Star of Gypsies (35 page)

It rained while I was living in the desert of Duud Shabeel. I watched the mudpuppies emerge, I saw them do their dance. And I wondered: What is the virtue of such a life? What merit is there in sleeping under the sand for years and years in order to have a single night of joy? What purpose can there be in it? These poor creatures are victims of nature's blind impulse toward self-perpetuation. The only purpose they serve is to create the next generation, whose sole purpose it will be to create the next.

And then I thought, Is it not the same with us? Are not we just a more elaborate kind of mudpuppy, arising and going through our little mating dance and dying so that our places can be taken by those who follow after?

I confess that these thoughts threw me into the deepest despair I have experienced in my life, worse even than when I lay imprisoned with the overthrown Loiza la Vakako, worse than when I suffered in the passageways of Alta Hannalanna. For suddenly I saw life as purposeless, and that was terrifying to me. I saw us as mere prisoners throughout all our days, as the mudpuppies are in their burrows in the sand: hoaxed and deceived by nature, filled with philosophical nonsense designed to keep us working at our task of replacing old life with new. If I had been less sturdy and resilient of soul I think I might have wanted to kill myself, thinking these thoughts, alone in that melancholy desert.

And then I thought: What does it matter if we are nothing but mudpuppies? How does it change anything, knowing that? We still must rise in the morning and go through our days and do what is required of us. And if there is no point to it, why, then there is no point to it: but we must go on, and we must do the best job of it that we can. The mudpuppies understand that. They waste none of their strength in weeping and wailing and railing against their destiny. No, they wait and sleep, and then they arise and dance. Let it be the same with us. Let us live as though there is purpose, and go through each day joyously and with vigor, doing the task that is our task. For there is no alternative. This is the only road. Therefore it has to be the right road. Even if everything seems meaningless, nevertheless there must be some meaning beneath that meaninglessness; and even if we are no more able to see that meaning than are the mudpuppies of Duud Shabeel, yet it is better to go onward than not to go onward. So live. Seek. Learn. Grow.

I found great comfort flooding in upon me when I came to understand the truth of that conclusion. My despair lifted and I returned from the desert and went about my business on Duud Shabeel, and I have gone about my business, whatever it has happened to be, without doubts ever since. From that day onward I have known no despair. Anger, yes, and dismay, and anguish, from time to time; but never despair. For despair means the loss of hope, and I am no longer capable of achieving a loss of hope, now that I have absorbed and understood the lesson of the mudpuppies. The memory of their joyous dancing in the desert rain has carried me through many a black hour ever since.

I thought of these things again as I lay imprisoned in Shandor's oubliette. Waiting for the endless hours to pass, waiting for the moment when I could rise once more to the surface and begin my dance.

GHOSTING. MY ONE AMUSEMENT, MY ANODYNE. THE SOLE consolation of the hapless prisoner in the clammy cell. Once again it became my joy and my escape, as it had been for me long ago on Alta Hannalanna. And on many another occasion after that.

It was a long time since I had done any serious ghosting. You pass through giddy phases, especially at the beginning, where you do it all the time. The whole vast range of the past lies open before you and you can't get enough of it. You go everywhere. Mars. Venus. Atlantis. New Jersey. It's like being a god. That freedom, that sense of omnipotence. But eventually you
do
get enough. Everyone who ghosts grows sated sooner or later, except maybe Polarca, who seems insatiable. Even I did. I wasn't bored with it. How can you get bored with infinity? But after you have been everywhere and a half, there are times when it seems as if you don't need to go anywhere else. Maybe gods come to feel the same way now and then. Do they get weary of godding, I wonder? Envy the lowly humans their tedious toil?

You may go without ghosting for years at a time, but you don't ever forget the knack of it. You know it's there, whenever you need or want it. And then you find yourself cast into somebody's dark oubliette and you give thanks to the Holy Spirit that you can do it. Off you go. Up and out, far and away.

I LIKED BEST OF ALL TO DO MY GHOSTING ON EARTH. Back to my roots, back to the solid terra firma, land where my fathers died. The old Rom blood drew me like a magnet. Again, again, again-Earth, any epoch, any of its myriad nations.

WHERE AM I NOW? A WALLED CITY, PROTECTED ON TWO sides by two great ramparts, on two sides by the sea. The sky is fair, the sun is strong. Who are these dour thick-bearded men in armor? Ah. They wear the emblem of the Cross. These must be Crusader knights. Within the city are Saracen defenders. And here, these darker men and women in tattered white robes and gowns, at the edge of the camp? I hear them chattering in Romany. Or something that sounds as if it might have been Romany once, long ago. They go among the warriors offering services. This man is a blacksmith who carries his own forge on his back. Three stones for a hearth, a bellows that he works with his toes, charcoal for fuel. A file, a vice, a hammer. Sharpen your sword, good knight? Mend your armor? And this one here, the coppersmith. And the old woman who looks like our phuri dai, doing the dukkeripen, saying the future. You will be a great lord, immense estates will be yours, your sons will be dukes and your grandsons will be kings.

We help the good Christian warriors fight their war. We build a great four-story machine for them to invade the Saracen city. The first story is of wood, the second of lead, the third of iron, the fourth of bronze.

But it catches fire and the defenders rejoice. So we build for them a stone-catapult that they call the Evil Neighbor, and a grappling ladder called the Cat. And two catapults that fling stones night and day against the besieged city.

I float over the wall and discover that there are Rom within. In this war we work for Christian Gaje and we work for Saracen Gaje. The work is what matters. The issues for which they fight are absurd to us. For the Saracens we mix pots of Greek fire-naphtha and other substances, a monstrous weapon that sticks to your skin and burns you alive-and they hurl them over the walls at the Crusaders. "Allah is Great," the defenders cry. They look at us expectantly and we cry it too, "Allah is Great." Why not? Allah
is
great. God is great under any of His names. These foolish Gaje will kill each other to show the superiority of their name for Him. And they will kill us too, unless we say the words they love. Very well. Allah is great. And Christ is our savior. Whatever they want. The One Word is:
Survive
.

ANOTHER LEAP. WHO SURVIVES HERE? A FLAT HIDEOUS landscape. Mounds of dirty snow, bare trees. Barbed wire. This is a prison. I see Gypsies in prison uniforms, stripes, a brown triangle on the left breast. But some of them carry violins. They stroll from building to building, playing: prisoners of special privilege, wandering entertainers. There are other prisoners here, peering out hopelessly from their dismal shacks. Gaunt hollow faces, dark tragic eyes. Staring, weeping. Listening to the Gypsy violins.

I drift down beside one of the violinists and make myself visible. He gives me a strange look but goes on playing. A sad wild tune. You could sing to it, or you could break into tears. He plays me the sound of a question.

"Sarishan," I say. "I am Rom."

"Are you?" Cool, distant, barely seeming to care.

"Yakoub son of Romano Nirano. Kalderash. And you?"

A shrug. "Daweli Shukarnak. You are new here?"

"A visitor."

"A visitor," he says, as if the word has no meaning for him. "Well, enjoy your holiday."

He turns away and fiercely strikes his bow across the strings of his violin, making a terrible noise. I am reminded of the grinding sound of Pulika Boshengro's fiddle as he gave the signal for his henchmen to attack his kinsmen, and for an instant I feel like cringing. Like screaming.

"Wait," I say. "Is this place a prison?"

"What do you think?"

"And those half-dead Gaje over there?"

"Jews. This is a prison for Jews."

"But there are Rom here too?"

"There are some Rom, yes. They treat us a little better than they do the Jews. They feed us, and we play music for the other prisoners on Sundays. And for the Hitlari."

"The Hitlari?" I ask.

"The prison-camp keepers. The Nazis." He begins to play again, sweetly, a melancholy tune that tears at my heart. "They hate us and they hate the Jews, but they hate the Jews a little more. When they are finished killing the Jews, they will kill us. They want to kill everybody, the Hitlari, everybody who is not like them, and they will, sooner or later. They think they are being kind to us, killing us later. But what sort of life is this for a Rom, inside a prison camp? They have killed us already, penning us up in here." He looks at me as though seeing me for the first time. "You are really Rom?"

"You doubt me?"

"You speak the Romany strangely."

"I come from far away."

"Well, go back there, wherever it is. If you can. Fly away and forget this place. This place is hell. This place is the house of the devil."

"Tell me its name," I say.

"Auschwitz," he says.

ITS VERY MISTY HERE. I MUST BE FAR, FAR BACK IN TIME. But through the thick white fog I see a great blazing sun overhead. The air is moist and hot. This is a marketplace. In its center grows a gigantic tree with a thousand trunks, and a bewildering tangle of roots and vines descending from its myriad limbs. All around it flows the throbbing life of the market, peddlers, holy men, thieves, mule-carts, children, scribes, magicians.

The people are slender and they have dark skins and sharp bony faces. Their eyes are very bright. They speak a language I don't understand, though I hear a word or two that sounds almost like Romany. At first all these people look Rom to me. But then I see that most of them are not. I see the real Rom among them. They look very much like the others, but the difference, though barely perceptible, is real. They have the Rom glow.

I watch the Rom moving through the marketplace. A juggler here, a team of acrobats there. Five who have mounted a little stage and are acting a play. One is playing a pipe. One who grins and waves a box of dice, and invites passersby to game with him. And one who has trained an elephant to dance: I see the great beast lumbering from side to side like a clown.

Some sort of turbaned prince advances solemnly through the marketplace. Servants with gilded pikes precede him, scattering the crowd. One of the Rom runs up to him, nut-brown, agile as a monkey. All he wears is a white cloth twisted at his waist. He turns handsprings; he shouts and laughs; he makes intricate fortune-telling signs. He holds out the palm of his hand. One of the servants puts a coin in it. Then he pushes the Gypsy roughly away with the flat of his pike. He has come too close to the prince. We are outcasts here. We follow the forbidden trades. It would be a disgrace for these others to juggle in the marketplace or to offer to foretell the future. We do what the decent folk may not do, and we do it with much skill.

Where am I? The mist is so thick. It is so very long ago. The heavy air is rich with spices. This must be history's dawn. We are newly come out of our lost and ruined land of Atlantis and we are refugees here. Perhaps this place is Babylon. Perhaps it is one of the island kingdoms of the Mediterranean Sea. I think it is the land that was called India, though. Where we lived so long after we left Atlantis. That elephant, the heat, the vines dangling from the many-trunked tree. It is the same in this India as everywhere else, for us. Somehow we are jugglers and acrobats, tinkers and soothsayers, wherever we go. Outsiders. Outcasts.

I allow myself to become visible. I am by far the biggest man in the marketplace and my clothing is strange and my skin is too light a color. Yet only one person seems to notice me. He is the agile Rom boy who was turning handsprings for the prince. Our eyes meet across nearly the entire width of the marketplace, and he grins at me. That warm grin shines like a beacon in the mist.

Does he take me for some Gaje prince from a far-off land, newly arrived and foolish enough to pay him a fortune in gold for a quick dance and a bit of prophecy?

No. No. He grins again, and winks. It is a wink of recognition and kinship. He sees the Rom in me.

I wink back, and grin. My lips shape a word for him:
Sarishan
.

And back through the mist from him comes an answering word:

Sarishan, cousin
.

Did he truly say that?
Cousin
! He laughs and nods. And turns, that unknown ancient cousin of mine, and disappears into the crowd. And I am alone, separated from him by five thousand years of white fog.

I KNOW WHERE I AM, HERE. THIS IS JULIEN DE GRAMONT'S lost and beloved France, and I am at the shrine of Sara the Black Virgin. Festival time for the Rom: we have come from all over Europe for it. I have been here before, many times, many different years. I may even be here now, another ghost of me. Or perhaps many of me. So be it. I look around. A familiar sight. The Gypsy women in long swirling skirts of a thousand hues, with masses of gold gleaming on their throats and breasts, the men in dark suits and brilliant scarves, everyone carrying lighted tapers down the gentle slope to the beach. And around them, as always, surging throngs of Gaje spectators, elbow to elbow. Pressing close, trying to catch a glimpse of the Gypsies at their rites. Always watching us. And we are splendid in our alienness. Men on white horses, priests in black cassocks. Hooves clopping on cobblestones. Violins and guitars ringing with liquid melodies. The long lines of Rom winding through the narrow streets to the church where the black statue of the saint is displayed. Sweet incense on the air and the thick smell of candle-tallow. Laughter, singing, men, women, children, pickpockets and policemen, Rom and Gaje.