Salvo wiped the dust from his eyes and stepped quickly, trying to keep up with his father. It had been a hot summer, and the fields were as dry as the dusty road they were travelling. It was 1919, less than a year since the war had ended and the Romanian army had claimed this formerly Hungarian province. If four years of war hadn’t been hardship enough, now there was drought. The people of this rural section of Transylvania would have to go without for yet another winter.
Salvo’s father seemed unconcerned at the prospect of things going from bad to worse. Miksa Ursari was a thin, gaunt man, with callused hands and scars on his back from having been beaten as a youth with a piece of barbed wire for stealing a chicken. He had indeed stolen the chicken, and hundreds more like it, and when the owners beat him he did not fight back, nor did he cry out. When they finally stopped, he got up and stole a horse and moved on to the next town. Revenge never even occurred to him. What would be the point? He was a Rom, a gypsy, and for a Rom the best way to get revenge was to live another day.
All throughout Europe the Roma were scattered, some having settled into towns and villages, most remaining wanderers. Since the beginning of the war, more and more people had been displaced, more Roma found themselves refugees from battlefields, starvation and conscription. But now there were non-Roma fleeing as well. These gadje did not readily take to a life of transience. Miksa felt sorry for some of them. He had no idea what it was to live your whole life in one place and then to be cast out. Old women with appled faces and a lifetime of belongings behind them in ox carts—he felt worst for them. There were others, though, spiteful men with lowered eyebrows, whom he did not feel sorry for. Wherever he went there were gadje who would try to lay blame on those who had nothing to do with anything, and nearly always it fell upon the Roma. But while the Roma undoubtedly lied and stole, it was never on such a scale as to do any real harm, and they were certainly not the ones who had brought the war, any more than they were the ones who had lost it. Miksa Ursari knew that there were many people who were looking for an excuse to make scapegoats of the Roma, and he tried hard not to think about what might happen if there were too many of these people and they got too loud.
So if Miksa seemed indifferent towards the drought, it was because he had other preoccupations. Still, he was far less concerned with the things on his mind than others were about the things on theirs. Life had always been hard; why should now be any different? There was no point in becoming obsessed with troubles. Even if life was mostly bad, there were still times that were not. And if you were to spend all your days worrying about the bad parts, you would miss the fleeting moments of good. Whether this was completely true Miksa was not sure, but he had learned that a man had to have a way of looking at things, and at twenty-seven, he thought his was as good as any.
Nine-year-old Salvo tugged at his sleeve. Miksa knew he was walking fast, too fast for the boy to keep up, but he had pressing business waiting and could not afford to slow his pace.
“Step quickly, Salvo, and I’ll tell you a story,” he said, knowing that his son would run to keep up before he would turn down the offer of a story.
His father had judged correctly. Salvo picked up his pace, eager for one of his father’s tales. His father told the best stories of any Rom he knew, and the Roma told the best stories of anyone in the whole world. On clear evenings his father would often gather the family around a fire and tell them stories until Salvo had to fight to stay awake, and when he finally did slip into sleep, they continued in his dreams.
Miksa Ursari swallowed, pushing the grit and dust down out of his mouth. He moistened his tongue and scratched at the stubble prickling his neck, racking his brain for a story to tell his son. He knew a lot of stories, but not all of them were good to tell an impressionable boy like Salvo, especially one who listened so intently and took every word as the truth. For a Rom, his son was ridiculously gullible. Miksa worried for the boy’s future.
“Do you know why there are so many Roma in Hungary?” he asked the boy.
“No,” Salvo answered.
“Well then, I will tell you.” The tone of Miksa’s voice shifted from that of normal speech to that of a man who is telling a tale and doesn’t want to be interrupted. If there was one thing Miksa would not tolerate, it was being interrupted while telling a story. It caused him to lose his place and ruined any effect he was trying to create. There would be plenty of time for questions after the story was finished.
“A long time ago, maybe before my great-great-grandfather was born, there were no Roma in Hungary. They passed through but they never stayed, finding themselves unwelcome. Then it came that one day a husband and wife and their baby were travelling through Hungary. Now, the husband, he was a great thief. He was so great a thief that it was said he could steal the tongue from your mouth while you were talking with him, and you would never even know it. That is what was said.
“Well, he was a great thief all right, but not so great that he did not get caught. And the Hungarians who caught him took him to prison, leaving the young wife and her baby on their own in this strange land, with no horse and no ox and no mule. The wife walked for many days in the direction the Hungarians had taken her husband, the thief, hoping that if she could find the prison he was in, she could plead for his release.
“On the third day of her walking she came to a village that was deserted. She was tired and her baby was hungry, so she went into a stable and sat on the straw floor and put the child to her breast to suckle. The wife was very beautiful, having had only this one child, and she had long, thick hair that she wore loose about her shoulders, where it fell down to the end of her back. She knew that it was dangerous for a beautiful young woman to travel alone, but she had a small knife and her husband had shown her how to use it, so she was not worried too much for her safety.
“She was just falling into sleep when she heard a noise outside, and not wanting her child to cry and alert whatever was there, she put the child to her breast again. There was no noise for a very long time, and the young wife thought that maybe whatever it was had gone away. And then she saw a snake, a huge snake, slither through the door of the stable and right up to her.
“This snake was enormous, long and wide as the forest’s oldest tree, long and wide and fat, with skin so tough and thick that an arrow could not pierce it. It had such an appetite that it had devoured everything in the village, the people and the livestock and the feed. Only a few lucky souls had managed to escape.
“Most wives would shriek at the sight of such a beast, but this young woman was a Rom and the wife of a great thief, so she did no such thing. The snake slithered closer still, smelling her milk, wondering if it tasted as good as it smelled. The young wife recognized the look in the snake’s black eyes, and she knew what it was thinking, so she gently took the snake’s head and brought it to her breast, side by side with her own child’s.
“There the snake suckled, so hard and furiously that the young wife thought it would pull the heart out of her, but she did not pull back. She gently stroked the snake’s head, caressing the scaly hide as if it were her own baby’s soft flesh.
“After a time the snake fell asleep, and as he slept she reached into her skirts for her knife. She knew that her knife couldn’t cut into the snake’s strong skin, but she wasn’t deterred. She was the wife of a cunning man, and she thought of a plan. Taking great care that the snake did not stir from her breast, she took the knife and she cut off all of her beautiful, long hair. She braided the hair into a good strong rope. At her feet was a fetter used to secure the horses, which had all been eaten by the snake. She tied one end of the rope to the fetter, then took the other end and put it around the snake’s neck, tying the rope into a hangman’s noose.
“In the morning the snake awoke, and he was hungry, and he drank from the young wife’s milk with an appetite suited to such a voracious creature. So intent was he on his breakfast that he did not feel the rope around his neck. The young wife stroked his head and did not flinch. She allowed the snake to drink its fill, knowing it would grow careless with its hunger satiated. After what was a long time to the young wife, the snake grew full and ceased to suckle.
“In one quick motion the young wife gathered up her baby, pushed the snake from her breast and darted towards the back wall. The snake lunged at her, fangs bared, but it was not fast enough to catch her, its belly full of milk. When it reached the end of the rope, the hangman’s noose pulled tight around its neck. The beast thrashed wildly to free itself, and the young wife was afraid the rope of her hair would break. But the rope held, and the harder the snake struggled, the tighter the noose became. Slowly the snake began to die, his air choked out of him. At last, his tail grew still and his eyes bulged out, and he was dead.
“When the gadje who had escaped from the snake found out what had happened, they were grateful, and they immediately found the prison where the young wife’s husband was being held and had him freed. They welcomed the Romany couple and their child into their village and told them they were welcome there always. But the husband, he was a thief, and he didn’t want to steal from people who had treated him and his wife and baby so well, so the family left the village.
“When other Roma heard how well the people of Hungary had treated the great thief and his young wife, they wanted to go to that village. The thief, not wishing to see anything bad happen to the village, did not say exactly where it was, but still the Roma went to Hungary. And a great many of them are still looking for the village where the thief and his young wife had been treated so well, as it has been said that if that village could be found again, the Roma would cease to wander.”
Miksa continued walking at his brisk pace, and Salvo was half walking, half running to keep up with him. All that could be heard was their feet thumping in the dust and a faint wind rustling in the brittle branches of the trees.
When he was sure that the story was over, Salvo spoke, his breath laboured by the pace his father had set. “Did her hair grow back?”
“What?” Miksa’s mind had drifted to other matters.
“The young wife. Did her hair grow back?”
“Oh, yes. It grew back longer and thicker and darker than ever, and she was even more beautiful than before.”
“What about the baby?”
“He grew up to be a great thief, like his father.”
“Did he ever go back to the village?”
“No. Like his father, he was grateful to the people of the village and didn’t want to steal from them. Besides, he was only a baby when he had been there, and he didn’t know where the village was.”
Salvo thought about this for a moment. He was sure that, as a baby, he had been places he could no longer remember. He had been many places, even as far as his aunt and uncle’s house in Budapest, which he could recall, but also into eastern Romania and Bulgaria, which he could not. So it made sense.
“Do you know where the village is?”
Miksa looked at the boy. Why did he have to take everything so literally? “No, I don’t.”
“It isn’t where we live?”
“No,” Miksa said. “It isn’t.”
They continued down the road, past a ditch that had a dead goat half sticking out of it, its rotting legs grotesquely splayed.
“What about the snake?”
“It was dead. It was no more.”
“Were there any more snakes like that?”
“I don’t think so. If there were, they probably all got killed in the war.”
Salvo was relieved. He did not like the thought of such a beast.
SALVO WAS THE SECOND OLDEST of the three living children in his family; his older brother, András, was eleven years old and very strong for his age, able to lift a large wash basin full of water. There was also a baby girl, Etel. There would have been six children, but three had died when they were very small. Salvo had not known them at all, really, so he hadn’t been saddened by their deaths, but he heard the keening of his mother at night and he was sad for her. He also heard words like influenza and diphtheria, and he wondered if he too would die. He kept himself awake, afraid that when he woke up he would be dead, but he always went to sleep and he always woke up very much alive, so lately he worried less.
Before the war had started, Salvo’s family had owned a tame bear. Their family name, Ursari, meant “bear” in Romany, and the family had made a living from the animal, who could do several tricks and was very smart. The bear’s name had been Bella, which someone told them meant “good” in Italian. Bella Ursari the Bear, or “Good Bear the Bear,” supported Salvo’s family for seven years, but when the war started there was not enough food, and even though he ate better than anyone else, Good Bear the Bear got sick and, after a while, he was dead. Salvo had not seen his father cry when his younger sisters and brother died, but when Good Bear the Bear finally died, his father had buried his face in the creature’s fur and cried like a young widow at her own husband’s funeral.
For a long time after that Salvo’s father refused to go out. He sat cross-legged on the floor and drank strong coffee and smoked cheap cigarettes, eating little, rarely sleeping, and never, ever telling stories. Then, in the spring, Salvo’s mother’s stomach began to swell, and three days before the war ended she gave birth to a girl.
After that Salvo’s father seemed to forget about Good Bear the Bear and set to work providing for his family. He knew how to work as a blacksmith, and he made a little money shoeing horses and doing the odd repair job. The war had brought a shortage of skilled labour, but as more men returned from military service there was less demand for his work. Most people would rather go to a Hungarian smith or a Romanian smith than a Romany smith, even if the Rom did a much better job. The only jobs Salvo’s father got lately were those that were either too difficult or too dangerous for anyone else.
THE ROAD CURVED TO THE LEFT, and as father and son rounded the corner, a church came into view. It was still half a mile away, but its steeple was tremendously high, so high as to be seen from a long way off. It was a very old church, at least four hundred years old—remarkable given the amount of fighting this land had seen in that time and the fact that the church was made out of wood. Rarely did a wooden structure see such an age in a place where people were prone to setting torches to buildings during times of upheaval.
The church was not particularly large, but it did not have to be. There had never been more than six or seven hundred people living in the vicinity, and of that number perhaps only two people in five were regular Catholic churchgoers. The main part of the building was two storeys high, with a steeply sloped roof designed to withstand the large amount of rain that usually fell there. Its white paint had long ago peeled away. Though the church was well maintained by the new priest and his helpers, there was simply no paint to be had.
On the west side of the church, directly above the entrance, was the steeple Salvo had seen from half a mile down the road. It stretched from the roof up towards the sky for eighty feet—square for the first fifty, then tapered for the last thirty and peaked with a flattened knob less than four inches across. What was most remarkable about the steeple, however, was the lack of a cross upon its summit.
The church did possess a cross for the steeple, the cross itself perhaps more valuable and remarkable than the actual church. It was said to be over nine hundred years old, made from an iron that had been forged in Rome and sent from a pope to celebrate the coronation of Saint Stephen, the king who had brought Christianity to Hungary. The cross was on its way to Budapest when the knight sent to accompany it had become ill and died, as luck would have it, in this very village. Since then it had consistently graced the steeples of a succession of churches built on this spot.
When the war came the old priest was worried that the church might be burned, and he had the cross taken down. Exactly how he had done it no one knew; he had died soon after. There had been a succession of temporary priests, but none of them much cared for the place, and they had left one by one. It wasn’t until a year ago that a new priest had finally come and stayed. He did not mind this place so much, he said, but he did not like that the cross was not upon the steeple.
While it was decided that the cross should be restored to its proper place, no one knew how it could be done. Various people from the church had tried, but none had even succeeded in climbing the steeple, let alone in getting the hundred-pound cross to the top. Finally the priest had put up a small reward for anyone who could figure out a way to raise the cross. Knowing the inventiveness of the Roma, he made sure that the news of the reward would reach them, and that is how Miksa heard of the problem.
He immediately volunteered for the job, telling the priest that all he would require was a strong rope twice the length needed to reach the top of the steeple. The priest was puzzled, wondering how he hoped to climb the steeple, but Miksa remained tight-lipped. He told the priest he would have to wait and see and that he would come the following day to do the job.
A crowd of about forty people had gathered to watch, not all of them happy about the prospect of a Rom being the one to restore the cross. As he and his father edged through the crowd, Salvo heard the mutterings of an old Bible legend, often told by people who saw the Roma as descendants of Cain, and told by Roma who appreciated it as a good story. Salvo remembered his father telling it to him and his elder brother, András.
“When it came that the Romans decided they would crucify Jesus, they sent two soldiers to buy nails to do the job. The soldiers were given money to buy four nails. But instead of going out and buying the nails, they spent some of the money on drink and food and women. After they had had their fill, they realized that they must have nails for that morning’s work, so they went and found a blacksmith, a Jew.
“ ‘Make us four nails, quickly, man,’ they said to him, and they lit his beard on fire to make him hurry.
“The man screamed from his beard being on fire, and the soldiers stuck his head in a water trough. ‘Hurry! We must have four strong nails so that we can crucify Jesus this morning,’ they said.
“The man, knowing who Jesus was and not wanting to have a part in killing him, refused to make the nails. The soldiers stuck their swords into him and spilled out his guts. Then they went to another blacksmith, a Serb, and they said the same thing to him, and he refused, and they killed him.
“Then they came to a Rom, who was hard at work in his forge. ‘Make us four nails,’ they said, ‘or you are dead where you stand.’ The Rom hesitated, and one of the soldiers took out a little money, a very small amount, the little that was left in his pocket from the night before. ‘I will give you this coin for the nails.’
“Well, the Rom did not want to be killed, so he took the money and put it into his pocket and set about making the nails. When the first nail was finished, the soldiers took it and put it in their bag. When the second was finished they did the same, and again they took the third nail as soon as it was finished. The Rom had just started to forge the fourth nail when the soldiers said to him, ‘Thank you, gypsy, for soon we’ll have four nails with which to crucify Jesus.’
“At that moment the souls of the men the soldiers had killed appeared and began to plead with the Rom not to make nails that would kill Jesus. The soldiers became afraid and they ran off, leaving the Rom with the fourth nail still hot in his forge. Not wanting to waste good iron, the Rom finished the nail, but when he poured water on it, the metal would not cool; it remained glowing hot. All day long he poured water on it, but the nail never ceased to glow red, like a burning body with fire for blood.
“Terrified, the Rom packed his wagon and moved on. He pitched his tent again only after he had travelled several days, but when he did a man brought in a wagon’s wheel for mending. The Rom took the fourth nail and fixed the wheel with it, and the man took the wheel away with the nail imbedded within it. The Rom again moved on, fearful that the man with the nail would return.
Months later, he was many miles away when a different man brought him a sword to be repaired, and when he touched the sword he saw the nail in the hilt, glowing red. He fled again but wherever he went the nail would eventually find him, and he would have to flee. So it went for that man and all his descendants, and that is why the Roma always have to keep moving on, and that is also why Jesus was crucified using only three nails.”
The people around them knew this story well, and they knew versions of it where the Rom was not such an unwilling victim of circumstance. Salvo could feel their eyes upon him, and he knew that they were not friendly eyes. This was surely not the village the great thief’s wife had saved from the snake.
They made their way to the front of the crowd, where the priest was waiting, the cross lying on the ground at his feet. He shook Salvo’s father’s hand and spoke to him in a hushed tone that Salvo could not quite hear. And the priest gave Miksa the longest rope Salvo had ever seen.
“You go wait over by that tree,” Miksa told his son, pointing to what was once a flourishing tree, standing dead at the edge of the clearing in front of the church. The boy reluctantly obeyed, making his way back through the crowd. Miksa didn’t want his son to wait with the Hungarian Christians. There were a lot of bad feelings going around, on account of the war and the revolution and Romania’s troops going in and out of the area, and he didn’t want the boy to become the object of anyone looking to vent a little frustration.
When he saw Salvo reach the tree, Miksa went inside and climbed a narrow, twisting staircase to a catwalk that traversed the length of the church’s interior. It ran to the very back of the building, made a turn and spanned the width. In the middle of the rear catwalk, there was a window, very small, just large enough for a man to squeeze through. Looping the coiled rope over his shoulder so his hands would be free, Miksa pushed open the window and, headfirst but facing the church, climbed out. He stood on the narrow sill, up on the tips of his toes, and was only barely able to reach the lip of the roof. With all the strength in his bony fingers he pulled himself up, as if doing a chin-up, until his chest was touching the edge of the roof. Because it was so severely sloped, he was able to swing one foot, and then the other, over to the side and onto the roof. He walked along the ridge towards the front, where the steeple began. There he saw the crowd of people below, and beyond that he saw Salvo perched in the crook of the dead tree.
It was at this point that the others had failed in their attempts. The steeple was nearly straight up, and there was nothing but smooth wood to hold onto. Miksa adjusted the rope slung over his shoulder and spit on his hands. His foot stepped into the air and outward towards the far edge of the steeple. As he reached the top arc of his stride, his foot landed on a nail, no more than three inches long and less than half an inch thick, nearly invisible to the eye, certainly invisible to the crowd below. Even those who had been up here before had missed the nail, but Miksa had known about it and the others that pierced the steeple, and was relieved when it held his weight.
Miksa Ursari knew about the nails because he was the one who had put them there. In fact, he was the one who had helped the old priest remove the cross in the first place. The old priest had been something of a friend to Miksa, and when he asked him for his help Miksa had agreed without hesitating. They’d taken the cross down early one morning, in secret, and hid it in the forest to prevent it from being stolen. After the old priest died, Miksa wondered if he should go and tell someone where it was, but he hadn’t trusted any of the successive priests. They never lasted long enough anyway. Apparently it didn’t matter; the old priest had written down where it was, fearful that something might happen to Miksa or that in his old age he would forget where he had hidden it. The new priest found the paper and recovered the cross, but had no idea how the old priest had got it down. When Miksa offered to put it back up, he thought it best not to mention that he had been the one to remove it. Nowadays, he did not volunteer any more information than was absolutely necessary.
At its base, the steeple was about five feet wide for the first fifty feet, and Miksa had placed the nails in an upward spiral, each two and a half feet up and over from the previous one, leaving a nail in each corner and one in between. When he was on the corner he was relatively safe—it was easier to hold on and to switch his feet on the nail—but when he was on the middle nail, he had to stretch his arms out all the way, barely able to wrap his fingertips around each corner of the steeple. The wood occasionally splintered into his hands, but he dared not wear gloves for fear of losing his grip. There would be a brief moment at each nail when he had to switch feet, and here he was most vulnerable. Very quickly, using all the strength in his thickly skinned fingers to clutch the edges of the spire, he would pull his body up, just slightly, lifting one foot off the nail and replacing it with the other.
As Miksa ascended in this manner, he discovered something he was not prepared for. The last time he had climbed the steeple, it had been early in the morning, before the sun had risen. Now, however, in the heat of the afternoon sun, the wood of the steeple had been heated to a temperature that made holding on to it much more difficult. He could feel its heat on his cheek, which he’d pressed roughly against the siding, and his fingers protested vehemently, though he was sure they weren’t actually burning. At any rate, it was not their decision whether to hold on or not, so he kept climbing. He wound his way around the spire, rising five feet on each side, making two and a half full revolutions. He reached the top of the square section, fifty feet from the roof of the church, pulled himself over the lip of an eight-inch ledge, and there Miksa Ursari rested.
To the people below it appeared as though Miksa was able to stick to the side of the steeple like a fly to a wall, although there were some who guessed that there were nails. Salvo didn’t need to figure the nails out; he had known about them all along. His father had sworn him to secrecy, a secret that Salvo would keep if it cost him his very life. As he watched his father climb the spire that stretched towards the sky like a holy finger, Salvo’s heart swelled with joy, and a little envy.
His father rested on the edge of the upper part of the towering steeple for several minutes before continuing. The final thirty-foot portion was triangular in shape, so instead of circling the structure as he had done in the lower section, Salvo’s father shimmied straight up. As the steeple narrowed he was able to move faster, and to Salvo it didn’t feel like very long at all until his father had reached the top. From where he sat in the crook of the dead tree, Salvo thought his father seemed a long way off, almost in another world. Salvo wondered what it must feel like to be up there, where no one else had been able to go, and as he saw the jealous faces of the gadje in the crowd, he was glad that Miksa Ursari was his father.
Miksa did not look down to see the admiration on his son’s face. Though he had never told anyone, he was slightly afraid of heights. Sometimes it bothered him and sometimes it did not, and that day it did. He continued, drawing in a sharp breath and digging his fingertips into the hot wood. His face was slick with sweat, and his heart was beating so loudly that for a moment he wondered if the people below could hear it. He glanced down to confirm his suspicion, and the ground swayed and twisted, and he felt his chest tighten up and his stomach flip, but still he made himself keep looking. Face it, and you will either fall or you will get past it, he told himself. So he kept focusing on the ground, and just when he thought he might not be able to control his fear any more, it vanished, and he was as comfortable up on the top of the steeple as he would have been standing on the top of a fence post.
He reached into his pocket and removed an iron ring, four inches in diameter, and hooked this ring over an iron peg that protruded from the top of the spire. The peg was intended to bolt onto the bottom of the cross. Then he untied the rope from around his neck and shoulder, glad to be free of its oppressive weight. Through the iron ring, he strung one end of the rope, lowering its length to the ground. When the one end was on the ground, he dropped the other.
On the ground, one end of the rope was attached to the cross, and three men pulled at the other end. Slowly the cross rose to the top of the steeple. Miksa saw the new priest smiling to himself down below as he watched its ascent. The old priest would never have seen a symbol of resurrection here. All he would have seen was a cross going up on a rope.
When the cross reached him Miksa moved down slightly, resting his feet on two nails that were about eighteen inches below the apex of the structure. He flexed his knees together and removed his hands from the steeple. He supported the weight of the cross with one hand and unhooked the iron ring with the other. Then, with all of his strength, he lifted the cross to rest its base on the edge of the steeple. The peg that held the cross in place protruded six inches upwards, and the base of the cross had a hole to receive it, but a great deal of effort was required to lift the hundred-pound cross that extra six inches and then guide the peg into its sheath.
Miksa braced his knees more tightly than ever and took a deep breath. With a hand on each arm of the cross he lifted it up and over, shifting the base back and forth until he felt it meet the peg. He rested the cross on top of the peg for a moment and attempted to force it down. He managed to get two inches through, but the peg was rusted from its recent exposure and wouldn’t go in any more. Slowly, tentatively, Miksa removed one hand and then the other from the cross, prepared to quickly grab it should it move, but it didn’t. He tested its stability with a shake, first light and gradually harder, and still it held. Satisfied that it wouldn’t fall on him, Miksa turned his attention to the rusted portion of the peg, which was about twice as thick as his thumb. With one hand he rubbed at the rust, feeling it crumble roughly under his ministrations. He jerked his hand back as the cross settled an inch further on the peg. Then he took the cross by the base and twisted it from side to side, feeling it move downward a little at a time.
When there were only two inches left Miksa felt the cross drop suddenly, colliding with the iron skirting around the base of the peg with a metallic clang. A shower of reddish grit skidded down the spire, and out of the corner of his eye he thought he saw a piece of the peg, perhaps half an inch wide, break loose and fall to the ground. The sight concerned him, but there was little he could do about it, as he didn’t have the strength left to raise the cross and inspect the damage. Miksa untied the rope from the cross, returned the iron ring to his pocket and prepared for his descent. The last time, when there had been only him and the old priest, he had looped the rope around the cross and, after the priest tied one end to a tree, had rappelled down the steeple. This time, however, there were too many spectators that he simply didn’t trust. There was no way he was going to risk having some gadjo cut the rope as he came down.
Miksa dropped the rope and began to climb down. The triangular section was easy enough, like walking down a ladder, but the square part of the steeple was far more difficult. Each step had to be aimed correctly or else he would be stepping into thin air with little means of correcting himself. At this point, Miksa could almost feel the ground beneath his feet, and even though it took less time to climb down the steeple than it had to climb up, it felt like forever to him. Instead of traversing the roof of the church and swinging back through the second-storey window as he had done before, Miksa sat and slid down the steeply pitched roof. When he neared the edge he used his feet as brakes, slowing enough to allow him to sit up and halt his momentum.
Beside the church stood a tree, and Miksa leapt into its branches. He was on the ground in a matter of seconds, immediately beginning to look for the priest, not wanting to hang around any longer than necessary.
Miksa could see the disdain in the eyes of the onlookers. He imagined that they must be upset because none of them had been able to restore the cross. They’d come today to see him fail at it too, and now they were disappointed because he had not failed. Their situation was no doubt confused by the fact that some part of them knew they should be happy that the cross was back where it should be, and they were not, which also made them angry, more with themselves than him. But Miksa knew that people seldom take out anger on themselves. He began to wonder if he had been wise to do this job.
The priest, seeing Miksa approaching, stepped forward with his hands outstretched. Unlike the rest of the onlookers, he felt no animosity. In his eyes all he saw was the man who had restored the cross to the top of his church. If he knew what others were seeing in Miksa, he gave no indication.
Miksa forced a smile and grasped the priest’s hands. They were smooth and soft, while Miksa’s were rough with calluses and scarred by this and other days’ work. Even Salvo, only nine years old, had more world-weary hands than the new priest, who had come from a seminary in Budapest just before the Romanians had marched into Transylvania and claimed the territory as their own.
The new priest had worried that the Romanians would take away his church, but they hadn’t so much as spoken to him, and since it was well attended, he assumed that he was safe enough in his position. His only regret had been the lack of a cross on the church, and he had for a long while been distressed as to whether he would ever be able to place a cross on top of the mammoth steeple. He had even considered having the steeple torn down and another, shorter structure erected in its place, one with a cross, but he had been discouraged from this course of action by the people of the town. He had been in a state of utter despair until Miksa Ursari had volunteered.
Now, as the new priest looked at the cross—which he did not believe was a waylaid gift for Saint Stephen for the simple reason that this town was nowhere near the road from Rome to Budapest—his heart swelled. He would not allow himself the luxury of joyous tears in public. He thrust a leather pouch containing coins into Miksa’s hand, wishing he had more with which to reward this Rom.
As soon as the coins were in his possession, Miksa turned and moved towards the tree where Salvo waited, only to find his son momentarily distracted by a butterfly that had landed only inches from his hand. Salvo watched its wings twitch as it settled in and appeared to assess its surroundings. The butterfly seemed intent on spending some time in the tree, unconcerned with Salvo’s presence. A sudden boyish instinct seized Salvo, and slowly he pinched his thumb and index finger around one of the butterfly’s wings. The butterfly, to Salvo’s surprise, did not protest or struggle. It remained calm as Salvo gently plucked it off its branch. He felt moved by the butterfly’s courage and released it just as his father reached him.
Miksa lifted Salvo down from the fork of the dead tree. Without speaking, they started quickly down the road back home. The crowd had not grown any more hostile, but Miksa saw no reason to test their resolve.
Behind them, the new priest was blessing the cross. He stood in front of the church, arms raised to God, as the more-or-less faithful kneeled before him. It was apparent to all how happy the priest was, and his elation was beginning to rub off on some of them.
When Miksa and Salvo were about a quarter-mile from the church they heard a scream. They stopped and turned back in the direction they had come.
There was no way to tell who had looked up. The people kneeling in prayer were supposed to have had their eyes closed, or at least cast downwards, and the new priest had been facing away from the church, towards Salvo and his father. But everybody had heard the scream, so it was obvious that someone had looked up. And at that moment, when the scream pierced the priest’s prayer, nearly everyone opened their eyes to see what had caused it.
The priest was somewhat irked; he was just getting to the end of the blessing, and now he would have to start over. It was a hot day, the heat all the worse for him in his black robes, and he did not want to spend any more time standing in the sweltering afternoon sun than necessary. He scanned the devotees for the source of the disturbance, and in a split second he came to the realization that the crowd’s attention seemed to be shifting skyward, and the air was filled with more cries. He turned to see what the people were looking at, expecting to see some sort of holy miracle on the summit of his ancient wooden church. Of course these people would receive a miracle fearfully; they were a rural, superstitious bunch, and miracles had historically inspired fear in even the most worldly of souls, but he was not afraid. He would accept this miracle with open arms, and he would help these people see it for what it was. Today was indeed a joyous day.
The new priest had not yet completed his turn when the falling cross landed squarely upon him, striking him on the head. It was doubtful that he ever knew what had delivered the blow, so intent was he upon receiving a miracle. The people on their knees certainly saw it, though, as did Salvo and Miksa. From where they were up the road they saw the priest crumple to the ground like an empty sack; they saw the crowd of people leap to their feet and rush to him. They were too far away to hear either the dull thud of the cross’s impact or the sharp crack that followed as the priest’s skull split in two. Likewise they could not see his blood and brains spill out over the ground, where they softly imbued the parched earth.
Miksa seized his son by the arm and pulled him along. He knew that when the initial shock wore off, the gadje of the church would seek retribution. He knew this as sure as he knew the sun would set that evening, as sure as he knew it would rise the next morning. They would have to leave this town, and fast.
Salvo wrenched his arm free and ran beside his father. He was ashamed to be treated like an errant urchin.
“Why do we always run away when there is trouble?” his brother András had once asked.
“We do not run away,” his father had said. “We leave when it is time, and we go to a better place.” It seemed to Salvo that once again they were on their way to a better place, at a much accelerated rate. Still, he knew better than to argue with his father. He ran as fast as he could, his throat closing from thirst and his chest burning.
“The priest,” Salvo panted, “he is dead?”
His father didn’t look at him. “Yes.”
The road began to slope upwards before it passed a cluster of tinder-dry brush and turned sharply to the right.
The town where the Ursari family lived was a modest place, home to seven hundred people, mostly Hungarians mixed in with some Romanians and some Slovaks. There were very few Roma. Nearly all were either Christian or Muslim, and there were some Jews as well. The only things that almost everyone had in common were a lack of food and a hatred of gypsies.
A main road ran through the town, which comprised a marketplace, some shops and a tavern. There was a stable on the south side of the street, next to a blacksmith’s. From the main road ran several smaller side streets that were closely crowded with houses, some better kept than others. At the very end of the worst of these side streets stood the two-room house where the Ursari family lived.
It was not much of a house. There was one low, narrow wooden door in the front of the building and one tiny window on the side. The walls were made of rough stones covered with a crude plaster that was chipped and cracked and stained. The roof, constructed of sticks thatched together in a haphazard fashion, gave the house the appearance of sporting a shaggy head of hair.
The inside of the house was nearly always dark. They owned a small kerosene lamp, but there had been no fuel now for nearly five years. Salvo slept in the front room with his brother, András, and his father’s tools, and his parents and the baby slept in the back room. They had lived in this house since just before the war had started; this was by far the longest they had ever stayed in one place.
Directly to the right of the house, a ring of blackened stones enclosed a circle of lightly smoking ash, marking the fire that the family meals were cooked over. The residence had no fireplace, and before the drought, when it had rained, Salvo and his brother had held a sheet rubbed with grease over the fire to keep off the rain while their mother cooked.
Azira Ursari was at this fire, preparing a painfully sparse meal, when she saw her husband and youngest son come running up the street. She instantly knew something was wrong from the way they ran; Miksa would never run like that for any reason other than danger.
At twenty-six, Azira had been married to Miksa nearly half her life. She had bore six children, buried three, and if there was one thing she could recognize with absolute clarity, it was imminent disaster. Remaining calm, so calm that a casual observer might not have noticed this shift in her perception, she straightened the scarf that corralled her inky hair and wiped her hands on a threadbare skirt. She picked up the baby that sat naked at her feet and went into the house to gather up the family’s belongings.
As they reached the house, Salvo caught a glimpse of his mother, disappearing into the darkened doorway. He took in large gasps of air, bent at the waist with his hands on his knees, trying to catch his breath. His father didn’t even seem winded; save for the sweat on his brow there was little that would indicate how far he had just run. Seeing him, Salvo stood up and ignored his screaming lungs.
Miksa scanned the area, shading his eyes with a hand. “Where’s András?” he asked.
Salvo shrugged. He didn’t know any more than his father.
“Go and find your brother. We have to leave this place.” He headed towards the house.
“Where should I look?”
His father turned, anger in his face. “How do I know? Just go and find him, Salvo, and do it quickly.”
Salvo nodded and jogged down the street. On the next street over lived a girl that András was fond of. Maybe he was there, Salvo thought. Of course, he could be almost anywhere. András was a fantastic wanderer, a true Rom. You never knew where he would go, and neither did he. He could be ten miles from here or he could be right behind you. There was no way to tell.
There were, however, places that he most definitely would not be. That was how it was in this town when you were a Rom. Some places you went and many you simply did not. The Roma lived on one of two streets, an unstated rule that was known by all, whether Roma or gadje. Similarly, there were stores and market stalls that Roma went to and those that they did not. No one seemed to know who had instituted these rules, and no one much cared. Most Roma didn’t want to associate with gadje any more than most gadje wanted to associate with Roma. It was very much a mutual feeling.
There were exceptions. Salvo himself had no particular misgivings towards gadje, other than a healthy measure of wariness when dealing with them. His mother’s sister had even married a gadjo, a Hungarian, and they now lived quite happily in Budapest. Salvo had visited them before the war, and he remembered his aunt and uncle as kind people. He also remembered the old priest, who was a good man, but he was a priest and thus subject to different conditions than an ordinary gadjo.
He continued his jog down the road and turned onto the street of the girl who András liked to visit, but when he got there all he saw was an old woman attempting to milk a goat that was little more than skin over bones. Salvo went further down the street, hoping to stumble upon him, until he reached the end of the road, at the foot of mountains, where there was a withered bit of forest few ventured very far into. He backtracked up the street and onto the main road. He ran for a short distance and turned onto a street where no Roma lived, but where there was a man who often bought goods of dubious origin, a man that the Ursari family and András in particular often had dealings with. The man’s shop was closed up, however, and there was no sign of his brother.
There was a place back on the main road where Roma went to drink gritty coffee and smoke acrid cigarettes, and it occurred to Salvo that his brother might very well be there. He was beginning to worry that he had been gone from the house for too long. He wondered how long it had been since he had started his search. Perhaps half an hour? Maybe longer? He had no way to tell. Salvo was still contemplating how much time had elapsed when he stopped dead in his tracks. Coming down the main road like a legion of ants was a mob of gadje, brandishing clubs and sticks and various other weapons. Some, the ones who had been soldiers, even had rifles. They were shouting, swearing, and they were moving fast.
Salvo ducked into the stable beside the blacksmith’s, moving rapidly towards the rear of one of the horse stalls. He didn’t see the smith and didn’t know if the smith had seen him. He edged in beside a sable mare, putting his head up against the horse’s flank, smelling the horse smell and speaking softly to the animal. As the throng grew closer the horse became agitated, shaking its head and snorting and stamping a poorly shod hoof against hard-packed earth. Salvo was afraid that the horse would crush him against the side of the stall, or catch him with one of those steel-clad hooves, and he realized that if he were to be discovered hiding here, it would be assumed that he was attempting to steal the horse. He cursed himself for not having taken the time to find a better hiding spot.
As the mob passed the stables he knew that he had made the right decision. He heard the words gypsy and revenge stand out among the furious drone, and he knew that if he had seen the mob, it was at least possible that someone in the mob had seen him. He was only one pair of eyes and there were many contained within the crowd.
Just when he thought that the raven horse was about to squeeze out what little breath was left in him, and just when he was sure that someone would discover him, the mob had passed. He could hear it moving down the street in the direction he had come.
Salvo waited until he was sure the mob was well away before emerging from the horse stall. He thanked the horse for not crushing him, the sound of his voice soothing the frightened animal. The street outside was quiet and deserted. It was hard to tell if the people who were supposed to be there were hiding from the mob or if they had left to join it. Either way, there was no one on the street but himself. He stayed to the side of it, ready to conceal himself if he encountered anyone he shouldn’t, but he went all the way to the last place he thought his brother might be without seeing a single person.
The café was empty but it was not locked up, and there were tin cups of coffee sitting on some of the tables. The coffee was still warm. In the corner, a lit cigarette lay on the floor, its wispy smoke wafting upwards. The people who had been there had clearly left very recently, and they had left in a hurry. It suddenly dawned on Salvo where the mob had been heading. His chest clenched, and he turned and ran as fast as he could in the direction of his house.
Miksa Ursari had gone into the house as soon as Salvo left. Azira was in the back room assembling clothing and other necessities, and Miksa began to collect his tools. He put them into a brightly coloured trunk, its corners battered and caved in by rough travel. Azira came into the front room and looked at him questioningly. As quickly as he could, he explained to her the church and the steeple and the cross falling on the priest. She did not interrupt him even once, and when he was finished she placed one hand lightly on her stomach and pointed at the door with the other.
“Go warn the others,” she said.
“There is no time.”
“Yes. These gadje will go for any Roma who are left.”
Miksa swallowed. She was right. Their anger was about more than a dead priest.
“Go. You must. I will do what must be done here.”
Miksa nodded in agreement. “Salvo has gone to find András. He should be back soon.” He stood and ducked through the narrow doorway into the blinding light.
The first place Miksa ran to was the Romany café. There were about ten men there, and he told them what had happened and advised them to leave this town until things settled down. No one needed to be told twice; this was not the first time such a thing had happened.
Avoiding the main street, Miksa ran to the road where Salvo had first gone. There was no time to go to each house, so he went up and down the road yelling as loud as he could, “The gadje are out for blood. Everyone should go away from here.” There was no way to tell how many people heard him, but some did. They came into the street and saw that it was him, and they went back inside their houses to gather their things.
He did this again on his own street, where there were fewer people. He was at the point where the side road met the main road when he heard the approaching mob. They were moving fast, and Miksa was tired from his recent exertions in the heat. He forced his legs into a run and sprinted for the house.
Salvo reached the top of the road just as the mob spotted Miksa darting into the house. Such was Salvo’s haste that he nearly caught up with the crowd and stumbled into them; only their preoccupation with his father saved him from detection. As the mob rushed his house, Salvo slipped behind a cart that lay abandoned in the tall grass outside a house belonging to a Rom who was imprisoned in a Romanian army camp up the road. No one knew quite why the man was being held, but his house had gone untouched since his incarceration four months ago.
Salvo peered over the top of the cart and watched as the mob swarmed around his home. Someone tried to open the door, but it had been barred from the inside, and the window was too small to crawl into. Besides, someone else speculated, this Rom was dangerous and could not be trusted to submit to punishment without violence.
That Miksa Ursari had no intention of surrendering himself was true, but he also had no intention of fighting the mob. He looked at Azira and the baby crouched in the corner of the front room, and he knew that the situation was dire. He began to assess his options. If he were to go outside, the crowd would, at the very least, throw him into some jail for a deathly long time, but he thought it more likely that they would kill him. He remembered being somewhere in Germany and seeing a crowd rip apart a man accused of raping a girl. They had torn his limbs right off and flayed the skin from his bones and ripped out his eyes in a matter of minutes. He shuddered to remember the sight. No, he thought, it’s no good to go out there.
So he would stay in the house. The door was strong, and unless someone in the crowd got overly ambitious, they should be safe. It would not take long for the mob outside to grow restless, and he hoped that when they did they would move on, looking for an easier target.
It is likely that Miksa would not have come to this conclusion if he had been able to see what Salvo did. Once the crowd realized that they couldn’t get into the house and the people inside were not going to come out, someone called for a torch. Salvo’s mind seized; surely they would not light the house on fire with his father and mother and sister inside it. But with every subsequent action taken by various people in the crowd, it became more and more apparent that that was exactly what they planned to do.
There was one man in particular who seemed to be spearheading the burning of Salvo’s house. Salvo recognized him from the church. He had never seen him before that, and he thought that he must be one of the ex-soldiers who had moved into the village immediately following the Romanian annexation of Transylvania. He was a large man, nearly six feet tall, with a neatly trimmed beard that grew into a point at the chin. His hair was brown and his forehead was creased with wrinkles. When he called for a torch Salvo heard his voice, rough and deep, his tongue thick with an accent the boy could not quite place.
The man was handed a torch, and he lit the oily rags with an expensive silver lighter. Salvo had never seen such a lighter. A long, thin flame rose out of it, spreading onto the torch and into the sky. Even though it would still be several hours before the sun went down, the light from the torch was clearly visible to Salvo, and he could see wavy lines of heat radiate from it. A sticky line of tar-black smoke followed the heat skyward. The man returned the beautiful lighter to his pocket and moved to the edge of the house.
Other people had been reluctant to go right up to the structure, perhaps afraid that the inhabitants would be armed, but this man was not, or if he was he hid it well. He casually walked around the perimeter of the dwelling, as though on a lazy Sunday stroll, stopping occasionally to hold the torch to the desiccated limbs that formed the roof. He lit the house in five places, showing no emotion as orange streaks of flame shot up the roof. He stepped back to evaluate his work. Seemingly satisfied, he tossed the torch through the tiny window and returned to the crowd.
The fire seemed to have a hypnotic effect on the mob. Where before there had been much shouting and pushing and jostling, now the crowd stood relatively still and quiet, as though transfixed by the flames.
Salvo watched from his hiding place as the fire engulfed the roof. He desperately wanted to rush forward, to individually smash apart every member of the mob and cut a path to the house, but he knew he could not, and he forced himself to stay where he was. He knew his father, and thought it was only a matter of time before his family would emerge from the burning building. As the flames grew brighter and the smoke thicker, he began to worry, his fear reaching a crescendo when a part of the blazing roof collapsed.
WHEN MIKSA URSARI FIRST REALIZED that the mob had set his house on fire, he yelled to Azira to lie down on the floor and cover herself and the baby with blankets. He hurriedly emptied the trunk he kept his tools in. When the torch was thrown into the front room, he stamped it out as best he could and hurled it into the back room. With a medium-sized pickaxe he put two holes in the bottom of each side of the chest and dragged it to the centre of the room. Ignoring Azira’s protests he took his daughter, Etel, from her arms and placed her in the chest. Over her he draped the tanned hide of Good Bear the Bear. The girl did not cry as he closed the lid, but after it was closed he heard her shrieking. He went to where Azira lay just as a shower of fire fell from the roof. Its debris landed beside him, continuing to burn on the dirt floor. He never had any intention of leaving the house. He did not think that the walls would burn, being made of stone and plaster. As he pressed his face to the earth, trying to escape the smoke that was rapidly filling the air around him, he knew that while he would probably not burn to death, there was a good chance that he and Azira would be suffocated.
He remembered something he had heard about poison gas, and he thought that it was possible that it would help here too. He removed his shirt and tore it in half. Then he rolled onto his back and pulled open his pants and urinated on the two strips of cloth as best he could. He gave one to Azira but she would not put it to her mouth. He held his soaked rag to his own mouth with one hand, and with the other he forced the second rag over his wife’s face. After several seconds she stopped resisting him, surrendering to the necessity of the situation.
The rags dried quickly with the intense heat and did not seem to help. Miksa did not know how long they had been lying on the floor of the burning house when Azira stopped gasping and lost consciousness, but the fire was still going strong as he felt himself slipping away. He felt as though he was inside hell’s own furnace, and he could not control his coughing. He briefly thought about trying to make it to the door and out of the house, but found he could not move. It was then that Miksa Ursari knew he was going to die. He found he did not want to die, which surprised him. He’d always liked to think he was ready to accept whatever came. That he wasn’t ready for death somehow gave him some small consolation. If he were to have no sorrow over losing his life, then it wouldn’t have been much of one. This fleeting notion was soon overwhelmed by despair, though, and the tears that ran down his face were not entirely the result of smoke.
As the room rapidly faded, Miksa thought of his children. They are Ursari, he told himself. We are a Lazarus stock.
Although it did not take long for the house to burn, it seemed to Salvo that his whole life passed in the time it took the flames to die. When the roof fully collapsed, he slumped down to the ground at the base of the wagon and hid his face in his hands, no longer able to watch. It would be dark very soon and a cool wind had picked up, pushing scattered blackened clouds across the sky. He thought of his father and mother and how they were almost certainly dead, and the baby, Etel, too, and he tried to remember better times, when his brothers and sisters were all still alive with Good Bear the Bear, but he could not. He could hear the fire and the mob, and he could taste the smoke in the air, and he could smell the house he had lived in for most of his life becoming a pile of ash. The memory of good things was lost to him at that moment.
Then he grew angry. Where was his brother, András? They shouldn’t have waited for him. And why hadn’t his parents come out of the burning house? Why had they just stayed inside and died like sheep? This mob, though, he thought, they are the worst of it. They should feel their own rage. They should burn like my parents. They should burn now like they someday will when they must answer for what they have done here today. But as soon as he had thought it he knew that no one would be held accountable for his own actions. Not by the authorities, and not by God. Well then, he told himself, I will hold them accountable. They will answer to me.
As the fire began to burn itself out, so did the mob’s vehemence. There were some who were as keen as ever but most were satisfied, and a few even looked as though they felt things had gone too far. As the sky darkened the mob dispersed, some crossing themselves with fallacious piety as they left the Romany street. When they were all gone, Salvo emerged from his hiding place and cautiously crept towards what remained of the house. The roof was completely gone, save for a piece that lay smouldering beside the building. The walls had not burned, but they were charred black from the smoke. Salvo did not enter the house. He peered through the tiny window and saw the bodies of his mother and father lying under some sooty blankets. He was surprised to see that they did not appear to be burned; they looked so much like they were sleeping that he almost called out to them. He did not see the body of his baby sister, and he assumed that she was somewhere in the back room, or under the blankets. He did not think to look in his father’s tool chest, which lay undisturbed in the centre of the room.
Salvo walked back up the street to the house of the man who was in prison. In it he found some rags and some thick oil. He took these to his own house, and with a piece of wood from the ground, he made a torch. He lit the torch on the smoking ashes that lay beside the walls of the house, and after a final wordless goodbye to his parents and sister, he turned and left that place.
Avoiding the main road, he skirted around the edge of the town, keeping a wary eye out for anyone who might be watching him. The wind was blowing hard now, and he had to walk backwards in places to keep his torch from being extinguished. When he was clear of the town he walked on the road, ready to jump into the brush at the first sign he was not alone. There was no moon, and the clouds that were coming made it unusually dark. Salvo was glad for the light of the torch.
He passed through the front courtyard of the church and past the dead tree where he had spent much of the afternoon. In the dark he could not see whether there was a stain on the ground where the priest’s head had split open, but he imagined there was and took great care not to tread on that spot. He looked up at the church for a very long time, admiring the building. There was nothing magnificent about the church. It was a plain building, but it had a sort of quiet sadness about it, as though it had witnessed a great deal in its time and the things it had seen left its heart on the verge of breaking. Salvo felt sorry for this old church, sorry that such wicked people worshipped within its walls, sorry that tonight it would burn to the ground.
He pushed his regret out of his mind. Fate did not rest in the hands of those it governed, and surely this church knew that as well as he did. Neither of them was above the whim of man or God, and if it was to be that Salvo would burn down this sad, old church as revenge for his parents, then that was how it was to be.
But revenge was something his father would never have considered, Salvo knew. Maybe revenge was only a way of fighting with fate. And certainly God would not want him to burn down a church, no matter how evil its inhabitants were. Or would He? Salvo did not know.
He caught a whiff of the torch, and the greasy smell reminded him of why he had come. His resolve strengthened. The church would burn regardless of his own damnation. Salvo lowered the torch and held it to the door. His hands did not shake.
The moment the door began to singe, he felt a drop of rain splash down on his cheek. He looked up just in time to see a streak of lightning skid across the sky, followed seconds later by an explosion of rolling thunder. The promise of rain diluted his resolve. His desire to see the church in flames was replaced with something bigger. He knew his quarrel did not lie with this old church. He jerked the torch back from the door and kicked out the small flame that crept up the wooden slat. He stepped away from the church and dropped the torch to the bare ground at his feet. The raindrops were few and scattered, and he stood and waited for them to hit him. His eyes focused on the dying torch. With his foot he rolled it back and forth on the hard-packed dirt, until it was extinguished. Lightning shattered the sky again, the thunder coming sooner than before, and Salvo knew that soon it would pour and the drought would be broken. He looked up at the steeple to where the cross had been, and he knew what he must do.
He leapt into the tree by the side of the church and went up it like a cat on a pole. From the tree onto the roof and up he climbed, as quick as if he were walking down the side of the road. He danced along the crest of the roof, his feet light and his legs strong. As he reached the steeple and stepped onto the first of the nails, he remembered a story his father had told him when he was very small and repeated many times as he grew older, a story he would never hear again except in his mind.
“Once, in a village like this one, at the foot of mountains like the ones near here, there was a Rom who was not a good man but a truly wicked man who stole the souls of other Roma. Some said he had magic, which may be true or may not. Then it came that a man who was a good man and a great thief, who never stole from those who could not afford it and certainly never from another Roma—and most certainly he never stole any man’s soul—this man came to the village at the foot of the mountains.”
Salvo climbed fast, and he climbed the spire very efficiently, much better than his father had done. His balance was perfect, and he had no fear of heights. He went from one nail to another to another so lightly that he barely even stepped on them. When he reached the end of the square section of the steeple it began to rain a little harder.
“When the Rom who was not wicked found out what was going on, that men’s souls were being stolen, he made a pledge to the people there that he would find their souls and return them. The people were grateful to hear the man’s offer, but they told him that it would not be possible, for the evil Rom had taken their souls to the top of the mountains, and there was no way to climb there. The Rom assured the people that he would do exactly that, and he set off early the next morning.
“When he reached the mountains he began to climb, but before long he got to a place that he did not think he could climb, and he stopped. He thought for a very long time about what to do, and then he spoke aloud to God. ‘God,’ he said, ‘here is a place that I do not know if I can go, but there are men’s souls beyond, and so I will try. I will do this knowing that whether I fall or not will be up to you. You are the master of my fate. So if I must fall then that is fine, but remember that there are souls that depend upon my success.’ ”
Salvo wrapped his arms around the rapidly narrowing steeple and shimmied his way upwards. The rain had made the wood a little slippery, but it did not slow him down. That he was nearly eighty feet off the ground did not bother him at all. He was in a place that was not Transylvania, not Romania, not Europe. He was in a place where only his father had been before, where no one else alive could go. Here, there was only him, and maybe God. He gained the top of the steeple and the rain poured down over him.
“The man climbed to the top of the mountains without falling, and there he found the wicked Rom guarding over the souls he had stolen. There was a great fight, in which both men were mortally wounded. When the wicked Rom died, the ground opened up and swallowed him. The Rom who was not wicked was frightened, and wished not to die. He did die, very soon after, but the ground did not open up. Instead, the man began to rise up towards heaven. As he ascended, though, he looked back to Earth and saw that the stolen Romany souls still lay on the mountains. He struggled to return to retrieve the souls and managed to do so.
“When he arrived in heaven he was not allowed to enter with all these extra souls. ‘You did not fall,’ he was told. ‘That is enough. These souls are no longer your concern.’ But the Rom remembered his promise to the people of the village, and so he struck a deal that he himself would not go into heaven if the stolen souls were admitted. As a result, he was destined to stay in limbo for all eternity.
“When other Roma found out how this great hero had been treated, many cast their own souls out of their bodies in protest. The Rom who was not in heaven was moved by this action, and he gathered their cast-out souls and returned them again to their owners. There is a consequence to casting out one’s soul, however, and the descendants of these loyal Roma have loose souls that sometimes escape from their bodies. Without their souls, they sometimes do things they otherwise would not do. The Rom who was not wicked knows about it, and he collects each soul for safekeeping until such time as that person is ready to take it back.”
Salvo stood atop the cusp of the steeple and stretched his arms out wide, palms skyward. The rain was warm and soon he was soaked to the skin. Tears ran down his cheeks and were diluted by sweat and rain, but he did not sob or shake or move a single muscle. He closed his eyes and willed his soul to leave his body. When it would not leave voluntarily he ripped it out, and he could feel it fall to the earth, where it lay in the mud. His tears stopped. He felt his soul rise up, only slightly at first and then with preternatural speed. It shot straight up the height of the church, hung even with him for a moment and was gone.
Back on the ground he could not remember having descended. The rain had eased up a bit, and Salvo realized he was hungry. He looked back in the direction of the town, pulled his sodden shirt tightly around him and set off in the opposite direction, northwest, towards the Transylvanian mountains and, far beyond, Budapest.