Minnesota

Minnesota serves both as a landscape of performance and as the place where family separation becomes part of Fidelis’s private history. At the fairgrounds, Cyprian’s daring act earns the traveling pair an audience and a living; years later, Minnesota’s woods remain in Fidelis’s memory as the setting where his son chose a prison over him, one of several losses he associates with the decline of his heart.

Performance on the Fairgrounds

During a windless night in Minnesota, Cyprian builds his act from balance and movement. He spins plates on poles held across his arms, shoulders, forehead, and teeth, then runs between a line of poles while keeping them turning. Delphine takes bets on how long he can sustain the feat, a practical contribution that makes the show a significant source of their income.

The act escalates into an improvised display: Cyprian stacks items supplied by the audience, including crates of chickens and additional dishes, while declining a washing machine. He jig-dances beneath the growing stack and rides a bicycle across wires strung over the fairgrounds. For the finale, he climbs a flagpole and holds a handstand on its top. Watching him, Delphine feels sympathy and revises her view of their intimacy: she decides that his desperate need for her is enough, despite her earlier frustration with their lack of sexual heat.

A Traveling Route Through North Dakota

The pair’s Minnesota performances belong to a life of continual movement. In Shotwell, near the North Dakota border, they join a vaudeville group and a traveling circus from Illinois. Delphine welcomes the open horizon, which feels more familiar to her than the tree-lined towns they have passed through. The traveling circuit offers work and company, but it also exposes her to parts of Cyprian’s life she has not previously seen.

At a local saloon, Cyprian joins acquaintances and is served liquor. Delphine had not seen him drink before, though she had sometimes noticed its trace on his breath. When he struggles with a shot, she says nothing and quietly pours hers onto the floor. Her silent refusal contrasts with the convivial setting and foreshadows the strain that alcohol can bring into their shared life.

Minnesota as a Place of Memory

Minnesota also figures in Fidelis’s recollection of the family’s later separation. At New York customs, returning from Europe aboard the USS Bremen, he remembers his son marching past him in the Minnesota woods and choosing a gated prison house rather than his father. The memory belongs to a sequence of blows he associates with the first signs of his heart disease: news of Franz’s injury, the letter reporting Emil’s death, and Franz’s return home before his own death.

Fidelis does not accept that his body is failing. He continues his habits and dismisses his physical needs, even as the journey leaves him exhausted and his breathing tight. His memory of Minnesota therefore sits within a collision of past and present: at the customs gate he recalls his father at the sausage kettle in Germany, while the family rupture in the woods remains one of the losses that has weakened him. Minnesota is not given a single meaning; it holds both the mobility of the fairground and the lasting weight of separation.