Up in the Old Hotel (Vintage Classics) (26 page)

‘Usually, when a woman enters an
ofisa
for the first time, she’s apprehensive. “Come right in, dear,” the gypsy says, and talks soothingly to her and tells her what a pretty dress she has on, so becoming, and leads her back into one of the booths. There’s two chairs in there, and a little table with a candle sticking up on it about a foot and a half long and as big around as your wrist, and that’s all. Every picture of a gypsy fortune-teller I’ve ever seen, she was gazing into
a
crystal ball, but I’ve never once seen a crystal ball in an
ofisa
. The gypsy lights the candle, and she and the woman sit facing each other, and the gypsy takes the woman’s right hand and opens it and gently strokes the palm, smoothing it out, and all this time the woman is talking, telling her troubles. The gypsy concentrates on the lines in the woman’s palm and doesn’t appear to be listening, but she’s listening; she’s trying to decide if the woman is worth working on, and if the woman slows down, she asks her a question or two that encourages her to talk some more. If the gypsy decides the woman has too much sense to fall for a
bajour
and all she can hope to get out of her is the fortune-telling fee, she doesn’t waste much time on her. She studies her right palm, and her left one, too, if the woman is willing to double the fee, and then she gives her the age-old fortune-telling rigamarole: a little about the past, a little about the future; she should watch this, she should be careful about that, she shouldn’t make any important decisions on Tuesdays. The gypsy may go through this procedure with a long succession of women, and months may go by, and then one day she’s staring at a woman’s palm and the woman is talking on and on – her husband died six weeks ago last Friday and now she’s all alone, there isn’t a single remaining soul who cares what happens to her; sometimes she sees him in a dream, and he’s sitting up in his coffin and his eyes are wide open and he’s looking straight at her; she wasn’t as good to him as she should’ve been, and her heart is broken; she hasn’t slept more than a couple of hours a night since he passed away, and she doesn’t see how she lives on the little she eats; she wishes she could take back some of the things she said to him, but it’s too late now; he was good to her, and she didn’t appreciate it; he left her everything he had, and she doesn’t deserve it, she doesn’t deserve a penny of it – and suddenly the gypsy knows she has a victim. She looks up from the woman’s palm, and interrupts her. “Have you noticed any unusual pains lately, dear,” she says, “any pains you never noticed before?” or “Come a little closer, dear,” she says, “and let me look at that mole on your cheek.” Then she goes back to studying the woman’s palm. She studies it for five minutes or so. “Let me see your other hand, dear,” she says. She studies the left palm awhile, and then she glances from one
to
the other, comparing the lines, and finally she looks up and says, “I don’t want to scare you, dear – we may be able to do something about it – but I see something bad in your hand. I see something very bad.” “What is it?” “It’s a good thing you came in here today,” the gypsy says. “The spirits must’ve sent you to me.” “What did you see in my hand?” the woman asks. “Tell me what you saw.” “I can’t tell you now,” the gypsy says. “There’s a certain other thing I have to look into, and then I’ll tell you. I want you to go home now, and on your way home I want you to buy a fresh white egg, and tonight I want you to get out the three warmest blankets you have and put them on your bed, and then I want you to get undressed and get under the blankets and lie on your back, and then I want you to take the egg and hold it on your navel with both hands clasped over it, and I want you to lie there that way until the egg feels warm, real warm, and then I want you to wrap it in a white handkerchief, and tomorrow morning I want you to bring it to me. And I don’t want you to pay me anything, now or ever; in cases like yours, we work in close connection with the spirits, and we don’t take money. And I want to warn you, if you say one word about this to anybody, even a priest or a minister, you’ll break my power so far as you’re concerned and I won’t be able to help you, and you better not let that happen, dear, because the spirits must’ve sent you to me, they must’ve meant for me to help you, and if they did, I’m the only one in the world that
can
help you. I’m your only hope.”

‘If the gypsy has the woman sized up right, she’s back at the
ofisa
bright and early next morning, and she has the egg with her, all wrapped up in a handkerchief. They go into the booth, and the woman tries to give the egg to the gypsy; she wants to get rid of it. “Just a moment,” the gypsy says. “I have to use a fresh candle for this.” She steps out of the booth and goes in back to get the candle, and while she’s back there she hides a tiny little object between two of the fingers of her left hand. She returns to the booth and stands the candle up and lights it. Then she takes the egg from the woman. She unwraps the egg and holds it and gives the handkerchief back to the woman and tells her to spread it on the table, which the woman does. Then the gypsy breaks the egg
and
empties it on the handkerchief, and while she’s doing so she executes some sleight of hand and the object between her fingers drops out, and when she takes her hands away it’s lying on the yolk of the egg – sometimes it’s a ball of tangled hair, sometimes it’s a knotted-up piece of string with some kind of stringy green matter clinging to it, and sometimes it’s a hairy little devil’s head.’

Captain Campion dug around in his briefcase and brought out a small cardboard box that had originally contained paper clips and opened it and placed it on the desk. ‘Such as this,’ he said. In the box, on a wad of cotton, lay a devil’s head carved out of ivory. It was approximately an inch and a quarter long and three-quarters of an inch wide. The devil’s horns were down-turned over his forehead, his eyes were shut, his cheeks were sunken, his mouth was fixed in an agonized grin, and he had a shock of bristly black hair. ‘When I first saw this thing,’ Captain Campion said, ‘I was pretty sure it wasn’t carved by a gypsy, and I took it uptown and showed it to a pawnbroker who’s an expert on queer jewelry and bric-a-brac, and he said it’s a type of ivory miniature that was quite popular in Germany during the latter part of the last century. They turn up now and then in antique stores and curiosity shops and pawnshops. When a gypsy woman buys one, she cuts off some of her own hair and glues it on the top and the back. We found this one in the possession of a Kalderash
bajour
woman named Linka Stevens. That flaky stuff sticking to the hair is dried-up egg yolk. The last time Linka used it, she took seven thousand nine hundred dollars from an old Irish-woman, a hotel maid. The old woman had worked in cheap side-street hotels in New York City for over forty years, and it was her life’s savings.’ Captain Campion closed the box and put it back in his briefcase.

‘To continue,’ Captain Campion said, ‘the gypsy and the woman stand there a few moments and look at the little object on the yolk of the egg, and then the gypsy says, “Let’s sit down, dear.” They sit down, and the gypsy says, “It’s just as I thought, dear. You’ve got a curse on you. You’ve got something growing inside you.” “Is it a tumor?” the woman asks. “We won’t talk about what it is,” the gypsy says, but the woman interrupts her. “Is it cancer?” she asks. “I told you we won’t talk about what it is,” the gypsy
says
. “We’ll talk about what we’re going to do about it. You’ve got some money in the bank, haven’t you, dear?” The woman says she has. “That may be where the curse is coming from,” the gypsy says. “It usually is. Back before you put that money in the bank, you or your husband or whoever put it in, some of it might’ve passed through the hands of a man who ruined his own child, or some of it might’ve passed through the hands of Antichrist, or, the way it often happens, a man might’ve killed himself making it. The actual same money may not be in the bank any more, but the curse is there, waiting; it’s in among all that dirty, filthy, stinking money piled up down there in the vaults of the bank, waiting. And it’ll jump to any money that replaces the actual same money; it’ll jump to any money that you draw out. I want you to go home now and get your bankbook, and then I want you to go to the bank and draw out a small bill – a five-dollar bill will do – and then I want you to buy another white egg and a white handkerchief, and then I want you to bring the five-dollar bill and the egg and the handkerchief back here to me. While you’re gone, I’m going to burn this handkerchief and the egg I broke and that thing that’s on the egg. I’m going to put them in a bucket and pour kerosene on them and burn them.”

‘When the woman returns, she opens her handbag and starts to give the bill and the egg and the handkerchief to the gypsy, but the gypsy backs away. “Oh, no,” she says. “I don’t want to touch that money.” She leads the woman into the booth. “Now, dear,” she says, “I want you to wrap the five-dollar bill around the egg, and then I want you to wrap the handkerchief around it, and then I want you to lay it on the floor, over in the corner.” Which the woman does. “I’m going to leave you in here by yourself a little while,” the gypsy says. “Just sit there and be quiet until I come back.” Fifteen minutes go by, a half hour, an hour, and then the gypsy comes back. “You can pick up the egg now, dear,” she says. “Spread the handkerchief on the table, and put that five-dollar bill back in your handbag and give the egg to me.” The woman does as she’s told, and the gypsy bends over the table and breaks the egg and empties it on the handkerchief, and once again there’s that little object lying on the yolk of the egg.
“This
is no surprise to me,” the gypsy says. “The money you have in the bank has a curse on it, just as I expected, and it’s responsible for that thing that’s growing inside you, and there’s only one thing you can do. You’ve got to go to the bank and draw out that money and bring it here, and I’ve got to hold it in my right hand and get in connection with the spirits and ask them to throw the curse off.” The woman comes to her senses for a moment. “What will happen if I don’t?” she asks. The gypsy shrugs her shoulders. “Look, dear,” she says, “I’m not getting anything out of this, and it doesn’t make any difference to me what you do. The spirits are using me, and I’m doing my part. If you do your part, the spirits will throw the curse off the money and that thing that’s growing inside you will dissolve and disappear. If you don’t do your part, the spirits won’t hold me responsible for what happens to you.” “Do you know what will happen to me?” the woman asks. “Yes, dear,” the gypsy says, “I know. One morning before long you’ll wake up and you’ll notice you have a gumboil, that’s the first thing you’ll notice, and by and by you’ll have dozens of gumboils, and then your gums will grow soft and your teeth will come loose and drop out two or three at a time, you’ll spit them out like cherry pits, and then a goiter will grow on your neck and big, hairy moles will sprout out all over you, and then your bones will start to rot and clog your blood – if you were to cut your hand around this time and rub some of the blood between your fingers, it would feel gritty – and pretty soon you won’t be able to sit in a chair, let alone stand on your feet, and you’ll have to go to bed for good, and then your lungs will start drying up, and then one day your heart will race a few minutes and stop and race a few more minutes and stop again and suddenly a pain will plunge through you like a flash of lightning, and that will be the end.” “Do I have to draw out all the money?” the woman asks. “You have to draw out every cent of it,” the gypsy says. “And if the man at the bank asks you any questions why you’re drawing it out, tell him it’s a confidential matter, you’re investing in some real estate. And tell him to give it to you in large denominations, such as fifties and hundreds, so it won’t be such a nuisance to handle.”

‘There are several ways of bringing a
bajour
to a conclusion. The two most frequently used are the sew-up and the burn-up. If the gypsy isn’t quite sure how much power she has over the woman and feels she’d better work fast, she does a sew-up. When the woman returns from the bank with her money, the gypsy takes her into the booth and tells her to sit down at the table. “Don’t worry, dear,” she says. “You’re doing the right thing, and it’ll all be over in a few minutes.” Then she gets a needle and thread and a piece of coarse white cloth cut into the shape of paper money, only a little wider and a little longer. She tells the woman to lay the stack of bills flat on the cloth, and then she tells her to fold them over once, both the cloth and the bills, with the cloth on the outside, which the woman does, and then the gypsy sews up the three open sides of the cloth, enclosing the bills in a snug little bag. That’s the basic meaning of the word “
bajour
” – a little bag of money. The gypsies claim it’s an old gypsy word, but I had a Serbian Orthodox priest tell me it’s really a Serbian word, “
bozur
,” that the gypsies borrowed and changed;
“bozur”
means a beautiful flower, and it can be extended to mean anything unusually beautiful. The gypsy clutches the bag in her right hand and gets down on her knees on the floor. “Kneel down beside me, dear,” she tells the woman, “and hold my left hand and close your eyes. While I’m talking to the spirits, I want you to pray in your own way. I want you to pray that I get the right answer.” The woman joins the gypsy on the floor, and then the gypsy begins to jibber-jabber in the gypsy language. She talks, and then she chants, and then she talks, and then she chants, and it sounds as if she’s begging and beseeching. The gypsy has two slit pockets in the right side of her skirt. One pocket is empty. While she’s jibber-jabbering, she slips the money bag into this pocket. In the other pocket, she has an assortment of bags similar to the money bag, only they’re phonies; they vary in thickness, and all they contain are pieces of crackly bond paper cut to paper-money size. She feels around in this pocket and picks out a phony bag that corresponds in thickness to the money bag, and she takes it out and holds on to it. She continues to talk to the spirits for a few minutes, and then she suddenly lets out a cry of joy and rises to her feet and pulls the woman up with her. “Now, dear,” she says, “I’ll have to
ask
you to undo your dress, or take it off, so I can get at your underclothes.” The woman does as she’s told, and the gypsy sews the phony bag to the woman’s slip or whatever kind of underclothes she has on. “Now, dear,” she says, “I want you to go straight home and lie down, and as it begins to grow dark the curse will begin to leave you. It won’t leave you all at once. It’ll leave you gradually, and at midnight it’ll be gone entirely. It’ll take longer for the curse to leave the money. I want you to wear this slip with the bag on it every day for the next seven days, and I want you to sleep with it under your pillow. On the eighth day, the money will be clean, and you can take it out of the bag and put it back in the bank. Only I want to warn you, if you open the bag beforehand, or if you say one word about this matter to anybody, if you even hint at it, the money will turn to plain white paper and the curse will jump back on you.”