But. And. I do not know what comes after these words now, for me, at least tonight.
Now I AM talking shesti. I feel the distance between us today. I am tired, so will pause this where I can say good night and that I miss you, with a smile, and not sad schoolgirl tear stains on my midnight note.
More soon.
Your shesti Lolo
30 January
Kezia,
There is a private post that is going to carry these pages to France, then into the mail from there. It is frightfully expensive per letter, so I have stuffed miri Mamo’s letter in with yours. Please bring to her. But press your lips tight together, baro moy, promise me! Ha ha!
Nais tuke, amalni.
Lolo
6 Feb
Mamo!
I am still shocked at how quick my letters arrived. Perhaps it is good for Romania that England’s postmen strike. The private post is expensive, but efficient!
I’m still emotional from hearing your voice. I did not expect to hear from you so soon, and I am grateful and happy.
I will answer as many questions as I can remember that I did not get to in our call. You quizzed me, and I was too soft and slippery with joy to have everything stuck. It will be a reason for you to call me again (see how cunning your most vestacha and only chej is?)!
I did not describe London or my room, yes. You always pushed me with words. When I talk with music, you see through my eyes, but the connection is too poor, too expensive (like the post, like food, like the train, like London!).
My days are simple. Here, I wake early (early compared to the other girls). I make tea, strong, and mix in jam and sugar and milk (I don’t get English tea. It’s weak, and thin, and everyone drinks it all day long), I sit with my tea as long as I can make it last, and eat bread with butter, or cheese and leftovers. If I am good or I am lonely or I am tired, I will eat biscuits too. Store bought, from a tube, lacquered in chocolate. I miss the fruits at home, but I eat well. School days, I dress and walk if I can. Seeing the same sights at the same times makes me feel more at home, and there are even a few faces I see at the same sights and same times, and we say hello. Classes go until 3 o’clock, then we break for tea, and I rehearse until 6, and take the train home because it is dusk. My flatmates and I chat, and eat a cold supper, and then retire to study and read and study. And read. My flatmates watch the telly—television. But I am happier to read and practise. And write my letters, of course!
Work days I rise and I breakfast, and we are at the stall by 6 am. I started bundling flowers, but I made good sales, so Sookie’s family keeps me at the front. I handle money, answer questions. It makes me smile all the time because we sell flowers that I picked all over for nothing, thinking nothing, of them even popping up in the cracks of stones in Bucharest. And here, we sell them, tied bunches of oleander and violets, aster and bellflower. English people pay extra and I get to keep that. Even I feel the cold by the time we close the stall, and I always treat myself to a cup of hot chocolate from another vendor who gives us a low price. Then, home, to practice, reading, studying. Reading.
I am not a movie star!
Kurko lunch starts at 11, on time, so Sundays, I am on the train by 9:30. This way, I am early, and avoid the scoldings of fifty aunties (ha ha ha!). In fact, right now, it is growing dark, and I have pages to read and sleep to get so I can make that morning train tomorrow.
Me kerav miri Mamo,
Loliya
7 February
Mamo, where are you? Where are you? I hung up the telephone with Káko Ray ages ago, and he said he was going to fetch you right away.
He does not know anything, I could tell, and I did not tell him anything except that this is an emergency and to please get you. I cried at the end. I could not help it.
Mamo, where are you? I am scared, Mamo. Ke dar mánge.
Saint Sarah, protector of the Romany and mother of travellers, to you I come to confide my sorrows and joys and offer my heart. I pray for myself in my hour of need. Gulo Sarah, come to me.
I am freezing cold. My hands, feet. Ke dar mánge. Ke dar mánge.
Oh, Mamo. Please call. Please call. Call.
7-8 February
Kezia,
My dear friend. Forgive me. My hands are so cold and I cannot get warm.
Ke dar mánge. I cried myself asleep waiting for miri Mamo. But she has not called and I woke up again. Ke dar mánge.
Ke dar mánge. Though I am safe. I am safe. I am in my flat and my girls are asleep and I am safe.
Why am I still so afraid?
You will not believe. I do not believe, sitting now, cold hands, scared like a child. But phenav chachimos. Every word is true.
I went to Kurko lunch, just as I have, the past two Sundays.
Today was not lunch at all. It was a wedding.
“I did not know!” I said. “I brought no gift.” Prikaza, bad luck!
But no gift is expected, at your own wedding.
My wedding.
Two big cousins took me by the hands to present me to some moosh, dragged up from muck. With a big bowl face, filled with soft pudding, and with a voice like a growl. His hands, cratered like the moon, and his eyes. Oh, his eyes. I knew his insides were even uglier then.
But there he stood, licking his lips like I were a dish, and a Grandfather Szgany promising him my price.
If I were frozen in place before, I burned then. I yelled, “Nashti! No, I will not!” I yelled and I screamed. Aunties giggled—a “nervous bride”—as the cousins now held back my arms, and grandfather came close to my face, whispering, “Dear one, be calm, have joy! This match is baxtali, dear little one.”
Joy? Calm? Luck? So what did I do? I spit.
I spit in the face of a Grandfather Szgany, who blinked and let it drip. “All little girls are nervous on their wedding day,” he said, part to me, part to the crowd, fifty of everyone, and one beast.
“I am not getting married!” I yelled and yelled.
A familia of boxers forgets the strength to hold up a violin for hours, and I pulled free. A familia of boxers, and no one expects me to throw a good punch.
And I threw a good punch. Right across the nose of a Grandfather Szgany.
Blood and blood. I spilled blood. I froze still again, I thought for shock myself of what I had just done. But it was not just that.
I froze and time froze, because in all of one single second, the Grandfather Szgany did more than was possible. Inside of one moment, one alone, he held back his blood with one hand and held out the other, clenched in a fist. I waited for his blow, but none came. Instead, he opened his fist where he held a mound of dirt. It was my dirt, I took a handful from home, silly me, sentimental me, so I would always be able to rest in Romania, even far away. How did he have it? My dirt is in a jar, in my room, across the city. My mind spun and spun.
Then he said these words, clear as day, even holding back his blood, holding my dirt:
“Listen to me, girl. You were born Szgany, and you will be Szgany. A horse may buck and a horse may kick, but if it has been bought and paid for, being broken is its fate.”
We looked at one other, and I broke the state. I yanked and ran. If I am a horse, then I bucked and I kicked, and I ran.
Cousins and uncles and boriya reached for me, but I shook them off. I do not know how. I was running for my life.
I ran and ran. I lost a shoe, kicked off the other. I ran out of the estate. I ran hard and fast, but I could not get free. I ran and passed cousins, aunties, Szgany everywhere! I passed them on the street, driving in automobiles, looking down from rooftops. I ran past Shepherd’s Bush station, I ran clear to the next. And my family, they were already there, for me... but just looking, looking. I thought they would grab for me, but they did not. They just watched. They just looked.
Everywhere, like the eyes of monsters.
I jumped onto the first train that arrived. I sat down, small and compact, and I tucked my bare feet underneath me. I rode one train after anoth
er until I got home.
When I looked the door, my knees gave. My flatmates picked me up, and asked what was wrong. My feet were black and frozen through. I told them nothing, only “I am unwell,” and “Good night,” and I went to my room and I closed the door.
I wrapped myself in my blanket and I waited until the sun went down, and my flatmates went out or to bed, and I crawled out and called Káko Ray. It took me a few tries to dial all the numbers in the right order. And I begged him to wake up, and to get my mother.
But she has not called. I am waiting and waiting, and it is growing early. I fear now something has happened. Something terrible. She should have called by now. Even if muro Káko dressed for a Saint’s day, he would have reached Mamo by now, and even if she was asleep, then woke up, washed, dressed, cooked everyone a grand breakfast and did the dishes straight after, she would have called by now.
Ke dar mánge. Something is wrong.
At first light, I am sending one of the English girls to mail this. If something has happened... dear amalni, you have always been like a sister to me, and I thank you forever. I love you, my friend. I love you.
Lolo
15 February
My dear Kezia,
I am so sorry that I worried you, amal, and thank you for calling me as soon as you read my letter. The fever made me lose my mind, no?
When I try and remember the night I fell sick (and wrote that shesti!) I can only remember here and there—scenes, like photographs, and nothing in order. And when I try and set things in order, it becomes even less clear.
It was a terrible, horrible flu. I have never been so sick. I was too cold and too hot and trapped in dreams.
I am the most baxtali rakli in the world. I have flatmates who love me, who got me to bed, brought in the doctor, and sat by my side through my fever until it broke. And I have you, almani, worried for me, and my mother and uncle and auntie, and now family here too, bringing me ciorba and nettle tea and sweet cakes, enough to share with my English friends (because no Szgany will admit my English girls grew in esteem as they cared for me, but oh, they have!).
I am feeling much better and stronger, but on doctors’ orders (both gazhe and Romany!), I am to rest at least one more day. I’ve made a bed on the sofa, where I can watch birds (visiting the windowsill) and the telly all day long (though every show is on Decimal Day—we have changed currencies here, official today, and you’d think we invaded Czechoslovakia, how heated it gets).
More soon,
Your recovering Lolo
16 February
Muri vestacha Mamo,
I have convalesced well—in fact, I may be one of the only people ever to have gained weight recovering from the flu. And I am quite embarrassed... everyone made such a fuss over me. I am touched, and baxtali to have been so taken care of. But Mamo, somehow... it has also made me more lonely, somehow. During my fever, my flatmates could not understand the Romany (and Romanian) that I spoke in stupor, and the familia was by daily to check on me and bring soup and sweets and medicine, but would not come inside, no matter how sincerely invited. And you and Kezia, and even Ray and Domino, sounding so far away by telephone...
Bah. I am being a brat. Being ill makes me more sentimental. Tomorrow evening, if I am well enough, I will venture out for the first time since my fever broke. Quite by chance, I read there will be a showing of Mihai Viteazu at a small cinema nearby. Kezia has seen it ten times, not a joke, and you, even you, Mamo—two times yourself, correct? I am thrilled like a child to see it, and thankful for the timing. See? Baxtali Lolo, no?
17 February
PS: Aye, Mamo! You were right. What a film! I could not be prouder to be an Ardeal Szgany. Opre Romania!
I had a truly wonderful evening. I love you very much!
Love,
Lolo
18 February
Kezia, Kezia, Kezia,
I have asked of you so much these past few months; can I ask more? It is irresistible to know secrets, but then, once you do, you are weighed down by the responsibility. Do I throw an anchor around your neck?
I will give you a second to decide. Meanwhile, I saw Mihai Viteazu last night, and I cried and cheered... and swooned. Yes. I understand now! I would have seen it with you all those dozen times too!
All right. Now you decide! If you do not want to carry this, I understand, my sweet friend. And so, burn the rest of this letter without reading it.
…
…
…
…
…
You did not burn it, did you? Ha ha ha!
I met someone. At the cinema! I saw Mihai Viteazu (finally) and this someone was the one who paid to rent the theatre and show the film in Romanian.
Oh, ho ho! You say. That is good news: you met a rich big spender friend. Where is the secret?
He is not Romany.
He! I know! And even beyond that, he would not be my type if he were: he is older, and not quite handsome. But he is sophisticated and well-read, enjoys music and art... a gentleman! He is of Hungarian heritage, and speaks Hungarian, Romanian, German, English, French, and I think more even, that we did not discuss.
At the end of the film, I was bawling, happy and sad, proud and moved, all those things. As the lights came up, a hand patted my shoulder, offering me a handkerchief. I dabbed my eyes and nose and then he said, “That is a tremendous film. When I first viewed it, I felt as you do, now.”
(Do we give back wet handkerchiefs to their owners, by the way?)
I introduced myself, and he introduced himself (“Matthew Corbin,” he said, and I think he would have kissed my hand if I let him). Then he asked if I wanted to discuss the film further over tea, since he’d yet found anyone else with as strong a reaction. I nearly said no, but his bird (he has a tame raven! True! On his shoulder) cawed at me in a way that sounded pleading... and you know how I am about birds.
In the lobby, I got my first look at him: medium height, medium build, with beautiful orange red curls (almost too pretty for a man). He is obviously older than I, but I can’t tell by how much, and it has not yet come up. His face is not masculine, but neither is it feminine... with elegant features and an aquiline nose. His skin is exquisite, though, so smooth that it seems blurry... as if he is going fast, or I am going very slow.
We talked of music, and history, and Bucharest and Sibiu, and so many other things I cannot even remember all we covered. Tea turned to brandy and Napoleons, and only once did I feel out of place or strange, and only when I realised that Matthew had barely touched his cake, except what he fed to his bird (whose name is Katona, and sweet as a kitten)... meanwhile I nearly licked the plate free of all leftover cream.
“You are so enchanting,” he said, “I forgot to eat.” And we both blushed and laughed like idiots. But then he said, “I must be bold. I would like very much to see you again.” And I blushed like a maiden or, maybe, still an idiot.
Of course I agreed. Thursday, we will go out. On a date? Oh my. Ha ha ha!
He is full of manners and respect, and tried nothing fresh, and sent me home in a private car. And I woke up this morning to a delivery of six dozen red roses. My flatmates went crazy wanting details, but you my best friend get the details first, always.
Oh, the flat smells wonderful. The roses are deep and rich, almost like wine. There are other things I could say, but I will not, yet. It is so lovely having some secrets. Do not worry, amal! When I am ready to share, your ears—well, eyes—will be the first.
Peace,
Lolo
25 February
Salutări Profesor Văduvă,
Thank you, sir, for your kind comments on my presentation and suggestions on researching the use of Romany/Byzantine modal scales, and the article on heterophonic counterpointing as an interpretive device used by the first violin in Gypsy orchestration. You are right, sir, the musical idiom is more than just the scales with augmented seconds.
Our Winter holiday starts next week, a
nd I must admit, as much as I relish the hard work I do here, I am grateful for a brief rest... a rest that includes deeply reading this article and sketching out ideas for my composition final project (of course).
I hope this note finds you well.
My best wishes,
Lolo Szgany
Note left for Lolo’s flatmates, 28 February:
Dear girls,
I don’t think my family remembers that I’m in rehearsal all day today (I know! I am NO FUN!) so if they call, remind them I won’t be over for lunch today? Thank you, loves.
Gran-gran Lolo
4 March
Ah, Kez! Kushti! Your letter was so beautiful. You know I would never miss your day in a hundred years, and I will be there. May is the most beautiful month, too. I agree, and a traditional celebration at the pass will be wonderful... there will nothing but green, young leaves and wildflowers to compete with your beauty, and bright sun to warm the guests almost as warm as your love. Te aves baxtali!
And I am beyond happy, beyond pleased to hear that you are finishing your schooling even after the ceremony. I am humbled that my rambles inspired you to talk frankly with Peti, and thankful that he is as rational a man as you foresaw.
I wish more Romany men were as Peti... I wish more gadje men were as Peti! As unrestricted as it seems for gazhya, some struggles are the same. Saturday, I am going with my flatmates to a march of women calling for rights. Can you imagine? There are such gatherings in England often. I am excited and a small bit frightened. But mostly eager.
I take to heart your reservations about Matthew. But you are now playing the fit gran, warning me of the temptations of the devil! Ha ha ha!
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