Up in the Old Hotel (Vintage Classics) (20 page)

‘I feel sad,’ Johnny said, ‘real blue-sad.’

‘What seems to be the matter?’ I asked.

‘The same thing that seems to be the matter with the rest of the world,’ he said. ‘The war. By the time this war’s over there just won’t be no travelling gypsies left in the U.S. There might not be no gypsies of any kind. The most of us, we been bottled up in cities since the depression, and that there gas-rationing business put the stopper in the bottle. The families out on the highways, one by one they’re going to get rid of their cars and fall back on the buses and the railroad trains. And before long the ticket agents won’t be so free about selling them tickets, and when that time comes New York’s going to crawl with gypsies. All the other cities where the cops are halfway decent to us, it’ll be the same – cities like Philly, Baltimore, Paterson, Chicago, New Orleans, Mexico City, Los Angeles, and Frisco. When a war hits the world the most sensible thing a gypsy can do is head for the nearest slum and hole up. And hope for the best. What gets me, some of our coppersmiths could do real fine shipyard work, but they won’t give them a chance. Four of the coppersmiths in my crowd were taken on by a Brooklyn Navy Yard contractor, but along about noon the foreman found out they wasn’t Greek fellers, like he thought, but gypsies, and he fired them. He was afraid they’d steal the tools.’

Johnny sighed and slopped some more gin into his glass. ‘Things have been getting worse and worse for gypsies ever since the automobile was put on the market,’ he said. ‘When I was a little knee-high boy the U.S. was gypsy heaven. Everybody was real ignorant and believed in fortune-telling. You could take their money so easy they just about gave it to you. And horses to
trade
. And every woman had some pots with holes in them, and if she couldn’t pay you to tinker, why, a dozen fresh eggs was just as good. And our wagons was red and yellow, and we had bells on the harness, and there wasn’t no motorcycle cops, and you could camp anywhere. Private property wasn’t even heard of. Nowadays, if gypsies was to make a camp out in the middle of some far desert a hundred and fifty miles from nowhere, about the time they got all settled down for the night a old farmer with a shotgun would come a-running and he’d say, “Private property. You get right off my private property or I’ll shoot you dead.” The entire country is overrun with private property. Some of them farmers, I’m surprised they let the airplanes fly over their goddam private property.

‘But when I was a little boy any place would do. The air would be clean, no stinking automobiles around, and we’d camp under some green shade trees near a stream of cooking water. And we’d put the horses on long halters and leave them feed theirselves. And we’d go fishing and fry the fish right off the hook. And firewood was free. And there was a violin in every family – at least a guitar – and you didn’t have to get drunk to feel like dancing. And the little kids would run around strip, stark naked. And the girls and womenfolks would go down the stream a piece and take a bath, and you would hear them through the trees a-giggling and a-hollering. And the yellow gypsy dogs that we don’t even have no more, they would lie down under the wagons and scratch their fleas. These
gajo
dogs you see in New York that the women practically nurse them, I despise those dogs. When they bark, yah-yah, they don’t even sound mad. They sound sick. A yellow gypsy dog, even a baby one, when he barked he sounded like a old bear. And the womenfolks would spread out and
dukker
at all the farms for miles around, and on the way back, after the sun went down, they would pick up a hen here and a cabbage there, and if they come across some clothes on a line, they would take the shirts and dresses. They never bothered the overalls. We didn’t have no use for overalls. When I think of the whole armfuls of roasting ear corn we used to steal, and the watermelons, and now and then a little grunty pig, why, it hurts my heart to think
of
it. When I was a little boy we almost always had enough to eat. You never saw no skinny gypsies.’

Johnny was interrupted by one of his daughters-in-law, a tall, haughty gypsy girl who came striding into the room, her heels clicking and her head held high. She went over to Johnny’s trunk, threw the lid back, and took out a number of copies of ‘Old Gipsy Nan.’ Johnny keeps a supply on hand and sells them to the women in his families. ‘I took six,’ the girl said, slamming the lid shut. She offered Johnny a five-dollar bill, and he grunted angrily. ‘Don’t bother me,’ he said. ‘Go get that changed and bring me sixty cents.’ She strode out of the room and Johnny’s eyes followed her.

‘I don’t mean no disrespect,’ he said after the girl had gone, ‘but gypsy women have got it all over civilize women. They got such a springy walk on them. No corset, no girdle, no brassy, none of them
gajo
inventions to weight them down. When you look at a gypsy woman you not looking at a corset, you looking at a woman. Most
gajo
women, I bet they carry more harness than a dray horse.’

Johnny kept working on the gin. Every few minutes he downed a drink and shuddered.

‘Yes, sir,’ he said, ‘years back gypsies lived high. But along about the time I got grown up, whenever that was, the bottom fell out. Automobiles spread and spread. No more horses to trade. Then came aluminum and cheap kitchen pots. Aluminum was a severe blow to gypsies, but when they took to selling pots in the five-and-dime they should of held the gypsy funeral right then and there. Women got so they wouldn’t have nothing tinkered; a pot got a hole in it, what the hell, pitch it out the window and get a brand-new one from the five-and-dime. Also, with only horses to feed, you could travel cheap. But when we took to cars we had to have gas and tire money. So we looked for big jobs. For a while we did fine. People don’t generally know it, but gypsies handled some real big tinker jobs. Back in 1921, in one fall and winter, a crowd of gypsy coppersmiths I and six of my families was travelling with, old King Steve Kaslov’s crowd, we did sixteen thousand dollars’ worth of copper and tin work for the Arlington Mills at Lawrence, Massachusetts. Not long after we did ten thousand dollars’ worth for the Waltham Bleachery and Dye Works at Waltham,
Massachusetts
. Bunged-up dye vats and dry cans, that kind of stuff. And Paterson, New Jersey, them big dye works out there, we handled the biggest kind of tinker jobs. We’d take the job right out of the factory and truck it to our camp in the woods. We’d leave gold coins on deposit, so the factory would trust us to bring the job back. We worked together in the woods like bees, with the old gypsy coppersmith secret that was handed down from centuries ago. We can shape a pipe sleeve so accurate it fits like a grape hull on a grape, and just use our fingers to measure by. A
gajo
coppersmith with a shopful of machinery, he can’t do no better. Then came the depression, and the union fellers began to grab off all the copper work. In 1930 we handled a big job for a bleachery in Worcester, Massachusetts. After that the union fellers took everything. We was washed up.’

Johnny rested his head in his hands and stared at the floor for a minute or two. ‘Well, we still had our gold,’ he said after a while. ‘It’s hard to make people believe it nowadays, but gypsy women used to be loaded down with gold. They was our banks. In 1933 I and Looba had six thousand bucks in gold coins and she carried the most of it around sewed up in her skirts. And, compared to some gypsies, we was poor. What happened? President Roosevelt. Except he made everybody turn in their gold, I wouldn’t say a word against him. Us gypsies, we had gold coins from damn near every country in the world. Some of it had been toted around for centuries. We used to change all our money into gold. And the cops came to our camps and made us take it to the banks and turn it in. Orders from Washington, D.C. And the banks gave us paper money in exchange. What the hell good is paper money? It went like wine at a wedding. We all bought new cars – who wants a Ford? Give us a Packard. Make it two, one for Ma, one for Pa, ride in style, honk, honk! And along about that time, I don’t know why, but the whole entire country turned against gypsies. Them motorcycle cops would chase us across one state line and then some more cops would chase us across another state line. Pretty soon we didn’t know where the hell we was at. Whole sections of the country had to be dodged or they’d put us on the chain gang, or try to. Even the carnivals turned against us. Use to, up to the
depression
, every spring the carnivals and little circuses would put ads in the
Billboard
magazine, rounding up the attractions. And all of them would advertise for a gypsy mitt joint, split half and half with the carnival. And the amusement parks and beaches all up and down the Atlantic Coast would advertise for gypsies. Nowadays, you look at the carnival ads in
Billboard
and it says, “No gypsies wanted.” Or it says, “American palmistry only.”
Gajo
women
dukkering
for carnivals. It’s sunk to that!

‘So we began heading for New York, Chicago, big cities where there’s slums to live in. And rent to pay. The fundamental thing a gypsy is opposed to is rent. Use to we was healthy. But now the babies get the rickets and the old folks get the itch. And colds, and t.b. And right after they’re weaned the babies start eating hot dogs. And the steam heat, it’s paralyzing us. It’s drying us up. It takes us all summer to get over the steam heat. It makes our hair fall out. It gives us the dropsy. You take a gypsy woman, out on the road she’d have a baby every year. Let her spend a solid winter in a steam-heat room, she quits having babies. And the relief people, always wanting to know where at was you born. Now, how would a gypsy know that? You’re born in a tent beside the road someplace and a week later you’re in another state and there ain’t nobody got time to keep track of where at you was born. Who cares? And birth certificates! Why, we never heard of birth certificates until we hit the relief. I don’t have the slightest idea where I was born. All I know it was in the U.S. someplace. I’m alive, ain’t I? I must of been born.’

Johnny had worked himself into a frenzy. He lurched to his feet, and started to say something more to me, and then stuttered and stopped, and I could see that the gin was beginning to take hold. At this moment the tall, haughty gypsy girl returned, bringing the money for the books she had taken. She stood at his elbow and tried to give him some coins, but he disregarded her.

‘And let me tell you something,’ he said finally, waving his hand at me with an oratorical gesture. ‘I just can’t wait for the blowup.’

‘The blowup of what?’ I asked.

‘The blowup of the whole entire world, that’s what,’ said Johnny. ‘It’s going to bust wide open any day now, ask any gypsy, and I don’t give a D-double-damn if it does.’

‘That’s no way to talk,’ I said.

‘And if it was left to me,’ continued Johnny, paying no attention to my remark, ‘I’d sure fix things up. The very first thing I’d do, I’d unlock the insane asylums all over the world and let them people out. I’d leave them run things. I’d hunt up the insanest feller of all and I’d say to him, “Sir, you got any notion how to run the world?” And he’d say to me, “Yes,
indeed!”
“O.K., pal,” I’d say to him, “take charge. You can’t possibly do no worse than them that’s been had charge.” And if the crazy fellers couldn’t somehow straighten things out, why, I’d call on the gypsies. I’d put everything in their hands.’

The gypsy girl snickered and made what I thought was a sound observation. ‘Uh oh!’ she said.

(1942)