Ascension

by Steven Galloway

  Salvo stood as still as possible on the wire. The ground was fifteen feet below. If he fell it would hurt, but he would probably not be seriously injured.

  “Immobility,” Tomas continued, “is what you strive for, but immobility is impossible. You could not move your arms. You could not move your legs. Even if you could fix your eyes on one point and not blink, you would still see. And your blood would still flow, and your heart would still pound in your ears. Yet you must always try for immobility. The wire must have a time of its own, so that each movement of your body is as natural and unconscious as breathing, so that there is as little difference between mobility and immobility as possible. First you will learn this lesson. Then you will walk.”

  Tomas slammed the window shut, leaving Salvo standing alone on the wire. How long he stood he had no idea. It could have been minutes, it could have been hours. Eventually, though, he felt he could stand no longer. His legs ached and his feet felt as though they were being sliced in half. His knees buckled and he fell to the ground. He was shaken but unhurt. The window above hadn’t opened, and there was no way to get back up on the wire.

  He walked around to the front of the rooming house, opened the unlocked door, went up the stairs and down the hall. He knocked on Tomas’s door. There was no answer. He opened the door and peered in.

  Tomas leapt forward and slammed his fist into the side of Salvo’s head. Salvo dropped to the floor, where he was met by a kick to the stomach. At first all he felt was blinding pain. Gradually the pain began to recede to a dull throb, and he once again became aware of his surroundings. Tomas pulled him to his feet.

  “If you ever let yourself fall again, I will make that seem like a handshake,” he said. “You stay on the wire no matter how tired you get. If you fall, you grab the wire. You crawl to the window, and you get back on the wire. But you never give up and seek ground. Understand?”

  Salvo nodded, but his jaw was set and his face was hot.

  Tomas pushed him to the window and opened it. “Out you go.”

  As he stepped out the window he saw Margit sitting in the corner of the room. She watched him with wide eyes, her hands clutching a piece of bread. He wished she hadn’t come back. He couldn’t know that she had not gone straight to the store, that upon leaving the rooming house she’d run fast in no particular direction, desiring only to be away from there. He couldn’t know that she had stopped, heaving for breath, and turned back in the direction she had come, stopping to buy food and wine for Tomas. He didn’t understand the way Tomas did that she had nowhere else to go, and that the streets were for her a very different place than they were for Salvo.

  As it had before, the wire stung his feet. Before sliding the window shut, Tomas offered one last piece of advice. “Make the wire yours.”

  Salvo again stood until he thought he could stand no more. He wanted to give up, to drop to the ground, but he wouldn’t allow himself. He would neither fail nor give Tomas the satisfaction of seeing him fail. He forced himself to stay still.

  Time stopped. His body ached, muscles strained past caring. He concentrated on immobility, on remaining motionless, on the stillness of his movements. Slowly, the wire began to reach into him. It snaked its way up his shins, through his calves, up his spine. It pierced his brain and was gone.

  Salvo was warm. He saw the faces of his father and mother, his brother, András, and his dead sisters. He saw his Uncle László and Aunt Esa, his crippled cousin, the girl Margit and the new priest and the villagers. He saw everyone he had ever known and everything he had ever seen. Then, it all vanished. It was night, he was in a freezing alley on a wire, standing above mud and garbage and the piss of a man he knew he hated but needed, and he was untroubled. None of it mattered.

  The window opened.

  “Come inside,” Tomas said. “I have a job for you.”

  Despite the welcoming nature of the Mór Roma, after five years András still didn’t feel as though he was one of them. There was something about them that he didn’t share, and he could tell that they knew it as acutely as he did, even if no one could quite put their finger on what it was.

  András remembered his father’s stories well, and he often thought that they were far better than Vedel’s, but he never said as much. His father would tell his stories no more, so there was no point in wishing to hear them, and anyway, one does not frown in the face of hospitality.

  There was one story Vedel told that András initially liked. It was a favourite with many, and often it was told by others when Vedel wasn’t in the mood. They never got it right, András thought, and he hardly ever listened unless Vedel was the one telling it.

  “If this is not true, then it is a lie. Troka, you pay attention to this,” he would say, and everyone would laugh at Troka Mór, a boy a little older than Salvo whose pathetic attempt at a beard was much maligned.

  “There were two men, one a Rom and the other a gadjo. They were friends, not the sort who would die to protect each other, but the sort who would compete over anything, like jealous brothers. But they did like each other, that much for sure.

  “The gadjo had a beard, a very fine beard, thick and long, and the Rom grew no beard at all.” At this point Vedel would usually look pointedly at Troka, and many would laugh.

  “The Rom became jealous of his friend’s beard. ‘Friend,’ he said, ‘that is a very beautiful beard you have. How would you like to sell it to me?’

  “The bearded man gave this some thought, and he decided it was not a bad idea. They agreed upon a price, but the Rom had a condition. ‘I will buy your beard, but it has to stay on your face.’

  “The price was good, so the gadjo accepted this condition, and a sale was made. Every day the clean-shaven Rom would come and see his friend, and he would take care of his beard. He trimmed it well and washed it in expensive lotions. Often he would bring people by to admire the beard, not caring if the man whose face the beard was on was busy or not.

  “He would cut it into a point, or put a hole into the middle of it, or pour scented oils on it. If his friend protested, he’d say, ‘What’s mine is mine, friend. You sold me this beard. The law is on my side.’ And he was none too gentle, either, when tending the beard, often pulling it and tugging it, sending his friend to tears.

  “Eventually, the man whose face the beard was attached to had had enough. ‘Please, friend, sell me back my beard. I’ll pay whatever you ask.’ The Rom refused. ‘No,’ he said, ‘I’m very happy with this beard. It’s very soft and thick, and it’s strong.’ He yanked on the beard to show his point, and the poor man yelped. ‘I’ll give you any price you ask. Just let my beard alone.’ ‘Sorry, friend,’ the Rom replied, ‘but it’s not your beard.’

  “Finally, after many weeks, the Rom agreed to sell back the beard, and he made a good profit on the sale. The gadjo went straight to the barber and had his beard shaved off, and he never grew it back as long as he lived.”

  András liked this story for the same reason the others did; he enjoyed hearing of a gadjo being tricked. What he did not understand, however, was why the gadjo didn’t beat the living blood out of the Rom for abusing his beard so. The more András thought about it, the more he was convinced that this was in fact what the gadjo, or for that matter, any reasonable man, would do. That was the problem with so many of Vedel’s stories: in many of them the gadje were stupid and easily tricked, the reality of the likelihood of violence ignored. He’d seen for himself that it took quite a bit of work to trick the gadje, and that they were more than willing to inflict physical harm on the Roma who had duped them.

  Most Roma probably already knew that. But what András also realized—after wondering why the bearded man had tolerated such behaviour—was that every time they pulled one over on the gadje, the gadje hated them even more. As long as they kept it up, gadje would always hate Roma. He had little remorse for this fact, and didn’t wish to change it, but he saw it nonetheless.

  ANDRÁS KEPT TO HIMSELF as much as he coul
d, avoiding conflict except when necessary. He was, at seventeen, stronger than most adult men, which brought a fair amount of trouble to him. There was always one boy or another seeking to prove his manhood by challenging him in some way.

  There was one Mór Rom who paid special attention to András, a striking young girl, fifteen years old, named Jeta. She had large eyes and an entrancing smile, and was easily the most beautiful of Nosh Mór’s daughters. She took quite a liking to András, despite his seeming ambivalence towards her. This infatuation did not go unnoticed by others, and it inspired a great deal of jealousy. András was unfazed by any of it, though, intent only upon the raising of his eight-year-old sister.

  As time went on, Jeta began to take András’s perceived snubbing of her advances to heart. She stayed in her tent, refusing to eat, until finally Nosh came to speak to András.

  “What have you done to my daughter?” he said, his voice low so that others would not hear.

  “I have done nothing.”

  “She is in love with you. She wishes to marry you.”

  “Yes. But I have no intentions towards her.”

  At this Nosh Mór became angry. “You think I would allow you to marry my daughter, orphan? I have overlooked many things. You burn a church, a bad omen. You do not become one of us. You do not sing with us. You do not share the stories I know you have. All these things I overlook.” He took a deep breath, collecting himself. “You would not be fit to marry Jeta. But for you to think yourself above her is another matter.”

  “I do not think myself above her. I simply do not love her.” András did not say that neither did he love any of the Mór Roma. If pressed for an explanation he would have been unable to supply one; he could not pinpoint why he was unable to fit in with this group.

  “Love?” Nosh spat. “Ursari, that is the least of your worries.”

  Etel burst into the tent. Tears ran down her face. András forgot Nosh Mór and focused on his sister. Never in her life since she had been a baby had he seen her cry, let alone with such ferocity. He knew at once that something terrible must have happened.

  “Vyusher,” she said. “Vyusher.” She was too upset to say more. András understood what she was talking about, and he went where Etel led him, Nosh following right behind.

  One of his favourite stories that their father Miksa had told—and one that András had repeated to Etel since she was old enough to listen—was the story of the Rom and the wolf.

  “Not so long ago,” he would begin, trying his best to sound like his father, “an old Rom who was once a great leader of his people but was now sick and weak sensed that his tribe was about to turn on him. So late one night he crept from their caravan and slipped into the deep of the forest, where, with his remaining strength, he set to building himself a shack. One day, when he sat down to rest, he was cornered by a pack of hungry wolves. He was unarmed, having left his axe at the edge of his clearing, and had no way to defend himself. The wolves were just about to devour him when their leader, a strong silver giant of a wolf, leapt between the Rom and the wolves and bade them leave him alone. The wolves grumbled at this, but they respected their leader’s authority and retreated into the brush.

  “A few years went by, and soon the silver wolf was not so strong, not such a giant. He was old, and though he still had cunning, he could feel his control over the pack waning. So one quiet night he fled into the forest. The other wolves heard him leave, however, and they took after him. They were nearly upon him when he reached the Rom’s shack. The Rom, remembering the favour this silver wolf had once done him, took him into his house and saved him.

  “From that time on, the Rom and the wolf lived together until their days were done, dying only moments apart, and they were as happy as they had ever been.”

  The Móra Rom camp was full of dogs. They were never consciously collected; they just arrived one day and travelled with the wagons, content to live off discarded scraps and whatever was seen fit to give them. Many of them were affectionate towards their human providers, and many were indifferent, but none was vicious. They were smart dogs, and they had quickly learned that any aggression towards humans led to an abrupt end. The dogs were, however, quite violent amongst themselves, fighting often and without mercy. There was one dog, a small brownish cur, that Etel found one day dragging part of its stomach behind it, having had its gut torn open in a fight. Etel picked the creature up and brought it to András, who was inclined to put the poor thing out of its misery, but Etel begged him to try and save it. They washed the distended pieces, pushed them back into the dog and wrapped a bandage around it. András doubted the dog would last the night, but there it was the next day, still alive, and the day after that, and so on, with Etel looking after it, washing its wound and feeding it, as well as keeping the other dogs at bay. Until one day the dog was well enough to get up, and eventually it appeared to be fine. Etel remembered the story of the Rom and the wolf, naming the dog Vyusher, the Romany word for wolf.

  They became inseparable. Vyusher was always beside her, licking her swollen feet after a hard day of walking, guarding over her while she slept. Etel, for her part, fed the dog half of all her food, brushed its fur with her own hairbrush and kept other dogs from injuring Vyusher further.

  That had been over a year ago. As András arrived at the bare spot of earth where Vyusher now lay motionless, he knew that this time the dog would not recover. Its head was caved in on the side, unrecognizable as the former face of a dog, an iron pipe on the ground beside it.

  “Who has done this?” he asked Etel.

  “Nicolae and Dilaver,” she replied. “But all of them were there.”

  András looked at Nosh. Nicolae and Dilaver were two of his sons, one a year older than András and one a year younger. They did not like András, nor the idea of their sister being in love with him, and they liked it even less that he did not care for her. They were too afraid to come after him, having felt his fist at their heads more than once, but there were other ways, they knew.

  “It’s just a dog,” Nosh said.

  “It was my sister’s dog. You do not kill a child’s dog.”

  “They love their sister.”

  “And I mine.” András stared Nosh Mór hard in the face, and his glare was returned with a smirk. András, infuriated, lunged towards Nosh, his hands at the man’s throat.

  Etel opened her mouth but no sound came out. She had never seen András lose his temper before. In all his fights he was never the one to make the first move, and even afterward he did not appear angry. That was usually his advantage.

  As András lunged, Nosh dissipated before him, there and not there. András felt a breeze at his side, and from behind him a cool, hard pressure at his throat and solid flesh constricting his wrist. He grasped with his free hand to keep Nosh’s knife from going into his neck, but Nosh’s arm was strong and he had no effect on its position. For a moment András thought he was dead, but death did not come, and he knew that if Nosh had wanted him dead, he would already be so.

  “You have made a bad mistake,” Nosh whispered into his ear. “I should kill you where you stand.”

  András said nothing. He couldn’t think of anything that was certain to make things better, and he didn’t want to risk making the situation worse.

  “I took you in five years ago, when others would not have. I protected you from those who thought you should pay for burning down their church. I fed you and your sister. You shared our fire. And for this you first bring shame upon my daughter, then you come at me with fists. Tell me one reason why I should let you live.”

  András thought for a moment. “Because you would do the same thing for your family. You would kill to protect them.”

  Nosh released András, shoving him to the ground. András was unprepared and lost his wind as he connected with the hard earth, and he lay on his back, gasping.

  “You look like a dying fish,” Nosh said. His dagger was already back in its sheath at his waist. Neither Andr�
�s nor Etel had seen it come out or go back. Nosh turned to Etel, who knelt beside her dead dog.

  “I am sorry for your friend,” he said. “All over the world other dogs will be sick of broken hearts for his absence.” Nosh looked at András. “Be gone before sunset. Your sister may stay, but if you are here in the morning, you will not see noon.” Just then others began to arrive, drawn more out of intuition, a feeling that trouble was near, than by the commotion that had been raised. Nosh pushed his way past a group of onlookers and disappeared into his wagon.

  No one spoke to András. He was, from the moment of Nosh’s pronouncement, outcast from the entire group. Whatever personal feelings any of them held, and a few did think that Nosh was overreacting, they did not go against his word, nor hold out a hand to András as he got up off the ground. They looked at their feet as he moved past them, and they walked away silently once he was inside his tent.

  Etel took one last look at her friend Vyusher and followed her brother.

  András gathered together what few belongings he had. He watched Etel in the doorway, wondering what to do. A part of him believed that she would be better off staying with the Mór Roma, that without him they would accept her as one of their own, and that in time she would come to understand why he had left her. Another part of him, a larger part, needed her to come with him, could not fathom the thought of leaving without her. Do not be selfish, he told himself. She has a right to a better life than you can provide.

  “It is a bad thing about Vyusher,” he said.

  Etel nodded. “Hearts are broken, dogs’ and mine.”

  András did not like her rephrasing Nosh, but said nothing. “I must go.”

  Etel stepped back. “And me?”

  “I think you should stay.”