Gypsy in Amber

by Martin Cruz Smith

  The music stopped, and into the middle of the circle stepped Vera and Dodo. Kalia’s father held a bottle of Courvoisier. Around the neck of the bottle was a string of gold pieces which marked the brandy as the pliashka. The bottle was opened and poured into two glasses from which Dodo and Vera drank soberly. When they embraced, their children were married. Later there would be a ceremony by a sympathetic priest, but it would be only for form. The Romany signified their recognition of the union now with cheers from the women and drinks for the men.

  So far Kalia and Laza had been invisible. The groom had been driving up and down Broadway with some of his closest friends while the bride stayed at another ofisa with a friend and an aunt. At this point she was brought to Vera’s and escorted to the kitchen to wait for Kalia. It was a necessary part of the tradition that she be carried off struggling by her husband.

  The drinking and talking and singing carried on for another hour until Kalia arrived. The signal was passed back to the kitchen, where Vera hurriedly unbraided Laza’s long hair. The girl stared down at the white silk dress bought specially for the occasion. With a tenderness that surprised Laza, Vera sang very softly:

  Kay hin m’ro vodyi?

  Ujes hin cavo,

  Ujes sar o kam,

  Ujes sar pani,

  Ujes sar kumut,

  Ujes sar legujes,

  Pen mange,

  Caveskro vasteba

  Kay hin m’ro vodyi?

  In another language it would mean, ‘Where is my heart? The child is pure, pure as the sun, pure as the water, pure as the moon, pure as the purest. So tell me, how could the child steal my heart?’

  There was a knock on the kitchen door, and the girl went out alone. In a line waiting for her were her brothers and cousins forming a shield. Coming across the room toward them were Kalia and his brothers and cousins. The two small armies met and engaged in a spectacular Hollywood stuntman sort of battle that Kalia’s side was ordained by custom to win. He grabbed Laza around the waist and started to drag her away. She screamed and pushed him away violently, but he refused to let go. They fell to the floor once, and when he still pulled her to the door, Laza tore at her hair with fear and scratched her face while the spectators moved out of the way of the shrill elopement. The bride made one last desperate effort to break loose, and then Kalia had forced her through the door and was dragging her down the steps to her accompaniment. At last, he threw her in the car and drove off.

  Kore took a cigarette from Roman, lit it and let out a judicious blue plume of smoke. ‘Very good. She did her family honor. It’s not often you see nice kids like that, Romano.’

  Roman wondered whether a marriage like this would appeal to Dany’s hysterical instincts. Kore had picked up a keg on each shoulder and danced while Roman accompanied him with claps. Dodo and his brothers joined in with a song. Vera laughed at one side, her necklace of coins slapping against her bosom. Dodo’s brothers forced toasts of beer and Tokay onto Roman. As he danced, Kore’s amulet, a seashell inscribed with stars, fell out of his shirt and danced on a chain. For a passing moment it became a devil’s head.

  Roman wasn’t drunk. He was thinking more clearly than he had all day. Something in the back of his mind was eating the brandy and beer like a demon. It was evil. Its outline was large and ominous. ‘There are no hesitation wounds,’ he remembered. It was capable of bending the posts of a bed, let alone dance with kegs on its shoulders. It had killed the girl and Nanoosh, and it could have killed him too if it had wanted to. It was not an outline of Hoddinot Sloan.

  For the first time he admitted to himself what he shared with Sloan. The dry, pretentious, unpleasant gajo was also in love. Why else would he save the letters and wait up for hours for a phone call from a girl he had murdered?

  Chapter Sixteen

  Celie Miyeyeshti was an important woman by a number of definitions. To begin with she was a mountain of a woman whose petticoats made pleated foothills. When she sat, her great-grandchildren raced to put at least two folding chairs side by side. Among Romanies, the word ‘important’ was the most common polite description of someone with weight, and Celie Miyeyeshti was the most important woman in New York.

  Besides that, she was a phuri dai, a woman acknowledged to have such extraordinary powers of perception and such understanding of the unwritten laws of Romany that children and formidable members of the Kris alike would modestly bring their problems to the garish, mammoth crone on her folding throne. No one knew how old she was. Her passports gave a variety of guesses, just as they differed on her nationality. She traveled in the rear of her Fleetwood Cadillac limousine with jump seats for anyone who cared to stuff themselves into the vast car with her as she dispensed wisdom – where to rent an ofisa, when to attempt a bozur, what crime was great enough to assemble the Kris – with an air of mystery that was almost sexual. Early in the morning, when Laza and Kalia had consummated their wedding and the bloodstained proof of virginity had been displayed, Celie would face the weary couple. She would break a loaf of bread and put a pinch of salt on each piece and offer them to Laza and Kalia, saying, ‘When you are tired of this bread and this salt, then you will be tired of one another.’ Laza and Kalia would exchange their halves and eat them as the children threw handfuls of rice over their heads, and yet another round of celebration would begin.

  ‘Get this Romano a chair,’ Celie ordered. A tiny girl slid a chair behind Roman.

  ‘Thank you,’ Roman said. He wiped the sweat off his forehead and looked at Celie. Somehow she remained cool in the Spanish mantilla and virtual breastplate of necklaces of strung coins she always wore to parties. Gold seemed to permeate her; it winked from twenty teeth when she smiled.

  ‘You should learn to relax,’ Celie said. ‘If everything is over, why aren’t you relaxing? What did you want to ask me?’

  He wondered what it was that gave him away. No matter, he was good at reading people but she saw things that he wouldn’t in a thousand years. She knew that for once he wasn’t sitting next to her to banter about her girth.

  ‘I don’t know,’ he said.

  Over by the tables, Kore and Dodo were pretending to be an Oursari and his bear. The boy who had sung the patshiv djili was singing an emotional canto hondo he’d learned in Granada. Two women were arguing over who had made the better bokoli. Children attacked each other with bread clubs. When one threw a disputed bokoli, the din became worse. A circle of elders began singing the old songs, and in a few minutes when their second wind came back, they would start dancing, too.

  ‘Come,’ Celie said as she heaved herself out of her chairs, ‘this is no place to talk about death.’

  Roman followed her as she plowed her way with dignity back through the ofisa to the empty kitchen.

  Dany finished chewing one side of her lower lip and started on the other. Her oversized glasses rested on the end of her nose, the lenses glazed by the blue of the television screen. Without them, anything beyond ten feet was a blur. Contact lenses made her eyes tear, which created new problems. She wouldn’t wear anything but contacts in public and Roman did nothing but make fun of her as she alternated, while they strolled in front of Harry Winston’s, between lighthearted smiles and Kleenex.

  That was another reason to hate him, to add to all the others she’d thought of during the evening. On the television, an enormous iguana was terrorizing Japan. It was a boring stupid movie, and it scared her, and that was another reason for hating him for leaving her alone.

  She shifted on the sofa, pulling a pillow over her stomach. It was a warm night, so she was in nothing but his old kimono, and since she’d turned all the air conditioners on full blast, she was freezing. She glanced at her watch. It was two thirty, and she had enough precious gems of enmity to stock her for a month.

  Roman had promised that he’d come back early, and she was amazed at her own acuity of hearing each time the elevator moved. Dany knew what she was going to say. She wasn’t going to say a thing, just let him stew in
guilt. Later, in the morning, she would let him make up. As the hundred-foot iguana ate a tank in the middle of downtown Tokyo, she held the pillow tighter.

  The elevator stopped on the floor. It had to be Roman because the apartment was on the top floor and his neighbor was in Europe. It was too late to turn the set off, so she grabbed the book on the floor and began reading the last pages of Spinoza. There was no key in the door, and she was putting the book back down when the bell rang. She jumped and laughed at herself. He’d know that she was up waiting for him.

  Dany took her time, checking herself in the mirror, tying the sash tight and assuming a look of displeasure. She took the chain off the door and opened it. Before she could close it again, the heel of a hand shot through, staggering her. She tried to keep her balance, holding onto the antenna of the television, when the hand came down a second time over her mouth. As she tried to pull free, another hand gripped the back of her neck. The antenna snapped off as she was dragged back onto the sofa.

  There were five of them, all dressed brightly in thick pullover ski masks, windbreakers and ski gloves. The heat of the night was already making them sweat in their costumes, so their eyelids batted.

  ‘The lock, the lock,’ the one holding her whispered.

  The chain was shot, and they turned back to her. Dany reached back to scratch, and her hands were grabbed and twisted down behind her back. Something bit into her wrists as they were tied together, and she was thrown onto her face. She was smothering in the pillow, and at last her head was wrenched back by the hair, and she inhaled once before a balled-up nylon stocking was pushed into her mouth. One of Roman’s socks was tied over her eyes.

  It was ridiculous, she knew, but what she thought of was that the kimono was pushed up on her back during the struggle and her rear was uncovered. She knew that she should fight some more no matter how futile it was but that would expose her completely. She squeezed her legs together and concentrated on not throwing up on the gag. On the floor, she could hear the crack of her glasses being crushed by a heel.

  ‘Take it easy,’ the whisperer said into her ear, his hand resting familiarly on a bare buttock. ‘Just take it easy and nod. Now, is he coming back?’

  Dany shook her head. She was crying and cursing herself for being so weak. The worst they could do was rape her, she told herself. Then a hand closed on her nostrils, clamping the cartilage hard, and her blinded eyes shot open as she realized what they could do. The grip on her nose loosened, and she sucked in air.

  ‘I’ll ask you again. Is he coming back tonight?’

  As soon as she started to shake her head again, the hand regained its grip. She couldn’t escape it. A fingernail dug through the skin. In a black vacuum, she saw with utter clarity that she was being killed. She’d swallowed the nylon gag back into her throat. When she tried to roll off the sofa, two more hands held her ankles. It took her forever to understand that the brittle snap was the cartilage bending in that inescapable grip. That the twin pops were the feeble protests of her eardrums. The sofa seemed to open up, like a cushioned coffin.

  Death was a stream. An iguana changed colors as it gained on her. It grasped her toes and climbed up to rest on her soft instep. Floating, she couldn’t shake it off. When it had regained its breath, the lizard started climbing up over her ankle, to her calf, tickling her as it dragged itself over the back of her knee. Its sharp feet dug into the meat of her thighs as it continued its journey. When it raised itself over the shuddering flesh of her buttocks, its footsteps became strangely louder, crashing, deafening. Then she felt the cool touch of its split tongue on the base of her spine and she could stand it no longer. She escaped from her body.

  ‘Hey, she’s having convulsions and throwing up.’

  ‘Make the gag tighter.’

  She couldn’t escape. Somewhere in her mouth and nose, clots of her were caught. The crashes became louder, more distinct.

  ‘She’s choking on the stuff.’

  ‘I can’t stand it. Cover her somebody, please.’

  ‘She’ll survive.’

  The footsteps were inside her, running with dull, heavy thuds, racing and shaking her with each step. Then, with amazement, she recognized her heart. And the acrid taste of vomit in her mouth, and the fact that she wasn’t dead. Something warm touched her.

  ‘I’m sorry, I had to cover her,’ a girl said.

  ‘Whisper, God damn it, whisper. She can hear you,’ said the voice that she identified best. ‘Turn up the TV.’

  It was wonderful to hear the shrieks of the horror movie again. She couldn’t have been under for more than a few minutes. Her ears hurt but unusual sounds, besides the screaming of film extras, came through. The noise of a drawer being opened and the disjointed clatter of its contents on the floor. A curtain being carefully, maliciously ripped apart. An antique chair caromed off the wall by insane force.

  When was he coming back, they’d asked. He was already late. He was probably rushing home now, she thought. They were tearing the place apart because they didn’t have their hands on him. She began praying that he was drunk, that his friends were holding onto him, keeping him, that he was flirting with a girl, anything. The chill sound of glass being scratched filled the room. Nobody else would hear it. The people downstairs were away on vacation too.

  ‘It’s your fault. You said he was home.’

  ‘The lights were on,’ a male voice answered.

  ‘Don’t throw the china. Use a hammer.’

  They knew she was awake because they all were whispering again. It was difficult to tell which was a man and which a woman.

  ‘It’s Sèvres.’

  ‘Give me that hammer.’

  The china cup exploded like a gunshot. As the unseen phantoms went on with their destruction, the rest of the fragile set went off like a child’s string of firecrackers. She huddled in the blanket, shivering, her tongue pulled away from the stocking, hoping that they were done with her.

  ‘There’s a safe behind the bed. Let’s open it.’

  She heard them pull the bed back, and then there was a relative silence as they attempted to find the correct combination. Failure was marked with the report of a hammer and the renewed zeal with which they attacked the rest of the apartment. She was getting better at images now. She could picture the knife that penetrated the cushion of a chair and ripped out the stuffing in manic jerks.

  How long had they been there, she wondered. Her fright gathered when she realized that there must be almost nothing left to destroy in the apartment. Every chair or table or mirror or piece of china, everything had been smashed but her. They would be left standing with their hammers and knives and hands with only one target left. The strange cacophony had longer and longer pauses. Before, she’d wanted it to end. Now she was willing for it to go on forever.

  The room was silent, except for the panting of people who had been working very hard on a summer’s night in woolen masks. Somehow she knew the colorful masks and gloves were still on. How nice it would be to go skiing with Roman in New England, in the White Mountains. She’d never done that.

  The sofa sagged. Someone was sitting next to her. She felt the heat on the side of her face when he bent to speak to her.

  ‘We have to go. We’re going right now,’ the whisperer said in a pleasant, conversational tone. The hope leaped in her even while she tried to fight it. She made her body as absolutely still as possible. A hand ran along her ribs.

  ‘We have to go,’ he repeated. ‘But we can’t just go. Do you know what I mean. We can’t just go.’

  The hope died stillborn.

  ‘Give me the razor,’ he said, and she knew he wasn’t talking to her anymore. It was stupid, of course, because the sock was around her eyes but she closed her eyes anyway so that she wouldn’t see what he was doing because she was a stupid girl, as Roman always said, and that was the way she’d die.

  At least she knew enough to pass out when he started.

  Celie balanced the glass
of hot tea between the fingertips of her hands so that it looked like an offering to a bizarre buddha. She blew a wisp of steam away and gave the glass to Roman.

  ‘You’re a smart boy, Romano. I always said that. You may be right, and I may be right, since we’re both so smart. But let me tell you something wise. Stay out of it. It’s gaja business, not yours.’

  ‘You said that before.’

  ‘Because I know when you’re not listening to me. Nanoosh is safe. That’s all that concerns you.’

  ‘He threatened me with the devil’s head.’

  ‘Bah. That doesn’t frighten you, and I know it. It shows how much he really knows about the rites.’

  ‘It shows that he thinks he knows. That’s what makes him dangerous.’ He thought back on Sloan, the coward who paced for hours in his office waiting for his phone call, who went to bed to have bad dreams. The man who left the devil’s head had come in through the bedroom window the same as Roman. Roman would have heard him if he had entered the house by a door. It was a man who was as at home in the dark as Roman. ‘The only reason he didn’t kill me was that I was at the house. It would have been too coincidental for the police. He knows what I am.’

  ‘You think that this evil thing is after you in particular? I have news for you, gaja evil is more impersonal than that. You can step aside and let it go on its way, and it will forget all about Romano Gry.’

  ‘And what do you suggest I do tomorrow night? Not think about it?’

  The sound of the party wasn’t enough to overcome the silence in the kitchen. A pin from Laza’s dress was on the floor, and Roman pushed it aside with his foot.

  ‘All right,’ Celie said finally. ‘You are such a phral of this policeman, why don’t you tell him?’

  It was quite a concession for Celie to make. No Rom spoke to the police. Only her dispensation would allow Roman to in the eyes of the kumpanias.