by James Lepore
The old gypsy, bantering in perfect Arabic, had slipped the head customs agent in Tangier the key to a storage locker at the pier’s passenger depot and they were let on the ferry with zero fuss. Megan changed into her Western clothes on the boat and, at Duval’s polite urging, used her own passport to enter Spain, applying for and being routinely issued a three-month visitor’s visa. She returned with him to Montmartre, to the fourth-floor flat of a small apartment building he owned on a weed-covered cul-de-sac. Gypsies lived in all four apartments. The men hung out in the street-level coffee shop all day while the women went out to hustle, looking for gadgo widows or old men to con out of their life savings, or simply steal from if they could gain access to their homes. The kids, about ten or twelve of them, played all day in the street or the littered lot behind the building.
As the end drew near, most of François’s relatives and friends had shown up, some from Paris, others from Hungary and the Czech Republic. One family of ten claimed to be from Russia. Their banged up, cannibalized cars and trucks, which doubled as sleeping quarters for many of them, lined the dead-end street. One day, François asked to be carried down to the coffee shop. The move exhausted him. He weighed about ninety pounds and had trouble breathing after any kind of exertion, even lifting his head to sip some water. He slept for an hour, and when he woke he refused the morphine that Megan had been giving him at increasingly shorter intervals. Megan watched as perhaps a hundred gypsies entered the coffee shop over the next three days to speak to the dying man. A fierce-looking crone named Ya Ya, once apparently Duval’s lover but now his head house-keeper, told her that this was not simply to say good-bye. A gypsy must not be allowed to go to his grave bearing resentment or envy or ill feelings toward any other gypsy. If he did, his mulo—his ghost, basically—would return to haunt the person who had caused this state of affairs. Any doubt as to any lingering ill will, going back as far as childhood, had to be resolved face-to-face before the old man died.It was the fear of marime, contamination by the dead, Ya Ya said, that had brought these people to the old man’s deathbed.
By ten AM, the entire group, perhaps a hundred and fifty men, women, and children had gathered in the street to watch as François’s coffin was lifted onto the back of a rusted-out pickup truck. One of the pallbearers was François Duval Jr., paunchy and balding but with his father’s sly eyes and careful, calculated movements. Another was a large muscular man, perhaps fifty, with a head of wild black hair, an eye patch, and a prominent gold tooth. Doro, the handsome, too-solemn teenaged grandson of Annabella Jeritza was the third. The last was a young man of perhaps twenty-five, with silky black hair, dark burning eyes, and fine, feminine features, including a cruel but beautiful slash of a mouth. Corozzo’s son. No gypsy would touch a dead body, and so Megan had washed and done her best to groom old François after he died, and then she and Ya Ya had sat with the body until a local undertaker, familiar with the odd ways of the roma, had arrived to prepare it properly for interment. While they were waiting, the man with the eye patch had entered the candlelit coffee shop. He had first glanced at Ya Ya, who immediately left, and then had taken her vacated chair across from Megan.
Megan, dressing slowly in her room, getting ready to join the crowd gathering below, recalled their conversation:
“I am Corozzo. François was my uncle, my father’s brother. As a young man I ran off and married one of his daughters without his permission. In the gypsy world, daughters are worth only the money they can bring when they are married off. François did not kill me because my father intervened. But I owe him a large debt. With you I will repay it.”
“How?”
“I will take you into my clan. You will be under my protection.”
“How do I know you can protect me?”
This question had stopped Corozzo cold. Gypsy men were not used to being questioned by women. But Megan didn’t care. She had to assert some control, some independence, lest she be totally enslaved by the large beast of a man before her. She had met Corozzo’s harsh stare with one of her own.
“Because if I don’t,” Corozzo said, “François’s mulo will enter my home, my clan. I will become an outcast myself.”
“Where will we go?”
“The Czech Republic at first. We will leave tomorrow, after the old man is buried.”
“No.”
“No?”
“My baby is due in a few days. François promised me it would be born here, in France. I have a midwife who I have been seeing. You have to wait.”
“The French police want to talk to me,” Corozzo said. “About a murder.” The light from a nearby candle bathed his face, softening his harsh features, but not the sharp, feral look in his good eye.
“One more thing,” Megan went on, ignoring this statement and his scowl, “no sex. But if you need money, I will give it to you.”
Now the one-eyed man smiled, his gold tooth gleaming in the candlelight. “François did not mention money,” he said, “but you will be expensive, and there is the question of your keep. As to sex, we will see. You might change your mind. I am charming and very brave.”
“I doubt it. But I will pay my way, and my baby’s. I don’t know how long I’ll be with you. It may be a while. As much as a year. Did François tell you why I am in hiding?”
“A mad lover.”
“Yes, quite mad. And dangerous.”
Corozzo rose. He towered over Megan. His smell—liquor and leather and sweat—filled the small windowless room. François Duval’s body, his wispy white hair neatly combed, his face clean-shaven, lay in his ornate brass bed a few feet away. A candle on a nightstand illuminated his face. Megan had looked over at him while waiting for Corozzo’s answer.
“I will wait,” Corozzo said. “I will want a thousand euros for every month you are with me. If I am arrested you will lose your protection.”
“And you will lose a thousand euros a month.”
Corozzo shrugged his large shoulders, then abruptly turned and left.
At the cemetery, the grave was already dug. A mound of red earth was heaped next to it with two coiled canvas straps resting on top. Gypsies lower the caskets of their dead themselves and fill in the grave. Megan, who had made the arrangements on François’s and Ya Ya”s instructions, was relieved to see that they had been followed. As the mourners neared the gravesite, the women began to wail, at first one or two and then it seemed like all of them. The violinist had arrived early and was playing as they approached. Several old women were propping up Ya Ya, whose wailing grew louder, as if she were in competition with the others. Everyone had the same clothes on as they had on at seven in the morning. Jogging suits, patched skirts, kerchiefs of every color on the women’s heads, trousers fifty years old on the men, the teenagers in jeans and worn-out running shoes. An Eastern Orthodox priest said some words that Megan could not hear over the din of the wailing and the violin. The younger kids were scampering around the knees of the adults and a few had ran to jump over nearby headstones. These were chased down and cuffed by their mothers. The same pallbearers lowered the heavy bronze casket into the grave, pulling the straps up after it. Everyone shoveled or kicked in the red dirt. Those who had been carrying flowers—most of them plastic—threw them in. When the grave was covered, two battered trumpets were produced and the clan filed out to their trucks and cars to a tune that seemed to put a wild melody to the women’s wailing. Megan, feeling what she thought might be the first twinge of a contraction, didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.
Annabella Jeritza, her orange hair covered by a black kerchief, took Megan’s arm and they walked out of the cemetery together.
“Is your baby coming?” the old woman asked.
“I think it is:”
“Yes, I do, too. But don’t fret. The first one takes his time. Come, I will introduce you to Miss Pia:”
Megan had lied to Corozzo. She had not been seeing a midwife, but rather she had relied on Annabella, who told her that when the time ca
me she would produce one. It seemed the time had come.
“She is just there;” said the fortune-teller as they walked through the cemetery’s arched wrought iron gateway, ”there with Doro and her daughter at his car.”
While they waited for traffic to ease so they could cross the busy Avenue de Clichy, Megan stared at the trio Annabella had pointed out. Doro she had met and trusted. The two women were strangers. When they reached them, Annabella introduced Megan, and then began a conversation in rom with the midwife, a severe-looking woman of about fifty with a cocked eye and a mole on her upper lip. While they were talking, presumably about the delivery of Megan’s baby, Megan eyed the daughter—who was perhaps thirty and about Megan’s height—and was at once struck by two things: how fair she was for a gypsy, her complexion and her hair color quite close to Megan’s, and how frail she looked, her bones showing through her thin cotton dress and long wool sweater. Then Miss Pia and her daughter left and Megan and Annabella got into Doro’s car. They were joined by Doro’s friend Ephrem, who had been in a nearby shop buying cigarettes. As they neared home, Megan pulled Annabella’s hand over onto her stomach for her to feel what she believed was her next contraction. She and the fortune-teller were in the backseat.
“Yes;” said Annabella, ”Miss Pia will be stopping by in about an hour. I think the child is coming, but she will know for sure:”
“Will she want money?”
“Yes. She lives for gold:”
Megan had learned that this question was not crass in the gypsy culture. They loved money more than any material thing it could buy, and they spent a large part of their day discussing it. Only a gadgo fool did not look for the opportunity to turn any situation—tragic, comic, or in between—into a source of money.
“And the daughter?” Megan asked. “Is she sick?”
“Yes, she has a cancer somewhere. She will be dead soon:”
“How soon?”
“A week or two, maybe a bit more:”
Megan turned to stare out the car window, trying to rein in her racing thoughts. When Doro slowed to make a turn, she recognized the street. It was Annabella’s.
“Are we stopping at your place?” she asked.
“Yes. You will not be welcome at François’s any longer. Corozzo has asked me to take care of you until you are ready to travel. You and the baby. I know a family who has an extra room. You can stay with them. They will want money, too:”
“Where does Miss Pia live?”
“In the same building you will be staying in:”
“Her daughter lives with her?”
“Yes.”
“Has she been to a hospital? A doctor?”
“No.”
“What is her name?”
“Little Pia:”
“Why is she so fair?”
“No one knows. We think her father was gadgo. Miss Pia ran off when she was young and was not heard from for years. She returned with the red-haired child. People keep away from her. They think her cocked eye is a mark of the devil:”
“Is it?”
“She is a good midwife, but as I said, she is very greedy, greedier than most, and she has no friends:”
~31~
THE RIVER OHRE, JANUARY 7, 2004
Ephrem was knocked from the bow of the boat by a branch that nobody saw coming until it was too late. They watched helplessly as he was swept away by the current, and rushed to the waterfall about fifty yards ahead. They knew the waterfall was there because they heard it and because their skipper, a bearded, thick-set Hungarian gypsy, had anticipated that the dam on the outskirts of Cheb would be raised to prevent flooding in the small but densely populated city. Better to flood the forest for a half mile or so on either side of the river than to destroy homes and businesses and lives. The problem was that as he slowed and veered toward the left bank in the pitch dark, he did not know just how much of the forest had been submerged. The branch that swept Ephrem away was normally ten feet above dry ground. The small beach used by locals to launch their pleasure boats must have been flooded as well. They looked for it, but once they heard the falls the skipper steered sharply to starboard and, in the blink of an eye, Ephrem was gone.
The Hungarian, who had earned the five hundred euros Pat had paid him, went back upstream after off-loading his passengers. He would tie up to a tree and wait out the flood tide. With his passengers gone, he would be safe from official inquiry. Not so Pat, Catherine, Doro, and Steve Luna, Doro’s young colleague, the third gypsy boy they had met in Rambouillet but never been introduced to until tonight. There was a car waiting for them at a boatyard in Cheb, no more than three or four miles away. Getting there was the problem.
“We should search along the bank for Ephrem;” said Pat. ”He might have made it to shore:”
“No,” Doro replied, “there is no shore. The river is still rising. We have to move inland:”
They were standing in a small muddy clearing, all of them soaked hip-high, all exhausted from their hundred-yard trudge through icy cold, waist-high water to dry ground.
“There will be police around;” said Catherine. ”We cannot use the roads:”
“Whose car is it?” Pat asked. “We could call them and ask them to pick us up.”
“Steve bought the car today from a gypsy family. He parked it, and then he had to hire the boat. That’s why we weren’t at the carousel at six olock.”
“Thank God you were there when we got there,” said Catherine. “We were very lucky.”
“The captain insisted on leaving early. He knew the river was rising and didn’t know how long it might take:”
This was the first chance they had had to talk. Pat and Catherine had driven from the Waldsassen municipal parking lot, near their hotel, to the amusement park in under ten minutes. They were happily surprised to see Doro waiting for them at the carousel, but in too much of a hurry to do anything but blurt out their predicament and rush to the boat, which was another surprise, and a relief, until they actually got under way. The river was dark and swift and the boat, under very little power, raced headlong downstream. It had been Doro’s idea to stop and push the Peugeot into the river. As their boat was taking them away from the park’s dock, they could see that their ploy hadn’t worked. The car was hung up on some rocks. They could also see headlights approaching the carousel.
Once under way, Pat immediately paid the captain, who cursed and asked for another hundred euros when he was told by Catherine that he could not use his running lights. He sent Ephrem to the bow to look out for floating logs and other boat-sinking debris. The others huddled as best they could on the stern deck of the twenty-five-foot boat, watching the Hungarian skipper’s back as he handled the wheel in the forward cabin. They all stood up when they felt themselves going to the left and the next thing they heard was the thud of the branch knocking Ephrem into the river. A sound they wouldn’t forget for a long time, if ever.
“We’ll walk through the forest,” said Doro, “keeping close to the water. When we reach the city, I will go for the car:”
“There will be hounds,” said Catherine, “but the water and the mud will make it difficult for them. And no boat could reach us here:”
In the boat, Pat’s adrenaline had risen along with the tide. Now it was starting to ebb. But the cold and the possibility of hypothermia were not their biggest problems. In the distance, upriver, he heard the whir of a helicopter, or thought he did. And then it was gone and they set out.
~32~
CZECH REPUBLIC, JANUARY 8, 2004
At dawn, Pat and Catherine were kneeling at a low stone wall overlooking a small but steep valley through the center of which ran an unnamed tributary of the Labe River. Fifty yards or so away, at perhaps a fifty-foot-drop from their level, was a clearing cut out from the forest on the far side of the stream. At one end, the clearing was bordered by three pyramid-shaped piles of dark gray tailings. Here and there a glint or two of ore sparkled as the strange dense masses, three times as
tall as a grown man, caught the first light of the sun rising over a series of low hills in the east. At the other end, a decaying two-story brick building squatted against a denuded hillside. The building’s two rows of windows were shattered and covered with odds and ends of plywood and other scraps of weathered lumber. Next to it gaped the timber-framed opening, perhaps ten feet high, to a long abandoned mine. On the hardpan near the building were parked six vehicles: a pickup truck, a box truck, and four passenger cars. The road in, at one time paved but now crumbling and overgrown with weeds, ended at the foot of the hill next to the mine building. The snow of the night before had barely reached this part of the Czech Republic, some twenty miles due east of Prague. A light dusting of it covered the clearing and surrounding countryside, just enough to make the abandoned mine compound look picturesque in the early light and the clearing look like a small but perfect stage that nature had prepared for its next important, secret event.