The Rebel Angels tct-1

by Robertson Davies

  Being skilled in escape and evasion, great numbers of Gypsies ran away, and took refuge in the countryside that had always been so kind to them. That was when the greatest horror began; troops hunted them through the woods like animals, and shot on sight. Those who could not escape were in the hands of the Einsatzgruppen, the exterminators, and they were gassed. The Gypsies are not a numerous people, and so the statistics concerning their extermination are unimpressive, if you are impressed chiefly by numbers: there were just a few less than half a million who died thus, but when one human creature dies a whole world of hope and memory and feeling dies with him. To be robbed of the dignity of a natural death is a terrible deprivation.

  It was these souls I thought of, Canadian as I am by birth, but half-Gypsy by blood, as I listened to Liszt’s three final Hungarian Rhapsodies, all in minor keys, and all speaking the melancholy defiance of a medieval people, living in a modern world, in which their inveterate criminally expresses itself in robbing clothes-lines and face-to-face cheating of gadje who want their fortunes told by a people who seem to have the old wisdom they themselves have lost in their complex world of gadjo ingenuity, where the cheats and rogueries are institutionalized.

  Half a million Gypsies dead, at the command of this gadjo world; who weeps for them? I do, sometimes.

  I do.

  6

  “So: my bad child has told you about the bomari?”

  “Very little; nothing that would give me a clue to what it really is. But enough to rouse great curiosity.”

  “Why do you want to know? What has it to do with you?”

  “Well, Madame Laoutaro, I had better explain as briefly as I can. I am an historian, not of wars or governments, not of art or science—at least not science as people think of it now—but of beliefs. I try to recapture not simply the fact that people at one time believed something-or-other, but the reasons and the logic behind their belief. It doesn’t matter if the belief was wrong, or seems wrong to us today: it is the fact of the belief that concerns me. You see, I don’t think people are foolish and believe wholly stupid things; they may believe what is untrue, but they have a need to believe the untruth—it fills a gap in the fabric of what they want to know, or think they ought to know. We often throw such beliefs aside without having truly understood them. If an army is approaching on foot nowadays, the information reaches us by radio, or perhaps by army telephone; but long ago every army had men who could hear the approach of an enemy by putting their heads to the ground. That wouldn’t do now, because armies move faster, and we attack them before we can see them, but it worked very well for several thousand years. That is a simple example; I don’t want to bore you with complexities. But the kind of sensitivity that made it possible for a man to hear an army marching several miles away without any kind of artificial aid has almost disappeared from the earth. The recognition of oneself as a part of nature, and reliance on natural things, are disappearing for hundreds of millions of people who do not know that anything is being lost. I am not digging into such things because I think the old ways are necessarily better than the new ways, but I think there may be some of the old ways that we would be wise to look into before all knowledge of them disappears from the earth—the knowledge and the kind of thinking that lay behind it. And the little I have heard about your bomari suggests that it may be very important in my research. Do I make any sense to you?”

  To my astonishment, Mamusia nodded. “Good sense indeed,” she said.

  “Can I persuade you to talk to me about it?”

  “I have to be careful; secrets are serious things.”

  “I understand that perfectly. I assure you that I am not here as a snooper. You and I understand the importance of secrets, Madame Laoutaro.”

  “Bring tea, Maria,” said Mamusia, and I knew that much, perhaps everything, had been gained. This was Hollier at his best. His honesty and seriousness were persuasive, even to my suspicious Mother. And her capacity to understand was far beyond what I had expected. Children often underestimate what their parents can grasp.

  As I made the scalding strong tea which Mamusia wanted, and was more appropriate to this meeting than any merely social brew, I could hear her and Hollier talking together confidentially. In transcribing their conversation I shall not attempt to reproduce Mamusia’s version of English literally, because it would be wearisome to read and a waste of time. Besides, it would appear to diminish her dignity, which suffered not at all. When I returned, she was apparently putting Hollier on oath. “Never, never to tell this for money; you understand?”

  “Completely. I don’t work for money, Madame, though I have to have money to live.”

  “No, no, you work to understand the world; the whole world, not just the world of little Here and little Now, and that means secrets, eh?”

  “Not a doubt of it.”

  “Secrets are the blood of life. Every big thing is a secret, even when you know it, because you never know all of it. If you can know everything about anything, it is not worth knowing.”

  “Finely said, Madame.”

  “Then swear: swear on your Mother’s grave.”

  “She has no grave; she lives about a mile from here.”

  “Then swear on her womb. Swear on the womb that bore you, and the breasts you sucked.”

  Hollier rose splendidly to this very un-Canadian request. “I swear most solemnly by the womb that bore me, and the breasts that gave me suck, that I shall never reveal what you tell me for gain or for any unworthy reason, whatever it might do for me.”

  “Maria, I think I heard Miss Gretser fall; there was a thump upstairs a minute ago. See that she is all right.”

  Damn! But much depended on my obedience, so off I went, and found Miss Gretser in as good a state as might be expected, lying on her bed with old Azor the poodle, eating stuffed dates, her favourite indulgence. When I returned something had happened to solemnize the oath, but on what Hollier had sworn, apart from the organs of his Mother stipulated, I never knew. Mamusia settled herself on the sofa, prepared to talk.

  “My name, you see on the door outside, is Laoutaro; my husband, Niemcewicz-Theotoky, is dead, God rest him, and I have gone back to my family name. Why? Because it tells what I am. It means luthier; you understand luthier?”

  “A maker of violins?”

  “Maker, mender, lover, mother, bondwoman of violins and all the viol family. The Gypsies I come from held that work as their great craft, and every craft means secrets. It is men’s work, but my Father taught me because he sensed a special aptitude in me, and my brother Yerko wanted to be a smith—you know?—work in fine metals and especially copper in the best Gypsy style, and he was so good at it that it would have been a black sin to stop him. Besides, we luthiers needed him, for a reason you shall know in good time. I learned to be a luthier from my Father, who learned from his Father, and so back and back. We were the best. Listen to this—spit in my mouth if I lie—Ysaye never allowed anybody but my Grandfather to touch his violins—the great Eugene Ysaye. I learned everything.”

  “A very great art, indeed.”

  “To make violins, you mean? It’s more than that. It’s keeping violins alive. Who wants a new violin? A child. You make half-size and quarter-size for children, yes, but the big artist doesn’t want a new fiddle; he wants an old one. But old fiddles are like old people, they get cranky, and have to be coaxed, and sent to the spa, and have beauty treatments and all that.”

  “Is repairing your chief work, then?”

  “Repairing? Oh yes, I do that in the ordinary way. But it goes beyond repairing. It means resting; it means restoring youth. Do you know what a wolf is?”

  “I doubt if I know the sense in which you use the word.”

  “If you were a fiddler you’d fear the wolf. It’s the buzz or the howl that comes in one string when you are using another, and it can be caused by all kinds of little things—even a trifle of loose glue—and it is the devil to repair properly. Of course if you use p
lastic glues and such stuff, you can do a great deal, but you should repair a fine fiddle with the same sort of glue that was used by the maker, and it is no simple thing to find out what that glue was, because glues were carefully guarded secrets. But there’s another way to deal with a wolf, and that’s to put him in the bomari after you have patched him up. I’m not talking about cheap fiddles, you understand, but the fiddles made by the great masters. A Goffriller now, or a Bergonzi or anything from Marknenkirchen or Mirecourt or a good Banks needs to be approached on the knees, if you want to coax it back to its true life.”

  “And that is what the bomari does?”

  “That is what the bomari does if you can find a bomari.”

  “And the bomari is a kind of heat treatment—a form of cooking? Am I right?”

  “How in the Devil’s name did you know that?”

  “It is my profession to divine such things.”

  “You must be a great wizard!”

  “In the world in which you and I work, Madame Laoutaro, it would be stupid of me to deny what you have said. Magic is producing effects for which there seem to be no causes. But you and I also know that there is always a cause. So I shall explain my wizardry: I suspect—and you behave as if I were right—that bomari is a corruption, or a Romany form, of what is ordinarily called a bain-marie. You find one in every good kitchen; it is simple a water-bath to keep things warm that will curdle or be spoiled if they grow cool. But why is it called a bain-marie? Because tradition has it that it was invented by the second greatest Mary of all—Miriam the sister of Moses and a great sorceress. She died, it is said, of a kiss from God. We may take leave to doubt all that, though traditions should never be thrown aside without careful examination. It seems much more likely that the bain-marie was the invention of Maria Prophetissa, to whom books are attributed, and who was believed by Cornelius Agrippa to have been an historical person, even though she lived centuries before his time. She was the greatest of the women-alchemists, a formidable crew, I assure you. She was a Jewess, she discovered hydrochloric acid, and also the balneus mariae or bain-marie, one of the surviving alchemical instruments; even though it has been humbled and banished to the kitchen it still has a certain glory. So—from bain-marie to bomari—was I right?”

  “Not entirely right, wizard,” said Mamusia. “You had better come and take a look.”

  We went down into the cellar of the house, which was where Yerko lived, and where Mamusia’s carefully hidden workroom was. Hers was not a noisy business, nor was Yerko’s, though now and then, faintly and musically, the clink of the coppersmith’s hammer might have been heard upstairs. Yerko’s forge was small; Gypsies do not use the big anvils and huge bellows of the blacksmith, because traditionally they must be able to carry their forges on their backs, and it is not the Gypsy style to carry any more weight than is necessary. In the workroom was the forge and Mamusia’s workbench, and Yerko himself, wearing his leather apron and tinkering with something small—a pin or a catch that one might have expected a jeweller to produce.

  My Uncle Yerko, like Mamusia, had changed his way of life radically when Tadeusz died. While he worked as my Father’s junior and principal designer in the factory, he had borne some resemblance to a man of business, though he never looked at home in conventional clothes. But when Tadeusz died he too returned to his Gypsy ways, and gave up his pathetic attempt to be a New World man. How hard he had tried when first they came to Canada! He had even wanted to change his name so that he might become, as he thought, indistinguishable from his new countrymen. His name was Miya Laoutaro, and he wanted to translate it literally into Martin Luther; I do not think he ever understood why my Father forbade it, as being too extreme. Yerko was his pet name, his family name, and I never heard anybody call him Miya. When Tadeusz died he was as stricken as Mamusia; he would sit for hours, brooding and weeping, murmuring from time to time, “My good Father is dead.”

  Indeed Tadeusz had been a father to him, advising him, seeing that his considerable earnings were properly invested, and lifting him as far up in the world of business as it was possible for him to go. That was not beyond the designing and model-making part of the manufacturing work, because Yerko could not direct anyone else, was hopeless at explaining things he could do easily, and was apt to take time off for week-long drunks.

  Gypsies are not great drinkers as a rule, but when they do drink they are whole-hoggers, and without becoming a thoroughgoing dissolute boozer, Yerko was unreliable with anyone but Tadeusz. Mamusia tried to make the best of it by assuring my Father that this failing was much to be preferred to an unappeasable appetite for women, but Tadeusz had to keep a tight rein on Yerko who, when drunk, was not unlike Brother Martin the bear—heavy, incalculable, and in need of much humouring. In his workroom Yerko had a still; he objected rigorously to paying government taxes to get feeble liquor, and he made his own plum brandy, which would have stunned a bull, or anybody but Yerko himself.

  “Yerko, I am going to show the bomari,” said Mamusia, and although Yerko was astonished, he made no objection. He never contradicted his sister, though I have known him to hit her, and even to take a swipe at her with his coppersmith’s hammer.

  Mamusia led Hollier to a heavy wooden door, which was of Yerko’s manufacture, and I do not think the cleverest safe-cracker could have opened it, so barred and locked was it. Yerko unfastened the locks—he believed in plenty of complex locks—and we walked into a room where there may once have been electric light, but where we now had to use candles, for all the wiring had been taken out.

  It was not unusually big, and I think that in some earlier time in the life of the house it had been a wine-cellar. Now all the bins had been removed. What immediately seized you was the smell, which was not foul, but very strong, heavy, and warm; I can only describe it as a combination of wet wool and stable, but concentrated. All around the walls stood large, heavily elegant shapes; they were rounded, and seemed almost like mute human figures; in racks in the middle of the room were smaller versions of these man-sized cases, plump and gleaming. They gleamed because they were made of copper, and every inch bore the tiny impress of Yerko’s hammer, so that they twinkled and took the light in a manner that was almost jewel-like, but subdued. This was not the thin, cheap copper of the commercial jug or ornament, but the finest metal, very costly in the modern market. It seemed to be a cave of treasure.

  Mamusia was putting on a show. “These are the great ladies and gentlemen,” she said, with a deep curtsy towards them. She waited for Hollier to take it in, to grow eager for more.

  “You want to know how it works,” she said. “But I cannot disturb these old noblemen in their beauty sleep. However, there is one here that was sealed only a week ago, and if I open her now and re-seal her, no great harm will be done, because she has at least six months to rest.”

  At her direction, Yerko took a knife and deftly broke the heavy wax seal at the uppermost end of one of the small copper vessels, lifted the lid—which took strength because it was a tight fit—and at once a powerful essence of the prevailing smell escaped. Inside, in a bed of what looked like dark-brown earth, lay a figure swathed in woollen cloth.

  “Real wool, carefully spun so that I know that not a thread of rubbish has been sneaked into it. This must be the proper lamb’s-wool, or it is not good.”

  She unwrapped the figure, which was bandaged at least six layers deep, and there we saw a violin.

  “The great lady is undressed for her sleep,” said Mamusia, and indeed the violin had no bridge, no strings, no pegs, and looked very much like someone in déshabillé. “You see that the sleep is coming on her; the varnish is already a little dulled, but she is breathing, she is sinking into her trance. In six months she will be wakened by me, her cunning servant, and I shall dress her again and she will go back to the world with her voice in perfect order.”

  Hollier put out his hand to touch the brown dust that surrounded the woollen cloth. “Damp,” he said.

 
; “Of course it is damp. And it is alive, too. Don’t you know what that is?”

  He sniffed at his fingers, but shook his head.

  “Horse dung,” said Mamusia. “The best; thoroughly rotted and sieved, and from horses in mighty health. This comes from a racing stable, and you wouldn’t believe what they make me pay for it. But the shit of old nags isn’t what I want. The very best is demanded for the very best. She’s a Bergonzi, this sleeper,” she said, tapping the violin lightly. “Ignorant people chatter about Strads, and Guarneris, and they are magnificent. I like a Bergonzi. But the best is a St. Petersburg Leman; that’s one over there, in her fourth month—or will be when the moon is new. They must be put to bed according to the moon,” she said, cocking an eye at Hollier to see how he would take that.

  “And where do they come from, all these great ladies and gentlemen?” he said, looking around the room, in which there were probably forty cases of various sizes.

  “From my friends the great artists,” said Mamusia. “I must not tell whose fiddles these are. But the great artists know me, and when they come here—and they all do come to this city, sometimes every year—they bring me a fiddle that needs a rest, or has come down with some trouble of the voice. I have the skill and the love to make everything right. Because you see this asks for understanding that goes beyond anything the cleverest craftsman can learn. And you must be a fiddler yourself, to test and judge. I am a very fine fiddler.”

  “Who could doubt it?” said Hollier. “I hope that some day I may have the great honour of hearing you. It would be like listening to the voice of the ages.”