Mulengro, page 15
A few years ago she had met the old woman again, in Rom-meville, while she and Jeff were on a promotional tour for their newest book. Ola had slipped away and shared an afternoon of tea in a small restaurant on the Lower East Side with the old drabarni, an afternoon of talk and understanding that flew by all too quickly. “We are Moshto’s last defense against the evils of o Beng,” Pivli told her as they left the restaurant. “Let that knowledge sustain you against the loneliness, sister. For in the end, it is all we have.”
She hadn’t seen the old woman since that day, but Pivli’s advice stayed with her. It helped to balance the confusion she felt as she weighed the world of the Gaje and her own people and tried to understand where she fit in. And it was what would keep her in this area as well. Her dook told her that Mulengro would come for her. From what she had seen of him, he could well be o Beng himself, but whatever he was, it was the responsibility of one such as her to stand against him. How she would do that, her dook hadn’t troubled to show her. She only knew it must be done. The Rom had not come to her, and she could not go to them. But Mulengro would come. She need only wait and be prepared for him.
She stood up and swung her pack onto her back, wearing a sense of determination that was almost as much put on as Boboko’s sulking had been. Talk was easy. When she thought of Mulengro, of the power she saw that he could wield . . . Boboko regarded her with a suspicious look in his eyes.
“You were serious, weren’t you?” he asked.
“About what?”
“The walking—and on an empty stomach.”
Ola smiled and some of her misgivings drained away. Trust Boboko to bring everything down to the most basic levels.
“As I recall,” she said, “you invited yourself along.”
“Yes, well that was before I understood just how much walking was involved. And there was never any discussion about fasting.”
Ola picked him up and started off. “I think I liked you better when you were mysterious and profound—and quiet,” she told him. “If the Egyptians had had to listen to your complaining, I doubt very much that they would have worshipped cats.”
“It’s hard to be mysterious and profound on an empty stomach,” Boboko replied. He squirmed into a more comfortable position. “Where are we going now? Deeper into the marsh? Maybe we could live at the bottom of a lake—no one would look for us there.”
“I could just let you wade along behind me.”
Boboko peered down from her arms to study the soggy ground. “It’s the water that does it, you know,” he said. “It affects my kind differently than it does yours. Sucks away our vitality, our . . . our . . .”
“Dignity?”
“Well, that too. Have we got a course planned, or are we just going to wander aimlessly until the winter comes?”
“I thought we could try the bush south of Bass Lake. There’s a fairly large section of land down that way that’s hardly built up at all.”
“Bass Lake?” Boboko repeated, liking the fishy sound of the name. He had very little conception of distances, having lived the whole of his short life around Rideau Ferry. Ola had inherited him from the cottage’s previous tenant. “What’s it like there?”
“Dry, for one thing.”
“Already I like it.”
The afternoon was half gone by the time they reached the area that Ola had been thinking of. They were perhaps a half mile east of Canton Lake—a tiny piece of water due east of Murphy’s Point on the Big Rideau. The stretch of countryside they were traveling through rose and fell gently in long slopes of cedar and pine, birch and trembling aspen. Boboko was faring under his own steam a few paces ahead of Ola, his calico coloring blending into the riot of ground cover, striped tail lifting from the grass and weeds like a periscope, complete with a kink in its end. Suddenly the tail went stiff and he stopped to peer ahead, one forepaw lifted in the air and his neck craned to see above the grass.
“Ola, what was—” he began.
“Did you hear that?” she asked at the same time.
Before they could think of hiding, a man came out of the forest at the far side of the field and saw them. He paused as well, then started over to where they were. Boboko glanced back at Ola to see what she thought they should do, but she simply shrugged and decided to wait it out. To run off now would only attract more attention than they might if they stood their ground. She was a hiker, nothing more. As the man came nearer, she began to wonder at her own wisdom.
He was a tall gangly individual, all arms and legs, wearing a pair of faded jeans that were patched with a motley assortment of different pieces of patterned cloth and frayed at the cuffs. His feet were bare and all that covered his chest was a fringed buckskin vest with a small button on it that read in fading letters: “Make love, not war.” A thin scraggly beard hung halfway down his chest, his waist-length hair was tied in a ponytail at the nape of his neck and a bright red and yellow scarf was tied around his forehead. Perched on the end of his nose was a pair of square-rimmed glasses—the kind that were called Granny glasses, popular in the sixties. He nodded in a friendly way to Ola, then saw Boboko and a big smile formed, half-hidden by his beard.
“O wow,” he said. “Nice cat.” He bent down to pat Boboko who backed up a few steps until he was almost on top of Ola’s shoes. The man glanced at Ola. “What do you call him?”
“I call myself Boboko,” Boboko said, forgetting Ola’s continual warnings that he wasn’t supposed to speak around other people.
Ola held her breath and glared at Boboko. This wasn’t the way to pass by unnoticed, her angry look told him. But she needn’t have worried. The man’s smile grew wider as he stood up.
“Far out! He can talk.”
Ola nodded, not knowing what to make of this strange leftover from the sixties who’d appeared out of nowhere. “He . . . he does that sometimes,” she said lamely.
“No shit? Did you teach him?”
“You could say that. Do you live around here?”
“What? Oh, sure. I’m Dr. Rainbow,” he said, as though that explained everything. When Ola regarded him blankly, he added: “You know, like in Dr. Rainbow’s Magic Dulcimers.”
“Oh.” Ola looked down at Boboko, who rolled his eyes at her. “You make instruments, then?”
“Sure do. You want to see ‘em?”
“Well. . .”
“It’s not, like, far or anything.” He bent down to eye Boboko from a closer vantage once more. “What do you think, kid? Think you could go for a saucer of milk or something?”
Boboko regarded the man as though he was a lunatic.
“Do you live by yourself?” Ola asked.
“What? Oh, yeah. I’ve got a place on a lake back there.” He stood up and negligently waved his hand back in the direction he’d come from. When Ola remained silent, a worried look came into his eyes. “Like, it’d be nothing heavy or anything. I know what you’re thinking: Who’s this guy tripping around the woods like some spaced-out elf—right? But, hey, it’s nice out here. I like to hang out and catch some forest vibes, that’s all. World’s a crazy place, so you gotta catch what sanity you can. Place like this, it’s long on the real—a natural high, you know? Used to be like this everywhere till we went crazy with the concrete.” He grinned ruefully. “Guess I’m babbling. I don’t see many folks around and it gets a little lonely sometimes. It’s just that you seemed like a nice person, you know, and . . .” His voice trailed off and he shrugged.
Ola smiled. Her dook told her there was nothing to fear from this man who seemed so gentle, even if he was out-of-synch with the rest of the world. “My name’s Ola,” she said, “and I’d love to see your place.”
“No shit?” His whole face, or at least what wasn’t hidden by his beard, beamed. “Wow. That’s great.”
At Ola’s feet, Boboko sighed. Ola reached down and hoisted him into her arms, deliberately ignoring the pained look in his features.
“Does everyone call you Dr. Rainbow?” she asked.
“No. That’s just, like, a name I made up.” Really? Boboko thought. What a surprise. “My real name’s Zachary Acheson—but my friends just call me Zach. I used to be in a band, you know. We played this sort of medieval music but on American instruments. Anyway, we all took these nicknames that had a kind of Englishy feel to them and mine was Nobb then. But I like Zach best myself. What do you think of it?”
“I think I like it, Zach.”
“It’s Hebrew, you know. Means ‘God has remembered.’ Say, are you an Aquarius?”
Ola shook her head.
Zach grinned. “Neither am I. Come on, I’ll show you my place.” He set off and Ola fell in step beside him. “Is Ola, like, a nickname?” he asked.
“No. It’s the one my parents gave me.”
“Really? That’s far out. What kind of nationality is it? Italian?”
“Sort of.”
Zach nodded to himself as he digested that. “When I saw you in the middle of the field, you know what I flashed on? That song about the Gypsies in the greenwood-o. Don’t know why.”
Ola regarded him from the corner of her eye, surprised. There was an air about him, she realized, that gave her the impression that he might have something like the dook himself.
“What do you think of Gypsies?” she asked.
“Well, like, I’ve never met one or anything, but I think they’re pretty neat. What about you? Do you know any?”
“One or two.”
“No shit? Wow. What’re they like?”
She smiled, wondering where to begin and how much to tell him. In her arms, Boboko settled mournfully, certain he was going to regret ever having left Rideau Ferry.
“It’s not far now,” Zach said as he led them out of the forest onto a narrow dirt road. It twisted through the woods, tire tracks deeply gouged into its uneven surface. They followed the road until it gave way to a grassy track that led straight through long rows of planted spruce trees. Looking ahead, Ola could see that the track disappeared down a rise. With the straight lines of the spruce on either side of them, it felt like walking down a corridor. When they reached the spot where the track dipped, Ola let out a little cry of pleasure. Below her was a small cottage, white-walled with green trim and a dark shingled roof. To its left was a smaller one-room building, on the right a set of swings and a tipi. Beyond the cottage, the land dropped quickly, but through the trees, there was a breathtaking view of the lake. She could see no other buildings on the shore from where she stood, just the greens of the forested hills beyond the lake, and the mottled browns of the reeds and bulrushes on the far shore.
“It’s called Mill Pond,” Zach said. “There’s only six other cottages on it, over that way—” he waved to the right “—and all the rest is a Conservation Area so, like, there’ll never be anybody else building here. What do you think?”
“It’s beautiful,” Ola said. “So private.”
“Oh, yes,” Boboko murmured. He squirmed in her arms until she let him down. “Far out,” he added, mimicking Zach’s voice.
Zach glanced at him, missing the sarcasm, and grinned. “For sure. I’m glad you like it.”
Boboko sighed and headed on down the steep incline that led to the cottage below. Ola stood drinking in the view for a moment longer, then she and Zach followed the cat. She’d been surprised at her first view of the cottage and its property. It hadn’t been nearly as hippy-dippy as she’d expected it to be—considering its owner. But as she made her way down the slope, details she’d missed earlier came into focus. There was a beat-up old Volkswagen bug parked beside what she supposed was the tool shed. Hanging on the side of the shed was a great wooden mask, easily four feet high, brightly painted, with woven reeds for hair that hung like a Rastaman’s dreadlocks to either side of the mask’s primitive features. Beyond the tipi was a large vegetable garden. Painted on the side of the cottage facing the garden was a huge yellow sun, complete with facial features and rays that streaked to the edges of the walls. Carved into the front door was a peace symbol. It reminded Ola of the welcoming patrin of her own people. Once they stepped inside, she had no more doubts that her new friend was a holdover from the days of flower power and be-ins.
The walls were decorated with posters from that bygone era advertising appearances by the Grateful Dead, Jefferson Airplane, the Lovin’ Spoonful, Donovan. A gray fishnet hung from the ceiling in sweeping dips and folds. There were shells in its netting, dried flowers and the skeleton of a starfish. The furnishings were comprised of a sofa near the cast-iron stove, a worktable with a scatter of woodworking tools and some half-finished instruments upon it, and a wooden kitchen table with three chairs. Above the worktable hung a half-dozen completed dulcimers. A macrame owl hung on the door leading to the porch overlooking the lake.
“Want some tea?” Zach asked. He watched her reaction to his home with pleasure.
She nodded. “I’d love some. This place is incredible. It’s like the sixties never ended.”
“Well, in a way they didn’t—for me anyway. There were some good things went down then, you know, and maybe other folks changed, but I couldn’t. I never found anything better, you see?”
He went to the kitchen that was just off the long main room. A corridor ran along it, leading to a bathroom and a couple of bedrooms. There were posters here as well—psychedelic art that spoke of love-ins, The Fillmore East, The Riverboat in Toronto’s old Yorkville. While Zach put on the water, Ola wandered into the living room. There was a small stereo perched on a couple of apple crates and a collection of records that took up three plastic milk crates. Ola smiled as she glanced at the albums. Jimi Hendrix. The Doors. The Nazgul. The Incredible String Band. Dr. Strangely Strange. The Electric Prunes. She’d been aware of much of this in a peripheral sense. It was something that teenaged Gaje went through, but it had still fascinated her when it was all happening. Beside the sofa, she discovered a bookcase made of wooden planks laid on stacked bricks. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings was there. Kahlil Gibran’s The Prophet. Books on instrument building and gardening. Orwell’s Animal Farm. A book of poetry by Dylan Thomas. Another by Bob Dylan. Then she had to laugh.
“What’s so funny?” Zach asked her.
Ola plucked a book from the case and held it up so he could see the cover. It was called A Herbal Garden by Kerio Rouge and Jeff Owen.
“Hey, that’s a good book,” Zach said. “I got the recipe for this tea out of it, I’ll have you know. Did you ever read it?”
“Often,” Ola told him, her eyes sparkling with humor.
“A friend of mine told me that Jeff Owen was born up around Smiths Falls—did you know that? And he lives just outside of Perth now. Far out, eh?”
Boboko wandered in from his exploration of the bedrooms and looked from Zach to Ola. “Oh, no,” he said when he saw the book Ola was holding. “Another fan.”
Zach pushed his glasses up higher on his nose. “What do you mean?” he asked.
“She wrote it,” Boboko explained in a bored voice and proceeded to clean his shoulder.
Zach’s eyes went wide. “No shit? You’re Kerio Rouge?”
Ola nodded. “It’s the name I write under—like you use Dr. Rainbow for your dulcimers.”
“Far out. Hey, would you autograph it for me?”
Ola smiled. “I think the water’s boiling.”
“What? Oh, yeah. Don’t move. I’ll be right back.”
Ola laid the book down on top of the makeshift bookshelf and went into the kitchen to see if she could give him a hand. She knew it was nothing more than coincidence that had him serving her tea immediately. It was a Gypsy custom and he was a Gajo, even if he did use as many names as a Rom would, so it had to be a coincidence, but she couldn’t help feeling more comfortable because of it. It was just possible, she realized, that she might have found the haven she’d been looking for.
sixteen
The Lees lived in a trailer camp off Highway 4, about a mile or so east of Perth. Janfri’s Chevy bounced in the ruts of the long laneway as he left the highway and drove the half mile to the camp. It was close to seven o’clock and he was tired, having spent the better part of the afternoon cruising the back roads of Lanark County, not really sure what he was looking for, just driving and thinking. He’d been waiting for an inspiration, stopping at a few general stores in Franktown, Munster and the like, asking circumspect questions that led him nowhere. A young girl in one had thought he was trying to pick her up and called her dad out from the storerooms to have him thrown out. An old geezer in another was sure that Janfri was trying to sell him some insurance and kept telling him that it “didn’t make no never mind—no one to leave the money to anyway, son.” Most of the time, people simply regarded him blankly, not sure what he meant by a “gifted” woman or a card reader. One man in Armstrongs Corners gave him the address of a woman named Lucy in Harper who turned out to be willing to give him a few favors for “two twenties and a five—but nothing kinky, you understand?”
He parked the Chevy in between the Lees’ VW van and an old Dodge Sedan. Tibo and Ursula were sitting on the steps of their trailer. Tibo was a thin wiry man whose walrus mustache looked big enough to throw him off balance when he stood up. He wore a white shirt that had seen better days and baggy flannel pants that were rolled up at the cuffs so they wouldn’t drag. His sister was bigger than him by a good four inches and thirty pounds. She wore the traditional low-cut blouse of a Gypsy woman but eschewed the pleated skirt in favor of trousers as baggy as her brother’s and smoked a meerschaum pipe.
“Sarishan, Boshengro,” Tibo said when Janfri stepped out of his car and approached the steps. Ursula smiled around her pipe and stood to fetch a cup of tea from a pot that was warming on a Coleman stove set up on a card table beside the trailer.
