After the previous night’s exchange with her mother, these visions flowed in and out of her mind, awake or asleep: the dead swallow’s eyes, the nymph’s turquoise eyes, her gypsy father’s eyes, one and the same staring at her in the darkness … And now the vision of Angela sitting under the mulberry tree and singing her lullaby. She wrote down the images as if they were scenes in a play. First thing in the morning, she rewrote them again and again, organizing the sequence, filling in the details. She hoped to dissolve the visions and watch them drift away by the end of the day. But they stalked her. It was now past midnight, and here she was at the top of the hill overlooking the encampment where she thought she could finally escape. Still, in the darkness, scenes from her dreams of the previous night marched on like an army conquering new lands.
“Do we all know each other?” Lorca asked.
The reality of her connection to him struck her. I am a gypsy, just like him. But it was the man standing next to Lorca who caught her off guard. She never expected to see him here. It was Stefan, her frog-prince she once pretend-kissed a long time ago.
“Hello Stefan,” Kata muttered. She looked past Lorca into the darkness at the silhouetted figures moving among the tents beyond the smouldering fire, searching for a glimpse of her … father.
He must be here somewhere. Then she saw Jasmine approaching. He must be nearby.
Jasmine sat on the grass, legs folded under her skirt as usual, and began examining the bottom of her foot.
“I can’t find it,” she said, turning her sole toward the moonlight. “But I can feel it. That darn thorn. Blackberry.”
“Picking berries with your husband?” Kata asked.
“Just us girls.”
Is that what gypsies did on their honeymoon? And where could her husband be?
“Probably staring at you,” Lorca said laughing. “That thorn you stepped on.” With an exaggerated flourish, he performed a low curtsy and recited:
Bajo la luna gitana,
Las cosas la estan mirando
Y ella no puede mirarlas.
Jasmine narrated the translation ending each line with a question:
Under the gypsy moon?
Things are staring at her?
Things she cannot see?
“Reciting poetry, again,” Jasmine said, smirking. “Garcia Lorca, his namesake.”
Stefan grinned: “The first time he met Angela, he rhymed off those very same verses. Sure got her attention, my pralo. Have to say, I wished I could’ve made such an impression on her.”
Lorca knew Angela? And Lorca reciting poetry? Kata was baffled and slightly uneasy. She had found comfort in his ordinary brooding stance. Now, for the third time since she had been welcomed to the camp, he appeared strangely boisterous, carefree. Three times – like the bad omens. She suddenly felt queasy.
“He’s memorized Garcia’s every line,” Jasmine said. “That’s why he is Goya’s favourite. Always has been.”
“And you expect to find a thorn in your foot by the light of the moon?”
Ignoring Lorca’s mockery, Jasmine turned to Kata and continued: “The love of Goya’s life she told you about? Well, that was our boro dad, our great-grandfather. He was a close friend of the poet.”
“Was he from Spain?” Kata asked. “The poet? Like your clan? Is your husband also from Spain?”
“Yes. We keep close ties. Last time in Granada, we were in Sacro Monte. Went to the cueva, cave home of Lola Medina. At one time, Lola was the most celebrated gypsy dancer of all.”
“Your husband is from Spain as well?” Kata persisted.
As if not hearing the question, Jasmine continued: “Our Goya discovered a plaque with an inscription: ‘In this cueva Federico Garcia Lorca wrote many of his gypsy poems.’ Goya just stood there, eyes closed, swaying to the rhythm of her own humming. She would’ve been happy to remain there forever.” She leaned over and lightly patted Kata’s hand: “But for her gypsy spirit calling her to follow the winds.”
“Goya was a dancer in Sacro Monte,” Lorca said. “That was before our boro dad was killed.”
“Killed?” Kata said, while recalling Grandma’s words: “We’ve both lost our husbands.”
“Taken to the Sremska Mitrovica concentration camp in 1942,” Jasmine answered. “The last Goya knew of him.”
“Perished in the Holocaust,” Lorca added. “One of the half-million gypsies.”
These last few sentences clung to Kata like magnets. She had heard stories about gypsies stealing children, stealing horses, robbing graves, using black magic or the evil eye to cast spells and even cause people to die. But she couldn’t remember villagers talking about gypsies being killed by the Nazis – except for Papa Novak. He’d once said to Grandma:
“Our people were slaughtered by the thousands, my dear, we all know that. But our position was different. We weren’t sought out like the Jews and the gypsies. We were targeted for refusing to cooperate with the Nazis and so we were called White Jews. Many of our people were killed in retribution for fallen Nazi soldiers, or for hiding our Jewish friends.”
At the time, Kata had been uncertain what all this meant. She thought of the schoolchildren in Kragujevac who were killed by the Nazis. Do the reasons matter? Was her grandfather killed for hiding his Jewish friends? Why did they have to hide? As she grew older, facts trickled in until the big picture emerged, the millions of Jews killed, not just the grownups but also children – linking with the five and three zeros killed in Kragujevac. And now the gypsies as well. The gruesomeness loomed over her, enormous and unfathomable.
“Goya still talks about the time they spent with the poet, as if it were yesterday,” Jasmine said. “The golden years of her life, as she put it, before the wars began.”
“Goya’s seen much death in her life,” Stefan said.
“Yet does not mourn,” Lorca said, his carefree demeanour gone. “Instead, she honours her loved ones in her stories and songs. But Uncle Grizzly’s death crushed her. Her last grandson.”
“We’ll find the truth,” Jasmine declared. ”It’s Goya’s wish. She must know before she joins the love of her life in the fragrant meadow of heaven.”
Lorca turned to Stefan: “After Grizzly’s death, your letter, your belief in our uncle’s innocence meant the world to us, my friend.”
“Your uncle’s death was no accidental drowning,” Stefan said. “It was murder of an innocent man.”
“We can’t bring our uncle back, but we can clear his name,” Lorca said. “To be suspected of such a hideous crime – of killing that baby. Or that young woman, Angela.”
“Until that crime is solved, everybody’s guilty. Every gypsy in this clan. The police are still looking for …” Stefan looked at Jasmine and stopped mid-sentence.
“There is only one way,” Lorca said. “Find the truth.”
****
What do I know about my father? I found nothing at the camp. It’s all talk about wars and death. And here in the village, more talk about wars and death. And gossip about Angela’s baby.
That night Kata dreamed she was in a school play. She stood on the stage and stared at the audience. They were her neighbours, in their raggedy work clothes, not like the audiences she saw at the Belgrade theatre, all dressed up and cultured, as Grandma used to say. And the villagers were laughing.
As far as she could see were faces contorted in laughter, an endless mosaic of gaping mouths of crooked teeth and dark gaps. Why where they laughing at her? The scene was evolving as it should. Her part was silent. It was cast that way – a new version of the old play. Suddenly she realized she was an imposter. This part belonged to Angela who was now staring at her – eyes deeply recessed burning through the matted hair shadowing her pale face; one side of her skirt torn away; dried blood from a neglected wound on her calf dribbling down to her foot – just as Kata had seen her by the well all those years back. She held a baby in her arms.
Kata stepped closer in disbelief.
“Angela, is that you? And your baby? Thank god! I thought you were dead!”
“Only the truth can set you free,” Angela whispered.
“It’s all your fault! You made that holy water that wasn’t holy!” the village chorus yelled. Kata sat up in bed, drenched in sweat, heart pounding, orange and blue circles pulsating in the darkness before her.
Chapter XX
Do Not Speak A Dead Man’s Name
I’ll look him in the eye. He’ll see it. See the intensity in my eyes. He’ll know.
No he won’t, silly. How could he?
I’ll tell Jasmine. He’s her husband. She’ll help.
No, no. Bad plan. She could hate me.
He might be by the fire, where I saw him the first night at the camp, poking the embers with a stick.
Kata stumbled along the path through the fields. With no moon, the skies were sooty. As she emerged from the cornfield, Kata thought she heard footsteps and looked back at the path behind her – it gaped like a tunnel. She shuddered and broke into a full-out gallop toward the encampment.
I need to see him. Talk to him.
And say what?
Anything. He is my father.
That means nothing to him. Your own father never talks to you. Never looks you in the eye. Why should the gypsy be any different? You know nothing about him.
From the edge of the embankment she stared down at the campfire, mystified by the angry commotion below.
Unwilling to walk into the cluster of raised voices, she picked an apple from the fruit basket she’d brought as a gift, and bit hard into it. She paused, stopped chewing, and listened: there was moaning, then sobbing in the darkness.
“Who’s there?” she called out.
A slumped figure under a tree shifted. Kata ran over and kneeled next to the woman curled on the grass. She unwrapped the shawl from the woman’s head and gasped: “Jasmine?” Voluminous hair concealed the woman’s face. Kata gently brushed it back with her hand.
Jasmine looked up, bewildered, murmuring in another language. Then she grabbed Kata’s hand: “Come with me.”
The two stood at the top of the hillock and looked down at the furious, yelling assembly of gypsies that encircled something, someone. Jasmine tugged at Kata’s hand and they charged down the hill.
Seconds later, they stood in the midst of the angry crowd. Two men, one on each side, held a third under his arms, supporting his limp body and dragging feet. A burlap sack was pulled over his head. He was propped up for a moment, towering awkwardly over the two men, then allowed again to slump, bloody knees scraping the dust. The crowd shouted at him as he was flung, like a pile of rags, on the trampled patch of earth that had served as the dance floor two nights before. He lay motionless.
“Is he dead?” Kata gasped.
“He wishes. He’d be better off,” Jasmine spat. “Wait here,” she said. “This will only take a minute.”
Jasmine approached the turbulent crowd. Arms propped on hips, she lifted her head high, and looked around. Silence fell and all eyes turned to her. She grabbed the top layer of her skirt, now streaked by dust, and in one swift motion tore away a strip of the fabric. Kata stared at Jasmine’s hardened face.
Cheers went up as Jasmine waved the piece of cloth above her head. She shook the hair off her face and approached the figure slumped on the ground. She lifted her hands above her head and snapped her fingers. There was a moment’s silence. Then fingers snapped, hands clapped, and feet stomped, swiftly joining in a tempestuous rhythm. Jasmine swished her skirt while arms and hands became one sinuous flow of movement.
“Cante jondo Andalusia, a deep song of Andalusia,” murmured the crowd. The words followed the beat of pounding feet. Kata went back to the day the bear danced. She closed her eyes and saw it all again. The flamenco dancer is Jasmine. Her partner, the gnarled tree. She opened her eyes. He seemed so much younger then, but it had to be him. But now Jasmine danced alone, her body and arms swaying as if in pain, arching over the slumped figure, her face smeared with tears, lips held firm above a quivering chin.
Jasmine paused over the man on the ground. She extended a hand over his covered head for a moment. In one quick motion, she pulled off the burlap sack. The crowd roared and Kata gasped in recognition. She stumbled through the crowd and stared into his down-turned face, searching for his eyes, for the intensity in his eyes. But they were shut.
“Drabengro, evil man of poison,” Jasmine shouted as she threw the fragment of skirt over his head. The crowd had quieted.
“You are condemned!” She hissed before she spat on him. “Devla mar tu! God strike you!”
“Devla mar tu, Devla mar tu,” an angry chorus repeated, as every adult present approached and spat on him, followed by a ceremonious nod.
Jasmine brushed her hands against each other as if indicating a job well done and one she was glad to be done with. “Mokado, magically unclean,” she snapped. “The father of my future children, no more!”
The words hung in the air for a few long moments before they sank into Kata’s mind. “The gnarled tree is my father,” she heard herself whispering.
Jasmine turned and swiftly began walking away from the crowd. Kata caught up to her. “Your husband?” she blurted out. “But why? Your wedding. The way he looked at you. He loves you.”
“Her too. He loves her too, I guess,” Jasmine said disgustedly. “That woman over there.” She pointed to another shouting group. They were encircling a young woman whose hair was being shaved off, long dark tresses carpeting the ground beneath her.
Kata recognized her as the one who had draped herself over Lorca the night of Jasmine’s wedding. The one who had so seductively fingered his hair. Kata sighed in relief. This woman probably meant nothing to Lorca. Then she thought of Jasmine. This woman would be hard to compete with. Then she noticed the same little girl who’d sat on the old golden retriever the night of the wedding. The toddler, in the arms of another woman, was screaming and waving her chubby hands toward her mother who now lay in a crumpled heap on the ground.
“Under that willow tree. They made love,” Jasmine scoffed. “The day after our wedding.” She motioned in the direction where Kata usually hid under the tree shadows. “And I didn’t even know until today.”
Kata took Jasmine’s hand into her own and stared at it. It was limp and cold, like her grandma’s dead hand. But Jasmine’s face was bright red, smudged with sweat and tears, her eyes burning with anger. Kata felt fear, cruel and cold, seeping into her – fear of love, loss, betrayal, naked fear stripped of all promise. She lifted Jasmine’s cold hand and pressed it hard against her own face, then fell into Jasmine’s embrace, into their rhythmic sobbing.
Goya approached: “Dordi, dordi,” she murmured, enfolding both women into her arms, into the heady scent of smoke and burning logs and baking bread. “What one woman do to another,” she murmured. “But she, Mokado, be pitied, for life. No dance. No friends.”
“Ha!” Jasmine said, breaking the embrace. She’ll hide under a kerchief. Until her hair grows back. That’s all. But this heart? Broken. Forever.” She struck her chest with a clenched fist and moaned in pain before quickly turning and walking back up the hill.
Kata was about to follow, but Goya motioned her to stay. “She talk to Ravnos, Spirit of the Sky.”
Goya sighed, as she sat on the grass. “My Jasmine. My fragrant flower. He good. But he have curse, Bari Hukni, the Great Lie.”
“What’s going to happen to him, to them?” Kata asked, sinking down next to Goya.
“Jasmine? Find love, some day,” Goya said, sadly, as if she herself had been wronged.
“What about him?” Kata persisted.
Then she recalled Goya’s words: Kris, you pro-miss to leave Jasmine when you no lo-ve … The wedding seemed so long ago, long before Kata knew of her own ties to this man. Yet barely a week had gone by. She had never before spoken his name, although Jasmine had told it to her, written it in the dusty patch of soil in the gras
s. Then she had gotten up laughing and twirled her skirt like a schoolgirl. She had spoken it with such love that his name, Kris, somehow became hers, belonged to her. To Kata, at the time, he was simply the gnarled tree from the painting. But things were different now.
“What about Kris?” Kata asked again, unnerved by the sound of her own voice uttering his name for the first time.
Goya looked at Kata intensely. “Speak his name? Never. To me. Here.” She waved her arm at the encampment. “We not speak dead man’s name!”
“A dead man’s name?” Kata cried out. “Is somebody going to kill him?”
“Take on wafdo bok, bad luck, from him? Nooo,” Goya scoffed. “He not take life. He take woman’s heart.” She grasped the fabric on the left side of her chest and scrunched it up in her fist. “He have no name. Dead man.”
Kata felt fire ants crawling up her legs, arms, face. She thought of jumping up and shaking them off, but could not move. She tried to lift her hand and brush them off her face, but her hand remained at her side, propped on the cool grass. Down below, a scraggly old man was bent over Kris, trying to lift him. Kata recognized the old man. He had a limp. She’d seen him shovelling horse manure, scrubbing iron pots. Always alone, sad and alone.
Lorca and Stefan emerged from a nearby tent. They passed Kris, still slumped on the ground without a glance. They did not even pause to help. As they approached, Kata glared as if seeing them for the first time.
“That old man always eats alone. Outside of the camp,” she said to them, aware of the accusation in her voice. Kata wished she could ask them why they didn’t help Kris, why they did not help the old man, but she could not, not after what she just learned. Yet, she felt hollow, betrayed.
“Condemned by the tribe, the old man. Long ago,” Lorca remarked casually and Goya spat on the ground in the direction of Kris and the old man.
Stefan added: “Does chores no one else likes.”
Summer of The Dancing Bear Page 17
