Finally she said, “The Blue Beasts came. First they told Kako Perrados that his taxes would be $3,000, and he had that much money. Then they came back and said, ‘No, it’s $5,000,’ and he said he could get that much together. And the third time they came back they said, ‘No, we made a mistake before, your taxes are $8,000, and you must pay it now, or we’ll take the plantation.’ Kako Perrados didn’t have $8,000. His wife had died ten years ago, with the yellow fever, and he missed her. Both of his sons had gone away to the Great War. In a week, his heart, it broke and he died.”
“I’m so sorry,” Gage said sadly. “It sounds like he wasn’t just a gaje, that he was different. For you, for the Gypsies, I mean.”
She nodded. “Kako, that means uncle, but it’s really a term of respect and affection, and we called his wife Kaki Perrados. For so many years we had been Perrados Gypsies . . . but that was all gone, all over.
“When the Blue Beasts found out we were free, not slaves, they told us we must pay the taxes too. All of us had to pay $500 for our houses.” Her mouth twisted grimly. “It could have been $5,000, or $50,000. They knew that, of course.”
“What did you do?”
She lifted her chin in that proud gesture that Gage was coming to know, and her eyes sparked defiantly. “We took our houses and made our vardos. We had sixteen horses that the Blue Beasts didn’t know about. We came here, built our vardos, and then it was time for us to leave. But Baba Simza said that she knew, Dovvel had showed her, that she must stay, that Mirella and Niçu must stay, and that I must stay.” She sounded regretful, and a little sad.
“That must have been hard for you,” he said. “Did you have other family?”
“Oh, yes. My father was—is—the Rom Baro, the Big Man, of our vitsi. My mother is only forty years old, and I have three younger sisters and two younger brothers. It was hard, it is hard. I miss them, I miss all of them.”
“I’m kind of surprised you stayed,” Gage said slowly. “You seem to have your own mind, your own way, Nadyha.”
Dryly she said, “Oh, you’ve noticed?” Then she shrugged. “My brother Niçu and I, we’ve always been very close. There’s a five-year difference between us and my next sister. And both of us, I guess, are Baba Simza’s favorites, though she’d never admit it. And Mirella, poor Mirella. She was expecting a child when the vitsi left, and we all thought it might be better if she wasn’t on the road, traveling. We’re not used to that life, you see, as other Gypsies are. But she lost the baby anyway. And then she lost another baby, just last year.”
“That must be really, really hard,” Gage said in a distant voice. He couldn’t help but think of his own mother and father, and how they had just given him away, had deserted him. Brushing these futile thoughts aside, as he had done thousands of times during his life, he asked Nadyha, “And so now do you believe that Baba Simza made a mistake? That you should have gone with the vitsi?”
“No.” Again she stared blankly out into the distance.
“What do you believe, Nadyha?” Gage asked softly.
He watched as the color in her cheeks heightened to deep coral, and when she turned to him her green-brown eyes were flashing. “I believe that Baba Simza and our fathers and mothers are right about one thing. This world, it’s not in balance. It’s not fair, it’s a cruel world, with hateful people, and very bad things happen to good people, and those wrongs are never righted, and they’re never avenged. And I don’t think God even cares about people like the Gypsies and Mirella and those two poor babies. Even the animals are cruel, even my Anca, when she first came to us she brought her kill into camp—” Her voice broke and she bowed her head, the black fall of her hair hiding her face. “It was a—a—doe, and she—she wasn’t dead—” A small choking sound escaped from her.
Gage knew she was weeping, and he wanted, so badly, to put his arm around her and comfort her, as one would a child grieving over a dead puppy. But he knew Nadyha would be horrified if he touched her, so he said in a kind, low, reassuring voice, “I can see how you think God doesn’t care, Nadyha, because you are right about this world. It’s cruel and unjust, with wicked people that prosper, and good people that suffer.
“But that wasn’t God’s doing, you know. When He made the world, it was in perfect balance, and it was full of His love. When Adam and Eve fell, not only did all people fall into sin, but the whole earth fell into sin, and it became the hard, brutal place that you and I know now. Even Anca, she isn’t wicked, she’s just the way she is because of human sin. God didn’t make her the way she is now, to be a killer. He made her a wondrous, gorgeous animal, and He gave her herbs and grasses to eat. But once the world fell into sin, it started working by the Devil’s rules—predators and prey. Animals and humans.”
As he had spoken, she had first furtively wiped her face with a corner of her apron, and then, when he started to talk about Anca, she straightened her bowed shoulders and turned to look at him with both wonder and disbelief on her ever-changing features. She said, “Is that true? What you said, you thought of it? And you tell me now, because I don’t believe that Dovvel cares?”
“It’s in the Bible,” Gage answered patiently. “I just said it differently, that’s all. But it’s all true. Just like the only way that God could give us a chance to escape from the devil, and our own sin, was to send His Son, Jesus, to us, to take our place, to take our sin, and to die for it instead of us.”
“But the part about the animals,” she said insistently. “Is that true?”
“It is all true. You know the story of Adam and Eve, right?”
“Oh, yes, the serpent, and the fruit, and God made them animal skins to wear.”
“Yes, I think that must have been from the first predator’s kill,” Gage sighed. “Because until Adam and Eve sinned, the animals were meant to eat herbs and grass and, I can’t remember the exact verse, but I can show it to you.”
“I want to see. I want to read it myself.”
“I’ll show it to you.” He smiled at her tentatively. She had lost that dreadfully sad look, and now seemed lively and curious. He went on lightly, “They could talk then, too, the animals. Before the fall.”
“The Bible doesn’t say that!”
“Maybe not. But it’s always kind of struck me that God and Adam kind of interviewed all of the animals to find a suitable mate for Adam. None of them would do, of course, but I can’t imagine that they would have wasted their time ‘interviewing’ the same mute animals that we know. And too, Eve wasn’t a bit surprised when that snake started talking to her. It seems like if animals didn’t talk, she might have turned and hightailed it away from that tree first thing when that old Devil said, ‘Hi, there.’”
Nadyha laughed, the deep bubbling up of delight, as if from her innermost being. “You make me laugh, gajo. I never thought—anyway, I don’t really know the Bible verses, because most of what I’ve learned about the Bible is from our teacher and Baba Simza telling us the lils.”
“Bible stories, yes. It’s kind of amazing how many people know the stories but they really don’t know the verses. So you had a teacher? You went to school?”
“Oh, yes, the Perrados have been teaching Gypsy children to read and write for a long time.”
“I noticed that you all are very well-spoken,” Gage said thoughtfully. “Do you go to church? I mean, did you, before you had to leave?”
Nadyha answered evenly, “Always the Gypsies have been forced to take on the religion of their masters. But we’ve never been allowed to go to their churches.” Her eyes narrowed as she went on, “There is a Gypsy lil, that I wouldn’t know was true except Kako Perrados said all of his fathers kept writings about their family and their slaves. Once, gajo, our word for God was Devvell”—she pronounced it “deh-VEL”—“and one of Kako Perrados’s fathers, many many years ago, heard the Gypsies in their camp praying to amaro deary Devvell. He thought we were praying to the devil, your devil, that we call beng.” Her jaw hardened. “There were t
errible men in the church back then. Perrados told the priests, and four Gypsies were burned.”
“And so you had to change it to ‘doh-VEL.’ But Nadyha, you’re smart, you’ve been educated, you know, that those kinds of things have happened to many, many peoples down through the ages, not just the Gypsies. Surely you understand that that’s exactly why Jesus had to come down here, to be a human man, and to die for our sins. He died even for those men that burned your fathers, and He died for me, and for you. You understand about that, don’t you?” he said earnestly.
“I know it in my head,” she said, laying her hand against her forehead, “but it doesn’t help here.” She laid her hand on her heart. Then she rose and said, “Baba Simza was right; it’s going to rain soon. Come with me, I’ll show you where our horses are, and how we hid them, even from Kako Perrados,” she said gleefully. “And from the Blue Beasts.”
Following her, Gage said, “You know, I have to ask—did you say you took your houses to build your vardos? You mean, you stole your houses?”
Nadyha tossed her head. “Just like a gaje, Gypsies steal all the time. We took them, yes, but we didn’t steal them. How can you steal from yourself? They were our houses.”
Gage grinned. “Don’t get your feathers all ruffled. I just think it’s funny, and it’s great. No one but the Gypsies would have thought of that.”
She looked pleased. Heading due west, they soon came to another big clearing, and it was filled with so much red clover that it looked like a red carpet. Tinar, Saz, and Cayenne were grazing away happily. They raised their heads as Gage and Nadyha approached, and Tinar gave a whinny of recognition. To Gage’s amusement, Matchko was lying on Tinar’s back, sprawled sideways, his legs hanging limply down on each side. They went to pet the horses, and Matchko took offense, because he jumped down and stalked back off in the direction of the camp, his tail waving high and indignantly. Gage and Nadyha laughed, and Gage said, “I’ve got to tell you, you have the most interesting pets I’ve ever seen. They all have the most definite personalities, much more so than some people.”
“They do, even Rai. He doesn’t stay at the camp much, it seems as if he just gets lonely sometimes and visits.” She waved to her left. “Over there is another pasture, and we planted it with dûrvâ grass. And then, past that, is Anca’s killing ground,” she said in a low voice, stepping closer to Saz and stroking his nose gently. “That—that time, Niçu took the doe from her and dragged it out to a clearing. Since that time she takes her kills there. After she hunts, we see the vultures.” She pointed to the sky and made a circular motion.
“I see,” Gage said quietly. He stepped close to her, stroking Saz’s neck, but not touching Nadyha in any way. “Anca’s very smart, then. If she does that, she must sense that that’s what you want.”
Nadyha nodded. “Yes, I know. I feel more for Anca than I do for most people. Baba Simza says that’s wrong, and maybe it is. But I can’t help it.”
“No,” Gage agreed softly, “sometimes you can’t help who you love.”
IN THE NEXT TWO weeks, as Gage observed the Gypsies, he realized how true Baba Simza’s words were. They had a secret life that he suspected very few gaje had ever seen. They were different from him, from Denny, from the culture he lived in. They spoke Gypsy some of the time, English some of the time, and a mixture of both some of the time. Gage had trouble comprehending why they went back and forth, and he asked Baba Simza about it.
“Romany, we have the words for—” With both of her hands she touched her mouth, nose, eyes, ears, and then rubbed her thumbs against her fingertips.
“Physical things,” Gage said.
“Hai. But we have no words for longing, sorrow, heart, soul, spirit, joy. Even our word for love, camova, is about the physical. So we use Gypsy for everyday things, for simple things, but we use English for the other things, the ideas.”
Gage then asked Nadyha to write down some Gypsy words since he would like to learn some of them. She laughed and said, “Romany, it’s not a written language, only spoken, passed down from father to son and mother to daughter since oldest times. And even if it were, I wouldn’t write it down for a gaje.” But she had still been smiling.
That was another thing; they laughed and smiled much more than Gage thought they would. He had the impression from what he’d heard that they were a melancholy, stern people. Indeed, Niçu and Mirella and Baba Simza, with their earthy skin color and dark eyes and jutting cheekbones looked severe when their faces were at rest. Though Nadyha was colored so differently from them, she too had a smooth, expressionless face that gave nothing away when she was concentrating on something. But all four of them seemed to be in a good humor every day, laughing at Boldo’s antics, or at each other. Niçu, Nadyha, and Simza had the same type of cutting humor, while Mirella’s sensibilities were much more gentle. Sometimes, in fact, Gage caught a look of distant sadness or regret in her face as she worked. Knowing about her two lost babies, he thought he understood.
The other thing that struck him was how industrious they were. All four of them worked from dawn to dusk; he found out that they took their goods to the French Market in New Orleans, usually one weekend a month, to sell. The women sewed, and they had two table-looms and they wove colorful madras scarves and shawls. All of them made baskets; Gage went with Nadyha once to the canebrake, and helped her gather the reeds. Niçu made tinware, some useful, some decorative. He was fascinated with Gage’s mucket, for he’d never seen one, and he immediately made a dozen of them, all intricately etched. No two of his plates, cups, buckets, even the tin covers he made for the jars of some of the herbs, were alike. In addition, he made wooden goods, useful boxes with handles, all gaily painted like their vardos, and decorative wooden fencing that could be bought in five-foot lengths, with spindles and curlicues and etched designs.
As Baba Simza had said, and Nadyha had told them, Denny was fully recovered within a week. He was feeble, to be sure, but with a will he pitched in to work, helping Niçu handle his tin sheets, working the bellows for the forge, helping Nadyha and Mirella stretch and dry the reeds for the baskets, even helping Mirella cook, for he bragged that he was an excellent chef.
One day Nadyha brought what looked like a pile of black and white fabrics to Gage’s and Denny’s “camp” by the willow tree. With mock disdain she said, “Baba Simza says, ‘Withholdeth notteth goodeth from them to whometh it is due, wheneth it is in the powereth of thine hand to do it.’ I didn’t check that Proverb, but I’ll bet she got it backwards, just like she did the lil of the Good Samaritan.”
It was two plain white shirts, and two pair of black trousers, just as Niçu always wore. The only thing different about the Gypsy shirts was that they were tightly gathered around the yoke, and had fuller sleeves. Denny was about the same size as Niçu, and so his clothing fit very well. Gage’s shirts were just a bit tight across the shoulders, though not so much that they were uncomfortable. His trousers, too, were a little short, but it didn’t matter because he always tucked his breeches into his knee-high boots anyway. Gage reflected that Baba Simza was a good Christian, indeed, because she seemed to have learned what must have been a hard lesson for her about charity. It didn’t occur to him that she had learned it from his example.
In spite of his growing insights into the Gypsies, Gage was convinced that the only reason he came to know and understand them as well as he did was when, after he and Denny had been with them for five days, the Gypsies began to dance and sing at night. Niçu had told Gage that they did almost every night, but because Denny had been so ill—and, too, because Baba Simza was injured and retired very early in the days after she’d got caught in the trap—they hadn’t thought that dancing and singing were fitting.
On that night Baba Simza announced after supper that on this evening they would dance and sing. Nadyha and Mirella clapped their hands, and the three grandchildren rushed into the vardos to get their instruments.
Gage and Denny were open-mouthed when Mirel
la and Nadyha came out of the wagons.
Mirella was wearing a full, green skirt the color of summer grass, with a bright pink scarf wrapped around her waist. Her blouse was in their usual style, gathered at the neck, with short puffed sleeves; this one’s neckline was cut a little wider than her workaday clothes and showed more shoulder but not more cleavage. It was sunny yellow with tiny pink flowers. Her diklo, or head scarf, was of woven madras in all the rainbow of colors—except for red, Gage noted. It had the coins suspended as a fringe all around it. Gage knew now that they weren’t really coins; they were clever little tin ornaments that Niçu made, and stamped with figureheads to look like coins. Mirella was wearing a necklace of these tokens that were so highly polished they gleamed silver in the firelight.
Nadyha was wearing a rainbow-colored skirt and a white peasant blouse. But over it she wore a tight-fitting, low-cut tan leather vest that laced up the front, and she wore her knife, her churo, at her waist. Her diklo was brown and black and a dark burnt-orange color, with gold threads shot through it and Niçu’s coins, covered with gold leaf, fringing it. Around her waist were two scarves, one purple and one striped green and blue, and both scarves had the tin coins fringing it so she made a small clinking metallic sound every time she moved. She was wearing heavy gold hoop earrings and also a gold necklace much like Mirella’s, only the coins were smaller and there were fewer of them.
“Gosh! You two ladies look just beautiful!” Denny gaped.
Niçu rolled his eyes and muttered, “dilo gaje.” But he, too, had put on some accessories for the occasion. He wore a bright blue sash tied at his side, with a knife stuck in it. His black boots looked new, with a diamond design worked into the uppers with brown leather.
Baba Simza and Nadyha played guitar. Mirella played either guitar or recorder. Niçu played violin. He played first, a solo, and the strains of the song, in a minor key, were so haunting and elusive that Gage felt he was almost spellbound. Every note resounded in him; it made him think of poignant, bittersweet but not depressing memories, such as saying good-bye to Ebenezer Jones, and when his favorite teacher had died, happily going home to Jesus after a long illness. This music made him long for a home that he had never had.
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