by Mort Castle
A drink. Now.
To keep away the shakes, the convulsions that want to send all his muscles into spasm, to keep terror and revulsion and anguish from exploding inside him. Without liquor to keep him going when he needs to keep going, to sedate him when he needs sedation, oh, Jesus, he just might start to scream.
What she is…What I have become…
So vodka, then, is the fuel that burns within him, that burns like the fire eating away the interior of a log.
I am burned out, a burned-out case.
Nothing left. He no longer has substance. His only reality is drinking and her.
He drives and drinks vodka. Clear liquid. A clear bottle.
He feels colorless and smooth and brittle. He is glass. Light passes through him and reflects off him in angled glints. He is a glass ghost.
And he is tired. He knows that without actually feeling it. Must stop and rest. How long since he has slept? A day or two?
Must keep moving.
But surely it is safe now. It must be. They cannot still be pursuing.
Who are they? Who? The Furies on his trail? Demons? Oh, no, not at all. Your demons are within you; it is futile to strive to elude them. Something else then. It is vengeance in pursuit; vengeance seeks them. It is justice. In a way he could never articulate, he knows this, has known it since that late night when he packed a few things—clothing and credit cards and cash and liquor—and they fled the house.
But I am innocent. I have done nothing wrong. The courts, yes, the American system of jurisprudence has found no guilt. A man invaded my home, tried to kill my child, and I saved her.
He sometimes talks this way to himself, and knows he lies.
Sunset. Soon it will be night. Hard to believe that, hard to believe it is winter. Mild weather here, so far south in Illinois; could fool you, make you think you’re in springtime.
But he no longer believes in springtime as reality or metaphor. There is no hope, no possibility.
There is only need.
And so, he must stop soon. Rest. Sleep.
One mile, a blue sign promises Food-Gas-Lodging. One mile to the next exit.
He takes the off ramp, drives to the Mt. Vernon Ramada Inn and produces his Mastercharge card. A room for his daughter and him. The little girl has hold of his hand. Her eyes are open, but she is not fully awake.
He does not like the way the desk clerk, a young man as bland as a Disneyworld employee, looks at him. In a vague way, he thinks it is because he looks like an alcoholic ruin, that his pores are seeping vodka sweat.
With the door double-locked and dead-bolted, everything is better. A drink. This bottle is empty, but there are suitcases with other bottles. He is all right. They are all right.
He needs to rest, but first get rid of his dirt, get rid of his stink.
He is going to shower. He is going to get clean.
That is what he tells her. She sits in one of the two chairs by the drapery-covered window. She has the television set’s remote control. Without turning up the volume, she runs the channels. The television’s picture is too green.
When he is finished, he tells her, they’ll go to the restaurant. She can order a hamburger, like always, and a kiddy cocktail.
With the shower’s hot water pounding him, a welcome assault of clean heat, there is a brief time in which he feels alive, as though he is again a man of flesh and bone and blood.
He stays under the pounding spray a long time. Then, in the steamy bathroom, he stands on the pile of the clothing he has shed. He takes a deep breath, then another.
And he is all right, he thinks, until with his palm he rubs a clear space on the fogged mirror.
There is nothing there. No reflection. He cannot see himself.
And he knows he has ended. He does not exist.
Then a face appears and glares at him. The Rat!
He looks in the mirror and sees nothing but the sad simplicity of what is—the red-streaked eyes, the bloat, the spidered capillaries in the nose, the shaving cut on the chin, the bitten lip.
This is what he is. Not who. What.
He starts to weep.
A towel wrapped around him, crying, the sobs hot and bubbling as they tear up from his chest, he emerges from the bathroom.
She nods, rising from the chair. She turns down the bedcovers. He lets the towel fall away and slips into bed.
He waits.
Then she is with him in bed.
She is naked and touching him, and he does not think of The Rat, does not think of what was or what might have been, does not think of loss or degradation, does not think at all…
…as she touches him and touches him…
The woman drives the specially equipped Ford Aerostar. Its headlights wash the night, creating shadow specters. For several weeks, since beginning this mission she has not been certain of her destination. But she has never doubted. She has passed beyond doubt. She is going where he tells her to go, and that is where God wants her to be.
Her life is in the hands of God. The Lord has brought her health and wholeness.
The man who brought the Lord into her life is waking now. He groans and coughs. He has little strength and less endurance, so he sleeps frequently. And sometimes, in his dreams, God speaks to him.
Perhaps God has just given him, given both of them, a dream message, because the man says, “Take the next exit.”
Ten minutes later, they pull into a numbered slot in the parking lot of the Mt. Vernon Ramada Inn.
They wait.
There are two men in the front of the customized ruby red Cadillac Eldorado. In back is an old woman. Her seat belt prevents her from toppling when the auto turns onto the off ramp. On this journey she has not said more than a dozen words to the two men. She has passed the trip in a dazed sleep, or in talking to ghosts and memories, or by watching the five-inch, color television with which the Cadillac’s passenger compartment is equipped.
And constantly she has been commanding the death inside her, death that is impatient now, to leave off, she will be ready soon enough, but there is a task to be accomplished.
The diakka must be destroyed and its wickedness destroyed. There are spirits who can find no ease or contentment, souls who can take no rest, until this is accomplished.
When the Cadillac is parked, the two men gently help the old woman out. They seek to support her, but she gestures them away.
I have the strength to stand, she tells them, and because she is the Rawnie, Pola Janichka, they cannot dispute her.
And she has the strength of others.
The side door of the Ford Aerostar opens. A hydraulic ramp whirs and clicks into place.
Emerald Farmer carefully rolls Evan Kyle Dean’s wheelchair out of the van and onto the concrete of the parking lot. There is a blanket over his useless legs. He may never take another step, as God wills, but always will he humbly walk in the way of the Lord.
A way that has brought him here.
A way that has brought Emerald Farmer here, a child of God, to aid him and serve God.
Pola Janichka feels the power. There is draba with her, with them all, an intense magic wrought by those who have united in a good cause.
And there are not only the three of them. In her right hand, Pola Janichka holds two strips of cloth, each tied in a simple knot. She has mulengi dori, the magical Gypsy strings. One cloth strip has been cut from the cotton length that took the measure of Selena Lazone’s coffin, the other that of David Greenfield’s. Both mulengi dori have been touched by her tears.
As she walks to the crippled man and the woman, her comrades, Pola Janichka feels the presence of David and Selena. They are here, now, mule, no longer flesh and blood but as real as ever they were in life.
“Devlesa avilan,” Pola Janichka says to Evan Kyle Dean and Emerald Farmer. “It is God Who brought you.”
“It is God Who has brought us together,” Evan Kyle Dean says, “to do His holy work.”
“Bater,�
�� says Pola Janichka. From somewhere, somewhere else but somewhere not so faraway, she hears Selena Lazone say, “Bater.”
Bater.
May it be so.
— | — | —
Author’s Note
There might be a linguist or two who finds fault with the Romany terms and phrases.
When one speaks Romany, one speaks tshatsimo, the truth, but when one writes Romany—lots of luck. Or lots of bahtalo. Or bact. Or baktlo. Not until the 19th century did Romany become a written language. Romany spellings vary from reference book to reference book to reference book. Marhime aka marimay aka marime, etc. The spellings I employed were chosen by the lingual postulate, “Eeny-meeny-mynee.”
As for Romany rules of grammar, well, the Gaje seem more concerned with such concepts than do the Rom, and I got into the Romany spirit as I worked on the book.
Finally,—while not all the ceremonies and rituals presented are authentic Gypsy practice and custom, I have tried to make them true to the spirit of the Rom. As Pola Janichka would tell you, there are times it makes sense to create an age old tradition on the spot.
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