Gypsies (Zingari)

We see gypsy women everywhere. In the entryway of every church an old gypsy woman sits nodding or sleeping on the floor, her head covered with a kerchief, her little dish of coins held in her hand or on the floor beside her. Young gypsy women accost us in the piazzas, at the train station, in front of monuments, fountains, on street corners. They come at us in groups, in their thin flowered dresses and shawls, their dark ragged hair flying about their faces. Surrounding us, chattering, they hold out their hands cupped as if to catch rain. It’s a strange song and dance they do—a chorus of distraction, pleading and threatening all at the same time.

On the day Joe and I visit the Brancacci Chapel at the Carmine church, a flock of gypsies swoops upon us like angry birds, circling and chanting. Two are holding babies in their arms. One of the women holds up in front of Joe a piece of torn cardboard as if it communicates an urgent message, as if he must read it and learn an important lesson. Puzzled but polite, he leans forward to see what it says. Suddenly the woman throws the cardboard at Joe’s face, at the same time grasping his arm in her claw-like fingers and moving so close to him that her face almost touches his.

Startled, Joe uses his fists to punch the air about him, showing he will be quite willing to punch the woman if she persists. I see her face turn dark and ugly, she snarls at him—then hisses what must be a curse—and in a flash of skirts the gypsy thieves are gone, dispersed to the four corners of the earth. Joe checks his wallet and finds it still in his pocket. A strange expression stays on his face for a long while afterward; not so much anger as disappointment, not so much fury as sadness.

A few days later, when I arrange to meet Cornelia for lunch in front of the Grande Mondo Ristorante Cinese, I arrive early and stand outside the restaurant, watching a pretty gypsy girl of about ten as she walks out in heavy traffic on the corner of Via Aretina and Via del Gignoro. When the traffic comes to a halt at the red light, she moves about between the cars, knocking on the drivers’ windows and proffering her red plastic dish for money. She has a sweet, almost ethereal smile; not many refuse her. Women, particularly, open their purses and toss a few coins in her dish. When she’s rejected, she smiles just as sweetly and shrugs—then moves on to the next car.

I wonder, is her mother nearby watching? Or is the child set down here to do her day’s work, left alone in the middle of a busy thoroughfare? When the light changes and the traffic moves on, the little girl comes to stand near me in front of the restaurant. Together we watch the fish in the aquarium displayed in the window. In the tank are two long gray eels and a number of goldfish.

The little girl reaches up and touches the fringed edge of my pink scarf, the one given to me by my friend Paola in the “mercatino usato.”

“Bella,” she says. “Molto bella.” The gold threads of the scarf glitter in the sun.

“Un regalo,” I say, hoping this may explain to her why, because it was a gift to me, I can’t give it to her. Perhaps I should give it to her. It would surely please her. But then her mother (she could even be the same woman who threw the cardboard in Joe’s face) would take it from her and sell it or keep it herself. I move cautiously away from the child, worrying about where her fingers will go next. Her eyes stay upon my face. She says something to me, holding out her dish, and I make my usual apology.

“Sono americana. Non parlo italiano.”

She smiles all the more fetchingly.

“Non in scuola?” I say. However wrong my construction may be, she understands, smiles and shakes her head.

Encouraged by the possibility of conversation, I continue: “La macchina—non pericolosa?” meaning to say isn’t it dangerous for her to be out among the cars?

She nods and shrugs—as if to indicate the danger goes with the territory. She reaches up to finger my scarf again. Just then Cornelia appears around the corner and shakes her head at me in warning.

“I’ve been talking to my new little friend,” I say. Cornelia turns to her and says a few words in Italian. They converse. The child tells her name: Antonella. Cornelia opens her purse and places a 500 lire coin in her dish. They talk a little more—something about school, something about don’t you want to go to school? The child nods—she wants to. But she can’t. In fact, there is a red light now, and the cars are stopped. She hurries back to work.

In the restaurant, the waiter seats us just beside the fish tank at the window that looks onto the street. We watch the fish, and beyond, we watch the little girl begging with her little dish held out in traffic. After we order our meal, Cornelia tells me how the gypsies know how to steal from almost anyone, true acts of magic and mystery. How even a man whose wallet is buttoned into his pants under his long coat will find it missing after an encounter with gypsies. “They have lessons for this,” Cornelia says, “they are trained in the ancient art of thievery.” She explains that a gypsy woman who appears to be carrying a baby in her arms may actually have a false arm, a wooden shelf, supporting the child, while her free arm can slip under your coat and steal your wallet. “The gypsies are a great problem in Italy,” she says. “They have no written language, they refuse to let their children go to school. They live in caravans at the edge of the city. They live by scavenging and stealing.”

We look through the water of the fish tank and watch the child standing in the stream of cars and motor scooters, a small vulnerable soul in a red jacket. When she acquires several donations, she quickly takes the coins from the dish and deposits them in her jacket pocket.

Cornelia suddenly taps the glass—at first I think she is calling to the child, but it’s not that—the goldfish in front of our eyes is eating, bite by bite, the flesh of one of the eels in the tank. The fish attacks the eel with his mouth and a small wound, like an ulcer, appears on the skin of the eel. With each attack the hole grows larger.

“Oh, how awful,” Cornelia says. “Scavengers and thieves on such a pretty day.”

When our appetizers are served, Drago chips and Primavera egg rolls, Cornelia and I eat and talk, no longer thinking about the gypsy child till we hear a tapping on the glass. Outside, the little girl is standing at the window, now holding a large baby in her arms and smiling at us. The baby has a great round head and huge black eyes.

Antonella stares hungrily at the food on our table. Her eyes take in the white tablecloth, the stemmed crystal glasses filled with ruby colored plum wine, the golden crisp steaming egg rolls. The Chinese waiter arrives with more food—our first course of sweet and sour pork, and pasta al pomodoro alla cinese, fragrant with bits of ham, shrimp, and chicken in it.

There is so much poverty and pain in the world, so much grief. Cornelia and I agree we would like to fix it, for everyone.

When we look up again, the child has disappeared, but the goldfish, pecking and digging at its prey, continues without mercy to make its meal of the eel.