by G S Eli
“What’s this?” he asked.
“I can’t pronounce it. I take it for my migraines.”
Mila shrugged and gulped down the pill. Sabina helped him up to his feet.
“There, all better now,” she said as she led him over to the sofa next to Jack. Pulling up a chair in front of the three teens, she crossed her arms and smiled. Her posture mimicked that of a typical scolding parent. “So, how’d you kids get into so much trouble?”
The three of them began to weave a strange tale. They took turns in telling it. Jack frequently interrupted to correct them on one thing or another. It started off, as Sabina had expected, with Mila getting in trouble over some vandalism. Then things took a dark turn: neo-Nazis, legends of dark magic, the death of little Korey in the train station. But when Sabina heard that Nasta had passed, a single tear rolled down her cheek and dropped into her teacup. By the time the story was finished, Sabina’s face was ashen and her smile had faded to nothing. Like most Romani Mystics, particularly fortune-tellers, Sabina could easily tell when someone was lying. That’s what scared her now: these children believed every word of the story they’d just told. Her last fleeting hope was that they were all crazy.
“Do you have this object?” she asked.
Casey unwrapped Jack’s balled up jacket revealing the golden spike. A chill ran down Sabina’s spine as she stared at the object.
“I think it might be the Fourth Nail,” Mila said, interrupting her stare. “The one from the stories.”
Sabina stood up and shuffled into the kitchen. “I need to make some more tea,” she muttered.
Drawing the curtain behind her, Sabina filled a kettle and set it to boil. As it heated up, she rifled through the kitchen drawers looking for something she hadn’t used in years. Beneath a stack of dish towels, she found a ruby-red linen cloth. The sheet was what Rom call vuzho: spiritually clean. She gently pulled the cloth out and cradled it, remembering the person who had given it to her, remembering the last words she had said to her.
Nasta is dead, she thought. My only sister’s dead, and she was right all along. I told her she was crazy. I told her she ruined all our lives believing fairy tales. But they were real.
More tears began to trickle down Sabina’s cheeks and drip onto the cloth. She wiped her face with her sleeve and stifled her crying, then searched another drawer until she found a small red box labeled “Frankincense.” She poured the grains of incense into the red cloth, then twisted it tightly.
The kettle began to whistle. With her composure restored, she made the tea, then shuffled back into the den with her best silver tea set on a tray and the cloth tucked under her arm. She put the tray on the table then without skipping a beat, snatched the nail from Casey’s lap.
“Hey, what the hell!” the girl shouted.
Without answering, Sabina wrapped the nail in the red cloth and tied it tightly. Once the scepter was sufficiently covered, Sabina offered the object back to her. For a moment, Casey shot her a glare of pure hatred, then her expression returned to mere annoyance and confusion.
“What was that about?” she demanded.
Sabina took a seat and poured herself some tea. “The cloth is spiritually pure. It will hold back dark energy, and the frankincense will throw off your enemies,” she explained.
“Sabina, we don’t really know what we’re dealing with here,” Mila said. “Is there anything you can tell us?”
The old woman stirred her tea one last time and took a long sip. “Mila, this you know, but I will explain for the gadje,” she began. “There were many Gypsy tribes, going back ages and ages, and each had its trades. The Kaldarash were known for metal-working, the Baschalde played music, the Lowara were great horse traders, and the Tshuara—well, they were kind of assholes.”
The teenagers smirked at this.
“There was one tribe, however, which was secret,” Sabina explained. She got distracted for a minute as she gazed out the window at her sign. The word Sabina was backward, since the sign was designed to be viewed from the outside. The setting sun gave the backward letters an orange glow.
“It’s getting dark…” Sabina said.
“You were saying?” Jack asked.
“Ah, yes—the hidden tribe, the Garade. It was once the greatest crime to even mention them to a gadje, but I guess that doesn’t matter now. Instead of a trade, the Garade had gifts…powerful gifts, and with those gifts a duty to be the guardians of evil.”
“That sounds…bad,” Jack said. “Like, they protected evil from being destroyed?”
“No, they protected evil from being used,” Sabina explained. “How they did that, well, for the longest time no one knew, for it was a secret they kept even from other Rom.”
“How come no one told me about this?” Mila demanded.
“I’m surprised Nasta didn’t,” Sabina replied. “Maybe she was protecting you.”
“If the Garade were so secret, why are you telling us about them now?” Jack asked.
“There’s no crime in saying it now, because the Garade are extinct, exterminated by the Nazis during the war.” Sabina paused a moment and stared into her tea.
“Were you? I mean, were you ever—you know…” Jack couldn’t quite finish the sentence.
“I never saw the camps,” Sabina replied. “I was born in hiding, safe. After the war, we Rom all banded together. The survivors had all lost their families, so we would take them in. It is from them I learned of the greatest horrors of the war.”
Everyone went silent for a moment.
“Destroying the hidden tribe was the Nazis’ highest and most secret goal. They wanted to destroy those who could contain evil. Everything else came second,” Sabina said.
“What about the Final Solution? Exterminating the Jews? Where does that fit in?” Jack asked.
Sabina took another sip of tea, then set her cup down.
“I don’t know everything. Maybe the Jewish people were persecuted for all those reasons they teach you in your gadje school. Or perhaps Hitler knew that the Jews and the Rom had a holy bond. All I know is that there was a special unit dedicated exclusively to finding and executing the Garade Rom,” Sabina said, bitterly. “The lead scientist for that unit was Josef Mengele—” Pttt! Upon mentioning the name, she paused and feigned spiting on her floor. “…that monster did every twisted manner of experiment he could on Rom. He would freeze people, give them drugs, cut off limbs and perform surgeries without any pain killers, there were rumors of forced breeding, and the blood—they say he had gallons of Gypsy blood. He was looking for a way to test who was Garade. Twins were his favorite; he preferred twin Garades’ blood. It was rumored throughout the camps that he did most of his research on their blood. Whatever he was looking for he must have found it, because now the Garade are no more.”
Once again, everyone fell into stunned silence.
“Why doesn’t anyone talk about this?” Jack asked.
“Who would listen? No one cares about the Gypsies,” Sabina replied.
Sabina noticed that Jack had a puzzled look on his face, or perhaps it was anger. “Forgive me, Sabina, but that’s not true. People would care. It’s like I just read on the Internet: The Allied armies were horrified by the camps. That’s part of the reason Israel was founded. If more people knew about this—”
Sabina interrupted the boy because she knew he was going to go off on a tangent. This often happened when non-Gypsies first heard the tales about Gypsy suffering, and sometimes it brought a letter or two to a local politician. But it often led to nothing more than just angry words, and then they would fade away.
“Listen to me, young man. I understand that you believe that people would care about us Gypsies. This is because you’re young and you’re goodhearted. I can tell. But it’s been sixty years since the end of the war, and the Gypsies burned right alongside Jewish people,
burned and suffered, and no one cares. To this very day, we are persecuted and disregarded by the world. Our people…” She paused, then pointed over to Mila, “…have endured such hatred from mankind, such evil from human beings, it can only be supernatural.”
Casey stared down at the nail, still bundled in the vuzho cloth. “What does any of this have to do with the nail?” she asked.
“You know, that’s a good question,” Sabina responded. She picked up the teapot that sat on the table and proceeded to refill Jack’s cup, then Mila’s. “How are you feeling, Mila?” she asked.
“Better,” he said.
She returned to her seat and began to struggle with her thoughts, trying to find in her head a good place to start to tell her story or perhaps answer Casey’s question. She turned her head left, then right. “I can’t believe it,” she said. “It must be true.” She smiled, looking up to the clouds through the window and still turning her head back and forth. She then looked to Casey to answer her question. “If the legend is true, the nail has everything to do with it.”
She turned back to Mila. “How did you find me?” she asked. “Did Nasta talk about me? Did she tell you to come look for me?”
Mila put his tea down. With a little bit of embarrassment, he explained, “Um, not exactly. Aunt Nasta never mentioned you. Simon from Romania told us you were here.”
“Simon? Pedo’s grandson? I used to teach him how to swear in English,” she chuckled. “So long ago, so many memories.”
Sabina began to tell Mila that she was Nasta’s sister and that she and Nasta were both there at his birth back in Romania. She explained that Mila was born in her own home, which she shared with her brother, Jimmy; his wife, Persa; and their adopted daughter, Rachel.
That name struck Mila deep within his soul. “You knew my mother?” he eagerly asked.
“I helped raise your mother,” she said proudly, crossing herself. “May she rest in peace.” Then she took a deep breath. “You see, I lived with my brother and his family. I never married, but it was probably for the best.” She turned to Casey and smiled. “I was never a pretty girl like this beautiful young woman.”
Casey smiled back at her and blushed. “Thank you, but I’m sure you were very beautiful,” she whispered.
“It’s fine, sweetheart. God blessed me with other attributes,” Sabina pointed out. She paused, realizing she’d lost her train of thought. “Where was I?”
“My mother,” Mila reminded her.
“Oh yes. My father hid me away with a gadje family during the war. My siblings Jimmy and Nasta were much older than me. There were nine siblings altogether, but all perished in the camps except for Nasta and Jimmy. They found me later, and by then, I was older, too old to be married off by arrangement and too young to be an old maid. So, I spent most of my time with your mother, Mila. She was just a little thing when I came home. I was told that Jimmy and Persa had adopted her; they had no children of their own. Later, I found out that some mystic brought her to them when she was a baby.”
Mila began to listen to the story more intensely. Sabina noticed that Jack and Casey were also moved by the tale. They shifted closer to Mila as he heard about his mother, possibly for the first time ever. Sabina could tell that these gadje cared about him. That made her more comfortable telling the story around the American teens.
“After Jimmy and Nasta found me, I moved in with Jimmy and Persa and young Rachel. We had a nice flat in the city, and with the Communist government we all had good jobs. Nasta and I worked in a factory side by side with the gadje. The Communists tolerated no racist segregation acts by the Romanians. It was a good life. We were finally happy, and we all were together. Your mother was just a little girl, and we were so close. I would come home from the factory early so I could pick her up from school—”
“Wait; my teacher said Gypsies don’t go to school,” Casey stated.
“Today they don’t. In fact, for hundreds of years it was illegal to educate a Gypsy, but under the Communist rule all those racist laws were removed, and we Rom were allowed to attend school—required, actually. Even I’d have gone if I’d been a bit younger.”
Mila smiled at this wonderful story of his family in better days. Casey made her way next to him and Jack. In a loving gesture, she warmly placed her hand on Mila’s.
Jack was visibly hurt as he witnessed Casey’s affection, but said nothing.
“Wow, back in the States we’ve always been taught that communism was a bad thing,” Jack said.
“Well, for most people, it was,” Sabina explained. “But if you’re a Gypsy, it was a good thing because it forced the racist population to accept us.”
“So, what happened?” Casey asked. “How did you guys wind up in Germany?”
Sabina turned to Mila and paused, fearing he did not know the full story of how his mother had died and who his father was. It took only a moment for Mila’s keen sense of emotion to pick up on her misgivings.
“It’s OK, Aunt Sabina. I want to know,” Mila said as he tightly clutched Casey’s hand.
Sabina gained her strength and proceeded with the story of what really happened to Mila’s family. She took them back to the days of persecution.
“Communism fell,” she said. “And with that, we were thrown out of our apartment and forced to live near the garbage dump.” She began to rant. “Of course, I was upset by this, but my brother and his wife, along with Nasta and her family, couldn’t be happier. To them, we were returning to our tradition. We were living like rats. We had the only decent house, if you want to call it that. It was a shack, really—two rooms—but the others had tents and houses they built from scrap metal they got from the city dump we lived on. I hated every minute of it.
“We were fired from the factories and jobs, and the government that took over hated us. We were back to living like animals. It was the last decade before the millennium, and we were living like it was the Middle Ages, horses and wagons and fires to keep us warm. It was pure insanity!” She shouted the last part.
Sabina nervously reached for her tea, and Casey rose and helped her retrieve it. Sabina took a sip and handed it to Casey to set down as she tried to continue.
“By this time, your mother was old enough to marry,” she went on. “And I tried to forget our living conditions. I learned how to read the tarot cards and went off into the city every day to tell fortunes to help support the family. The thought of Rachel getting married was my only happiness. I wanted her to marry a nice Kaldarash boy from another camp, but Jimmy and Nasta wanted to wait for the right one.
“At first, I thought that they were just being overprotective, but then one day, a man appeared in our camp. Michel was his name. He told stories of how he and a few others overthrew the Communist government; what a mistake that was. It was a mistake for him, too, because police and the military were looking for him. He was much older than your mother, by at least ten years. So, naturally, when Jimmy and Nasta told me that Michel was to marry our Rachel, I was outraged. We had a big fight. But the whole family overruled me. And your mother seemed happy with him; I even believed she loved him,” Sabina reminisced, finally with a smile. She paused because she noticed the wetness of Mila’s eyes.
“Michel was my father’s name?” Mila asked.
Sabina nodded.
“So, where is my father? And did my mother die when I was born like I was told?”
“No, Mila, she lived after your birth,” Sabina explained. “She and your father lived with us for a while until he said that the new government police were looking for him and he feared his presence might bring us harm. So, he told us he must go. He left right before you were born. You came, and we watched over you. Jimmy was getting very old, and I was going out all the time to make money. By then, the Romanians in the villages constantly threatened us. The racism started up again. They would come in the night and warn us to leave
our camps or die.”
Sabina started to cry. Her tears caused Mila and Casey to cry along with her. Only Jack remained stoic. Sabina could tell he was holding back. Casey knelt next to her and took her hand. Sabina felt a warmth in her touch. Perhaps I was wrong about her, she thought, or perhaps the cloth is blocking the evil I sensed…
“We were in constant fear for our lives. And then hope arrived in a letter. The family that helped hide me during the war passed away and left me this flat here in Paderborn in their will. I was so happy, I told Rachel we could bring you, Mila,” she said, reaching out to grab Mila’s hand as she closed her eyes to remember, tears freely falling down her old face. “We were going to raise you here and educate you, but Jimmy and Nasta would not have it. So, I made a plan with your mother to run away with you and bring you here. We figured once we left they would follow, but the Romanians had a different plan.”
She pointed to a tissue box on the nearby table so Casey could retrieve it for her. The girl grabbed it and handed it over, then grabbed a couple of tissues for herself.
“A week before we were to leave for Germany, I came back from doing readings and found my house and a few tents were burned by the Romanians. I tried to go inside, but it was too late. I was told everyone inside had died. I discovered later that your mother tossed you from a window. Someone caught you, I don’t know who but God bless them, and you survived, but Jimmy and Persa and your mother died along with a few others. Soon after, I left angry with Nasta and the family, and I came here alone. Later, I heard that this priest who always hated me for fortune-telling brought the family to Berlin,” she said, wiping her eyes.
“Leichman,” Mila whispered with disdain.
Casey and Jack were shocked and saddened by this; Mila sat with his head down in despair. The room was silent. Sabina wiped her eyes one last time, and suddenly, she seemed content, as if telling this story took a great weight off her chest.