And yet, however far I retreated, there was always a part of me that remained bitterly aware of reality. My mobile prison jolted me across the length and breadth of France, from one fair to another, and I was kept in conditions of animal squalor until I feigned sufficient obedience and resignation to suggest that my spirit was entirely broken. Humility was the price of those moments of privacy which basic human dignity demands. My mother had taught me to conduct myself like a gentleman, to be fastidious in my person and courteous in my demeanor. I could not bear to live like an animal.
I begged to be allowed out of the cage, to attend to matters that demanded privacy, and this request so amused Javert—that mannerless pig!—that he came to release me in person and stand guard over my ablutions with his pistol. I knew that if I made any attempt to escape he would shoot —not to kill (I was too valuable an exhibit for that) but to maim sufficiently to ensure I should not get far before he caught me.
When I demanded clean clothes he laughed out loud and told me he had never known a corpse so particular about its shroud.
"You'll be wanting a dress suit next," he sneered. "Quit your bleating, you draw good enough crowds as you are."
I turned very slowly to look at him.
"I could draw more," I said, driven by desperation to sudden boldness. "1 could draw twice as many people—if you made it worth my while."
He lowered his pistol and beckoned me nearer; his instinct was to mock, but his own inherent greed made him curious.
"What blather is this?" he demanded cautiously. "You're the most ugly creature that ever walked God's earth—that's your livelihood and my good fortune. Why else would anyone want to pay to see you?"
"If you place lilies in the coffin with me…" I said slowly, "I could make them sing."
He pushed the pistol into his belt and rocked to and fro on his heels, bellowing with laughter.
"God help me, brat, you're a raving lunatic. You'll be the death of me, I swear it. Going to make lilies sing, are you? And just how are you going to do that, I'd like to know?"
At this time—before I turned my attention to my own setting—I still considered Bach's Mass in B minor to be the worthiest interpretation of the Latin text. It was from that composition, so beloved of Father Mansart, that I now chose the Agnus Dei which apparently issued from the petals of a wild daffodil beside Javert's boot.
"
Agnus Dei… misere nobis
…"
Without emotion I watched Javert's fat face sag in disbelief as he bent and plucked the flower at his feet. He held it to his ear and I heard his sharp gasp of astonishment when I let my voice ring sweetly in his head. He changed ears and abruptly my voice changed direction; he threw the withered bloom to the floor and walked away from it and I tapered the sound accordingly so that it seemed to him my voice had grown distant.
Then he came and stared at me intently, placing a thick, dirty finger on my throat and starting violently when he felt the faint vibration of my vocal cords.
"How is it possible?" he muttered, more to himself than to me. "I've seen enough ventriloquists in my time—but I've never heard anyone produce a voice like that." He caught me roughly by the shoulder and gave me an angry shake. "I should beat you for keeping this secret from me, you little devil! When I think of the money I could have made already…" He released me abruptly and stood back. "Still, no matter, you'll sing tonight. I'll get hold of those lilies if I have to raid a churchyard grave—"
Suddenly he became aware of my pointed silence.
"Well?" he demanded uneasily. "Why that mum, codfish look? Cat got your tongue, has it?"
I stared at him in defiant silence and he immediately began to bluster like a bully who senses the first scent of defeat.
"All right, what's going on in that twisted little head of yours? Out with it!"
I shrugged my shoulders and turned away.
"If I agreed to sing," I told him calmly, "there would be conditions."
"
Conditions
!" He caught me by the neck and pressed his huge thumbs against my windpipe in a strangling grip. "Conditions, is it? I could slit your throat for you here and now."
Very slowly I began to smile; and I suppose the utter absurdity of his empty threat must have been instantly apparent to him, for even as he spoke he let me go and I became aware that he was breathing noisily through his nose in a futile attempt to govern his fury.
"Conditions," he repeated, enunciating the word with some difficulty through clenched teeth. "Well, what are these damned conditions? Name them, you insolent little bag of bones, and have done with it!"
I sat on the grass, staring away across the straggling camp with complete indifference to his growing agitation. I let him wait… and sweat.
"I won't sing without the mask and I won't sing in a cage," I said steadily. "If you want to make a bargain with me, you can begin by giving me my own tent."
"
If I want
…" he began incredulously. Then suddenly he seemed to recover from his stupefaction and became coldly practical. "Impossible," he continued—but without rage, I noted. "How could I trust you to stay?"
I stared at the floor to hide the tears which were suddenly stinging my eyes as I gazed squarely into the bleak future.
"I have nowhere to go." There was an edge of weariness and resignation in my voice. "Give me privacy and a little comfort and I will stay and make your fortune in return."
He stared at me suspiciously.
"So you say. Just supposing I chose to trust you, there's still the crowd to consider. They'll want to see your face. What's the point of the coffin and the lilies if they don't see your face?"
I considered this resentfully, for I knew he had made a valid point.
"Very well," I conceded at last. "I agree to remove the mask at the end of the performance. But only for a few minutes, just long enough to shock. My face remains covered until that moment and the rest of the time is my own, to do with as I please."
"You don't want much, do you?" There was a sneer in his voice, but something moved behind his hard eyes, a look that was almost a grudging sort of respect.
"I could beat you to a pulp, but I couldn't make you sing —that's it, you little rogue, isn't it, that's what you're telling me?"
"No," I told him grimly, "you couldn't make me sing." We stared at each other like wary enemies, and after a moment he made an abrupt gesture for me to accompany him to his tent, striding off across the field and resisting the temptation to look back to check that I was following. For the moment I was the victor.
Strange as it may seem, once I had gained that small measure of freedom, I no longer occupied myself with thoughts of escape. All my life I had been sheltered from the outside world, and I was as yet too ignorant of its ways to survive alone. I wished to eat at reasonable intervals and have a roof of sorts over my head; Javert provided the basic necessities of life and I chose to remain obediently at his side for much the same reasons that tie a stray dog to a cruel master. His authority was the boundary of my world at a time when I was still child enough to need such boundaries and the sense of order and place they bestowed. I belonged to him; perhaps for no better reason than that I simply needed to belong.
Moving became an integral part of my life, and I quickly learned to embrace the instinctive restlessness of the Gypsies and absorb their mystical ways. I soon recognized the signs that other Romany travelers had left in their wake, signs that pass unnoticed to the eyes of the uninitiated. A birch twig denoted danger ahead, white feathers the presence of chickens in the area; branches of fir announced a wedding. Silent and observant, I soon became as steeped in Romany customs and skills as any Gypsy born on the open road.
Once it was discovered that my eyes were adapted to the dark better than any cat's, I was immediately singled out for the ancient practice of
chiving drav
. In the tent of a gap-toothed old woman, famed for her herbal knowledge, I was taught how to prepare a poison capable of killing a pig without contaminating its blood. And then, at dead of night, I would be sent creeping into a nearby farm to administer this poison to some unfortunate beast. Most Gypsies will not thieve at night for fear of encountering the spirits of the dead, but, as Javert pointed out with drunken wit, the dead were hardly likely to object to my presence. Next morning, when the farmer was puzzling over the mysterious demise of his pig, one of the tribe would appear at his door, begging for food. Almost invariably they would be presented with the carcass, the farmer being anxious to get it off his hands, fearful lest the death heralded some deadly outbreak of disease.
I hated this practice and never ate meat procured in this manner. It became known as one of my eccentric ways, that I would go hungry rather than share in such a meal; and eventually, as the performances in my tent grew steadily more professional and lucrative, I refused to undertake this distasteful task anymore. The night that I threw the vial of
drao
on the campfire and told the tribe to procure their own miserable carrion in future was a strange turning point. No one moved to punish me, no one struck me to the ground for my disobedience; and it was then that I suddenly came to realize I was not without power.
Power!
The concept began to appeal increasingly as I perfected my ventriloquist's skills and sat long into the night devising increasingly complex magical tricks to enchant the crowds. By the time I had passed two summers with the Gypsies my fame was already beginning to run before me, and the camp was growing unusually prosperous as a result. I was the main attraction at every fair; people came for miles to see me perform. And though I still hated the moment of unmasking, there was a certain satisfaction in the breathless hush which greeted my singing and my displays of legerdemain.
Power!
Once I had begun to seek it actively, power came to me in many curious and unexpected ways. My period of instruction in the wisewoman's tent had sparked an acute interest in the herbal properties she sold at all the summer fairs. She had remedies for every conceivable human disorder; and since anything that caused the human race to suffer was inevitably of consuming fascination to me, I began to study her skills with stealthy industry. She was ugly enough herself to be largely untroubled by my presence, and I think she was flattered by my questions. But when I began to experiment with tried and trusted remedies, she was furious and threatened to put a curse upon me. I think that would have been an end of my tuition, but that same night she was stricken with a fever that yielded to none of her proven recipes. The rumor went around the camp that she was dying of a deadly contagion and with cold and pitiless logic the tribe repitched their tents at a safer distance.
"Surely someone will go to her," I protested uneasily.
Javert looked up in mild surprise from the stick he was patiently whittling
"There's nothing to be done for a mortal fever," he told me placidly. "It's only common sense to keep away."
A strange fury gripped me, a fury that owed virtually nothing to pity, but a great deal to mortal impotence and complacency. There was no better way to raise a demon in my brain than to tell me a thing could not be done.
Impossibility was not a concept I acknowledged.
I got up quietly, without breathing a word of my intention, and crossed the void to the old woman's tent.
I could see as I looked at her that she was in a very bad way and I felt the same frustration I had once experienced when I dismantled my mother's clocks—unbelievable irritation in the face of my own inadequacy and limited competence.
Well… I had learned very early to master the mechanism of a clock. And I would not be defeated this time either—not by some miserable pestilence invisible to the naked eye!
I was not moved by any feeling of common humanity or affection. This was simply a challenge I could not resist.
While the old woman lay moaning on her pallet, completely insensible of my presence, I pulled out the ancient copper pans and began to heat an infusion of my own.
She lived.
The infection spread all over the camp, afflicting almost half of the sturdy Gypsy children, who had seldom known a day's illness in their lives. Those who were treated with the traditional infusions died; the three who were treated with mine lived.
Beginner's luck, perhaps, but of such strange and timely coincidences legends are born. After that incident the tribe began to treat me with increasingly wary respect. The entire encampment, riddled with superstition, took to explaining my rapidly expanding skills as a natural talent for dealing with unseen forces. A story went around the campfire that I was the scholar of ancient Gypsy legend, the tenth graduate of the College of Sorcery, who had been detained in payment to serve as the devil's apprentice. It was said that I knew all the secrets of nature and magic and that I rode a dragon which dwelt high in the mountains of Hermanstadt and slept in the caldron where thunder was brewed.
The change in my status was remarkable. Small children no longer threw stones and chanted names when I appeared. If I passed by their tents in the daytime, they would run away from me, as though I were the devil in person, shrieking for the mothers, who now used my name as the ultimate threat to enforce obedience.
"Hush! Or Erik will come and take you to his tent and you will never be seen again."
Boys of my own age, who had made my life a misery during my early months with the tribe, now left me alone, fearing a terrible retribution if they angered me. And since it was comfortable to be free of their torment, I did everything in my power to foster the growth of my grim reputation.
Power!
I was beginning to acquire quite a taste for it, to see it as a very satisfactory substitute for happiness… for love.
By the time I had spent three summers with the Gypsies, I was pleasantly aware that everyone in the camp regarded me with some degree of unfounded terror.