Fires in the Dark

by Louise Doughty

  Praise for Fires in the Dark:

  ‘An epic novel … absorbing, shocking, hopeful.’ Mail on Sunday

  ‘Compulsively readable … Have we had too many fictions about the Holocaust? Perhaps, but we have never read anything like this … its triumph is the quiet authority of its telling, an unblinking serenity of gaze that charts without countenancing the absurdity of the world into which the Roma are incredulously drawn … [and] the magnanimity and power of Doughty’s achievement.’ Guardian

  ‘Memorable and gripping.’ New Statesman

  ‘Compelling. Assumptions and inhibitions bind each of us all too tightly into our own world, but fiction can release us into another. Fires in the Dark does just this.’ The Times

  ‘The compelling story sweeps you along from beginning to end. Doughty writes with a deep knowledge of her subject.’ Daily Mail

  ‘A novel such as this has the emotive power to restore dignity to those who were so appallingly robbed of it … It delivers inner truth in a knock-out blow, as only art can.’ Independent

  ‘Undoubtedly both a topical and important book. Combining a compelling human story with a necessary historical lesson, Doughty’s fourth novel is her best by far and nothing less than an essential read.’ Big Issue

  ‘A book overflowing with newfound confidence and commitment.’ Time Out

  ‘One would be hard-pressed to find a book in any genre so expansive and capacious detailing the Roma experience during the Second World War as Fires in the Dark. The book, a blend of historical detail and finely tuned fiction adds to the knowledge about this precarious but rich culture and people.’ Jerusalem Post

  Louise

  DOUGHTY

  For Jerome

  Solidarity is not discovered by reflection but created. It is created by increasing our sensitivity to the particular details of pain and humiliation of other, unfamiliar sorts of people.

  RICHARD RORTY

  Contingency, irony, and solidarity

  Today, at this very moment as I sit writing at a table, I myself am not convinced that these things really happened.

  PRIMO LEVI

  If This Is a Man

  NOTE ON LANGUAGE

  This novel is about a group of Roma or Romany people, more commonly known as Gypsies. The word gypsy is pejorative in many European languages and is often a racial slur. In English it is inaccurate but not generally considered offensive as long as it is spelt with a capital G.

  ‘Roma’ means The People. Roma people use the word gadje, or gadže, for anyone who is not-Roma or Sinti (another Romany group). Gadje may be imagined as whitefolks said with a great deal of scorn. Roma and Sinti societies are highly complex, with many different groups speaking different forms of the Romani language. The characters in this book are Kalderash (Coppersmith) Roma, who are travelling in the Czech lands but are originally from Wallachia, in present-day Romania, so I have used the Vlach Romani forms of most words.

  There are some deliberate inconsistencies in this book. When using the plural, I have added an English ‘s’, and I have occasionally used the Anglo-Romani term O Del, meaning God. When referring to street names in Prague, I have used the English equivalent of the most famous landmarks, such as Wenceslas Square and Charles Bridge, but in the interests of flavour, retained the Czech versions for others.

  I am greatly indebted to Thomas Acton, Donald Kenrick and Ian Hancock for attempting to explain to me the complexities of Romani along with a great deal else besides. Any remaining errors or simplifications are entirely my own responsibility.

  Rromale, phrálale, pheyale, me sim rromani feri ekh tserra, numa o mai lačo kotor si. Te yertin varesave doša me kerdem ande kadi paramiči, thai pačan ke čačo si o ilo murro.

  CONTENTS

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  Note on Language

  PART 1: 1927

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  PART 2: 1933

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  PART 3: 1942

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  PART 4: 1942

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  PART 5: 1942 – 3

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  PART 6: 1943

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  PART 7: 1945

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Postscript

  Acknowledgements

  About the Author

  By the Same Author

  Copyright

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  PART 1

  1927

  CHAPTER 1

  Summer in Bohemia: high summer. The sun is furious, the sky a vast dome of bright and solid blue broken only by a few wisps of high, motionless cloud. It is 1927, July – the middle of the day.

  The heat has deadened everything. No trace of breeze stirs in the grass, the trees are still. The cows can hardly lift their heads, so accustomed are they to indolence. Flies hang lazily over patches of dung already baked unyielding black. Daisies droop. Only the skylarks are in motion, ascending and plummeting with pointless enthusiasm.

  At first glance, this small corner of the world seems uninhabited. The buildings at the edge of the field are disused. There is a tiny stone cottage which looks sound enough but the barn next to it is in ruins, sagging beneath the weight of its own dereliction. It is the sort of old barn which you would pass by and not even register.

  Perfect for Gypsies.

  Six women are inside – five of them crouching around the sixth who lies supine on the hard earth floor. A birthing sheet has been laid beneath her and two women sit either side of it waving inefficient fans made from twigs and straw. The woman wears only a loose chemise – the others have undressed her, folded her three-layered skirts and hastily unplaited her braids to allow the gold coins trapped in her stiff, oiled hair to drop loose. The coins have been gathered and, along with her elaborate jewellery and money belt, placed outside the barn. They must not become marimé – Unclean. Divested of her finery, how vulnerable the woman seems. Two of the women are supporting her at her shoulders, raising her when she flaps a hand upwards to indicate her position is uncomfortable. For the moment, she is pausing between contractions to close her eyes and pant gently. She has not yet reached the wild time, when she will move into a crouching position and lose all awareness of the processes of breathing.

  The remaining woman squats between the labouring woman’s legs, observing the blossoming of her vagina. She thinks it will be some time yet.

  *

  The boy will be called Emil. His mother is Anna Maximoff, a tall woman famed for her good looks, breeding and pride. She is also considered insightful but as she is currently giving birth to her first child she is temporarily deprived of the ability to see further than the next contraction.

  Her cousin Tekla – the woman examining her – predicts that Anna is not nearly open enough for the pushing to begin and that a lengthy battle lies ahead.

  Little Emil has other ideas.

  *

  The men of the kumpánia have been sent to find the nearest village or, if they cannot locate it, otherwise o
ccupy themselves. The group was on its way to Kladno when Anna’s time came early. They were hoping to reach the sour-cherry orchards on the westerly outskirts, Ctibor Michálek’s orchards.

  No man will be allowed near Anna for two weeks after the birth, while she is still marimé. She will not be permitted to wash or cook or perform any duties which might contaminate them. Instead, she will be tended by Tekla while she lies in the barn, feeds the child, sleeps and dreams of his future. When they are alone together, she will whisper his real name into his ear.

  *

  Tekla allows herself a small smile at her memory of the look on Josef’s face as she ushered him away with the other men. Josef is her cousin and Anna’s husband, famous for bursting into tears when his wife was stung by a bee at their wedding feast, while the assembled guests flung their arms up and burst out laughing, declaring that a bee-sting was good luck, the next best thing to bird shit.

  For a moment, Tekla remains lost in this memory and has time to note that it – still – causes her pain. Then Anna lets out a strange, meandering howl, arching her back, as if the curve of noise is raising her body from the floor.

  Tekla looks up in surprise. She sits up and commands the other women to lift Anna and turn her, the sharpness in her voice obscuring her alarm.

  Tekla has dealt with sixteen births and never yet had to cut a baby loose of its mother. The thought makes the back of her neck prickle. She has a knife ready, as she does each time, cleansed in the fire that morning before they left the forest camp and wrapped tightly in clean cloth to keep it uncontaminated. It is hidden in the pocket of her apron. When she bends over, she can feel it resting across the top of her thighs. The cloth might be difficult to unwind in a hurry.

  The women supporting Anna look to Tekla for instruction. Božena and Dunicha have borne five children between them. They know enough to sense that something is amiss. Božena is fond of contradicting Tekla but even she looks at her appealingly now.

  Tekla does not trust herself to speak again, fearing the tone of her voice might convey alarm to Anna. She gestures with both hands, palms upwards. Božena and Dunicha lift Anna from her crouching position with one arm each over the nearest shoulder. They brace themselves to take her weight – she will push down towards the ground so that the powers of the Earth will help to pull the baby out. The women with the fans, Ludmila and Eva, instinctively increase the intensity of their flapping, as if the air they generate might wash away Anna’s pain. All four have their gazes concentrated, breathing in time. Anna’s face, normally clear and calm, is bathed in sweat. Her eyes stare wildly around, from one woman to the next, as if she is accusing each of them in turn of being her torturer. The veins on the back of her neck stand out in great twisted ropes as she strains. Tekla remembers that Eva and Ludmila have never attended a birth. It must be frightening for them to see Anna, their beautiful Anna, made ugly by this extremity.

  Only Tekla herself is managing to maintain a distance, a coolness in her thoughts – if quick decisions must be made, they will be her responsibility. She feels as though her mind has gone numb, as if the insignificant has become hugely important and vice versa. She finds herself noticing that a supporting beam in the centre of the barn is full of woodworm. In a far corner, there is a rusted iron mangle which was once painted green. The bowl and rollers are missing. She hears a husky snuffling and glances round to see that the old dog Biri has worked his way loose from where he was tied outside and is scrabbling beneath the barn door, desperate for admittance.

  They should have left the door ajar, Tekla thinks. It is completely airless in the barn. She can feel the sweat running down her back and chest, small rivulets between her paps and a stickiness which will be darkening the back of her blouse.

  Anna throws her head back and lets out another howl, bearing down between Božena and Dunicha, her full-throated yell dying into a pitiful cry that sounds as if it is trapped at the back of her throat and whimpering for release. Tekla lies down on her side, turns her head and peers between her cousin’s legs – and what she sees makes her realise there is no time to be lost.

  *

  The story about Anna’s husband Josef and the bee was absolutely true. He did cry easily; but he only cried for others.

  As a child, Josef had been trampled by one of his father’s mares. His left leg was mashed, the bone splintered twice below the knee. There was no doctor in the village, so his father and uncle held him down while his mother strapped two wooden splints either side of the bone.

  They were in Upper Hungary then, in a settled tabor by the River Dunaj, close to a village called Sap. His father bought and sold horses, across the river mostly, dealing with a group of Lowari Gypsies and a few gadje – he spoke fluent Magyar, Slovak and German along with Romani. His mother sewed and spoke only Romani and Czech. She hated being settled and begged his father nightly to take to the road, if only in summertime.

  The tabor was squeezed between marshland at the southerly edge of the village and the river. The wagons were enormous square things with flat roofs and wheels sunk deep into the mud – they had been there for two generations. They would never move again.

  In the summer the camp was plagued with huge swarms of bluebottles, plump and iridescent, buzzing and dancing in their anxiety to mate. It was particularly bad around the pea harvest, when the rotting matter left by the thresher gangs sent the flies wild. Each family would string washing lines around their wagon and hang up sheets of flypaper in rows – to get from wagon to wagon you had to duck beneath the sheets. When the flypaper became so dense with insects you couldn’t see what it was any more, it would be taken down and burnt on the fire. Charred flakes would shoot upwards in a hot column – the area around the fire would become engulfed in a cloud, the puffing ash of little legs and wings.

  The flies reached their peak in August, when the mosquito season started. The summer swarms drove Josef’s father crazy but he did not want to take to the road while the horse business was so good. He was forever threatening to buy a little house in the village amongst the gadje – a threat which would sand Josef’s mother running to the other women for comfort, sobbing and flapping her apron.

  It was a gadjo doctor who persuaded Josef’s parents to break the leg again. He was a town doctor, a Hungarian from Nitra who had been passing through Sap one day on his way to Győr. He had stopped to visit a relative and had seen young Josef hobbling back towards the camp with an egg in each hand – the eggs lending tremors to Josef’s limp as his stick was tucked under one arm. Assuming him to be palsied, a speciality of his, the doctor had followed Josef on foot to the Gypsy tabor, where he strode through the wagons oblivious to the hostile stares of the residents. He introduced himself to Josef’s father and asked to examine the boy.

  He was a little disappointed to discover that the limp was due to a badly set bone, but he offered to do the family a favour: rebreak the leg and set it properly with a set of iron callipers which he had in the back of his carriage, parked outside his aunt’s house in Sap. He would do it without payment as long as he was permitted to visit them every six months for the next two years and check on Josef’s progress. Josef’s father must give his word of honour that he would relinquish the callipers when the two years were up, or leave them on the aunt’s doorstep if the family took to the road before then.

  At this point, most men would have escorted the doctor to the banks of the Dunaj, and booted him in: but Josef’s father was used to dealing with gadje, and he was a pragmatist. He wanted his son to follow him into the horse business. You needed two good legs to ride.

  Josef’s mother had to be carried bodily from their wagon.

  They held Josef’s nose and poured slivovice into his mouth until he coughed and swallowed. Then they broke his leg with a wooden mallet. At the first blow, Josef fainted. When he came round he vomited. Then he fainted again. The fainting and vomiting continued intermittently for a week, accompanied by a fever. By then the gadjo doctor had left with a
cheery wave and a promise to visit them in six months’ time. Josef’s mother burned blackberry leaves in a dish and prayed to the Saints and cursed the day she and his father had ever met. Without consulting her husband – an unheard-of rebellion – she arranged for her uncle to summon a drabarni all the way from the Eastern Mountains, to be paid on arrival by one of the gold coins from her braids. When Josef’s father found out he smashed all their wedding crockery and they didn’t speak to each other for ten months.

  The drabarni came, took the coin, and told them there was nothing she could do for a child whose leg was still clasped by a gadjo’s implement.

  It was a month before Josef left his bed and another two before he regained his strength and could walk without pain. Throughout all this, he never cried. He screamed sometimes – fainted and vomited on occasion. But there were no tears.

  Then one day, when he still had to drag his leg behind him like a dead dog on a stick, he was walking past his mother as she kneeled before the fire frying potato cakes. She was in the process of wrapping her apron around the handle of the blackened pan. As she lifted the pan, the edge of her apron caught on the trivet and it tipped from her grasp, emptying its contents on to the embers and burning her hand as she tried to prevent it.

  A child was not to realise it, but his mother’s cry was more at the loss of the food than at her burnt hand. At the sight of her twisted face, Josef began to wail – and once he had begun, he could not stop.