Yavy closed the door to the ballroom behind him. Walked back out to the garden and stared out across the lake.
“Where are you?” he whispered. Where are you? He had lost the sense of them now.
Long Before
AUSTRIA, 1932
Lor was sitting at the foot of the bed, her bare feet resting on the floor, her eyes closed. Yavy was at the head, leaning back against the wall.
“What’s in them thoughts of yours?” he asked, the sound of his voice surprising her, for she had thought him asleep.
She opened her eyes. “You’ll think me strange,” she said.
“Tell me.”
“I was thinking of mushrooms,” she replied. “Truly, that is what I was thinking of. How sad it was that I did not know which mushrooms were edible, which ones were poisonous. Often, in the woods, in the meadows of England, for you walk the country pathways as a pastime there, I would think this. Why in all the years of wandering I had not striven harder to learn and recognize which ones I could pick and cook.”
“I love that you fret so.”
“You love it?”
“Yes. I love it. The littlest things, of such consequence to you.”
“It’s true. I do fret.”
“Always. But not now. I can teach you ’bout them mushrooms.”
“Yes, I know that of you.” She thought for a while. “What happens after this?” she asked at length. “What does love become? Do you know?”
“No.”
“I have seen it doesn’t stay this way. That it becomes something else.”
“I have seen it staying this way. I love you. It don’t be feeling like a choice.” He pulled her to him then, held her close. “Don’t be afraid,” he whispered. “Don’t be afraid of this.”
They were silent once more. She had sensed of late another shift within him, a fraught restlessness that manifested itself in hours of wakefulness when he would stand staring down into the dark of the street below, with that look of his that was halfway hopeful, halfway bereft.
He had found courage enough to take that first set of colors to the market. He and Lor had set them out on the three-legged stool and they had stood behind them for an entire day. Mostly people had passed without interest, bewildered perhaps by the strangeness of the wares, but in the end a local artist, Julien Biedermeier, had bought them all for more than Yavy earned in a week of stonemasonry. Julien, who was as renowned for luring pretty young girls to his attic studio as he was for his paintings of them.
“Where did you find lazuli here?” he asked, his voice soft, almost inaudible above the clatter of the market around them, but Yavy would not tell him.
After that, Yavy had sold more, if not to Julien himself, then to his friends, a rowdy group of artists who drank more than they painted, but who dreamt of colors such as those he made, and who readily bought them as quickly as he could produce them.
But it was not enough. Despite the fact that his colors could inspire the most incendiary of passions in those who found them, it was not enough. She knew that. There was a lacking, a wandering to his thoughts. Just as she had first seen him, standing that night drinking the rain, there was a look to him, an otherworldliness that seemed to separate him from the place in which he stood, so that he was never wholly there. It was that part of him which he kept hidden. He took to staring out of the window for long bouts of time, out across the chimneypots and past them as far as he could see. He would stand there as if all else had been forgotten, as if all else, other than the distant horizon, ceased to exist. What was it he looked for? She was afraid to ask.
“Please?” she pushed eventually, as they lay there on the bed. “Tell me what it is?”
He became very still. She lifted her head. His face was pained, his brow fraught as if something weighed down upon it.
Finally he spoke. “I need something from you, but I don’t know how to go asking for it.”
“Ask,” she told him.
“That road,” he said. “That road where I first come from. I need to find them old routes, to follow them seasons to the sources of those colors. But I worry it’s too much to be asking of you, to live a life you not lived before. To travel with a horse, with a wagon, to be laying your head down in a different place each night?”
“You have asked,” she said. “You needn’t fret so. You are seeking something?”
He nodded. “I not knowing how else to find it,” he said. “Most likely we’ll be chased on from here in the end. If not by them, then by some other. Had that all my life. This moving on. Of no matter. Happens so much we end up needing that road anyways, longing for it like we under some spell we cannot lift.”
“Then of course. We can do this. Live a gypsy life. Happily we can do it. All children have dreamt of it. Did you not know that?”
Long Before
AUSTRIA, 1935
Wonder if you knowing what ash can be used for? Can be used to bind things together, lock ’em tight, like a glue that dries thick an’ hard, and this is what my pa was thinking ’bout when he burned all them wooden crosses. He sat there thinking how best he gonna turn that ash into something worthy of itself.
We watched them flames rising, spitting their fiery ashes out, lit up an’ sparkling like something you’d not be putting a price to. Brightest things on earth in them moments, but come the end of that fire, we’re left with a mound of ash, the dullest gray.
My pa, he comes then with all number of strange things into our kampania. Comes with a great hunk of rock to begin with. Grinding it down to whatever secret is held inside of it. Mixes an’ kneads his mounds of ash, and his hunks of rock, and it is days later before I see what he’s been up to. On the table lies the finest mound of powder I ever seen, and this mound, that come from the grayest, dullest ash, and the grayest, dullest stone, is now as bright a blue as ever I seen. And my pa stands there with his fingers all stained, as if the color has become a part of him, the dye seeping into his pores, like he is holding the sky an’ the sea in his hands.
After that we packing up our horse and our wagon an’ sets off on that long road again. My pa finds work as a harvester, a miner, a digger, and after he has us fed an’ watered, he buys back them crops he harvested, them stones he mined. We travel onward to those saffron fields, timing it right with that blue harvest, that you best be picking before that yellow sun goes setting in that big sky. Traveling to them cactus plantations with those small cactus beetles you can crush between your fingers with a pop, staining them sweet with the brightest red. Down to the shore then, finding them sea snails that weep violet tears, tears that do not fade, that grow brighter beneath that hot sun, brighter ’gainst that gusty wind. Collect them quick after the rising o’ the Dog Star, or if not then, before them first days of spring. Heading on up to them copper mines, finding rocks the size of melons, that my pa turns into green-tinged seas, and blue hues that give height to them artists’ skies.
All number of smells seep from our wagon, stinging our nostrils, stinging our eyes, but not one of us is complaining ’cos we knowing this something my pa gotta do. So my ma stops her laments, and I become my pa’s right hand, ready to run go get this an’ go get that; a little more salt, a little more lemon, wine if we have it, my hammer, my chisel, my mortar an’ my pestle. I learn the names of chemicals we not ever knew existed, strange words, hard to get our tongues around: potassium, ferrocyanide, caustic soda and sodamide, cadmium, sulfide, iron and aluminum salts.
My pa suspends hunks of orange rock over tubs of red vinegar, which we putting out under the trees, watching how the acid burns that copper metal to a green that gonna color all them artists’ leaves. We chew those indigo leaves, and those woad mustard plants, crushing them to a murky yellow. Fermenting them, drying them out on the banks of some merry river as we sleep, praying it don’t rain throughout the night. Come morning them leaves have changed to a dull-green clay that if we leave out beneath that burning sun is turning into the dark of midnight by day’
s end. Pa finds them salmon pinks in the rock lichens that grow in the damp nooks an’ crannies of the earth. Finds them deep browns in cooked wild walnuts that we catch as they falling from the trees, and when he has used all them woad leaves he finds more midnight blacks in the branches of breeze blown mimosa trees.
He is stirring an’ mixing and getting all his colors right, and all the while a little bit of them cross ashes gets put into his palette of paints. Like watching some magic happening before you, all them bright colors coming out of the dullest thing, like all along they’d been just waiting for someone to release them into this big bright world. Glass jars of color stack up in the back of our wagon, rattling along them roads. And in every town, and in every city, my pa is seeking out the very best painters, giving them a jar of this, and a jar of that, selling them at markets, at shops, at fancy galleries where he goes knocking on the doors. Those paints give them artists the very substance of things. They dip their brushes into the air, spreading the light of it onto bare canvases. And as we rattle around the land, I peer through them house windows, wondering if the paintings on those gray walls are the ones that hold them dead soldiers’ sorrows in their skies. Life’s not simple. Full of a mystery an’ a magic we’re not ever meant to understand. The end not always the end. The beginning not always the beginning.
Seen it with my own eyes. Seen how those colors can save a life. There was this young ’un, a wiry wreck he was, all skin an’ bones under the rugs flung on top of him to keep him warm. But still he lay shivering, ’cos he got a fever buried deep and something nasty ripping through his blood.
Heard of this young ’un the day we arrived at that kampania. Followed a track, slipping an’ sliding through the bog, mud sloshing over our wheels, that brought us to this field and this river, all beaded with frost an’ silver shimmering. And lined up to face the sun, a gathering of wagons, all colored an’ hand painted like our own.
We set up camp, and soon enough I could hear the hiss of them oil burners, smell that kerosene, and we’d found ourselves a place that looked good an’ friendly enough to stop a while.
My pa is up before first light. Hear him shifting from his mattress below, catch the silhouette of him leaving our wagon before sleep is pulling me back. Later I hear the boil an’ whistle of the kettle. Wake to light streaming through our windows.
“Where’s Pa?” I ask Ma, as she standing by the hob with leaves in her hair.
“A boy’s sick. They asked for him.”
“They asked for Pa?”
“Yes,” she tells me.
I take the buttered bread she hands me, pull on my cold boots, and out I go, running through that hard frozen grass. Smell that frost, the ice on the river, them scents of salt an’ resin.
Find my pa in the last but one wagon, kneeling on the wooden floor, by a crib where the young ’un is lying, shivering still with his eyes all rolled back in his head, the whites glinting back at us. My pa’s hand is resting on that young ’un’s forehead, his fingers in his hair, and around him on the floor he’s laying out them mounds of colors. Rubs a bit of malachite on the wrist of that boy, a bit of ochre on the other, like some strange ointment.
I watch him. Wait. Absentminded. Scoop a little bit of them colors up, one by one. Then I start streaking them ’cross the wooden walls of that wagon, streaking them in an arc, from one end to the other. Right in front of that young boy’s eyes. Watching how a light film sticks to the grains, so light you barely seeing it at all. But look hard, and colors be glistening over the wood, like the haze of a rainbow.
“Pa,” I says, ’cos he didn’t see me come into that wagon. But my pa don’t turn his head. Got a funny expression on his face, like he can’t hear nothing. I step back, stay quiet an’ mouse-like. Leave that rainbow arc on them walls. Go sit out front, beside the mamo and da of that sick boy, who sit pale faced and clenching their hands, chewing on a handful of nuts an’ shredding the shells onto the floor. We sit like this for an age. The only movement, those nuts popping into the back of that man’s mouth, and the only sound, the crunching of them nuts between his teeth. That light outside changes from blue to white, and that frost melts, by the time my pa stands up. He takes my hand like he knows I been there all this time, nods to the man and the woman on the steps, and then we are walking back to our own wagon to start unloading for our stop an’ stay.
It’s not ’til evening that I hear the cheering of people’s voices and see a small crowd come crossing them long shadows to our wagon with their lanterns rattling. And that young ’un, he’s right in the middle of that merry group, taking strong steps to get himself to us.
My ma’s all smiles. My pa rises from the table inside our wagon. Comes standing in the doorway and I can hear them all thanking him, addressing him with respect, like he is something special.
My pa don’t say nothing. Just stands, tall an’ straight backed, taking in what they saying. When later that night them people have gone, and I ask him how he made that sick boy well again, he won’t set about telling me. Eventually he gets sick of my carry-on and then he says Yavy Boy, and I know he gonna tell me something big ’cos he not using my name often. Keeps it for them important things he has to say. ’Cos he is called Yakob, and I am called Yavy right after him. Always feel a warmth inside the way my pa says my name. He speaks it soft, puts all his loving of me in the way that he says it.
“Yavy,” he says this time. “Done nothing no one else can do. Them pigments I make, some got an antiseptic inside of them that gonna kill the likes of an infection. But perhaps that don’t explain why a boy so sick as that can stand by sunset. Perhaps there’s something else that warrants that turn around.”
And he has a glint in his eye as he speaks on, like his smile is gonna widen at any moment. “I reckon he is remembering that thing we call Apasavello,” he tells me. “What we calling the Belief. In life, in the hope of it. Ain’t nothing like some rainbow arc spread out before your eyes, to be reminding you of that.”
My last memory of my ma and pa. I remember hearing a noise so loud it bish-bashed the silence out of the night all around. My pa’s like me, shut eyed in his sleep, with my ma cozied up beside him, her hair splayed all silky soft an’ unraveled on the pillow, and her hand laid flat out on his chest ’cos she loving him even as she sleeps. Them Authorities come to take us little ’uns. Come to take my three sisters and there is nothing either Pa or I can do. My pa’s up as soon as them sounds hit against the night. Standing there in his nightshirt, all undone ’gainst the dark. But those Authorities, they got my sisters by then, got them already to the door. Roughly they pull me, yanking at my arm, my shoulder sharp an’ screaming in its socket. Hit my pa down when he comes stalking toward them. Hit him clean down ’cos they are barri men and he is slight. Still I see him get back up, and though I have a pair of heavy arms wrapped around my head, blocking out the sound from my ears, I still hear the screams of my ma as they pummeling their big fists into my pa. I ain’t never heard screaming like that before. Coming from a place down deep in her belly, gravelly, like there’s a big beast inside her. But ain’t nothing gonna stop them Authorities taking us then. They got a task they gotta finish. To wash the gypsy out of us.
My pa got his hands over his head now. All curled up in a hedgehog ball, trying to ward off them punches. My sisters out of the door, and I, pulled right behind them, out into that cold night in my nightshirt an’ nothing else.
Trying hard to find the dook inside o’ me. Trying so hard to see what my pa has taught me to see all my life, as them barri men drag me and my sisters away. ’Cos my soori is breaking with the last sight o’ them. My ma on the ground, like she felt all the pain of the world in them last moments, her hands grasping at empty air. So weighted down with her crying, even my pa can’t lift her off the ground. And my pa himself, face bleeding from them punches that didn’t stop, and I can see him mouthing out my name. Yavy, he whispers. Yavy Boy.
They don’t run after us, ’cos they know an�
� I know, them barri men gonna bash their skulls in if they come running to save us again. So they stay put right there on that wet earth, clinging to them footprints we pressed there before we were gone into the night. Gone their three girls. Gone their only boy. Gone. Gone.
We’re pushed into a truck, and I see other faces inside that dark, sleep smeared like us. Smelling of oil an’ hay, and that truck, better for the sheep, not children, who sit all weeping, scared an’ missing their ma’s already.
My soori is screaming out. Tumbling an’ hammering in my chest. Sa so sas man-Hasardem. All my heart. Sa so sas man-Hasardem. All my life.
But even then, as tears spill down my sisters’ faces, I hear my pa. Telling me loud an’ clear what I have to find. Shouting out that Apasavello to me, telling me to see it, so when I close my eyes, shutting out that truck’s black gloom, I see that life—sun bright. Tree bright. Sky bright. Have the whole of nature in front o’ me. Seeing colors where there ain’t no colors. Seeing them mounds of powder my pa made, them piles of brightness that he pulled out of the grayest stone.
Just have to find them, I keep telling myself. Keep seeking out them colors that gonna make this life worth living.
Part Five
Before
AUSTRIA, 1943
They followed the river to the lake, followed the lake to the Institution, through reeds and the nests of warblers, arriving, in the end, as Lor had left it. She could see the expanse of the building above the trees, such was its height, grand still, despite the bleached dilapidation and the crumbling stone. The mist came in swiftly, as if nature had made a sudden decision to hide the sky. Swallows that flew in across the water appeared, then vanished, then vanished and reappeared, wings beating furiously, as if they were racing the swoon of a wave. The fog spiraled in from the shore to the lawn, wrapped around them, clinging to the trees, to the grasses. The air was dank with it. They walked around to the boathouse, past collapsing balustrades and trees weighted with shriveled fruit that had refused to fall at the end of the summer and hung rotted on the branches. Around the bare vines of wisteria, to the workhouse, where at first she simply stood, lost to the ghost world of her past.
Jakob’s Colors Page 23