Fires in the Dark

by Louise Doughty

  The door to the wagon opened and Anna descended, stepping around him with a bundle of clothing in her arms. The women had strung up a line and were trying to air as much as possible while they had the chance.

  ‘What was that about?’ she asked Josef.

  ‘Your son is learning to be my son also!’ Josef declared. Anna looked at him, then shook her head.

  *

  A few minutes later, Josef saw that a group was storming up the mud track, led by a dark-faced woman who was clutching the boy’s hand. Here we go, he thought.

  A stream of children and four or five other women were in the group. The woman stopped in front of their wagons.

  ‘Where is the mother of the Kalderash boy!’ shouted the woman. ‘I call her out! Where is she?’

  Anna turned calmly from the line, a pile of clothing still in her arms, a wooden peg between her teeth.

  ‘It is I,’ she replied calmly, then spat out the peg. ‘Who calls me out?’

  The woman seemed inclined to skip the formalities. Perhaps it was the cold – or maybe she had left something boiling over a fire. She squared up to Anna without another word, lifting her fists.

  Anna sighed, then handed the bundle of clothing to Ludmila, who stood open-mouthed on the other side of the line.

  The men had stopped sweeping to watch, grinning at the show. Emil had come to the door of the shed and stood next to Miroslav, staring from his mother to the woman.

  Time we had a bit of fun round here, thought Josef. This should warm things up.

  Anna was rolling up her sleeves.

  The two women had just begun to circle one another, when the door behind Josef swung open and Tekla jumped down from the wagon. She ran up to the Moravian Romni and said, ‘I told our boy to punch yours! We are sick of him causing trouble round here. You Moravians don’t know how to behave!’

  Anna was still staring at Tekla in disbelief, when the Moravian Romni thumped Tekla neatly on the nose, turned quickly away and strode back down the mud track.

  Anna and the others felt obliged to scream a few insults at the departing crowd – and the departing crowd felt obliged to scream a few back – but the matter was clearly concluded.

  ‘Tekla!’ Anna exclaimed, rounding on her cousin, whose nose was dripping fresh red blood on to the snow.

  ‘Shut your face!’ Tekla responded. ‘I’m still good for something. Your arms are like twigs! You couldn’t punch a petal!’

  The men turned back to their work, shaking their heads. Women!

  Anna tried to take Tekla’s face in her hands, to examine the damage, but Tekla knocked her hands aside and turned back to the wagon. As she pushed past Josef, she muttered fiercely from beneath the rag she held over her nose, ‘If you men have no work to do then O Beng himself makes work for you!’

  ‘Tekla …’ said Josef sheepishly, raising his hands. ‘It was only a little fun.’ A man has to teach his son something, Josef thought to himself, uneasily. Well, all right, it was a stupid thing to do. But I meant no real harm. ‘Come, Tekla, don’t be angry with me. There was no malice in my mischief – a boy’s game. Forgive me!’

  Tekla stared down at him. He was silenced by the look on her face. ‘I have long since learned to do that, Josef,’ she said quietly. She closed the wagon door behind her.

  When Josef turned back, Anna was standing in front of him holding a small wicker basket of pegs. ‘You are a fool, husband,’ she said, her look indecipherable.

  Women! Their strange looks! What were they on about now?

  She turned away, shaking her head. ‘All men are fools …’

  *

  Inside the wagon, Tekla held her head over a bowl and squeezed the bridge of her nose. A clot would soon form. She shouldn’t be doing it inside the wagon but if she went outside the other women would gather round and she could not bear sympathy. While she waited for the bleeding to stop, she wept salty tears of self-pity that had nothing to do with her nose.

  Afterwards, she wiped her nose and peered at her reflection in the hammered-smooth piece of tin which hung from a piece of string on the back of the door. She would have to go outside soon, or one of the others would come in. How many opportunities did she have to cry alone?

  Her nose was still the same shape, flat and flared, red with the cold. Her eyes were still too close together, the brows heavy and dark. Her skin was still sallow and pitted. A punch. What else was she good for?

  She ran her tongue over her lips. They were cracked and sore with the cold. Sometimes, at night, lying next to Ludmila and Eva, she would press her lips against the soft skin on the inside of her wrist, just to imagine what it must be like to have another person’s mouth against your own.

  She turned away from the piece of tin and closed her eyes. She lifted a hand, still in her fingerless woollen gloves, and stroked her cheek, knowing her expression was a frown of pain and glad she could not see herself any more. It was always a mistake to look. When Anna and Josef had married, she had re-braided her hair and pulled her best skirt over her workaday one without ever once running down to the river with the other women, who stood above the water like a bunch of silly geese, swaying and admiring their wavery reflections. At the dance after the feast, she had celebrated with greater gusto than anyone present. How she had danced – and how the two families had laughed at short, squat, ugly little Tekla losing her inhibitions for once and kicking up her skirts. She knew they were laughing at her – she had drunk so much that she was horribly sober – but it suited her fine. If they enjoyed the sight of funny, dumpy little Tekla Maximoff making a fool of herself, then maybe they would be too busy laughing to guess the truth.

  The truth was, she had loved Josef for years, ever since they were children together in Sap. Once or twice, she had even dared to hope her feelings might be reciprocated. Josef had married late for such an eligible Rom – he had been hard to please, and many a family had paraded their daughters before his parents over the years. Then came the news of his engagement to Anna Demeter.

  Tekla could remember the first time she had set eyes on Anna. The betrothal had been tentatively agreed but the Demeters were lowly stuff in comparison with the Maximoff clan. The girl was instructed to prove herself in a variety of domestic tasks before Josef’s parents would give their full consent.

  One grey-green dawn, Anna and her sisters were to join the women of the Maximoff kumpánia at mushroom-picking. It was a chilly, foggy morning: first light. Tekla had waited with the others at the edge of the forest, all standing in a row and staring down the lane. She could recall her grim satisfaction at the solid line of women, waiting for these chits from the Demeter clan who thought themselves equals. How intimidating we will seem as they approach, she thought. She had better get used to it.

  Then, the Demeter girls walked down the road together in a line, three tall, slender women emerging from the mist, the gold coins on their belts and braids clinking softly in the silence. Tekla had inhaled, struck breathless by the knowledge that that was what Josef had been waiting for, that vision. I was there when he had chicken-pox at the age of twelve, she thought tremulously. I was outside the wagon and heard the snapping sound when they broke his leg. My mother stayed with his family when his mother disappeared for six months after his father cracked her jaw. I cooked for my beloved cousin every night. And still the three tall women drew nearer, Anna in the lead, her face a smooth-skinned picture of graciousness, her eyes alight, her fine lips turned in a seraphic smile. Even the older women had been temporarily struck dumb. It had been an effort not to turn and run.

  On the wedding night, Tekla shared the wagon with her mother and Josef’s parents who lay drunk and hating each other at the far end. The newly-wed couple were in a specially erected tent outside, with a double canopy to protect them from the light summer rain. The families had stood around and clapped as they retired.

  Tekla huddled on her small cot and drew her knees up underneath the blanket. The worst thing she could do was think
about what Josef and Anna were doing now, she said to herself, and proceeded to think of it in great detail. She imagined Josef’s forearm around Anna’s back – she loved his forearms, the strong muscles, the dense, dark-brown hairs, the immaculate hands. She imagined their mouths upon one another, Anna’s braids falling down and around Josef’s face …

  At the beginning of the betrothal, she had comforted herself with the thought that many first marriages ended in bitterness or divorce and it was not uncommon for a man or woman to return to a true love many years later. But when she had seen the look on Josef’s face when Anna had been stung by a bee, just before he crumpled into tears, she knew that this marriage was a great deal more than an arrangement. She had lost Josef as irrevocably as if he had gone over the edge of a waterfall in a pickle barrel.

  Tekla squeezed her eyes tight shut to hold back her bitter tears and dug her fingernails into the palms of her hands. Josef had got what he had been waiting for. All the small, shy beauties that had been paraded before him were wasting their time. She, Tekla, each loving meal she had cooked, the sewing she had done for him – it had all been a waste of time. He had been waiting for a woman who held her head so high it was amazing no one slapped her for insolence. Why was it that people thought it charming when a beautiful woman was headstrong? She, Tekla, was headstrong too but nobody had ever remarked of it approvingly. Anna had long arms that seemed to lift in the breeze when she danced. Tekla had plump shoulders, short arms and large, muscular hands. Anna could lose her temper and the men around her – even the women – would sigh at the dark flash of her eyes. If Tekla got cross, it only made her more ugly.

  Now, right now, as she lay curled under the blanket, with Josef’s parents out-snoring each other after the feast, the man she loved would be lifting Anna’s skirts, their eyes fixed intently upon one another. While she, Tekla, had nothing but a hard cot for comfort, they would be melting flesh with flesh. Anna was beautiful. Tekla was ugly. The sun would drop from the sky in flames before those two basic facts were altered.

  Finally, bitter tears rolled down her cheeks. At first, she tried to stifle her sobs, but soon she lost all sense of restraint and wept openly, her mouth a harsh rectangle of grief and her cries strangled at the back of her throat so as not to be detected outside the wagon – she wasn’t concerned about waking Josef’s parents or her own mother. A horse falling from the sky and crashing through the ceiling wouldn’t bother them.

  It seemed at that point that her pain was infinite, located somewhere in the very core of her, and that she loved Josef more at that moment, yearned for him more, than she had in all the moments of her youth and childhood put together. It was only later she realised. The moment she most grieved was also the moment she ceased to love him quite so badly. As she wept in desperation, a small desire for self-preservation began to grow in her.

  Gradually, over the next few years, Tekla fell out of love with Josef and in love with Josef and Anna, with the idea of them as two beautiful children, well-meaning but irresponsible, who had no idea of the pain they caused by their innocent devotion to each other. When Josef’s parents died, Tekla found herself with a new role, new status. She took over the bulk of the cooking duties and began to organise more and more of the chores, distributing the work between herself and Anna’s sisters but bestowing on Anna only the lighter duties. She, Tekla, was now mother to this strange grown-up family, the new Rom Baró, his beautiful, carefree wife and her charming siblings. It was she, Tekla, who kept the wheels turning. It was a role which remained secure so long as Josef and Anna were childless.

  Emil’s birth had changed everything: Anna was a mother, not only more beautiful than Tekla but also more respected. It was galling to see how good at it she was. If only she had been a poor cook, or unable to sew. At least when she was barren then she had a flaw – and an all-consuming one at that. What had she left Tekla with, after Emil? Nothing. Now Emil was five years old, and perfect, and loved by everyone, and she, Tekla, still did the chores and picked up the pieces, except that nobody noticed any more because they were always too busy noticing how perfect Emil was. Not even Anna’s failure to give him any little brothers or sisters detracted from his virtues, so strong and impudent was he. Perfect.

  Well, Tekla thought grimly, poking the rag into a nostril to remove the last trace of encrusted blood. I know how to take a punch, that much I can do.

  The door to the wagon opened. It was Anna. Tekla turned away quickly, picking up two folded blankets from the top of the oak chest.

  ‘Here,’ she said, holding them out without turning to Anna. ‘You forgot to take these out.’

  ‘I thought they were too heavy,’ Anna said gently. ‘I unfolded them but then I thought the sun didn’t look as though it was going to last and we can’t risk them getting damp. We’d never get them dry again.’

  Tekla turned to Anna and raised her eyebrows, downturning the corners of her mouth in an expression which indicated that in her opinion there was not the remotest chance of the blankets becoming damp on such a fine day. ‘As you wish,’ she said, tight-lipped.

  She pushed past Anna, leaving her holding the folded blankets and gazing at the floor. At the door she paused. She wanted to say, it has been an effort not to hate you, and at this very moment I am losing the battle. Strange how a small incident like today’s could bring it all back – how she could go for years hardly thinking of all the pain Josef and Anna had caused her. She closed the door gently behind her. Let me keep my bitterness at least, she thought. It is the only thing I have that is truly mine.

  CHAPTER 5

  Václav Winter’s son died at the beginning of February. They all heard him gasping for breath one black night, as the whooping cough closed his throat at last.

  The ground was too frozen to bury him, so they took him in procession to Třebič, to the brick crematorium on the far side of town, opened specially each winter. Václav carried the tiny coffin in his arms all the way, his face a mask of grief. The women supported Božena, who could scarcely walk, her five small daughters trailing weepingly behind. Every single inhabitant of the Black Huts followed them into town, the musicians playing, and the gadje they passed in the street removed their hats and stood with their heads bowed as a mark of respect.

  Martin Winter’s death was the first – others followed swiftly, as influenza ravaged the occupants of the Huts. Each day it seemed to leap from shack to shack, advancing with unbelievable speed. Two old Moravian Romnis went first, followed by another baby and a boy. The disease progressed along the Huts until it reached their encampment. Old Ludvík Frank, bedridden and enfeebled already, went first. His wife came down with it but pulled through. All five of the Winterová girls fell sick and Zdenka – poor, toothy, unmarried Zdenka – did not survive.

  The night Zdenka died, Václav ran out into the freezing darkness in the middle of a tuneful snowstorm, and shook his fists at the sky. Josef and Yakali tried to pull him back inside but Václav took no heed of them, his feet planted firmly in the fresh snow, his face tipped upwards as he howled, ‘I said instead, O Del! Are you blind? Are you deaf? I said inSTEAD …!’

  *

  A week later, Emil fell ill.

  He had been lethargic and complaining all day, but Anna assumed his whiny mood was due to hunger – there was nothing but a little farina to eat, and there would be nothing else until the current snowstorm lifted. She did not detect his high temperature until that evening, as they all retired. He started complaining that he wanted to go to sleep – unusual for Emil – and when she asked him why, he said his head hurt. She placed a hand on his forehead and felt at once that he was burning. She told Josef to sleep on the floor and Eva and Ludmila gave up two of their blankets for him. Anna wrapped herself around Emil and held him close as he fell asleep. He was just overexcited, she told herself. She would hold him so tightly the fever would not dare penetrate her embrace.

  In the morning, there was no doubt. He was awake before any of them, crying
out that he was thirsty. While Tekla pulled a shawl around her shoulders and went to break the ice on the water bucket by the step, Anna pulled Emil’s clothing away from his chest and pressed her cheek to it. He pushed her away, moaning that he was cold, although he felt as hot as a little roast chicken. He continued to shiver and complain even when she wrapped him in blankets and lay down next to him, clutching him. ‘It hurts,’ he cried, his voice tiny and baby-like, but when she asked where, he closed his eyes and wouldn’t answer her.

  ‘So,’ Tekla said simply, as she sat down on the edge of the bed, nursing a tin mug of water and gazing down at them. ‘We are not immune, after all.’

  As soon as dawn broke, Josef and Ludmila and Eva were banished from the wagon, the girls to sleep with Pavliná Franzová who was still weak and needed company anyway, and Josef to lodge with the Zelinkas – Anna dared not send him to the Winters’ wagon. Two of their girls were still sick.

  Tekla went to make tea for the men. Then they would see if they could persuade Emil to take an infusion.

  While Tekla was gone, Anna lay curled around her son, stroking the damp hair back from his forehead, tracing the length of his scar with her finger, until he pushed her hand away, saying she was hurting him. Tekla had said there was a freezing mist outside. That was a bad omen. The mist would pull poisons from the earth. When Tekla came back, she would tell her to stay in or out and stuff rags beneath the door, to prevent any more evil air entering the wagon. The crisis would come today or tomorrow – the Sweating Sickness was always a quick killer. She would soon know.

  She felt strangely calm, lying next to her sick son. It is very simple for me, she thought. For those with normal size families, it is more complex. Božena had six children and has lost two of them – a third of her life is now grief. My mother had eleven of us in all: us three in quick succession; then the twins, Chachu and little yellow Arniko, who died at six weeks; then Pavla; then Andreas; then poor Malilini who fell from a cart and broke her back and took four pain-filled years to die; two more boys – haw she had doted on blond Emanuel; then a stillborn girl. What a mad tangle of joy and misery was there – what strange pattern of loving and loss must have grown around my mother’s heart. I have but one child to worry about, so as long as I can protect just this one, then I am completely happy. But if I lose Emil, I lose everything. My life will be a void.