by Colum McCann
It is good, daughter, to be prepared for surprise. This is a place where a slant snowfall can arrive at any time—even in summer I have seen flakes fall, followed by gales of light and dark. It is strange to think how far my life has come, having discovered enough beauty that it still astounds me.
Enrico once told me of a time when he was just a boy, no more than five years old, the sort who was told to wear navy-blue calzoncini and long white kneesocks. He ran around the courtyard of his Verona home, its beautiful garden with large ferns and white brick and fountains and giant pots of towering plants that his mother's gardener tended to. In the far corner of the garden there stood a large brass statue of three chimpanzees: one with its hands over its eyes, one with its hands over its ears, one with its hands over its mouth. Beneath them was a small well of a pond where water gurgled in and out. Enrico used to sit there and pass his days.
I sometimes still see myself as a child and how much I was loved and how much I loved in return and in my childish heart I was sure it would never end, but I did not know what to do with such love and I relinquished it. I put my hand over my mouth, my ears, my eyes, but I have come around again, and I still call myself black even though I have rolled around in flour. I have always been with my people even though they have not been with me.
He never much asked me about my past, your father, so I told him willingly, I always thought that he, and you, were the only ones to whom I could trust these words of mine, the dark ink of what they have said.
SINCE BY THE BONES THEY BROKE WE CAN TELL NEW WEATHER: WHAT WE SAW UNDER THE HLINKAS IN THE YEARS ‘42 AND ‘43
What sharp stones lifted our wheels,
What high skies came to rest on the ground.
On a golden morning the river turned
And two uniforms appeared at our backs.
We asked by what roads we could escape—
They showed us the narrowest one.
Don't go looking for bread, dark father,
You won't find bread under breadcrumbs.
The spring died at the furthest corner
And our song went into the mountains
Where it sounded along the ridges
Then put on a twice-removed hat.
We called this song the quiet
But it came answering back.
Some days we went looking for the sky
But, Lord, it was a long walk upwards.
Land of black forests we grew from you.
We found the sun in your branches,
Warm shelter in your roots,
A shirt, a hat, a belt in all your moss.
Now it is raining and raining so hard,
Who can make our black ground dry?
The hour of our wandering has been
And passed and been and passed again.
They drove our wagons onto the ice
And ringed the white lake with fires,
So when the cold began to crack
The cheers went up from the Hlinkas.
We forced our best horses forward
But they skidded, bloody, to the shore.
My land, we are your children,
Shore up the ice, make it freeze!
The women came to their windows
To see what was up the road ahead.
They threw out the fire's ashes
So that some might rise in the wind.
The darkest birds of winter
Told others not to follow behind.
The snow fell large and white
And buried our wheels center deep.
How soft the road underfoot,
The branches gray and bare.
Light through light in the treetops
Warned other light not to return.
We had been everything to the forest
Except enemy and danger.
How many times the trees bowed
In our long and dark marching.
They loaded the railway trains
Until the springs went flat.
We heard the moaning of Gypsy children
Too hungry to sleep or dream.
Even those who stayed alive
Found a grave in each survival.
In all the white fields and forests
Old sorrows called out to the new.
At the gate two wooden poles,
Out of which nothing could be carved,
Not a spoon, a moon, nor a Gypsy sky,
Not a swift or an owl or another flight.
We went through them single file,
Our faces turned to the sky.
Who could tell the time from the stars
If the roof was an inch from their eyes?
A child's black fingers descended upon a moth
That descended upon a candleflame.
The winter was closing in
Cold and fast and blue.
We dreamed of a better place
Just above the roof of the pines.
Yet some small splinter of shade
Was nothing but another shadow.
We carried the streams of streams through seasons.
What sorrow and terrible wailing were heard
In all your lonely downcast corners,
Auschwitz, Majdanek, Thieresenstadt, Lod(.
Who gave them such places, O Lord,
Right on the edge of black forests?
We were taken in through their gates,
They let us up through their chimneys.
Gentle mother, make no friend
With the snake that even the snakes hate.
You ask why this song doesn't speak
To you of dreams and of opened gates?
Come and see the fallen wheels
On the ground and deep in the darkest mud.
Look at our fallen homes
And all the Jews and Gypsies broken!
But don't leave behind the dead, broken!
With whom we shared our hunger.
Don't let the snakes go free
Of what they wanted us to be.
Icicles eaten from the wire in winter
Will not freeze our tongues with weight.
We are watching still, brother,
The bend in the distant corner.
The bell that has been pealing
Is not the bell you heard before.
We will tear it to the ground
And use the old forged brass.
It will take us back around
The long five-cornered road.
I speak from the mossy earth to you—
Sound out your mouth ‘s violin!
The song of the wandering is in all the trees
And is heard in the last stars of daybreak.
It ripples in the bend of the river
Turning backwards towards us again.
Soon you shall see nothing in the chimney
Except silence and dim twilight.
The sky is red and the morning is too—
All is red on the horizon, Comrade!
Old Romani mother, don't hide your earrings,
Your coins, your sons, your dreams,
Not even inside your golden teeth,
And tell this to hell's dark brother:
When he goes collecting
He won't take any more of us along.
Who has said that your voice will be strange
To those who have risen from you?
Sun and moon and torn starlight,
Wagon and chicken and badger and knife,
All the sorrows have been heard
By those who suffered alongside us.
You who were sad at evening
Will be happy now at dawn.
Since by the bones they broke
We can tell new weather.
When we die and turn to rain
We shall stay nearby a little while
Before we go on falling.
We shall stay in the shade of the mossy oak
Where we have walked
And cried and walked and wandered.
Zoli Novotna
BRATISLAVA, SEPTEMBER I 9 5 7
Paris
2003
SHE DESCENDS THE TRAIN in the amber light of afternoon, shading her eyes with her hands. Her daughter steps from the shadows, looking tall, short-haired, lean. They kiss four times and Francesca says: “You look beautiful, Mamma.” She dips to the ground to pick up the small bag at Zoli's feet. “This is all you brought?” They link arms and walk out under the wide ceiling of Gare de Lyon, past a newspaper stall, through a throng of girls, out into the sunlight. At the corner they hear the shrill beeping of a car horn. Across the road, a young man in an open leather jacket clambers from a car. His hair is cut close, his shirt ambitiously undone. He rushes across to Zoli and his stubble bristles against her cheek when he greets her.
“Henri,” he says, and she rests for a second against a lamppost, winded, the name so close to that of her husband.
Francesca half-skips around the front of the car and helps Zoli into the front seat. “Does he speak Italian?” Zoli whispers, and before her daughter can respond, Henri has launched into a speech about what a pleasure it is to meet her, how young she looks, how marvelous it feels to have two such beautiful women in his car, two, imagine, two!
“He speaks Italian,” says Zoli with a soft chuckle, and she closes the car door.
Francesca laughs and hops in the backseat, leans forward with her arms around the headrest to massage the back of Zoli's neck. She has not, she thinks, been so carefully touched in a long time.
The car jolts forward and merges into traffic, swerves around a pothole. Zoli puts her hands against the dashboard to brace herself. The streets begin to branch and widen and clear. Out the window she watches the quick blip of traffic lights and the flash of billboards. I have arrived in Paris so many times, she thinks, and none of them ever like this. They speed through the yellow of a traffic light and down a long avenue shaded by half-grown trees. “We'll show you around later, Mamma,” says Francesca, “but let's go home first. We've a nice lunch ready, wait until you see how many cheeses!” It is a thing her daughter seems to have invented for her, that she is a lover of cheese, and she wants to say, That's your father, not me. Zoli puts her hand on Henri's forearm, asks him if he likes cheese, and he finds it funny, for whatever reason, she is not entirely sure, and he slaps the steering wheel as he turns a sharp corner.
They slow down, past kiosks and storefronts strange with foreign script. A number of Arab women in dark headscarves emerge from a shop, only their eyes apparent. Further up the street, a black man wheels a trolley of jackets across the road. Zoli turns to watch. “So many people,” she says. “I never expected it to be like this.” Her daughter unbuckles her backseat seat belt so she can whisper: “I'm so glad you're here, Mamma, I can hardly believe it.”
Henri taps the brakes and the car jolts. “Put your belt on, Francesca,” he says. A silence descends until Zoli hears the soft fall of her daughter's body against the rear seat and a long exaggerated sigh.
“Sorry, Franca,” he says, “but I'm the one driving here.”
How odd it is to hear the nickname of her daughter from this young man. How extraordinary, in fact, to be here at all, in this small car, in these thrumming streets, on a sunny Thursday afternoon when back in the valley they will be cutting grass on the lower slopes.
They negotiate a few more winding side streets and pull in next to the curb under a row of low trees by a pale stone building studded with blocks of ancient red marble. They climb out of the car and walk through the front courtyard. Henri puts his shoulder to the giant ironwork door. It creaks and swings, revealing a black and white tiled floor. They walk towards an old elevator, but Zoli veers off to the stairs, explaining that tunnels and elevators are not for her, that they make her claustrophobic. Henri takes her elbow and guides her towards the elevator's intricate grillwork. “The stairs are so steep,” he says. Zoli reaches back for her daughter's hand. She is afraid now that she will dislike Henri, that he is one of those who is almost too happy, the sort who forces his opinions of happiness on others. A sharp look appears on his face, and he goes ahead, alone, in the elevator.
Mother and daughter stand wordless in front of each other. Francesca drops the bag on the first stair and takes Zoli's face in her hands, leans over and kisses her eyelids.
“I can't believe it,” says Francesca.
“You'll be glad to get rid of me in a day or two.”
“Want to bet?”
They laugh and climb the stairs, stopping on each landing for Zoli to get her breath back. She has the clammy thought that they will have arranged their home for her, that they will have laid out a bed and perhaps a night lamp and they will have cleaned and ordered things out of their usual places, perhaps even put up photographs for the occasion.
On the fourth floor, Francesca hurries ahead, opens the door, throws her keys onto a low glass table.
“Come in, Mamma, come in!”
Zoli pauses a moment on the threshold, then slips off her shoes, steps in. She is pleasantly surprised by the apartment, its high walls, the cornices, the crevices, the oak floorboards, the woodcut prints along the hallway. The living room is bright and open with high windows and a piece of artwork she immediately recognizes as Romani, vibrant clashing colors, odd shapes, a settlement of sorts. A photo of Enrico sits on an old wooden shelf made from a slice of railway sleeper. A dozen other photos accompany it. Zoli runs her fingers along the hard tar on the shelf, then turns and examines the rest of the room.
In the center of a glass coffee table sits the leaflet for the conference, in French, odd words shoved together. The leaflet is slick and professional and not at all what she expected. She should, she knows, pay attention to it, comment on it, compliment it, but Zoli wants nothing more than to ambush it with silence.
A row of books sit under the table and she lifts one, photographs of India, and deftly lays the leaflet underneath, its edge sticking out so it doesn't look hidden. Her daughter stands over her with a glass of water, and tenses slightly at the sight of the covered leaflet.
“You must be tired, Mamma?”
Zoli shakes her head, no, the day seems bright and open. She runs her fingers along Francesca's blouse: “Where's that cheese you promised me?”
They pass the lunch in idle chatter, the train trip, the weather, the new layout of Paoli's shop, and as the afternoon lengthens, a heaviness bears down. Her daughter brings her to the bed- room, where the sheets on the double bed have been freshly changed, and a nightgown has been laid out with a shop tag still on it. Francesca snips the tag from the back of a nightdress and whispers that her boyfriend will be staying elsewhere for a few days, and that she will sleep on the couch, no protests allowed. She folds back the covers and fluffs the pillow and guides her mother to the bed.
Zoli feels briefly like a pebble that, having lain around for quite a while, is quickly tossed from hand to hand.
“Have a good nap, Mamma. And I'm not going to say anything about bedbugs.”
“I wouldn't even feel them.”
She wakes to darkness, disoriented a moment. A harsh whispering issues from the kitchen, the voices low and urgent. She lies and listens, hoping they will quieten, but Henri curses, and then she hears the slamming of a door, the slide of grooves in a kitchen cupboard, a rattling of cups. Zoli looks around the room, surrounded by the possessions of others, cosmetics on the table, photographs in frames, a row of men's shirts in the cupboard. In her mind she goes through the three rooms of her own millhouse, how the four doors creak, how the curtains jangle on the rings, how the stove leaks a little light, how the lantern nickers. Curious to have taken a train here and arrived so quickly, somewhere so unfamiliar, as if the journey has failed her by such ease. She lies back down on the bed. A surprising stillness to the room—no sounds of traffic, or children playing outside, or neighbors with their radios.
“You're awake?” says Francesca. She
has put on some light makeup and she looks exquisite as she steps gracefully across the room. “Are you ready for dinner, Mamma? We ‘ve booked a little restaurant.”
“Oh,” says Zoli.
“Henri's gone to get the car. Do you like him, Mamma?”
Zoli wonders a moment what there might be to like, so quickly, so abruptly, but she says: “Yes, I like him very much.”
“I'm glad,” says Francesca with a chuckle. “I've been with worse, I suppose.”
They embrace again. Zoli swings her legs off the side of the bed, narrows her mind, forces it upon her arms and legs, stands. The nightdress comes up over her head. It takes an effort not to sway. Francesca turns her back and flicks on a small lamp on the nightstand as Zoli puts on her dress. Foolish not to have brought more clothes, but she wanted to impress that it would only be for a few days, no more, that she would not be part of the conference, that she would just sit and watch and listen, if even that.
