Summer of The Dancing Bear

by Bianca Lakoseljac

  Encouraged by Goya’s nod, Kata and Maja each took a shard of pottery. What kind of magical power could this lucky charm bring? Kata wondered. Goya’s voice rose above the others as she addressed Jasmine’s rom: “You promise to leave my Jasmine, my fragrant flower, when you not love her any more?” The groom nodded. Then Jasmine promised the same. Goya asked her final question: “Respect, be husband and wife, as many years as pieces of this vase?” The couple agreed.

  “Is this marriage real?” whispered Maja.

  “Goya is the tribal Puri Dai, grandmother,” Lorca said. “A female counterpart to the chief. So, yes.”

  “Why is Jasmine’s ceremony different?” Kata asked.

  “Traditions. Many tribes and many customs. My sister chose the parts that suit her. It was Jasmine’s will.”

  “What happens after the time runs out?” Maja asked. “What about, ‘until death do you part’? Isn’t marriage forever?”

  “It is forever,” Lorca aid laughing, “but only as long as the married couple wish it to be. When the time runs out, if it runs out, they could separate. Or break another jug.”

  The girls exchanged dubious glances.

  “We love freedom, and freedom in love should be no exception,” Lorca continued. “The notion of ‘love’ should not imprison. It should be boundless and invigorating as the blowing wind.”

  Kata was unnerved by Lorca’s rare poetic demeanour. This was the second time she had noticed it; the first being when he had sung about love being as free as the wind.

  “Imprison the wind within walls and you turn it into stale air,” he said. “Chain ‘love’ to ‘forever,’ and you turn it into duty and possession.”

  Kata felt queasy. Love must be free and invigorating. The same stanza that sounded so enticing when sung now seemed ambiguous. Free to do what? Melt like butter under that woman’s hand as she – bangles clicking and clanging – rumpled his hair? She envisioned him making that same declaration in a ceremonious manner, as if he were clan chief officiating at a wedding: “You must love each other freely!”

  How would that apply to her as the bride, to him as the groom? At this very instant she did not feel free or invigorated by her love for him. She’d been puzzled but now she felt dismal and hopeless. At the same time, his words were far more enticing than any marriage vows she’d ever heard.

  She felt a twinge of something she could not describe. Anxiety about his perpetual smirk? At this moment, his grin seemed bitter, as if recalling some hurtful memory. He glanced at her, but not in any special, meaningful way. Suddenly, all those phrases about love seemed hollow, as if he didn’t believe what he’d said. Do I belong in those stanzas? Could he ever see me in his lyrics about love?

  Kata felt betrayed, somehow. As if he excluded the present from his words, the moments that belonged to her. He excluded her. His cockiness, his smugness, his conceit, they all vexed her. She wished she could raid his thoughts and invade his heart and infect his spirit and make him pine for her. If only she had the gypsy love potion that worked wonders, according to Roza.

  But the longer she stared at him the more quickly hope seeped away. I am the only one who would pine and wither away like Narcissus. Yet there is no one like him.

  She suddenly felt as if she were drowning … like the stray bee she’d watched sink in the freshly-drawn honey being poured in jars … the honey her father harvested from beehives in the orchard. Could she ever fit in Lorca’s life?

  Chapter XVIII

  The Blacksmith

  After Jasmine’s wedding, Kata continued visiting the camp as the festivities went on and on. This night she returned home early. It was not yet midnight, and here she was in Grandma’s room. Her stomach churned with hunger pains. She had skipped dinner, escaping scrutiny of table manners: back straight; elbows off the table; fork in the left hand, knife in the right; no talking while chewing. She preferred the gypsies’ easy-going approach to meals, sitting cross-legged or leaning against a tree, food in hand. But this evening, even the fragrance of warm cornbread could not raise her appetite, not after Goya’s sudden words: “Madrid. Get message. Must go. Soon.”

  Kata needed to think. Needed to find her place in this latest complication.

  There was a knock at the door: “Kata, open up.”

  Her mother? The only time she came to the guesthouse was to tidy up for visitors.

  “You in there?” her mother called again. “Open the door.”

  Kata turned the large iron key protruding loosely from the brass lock. She pulled on the door handle and rattled the purple glass pane wedged between the green and yellow one in the row of rectangular inserts arranged across the door. That glass should be fixed, Grandma had warned shortly before she died. Kata knew it was her own fault that the glass was loose to start with. Gently, she pressed the palm of her left hand on the pane, and pulled at the door with her right. But the glass insert rattled again, like a distant school bell. She stared at it, memories from early school years surfacing.

  Miss “Hygiene’s” class. Hygiene! Hygiene! The teacher’s voice barks in Kata’s head. Forgotten your handkerchief! Again! Dead silence. Each student’s hands resting neatly over a folded hankie, backs straight, all eyes on the single dot drawn on the blackboard. Shallow breathing. Kata holds her hands out, palms upturned, closes her eyes. Her heart pounds. The first slash burning the skin. More slashing. More burning. She opens her eyes. The ruler whizzes in the air. The door is ajar, only a few steps away.

  She makes a run through the classroom doorway, down the long corridor, along the cement walk to the schoolyard gate, across the paved road, onto the well-trod path through farm fields that takes her home. She slows down and breathes freely. Then realizes she must get home fast and runs until all breath is drawn from her. In Grandma’s room, she’s safe at last. Grabs her handkerchief from the ironing board where she’d left it, and runs back out. She slams the door behind her and it groans and rattles and the glass inserts clink. She dashes down the verandah steps, across the lawn and bends down to fasten her shoelace. A heavy arm lands on her shoulder. Her mother’s face looms above, screaming. A slash of a stick on bare legs. More screaming, slashing. Skin burning. “Run! Run!” Grandma yells from the barnyard. Kata is trapped, lying on the grass. Grandma is trotting, her footsteps unusually heavy, closer and closer. She is above her now, pulling on her mother, yelling, “Run, Kata, run!”

  “Open up, Kata. I know you’re in there.”

  Kata shook off the memory and unlocked the door.

  Dare she look her mother in the eye? She must be angry. Otherwise, why would she be here?

  She glanced at her mother’s face. It was beautiful, even when compared to Jasmine’s. Back when Grandma told the story about the nymph who hoped to soften Zeus’ heart, Kata pictured her mother. When Grandma described the nymph loosening her dark, knee-length hair, Kata saw her mother’s shining tresses. And when Grandma spoke of the nymph’s turquoise eyes, Kata thought that even the nymph could not possess eyes more beautiful than her mother’s.

  Warily, she looked at her mother. To Kata’s surprise, she saw no trace of anger.

  “I know about your visits with the gypsies,” her mother declared, sitting on Grandma’s bed and sounding like one of the announcers reading the six o’clock news. “Miladin said you’re planning to run away with your gypsy boy.”

  Kata stared at the laced fingers in her lap as if she’d never seen those hands before. What could she say? She was mute. Was the play about to begin? Scenes about to start evolving: the screaming, the striking, the hysterics? She knew her part in the drama. Even if it had been a few years since the last performance. And while she had no lines to memorize since she preferred to play her part silently, the plot had always remained unchanged.

  The turquoise eyes were still, not a flicker.

  “I came to see what you’ve been doing there, at the camp.” The statue remained frozen. “You’ve been going there every night, haven’t you?” Kata took
in a shallow breath. Her stomach turned rancid. “You seemed quite at home. Aren’t you going to say anything? Do you feel at home with them?”

  Kata looked up into her mother’s eyes and nodded, amazed at the calm she saw there.

  “I haven’t been much of a mother to you.” Kata winced. This play was different than the others. “Have I?”

  The thought that she should run to her mother’s embrace and shout: But you could be, you could, flashed through Kata’s mind, then fizzled.

  “Come and sit next to me.”

  The statue clambered onto the bed.

  Her mother lifted an arm as if about to embrace her. But instead, her hands fidgeted with a fold of skirt.

  “I’ve got a confession to make,” she said, looking down at her hands. “Seeing you with them like that, I realized. I’ve got to tell you. I never thought I’d have to. That it would come to this.”

  Kata was startled to hear a touch of guilt, and became wary of the calmness. To the point where the statue might disintegrate. But she realized that if she let her guard down, all hell might break loose.

  “After your grandpa died, gypsies worked for us, helping Grandma. But then you know that.”

  Still fiddling with her skirt, her mother talked about the winter before Kata was born, the winter Grandma broke her hip and needed extra help with the farm chores. Kata listened to the distant voice, about a distant time when her parents had teaching jobs in town and came to the farm only on weekends, before they moved back to run it.

  As her mother described that bitter winter, Kata wondered what kind of a teacher she’d been. Could she recite the botanical names of plants? Did she have a beautiful singing voice? Did she ever slash her students with a ruler? She must have been a better teacher than she was a farmer as she performed all farm chores resentfully – never seeming comfortable with other farm wives. Grandma always sheltered her as if she were incompetent or fragile – as if she might break under hard work.

  “One of the men was a blacksmith, an expert with horses,” her mother said. “He was thin, tall, with a wiry build. Full of energy. An unusual-looking man.” She smiled. “I thought him rather unpleasant until I got to know him. Then I realized he had a certain charm. Magnetism you could call it.”

  Kata thought it strange that her mother talked about a man other than her father. But then she never talked about her father. He was just there.

  “The blacksmith stayed for a week, and then another. He said work was slow in winter. His men could cover for him.”

  Kata felt tired, her eyes heavy. Her mother stood up as if ready to leave but then abruptly sat down again. “I must tell you, Kata. Or I may never again find the courage.”

  She rose and began pacing. Then stopped right in front of Kata.

  “There was this intensity in his eyes,” she said. “When he looked at me, he burned a hole in my soul.” She uttered these words urgently, as if she’d been waiting an eternity to release them. “Kata, I see that intensity in your eyes,” she said.

  She placed her hand under her daughter’s chin and lifted her face, looking long and hard into her eyes. For a moment Kata felt as if she would crack under her mother’s gentle touch. But at her mother’s next words, she jumped off the bed and backed away.

  “Kata, he was there, at the camp. That’s when I realized I must tell you.”

  “Tell me what?”

  “I think you know.”

  “Know what?” Kata shouted, not believing her nerve.

  “He’s your father, Kata. He’s your father.”

  For a moment, they stared at each other in silence. Then her mother moved toward Kata as if to offer an embrace. Kata stepped even further back.

  “He slept in that room over the barn. That was my special place. As a child, I used to hide up there when I was sad or lonely. It felt so high, the view so long.” Her mother looked at her as if expecting something more. Then shrugged her shoulders. “I don’t know what else to say. I just thought you should know.”

  “Did you love him?” Kata yelled.

  “What does it matter now,” her mother said with a wave of her hand. But the twist in her lips told another story. Her china doll face wrinkled up, as if she’d taken a spoon of Grandma’s wormwood fermented in slivovica that still sat in a bottle on the kitchen shelf.

  “I need to know. Did you love him?”

  “I … really don’t know,” her mother said. “I think it was more a need, loneliness.” She paused. “I can’t say it was love. Perhaps it was. Who’s to know?” She stood for a moment, lost in thought. “I could see myself loving a man like him. In another life, maybe. Not in this one.” Her face twitched into an almost-smile.

  “Desire, some called it,” she said, grimacing. “What did they know? Disgrace. Shame. Lust. Pointing a finger is all anybody knows.”

  She looked straight at her daughter. “You’ve always been different. When you were only four, one night you woke up screaming. You said somebody was killing the peacocks in the gate. You wouldn’t stop. So Grandma got us all up and we lit a lantern and took you to the gate to show you that the peacocks were just made of copper. Well, the next day we found out that a young woman in the village had died in the night.”

  “Angela’s sister? Is that who it was?” Kata voice was trembling.

  “Yes. Yes it was. How did you know? We never talked about it again. Thought it was better left alone.” Her mother shrugged. “I never thought I’d say this. I think it’s your gypsy spirit. Use your gypsy spirit wisely, Katarina. Use it wisely.”

  She turned and walked out of the room. The glass door rattled behind her and the loose pane looked ready to fall.

  ****

  The gnarled tree is my father, the gnarled tree is my father, whirled in Kata’s head. She buried her face in the feather pillow and felt herself sinking into Grandma’s embrace, hearing her whisper: All is well that ends well.

  “But there is no end to this story,” Kata barked at the empty room. She went to the dresser and opened the top drawer. Beneath all the trinkets, she spotted the corner of her old school notebook and pulled it out. List of Puzzling Questions Without Answers, she read aloud from the cover. She inserted a finger under the cover and lifted it, only to snatch it away and stuff the book back in the drawer. None of these questions mattered. Only one. The one that now superseded all others.

  Am I the child of love? A woman must love her man with her whole heart and soul. Or am I only … only a child of lust … or desire? Those ominous words loomed again. My spirit, weakened by lack of love? By this out-of-control thing called desire? Is that all I feel for Lorca? How would I know what love is?

  Kata saw her face in the mirror across the room. The expression resembled her mother’s as she told Kata that loving the gypsy would have been hopeless.

  “Perhaps it was love,” Kata murmured, repeating her mother’s words.

  She crossed the room and stared into the mirror. “Tresses like horsetail, like a gypsy’s,” Roza used to say when braiding Kata’s hair. She ran her fingers through hair that hung past her shoulders, stuck out this way and that, and wiggled itself out of every hairband she owned. She liked the blackness of it, even the red highlights caught by the sun. But she often wished it were more like friends’ hair, silky like Maja’s, or buttery blonde like Lena’s.

  She disliked the figure in the mirror, wishing she could reshape it like putty – skinny legs, inconspicuous breasts, high-bridged nose, ears poking out of the coarse hair. She stared at her own eyes again, light green with yellow specks. Not turquoise like her Mother’s, not leaf green like Lorca’s, not ice-blue like Van Gogh’s, and not black like her father’s – at least the man she’d thought was her father. And then she remembered that the gnarled tree, her biological father, also had dark eyes. Her own eyes did not resemble those of anyone she knew, only the green marble she’d traded to Miladin many years ago for a bubble-gum card of Richard Chamberlain.

  Nor could she see the inte
nsity described so emphatically by her mother. Yet the thought of having this special intensity made her feel strong, defiant – the way she had felt when Papa Novak found music in her voice.

  In the mirror, Grandma’s spinning wheel was silhouetted in a dark corner. Kata wished that she could fall into a deep 100-year sleep, like the princess who pricked herself on a spindle. Then she could wake up some day, after all the confusing questions without answers had been resolved.

  Chapter XIX

  Under The Gypsy Moon

  The dead swallow under the blue hyacinth lifts her wings and sweeps toward the sky. I run, try to catch up with her. Her shimmering feathers grow longer and longer, taking the shape of a woman. The swallow/woman turns her head and looks at me with her turquoise eyes – long dark tunnels. They are now my father’s eyes, burning holes in my soul, beckoning me to run faster, faster. Not catching up with the swallow/woman’s eyes, with my father’s eyes, is worse than death. She raises a flute to her lips and blows an ominous tune: “Sleep my little baby, sleep in the night, sleep in your cradle, under moonlight …” I scream: “No! Not Angela’s lullaby!” Two figures run toward me. But this is no longer a dream.

  She stared at the approaching figures.

  “Kata? Is that you?” Lorca’s voice, surprised yet somehow warmer than usual.

  Sheepishly, she stepped out of the shadow.

  Her mother’s warning echoed in her head, Stop hallucinating, stop running from reality. Now, those instructions seemed futile. Where did reality end and unreality start?