The Gypsy's Dream

by Sara Alexi

  He said the words to her every time they climbed that hill. Even when she walked up there once with him, with an engagement ring on her finger, he repeated that monologue. By then, the words had become a mantra and she said them with him: ‘Play the game well, without fear and don’t let your belief hold you back. No matter who you are.’ And Stella had added, ‘If in doubt, look down,’ and laughed.

  That last time they had laughed together a long time and he had told her he loved her and put his arm around her and said what a lucky man Stavros was and he hoped that he knew it.

  ‘So all I can say is, sorry for my clumsiness,’ Mr Kleftis concludes.

  Stella looks down. The carpet needs vacuuming. Now she understands why her father had added on, ‘No matter who you are.’

  ‘So who is he?’ she asks, still looking at the floor. The swirling patterns become the sea and the plain of the valley.

  ‘I believe, and I am very sorry to say this, but I believe your mother had no choice, it was some cousin.’

  ‘A gypsy!’ Stella’s head shoots up.

  Mr Kleftis swallows hard and blinks rapidly before slowly nodding his head.

  Stella quickly looks back at the carpet.

  Mr Kleftis looks at his watch.

  Stella is silent and unmoving.

  Mr Kleftis clears his throat.

  ‘So, er, what can I do for you today, with regards to you and Stavros?’ He stammers.

  ‘I want him out!’ Stella says loudly, and then shuts her mouth, frightened of what else might come out.

  ‘I see.’ He looks through the papers. ‘Well, there is nothing legally binding about anything. No. You bought the “aera”, the goodwill, if you like, but now the lease on the shop has expired and I presume you haven’t signed a new one.’ He looks up and catches Stella shaking her head. ‘You just pay the rent each month, with a verbal agreement, and the same with the house. Neither of you are bound, or for that matter have real claim.’

  ‘But it was my inherited money that paid the goodwill and deposits on them both, and the first two months’ rent before we started to make an income. That must stand for something!’ Stella rubs her forehead, and sucks on her dry mouth. The rest of the money from selling her father’s house had paid off Stavros’ debts. He had taken more than his share. The shop and house should be hers.

  ‘Well, yes, you could use that as an argument if it went to court, but do you want to go down that route?’ He says this with excitement, almost to the point of glee.

  The swirls of the carpet are now very definitely the sea and the plain. Her father – and he was her father, no matter what any bit of paper says – holds her hand and she stands and walks out, leaving Mr Kleftis scraping his chair back to get to his feet.

  ‘Er, I also forgot to give you this when we sorted out the will.’ He hands her a folded sheet of paper which she snatches, he trots behind to escort her from the premises, but all too late as she closes the door behind her.

  Stella wanders to the park to be under the shade of the pine trees. The heat is oppressive, the sun high in the sky, her long skirt sticking around her legs as she walks. A mangy-looking cat meanders by, unhurried, sniffing at the bins.

  The weekly market along the play-area’s edge is coming to its close and the sellers are packing up, vans reversed next to stalls with the rear doors open, boxes upon boxes ready to be loaded, discarded fruit thrown in a pile. There are numerous gypsy vans and trucks parked under the trees, whole families standing around in their bright colours and long floating skirts.

  Thoughts of her father not being her blood tear at her chest. The foundation on which she had built her perception of herself falls away, leaving her teetering. One wrong move and she will collapse inwardly like a house of cards, leaving nothing but a remnant of herself. Her terror increases her breathing, and tears run down her face. She slumps onto a bench.

  Some children shriek and run past her, barefoot, with uncombed hair, flattened at the back from sleep.

  Her father was a gypsy cousin. Was he one of those who had emptied the house? The one who slapped her mother, perhaps? Stella is repulsed by the idea and gags. Is he still alive? She doesn’t care. She hates him, whoever he was.

  She is all gypsy. That cannot be changed. She cries openly.

  The school taunting, the second-class feeling, rush in on her, a gust of humiliation. Another breath, another thought, and she will come undone and she has no idea what will happen then.

  ‘Why are you sad?’

  Stella looks up but sees only tears.

  ‘Here, lady.’

  Stella wipes the tears, to focus on a lollipop.

  ‘Go on. It’s nice, stop you being sad.’ The child, with a dark tanned face, smears of dirt on her forehead and round her mouth, thrusts the sucked sweet at her.

  Stella forms a sentence in her mind and opens her mouth to speak. A large woman, in a blue and black ankle-length skirt and her hair in a plait to her waist, grabs the child by the wrist and pulls her away. She raps the girl’s head with her knuckles and speaks harshly to her. The girl does not cry. She listens.

  ‘Gypsies do not mix with non-gypsies,’ the flamboyant mother says.

  The girl looks back at Stella, bewildered, and puts the lollipop in her own mouth.

  Stella, engrossed in the drama, doesn’t notice another gypsy girl, slightly older, who approaches, hand outstretched, palm upwards, until she hears the muttering, a whining, falsely pitiful, begging voice. The only word intelligible is ‘money’.

  Stella is about to fall into her usual habit of telling the child to go away when it occurs to her that the girl does not see her as another gypsy.

  ‘I’m gypsy.’ Stella tries the word out. It feels like a lie. The girl looks blank and continues her whining noise, the final word “psila” - loose change.

  ‘Gypsy.’ Stella taps her fist to her chest, and cries openly, looking the girl in the eyes.

  The big woman with the plait marches towards her. Heels firmly first, the dark bare toes curling and splaying as she walks. Her pace slows as she nears, falters when she sees the tears.

  ‘What are you saying, lady? You are no gypsy. You dress like a Balami. You do not speak like a gifti.’ Her tone is soft but her movements sharp. She flicks her head, a well-practised movement, and her plait writhes like a snake and lands down her back as she takes hold of the wrist of the second child. ‘Gypsy is in here!’ the woman says, as she puts her hand on her heart, shifting her weight to turn.

  ‘What would you know?’ Stella sits straight, tears lost to tight withheld anger.

  The gypsy’s head tilts to one side, the child holding her hand looks from Stella and back to her mother.

  ‘What do you mean?’ She steps closer, sits next to Stella and pulls the child onto her knee, but the girl squirms off to run free.

  ‘My mother is gifti and today I find out my father is also gifti. Stella twists her hands together, her eyebrows drawn low, her eyes brim with tears, the lump in her throat cutting off her breath.

  ‘Why do you cry?’ The gypsy’s rough hand covers her own, ‘to be a gypsy is only a good thing.’

  The knot in Stella’s throat will not allow her to answer. The younger child runs over and squeezes between her mother’s knees and settles to see her mother’s hand on Stella’s, soothing comforting. She places her own little hand on top and copies the movements, her big eyes on Stella.

  ‘I do not understand your sadness. You mother is a gypsy - good! Your father is a gypsy - better! I watch the Balamoi, with their clothes and their cars and houses, and I watch how much they throw away. These same Balamoi that have so much to put in the rubbish, they turn my children away, who have nothing.’ She points to her child’s bare feet, tiny next to her own leathered feet, black with dirt. ‘Their clothes, no longer fashion so they throw them away. Their children grow, they no longer fit their clothes so they throw the clothes away.’ She pulls at her daughter’s skirt as if to indicate its origin. ‘If t
he woman sees a new cushion she likes, she throws the old one away. They appreciate nothing and waste everything. It is better to be a gypsy.’ the woman takes her hand back but the child now leans against Stella, sucking her lollipop and observing the exchange with a serious expression.

  ‘But you throw your waste by the roadside, paper and cardboard and empty water bottles,’ Stella says, thinking of the mess by the way from the town to the village.

  ‘Why do you think that is us?’ The woman tries to run a hand through her daughter’s hair, to untangle a knot or two. ‘I watch, I see the Balamoi throwing what they don’t want out of their car windows, to keep their lives clean. Then you blame us.’

  ‘And how do you know they are not gypsy? The people in the cars?’ Stella’s father had driven them so many times into town to the market. ‘We are not automatically Balamoi just because you don’t know us!’

  ‘And Gypsies are not dirty just because you don’t know us,’ the woman replies, but without malice. There is an awkward silence, but neither woman seems prepared to leave.

  ‘My father is a gypsy.’ Stella tries again, it feels less of a lie. ‘And my mother.’

  ‘Yes,’ she gypsy states, her hands back in her lap, having given up on her daughter’s hair.

  ‘Yes,’ Stella replies, she looks beyond the gypsy, past what is left of the market towards the hills. ‘My grandmother moved into a village. As a help in a cheese factory,’ Stella qualifies still looking beyond her immediate world. She is about to continue but the gypsy woman interrupts her.

  ‘How could she do this?’ Quick, eager. Stella raises her eyebrows, her focus returns to the park. The child runs off to play.

  ‘Would you? I mean, settle down in a village?’ She looks behind the gypsy at the vans with open sides and mattresses inside, televisions angled from the metal ceilings. A breeze drifts through the pines, blowing the needles across the compact earth. The children run, shrieking, in circles trying to catch an empty crisp packet caught in the wind.

  ‘Ha! No village would have us. So how did your grandmother do this?’ The gypsy straightens her back, her blouse has several stains down the front and as she raises her arm to adjust it Stella sees there are holes under the arms where the seams have given.

  ‘I think it was because she was on her own.’ Stella replies. Behind the gypsy another van pulls in and a group of children explode from the back, with cooped-up energy to spend. ‘People feel afraid when you are in big families.’ The man gets out of the driver’s side, stretches and takes out a cigarette and lights it before running his hand over his wet-looking long hair.

  The gypsy woman turns to see who has arrived, nods a welcome to the group. ‘It keeps you from pushing us around,’ she answers Stella. There is a hint of sadness in her voice.

  Stella stretches her legs and stands, and the gypsy, coincidentally, also stands. The gypsy looks down at her. She could flick Stella across the park with her little finger, she is an Amazon, where Stella is a nymph.

  ‘Would you settle down if you could?’ Stella asks.

  ‘I have children. You think I want them growing up in blanket houses, not going to school, being treated like they are dirt?’

  Stella’s mouth opens but no words came out for a second until, ‘Why don’t you then? Break away, do it.’

  The woman looks around her, checking where her family is, but remains standing beside Stella. ‘How? Even if we are one family, when we stay, people move us on. We send our children to school and they close the doors.’

  Stella swallows. ‘I know what it is like to be a gifti at school.’

  The woman gives her a sympathetic look.

  ‘They stoned me, the other children.’ Stella swallows.

  The gypsy lifts her hands and lets them drop into the sides of her skirts as if this was inevitable. With unblinking eyes that say more than words she looks at Stella for a long time. ‘So you know, you understand, you have lived the life of a giftisa. How can we settle, how can my children learn? I cannot teach them, I know nothing.’

  ‘Can your husband not get a job in a village and then you can stay?’ Stella suggests. She watches the children, they have sticks now and are batting the crisp bag up into the breeze, batting again before it touches the ground.

  ‘Him?’ And she bursts into laughter, a rich, contagious, kind sound, her silky clothes shimmering with the vibration. ‘He will never stop travelling, he does not think how it is to cook and clean. He does not think how to keep the children clean. He does not think of their learning. He wants them to be like him.’

  She sneers in his direction.

  ‘What does your husband do?’ She asks.

  “Not much. I run an ouzeri in a village. It was a shop that was empty for years so we got cheap rent, now we make a living, or we would if ...’ The sentence does not feel worth finishing.

  ‘But you do all the work. The same in my life.’ She looks over to her husband. ‘But he feels like a man, in charge, and he is happy.’ She concludes, her hands on her hips.

  ‘Our lives are not so different.’ Stella looks across to the man, who has a big round stomach.

  ‘Can you give me ten euros, then?’ the gypsy asks. ‘For nappies …’

  Stella transfers her weight onto her back foot.

  ‘Why do you think I am in a position to give you ten euros?’ Stella asks.

  ‘You are Balami with an ouzeri, Balamoi has money.’

  Stella stares hard at her. ‘I am gypsy.’

  ‘If you are gypsy then you must be proud, you have done much!’ She turns on her heel and struts back to camp, the smaller child running to her. She hoists the smaller child onto her hip; the bigger one nuzzles into her skirts, under her arm.

  Stella has only ever met her mother’s gypsy relations. These people are different. They seem less rough, more of a family, cleaner, softer, prouder.

  She watches them, until they notice, and then she looks away.

  Stella’s preconceived maps of her world tumble and spin away, perceptions switching, concepts fizzling, stone tablets cracking. Gypsies are not the bad breed her mother’s family had led her to believe, and the ‘Balamoi’, as the gypsy calls them, the non-gypsies, are not the clean decent civilised people she had always presumed them to be. Now that it has been mentioned she can remember numerous times she has seen village folk and town people throw rubbish from their car windows, but whenever the accumulated mess is discussed the blame is always on the gypsies and their camps. How many more of her beliefs are skewed like this? Safe has become unsafe; sure, unsure; trustworthy, untrustworthy. Love has become hatred; friendship, love. Her world spins. Her hands reach up to her head and she looks up into the pine trees, searching for a fixed point.

  She pauses to thinks of Mitsos, her rock, unchanging in all the years she has known him. She heard with relief, from Nikos, that he is ok, up and about. He has broken ribs and is in need of rest. She wishes she could go and see him but can think of no seemly pretence. She wonders if he has become close with Marina. Stella decides she will be his friend if that is all she can be, as long as she is near him, the rest of her life.

  The word ‘love’ does not need to be voiced. The feelings are even deeper than that.

  ‘Soul mates,’ Stella breathes.

  How has that happened, anyway? She liked him, she knew; she enjoyed his company. But for that to jump to more? He has shown her only kindness, not a hint of anything greater. She tries to squeeze him into a father-figure role in her mind but he won’t fit. There is something about his square jaw and ample mouth that puts her feelings into the ‘unsuitable’ category for any sort of family relation. She snorts at the ridiculousness of her situation, quickly turning her head from the gypsies.

  It is hot even under the trees. Not ready to face the village, or anything else for that matter, Stella wanders across to where the stall-holders are sweeping up. The aroma of fish lingers. She tiptoes between squashed tomatoes, plastic bags, empty boxes and soft onions
. The men sweeping up have little energy left to put vigour in their work. Their days begin before it is light, some of them come from Corinth, others up from Kalamata, it’s a long day.

  She walks along the line of shops opposite, trying to decide whether her father not being her blood alters the way she feels about him, who he is to her and she to him. He took on a child, a child that was not his, a gypsy. That takes courage, guts. She feels proud of him. He was the hero, and he had picked her out of the ashes and the dirt of her family’s heritage. But not so dirty it seems, well, not all of them. The gypsy woman had dignity, a confidence in who she was; she impressed Stella.

  How did her Baba see the gypsies? He chose her, and her mother, despite the possible social consequences for him. She takes a deep breath, the tears no longer need to fall. He would not want her despairing. He would expect her to fight, fight her restricting beliefs, fight her fear. Fight Stavros. The pavement turns a corner. She is now walking up March Twenty-Fifth Street, named after Greek Independence Day, when Turkish rule was overthrown.

  It feels somehow appropriate.

  Somewhere inside Stella feels she has a strange freedom. It is not a happy one, it is too unknown, but nor is it unhappy. Her heart cannot be wrenched any more, and she is surviving. That gives a peculiar freedom. What she had believed to be true – about her father, about Stavros, the ownership of her shop, even about gypsies – all changed. It is twisted and distorted into something else. It could not be twisted further. Yet she is still here, still breathing. It is an odd liberation, a curious letting go.

  She stops outside a glass-fronted shop, number thirteen, the inside aglow with pink striped walls. The colours lift her spirits. Not only the colours; she looks further, there is a dressmaker’s dummy with an apron on standing by one wall, see-through green Perspex chairs around a shiny table on the other side. It’s fun. But best of all, on the clean white open shelves in the window sit the most amazing little cakes Stella thinks, in that moment, she has ever seen. Like tiny works of art.

  She does not have a sweet tooth but she is drawn by the aura of success about the business. This is her dream: not a fast-food shop in a village with rocky old tables, sticky floors and nothing but chicken and giro on the menu.