Cursed Be the Child

by Mort Castle

  It was an ominous day.

  She went into the Hamlin Building. Her first appointment wasn’t until ten, but there were notes she wanted to check over. She anticipated her ten o’clock client. A nice, normal, 26-year-old woman, she thought. That is, a nice, normal, 26-year-old neurotic who couldn’t sustain a relationship because she was still working out all the old Oedipal schtick for her father.

  She crossed the gleaming tiled lobby. She smiled at Hank, the soon-to-retire security man. Then she stepped into the empty elevator, pushed eight, and as the doors came together with their metallic whisper, she realized she was not alone.

  The hairs at the nape of her neck rose as she turned to see Kristin Heidmann. For an instant, Selena believed herself truly face to face with the girl, the living child.

  No, Kristin Heidmann said.

  Reality, Selena Lazone told herself, was the vibrating floor under her feet as the elevator rose smoothly and the hum of the overhead ventilator.

  Reality was a mulo, this ghost child, who had come to confront her, to accuse her, to condemn her for her failure—as she had been condemning herself.

  “Kris,” Selena whispered, “I am sorry.”

  Sorry, yes, but not frightened anymore. Mule and vila, ghosts and spirits, had their roles to play in this world as they did in other worlds.

  “It is all right,” Kristin said.

  Kristin touched Selena’s cheek. The spectral fingertips felt like the tickly brush of seedling dandelions.

  “I didn’t give you the chance,” Kris said, “but it’s all right. It really is. Maybe it wasn’t right to kill myself, but I’ve found peace now, Selena, peace and forgiveness, so it’s okay. I can handle it, you know? I mean, Selena, I can handle being dead.”

  “Kris,” Selena said, “if you accept your fate”—Baht!—“then why have you returned? Why have you not passed on?”

  “I never said thank you, Selena,” Kris said. “You helped me.”

  “I did try.”

  “You helped me, Selena. Things wouldn’t be all right now if you hadn’t. I want you to forgive yourself, Selena. You’re not to blame for my suicide. And now, Selena…”

  She knew what Kristin Heidmann would say then. Selena could not even be sure she wasn’t saying it to herself.

  “There is a child who needs you. She needs special help.”

  Yes, there was.

  “Help her, Selena.”

  Selena nodded.

  “Then there’s just one more thing I have to ask you to do for me.”

  Again, the comforting ethereal hand touched Selena’s face, and Kristin Heidmann, mulo, asked Selena Lazone for a prayer.

  Selena had a prayer. In Romany, the language of the truth of the heart, she whispered: “Putrav lesko drom angle leste tu na inkrav les ma but palpale mua brigasa. May the way be open before you in your world beyond as I release you from all chains of this Earth and my sorrow.” To herself, Selena added, and as your forgiveness has released me from my chains of guilt.

  The mulo’s image seemed to flicker, then blur as though Selena were gazing at her through a rainy window.

  “Kris, Kristin Heidmann…Akana mukav tut le Devlesa.”

  The mulo’s eyes flashed grateful understanding and farewell at Selena’s words; “I now leave you to God.”

  The elevator’s doors opened to the eighth floor.

  Her ten o’clock appointment whined the usual whines. “My father just never seemed to have time for me, you know? Oh, he worked hard all his life, had to, really, to take care of my mother with her multiple sclerosis and all…”

  She had only one other appointment for late this afternoon, and she cancelled it. Then she called the apartment. David was in. Could he meet her for lunch at Bennigan’s, just across the way?

  She needed to ask him some questions. She had to talk about what she could not speak of last night.

  An hour later, sitting at a window table in the bustling restaurant, she appreciated the noise all around her. Conversations and glassware clatter and the TV sets from the center bar blended together as a comforting curtain of sound that freed her to say anything. Of course, the vodka martinis also helped.

  But most of all, looking into David Greenfield’s fiercely black eyes, she thought, Yes, he is tacho rat. His soul is a Gypsy soul, and I can tell him anything.

  “The Barringers, David. Vicki, Warren, and their daughter, Melissa. They came to the office. You know them.”

  “Yes.” If he was shocked or surprised, he did not show it.

  “I sensed that.”

  “Dukkeripin,” he said quietly.

  “Yes. I’ve tried to deny that sixth sense, or at least ignore it, but it’s there and it’s real. The Barringers, David, their little girl is obsessed by a diakka.”

  Selena went on. “I sensed a lot of other things, too, David. Baht itself brought the Barringers to me. Fate has a plan for all of us, for the Barringers and you and me, David. I sense the possibility of death for all of us—or some of us. And…” Her voice became less than a whisper, a voice that would have been incapable of speaking anything other than tshatsimo, the truth. “I am afraid. I could die, David. I am even more afraid that you could die.”

  He smiled mockingly. She understood he was not mocking her. Instead, he was taunting Baht. “And if you refuse to be part of fate’s strategies?”

  “Then the little girl, Melissa, will be…”

  Selena hesitated, searching for the word. It was not death; it was destruction of self—and worse. “The child will be lost.” Then the Romany words came to her, far more precise and terrible. “Detlene mulano,” she said “a lost child spirit, wandering lonely and afraid forever in the void, the gray realm between the world of the living and of the dead.”

  “I see,” David Greenfield said.

  “Tell me about the Barringers, David.”

  He did, briefly and brusquely, the way he treated all of his past. The past was the past, complete of itself, hardly worth consideration.

  David denied being a Gypsy, Selena thought, denied being anyone except a man who looks at things and takes pictures of what he sees, yet in his attitude about living in the perpetual present, he was pure Rom. To the Gypsy, neither before nor after was of consequence, only now. “A candle is not made of wax but is all flame” was a Romany saying.

  Even though she hated asking the question, she felt compelled. “David, did you love Vicki Barringer?”

  “No,” he said.

  “Forget I asked that,” she said.

  Then, though she had already made up her mind, she spoke aloud. Saying it would validate it. “You know what I am going to do,” Selena said. “It’s what I must do.”

  “Of course.”

  “I have to ask you to help me.”

  “I will,” he said. At that, she loved him so much it hurt.

  David picked up the menu and opened it. As though they had been discussing import cars or the weather, he casually said, “Let’s order, okay? I’m really hungry.”

  “Okay,” she said. Trying to choose between seafood pasta or a California salad, she dared to think that this time David Greenfield would say, “Yes,” if she asked, “Do you love me?”

  — | — | —

  Thirty-Sex

  He wanted to depart earlier, but the first Birmingham to Chicago flight he could book wasn’t until late afternoon. He had a seat in the coach section. Casually dressed, without a tie, he was unrecognized, which he wanted to be, and alone, which he did not want to be. Certainly, there had been people at the airport who had thought they’d recognized him. There had even been several who had attended services at his True Witness Church, but when he greeted them with a quiet word or two, they had implicitly received his message and knew he didn’t want to be disturbed.

  It was time to fasten his seat belt. Already he missed Carol Grace terribly.

  Later there would be a time for families to join together in forgiveness and love, but for the present t
here was danger—the gravest danger of body and soul. He could not allow Carol Grace to be in such peril.

  Evan Kyle Dean was not yet sure how he would confront the evil because he did not yet know the true nature of the malign spirit that was attacking his niece.

  His own niece! Could there be any doubt that the child was the lure, challenge and insult that Satan had put before him?

  But he would conquer the evil. He would liberate the child from the bondage of wickedness. With the help of the Lord he would save her.

  When the plane landed, with only his carry-on bag, he didn’t have any luggage delay. The terminal was overheated, so he draped his coat over his arm.

  From a telephone booth, he called his sister-in-law. He heard relief and hope in Vicki Barringer’s voice as she gave him directions from O’Hare. it would be about two hours, she estimated, perhaps longer with the construction on the tollway. “Two hours…” she repeated, and he heard the catch in her throat.

  “Just hold on,” he said. “Keep your faith. I’ll be with you soon.”

  At the Avis stand, he rented a car, and, 15 minutes later, behind the wheel of a Ford Escort, he drove south. He was one man in a compact car, but he knew he was not alone.

  God was with him.

  He would do God’s work.

  He’s going to help me! He’s on his way, right here, right now. He’s going to make you leave! He’ll get rid of you, Lisette, so there!

  Say, would you like me to teach you a song, Melissa? It’s been awhile since I taught you a new one.

  You listen to me, Lisette! He is so on the way, and he’s super-special ’cause he’s a minister.

  Here is a good song. I always used to sing it. By the light of the silvery moon…

  He knows all about God, Lisette! It’s like God is his very best friend! What do you think of that?

  Poo!

  Lisette, you know what?

  Tell me.

  He’ll tell his friend God to kill you. That’s it! God will kill you.

  No!

  You are going to die, Lisette. You will be dead, dead, dead, and then I’ll be happy!

  I won’t die! I won’t.

  You’ll see! My uncle, my very own uncle, is going to kill you. He is bringing God here, and they’ll kill you together!

  You think so? I don’t know about God…

  God is great, God is good, and He’s so strong.

  …but I know all about uncles!

  The shades were drawn in the living room of the East Rogers Park bungalow, the only light the colored waverings from the three television sets that stood side by side. The tiny old woman sat on a sagging sofa, eyes half-open, watching, fingers resting on the three remote control units in her lap. If she saw something interesting, then she would turn up the volume and hear it as well.

  The old woman wore a flowered dress that had fit better 40 pounds ago, before the cancer in her belly started swallowing her and eating her from within. There was a kerchief around her head, wispy white hair at its edges. Screwed into the corner of her mouth was a curved clay pipe. She looked a great deal like a living caricature of Mammy Yokum.

  There! Channel nine had a commercial for Saturday afternoon’s Creature Features, The Wolfman. That was a good one, all right—Lon Chaney, Bela Lugosi, and Maria Ouspenskaya. That Bela, yes, he was a Gajo, but he knew the Rom, loved their music and treated them with respect. Back in the old days, when horse drawn vurdons roamed here and there, and Gypsies traveled north and south, east and west, she had gone out to Hollywood to work with Maria Ouspenskaya. They were bit players in a foolish musical adventure called The Gypsy’s Necklace. She and Maria Ouspenskaya had also been consultants for the film, explaining Gypsy customs or, better still, fooling the ignorant Gajo director by creating Gypsy traditions on the spot.

  “No, no, no! The hero is an honorable Gypsy, thus he would never begin to eat without first washing his hands.”

  “Nor would he eat eggs. All Gypsies know that eggs are slippery and weak substances that rob a man of his strength.”

  “He must not enter the farmer’s cottage without first stamping his left foot three times to shake off any tiny devils that might be clinging to him.”

  “That is not so! He would stamp but just once as he said a prayer to St. Sarah the Black.”

  “Stamp only once? Perhaps that is the custom amongst the Sinti Romany, but among the better bred Kalderash, even a child knows to stamp at least twice!”

  By the time the “hero enters Farmer’s cottage” scene was on film, the poor actor was dancing a jig at the doorstep.

  Maria Ouspenskaya was a good Gypsy. That all Gypsies might have the soul of Maria Ouspenskaya!

  The old woman leaned back, settling into the familiar contours of the couch. She was sleepy all the time now, and one day she would sleep and not wake. Then it would be her time to journey anda I thema, to go beyond the waters into the nation of the dead. She had visited there before, both in dreams and in the spirit, and she did not fear it. It was neither a good nor a bad place, only a different one.

  She took her pipe from her mouth and set it on the table to her left. She dozed, images from the televisions filtering into her mind and blending into dreams. Then she awoke at a knock at the front door.

  “Joe! Joe, you get the door, okay?” On any given day, any number of nephews and nieces and cousins might be living in her bungalow. Names were important to the Gaje, not the Rom, and so she referred to all the men in her home as Joe. That way, she was always sure of somebody responding when she called out, “Joe.”

  A Joe answered the door. She heard men’s voices and footsteps, then he entered the living room. She squinted. He wasn’t too tall, but there was a good, well-balanced size to him; he seemed to belong in his own body—and so many people did not. He wore a hat; he had manners. She crooked a finger, beckoning him closer.

  “Do I know you?” she said. “I think I ought to know you. I don’t know. I’m old.” When the old woman spoke English, she sounded like a polka band singer who’d been raised by B-movie gangsters of the 1940s. When she spoke German, she sounded, she had been told, like an angry pig peasant. She also spoke Spanish, French, Portugese, idiomatic Russian, and some Hindi—all badly.

  But when she spoke Romany, the true language, she spoke pure poetry.

  “Puri Dai”—he respectfully called her ‘Old Mother’—“you might remember me. I’m a photographer. Some years ago, I took your picture for a book I called Rom.”

  “Yeah, yeah, I remember that.”

  He told her his name.

  She nodded. “You didn’t come to take my picture this time, did you?”

  “No, Puri Dai,” he said. “I’ve come because there is someone who needs your help. She needs your wisdom and your gifts.”

  “Hey, what you saying? You sound like ‘This is a job for Superman’ or something.”

  The man’s smile was serious. “No, but it is a job for the Rawnie, the great lady, Pola Janichka.”

  “I don’t know, I don’t know.” The old woman shook her head. “I been sick lately.” Her words trailed off and then, seeming to lose track of what they had been saying, she cocked her head and gave him a sharp stare.

  “Rom San?” she asked. Are you a Gypsy?

  “No,” he replied.

  She shifted to turn on the lamp, then remote controlled the televisions off. In the yellow splash of light, she leaned forward, demanding, “Your hand. I got to know who you really are, you know what I mean?”

  He gave her his right hand.

  She gazed hard, tracing lines with a shaking finger, her breath on his hand. “Rom!” She said decisively.

  “Yes, you are a Gypsy,” Pola Janichka told David Greenfield. “Maybe you don’t know it or maybe you don’t want to know it, but you are Rom.”

  So that she would know him, his heart and his soul, and thus know what to do, she read his palm. And then, because it is something we all must know if we are to be truly alive,
Pola Janichka, psychic and sorceress, healer and witch, woman of knowledge, told David Greenfield who he was.

  — | — | —

  Thirty-Seven

  Stefan Grinzspan was a young Polish Jew. When the Nazis set about purifying the world for the master race, Stefan Grinzspan went to Auschwitz. National Socialism had a great deal of purifying to do, an awesome task that only ubermensch would dare undertake, and so, not only Jews went to Auschwitz and other such camps. You might find Slavs and Czechs and Russians, homosexuals and petty criminals of any nationality, all the asocials and untermenschen.

  Gypsies wandered the Earth, refused to seek gainful employment and had dark skins, so they were sent to the death camps.

  The Gypsies at Auschwitz “…were the best loved prisoners. They loved to play, even at work, which they never took quite seriously. I never saw a scowling, hateful expression on a Gypsy’s face. They would often play their musical instruments or let their children dance…”

  This was written by Rudolf Hoess, commandant of Auschwitz, as he awaited his own sentence of death for war crimes. He stated he genuinely liked his Gypsies, and he found it quite painful and difficult to have 16,000 of them killed. He was, he explained, a sensitive man, and what was particularly hard on him was that he “knew almost every one of them individually. They were by nature as trusting as children.”

  Stefan Grinzspan did not see any dancing Gypsy children, but he did get to know one little Gypsy, a boy of perhaps six or seven, who was all over the camp foraging for food. The child had brilliantly black eyes, and just once, Stefan would have liked to see him smile. Because Stefan worked in the kitchens, sometimes he could smuggle a rotting black potato or a turnip to the boy.

  One day, luck ran out, as it had or would for most of the prisoners of Auschwitz. Stefan Grinzspan slipped the Gypsy boy half a piece of white bread, and then froze at “Nein!”

  SS Lieutenant Hans Kraus, blond and youthful, was new to Auschwitz. A blanched face showed he was not accustomed to the pervasive stink of filth and burning corpses. His contemplative blue eyes, and sad, full mouth made him look as though the world had treated him unjustly.