Fires in the Dark

by Louise Doughty

  After that, he would cry at the slightest excuse – but only when the pain or distress occured to someone other than himself. Bad news in the tabor was kept from him. If another child scraped a knee or brushed a thistle, Josef’s mother would turn his head away from the sight. His father would not even whip a horse in front of him.

  When the gadjo doctor returned two years later to prise off the callipers, Josef gripped his father’s arm so tightly he drew blood with his fingernails – but shed not a tear.

  *

  When his wife Anna was stung by a bee on their wedding day, Josef Maximoff wept for the remainder of the feast. He was so in love with Anna he wanted to die. He wanted to weep every time he looked at her; her beauty, her strength and stubbornness. It was that very strength that made her seem so vulnerable at times. She would never admit to anything, so he felt it all, continually, on her behalf.

  They were in Moravia by then. Josef’s mother had finally won out and they had taken to the road, using Sap as their winter quarters. Josef’s father’s spirit had been broken long before. When the gadje had their Great War, a colonel had come recruiting for the Imperial Army and left with half the men and all the horses. Josef’s father had pleaded to be conscripted so that he could stay with the animals but the colonel said the horses were not being allocated to the gypsy regiment. They wouldn’t even admit Josef’s father into the infantry. They said he was bow-legged and too old.

  None of the horses or men ever returned from the gadje’s Great War. The horses were shot to pieces from underneath their Magyar lieutenants. The Roma regiments were the first to be sent into action to be mown down by the French.

  Josef’s parents were to die not long after he was married. Neither of them lived to see how inexplicably long it would be, seven years, before Anna became pregnant with Josef’s first child. When she told him she was carrying a baby, he fell down on his knees in front of the entire kumpánia, stretched his arms and burst out sobbing – Josef Maximoff, crying for himself at last. All the women around had smiled and shaken their heads. Anna had laughed a huge red laugh.

  No man was allowed near his wife when she was in labour, but everyone in Josef’s kumpánia agreed – the minute Anna’s pains began, he was to be hurried from the scene as quickly as possible.

  *

  As he walked along the edge of the field with the other men, Josef chewed at an ear of wheat and tried not to think about the look in Anna’s eyes as she had stirred the fire that morning. It was a concentrated look. Her mind was elsewhere. At the time, he had wondered if her belly was so large it was no longer comfortable to squat. Now he realised that her pains must have started.

  Normally Anna would walk alongside the wagon while they travelled – she liked to walk, even as her girth expanded and her stride turned into a slow waddle. That morning, she had been uncharacteristically quiet while brewing his tea. They had loaded up the wagon together in silence. Josef had glanced at her surreptitiously from time to time, then harnessed the horse and climbed up on to the wagon. When he was settled with the reins in his hands, he turned to look at her.

  For a moment, Anna stood beside the wagon, frowning to herself. The other families had loaded up and harnessed and were waiting for Josef and Anna to move off before following. Only Tekla was not quite ready, messing around by the fire.

  Anna pursed her lips, bit at the lower one, unpursed them and said in a small voice. ‘Husband, move over there.’

  He had gazed down at her. Anna had never used a small voice in her life. As she climbed up carefully on the seat beside him, he had thought, ah well, the sour cherries will wait.

  For the rest of their journey he drove as if the wagon was piled high with eggs. Anna sat bolt upright next to him, her hands on her knees and her arms locked, as though she lacked a spine. She said nothing. Only her breathing betrayed her: periodically, it would deepen, then she would exhale with stealthy force, as if she was trying to whistle without making any noise.

  Tekla, Ludmila and Eva were in the back of the wagon, and every hour or so Tekla would climb up and rest her forearms on the seat, peering between them. She tried to persuade Anna to come inside with the other women – which would have been a great deal more seemly than her riding up with Josef for all the world to see – but Anna was not given to being seemly at the best of times. She was breathing in the morning air and gazing around the fields. Josef guessed that she was searching out the best place to stop. He respected her need to feel that the place was right. There was no telling how long they would have to be pulled up, after all. Perhaps she would ask him to change course and head for the woods at Kralupy, where they would be able to pull into a clearing and be out of sight.

  The sun was high by the time she lifted her hand and Josef pulled sharply on the reins. He looked around to see what she had spotted. They were still in open countryside.

  The field to the left had no gate and was fallow. Cows grazed the neighbouring land but there were no dwellings in sight. Then he saw what she had seen. At the far end of the fallow field, almost obscured by trees and bushes and snuggling insecurely next to an old cottage, lay a derelict barn.

  Anna’s expression was glazed as Tekla helped her down from the wagon and issued orders to everybody else. The men were ignored while the women gathered around Anna, taking her from Josef and swallowing her in their women’s care. His last glimpse of her as they led her to the barn – panting openly now – was of the back of her tall head, clearly visible above the others, her headscarf neatly knotted at the nape of her neck.

  The men pulled the wagons round the high hedge that bordered the field, unharnessed and tied the horses in the shade, ensuring their tethers were long enough for them to grass. Josef was brisk in his actions, feeling the need for physical activity. He unloaded a bale of hay and pulled a fistful loose, then used it to wipe the sweat from the geldings, rough in his desire to do something useful, to think of anything but his wife.

  His proximity to the horses calmed him a little. They were the finest in the kumpánia, four-year-olds. He was the only man who had a pair – they had cost him sixteen thousand crowns each. Wiping them down was the first thing he did each time they pulled up, no matter how thirsty or dirty he might be himself.

  When he had finished, he assembled the others. They would find the nearest village on foot – the local gadje might not be accustomed to People and it would frighten them if they turned up in a caravan. They needed salt, and Josef needed new bellows. He had patched his old ones with pig skin so many times that air puffed from everywhere but the nozzle.

  The wagons were still visible from the road, so they left old Ludvík Franz and his wife to look after them and the horses. Eva Winterová and her sisters were instructed to remain with them and gather firewood. As the men set off, Josef heard a twisted howl from inside the barn.

  *

  When the men had traversed the edge of the wheatfield, they climbed a sty and tramped alongside younger, greener wheat, infected here and there with bracken. Josef guessed that a generation ago, the whole area had been wooded. The ground began to slope gently upwards, towards a tended copse. When they had passed the trees, they could look down across more fields to see the smoky smudge of a village in the middle distance. Josef paused and removed his hat to wipe his brow with his handkerchief. He always felt the heat, particularly on his face. Walking when it was warm made his leg ache which exacerbated his limp.

  It took them less than half an hour to reach the village, which seemed to comprise little more than a small crossroads and a mud-track main street with rows of cottages on either side. There was no one around. At the end of the street, they found a tiny chapel and schoolhouse, and close by a small shop which had sweets in the window – jars of fruit-flavoured toffees wrapped in coloured papers and burnt-brown sugar sticks.

  They entered cautiously. No one was behind the counter but there were rows of shelves upon which household goods were piled; blankets and tin buckets and oil lanterns
with foggy glass.

  A man emerged from the back room as they entered. He glanced them over, then nodded, reserved but courteous. There was nowhere where they would get bellows, he said, they would have to wait until Kladno, but he would sell them a block of salt and a beer apiece. He had his own barrels. He was about to close for the afternoon, but he would give them clay mugs and they could leave them by the door afterwards.

  Josef enquired about who owned the land with the old barn and the shopkeeper gave them the farmer’s name, Myclík.

  We must pay him a visit on the way back, Josef thought. It would be a good idea to get to him before somebody else went and told him there were gypsies on his land.

  They emerged from the gloom of the shop to blink at the hot sun. Václav had unbuttoned his shirt to the waist. He flapped it so that it billowed outwards. ‘Josef,’ he said, ‘those trees over there?’

  Opposite the shop there was a small rise topped by cluster of oak trees which provided a canopy over the village well. Josef glanced around. The village still seemed empty but he didn’t like the idea of sitting down and drinking somewhere so visible. ‘Behind the well,’ he replied.

  They sat in a semi-circle and rested their backs against the rough stone; Josef in the middle, Václav on one side and Yakali and his two sons on the other. Each man tipped a little of his drink on the ground. There was silence.

  There was a coolness between Václav and Yakali. In the quiet moment, Josef acknowledged that it had deepened recently. Yakali had Justin and Miroslav, two strapping lads, fifteen and fourteen respectively, both desperate to marry at this year’s harvest. Václav had three young daughters; Zdenka, Pavla and Eva. A man with three daughters would always feel at a disadvantage next to a man who had produced sons. Yakali never lorded it over Václav but it stood between them like a stagnant pond.

  Zdenka would be twelve in the autumn. She and fourteen-year-old Miroslav had begun to eye each other, but Josef knew Yakali had plans for his sons to marry elsewhere. The Zelinka vitsa would gather at the harvest and Yakali had a long-held understanding with a South Bohemian family who had two daughters the same age as his sons. Yakali’s wife Dunicha was keen on the match. With three men to look after she couldn’t wait to have a couple of bori to take over the chores. If Miroslav married Zdenka then Dunicha would have Zdenka’s mother Božena in the next wagon, keeping far too close an eye on her daughter’s well-being.

  In the meantime, Václav was naturally becoming anxious about where he was going to place his girls. He wouldn’t get much of a price for them, in Josef’s opinion: they were short like their father and dark like their mother. Zdenka had receding gums and bad skin.

  It was a pity, all the same. Josef would have been happy to see a tie between the Winters and Zelinkas. It would strengthen the kumpánia. Zdenka was a good girl, hard-working and modest. She would be disappointed when she realised Miroslav’s parents were negotiating with another family. He hoped it would not cause bitterness.

  The first sip of beer was so refreshing it gave Josef the illusion that his thirst was quenched. By the third sip, he was uncomfortable again. The other men had leaned their heads back and closed their eyes, grateful to be out of the sun. Yakali had pulled his hat down over his face and was resting his wrists on his knees with his hands hanging limply, his mug already emptied and discarded by his side. Josef tried not to resent how easy it was for Yakali to relax.

  For once, they had plenty of time. Josef closed his eyes and tried to quell his unease. To stop himself thinking about Anna in pain, he thought about Anna on their wedding night. She had stood over him in the tent and he had waited for her to fling her long skirt and petticoats upwards in one swift movement – it was what a woman like Anna would do. Instead, she had gazed down at him, then grasped two great, full handfuls, raising her garments centimetre by centimetre, with exquisite slowness, gazing at him all the while, her smile growing broader and broader as the skirt rose higher and higher … He would never forget that moment, her delight in confounding his expectations of her.

  He opened his eyes to lift his clay mug to his mouth. Halfway through the action he paused, knowing all at once that he would not be able to swallow. He lowered the mug again, sighing gently. O, that a man could relive his wedding night a thousand times, instead of all that followed; the worry, the responsibility – the thought that as he drank beer in the shade Anna was lost in the agony and mystery of whatever it was that women went through. It made him feel inadequate, his worry, less of a man.

  ‘Josef …’ Václav said without turning, his voice softly reproachful, ‘… drink your beer. Enjoy these moments. Today of all days you should drink. Your son is being born.’

  A first-born was always referred to as a son until it was proved to be otherwise. Josef sighed again, more heavily. He didn’t care if the child was a boy or a girl or a piglet with a blue tail, just as long as Anna survived.

  Ahead of him were the fields on the edge of the village, a wide expanse covered by a mass of dark green corn, leaves glistening and the air above shifting and shimmering in the heat. A light breeze was blowing. A pair of buzzards were riding the warm air, lazy and inseparable. He had met a man in Mĕlnik once, an Elder who had lost three wives in childbirth, one after the other. Even though he had been left with five children to raise, he had declared he could not bear to marry again.

  Josef closed his eyes once more, as if preventing vision might prevent speculation. It didn’t work, but he allowed the breeze to play on his face.

  Beside him, Yakali began to snore.

  *

  His eyes had been closed for only a moment when he was woken from his thoughts by a deep, bubbling voice which declared, ‘So, gypsies, nothing to do but drink beer and doze, eh? You lucky people. God’s favourites I’d say.’

  Josef sat up. The man in front of than was a municipal policeman, his moustache bristling and unkempt, his eyes alight with a cold twinkle. He was on duty, his uniform jacket tightly buttoned. The only concession he had made to the heat was to push his cap up from his forehead so it sat at an unsteady angle on the back of his head, atop a mass of thick, mid-brown hair. On one shoulder he wore a small drum. Two short wooden drumsticks were clasped in the other hand. He had one foot up on the grass slope, right in front of than, and was leaning forward, resting on his knee.

  ‘Good afternoon, Officer,’ said Josef stiffly, embarrassed that the man should have been able approach with none of them hearing.

  The Officer looked at him but did not return his greeting. ‘Where might you be going, gypsies?’ he asked casually.

  Václav jumped to his feet. ‘Officer, you must congratulate this man. As we speak, his son is being born.’

  Never tell a gadjo where you are going or where you have been. If they know where you come from, they will close the road behind you. If they find out where you’re heading, they will have a gallows waiting.

  Václav was beaming with joy. ‘We are smiths, heading up to Teplice. We have three months’ work awaiting us. This man’s wife was taken ill this morning. It is his first child, you can imagine how he is feeling. Do you have sons yet, Officer? Of course you do, a man such as yourself …’

  The Officer stood upright and grinned to show he wasn’t fooled. ‘The whole village will be out shortly, gypsies. I suggest you make yourselves scarce.’

  Josef rose. ‘My name is Josef Růžička,’ he said solemnly. ‘And my family will be stopping in this area for a while. We were on our way to find a farmer named Myclík. Will he also be out shortly? We have business with him.’

  ‘Myclík will be working his farm,’ said the Officer. ‘It’s what farmers do, I’m told, but if you’re determined to hang around then his son will be here. He’s married to a villager but he works for his father in the evenings. He’ll have just finished sleeping off his lunch.’ His tone of voice suggested that he put Myclík’s son in more or less the same bracket as gypsies.

  He turned away from them and readjusted hi
s cap. Then he lifted the drum from his shoulder and pulled the leather strap over his head, which involved readjusting the cap again. He descended the shallow slope, paused to cough, then lifted his drumsticks smartly. He began to beat as he walked.

  ‘Stay here, brothers,’ said Josef, then followed the Officer down the slope.

  Three small children ran out of a cottage to greet the Officer as he strode smartly down the main street, beating his drum. Two were little girls who fell in beside him, clinging to each other and staring. The third child was a boy who stepped smartly behind the Officer, lifting his feet high to march in time with the drum. As the small parade progressed, villagers emerged from their houses, the women wiping their hands on their aprons, the men fixing caps on their heads.

  Only a woman from the nearest cottage glanced behind and saw Josef, following at a respectful distance. Her eyes widened and she ran up to the two women in front of her to whisper at them. They turned and stared as they walked.

  At the end of the main street was a crossroads with a wooden Calvary erected on a stone plinth. The Officer turned and stood facing the villagers, legs firmly planted. He continued to drum until he was sure they were assembled. They had all seen Josef now, who stood apart and watched the Officer with calm interest. The Officer gave a final roll of his drum and then lifted the sticks sharply, freezing in position for a second. The boy who had followed him stood to attention beside him, frowning self-importantly.

  After a ceremonious pause, the Officer tucked the drumsticks into his top pocket, sat on the edge of the plinth and pulled a folded piece of paper from inside his jacket.

  ‘In Prague today,’ he began in a tired voice, ‘it was announced that further to last year’s coalition agreements between the government, the German Agrarian Party and the Christian Social Party, additional measures are to be introduced to wands a general inclusivity of all national minorities. Immediate opposition to this proposal was announced by the Slovak Clerical Party …’ One of the villagers began sneezing ostentatiously. ‘Whose secretary today emphasised that their continued co-operation in Cabinet was dependent upon governmental support for the discouragement of Magyar Irredentism upon Slovak territory. President Masaryk has provided full assurances …’