“You dream about her, Bako?”
“Yes, dear. Something in her eyes as if she needs to tell me something … I never see her mouth. As if she’s incapable of speech.”
“Have you tried asking her, Bako?”
“Asking her, dear? This is in my dreams, my little swallow. And she seems so troubled. But of course she would be. Nothing seems to make sense. What am I saying?”
“Maybe you should try asking her.”
“It never lasts long enough. And I have no control over my dreams.”
“You taught me how to try and control my dreams, Bako. When I have nightmares. Remember? I just thought, maybe …”
“And her poor mother finally died, God rest her soul. She is better off dead.”
They had walked almost a whole block now, leaving the beggar child behind. Kata felt ill, the gut-wrenching pain spreading to her chest and her head, weakening her legs, as if they would, at any moment, fold under her. She led Grandma toward a bench.
“If she’s not crippled by the gypsies, why would she be like that?” Kata asked. “The beggar child.”
“Oh, my dear girl. There could be so many reasons. Sometimes, young women get pregnant out of wedlock. Try to abort, out of shame, fear of parents, of gossip. But if it doesn’t work, and a child gets born, it could be crippled because of damage. There are so many reasons.” Grandma sighed and added: “Just like in our village. Not long ago, you were only four or five years old …” She stopped, then said: “Better leave that alone …”
“Please tell me, Bako. I am not too young. I’m almost twelve.”
“A young woman in our village … Well, not any young woman. It was Angela’s older sister.” Grandma brushed a palm over her forehead. “People say she inserted needles in her womb. Died from infection or from bleeding, nobody knew for sure. The family hushed it up. Said it was some kind of fever.”
“Angela’s older sister?”
“Yes, dear. Roza was friends with her, best friends. She took Angela under her wing after that, took the place of her older sister.”
“Do you think that’s her child, Bako? The gypsy’s?”
“I don’t know her story, dear. But when a gypsy uses a child as a beggar, everyone suspects it’s been stolen and crippled. It’s all so heart wrenching. Besides, how do we know she really is a gypsy? It would be an easy disguise for any woman trying to escape, even from her own family.”
Once home, Kata went into Grandma’s room, opened the top dresser drawer, and took out the pink cookie heart. She unwrapped it, narrowed her eyes and scrutinized the wobbly image that peeked at her from various contorted angles, searching, shrewdly, for a glimpse of … what?
You made that holy water that wasn’t holy … it’s all your fault, the image in the mirror taunted. But I repented. To err is human, to forgive divine, Kata told the mirror. And I gave up the red shoes. That’s another penance. Isn’t it? She felt bizarre, ashamed of her secret, of her bickering with the mirror. Yet, looking into it made her feel that she was doing something useful.
****
“Kismet. It’s kismet, I tell you,” Roza had hollered as she ran into the barnyard early one morning, a few days after the disappearance of Angela’s baby. “You can’t change your fate. You can run and hide all you want, but fate will find you. It finds all of us.”
“What now, Roza dear?” Grandma had sighed.
“That poor Angela. First her sister. Then that orphaned child of hers. And now her dear mother has taken ill. Doesn’t look good, they say.”
“Dear God. The tragedy that’s befallen that family.” Grandma began gathering herbs in her basket, ready to leave.
“Don’t go. Ivan doesn’t let anyone near. He’s barred the house. Stands with a shotgun at the gate.”
“That tyrant. I’ve no fear of him.”
“Searched the gypsies. Ivan and his son and a few others.”
“Can’t be, Roza. That’s a raid. Against the law.” Grandma slipped the willow basket off her arm and placed it on the grass.
“Whose law? Tied those gypsies with ropes! Whipped them with horsewhips!”
Grandma turned pale. “Angela’s poor mother took ill, you say. No wonder.” She walked through the gate and headed toward the encampment. Kata followed.
“To get them to confess,” Roza yelled behind them.
The scene had been unlike any other: overturned cartons of costume jewellery, boxes of heart-shaped cookies, embroidered skirts and blouses. Bales of hay lay scattered, torn tarpaulin and a heap of rubble that once was a cart were strewn along the riverbank.
Papa Novak was there.
“Convinced the police, finally, to let the gypsies leave. But not until this happened,” he said. “Somebody could’ve planned this heinous crime during the town fair. So easy to shift the blame.”
Over the years, rumours about Angela’s baby had never ceased circulating throughout the village. One was about the gypsy who was found face down in a foot-deep creek that fed into the river Sava. Some suspected an angry mob had killed him after discovering him wandering the fields at night. Others wanted to believe that drunken gypsies had fought among themselves. No name had ever emerged. He was simply referred to as the gypsy who drowned the night after Angela’s drowning. Gossip also had it that the dancing bear had been found dead. No one knew for certain if that was true, nor how the bear died, nor why. An even stranger thing was that the police seemed to have no leads.
Chapter XII
The Peacocks Bring News
(Summer 1966)
“Kaaa! Kaaa!”
The blue peacocks of India, once made sacred to Hera, queen of the heavens, Grandma’s voice whispered. Kata found herself in a courtyard filled with colossal pink roses as tall as trees, bordered by blue morning glories reaching to the sky. A peacock, its magnificent train framing a glossy blue head and neck, postured and strutted. The elongated tail coverts tipped with eyespots of turquoise and gold shimmered as the peacock quivered its fan and rattled its quills at a small harem of peahens. “The fan dance,” Kata murmured as she yawned lazily and stretched her hand over Grandma’s pillow.
She opened her eyes and realized that she had again spent the night in Grandma’s bed in the guesthouse where no one except guests had slept since Grandma’s death two years earlier, just before Kata’s twelfth birthday.
Kata leapt from the bed. I better sneak back to my own room before Mother sees me looking like this. She ran her hand down the outgrown dress rumpled from sleep and yesterday’s wear, trying to smooth the fabric.
Then she heard it, again – the thin, hesitant squeaking of the front gate, as if someone was trying to steal through.
Who could this be? They could wake my mother. Nervously, she stepped out to the front verandah. Since Grandma died and her parents took over the running of the farm, she’d devised new means of keeping out of their way. Most of the time, she was successful. Her parents spent much of their time in the fields or at the Belgrade market.
As she glanced about the peaceful courtyard awash in morning light, the fear of her mother’s reprimand dissolved into melancholy. The lilac tree – with the twisted branches she once sat among as a child – seemed weary with age. The cherry tree – with a rope swing no one used any longer – gave off an aura of loneliness. She felt like a complete stranger in this place she’d always known, this courtyard veiled in mist, infused with the fragrance of linden blossoms.
Stop the fantasies. Stop romanticizing the past, Katarina. She could hear her mother’s voice in her head. Your fits of melancholy are like a disease, distorting your sense of reality.
Kata shook her whole body – like her dog Samson after running through the marsh – hoping to dispel the gloom that enveloped her.
The front gate squeaked again. She ran to it, but there was no one in sight.
Crouching down, she fastened the laces on her white runners, ready for her morning run along the rutted path through the fields. Two hands grabbed
her shoulders from behind. She shrieked and spun around.
Miladin’s roguish laughter greeted her: “I saw them! Under the bridge.”
His bony cheeks, usually pale, were now two burning red circles. His violet eyes sparkled with excitement. With damp, light brown hair and fine droplets of mist gathered on the blond peach fuzz under his nose, she thought he looked like a young faun, a faun who had slept in the forest under a tree and was now covered in early morning dew.
“The caravan! It’s here!” he exclaimed. “Two wagons on one side of the bridge and three on the other, with horses and everything.”
“What are you saying?” she yelled, although his words echoed a familiar note. He used to run through the village, announcing …
“Gypsies! They’re here! In Ratari!” he said, squealing those same words in the childish voice she had not heard for many years.
“Are you playing games with me?”
“No! I was helping my dad! He’s off to the market.”
“You saw them?”
“They had a fire going under a big black pot. A man was peeing under the witch tree.”
“Gypsies are here?”
“I just said that! Wake up, rag doll! You think they’ll be going around, begging food and telling fortunes?”
Rag doll? He said it. Again! This was his new name for her – his way of proving himself to be a man, or more perplexingly, to be more than just a friend. But each time he said it, his head wobbled just a teeny bit, and the long, sparse hairs on his chin twisted this way and that. He postured and strutted in a way that reminded her of Papa Novak’s new goat, the Swiss Toggenburg everyone talked about. Lately, she found herself checking for the wattles on Miladin’s elongated neck. And each time he called her rag doll, she was reminded of all the little tics she knew he would never outgrow.
“I wish Grandma was here,” she sighed.
“She’d know what to do, wouldn’t she?” he said. And then rambled on: “I saw lots of women in big skirts and kerchiefs. And I could hear babies crying.”
“Babies? They had babies with them?” she said.
“I guess. I could hear them crying.”
“How many?”
“How many what?”
“Babies! What else? How many babies?”
“How would I know?”
They paused and stared at each other for a long moment.
“You … think?” he began hesitantly.
“Do … you?”
She wrung her hands, but could not bring herself to speak the words out loud. In her mind, she could hear grandma’s warning: Words are powerful. Once spoken out loud, they assume a potency of their own. It is like breathing a spirit, a life, into your thoughts – once you turn them into words, your thoughts became alive. You must be very, very careful, Kata, what you say. Here, Grandma would pause and look deeply into her eyes: If you’re not certain, you should test your words when you’re alone. Close your eyes, and say them out loud. Pretend the voice you hear is not your own, but someone else’s speaking to you. How do those words make you feel? Then you will understand the power they can have on others.
“Let’s whisper at the same time, to be sure, you know, we’re thinking the same,” Miladin said.
She recalled this well-rehearsed routine they had followed since they were little. Unable to resist the game, she moved closer to him, their heads almost touching. Then both whispered: “You think the babies are stolen?”
Just like in a school play. You’ve always been my favourite co-star, she thought, as they stepped back in unison, each searching for signs of dread in the other’s face. But this game was more serious. Even now, she sensed that her friend was also unsure of the potential power of the words they had just uttered.
“You think they saw you?” she asked.
“Don’t know. I ran across that bridge …”
“You must’ve been frightened,” she said, teasing.
“I just ran and ran through the cornfield,” he said. “I thought they’d be there, you know, stealing corn.”
“They could’ve caught you, and nobody would’ve known,” she said, playing along.
“Nobody would’ve seen them! Nooobody would’ve known what happened to me, just like Angela’s baby. I could’ve disappeared just like she did. They could’ve blinded me, or broken my legs, or my neck, just like this.”
Miladin was contorting his body, acting out the part. He had his neck twisted to one side, and made clicking noises to show what breaking it would sound like. Tongue stuck out of the side of his mouth, he tilted his head, hands grasping an imaginary noose. He began gasping as if he were being strangled.
Although they were the same age, Kata had always felt much older. And now he was carrying this game a bit too far, making fun of her, making her feel frail and anxious, and not 14. Usually, compared to him she felt like a sage who had already lived her life, observing herself from another world, looking down at an awkward, unsure, silly teenaged girl. She needed to sound wise and confident.
With her hands propped on her hips, she observed him with a sense of superiority: “You think they’d hang you?”
“Who says they wouldn’t?”
“Let’s go and see them, tonight! We can sneak out after everyone’s asleep. I bet they’ll be playing music and dancing by the fire. We’ll hide in the dark, under the witch tree. Please, will you come?” Kata was too excited to curb her enthusiasm in front of him as she usually did, too anxious to notice his hesitance.
He stared at her, skeptical. “You serious? They could see us!”
“I don’t care. I have to see them. Are you coming?”
“I guess.”
“I’ll meet you at the woodlot, at the dead soldier’s corner. Midnight? You think your parents will be asleep?”
“You mean, you’re not afraid, rag doll? You don’t run by that corner any more?”
“Of course, not. Grandma used to say you don’t have to be afraid of the dead ghosts, just the living ones.”
“The living ghosts? You think there are living ghosts?”
“Grandma meant bad people who do bad things and blame it on ghosts, or on gypsies,” she blurted out. “But if you’re afraid, I’ll have to ask … somebody else.” She was pleased to discover that her words had the desired effect.
“I just thought you’d be scared, being a girl and all,” he said and puffed out his chest.
“I’ll see you tonight, then?”
“I’ll be there, rag doll.”
Miladin turned on his heels and jogged toward the gate, rolling his narrow shoulders, as if he were a heavyweight boxing champion.
****
Kata returned to Grandma’s room, the only place she could contemplate such intriguing news. She inhaled the smell of furniture polish mingled with the faint whiff of lavender sachets and thought it strange that two whole years had passed since Grandma’s death, yet everything was going on as before. Even the lavender bush out in the yard, now woody and scraggly, still kept blooming, although no one had bothered to pick its fragrant, silver-grey leaves and tiny pale-purple flowers.
It’s about time you clean up that farrago of trinkets! her mother’s voice boomed in her head. Throw away all that junk you’ve outgrown.
Kata knew that, by everyone’s account, she had outgrown most if not all of her collection. But she simply could not find a single item she could part with: the wicker trunk under Grandma’s bed with newspaper clippings; her favourite books, some of which were fairytales she still read occasionally to ensure the characters did not get lonely; trinkets from various town fairs that took up a whole drawer in her grandma’s dresser; miniature ceramic jugs and glass bottles that served as tiny vases for the wild violets and snowdrops she used to pick in the woodlot; necklaces and bracelets made of beads and sea shells; embroidered cotton tops; her first kiss – a lipstick imprint on the cut-off sleeve of a faded t-shirt; a tiny round mirror and a few crumbled sprigs of rosemary tied with a tuft of fu
chsia wool which had failed to foretell a future husband.
Then there was her favourite, a gift she received when she was eight years old, on the day the bear danced. Although she could guess with a fair degree of certainty, she had never uncovered for sure the gift-giver’s identity.
While some of the objects seemed to be losing their enchantment, this gift – nothing more than a large pink cookie heart hanging on a purple rope, made of cookie dough that never spoiled and was commonly sold by gypsy vendors – intrigued her and grew more mysterious each time she thought about it or its giver, especially its giver. Lately, she found herself peeking into the wobbly round mirror glued to its centre, examining her distorted features. These cookie-necklaces were special. During the town fair, every child and child-at-heart hoped to receive one: parents often bought them for their children; teenaged girls bought them for themselves and for their girlfriends as a sign of friendship; and teenaged boys bought them for a special girl.
Could this cookie heart possibly, possibly be from … him?
Kata glanced about the room, her treasure-house, containing all the riches she’d accumulated; objects most grownups referred to as a litter of junk and useless trinkets sold by lazy, thieving gypsies.
And now the gypsies have returned after six years. What could this mean?
Chapter XIII
The Corner Of The Woodlot
The two summers since Grandma died had been rainy, and the girl who used to love summer was somehow glad that the cherries had turned wormy and the sun hardly shone. She found solace in daydreaming, imagining what it would be like to walk on the clouds in the crying sky and ask the unjust God why he took her grandmother away without so much as a warning. The villagers had said that dying from stroke was a blessing, sudden and painless. But that was little consolation to Kata. Even Grandma’s voice in her head seemed to be fading. She found herself resenting people who laughed, who sang, who danced or played music.
Summer of The Dancing Bear Page 11