The Third Antichrist (32 page)

Not that he resented Alexi in any way. It certainly wasn’t that. There were any number of crazy Gypsy men in camps scattered right across France, and Radu was as much given to the deliriums of excess as any other man. But in Radu’s opinion, Alexi topped just about everyone he knew in sheer crackpot lunacy. How O Del could have chosen a maniac like that to father the Second Coming was a complete mystery to him.

As a child, Radu had been told that God acted in strange ways – perhaps this was one of them? What was it that his grandmother had always said? ‘
Te ala mangel O Del, vi da
ž
i del pu
š
ke ekh matora
’ – ‘If God chose, even a broomstick could fire bullets.’ Radu loved Alexi like a brother, but he held no illusions about him. Still, if Damo and the forefather man from many centuries back said that Alexi and Yola were to be the parents of the Second Coming, who was he to cavil?

At around ten o’clock that morning – and well before the most recent snowfall – Sabir and Calque and Yola and Alexi, accompanied by Bera and Koiné and their parents, Flipo and Nuelle, had set off for the weekly market at nearby Oponici. Lemma was too advanced in her pregnancy to walk anywhere, so Radu had agreed to stay behind to send for help to the village midwife in the event that her waters broke prematurely. But nothing of that sort had occurred. Lemma had slept for most of the afternoon, and Radu had busied himself chopping wood for the evening fire.

At 4.30, Lemma emerged to make Radu a cup of green coffee. There had been a heavy snowfall at around two o’clock, and while he was waiting for his coffee, Radu walked a few hundred yards up the track to see what effect, if any, such a fall would have on the party’s return. Maybe they would decide to stay over – in which case it would give him some time alone with Lemma. Although heavily pregnant, she was still not immune to a little gentle persuasion in the coupling department. It excited Radu to hold his wife’s swollen belly in his hands while he dog-mated her. O Del had been very good to him, giving him an amenable wife such as Lemma.

Another of his cousins, Zoltan, had married a shrew who asked for money whenever her husband made sexual demands on her. This was because she had discovered that Zoltan had once gone with a prostitute. From that moment on, she told him, he would have to pay her just as he had paid the other woman.
Malos mengues!
That was a wife to be reckoned with. Still, Radu was grateful that O Del had allocated him the more submissive, tender-minded variety of female. Even Yola possessed a barbed tongue when she had a mind to it. Fortunately for him, Alexi was so crazy in his head that he rarely noticed when Yola was on the warpath, and simply steamed towards the cataract like a barge that has lost its rudder.

Radu cleared himself a place on a nearby wall, sat down, and lit a
papirosu
. It was pleasant out here, with the fresh snowfall all around. It made a man feel safe. Radu was grateful that the memories of what had happened to him three months before were nearly gone.

He finished his cigarette, dropped it into the slush made by his feet, and watched it sputter out. Then he strolled back towards the camp, happily speculating on what he might be able to persuade Lemma to allow him to do to her, once it became clear the others were not returning home. The great advantage of pregnancy was that there were no impure times of the month to prevent a man from gaining his satisfaction whenever the urge overcame him – if only his friends and his relations would let him be.

Radu stopped about eighty yards shy of the entrance to the camp and canted his head to one side. What was this? A man had sprung to his feet directly across the road from the tent he and Lemma shared. As Radu watched, the man frantically patted his jacket, fished out his cell phone, and then ducked back into hiding again.

Radu drifted across to the side of the road and concealed himself behind a wall. His throat was dry. His heart was pounding in his chest. He looked about himself for a weapon of some sort, but there was nothing. Before he had left on his weather inspection he had been chopping wood and had sunk the hatchet deep into a log to protect the blade from rusting. Now he didn’t even possess so much as a penknife with which to defend himself.

Radu watched the place the man was hiding. Beyond the man, he could see Lemma bustling about the fire, preparing his coffee. So the bad man and his siblings had found him after all. During the course of the last three months, Radu had gradually relaxed his vigilance. The onset of winter was partially to blame, together with the fact that there was no way on earth in which the four people who had kidnapped him could investigate every village and every hamlet in northern Romania on the one-off chance of encountering a particular band of Gypsies. There were hundreds – no, thousands – of Roma in that part of the country. It was an impossible task.

Even Damo, and his friend, the Frenchman Calque, had begun to lower their guard. The occasional trip to the local bar had formed a part of this new
glasnost
– as well as today’s communal trip to the market. And then again, the whole emphasis of everyone’s thoughts had inevitably begun to turn away from the Corpus Maleficus and towards the two women’s pregnancies, together with all the necessary preparations for two births in two consecutive months in a country which was not their own, and amongst a people who had no particular reason to care whether the babies lived or died. And now, on the instant, everything had changed.

Radu chanced another look from behind his wall. The man had not moved from his position. Was it the young leader, then, or the other, quieter man – the one with the limp? The man with the cell phone had moved too fast for Radu to be certain of his identity. But it was a fair bet that he would be in the process of calling for reinforcements from whoever he was speaking to on his telephone – that much was clear. Where there was one there would be the others, surely? All four of the creatures would then converge on Brara to exact their revenge.

Two hundred yards away from where Radu was hiding, Lemma ducked back inside the tent. As Radu watched, the man rose from his place of concealment, withdrew a clipboard from his briefcase, consulted something on the clipboard, and then crossed the road with a swiftness that made Radu’s heart clench inside his chest. This time around, Radu got a clear view of the man’s face. The man was entirely unknown to him.

Could he have been checking something? The electricity, maybe? Or a water pipe running to the river? Maybe that was why he was hunched down out of sight? Maybe the whole thing was totally innocent, and Radu was letting his anxieties get the better of him? What was that other expression his grandmother always used? A fly can’t enter a mouth that’s shut.

Radu dragged his hands down his face. No. He couldn’t risk it. He had allowed himself to be lulled into a false sense of security once before, and he had been kidnapped as a result. He must not let such a thing happen again. This time he had Lemma and the baby to consider.

Taking advantage of the man’s momentary lapse in concentration, Radu duck-walked behind the wall until he was directly opposite the gate to the yard. The man was now writing something on his clipboard. Radu scissored his legs over the wall and concealed himself in the lee of the three-metre-high entranceway. He risked a glance through the gate.

The man, possibly sensing a third presence, checked around himself in the way animals do when their instincts tell them they are being stalked by a predator. Radu flattened himself against the carved wooden frame of the entrance arch and cleared his mind of all thoughts, just as he did when stalking roe deer in the Samois woods. By turning himself into a blank, Radu hoped that the man would not intuit his presence.

From his new position Radu could just discern the sound of the tent flap being thrown back as Lemma re-emerged into the daylight. The scent of the green coffee beans she was roasting wafted towards him on the late afternoon breeze.

Lemma gasped.

In his mind’s eye Radu could picture the shock on Lemma’s face when she realized that a strange man was confronting her, and not the cherished young husband she was expecting back at any moment from his afternoon walk. Radu’s soul stirred with an unbearable sense of foreboding. He gritted his teeth, but remained in place.

‘Excuse me,’ began the man, with a smile in his voice. ‘But are you Yola Dufontaine? I have you down on my list as living here. I represent the commune, you see. And we are conducting a census.’

‘A what?’

‘A census. That’s a listing of everybody living within the commune and its confines. This is a government order. I am responsible to the government for this locality.’

The man’s voice was hesitant when it should have been filled with a bureaucrat’s solid pomposity. The reiteration of the word ‘government’ was too emphatic. The smile in the voice had also disappeared. Radu shifted his position until he was able to see, albeit at an acute angle, through the entryway.

‘Is your husband, Alexi Dufontaine, here with you, by any chance?’ As he said these words, the man glanced around himself a second time. On this occasion, however, the look was not that of a prey animal, but of a predator. Of a man with power. Of someone who feels himself to be incontrovertibly, and unassailably, in the right. ‘I will need the names of your other companions too. And their ages and places of birth. Perhaps your husband can provide me with these?’

‘My husband is away. I am alone here. I do not know the names of my companions. You must come back another time. He will answer you then. He will speak for all of us.’

The man grinned. ‘I see that you are making coffee. Is it just for you? When I came by earlier, there was a man here. If he is the head of your family, I must speak to him. It is hardly too much to ask.’

‘He is away, I tell you. At the other end of the village. And without his presence, I am unable to tell you anything. You must come again when he is back. Come tomorrow. That would be better.’

Lemma was casting anxious glances about herself. She was talking loudly, in the clear hope that Radu would hear her and conceal himself before the official saw him. All Gypsies were adept at evading bureaucracy – it was an integral part of their DNA. Over the many centuries of their diaspora most had learned never to volunteer information unnecessarily – or if they were forced into a corner, to muddy the waters and lie. Officialdom fed at the trough of facts. Vary the facts, and the bureaucratic behemoth ground to a halt. This much should be obvious to anyone with half a brain, thought Radu. Even this asshole with his clipboard.

‘But you are Yola Dufontaine, aren’t you?’

‘Of course I am. Who did you think I was?’

Radu’s sense of foreboding increased. Lemma thought she was doing the right thing by pretending to be Yola – but Radu suspected a trap.

‘I have you down on my list as expecting a baby. Your condition is clear even to me. When is the baby due?’

‘Next month. Or maybe the month after.’

‘Next month, eh?’ Andrassy smiled. ‘Or the month after? You are very big, Doamn
ă
Dufontaine. I have a wife and children too. I have some experience in these matters. I would hazard your baby will arrive sooner than that.’

Lemma backed hesitantly towards the safety of her tent. ‘I may not talk to you like this. It is not allowed. My husband will be very angry with me. You must go away. Come back and talk to him when he returns. He will give you all the information you seek.’

Andrassy took a step towards her. ‘Here. Look.’ He took a further step. He was glancing nervously to his right and left now, like a guilty dog. ‘These are my official documents. These prove that I am a registered census taker. Can you read?’

Lemma, her eyes still fixed on Andrassy’s, ducked back inside the tent. She began to fasten the front flap from the inside.

Radu exhaled in relief. Surely, now, the bastard would turn round and leave?

But as Radu watched, Andrassy dropped his clipboard, flashed a final look around the compound, and sprinted towards the tent.

50

Radu allowed himself no time to think. The distance between him and the tent was thirty yards. He covered it in four seconds. The man was already inside the tent when Radu reached the opened flap. Lemma was on the floor in front of him and the man was squatting over her, both hands encircling her neck.

Radu yelled and threw himself on the man’s back. The man flung one arm behind him and struck Radu violently on the cheekbone with his elbow. Radu had never known such pain. He was thrown back against the interior of the tent. He had still not entirely recuperated from the bullet wounds he had sustained the previous November. Now he could feel his left eye closing. His right eye began to flutter in sympathy.