Tide King (23 page)

The men came back one afternoon with their wagon and motioned for the women to help pack the trailers. From their tight faces dripped worry that seeped into the camp. Were the Germans already here? According to the talk the men had picked up in town, their territory had been expanding further and further east, and the Russians further west. For months there were rumors of the Nazis taking the Jews and the gypsies to camps, an invasion of Poland. It was already hard enough to trade in the towns, Ferki told her, given the natural, centuries-long distrust of the gypsies, but the German would put them into
Zigeunerlager
, or work camps, or they might kill them on the spot. The Russians would send them to Serbia. Ela watched from the door of the bone house as Ferki carried bales of blankets on his young back, the bead of sweat that formed on the top of his lip. She wanted to hold his head close to her chest and kiss his brow.

“I am worried for your safety,” Ela said to Tsura as she helped to pestle some of the burnette saxifrage.

“Es okay. We survive a long time. But you will show us how to survive longer.”

Tsura stood close, rubbing her hand. She put her finger in the bowl and held up a finger covered with grains. She poured the remains of the bowl into her pouch. With the ashes, it would be all they had to work with during their trip, wherever it was they were going. Heated words between the men, Ferki's father and another, floated into the doorway. Whatever they decided, there would be no time.

Ela looked around the bone house. It had always protected her, she thought as she grabbed Antoniusz's wooden horse and brought it to her chest. But perhaps she had been the one who protected it. She wrapped it into the multicolored quilt and tied the ends and then sat on the bed.

“Hurry,” Tsura called from the door and hurried outside. Ela listened to Ferki call her name. She dug her feet into the earth and closed her eyes. If she left her mother's house, she could never get back to her. She was sure of it.

“Ela!” Ferki's voice was closer, just outside the house. She imagined the silk of her mother's hair as it tumbled down her back, the touch of Matka's hand on her shoulder, caressing it.

Then it nudged her
go, go
. When she moved to the door, Ferki was already there, waiting. He grabbed her by the arm and they ran toward the trailer.

They rode at night, traveling narrow cattle trails through the open fields, far from the little jumbles of villages scattered like campfires across the countryside, relying on the moon to reveal an intruder. They slept during the day deep in the forests, one eye open. They learned to tell the sound of a branch broken by a human foot from one made by a goat or mountain lion. There were uncooked potatoes to eat and cold pottage, a wheat stew. It took its toll on the younger Romani through temper, dark eyes, dry coughs, runny bowels. Tsura became sick. She lay in the back of the trailer under a pile of blankets with Ferki and Ela while Ferki's parents sat outside in the front, where they had affixed a wooden bench to corral and guide the horse. Ela fed Tsura the mint and sage and burnette saxifrage she had ground into a tea, but her tinctures left Tsura almost as quickly as they entered her, and if they made a complete crossing of Tsura's stomach, they exploded as hot, sour liquids from her as she shat out the trailer door, Ferki holding the rest of her inside by her arms.

“My spirit has been taken,” she murmured, eyes closed, a sunken pillar in a pile of cloth, the reservoirs to her wisdom sealed forever. “Leave me behind.”

“Never.” Ferki dabbed her face with a cloth, damp from the bucket of water that needed to last them all. For how long, no one knew. The forest they were traveling through was unfamiliar; they had encountered no brooks or rivers. No one wanted to think about what might happen next, but they each had taken pains to urinate into something that was theirs alone, a cup, a flask, a bowl, and guarding the precious liquid against the bumps and twists that the wagon wheels found on the forest floor as if cradling a zygote in their womb.

“Do not waste the water on me.” Tsura tried to sit up. “If I stay, you will go faster.”

“If you leave, we all will die.” He kissed her cheek. “As your soul goes, as do ours.”

A meeting was held. The trailers would separate so they could travel faster, smaller, like coyotes and not dogs. Ela went with Ferki and Tsura and Ferki's parents. They rolled onward in separate directions, their wooden wheels splitting stones and cracking branches, but still maddeningly slow. The horses spooked easily, and they stopped many times as Ferki's father spoke softly to them, rubbing their necks. They could cover so much more ground on foot, Ela knew, but Ferki would not leave his grandmother, so she did not ask.

They took turns, Ferki's father and Ela sleeping, then Ferki and his mother. With an eye open, they listened for the sound of the Nazis in the distance. They were arrogant, it was known, shouting and laughing in German, never needing the element of surprise because of their brute force.

At least, Ela listened. Ferki's father slept like death, silent and unmoving until the trailer stopped and everyone changed their positions, nibbled at the hardened biscuits and potatoes full of eyes and roots that lay like small islands at the bottom of growing sacks. When it was their turn to sleep, Ela lay awake, the dream world and the real world before her, holding hands, courting. She missed her time with Ferki; she longed to press her face into his neck, to be comforted by his smells as Tsuri's began their own slow and inevitable leeching into the trailer, sweat and rot and bowels that festered in every corner. Sometimes he would tap on the roof of the trailer, softly, from where he sat on the bench to let her know he was there, that he was thinking of her. That he would not forget her.

The trailer ground to a halt, throwing Ela forward, out of her half sleep. She shook Ferki's father as he swatted at her with his hand.

“
Jal avree
. Go away.” He frowned and furrowed his brow. “Another minute.”

“We're stuck.” Ela pulled at his ankle until he sat up. Outside, the horizon glowed orange, revealing the last few glimmers of the world. The trees huddled before them in dark shadows. They seemed to sway closer and then farther from them. Ferki's father stumbled out of the trailer, kicking his legs as he struggled not to fall in the mud.

“Come.” Ferki took her hand and they felt their way in the darkness, gathering branches, pressing them to their chests until they began to drop them. If they did not work quickly, they would lose time, the cover of night, to put distance between the rumbling trucks, the searchlights that sometimes swept through the trees ahead and behind them. Ferki and his father threw the branches they collected and leaves into the mud by the wheels as Ferki's mother fed the horses the last few bits of straw. Ela walked the perimeter of the trailer, looking for berries and other edibles, medicinal plants for Tsura, when she saw Tsura staggering away from the back door of the trailer.

“Don't mind me.” Tsura smiled at her. “I have to go the bathroom. And then I will fly like a bird to the clouds, tweet, tweet, tweet.”

“May I be of help?” Ela looked toward the trailer, which rocked back and forth, the wheels trying to catch the dry material.

“No, no. The fresh night air.” Tsura said over her shoulder as she teetered, holding her skirts. “Already I feel better. Like the snakes in my ears.”

It was only natural she would become delirious from her continued loss of fluids. Ela took her own skirt full of berries and jasmine flowers back to the trailer and opened the wooden jewelry box that Tsura used to separate and store her herbs. Perhaps she could ground some more psyllium and mint together, making a fibrous concoction to better bind Tsura's stools. But when she opened the door on the right, one of the wooden slots, the one where Tsura kept her belladonna root, was empty. Ela left her berries in a pile and ran out of the trailer.

“Ferki!” she shouted as she ran in the direction that Tsura had taken into the woods. She had not gotten far when she saw her, slumped under an oak, face flushed, her chin pressed into her neck.

“Puri daj!
Grandmother!
” Ferki had overtaken Ela and lifted Tsura's head in his hands.

“She ate the belladonna,” Ela explained, opening Tsura's eyes, moving her head back and forth. Her eyes did not track; they locked on Ela's shoulder. “Wake! Wake up! When did you take the belladonna?”

“I saw her going through them this morning.” Ferki looked at her Ela, his eyes rimmed wet, his bottom lip loose, exposing his lower teeth. “The herbs. She said she was getting some mint to chew on.”

“We need mustard and salt.” Ela put her fingers in Tsuri's mouth. “To make her bring it up. If it's not too late.”

“You have to save her.” Ferki grabbed her arm and pressed his knife across the soft underside of her arm. He pulled it across and it sank, without resistance, into her skin. A sea of red spilled over the edges of the cut as Ferki pressed her arm to Tsuri's lips. “Drink, Puri daj. Drink.”

In the distance, they heard an engine. It was not good if they were near a road. But if they were near a road, perhaps they were close to water, to help.

“Javen daj!
Come here
!” His mother called after them. “We get the trailer under cover.”

Ela could feel Tsura's breath, light and quick on her arm, begin to slow. She pressed her arm closer to her, even knowing that her blood had never saved anyone. It smeared across Tsura's face, making her look like one of the clowns that sometimes came through with the circuses. Ela tried to wipe it with her the top of her hand.

“Javen daj! We must go,” Ferki's mother called. “I do not say again! Akana mukav tut le Devlesa.”
I now leave you to God
.

“Go.” Ela looked at Ferki. “I will stay with her.”

“Never.”

“It is too late for her.
I
will be safe—you know that.”

“Tsura.” Ferki cupped her chin and pressed his ear against her mouth. When he pulled away, sucking in his breath, her lips had left a blood kiss where his ear met his cheek.

“Akana mukav tut le Devlesa!” Ferki's father appeared at the head of the woods. He beckoned to them.

“Javen daj's dead!” Ferki yelled.

“They are coming!” His father waved them toward the truck. The engine was louder. Clipped German bit at the air. His hand froze in mid-air as they heard Ferki's mother scream, voices they did not recognize mingled with it. His father began to wave them in the other direction. “Go! Go! Run!”

Ferki stared dumbly at his father as he hurried back toward the trailer. Ela grabbed his arm and pulled him the other way into the forest, his feet stumbling in the roots, kicking up leaves, his breath choked wet with tears, until something settled in him, the force of life, and he began to pull her, faster and faster until they were gone from where they were, no idea where they were going.

During the day, they slept in the trees. Ferki tied one of each of their ankles to the branch on which they lay with the torn-off arms of his shirt so they would not plunge to the ground. They hugged the thick branches with their bodies, and as they fell asleep, their grips would loosen, awakening them. But they were safe. By day, they searched for a stream, a pond, a stagnant circle of water, to wash off the blood and grime. They had heard the dogs, some days as soft as whispers, other days just over a hill, down in a valley. It was possible that they knew Ela's scent, that they had found Tsura and smelled it on her. That they were gaining.

“You go on.” Ela stopped walking. The woods spread around them like a maze. Every tree the same, a sliver of moon through a canopy of leaves to guide them. “I will be decoy, you get?”

“No.” He grabbed her arm and jerked her along. Branches whipped at her face. “We go together.”

“They smell me.” She stopped again. “You are free.”

“My heart is chained to you.” He cupped her face in his hands. “I have no family but you. If I do not have you, I have nothing. And I may as well be dead.”