Fires in the Dark

by Louise Doughty

  My child, my children, will not end up in a tent by the side of the road, Anna swore to herself in the moment before sleep. Fate will not decide what happens to them. It is I, their mother, Anna Maximoff, who will decide that, Anna the Blasphemer. God forgive me. Between them, Emil turned in his sleep, lifted a hand briefly to grasp at nothing, then let it drop. He pressed his face into the pillow he shared with his mother and gave a short, contented sigh.

  CHAPTER 6

  The men came at the end of the month. Josef was with the horses, bending and feeling down a foreleg thigh on the black mare, trying to find a swelling that might betray a sprain. He saw the two gadjos pass the open doors of the Hut but had no reason to believe they were looking for him. Miroslav came to fetch him a few moments later. Josef emerged from the stable slowly, stopping just outside the door and regarding the men where they stood looking round, a few metres away. It never did to hurry when summoned by a gadjo.

  The elder of the two was short and portly. He was wearing a pigskin coat which was too large for him and had enormous fur lapels, turned upwards like a salamander’s collar. He wore whiskers and a peppery beard tucked into the coat for warmth, which made it seem as though his facial hair grew upwards from his chest, fulminating over his chin and cheeks before burrowing under his fur-lined cap.

  The younger man was thin and wore spectacles and glanced around nervously, as though thinking to himself, coming here wasn’t my idea.

  Miroslav spoke to the men as he passed on the way back to his wagon. They turned and regarded Josef, who returned their stares, standing his ground. The two men glanced at each other. Eventually, they were forced to approach.

  The bearded one spoke first. They were looking for a smith. Someone in the town had told them there were Coppersmith Gypsies at the Black Huts. They had tried the local Guilds but no one there could help them. They wanted something very specific, particular skills which were – how could they put this? – not necessarily current nowadays. They were employed by a local landowner, nobility, to renovate his nearby estate and restore it to its natural glory. The Count was most specific that everything had to been done in a way which was historically accurate.

  Josef listened, wiping his hands on a cloth in an effort not to appear interested.

  It was not a large job, two or three weeks’ work perhaps, a little casting but mostly repair work. He would be paid by weight. They could provide some of the materials but not the tools. The hours were strict. He would be fed at lunchtimes.

  Josef remained impassive while they talked, to draw them out. Eventually, there was a long pause.

  ‘Do you …’ said the bearded one, ‘do you, perhaps, have any examples of your work which you could show us now?’

  Josef turned without speaking and strode over to his wagon, lifting his leg high to mount the steps in one stride and push back the door upon a surprised Anna who was sitting cross-legged on the floor and knitting, singing softly to herself, with Emil asleep in her lap.

  Leaving the door swinging open – something he never usually did – he crossed the wagon in two steps, ignoring Anna’s frown, and opened the cupboard. He withdrew their copper spice box, made by himself at the age of seventeen; six square compartments and one long one at the side, for cinnamon sticks. It was one of the few pieces of his handiwork not yet sold.

  He carried it from the wagon, kicking the door shut behind him.

  The men were standing and gazing up at the sky, as if they did not care to look around the Black Huts or return the stares of the children who had come outside in the freezing cold to gaze at them.

  Josef strode over, stumbling on the frozen, rutted mud.

  ‘Gentlemen …’ he said, holding out the box. He lifted the lid. ‘The compartments are lined with tin. I handlined them myself, using molten tin spread with an oakum wick.’

  The man with the beard growing out of his coat took the box from Josef and felt the weight of it. ‘Most interesting,’ he said, handing it to his fellow. ‘Did you pickle it first?’

  ‘Of course,’ Josef replied.

  ‘Vinegar and salt?’

  ‘I used salt and cream of tartar. It removes the annealing more thoroughly, in my opinion.’

  ‘What sort of alloy would you use if we wanted, say, a decorative horse brass, to hang in a library?’

  What a stupid idea, thought Josef, while replying quickly, ‘Bath copper. Six per cent zinc.’

  It was the younger man’s turn. ‘And say we had a number of vessels that needed cleaning, no wild patinas, they’ve just been in storage.’

  ‘Which recipe do you prefer, the German or the French?’

  The men stiffened and the one with the beard barked. ‘French, naturally.’

  Josef thought the German recipe much the simpler but was not about to lose the job by saying so.

  ‘I would require large vats in order to boil the vessels in water with lemon rind. I would then hand polish with fine sand. The grading of the sand is essential if we are to avoid scratching.’

  He was pleased with himself for that ‘we’, the implied inclusion of all three of them in a joint endeavour. He felt it redeemed his previous error. (The Czech gadje went purple if you even said the word German these days.)

  The men looked at each other. The bearded one nodded.

  ‘You have work,’ the other said, with a polite nod.

  Josef bowed deeply and offered them tea, but the men were keen to leave. They gave Josef instructions for finding the house and asked him to report at dawn the next morning.

  As they walked away, Josef heard one of them saying, ‘He’s absolutely perfect.’

  *

  They rose when it was still dark. Josef and Václav took a horse each and Emil rode up in front of his father, sidesaddle, wrapped in a blanket and still half asleep. Třebič slept while they skirted the town. Smoke rose from one or two chimneys. Now and then, geese awoke and clucked as they passed. The horses’ breath condensed in ghostly clouds.

  Josef had miscalculated how long it would take for them to plod there with the animals so weak and Emil across his lap, so it was already light by the time they clopped down the long track that led to the mansion, a grey edifice in the mist. They skirted the building along a path, turning the vast corners of a side wing, alongside a row of firs and past a disused well.

  At the back of the house was a deserted gravel courtyard. The high windows of the house hung in serried rows. A few brown leaves danced against the stone walls. Deep within, a dog barked.

  Václav dismounted first and Josef handed the stirring Emil down to him. His blanket slipped to the ground as he woke and stood upright. Václav picked it up and tried to wrap it back around the boy but he wriggled away from it, saying simply, ‘No.’

  Václav shrugged and placed the blanket over his own head and shoulders, shuddering and performing a small, skipping dance to show how cold it was. Josef led the horses to an iron ring set in a wall and tethered them, then returned to Emil and Václav. Emil looked up expectantly. Josef lifted his hands and let them fall. He had been given no instructions other than to go round to the courtyard at the back.

  They stood for a moment, then they all looked at the floor. Eventually, Václav wandered over to his horse and threw the blanket over her rear, then went and leant against the animal and talked to her.

  ‘Father,’ Emil said, scuffing one shoe in the gravel, ‘Why are there so many windows?’

  Josef sniffed. ‘To look out of, muro šav, to see what’s outside.’

  Emil narrowed his eyes and looked up. ‘But we are outside …’ he said thoughtfully, gazing from one window to the next, as if he expected to see a different gadjo at each, staring down at them.

  At last, a nearby door opened, with ancient slowness. The younger of the two men who had hired Josef stepped out. He gestured at them.

  Inside was some sort of stone ante-room, narrowing to a low-ceilinged passage at the back. Empty iron hooks were inserted into the walls at v
arious heights. A leather apron was tossed carelessly over a wicker basket in one corner. The light was dim.

  The young man looked at Václav and Emil, then at Josef.

  ‘We are paying you by weight, not the man-hour,’ he said.

  ‘I am well aware of that.’ Josef’s tone was firm. This man was a junior member of the household staff and unsure of himself. Josef could smell it.

  Physically, he and Václav made a good team; Josef of average height and build but with, he liked to think, a thoughtful, intelligent air; Václav, short and muscular, bullish-looking and expressionless. Josef was actually the stronger of the two, but Václav’s physique always impressed the customers. They had worked together, on and off, for years. In times such as these, Josef could not have taken a job without including Václav. It would have been dishonourable.

  ‘Very well.’ The young man turned sharply and led them down the stone passage. Josef and Václav followed. Emil trotted behind obediently, having been promised that he would feel the weight of Josef’s hand if he got up to any of his mischief. The boy would have to concentrate today. Today was one of his few chances to learn.

  The passage was so narrow that Josef brushed his shoulders against the walls. The floor sloped sharply down and they turned a corner. The light from behind them vanished and left them in almost total darkness. There was a rattle of keys and the clunking mechanics of a lock.

  When the young man swung the door, Josef was half-blinded by the flood of yellow electric light that lay beyond. They stepped into a huge, vaulted kitchen, blinking.

  The young man turned and said with a supercilious air, ‘We have electric lighting in every room in this house, including the employees’ quarters. The Count is eager to restore this building to its former glory but at the same time believes one should also take advantage of the best of modern conveniences. The Count is a most comprehensive man.’

  ‘If you will show me the vessels,’ said Josef with a small bow, in a tone which he hoped implied he did not care whether the Count was comprehensive, narrow-minded, or a three-legged imbecile.

  *

  They spent most of the first day building a kiln in the small, enclosed courtyard outside the kitchen. Once Václav had helped him pile up enough bricks, Josef sent him back to Třebič, to visit the local smith and hire some larger pieces of equipment – he wanted to weigh the vessels himself, if that was how he was being paid. He had bought a bag of smaller tools, and set Emil to mixing mortar while he inspected the vessels. The supercilious young man proved friendly, eventually, and sat with them for much of the morning, taking an interest in Josef’s plan of work. The lunch he provided was more than enough to feed all four of them. Emil’s eyes nearly popped out of his head when he saw the pastries. Other staff from the mansion came in and out of the kitchen now and then, and paused to observe what was going on.

  By the time the light was fading, the kiln was built and covered with brushwood and sackcloth to protect it from the cold overnight By the next day, it would be hard enough to use. The vessels for cleaning were lined up by the kitchen door – there were some beautiful shallow copper pans with unusual wrought-iron handles. Josef felt happy for the first time in months.

  Emil was exhausted. Josef was all for starting the cleaning there and then – they had electric light to do it by – but the young man came and begged them to stop work because he could not go home until they had.

  *

  ‘A beer, Václav!’ declared Josef as they mounted the horses. ‘A small pivo for us working men!’

  Emil fell asleep on the way back to town. Josef knew the hostelries in the centre of Třebič were not friendly, so they went back around the outskirts until they found a stone building with a wooden sign outside and a little golden light gleaming from its shutters.

  The tavern was in the middle of a row of cottages and consisted of one room with a stone floor covered in sawdust and two long tables with benches either side.

  They had to bend their heads to enter the tiny doorway. The only other customers were two old men playing backgammon in a corner, empty glasses beside them.

  The innkeeper was cleaning glasses with a cloth. He looked them up and down when they entered, then continued to clean.

  Josef and Václav sat on one of the benches. Emil was still asleep, lying across their laps. ‘We may have a long wait,’ muttered Václav.

  Josef shrugged. He was in too good a mood to mind.

  After a while, however, it became clear that the man had no intention of serving them at all. He continued to clean his glasses, and when he came to the last one on the counter top, paid special attention to it, holding it up to peer in the poor light from the lanterns strung above the bar.

  Josef could feel Václav’s antagonism growing, as if he was a kettle coming to the boil.

  Such behaviour did not bother Josef as a rule. Life was too short. But if Václav became angry than there would be a scene, maybe a fight, and the last thing they needed was for one of them to become injured when there was work to be had.

  The only sounds were the wind blowing outside, whisking dead twigs against the shutters, and the small squeak-squeak as the innkeeper turned the glass round and round against the cleaning cloth.

  ‘It is a cold night,’ one of the old men playing dominoes said suddenly, loudly, without looking up from his hand. His companion did not lift his head. ‘Serve these men, Lukeš,’ the old man said.

  The innkeeper put down the glass and gave the two old men a long, expressionless stare. Then he walked around his counter and approached Josef and Václav.

  Václav’s face was bright red with fury. Josef said quickly, ‘Two beers.’

  The innkeeper stood in front of them, without moving. Václav muttered under his breath, ‘Te tasarel les O Beng …’ May the devil choke him.

  Josef reached into his pocket and placed some coins on the table. The innkeeper picked up the coins, examined them, then dropped them into his apron pocket. Only then did he turn to fetch their beer.

  Josef’s spirits would not be dampened. He even thanked the innkeeper when their beer finally arrived. He was thinking about the fire they would build in the kiln the next morning, the smell of scorched brick and tang of molten metal. The glow from liquid metal was brighter than the mortal eye could take, the sheen of it unearthly. God made us Roma metalworkers for good reason, Josef thought. There is something Holy in it.

  ‘Oh phrálá,’ he sighed to Václav, ‘Do you remember when every day was like this, day after day, hard work that we were trained to do, not digging ditches for cold gadje who think they are doing us a favour by giving us a few crowns. That woman last week. I nearly broke her skull.’ Josef had been cheated the previous week, by a woman who had promised him twenty crowns for the job and then only given ten because she said he had cleared the wrong side of the path.

  ‘I remember …’ said Václav, and the shortness of his reply suggested he was not quite as nostalgic as Josef about their smithy days. It suddenly occurred to Josef that Václav resented him, and always had.

  He fell silent, staring moodily into his beer, annoyed that Václav had punctured his happy mood and trying to work out how much of Václav’s shortness was the innkeeper’s fault and how much his. Václav had not been the same since his son had died – he had to allow the man his grief. But there seemed something more personal in his bad mood now. Perhaps it was because he always had to work as Josef’s subordinate – he didn’t have the training to take on a job in his own light. But that was hardly Josef’s fault. Josef had his uncles to thank for his training, after all. Blood mattered in these things, and foresight. Weak blood, maybe that was Václav’s problem. Perhaps that was why he had produced so many girls. Josef sat silently, thinking bitter thoughts.

  Václav’s voice was conciliatory when he spoke. ‘Come, Josef, don’t brood on what is past. It is not our way. Live lightly.’ He seemed recovered. ‘Come, you know I’m right. We have food for today and work for tomorrow
, God save the gadje. Where would we be without their cake tins and their ornamental horse brasses and all their little foolish things? They were sent to this earth for a good reason – to put food in our bellies, and even beer sometimes. They may be stupid as a flock of starlings, but they keep us alive.’

  That much was true. Josef raised his glass, and he and Václav toasted the gadje.

  PART 3

  1942

  CHAPTER 7

  Emil stayed crouched beneath the bush, head down. All he could see was the clear water of the river, running over the glossy brown stones. His back ached but the slightest movement would make the twigs above him rattle and the green leaves shudder. His trousers were hitched uncomfortably around his crotch but to loosen them he would have to stand. He was sweating. Somebody was crashing downstream towards him. Until he knew who it was, he wasn’t going anywhere. Beyond the row of bushes were the open fields. He would not stand a chance.

  The gunfire had come in brief bursts, punctuated by shouts. It sounded as if it was coming from the village but the summer breeze blew erratically; it was impossible to tell.

  Crouched painfully, Emil thought briefly and disbelievingly about death, about the fact that he had disobeyed his father to cross the fields and climb the rise to see what was going on down in the village. He thought, I am only fifteen. The others would be waiting for him – his father pacing round the cart, his mother sitting very still, her lips fixed, with Parni leaning against her sucking two fingers and Bobo asleep on her lap. He could just picture them. He thought, I’m all right, Mum and Dad, don’t worry so. Trust me. I am fifteen.

  The person who was crashing through the water came nearer, then stopped, very close by. Emil could hear the person taking raw gulps of breath, a pause between each gulp. He recognised panic in the sound, and the panic gave him the daring to turn his head slowly and peer through the leaves of the bush. A twig caressed his cheek. There was the smell of earth, and something sharper, a tang.