The Stolen

by T. S. Learner

  A gypsy stared back at him: hollowed cheeks (when was the last time he ate properly?) and haunted eyes ringed by exhaustion. He would shave his beard before leaving. He looked back at himself knowing what he must do, then, after filling the sink with freezing water from a nearby jug, splashed it on his face, the cold jolting him into complete alertness.

  On the other side of the caravan, in the lower bed alcove, the beak of her nose just visible beyond his daughter’s shoulder, Keja muttered in her sleep. Matthias glanced over, struck by the comforting intimacy of being surrounded by people he had not even known a month ago, yet now was linked to inextricably by blood, even by love. Even in their repose he felt the connections between the sleeping figures and himself weaving in and out, like their breathing. For the first time in his life, he had an inkling of the real meaning of family.

  Outside a cockerel crowed. He had to leave, and soon. He glanced at his watch. He knew there was an eight o’clock flight to Paris and from there he could take a flight direct to Jaipur. His stomach growled loudly, insistently. He reached for the coffee pot sitting on the gas ring. There was still coffee in it. He fired up the ring then took up his briefcase, which had been leaning against the caravan wall like some absurdly incongruous prop from a past life. Past life. Yes, that’s what it feels like, he decided, and all the adrenalin, the fear and the sheer horror of being unjustly vilified faded with the excitement of what lay ahead.

  Inside the briefcase was the thousand US dollars he’d managed to withdraw from the bank and a couple of credit cards, a couple of small magnets, the piece from the original statuette, and the information Jorges Hatiwais had given him about the crater site. The only passport he had was the fake one Latcos had made up for the East Germany trip, but it would have to do. The coffee pot’s lid rattled and he leaned over and began pouring himself a cup.

  ‘Off somewhere?’ Helen was looking down at him from the bunk, her auburn hair tangled.

  ‘The airport, as soon as I’ve washed and changed my clothes.’

  ‘You’re going to Rajasthan, aren’t you?’ She climbed down, pushing her wild hair away from her face.

  ‘I don’t have a choice; I have to get there before others find it.’

  ‘I’m coming with you.’

  ‘Helen —’

  ‘You’ll need me there.’

  ‘I need you here, to take care of Liliane until I get back.’

  ‘Bullshit. Liliane will be safer hiding out as Keja’s granddaughter here in the camp. I speak a little Hindi, and I know the area. Besides, they’re looking for me as well as you.’

  ‘She’s right, Matthias.’ Latcos was sitting up. ‘You saw how the police reacted yesterday; Liliane is more gypsy than she is Swiss – she disappears a lot easier than you.’ He lit up and inhaled deeply. ‘She is our chey, our daughter. We can hide her without a problem. And they will never think of looking here. Find what you need, then come back to clear your name, and I will take the paintings and the gold to Herr Rechtschild later today. By the time you return arrests will have been made.’

  Matthias turned back to Helen. ‘But how will you get past security? I have the passport I used to get into East Germany, but they know your name.’

  ‘I brought my old passport as well and it’s in my married name. They’re looking for Helen Thorton, not Helen Miller.’

  Matthias looked down at the open briefcase, the fragment of the mysterious ore sitting between the map and his papers; even in the low light it glistened like the surface of some far-away planet. ‘I am so close, if I don’t go now I lose the chance of ever finding it.’ It was a statement made more to himself than the others.

  ‘Go, it’s your birthright as much as mine.’ Latcos slipped off the couch and stepped over. ‘I’ll drive you both to the airport; at this time the road will be empty.’ He reached into his belt and drew out a hunting knife with an ornately carved handle. ‘But you don’t go without this, my brother. It belonged to Yojo, the first thing he purchased when he was liberated by the Allies.’ He pressed the knife into Matthias’s hand.

  Overwhelmed, Matthias faltered. ‘Latcos, I can’t…’

  ‘You can and you will. I have a feeling you will need it – and besides, I’m lending it to you, not giving it to you. You will give it back when I see you again.’ Latcos grinned then placed it in Matthias’s briefcase.

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  The Swiss Restitution and Research organisation of Zürich was on the ground floor of an office block just north of Sihl river. Well-funded by American donors, it had a spacious reception area, a pristine glass prism, with marble underfoot and brightly coloured abstract paintings tastefully hung between the leather sofas and Bauhaus chairs. The reception desk itself was a continuous steel curve behind which a languid brunette was surreptitiously reading a magazine. On the pavement outside Latcos stared up at the sign next to the revolving glass doors for the tenth time, then nodded towards Raga, who stood waiting beside a large wooden crate. The two gypsies began hauling the crate to the rotating glass doors. Latcos, sweating with the effort, walking backwards, carried one end, while Raga walked forward, carrying the other end directing Latcos as he stepped blindly into the revolving door. By the time they placed the wooden crate onto the marble floor of the reception area the security guard was waiting.

  ‘Deliveries are at the back of the building, especially for the likes of you,’ he told the two gypsies, his arms folded over a barrel chest, a small handgun visible in his belt.

  Latcos did not move. ‘Not this time. I’ve been given strict instructions to deliver this crate personally into the hands of Mr Director himself, Herr Javob Rechtschild.’ He pulled Matthias’s letter out of his waistcoat pocket and flourished it in the air. ‘And I have an authorised letter to prove it.’

  The security guard, wrong-footed by Latcos’s confidence, looked at the receptionist, who stepped out from behind the desk. Tapping her way across the marble floor in her high heels, to the admiring glances of both gypsies, she came to a halt and, towering over Latcos, glanced dubiously at the crate.

  ‘Herr Javob Rechtschild is in a meeting until one,’ she announced imperiously, holding her hand out for the letter.

  Ignoring her, Latcos tucked it back into his pocket. ‘In that case we’ll wait for him.’ He gave Raga another nod and they picked up the crate and moved it to the reclining area, then threw themselves down in the leather chairs.

  Liliane sat at her grandmother’s feet, allowing her to plait her hair in the traditional Kalderash way – six plaits for a woman, seven plaits for a maiden – she hadn’t the heart to tell Keja she wasn’t a virgin any more – and already the older woman had started to calculate which male relatives were potential husbands for her.

  Liliane had slept for hours, but images of her imprisonment still played out in her mind every time she closed her eyes. Sitting there in the cosy caravan, the walls hung with brightly coloured embroidered fabrics, the scent of burning herbs and wood fire made her feel as if she’d been transported into another time, a world where life turned over lazily, slowly with Nature and not Man. Nevertheless she could still feel the burning circles the bonds round her wrists had left, and one of her cheeks was swollen. She leaned against Keja’s legs, covered by the long red skirt, soothed by the rhythmic feel of her grandmother’s hands weaving her hair.

  ‘You must keep your hair safe and never let a strand of it fall into the hands of a stranger,’ her grandmother told her solemnly, then stood up. ‘There, it’s done and you look beautiful.’

  Liliane glanced in the small oval mirror and the young woman who stared back was completely gypsy. Marvelling, she touched her plaits. ‘Why keep it safe?’

  ‘Because your hair can be used against you in magical spells. Here, I’ll show you.’ Keja placed a small copper dish filled with water on the stove, then gestured to Liliane to join her. When it began to boil Keja reached into a pocket and pulled out a strand of hair.

  ‘Remember this?’ She hel
d up the strands of brown hair still wound round the button off Liliane’s school coat.

  ‘Destin’s…’ Liliane fought the images that came sweeping back.

  ‘Don’t be afraid. Now we have something of his body we can hurt him as he has hurt you. Watch.’ As she chanted an incantation in Romane she dropped the hair into the bubbling water. Liliane watched her, fascinated and frightened.

  ‘What now?’ she whispered once the old woman had finished.

  ‘Now we wait for news of his death – which will happen sooner rather than later.’

  ‘Are you a witch?’

  ‘Not a witch, a phuri dej, a wise woman. You too, Liliane, you too have the wisdom, if you choose to use it.’

  ‘And Papa?’ she asked, still marvelling that this tiny olive-skinned woman could have been her father’s mother at all. Keja sighed, a long deep sigh that seemed to whistle through her bony frame.

  ‘Your father is different. He was born with an ancient soul, into such evil. He was strong to survive and they took him from me when he was only three months old, but even then I knew he would be a great man.’ She lowered herself into a chair gingerly. ‘You know I wanted to kill him, before he was born. But he was a fighter, and then when I saw him, saw his eyes, I knew he had to live. But I had placed a curse on his father – when he first took me.’

  ‘What kind of curse?’ Liliane asked, surprised.

  ‘You have to understand that the armaja, the gypsy curse, came to our people as a way for us to protect ourselves. There are spirits I, as a phuri dej, can call upon to serve me – Cohani, Mijek, Bibi, Beng. We can all make magical dolls and amulets, but only a woman who knows the spells and has the sight can make them work. As I told you, I am such a woman, and so are you, Liliane. Forgive me, granddaughter, I did not know at the time I would bear a child to such a monster…’

  An uncomfortable truth began to bloom inside the girl, pushing its tendrils out, compelling her to persist. ‘Oma, what kind of curse?’

  Keja stared into the green eyes she knew had looked back through her ancestry generation after generation – the drabarni, the truth-bearer, the hardest role of all. She could not lie to her own blood. ‘That the souls he has destroyed will destroy the souls he will create. A curse upon his children and his children’s children.’

  ‘And – and that’s Papa and me?’

  ‘Yes, and I cannot lift it.’

  ‘Can I?’

  ‘Perhaps.’

  The line of police cars wound down the country road like a silent blue snake. When they came to the junction they took the turn-off leading to the forest.

  The eight-year-old Sinti child had been sent to collect pine cones for burning and was dragging them back across the snow in an old plastic bag he’d found when the sound of a car made him look up. Between the trees he could see the blue of the police cars passing like a flickering light between the tree trunks. For a moment he lost count, then, dropping the pine cones, he ran as fast as he could back to the camp.

  Keja sighed deeply; there was a timing to the teaching but her granddaughter was burdened. ‘One thing I can do is show you how to control your dreams, your visions. Your father told me you have a haunting?’

  Liliane stared at her bitten fingernails. ‘I relive the last moments of my mother’s accident and death, as if she is trying to show and tell me something. It is so vivid it is like it is me dying, over and over and over. But I can’t hear. She says something in those last seconds, I know it, but I can never hear her…’

  ‘If you take me there I will show you how we can close the circle.’

  ‘But I can’t control when I have the vision.’

  ‘Here…’ Keja reached over to a small table on which were laid a variety of seashells and amulets as well as colourful postcards of Ukrainian Orthodox saints. She placed a shell before Liliane and spun it so that it revolved in a whirl of stripes. ‘Watch this only,’ she said and took Liliane’s hand. ‘Trust me, I will be with you.’

  Liliane stared at the blur of pink and grey and then she was there, inside her mother on the mountain, the freezing air whizzing past her nose and cheeks. But this time she could hear everything, feel what her mother was feeling – anxiety with an urge to erase something she’d just discovered through the sheer exhilaration of speed. A bird screeched overhead, tree six, tree seven flashed past. Now Liliane could see a hooded figure on skis high on the crest of the mountain, watching, and he appeared to be holding a small box in his hand.

  Look and learn! Keja’s instructions sounded out in her head, jarring and distinctive, and Liliane forced herself to look through her mother’s eyes. Just then the sound of a helicopter filled the air. Marie looked up, at a helicopter circling overhead, the pilot and the man sitting beside him silhouetted in the domed glass cockpit. The sun moved from behind a cloud, illuminating the passenger clearly. Liliane felt a jolt run through her mother’s body as both she and Marie recognised him.

  ‘Thomas,’ Liliane heard her mother say, before turning back to the man on the crest of the mountain. In that instant the man flattened his hand against the box. There was a dull thud which would have sounded like an avalanche if Liliane hadn’t realised it was the boom of the explosives the man had detonated. Her mother turned as the huge wave of snow, dislodged by the blast, started to cascade down the mountain.

  ‘Baba Keja!’ the sound of a child’s voice jolted Liliane back to reality and the caravan.

  A small child stood in the doorway, chest heaving from the exhilaration of running.

  ‘The police, they’re coming!’

  Liliane sat dazed, gathering her senses.

  Keja stood up. ‘Quick! Into my bed. I am going to tell them you are ill, that you have a fever, measles – something contagious. That will keep them away, and don’t worry, they will find nothing; Latcos has made sure of it.’

  ‘Where is Latcos?’

  ‘In the city on business for your father. But don’t be frightened; they will not take you, I promise.’

  Latcos had been waiting for over an hour; he looked at the pictures of pretty women in the fashion magazines on the coffee table in front of him. He’d played a game of cards with Raga, had five cigarettes, fantasised about the receptionist and had got nervous about the security guard phoning the police. It was time Herr Direktor made an appearance. Just as Latcos decided to approach the receptionist again, a gaunt-looking man in his early forties in a crumpled suit, a great shock of curly hair springing up either side of an otherwise bald pate, emerged from behind a door. He looked at the two gypsies and the wooden crate beside them, a little perplexed, then walked up to Latcos, who immediately stood.

  ‘Herr Direktor Rechtschild?’ he asked, taking his hat off in respect. The man nodded, bemused. Latcos pulled Matthias’s letter from his waistcoat and pressed it into his hand, then indicated the crate. ‘These objects were stolen from your people and mine. The letter explains everything, but you should know the Roma are putting their trust in you. This is a big responsibility – one of the heart and soul. We expect justice and compensation.’

  Then he put his hat back on and walked out with Raga trailing behind.

  Inspector Engels waited by the car as the gypsy families huddled in the cold outside their caravans while the officers searched the vehicles. He’d instructed them to look for either Matthias and his daughter, or evidence that they had been hiding there. So far the search had turned up nothing but some fake Turkish carpets, a few forged working permits and a stolen pig. The gypsies were Sinti, from West Germany, and the leader had explained that they were merely spending the winter there and would move on in the spring when the snow had melted and the roads were clear. The whole place reeked of poverty and moral corruption, Engels told himself; he’d refused to enter the caravans himself, convinced he would get lice or fleas or maybe some other unknown disease. The second-in-command, a young lieutenant originally from the Lausanne canton, stepped out of the trailer parked at the far side of the camp, an
d began to stomp across the mud and snow towards Engels.

  ‘Inspector, we’ve covered all the vehicles now and they’re all Sinti except for the group in the yellow caravan. They appear to be a Romanian family, a young girl and her grandmother. The girl is in bed with measles or mumps – I think that’s what the old woman was trying to describe – something contagious anyhow. We searched anyway – nothing but a few copper pots and bowls, and absolutely no indication that anyone of Matthias’s calibre or anyone civilised had taken shelter there, recently or otherwise.’

  Engels glanced round the camp. A few of the men forced to stand in the cold next to their shivering families stared over hostilely while one of the dogs tied to an old metal rail barked continuously. Just then the sound of a hunting rifle rang out and a flock of starlings rose from the nearby trees, swerving in the air as one shadow-being. If Matthias has ever been here he’s long gone, the inspector thought to himself.