Summary

Chapter 1, continued. The trainer’s imaginings of Tosca’s biography blend with recollections of her own childhood, with experiences with their two mothers being a common point of interaction. Markus, meanwhile, becomes increasingly frustrated with their lack of progress creating an act for Tosca and, saying he feels penned in, goes to the library. The trainer spends time alone with Tosca, but is interrupted by Honigberg, who hints at secret activities that trigger dreams of her childhood in the trainer, and recollections of her first experiences at a circus. Those experiences, she says in narration, involved her escaping her mother’s control and influence to voluntarily work at the town’s circus, feeding the horses. Eventually, the clown who supervised her asked her name, and she revealed that it was Barbara, leading the clown to comment that...