Mulengro, page 41
The Rom grew more quiet still and stood closer to one another. Zach and the others came out of the guest cabin to stare speechlessly at the Gypsies, at the old woman and the thing she confronted.
“You can do nothing to me now, old woman,” Mulengro’s mulo said.
Pivli laughed, harsh and bitterly. “And you have done so much! Murderer! I would spit on you, but you are nothing now. You are dead and the land of shadows calls you. We will revile your memory, but we forgive you.”
“No!” the apparition roared. “I will not go!”
“We forgive you.” Pivli turned to the gathered Rom. “Is that not so, you Romany chal and chi? Do we not forgive this murderer? Will we not send him on to the land of shadows where he can trouble the living no more?”
“No! NO!” Mulengro cried.
But the Rom had listened well to the old woman before they left the Hollis farm. They moved forward by ones and twos, throwing handfuls of baXt spices into the flames. They believed their forgiveness as they had believed nothing else before.
“Bater,” Pivli said. “You see?”
“No. . . . ” Mulengro moaned. But his shape was already drifting apart.
“We are the kris of all the Rom tonight, murderer. You have our judgment. You are marhime. You will never be spoken of again. But we will forgive you—now and forever more. Be GONE!”
The wind and rain blew apart the mulo, and it was gone. For long moments only the hiss and splatter of the fire and rain could be heard. Then another shape emerged from the fire.
“And I?” it asked in Janfri’s voice, grown hollow and distant, for it, too, was a mulo. “Am I forgiven too?”
Pivli regarded the apparition with tears in her old eyes. “There was nothing to forgive, Boshengro. You were always o phral in our eyes.”
For a moment, those who knew Janfri saw his features in the misty shape of his mulo. A trace of a smile touched its lips.
“A true Rom,” it repeated. “Bater. Tell my prala Yojo... I loved him well.”
“I will,” Pivli said. “I will do this thing, as God is my witness.” She bowed her head. When she lifted her gaze, the mulo was gone.
The old woman turned and slowly made her way alongside the cottage to where her dook told her Ola was. There were still mule loose in the night—those Janfri had called to him, but they would return soon to the land of shadows, and those of Mulengro’s, but they no longer had his madness driving them on. Pivli vowed to remain in these woods until the last of them was gone. But for now...for tonight ...by the grace ofGod, it was over.
Epilogue
Akana mukav tut le Devlasa.
—Romany saying
[I leave you now to God.]
The autumn was gone and so was the long winter that had followed it. Spring was in the air and Leeds County was green with the joy of it. Ola had the taxi drop her off at the windmill on the Scotch Point Road. She shouldered her knapsack and walked along the dirt track, her mind filling with memories with each step she took. The ghosts were still here, but they were only the ghosts of her mind—memories, not the mule that she had fought with the others last summer, the summer that Janfri la Yayal and Jeff Owen had died.
When she reached the crest of the hill, she paused. Zach’s land lay just beyond it. A few more steps and she would see it. She could hear a hammer. The sound was clear in the still air. It was still too early for the cottagers to start coming up. She thought again of her choice, of why she was here, of what it meant to her, as a Rom and as a human being. A sad smile touched her lips as she remembered Boboko’s advice on that terrible night. What was important was what she was—not how she fit into either Gaje or Rom society. She smiled. She’d missed Boboko. Both his wisdom and his humor.
She took a quick breath and took those last few steps, then looked down. The new cottage was only a foundation and a webwork of two-by-four frames, but she could see by its lines that it was going to be even lovelier than the old place. She could see Zach, stripped to the waist, hair tied back, bandana around his head and granny glasses perched on his nose. He was hammering away, oblivious to her presence, but a small calico head looked up right away. Ola’s smile widened. Boboko’s dook had probably told him she was coming before she even got out of the taxi. She saw the cat say something to Zach and the luthier straightened, shading his eyes as he looked in her direction. She held her breath. Only when he smiled and waved did she start down.
There was an awkward silence after she’d laid her knapsack down. She ruffled Boboko’s fur and looked at Zach.
“You’re looking well,” she said finally.
“You too.”
“How’s Lucy?”
Zach shrugged, a shadow touching his eyes. “Haven’t seen her, though she writes. She’s staying with an aunt and uncle out west, around Calgary. She says she doesn’t like it too much—it’s too, like, flat, you know?”
“And Jackie? Do you hear from her?”
“Not since—you know. Folks up at Tinkers say she moved down to New England somewhere. Better vibes. I see that detective once in a while—Paddy Briggs. Remember him? He was the older one. He drops by just to, like, see how things are going. He brought a friend of Janfri’s up the first time, a musician. He’d been working on an album with Janfri and he left me a tape of their demos for it. It’s rough—but beautiful, you know?”
“And how are things going with you, Zach?”
She looked at the frame of the cottage, then turned so that she could see the guest cabin that he’d been living in until the cottage was rebuilt.
“They’re going,” Zach said.
Another awkward silence followed.
“There’s...no one chasing me this time,” Ola said.
“Hey. I never said—”
“I know.” She smiled. “Are you still looking for a partner?”
“You mean it? You’re going to stay?”
She nodded.
“Oh, wow. No shit?”
“No shit.”
They both grinned. Ola thrust out her hand. “Partners?” He took her hand. “You bet.”
Boboko yawned and stood up on the plank that he’d been lying on. “Well, now that we’ve got that settled,” he said, “how’s about some lunch?”
“What do you think?” Zach asked.
“Sounds lovely.”
Zach headed off to the cabin with Boboko trailing in his wake, but Ola stood for a moment, looking at the lake, remembering. The water was still. The reeds on the far shore beyond which the herons nested were still brown, but the trees on the hills above the marsh were a perfect shade of green. She knew they were all gone, the mule, but for a moment she imagined she could hear a fiddle playing, softly, as though from a great distance away. She smiled. Glancing at her knapsack, she willed it into the air and headed over to the cabin where Zach and Boboko were waiting for her. The knapsack bobbed in the air behind her.
“You’re going to have to teach me how you do that,” Zach said.
Ola laughed. “Only if you teach me how to be a carpenter and whatever else I’ll need to be to help get this place in shape. I want to build it with you, not watch you do it.”
“I think I’m getting the better part of the deal.”
Ola shook her head. “I don’t think so,” she said. Her voice was soft and happy.
“Lunch?” Boboko piped up hopefully.
Ola let the knapsack swoop down at him.
Afterword
Romanies have fascinated me for a great many years, not just because of their Romantic image, but because they represent a living embodiment of the Trickster—whether it be the Puck of the British Isles, or Old Man Coyote of our Native Peoples. What appears amoral about them is, in fact, merely a completely different viewpoint. Perhaps, by exchanging their horse-drawn caravans for Caddys, and their tents for tenements, they don’t hold the same appeal for as many people as they did in the early part of this century. But for me, their continued coexistence with, but refusal to assimiliate into, Western society merely enhances their romance.
Being a Gajo I doubt very much that I’ve been able to do more than scratch the surface in regards to Rom beliefs and customs, but I hope that any Gypsy reading this book will understand that I tried my best to present them in an honest light and tell a good story at the same time. To the rest of you Gaje out there, I hope this book will interest you in the Rom enough to seek out some more factual books on them—particularly books written by Romanies, rather than just about them.
And for those of you whose interests include music, the Ewan MacColl songs quoted as epigraphs come from a radio ballad that he wrote for the BBC in England, along with Peggy Seeger and Charles Parker. It was called “The Travelling People” and a recording was available in the late sixties from Argo Records (catalogue # DA 133). The song by Robin Williamson (who’s as much a Trickster as he is a bard) comes from his LP, A Glint at the Kindling (Flying Fish, FF 096).
Addendum to Afterword
And now as I write this, it’s eighteen years on.
Ewan MacCol passed away in 1989 and his voice—both the songs he wrote and his singing—is much missed. Robin Williamson is still gypsying around the world, telling his stories and playing his music. The world is much changed and there blows a wind in certain literary quarters that frowns upon something called cultural appropriation, by which is usually meant white authors mining the cultures of minorities for their own profit and gain while the voices of writers from those same minority cultures go unheard.
I understand their discouragement. It must be so frustrating to see your culture represented in somebody else’s book—perhaps wrongly, perhaps hitting a best-seller list and making all kinds of money for its author—while your own work goes mostly unread because it seems only small literary presses will take a chance on something that is (mistakenly) perceived as not capable of grabbing a viable enough market share to make a larger-scale publication commercially viable.
But I don’t think that censuring the white authors is the answer. We should rather be presenting a united front and promoting each other’s work.
I come from a mostly white Western cultural background—at least I was brought up that way. My mother’s Dutch, my father was born in Sumatra of a mix of Dutch, Spanish, and Japanese blood. Does this mean that my literary palette can only be composed of characters with that same genetic background? By such logic, I couldn’t even have completely white characters in my writing, little say women, blacks, Native Americans ...or Gypsies.
And let’s not even get into the fields of fantasy and science fiction. I mean, when was the last time you read a book written by an elf, a wizard, an android, a Martian?
No, we can’t limit our palette—that’s the death of good writing. But we can make sure that we approach cultural and sexual differences with respect when we write about them. We have to do our research. If we can, we might even run the material by someone from that different culture—not to be politically correct, but for the sake of veracity. Nothing is worse than the uninformed author; all they do is spread stereotypes and, often, outright lies.
And as I mentioned above, we can support our brother and sister authors whose work comes from a less mainstream perspective. We can and should promote their writing. We can and should be buying and reading those books ourselves, because if those voices aren’t heard, we’re not only doing those writers a disservice but we’re doing literature a disservice as well. Instead of tearing down the white literary establishment, let’s work to turn it into a rainbow. My life has been greatly enriched by reading the books of writers such as Thomas King, Sherman Alexie, Susan Power, Toni Morrison, Lisa Jones, Ronald Lee, Manfri Frederick Wood, Sandra Cisneros, Evelyn Lau, William Wu, Leslie Marmon Silko, Robert Rodi, Sarah Schul-man, Jeanette Winterson, Dorothy Allison ...the list could go on for pages. These are simply a few that come immediately to mind.
Some have already been embraced by the literary establishment; others aren’t but should be. The point is, let’s not simply lionize the Shakespeares and Dickenses; let’s not forget the other voices. But let’s not censure each other as well. You can learn as much from reading a white author writing about the black experience as you can from reading a black author writing about it. You don’t learn the same thing, but both are worthy of our attention.
Let the criteria be good writing—books that inform and enlighten us while they tell a story—not the source of the writing. And if that makes me sound naive, so be it. But I’ll continue to read as widely as I can, and I’ll be enriched by it. And I’ll continue to use as large a character palette in my writing as the story requires, because I can’t do otherwise and still maintain my integrity to my work.
—Charles de Lint
Fall 2003
Glossary
[NOTE: Romany is not usually written down, so opinions about the pronunciation, spelling and sometimes the meanings of words vary in different parts of the world.]
arakav tut—take care; watch out
ashen Devlesa—may you remain with God
bater—so be it
baXt—good luck (the “X” is pronounced like the “ch” in loch) Beng, o—the Devil
Bi kashtesko merel i yag.—Without wood the fire would die. boshbaro—big fiddle
boshengro—literally “fellow who plays the fiddle” bostaris—bastard
bozur—the money-switching game chal—man
chao—tea brewed with sugar and served over fruit che chorobia—what vagaries; how odd; how unusual chi—woman
czardas—a musical finale; illogical in a musical sense; pure emotion
darane swatura—stories told for fun
Devlesa araklam tume—It is with God that we found you
Devlesa avilan—It is God who brought you
diklo—traditional Rom scarf
dilo (f. dili;pl. dile)—fool
dook—abbreviation of “dukkerin;” means variously “the luck,” “the
sight” or “the magic” draba—magic; medicine
drabarni (m. drabarno; pl. drabarne)—one who works with medicine or magic
droboy tune Romale—traditional Rom greeting dukkerin—fortune-telling
Feri ando payi sitsholpe le nayuas.—It was in the water that one learned to swim.
Gaje (adj. & pl. noun; m. Gajo; f. Gaji)—non-Gypsy Gaje si dilo—The non-Gypsy is a fool
Hay kiro?—And yours?
kesali—forest fairies
khanamik—father of groom or bride
kris—group of elders; collected will of the Rom
kumpania (pl. kumpaniyi)—a group of Rom traveling or living
together in a community Kurav tu ando mul.—I defile your mouth.
marhime—ceremonially defiled; unclean Martiya—the night spirit;
the Angel of Death Mek len te han muro kar.—Let them eat my penis. Misto kedast tute—You did well. mobile—vehicle; car
Moshto—The God of Life; has three sons
mulengi dori—dead man’s string
mulo (f. muli; pl. mule)—ghost; spirit of a dead Rom
na may kharunde kai tshi khal tut—Not to scratch where it did not itch.
nano—uncle natsia (pl. natsiyi)—tribe nivasi—water fairies
paramitsha—fairy tales
patrin—information symbol
patteran—signs the Rom leave behind for other Rom that might
take the same trail pen—sister
perdal l paya—beyond the waters (European Rom expression meaning
North America)
phral—a true Rom phuri dai—wise woman phuvus—underground fairies pivli—widow
pliashka—bridal brandy offered as gift to bride’s father
pomana—wake
prala—brother
prikaza—bad luck; misfortune
rom baro (f. rom bari; pl. rom bare)—the leader of a kumpania; literally
“big Gypsy” or “important Gypsy”
Rommeville—Rom name for New York City Royal Town—Rom name for London, England
San tu Rom?—Are you a Gypsy?
sarishan—how do you do; traditional Rom greeting
shanglo (f. shangli; pl. shangle)—police
swato (pl. swatura)—stories told to chronicle the history of the Rom
and keep it alive
Te aves yertime mander tai te yertil tut o Del.—I forgive you and may
God forgive you. te merav—may I die if
Te xal o rako lengo gortiano.—May the crabs (cancer) eat their gullets. tsera—tent; household
Tshatshimo Romano.—The truth is expressed in Romany. Tu prala?—Your brother?
urme—fairies or evil spirits believed to be responsible for the fates of
men uva—yes
vadni ratsa—the wild goose of Rom legend vurdon—wagon
World’s Fair Worker—corruption of “Welfare Worker”
Yekka buliasa nashti beshes pe done
one behind you cannot sit on two horses.
Charles de Lint, Mulengro
