It had been a long time since she’d spoken to Roza. Kata had managed to avoid her. But the woman out there had been following her, she now realized. Those footsteps and eerie cornfield rustles in the night were not imagined.
She stepped close to the window and pulled the curtain aside, just a sliver. Roza was still standing between the two cypresses guarding the verandah, hand extended toward the moon, gazing at the tiny coin, her precious ducat.
Chapter XXIV
Only The Truth Can Set You Free
Whose voice is that? Kris is talking to someone? Kata peered through the boards of the makeshift door. She could see nothing. The voice stopped. There was a muffled sound, a shuffling. Nudging the door open a crack, she squinted into the darkness. The shuffling resumed, the voice mumbled. She opened the door and entered cautiously.
Kris was sprawled on the bed. Through the tiny window, bluish moonlight cast a beam across his head hanging off the mattress. His mouth was a gaping hole. His chest heaved. He moaned, then lifted one arm and let it drop, thrashing his arms at an invisible attacker.
Kata lit the kerosene lamp. She took two aspirin from the bottle, her heart racing.
“You look horrible, worse than a dead man,” she whispered. “And Jasmine still cares about you.”
She placed one hand under his head and tried to lift it. His hair was coarse, like a horse’s tail, like her own hair. The similarity startled her. She grasped a few strands and rubbed them between her fingers, the way her mother checked the quality of fabric, and heard a faint grinding sound.
“You’re hurt,” she said. “Hated by your people. Once, they loved you. And you are my … my …” She stepped away, pressed her back against the boards of the hut.
Are you Angela’s baby’s father too? The thought flashed through her like electricity. She moved closer and shook his shoulder. “Kris, wake up.”
He mumbled and groaned in pain. Then opened his eyes and stared in confusion.
Ask him? How?
She poured a glass of water, slipped the aspirin into his mouth, and shook his shoulder. “Wake up.”
“You, again,” he said and reached for the glass. He spat the aspirin onto the floor but gulped the water. “Get out. Now, enough. Enough hell. Out!”
She pressed her back against the door. His hair stood up on his head even bushier than she remembered. His cheeks shone in the semi-darkness as if made from fist-size balls of beeswax her father stored in the cold cellar, all lined up on a shelf, for what purpose she never knew and never mustered the courage to ask. Besides, even if she did, he would have stared somewhere above her head, waved his arm and said: “Idle minds asking questions they have no business asking.”
“Give me those crutches,” Kris said. “I’ll get ya outta here.”
He propped himself on his elbow as if about to get up, and winced in pain. She opened the door just a crack, for a fast escape.
“Hand over that bottle, girl. An’ get out,” he growled. “An’ don’t come back. You hear me?”
“Here, drink yourself to death,” she snapped and pushed the bottle into his hand. She retreated to the open door and listened to the slivovica gurgle down his throat.
“Ahh! Holy water, by God,” he sighed.
“I knew you’d say that.”
“Out,” he spat through clenched teeth, clutching the bottle to his chest.
Kata slammed the door behind her. The hut rattled, and for a moment she feared it would collapse and bury him.
“Go ahead,” she yelled. “Die. See if I care!” She stepped out into the narrow locust grove shielding the back of the hut from the path. She turned and glanced back into the rustling cornfield that was once a watermelon patch, many summers ago, before the summer of the dancing bear. Or was it the same summer, not long before the baby’s disappearance? She winced. She could remember Miladin’s warning.
“Run, he’s coming.”
The watermelon farmer had been gruesome. She now knew it was the right word for him, the word she could not think of at the time. Even her own fear of him had been repugnant. It sickened her. All she had to do was recall the glint in his eye, the smirk that lifted an upper lip under hairy nostrils as if he smelled something foul. He said she could come to his watermelon patch any time. And eat all she wanted. Grandma’s back was turned when he told her that. You can have allya want. With every recall of those slurred words came the foul odour of decomposing carp he carried with him, along with that bloat in her stomach as if she’d just swallowed a mouthful of sludge from the marsh.
So he had known that she and Miladin snuck in and stole his watermelons, eating them in the dappled shade of the locust patch. Did he watch them? See them crossing the bridge? From the open field, the bridge was fully visible. Why did he not chase them? Everybody knew he shot at one of the boys from the village. Roza’s brother. Missed, luckily.
Miladin hid the knife they used to cut watermelon under a rock by the big locust tree – the knife she’d smuggled out of her kitchen. Grandma looked for it everywhere, and then said she must have lost it while picking young summer cabbages for salad. After the farmer told Kata she could have all she wanted, she never went back to the watermelon patch.
Run, Miladin’s voice yelled in her head. But her legs felt numb. She could not inhale. The air was stagnant; the air she hoped would finally reach that chamber in her lungs that always seemed starved of oxygen. She turned back and sat on the makeshift bench propped up against the hut.
That farmer would kill you, Kris. I will not let you die.
The night was quiet and the moonlight so weak that she closed her eyes.
They say that handsome one, tall, wiry build, was there when the bear danced. You know, the blacksmith.
Kata cringed. Where did that come from? That voice. Grandma’s.
He helped me, worked on the farm when I broke my hip. A good man.
Maybe he was the baby’s father and Angela went to see him. Kata shook off the villagers’ gossip from long ago.
If the baby’s father was a gypsy, you think he’d murder his own child?
Kata jumped from the bench and began walking away on brittle legs, as if they were Kris’ useless crutches. She clenched her head with her hands to stop the words from expanding.
You think he’d murder his own child …
But the villagers’ words kept swelling in her head. Light flared. A spring day in the forest; that longed-for spring sunshine from childhood. Or was it early summer? She was not sure. And all that shimmering freshness and woody dampness after rain, of that she was certain and smelled it now, this very moment. It permeated all her senses as powerfully it did then. She must have been four, five years old? Grandma was calling her.
“Over here, Kata! Hurry! You may never have a chance to see it again.”
Kata stared into the tangle of leaves and grass on the forest floor. Shocked, she saw the pile shift, as if it were alive.
“A nest of snake eggs, hatching,” Grandma whispered.
Then Kata saw the young snakes unfolding, pushing their limbless bodies out of the cracked eggshells. The writhing mass expanded magically, like dough that filled the bread bowl to the rim and climbed over the edges.
“God’s miracle,” Grandma had said.
And now, like the nest of hatching snakes, the words, “you think he’d murder his own child,” writhed in Kata’s head. They ballooned, heavier and fatter until they filled every crevice in her thoughts, ready to burst.
You think he’d murder his own child …
A voice arose from the hut. She tiptoed to the door and listened. What is Kris saying? Gently, she pushed at the boards, and they gave way, just a crack. She closed one eye and pressed the other tight against the gap. He looked horrible, distraught. He thrashed his healthy arm and mumbled.
“Are you Angela’s baby’s father? Are you?” she yelled into the parted boards. “Go ahead. Die. See if I care.”
She pushed at the door and it screeched, like the wounded p
eacock from her dreams. Her hand jerked back. Hesitantly she stepped in, edged closer, and gently shook his shoulder: “Kris! Wake up. You have to tell me.”
“O’ly … ‘ruth … can … free,” he muttered.
“Gibberish, nonsense.” She raised her voice. “That’s all you can do. Nobody cares about you. Nobody. Not even me.”
Oh, God, what am I doing yelling at him? He’s half-dead. She poured a glass of water, lifted his head with one hand, and brought the glass to his lips. To her surprise, he drank it. She poured another one and he drank that too. He opened his eyes.
“Ahh,” he sighed, as if he had just gulped mouthfuls of slivovica.
“Kris?” she called out.
He stared with his huge eyes, stared somewhere beyond her, through her.
“With magical … eyes … burn …” he mumbled, voice faltering then rising before trailing off.
Kata stood over him, head turned away from the stink of stale slivovica. His eyes rolled in his head and landed on her, vacant. His head remained still.
“Vila … burning holes in your soul,” he announced, in an eerily clear voice. She knew he was delirious.
“O’ly truth … set … free,” he went on. She waited. Will he say it three times? The way Grandma told the story? “Only truth … you free.”
He repeated the same words three times, as in the story. She knew the story by heart – the one Grandma learned from the gypsy who helped her with farm chores the winter she broke her hip – learned from him, Kris. It tells of the vila with magical eyes who lures the guilty into confessing their sins by playing “only the truth can set you free” on her flute, while peering deeply into their eyes. The guilty would be charmed into telling the truth under the spell of the music and the vila’s gaze. Grandma believed that the words, “only the truth can set you free” held magic power.
Kris rambled on and she could fill in the pauses, groans, missing words. A story evolved in her thoughts, its shape sketched in part by Grandma’s voice and his muttering.
Chapter XXV
Angela’s Baby’s Father
Tell them, my girl. You must tell the truth, Papa Novak’s voice echoed in Kata’s head as she ran toward the spring by the marsh.
No, he is not a murderer. Angela’s baby’s father? May be. But what does that matter? He is my father too. The blacksmith was a good man, Grandma had said.
“I will not give you to the police, Kris, I will not,” she said, panting between short breaths. She stopped and looked around – the moon was pale and the sky strewn with clouds like torn rags. Her mother had lied to the police – said she didn’t know about the goings-on at the gypsy encampment. Kata had nothing to do with the gypsies. Her daughter spent all her time at home, helping with the chores. Papa Novak said he’d go with her mother into town the next day and talk to the lawyer. He asked the police not to talk to the girl without legal representation. This all sounded serious. She needed legal representation? Had she done something wrong? Strangely, her mother wasn’t angry. Just worried. Those little fine lines around her eyes were as sharp as paper cuts.
“We know he’s hiding somewhere around here,” the policemen had said. “All we ask is that you tell us what you know.”
****
“You all right?” Jasmine said, taking Kata’s hand. “What’s wrong?”
“Goya said I’d find you here … Didn’t you know? The police are looking for … Kris,” Kata stammered through the rushing river in her head. Other voices floated in and out of her thoughts. She heard them one moment and, before she could make sense of them, they were gone, like the swishing of bats’ wings at dusk.
“I know,” Jasmine replied. “They talked to us. Asked questions.”
Lorca and Stefan approached.
“Maybe, just maybe, something will come out of this, after all,” Lorca said. “Maybe we’ll find out what happened with our Uncle Grizzly.”
What about Kris? Kata felt tears welling in her eyes. Has everyone forgotten about Kris?
“We owe it to him, to us,” Jasmine said. “He raised us after our parents’ death.”
“He was everybody’s uncle, in a way,” Stefan said. “Even his bear’s.”
“His bear’s?” Kata said, wishing someone would say something about Kris, and realized that no one would.
“He found a cub, abandoned, motherless,” Stefan said, chuckling. “He raised it, named it Grizzly after hearing about American grizzlies. Himself as well.”
“Thought the name added fierceness, adventure,” Lorca said.
“All year round I looked forward to your visit,” Stefan said. “And if you didn’t show up, my whole summer was ruined. I didn’t have many friends.”
“Angela was your friend,” Lorca said.
“Once, in grade four, we came here and listened to the frogs,” Stefan said. “Then her father found out and all hell broke loose. After that, she avoided me. Even in winter, I come and sit by the frozen marsh, remembering.”
How peculiar it was, Kata thought, hearing Stefan. She could have imagined him picking a fight with someone. Or getting drunk. Or trying to date somebody’s daughter without her parents’ approval. Or simply wasting his life away as most villagers claimed. But she never pictured him at this embankment listening to frogs.
“It’s about time you stopped blaming yourself, Stefan,” Lorca said.
“Let it go,” Jasmine said. “Let’s put our heads together and try to figure out what happened, once and for all. I’m ready to face anything now.”
“Those few days the bear was dancing here in Ratari, I’d been drinking,” Stefan said. “Then I’d come to the marsh to finish the bottle. Sometimes fall asleep.”
“My pralo. Sleeping off his hangover under the bush like a true gypsy,” Lorca said, laughing quietly.
“That night I woke up to a loud splashing in the water.” Stefan said, rubbing his eyes. “My head was throbbing.”
“Angela was your age, only 14, when she had her baby,” Jasmine said to Kata. “We thought you could remember something, anything. Any hints at who the father could’ve been.”
“Angela baby’s father?” Kata blurted out.
“Yes.”
She knows about Kris and me? Kata heard a noise, as if a distant flute was playing in her head. She cringed: “Me? How would I know? It’s all gossip.”
“Your grandma was a healer, knew more than anyone else what went on in the village,” Jasmine said. “I just thought …”
“You weren’t that much older when you had Marco,” interjected Lorca, and Kata breathed a sigh of relief.
“That was different,” Jasmine replied. “I was in love.”
“And what makes you think she wasn’t?”
Jasmine shrugged her shoulders: “She was such a sad young woman. People who are in love have an aura of happiness no father, no matter how strict, can subdue. I sensed unrest in her.”
“You only met her a few times,” Lorca persisted.
“But I felt her pena, her torment.” Jasmine grasped the fabric covering her chest and scrunched it up in a fist as if about to tear it off.
“It could’ve been fear of gossip, of her father’s disapproval,” Lorca said.
Jasmine nodded. “I suppose. Who am I to say, either way?”
“If anyone knew her, I think I did,” Stefan declared.
“Had her baby at fourteen and at sixteen, she was dead,” Jasmine said bitterly. “Sixteen years old.”
“Once, I asked her to come to a school dance with me,” Stefan said, pacing. “She said she’d like to, but never showed up. And then, she was taken out of school.”
“You did see her after that,” Jasmine said.
“At the market a few times, with her father selling vegetables and watermelons. I hung around, tried to catch her eye. Her old man simply went mad! Came after me with that wooden cane of his.”
“Did you ever talk to her again?” Jasmine asked.
“Yes … but never fou
nd the right way to tell her … how I felt.”
“How were you to know, my friend?” Lorca said, patting him on the shoulder.
“I had the chance and lost it.” Stefan placed his hand over his eyes. “Once I ran into her and she was angry, screaming: ‘I hate him! More than I hate life! More than I hate God for putting me on this earth.’ I tried to say something but she turned on me: ‘Don’t you ever talk to me again! I hate you! All of you! You’re all the same.’ And then she ran off.” He sighed. “I should have gone after her. Instead, I did nothing.”
“You can’t change the past, my friend,” Lorca said. “But you must try and remember. For her.”
“A few months later she had her baby,” Stefan said.
As if startled by a predator, a flock of ducks took flight from the marsh, quacking and flapping their wings. Stefan stood up and waved his hand in their direction. With his palms to his temples, he shouted into the sky: “God! If only I could remember the face. Damn you God for pain, for guilt! And most of all for taking her away from me.”
All eyes fell on him. Lorca was the first to speak.
“If you could remember whose face?” Lorca said.
“You saw somebody?” Jasmine yelled. “Stefan, you never said anything about that before!”
“I was drunk, wasted,” Stefan said. “Couldn’t be sure of anything.” He lowered his head and continued: “Earlier that day, I saw Angela. She was in the crowd that followed the dancing bear, looking at the baubles at one of your carts, at the roadside. I was surprised. She never went anywhere after her baby was born. I headed her way. But she took off, ran through peoples’ backyards. So I dove into the bottle. That’s why I can’t really be sure of what I saw.”
“You did see somebody, didn’t you,” insisted Lorca. “That was the night before Angela’s baby disappeared.”
“See those ducks in the marsh?” Stefan said. “That night, it was a splash that woke me up from my drunken stupor. Except, it was much louder. And I don’t remember seeing any ducks, that’s the trouble. I saw a man, though.”
Summer of The Dancing Bear Page 19