The Stolen (28 page)

Rajko held out the copper goblet and addressed Matthias solemnly in Romanes, which Latcos translated.

‘Drink now and by first light you will either be of gypsy blood and I as the
bulibasha
of my
familiya
, will welcome you as a Rom, or you will be with the angels. Do you agree to take our law into your soul?'

‘I agree.'

Matthias, staring straight into the black eyes of the old man, took the goblet and drank the contents, a searing, bitter liquid that instantly made him want to retch. Fighting the convulsion, he managed to keep the drink down. Rajko rocked back on his heels. A new look of respect glazing his features, he stood, brushed the leaves from his trousers, then pointed to the first star now clearly visible over the jagged tops of the pine trees. Latcos turned to Matthias, his face full of concern. ‘He wants you to mark the first star as the beginning of your journey.'

Matthias looked up. Venus, just below the white crescent of the moon, was a bright twinkle that seemed to oscillate between crimson and yellow light. As he stared the star seemed to begin throbbing. Suddenly he buckled over as pain rippled through his stomach.

‘Are you all right, my
phral
?' Latcos, hoisting one arm over his shoulder, helped Matthias to stand upright. ‘We go to the clearing: ghosts will come to you, unanswered questions, your own demons. Some are too weak to survive, so you must be strong. I will watch over you until you are back with us.'

The whole forest had begun to sway around him as if in a violent storm. In the distance Matthias could hear a faint reverberation that seemed to be approaching, like the subterranean rumble of a huge train. He allowed Latcos to support his weight as he led him through a small cluster of trees into a tiny clearing, the undergrowth soft with young evergreen branches that had been cut and laid to make a carpet. Latcos lowered Matthias down. Now his jaw rattled with a trembling fever; as his stomach cramped, he curled up in a foetal position.

Latcos squatted beside him. ‘Don't fight the spirits that come to you. Let the potion take you where it wishes – this way it will be easier and over quicker.' His voice, distorted, sounded like the rasping of an old woman, and Matthias, barely conscious, strained to acknowledge it. As his eyes rolled up towards the night sky he saw that it was filled with great rolling white clouds that appeared to be gathering like mountaintops ready to cascade down upon them. He let himself slip into darkness.

 

‘For years we thought you were dead, that the Nazis had killed you. Another small white skeleton like so many others, mountains of them…' The gypsy sat with his back towards Matthias, legs crossed, his veined hands turning a small metal thing Matthias couldn't quite see, over and over.

The great roaring that had consumed Matthias before was now somehow infused into the very surroundings, air itself appearing to throb silently. He picked himself up off the ground, wondering whether he was conscious or swept into the netherworld of the potion. He tried looking in the direction of the man sitting before him. Before them spread a dawn – a great panorama of purple, pink, crimson and azure, but it was not a landscape he recognised; it was an entirely flat horizon devoid of trees, buildings, any evidence of humanity and stretched so far at either side it was possible to see the curvature of the Earth. The gypsy took his hat off and Matthias could see the gaping wound on the back of his head. He turned to face Matthias, and Matthias recognised him from the photographs Latcos had showed him. His uncle, Keja's brother Yojo, his amber eyes twinkling with intelligence.

‘But then Keja would suddenly feel you, or dream you, seven years old, fifteen years old, as if some buried part of you was calling out for her. I was the only one who knew, the only one she could tell of her terrible shame, of the way he had tortured her, tried to flatten her spirit like a beaten piece of copper. But although you had come out of him, she had seen something in you lying in her arms, the cord still hanging from your body. Even then in those first seconds of life you reached for her and held on. You were hope in all that evil.'

‘Was I?'

‘Understand, I was the one that found her after the war, abandoned in the camp, the brown triangle still stitched into her rags. It took nine months before she spoke, another two years before she told me how she had survived, why she hadn't been forcibly sterilised like most of our women. What you do with your life will make good her shame, my nephew. Half-blood, quarter-blood, the ties are still there. Gather what is yours by right. No one is born against such odds without a reason. Avenge her, avenge my death…' He reached over and placed the small metal object into Matthias's hand. It was a bloodstained bullet, the one that had killed him.

In that moment Matthias felt a stickiness spreading across his palms and fingers. He looked down; the bullet was bleeding over his hands. Horrified, he dropped it into the snow where it lay, a crimson blossom against the white.

‘Matthias…' Now it was Marie sitting before him, her long legs tucked under her, a thin silk dress he'd loved billowing gently against her breasts. She seemed oblivious to the snow and the freezing air. He stumbled forward, the impossibility of her instantly dismissed.

‘Marie? Is it really you?'

‘Of course – why shouldn't it be?' she said, the gently teasing tone to her voice poignantly familiar. And as she said it he forgot that she had died at all. Instead he reached out, the warmth of her leg under his fingers palpable, real. The faint smell of crushed strawberries filtered down through her hair, a scent triggering memories so intense he fought not to weep.

‘Matthias, listen to me. Our daughter, her haunting… those are the last terrifying seconds of my death she relives over and over…' Marie's voice floated over him and through him as if she were speaking both from within him and outside him. A terrible possibility swept through him.

Shocked, he sat up. ‘She never told me… Marie, was your death really an accident?'

‘I don't know…'

‘Tell me!'

But she'd already begun to leave him. Wanting to keep her with him, he grabbed her wrist, the flesh as warm as his own, then realised there was no heartbeat pulsating through her veins.

 

The dawn sky and the smouldering embers of a campfire rippled back into his senses. Swaying, Matthias kneeled over to vomit. Latcos, sitting nearby, rushed over to help him. ‘Welcome back, brother, you are now a true Rom.'

The three other gypsies were waiting for him back beyond the forest. A pot of steaming black coffee sat on a small campfire. As they approached, Rajko stood up.

‘You are now part of his family,' Latcos announced formally as Rajko stepped forward to embrace Matthias, followed by Vedel and Andro. Vedel handed him a tin cup full of strong black coffee and they all sat as Vedel told Rajko and Andro the purpose of Latcos and Matthias's journey. Settling back on his haunches, Rajko lit his pipe and began talking in a deep baritone, Vedel translating in a soft voice.

‘Now I can trust you with my history of my family. At the beginning of the war we were travelling through Austria from Hungary. The men wove baskets to sell and the women told fortunes and picked apples for the farmers. It was a good life, not easy, but it was the pure life, the life on the road. We had set up camp near a village we visited because the peasants there were friendly. We knew about the Germans, but this war was the
gadjé
's business, and although we'd heard about Jews being taken, up until then our family had been left alone. The soldiers came early one morning and told my father, the
bulibasha
, that they were going to rehouse us in a beautiful village and that we should come with them. They had guns and dogs, what choice did we have? The whole
familiya
, women, babies,
babas
, everyone was loaded up onto trucks and they drove us for two days and nights into Germany. No water, no food, and on the third day we arrived at Buchenwald, at the special camp they had there for the Rom, hundreds of families packed together worse than animals, and every day children would swell up and die of the water cancer. The
gadj
é
soldiers didn't care about gypsy law or the feuds between the clans: Manush would be living with Vlax, Kalderash, Kale, Sinti, every Rom thrown in together. My three children – two boys and a girl – they starved to death within three weeks. My fourteen-year-old brother was hung for stealing a rotten potato, and my wife was shot in the head by the man who has your face. The face I saw again six months ago at a marketplace near Karl Marx Stadt – only then you had the years etched in your face.'

‘Ulrich Vosshoffner!' Matthias exclaimed.

Latcos asked the old man a question; he replied with an impassioned tirade and emphatic gestures. Latcos turned to Matthias. ‘I asked if he could remember exactly where he'd seen “you”. And he told me he could do better than that – he can lead us to where “you” are living, because he followed him home that day in the market. And now he will be able to help “you” kill “yourself” in the most ignoble death of all, the father to be killed by the hand of the son.'

The three other Rom froze, waiting for a reaction from Matthias. He studied the wrinkled face of the man sitting before him and then, leaning forward, kissed him on both cheeks. Astounded, Rajko dropped his pipe into the snow.

 

 

It was a small village, really more a hamlet at the edge of a main road that ran into the city of Karl Marx Stadt, or Chemnitz – its pre-Soviet name – as Vedel defiantly called it. A sad place of fifty or so dwellings built around a square that boasted a medieval fountain, a neglected church with a poster advertising dances for the young Communist league, a small town hall, a police station with a flagpole from which hung the yellow, black and red striped DDR flag with its distinctive coat of arms, and a couple of down-trodden cafés. It was in this village square that the market took place every Sunday, the same market at which the old gypsy had sighted Ulrich Vosshoffner. Once a thriving town with farms surrounding it, it had been consumed by factories – mainly leather works and steel – three of which were visible from the square: ugly, squat concrete buildings from which soot-blackened chimneys yawned up into the white sky.

Matthias stood next to a statue at the top of the square; originally a monument to the fallen dead, the current regime had placed Stalin atop what had obviously once been a statue of Bismarck. Besides this travesty, leaning irreverently against the great man himself, was Latcos, who had dressed Matthias to look more like a local farmer in a state-issued boiler suit and Russian fur hat with earflaps.

Rajko was pointing out the café where he'd seen Vosshoffner having a strudel and coffee, and the path he took tracking the Nazi to his car. The night before, Matthias had argued for a chance to confront Ulrich, to try and get information out of him about the statuette with the threat of exposing his true identity to the Stasi – which would certainly lead to a trial and execution. He promised they would betray him to the local police anyhow. But Latcos wanted the right to kidnap the former Nazi and put him in front of a
Kris
– the Rom court – ensuring that he would be tried by the relatives of his victims. Either way, Matthias and Latcos had reassured Rajko that he would get his revenge for the murder of his family. But first they decided to search his house for evidence, then wait for him to trap him.

‘That café, over there,' Rajko told Vedel in Romanes. ‘That is where he was.'

‘Why didn't you take him then?' Matthias asked. Vedel stared at him. ‘We are nothing in this country – you think they would believe the word of an old gypsy? Others have been seen who were commandants in the camps, now in government positions. The Germans look after their own.'

‘Fear not, now we will look after ours,' Latcos reassured the others.

Matthias nodded. ‘I'll go find out when he's expected. Go back to the car and wait for me. If I'm more than ten minutes, drive around, and try and stay inconspicuous.'

Vedel grabbed Matthias's arm. ‘Then we get him?'

‘I promise,' he answered, but the Sinti's grip tightened. Latcos leaned forward.

‘You can trust the pas Rom.' The two Rom stared at each other. Finally Vedel let Matthias's arm go.

 

A folk song by the Soviet band Pesneri was playing on an ancient juke box in the corner. The café was practically empty except for a couple of older women having coffee in the far corner, their heads bent in a conspiracy of gossip, and a factory worker at the bar – a shift worker, Matthias guessed – still in his stained overalls and cap, smoking with a mid-morning beer in front of him. There was a framed photograph over the bar of Erich Honecker opening what looked like one of the nearby factories, and the obligatory state-approved photograph of Brezhnev next to him. The café owner, an obese man whose stomach seemed to have a personality of its own, stood behind the bar wiping glasses. A bell above the door rang as Matthias entered.