Fires in the Dark

by Louise Doughty

  The women rose an hour before dawn. Anna infuriated Josef by insisting on digging up the tubers and seedlings from the vegetable patch behind the cottage and storing them in wooden trays. He ordered Emil to help her. As his wife and son dug, side by side, he heard Anna hissing to Emil in the dark, ‘All your father worries about is whether we will be shot. He doesn’t seem to think we will need to eat if we don’t get shot. He thinks food appears out of thin air.’

  As he helped Emil carry the boxes to the cart, Josef hissed to his son. ‘All your mother thinks about is the next day’s dinner! When we could be shot!’

  *

  The edges of the sky were tinged with silver by the time they left. Josef was furious – he had wanted to make as much headway as possible before full light.

  Anna was sitting next to him. Tekla, Eva and Ludmila had tied their braids up underneath their headscarves and sat with their heads bowed amongst the things in the back of the cart, Parni and Bobo asleep across their laps, Old Pavliná hunched in a corner. Emil was leading the horse so it should not stumble in the rough lane – when they reached the road, he would take over the reins for the daylight travel. He was the most fair-skinned of them all.

  As the cart lurched away from the hamlet, Anna, seated up front next to him, placed a hand on Josef’s thigh. He did not respond, twisting the idle reins about his fingers and staring straight ahead.

  Above them, the moon was misted by fine cloud, as if it was dissolving into the night sky, its form unable to hold. It was a cool, soft night, so still a whisper would carry across a field.

  When they were a safe distance from the hamlet, Anna said carefully, ‘It sits heavy with you, Josef.’

  Josef nodded. Anna meant, leaving the kumpánia. He could not tell her that what bothered him was wider, greater. I have realised, he was thinking, what kind of man I am. I am a coward.

  When Václav had demanded kris, justice, he had told himself that he would not argue more with him because it was obscene that one Rom should fight another when the gadje were trying so hard to kill them all. He had told himself that the only course of action for a wise man was to walk away, and walk away he had.

  But now, in the still grey night, the wheels of the old cart creaking with each slow turn, he knew in his bones that the process of thought he had believed himself to be undertaking was a lie, a construct he had hastily devised as he walked away from Václav and the other men, the ridicule burning behind him. He was a coward. He had not argued with Václav because he had known he would lose. In the past, he had always chosen the course of modesty and in the good times, the peaceful times, this had made him seem wise, a man of restraint. But now that forces of destruction stalked them and O Beng was to be found behind each bush, his wisdom and restraint were worth no more than a girl’s sigh. Václav’s little daughters had more courage than he. Never in his life had he been more afraid than now. He was a coward.

  What kind of man am I? His hands gripped at the reins. Tears smarted his eyes. Am I a true Rom? A Rom’s first duty is to his family. I must save my family. Yes, a voice whispered, and save your own hide into the bargain. How convenient to have a family. How comfortable to hide behind your wife’s petticoats. A true Rom Baró saves his whole people. You are no true Rom.

  Anna, next to him with her hand still resting on his thigh – she was little comfort, though she meant to be. Were she a man, she would have argued with Václav, and won.

  He thought of Parni, his tiny girl, the wideness of her eyes in her small face. He had given her a piece of apple yesterday, cut from his own. It was all there was. She had looked at it, tasted it, then handed it back saying, ‘Father, it is bitter.’ She had gazed at him, trusting him to find a piece for her that was not. Václav’s children would have snatched the apple and wolfed it down, knowing that if they did not eat it there would be nothing else. His Parni, small and calm and huge-eyed, had believed absolutely that if she returned the piece of apple her Father, her Taté, the Rom Baró, would find a better one for her.

  And he had taken the piece of apple, and chopped it and mashed it with his knife until it was brown and foamy. Then he had gone to where Anna kept a small supply of precious milk powder in a wooden keg beside the spice box and added half a spoonful, along with a few grains of cinnamon which he lifted from the empty box with a dampened finger, and he had stirred it and taken it to her.

  She had received the bowl from him solemnly, as no more than her due.

  My daughter believes in my power to save her, and she does not care what I think of myself. The thoughts swam in Josef’s head: above him, the dissolving moon. I am a coward. I am no true Rom. What is prudence but cowardice? How would I like my son to behave? My son. I beat my son today. I behaved like my own father, whom I grew to hate. Is that what all this is about? He felt tired, so tired. Anna laid her head on his shoulder. She was tired too but would never say so. She could have sat in the cart and dozed with the others, but she would stay up with him until they reached the road. Her head was heavy on his shoulder, the weight of it uneven, rolling on his bones in concert with the rocking of the wagon. The horse snorted and shook its head, as if it was only now awaking from a long sleep. What kind of man am I? What kind of man? If they came through this, if they lived, he would have his answer: a wise Rom, a living one.

  CHAPTER 9

  They took their usual route East, skirting south-west of Prague. Prague: who knew what was happening there? Ctibor Michálek had been swallowed by Prague and his farm occupied by the SS, his beloved fruit orchards hacked to pieces. The restaurants and cafés in Prague were full of Hitlerites now, they said, all in black with those stiff caps with skulls on them. Bored of Paris, the Devils holidayed in Prague. Prague had always been a hell-hole, in Josef’s opinion. Now it was truly a seething city of Evil, the heart of all that was rotten amongst the most rotten of the rotten, stinking gadje. Not until they crossed the Vltava did he feel well clear of Prague.

  They stuck to the small roads, the winding tracks between the villages where they could pretend to be a family taking goods to market. On the fourth day, they pulled up behind a deserted farm for the night, and in the morning a man in a suit came and told them that the old building belonged to his brother. If they cleared it for him and restored the vegetable patches at the back, he would let them help themselves to some of the produce. Josef regarded the man and surmised that there was probably a good reason why he did not want to ask the local people to help clear his ‘brother’s’ farm. That was good. If he had something to hide, then he would be telling nobody about them. They stayed at the farm for three weeks, until the man in the suit came by one lunchtime, in a great hurry, and told them to pack up and be off immediately.

  They continued the journey slowly, stopping often. While they were still in Bohemia, their papers were legal, at least. Josef realised he was trying to delay the moment when they would reach the highlands and cross into Moravia. After that, they would have to get their story straight. But the longer they delayed, the harder it would be to explain. Travelling was strictly forbidden. We are forbidden, Josef thought. We are becoming more forbidden with each passing day.

  *

  It was late one afternoon when they approached the Moravian hills. They were on the forest road, a rise that led up to the highlands. As they rounded a bend there was a roar, and passing them was a convoy of twenty trucks full of German soldiers. Josef was driving and kept his head down as the convoy passed, afraid that if he glanced at it he might meet the gaze of one of the Devils. Unable to look, he was aware of the Evil Ones and their vehicles only as a thunder of noise, a vibration from the road that shook the decrepit, overloaded cart and shuddered his bones. He had heard stories about Roma being stopped on the roads and arrested, their carts overturned into ditches. He felt the tremors long after the convoy had passed.

  They pulled off the road well before the light began to fade. It was time to find a clearing in the forest and wait until dark before they crossed into
Moravia.

  *

  The cart had been rocking her for so long that Anna felt she had achieved an hallucination, a strange nothingness where she would doze for a second, to be jolted awake, doze for a second … Looking at the faces of the other women, she could see they were doing the same, heads lolling, eyelids descending, then shooting upright at a shudder from the cart. Only the children managed any real rest.

  When they were in the middle of the forest, with no sign of life ahead or behind, Josef pulled up and asked them all to get down and carry as much as they could.

  Anna handed Bobo to Eva. For once, the plump, clingy boy did not protest. The Little Ones were both exhausted. Parni was half asleep, so Anna put her on Emil’s shoulder. Ludmila and Pavliná would have to carry the bundles. She and Tekla would help Josef manoeuvre the cart. She handed a bundle of clothing to Pavliná, who shook her head and reached for her own sack, the noisy one full of pots and pans. Anna sighed in wonder. Pavliná had always been a terrible hoarder, so obsessed with her possessions she would insist upon her own heavy bundle rather than carry someone else’s lighter one.

  Josef chose a narrow gap in the trees to lead the horse off the track. They would find a clearing as soon as they were out of sight, then wait until the middle of the night before continuing. While Josef led the horse, Anna and Tekla pushed at the cart on either side, trying to prevent the wheels from getting stuck on fallen branches or in ruts. Anna grazed her hands grasping at the rough wood. Tekla made grunting noises as she pushed, until Josef turned and hushed her. ‘Who’s to hear …?’ Tekla grumbled, but was silent.

  They had not gone far before the trees became too dense for the cart to progress. ‘We will be all right here,’ murmured Josef, then turned to slip back to the road and kick over any traces they had left behind.

  Emil tied the horse while Anna unpacked the few things they needed to eat and rest.

  She lifted down the wooden box of their remaining supplies. Inside was a small sack with a little flour, some hard biscuits, the two last wizened apples and her clay pot. She removed the lid of the clay pot and unwound the heavy string of flatbread dough. The raw dough was unpleasant but filling – after tonight, even that would be gone. They would have to barter for food in Moravia, which meant contact with the gadje. It might take another week, or more, to reach the Slovak border. Slovakia – a hated, backward country in her mind till now. Now it meant relative freedom, safety. Unless, of course, Václav Winter was right, and the Slovaks would prove as bad as the Hitlerites. She pushed the thought to the back of her mind.

  Parni had awoken now they had stopped. She came and stood next to Anna and rested her head against her thigh. ‘Mummy, I’m thirsty,’ she said.

  ‘The water is finished,’ Anna said. ‘We will find some in the morning. We are going to eat.’

  ‘But I’m thirsty …’ She gave a small, exhausted sob and leant against her mother’s thighs.

  ‘I know, Little Daughter,’ Anna said softly, wearily, stroking her head. ‘I know …’

  *

  Emil was unrolling his mat when his father came and said gently, ‘Emil, let the women settle. Sit up with me for a while.’

  Josef turned and walked through the trees, stepping lightly on the spongy forest floor, the dense, textured carpet of dead pine needles, twigs and leaves. Emil followed him.

  They chose a fallen tree trunk. The moss upon its side felt soft and damp. Emil tried sitting in three different places before he found one without an uncomfortable knot or ridge. Josef was filling his pipe with debris picked from the ground beneath the log. He couldn’t light it but it comforted him to suck on it.

  ‘See?’ said Josef, pointing with the stem of his pipe.

  Emil looked back at their tiny encampment, just visible in the half-light. Through the black crowd of trees, he could see the cart to one side, the horse standing tethered to a pine, still as a statue, and Tekla and his mother gently shaking out their mats. The Little Ones, Pavliná and his two aunts were already asleep on the forest floor. What a small, depleted group they were, a few women, an old one, the babies …

  ‘That is what we have to make live …’ Josef said softly, tapping his pipe on the trunk. ‘If I die, the responsibility will pass to you. Never leave them, Emil, I don’t need to ask you, do I?’

  Emil shook his head, even though his father was not looking at him. ‘No,’ he said. ‘You don’t.’

  ‘I know,’ Josef added quickly, ‘I know I don’t. I just needed to say it to you, for myself.’ There was a long silence between them.

  ‘It has not been easy, these weeks on the road,’ Josef said eventually. ‘You have been kind to the Little Ones. They can’t help complaining. That is one of the hardest things, not being able to make them understand. You have been very patient with them.’

  Praise at last, thought Emil.

  ‘If something happens.’ Josef paused and drew a deep breath, then repeated, ‘If something happens, happens to me, I mean, and if you have to make a choice, ever, than save your mother,’ Josef said. ‘The others would die without her anyway.’

  ‘You think it will come to that?’ Emil asked, flushed with pride that his father was talking to him like an equal, discussing frankly who they might or might not save.

  Josef shrugged. ‘I hope not, but if we can’t get into Slovakia then there is another possibility, somewhere we could go, but it’s dangerous, I’ll explain to you, everything, while we’re on the road. You never know when something might happen to me, so you must know everything I know.’ He fell silent.

  The gloom gathered around them. They watched first Anna and then Tekla lie down. Soon the small dark mounds of their bodies became invisible, and all they could see of the camp was the solid black shape of the cart.

  ‘It still feels strange to be without the others …’ Josef murmured. ‘I keep thinking we are on the way to meet them. We are so few now, alone …’

  I am all he has, thought Emil, his happiness a little spoiled by the thought that his newfound status in his father’s eyes had as much to do with necessity as respect.

  ‘That day before we left, near the village,’ his father said. ‘I was angry, but I shouldn’t have hit you like that. I was frightened.’

  It was almost completely dark. Darkness fell quickly in the forest, as if the trees were grateful to be claimed. Above them, the first stars were appearing in a fathomless sky.

  ‘Are you still frightened?’ Emil asked. He would not have dared ask such a question by daylight, when he could see his father’s face.

  ‘Hardly, any more,’ his father sighed. ‘Not now we’re on the move. At least we’re doing something. It’s sitting waiting for them to come and get us that’s worst. I’m so used to being worried I think I’ve forgotten what it’s really like. I was more anxious in the beginning. Now I’m just tired. It isn’t the thought of dying …’ He paused, exhaling heavily. ‘It’s the madness of it. You start to think, maybe it’s me that’s crazy. That is frightening. Do you know when I first realised the world was truly going mad? When we had to get a gas mask for the horse. That day we spent, going from shop to shop in Třebič, trying to find one with a strap big enough. A hundred and fifty crowns. They were still glued to their radios and weeping over Austria. We hadn’t a clue what was coming. It seemed so ridiculous at the time but what would seem ridiculous to us now?’

  Emil leaned towards his father and rested his head on his shoulder. ‘I can’t remember anything before the war,’ he said.

  ‘Really …?’ Josef murmured, comfortingly.

  Emil sat up and rubbed his eyes. He sighed. ‘I can remember when they made me go to school, the teacher sitting us at the back of the class. I remember the first day, when we were making pictures with glue and sunflower seeds and dried peas and I ate the sunflower seeds and put the peas in my pocket to give to Mother.’

  Josef exhaled shortly, an amused sound. ‘It was a good job I met you on the lane. If you had told your mother yo
u’d been beaten on the first day she would have gone there the next morning with her sleeves rolled up.’

  Emil smiled to himself in the dark. He had quite liked school. He had liked the Easter parades, the girls in their white dresses. He had even made friends with some gadje boys in his class. And he knew how to read and write, and speak German. He knew things his father didn’t know, about the world. He knew how big it was, and how different types of gadje thought they were different from each other and would be insulted if they realised that to the Roma they were all just gadje. ‘Afterwards, after the invasion, the teacher took me out of the class one day and put me in a room with all the books. Cutting England and France out of the maps – I remember this pile of Englands on the floor. It looks like an old lady feeding a bird.’ It had been frightening when the Germans came but thrilling too. Those boys who had bullied him, from the class above, and the others who just never spoke to him, all those white boys who thought themselves so superior, they had watched the Germans march right in and had to realise they weren’t top dogs any more. It was something, that.

  ‘See, you can remember …’ said Josef.

  Emil shrugged in the dark. He remembered the excitement of the invasion, the people on the streets. They had all crowded in front of the announcement, the poster pinned up in the window of Frieder’s Tapestry, Millinery and Parlour Goods. A man at the front had been reading aloud. The assembled gadje had all gasped in dismay at each phrase. Josef had pushed at Emil’s shoulder to indicate he should wriggle to the front, hissing, ‘See if we can still use our crowns …’