Ascension (14 page)

A
NDRÁS KEPT TO HIMSELF
as much as he could, avoiding conflict except when necessary. He was, at seventeen, stronger than most adult men, which brought a fair amount of trouble to him. There was always one boy or another seeking to prove his manhood by challenging him in some way.

There was one Mór Rom who paid special attention to András, a striking young girl, fifteen years old, named Jeta. She had large eyes and an entrancing smile, and was easily the most
beautiful of Nosh Mór’s daughters. She took quite a liking to András, despite his seeming ambivalence towards her. This infatuation did not go unnoticed by others, and it inspired a great deal of jealousy. András was unfazed by any of it, though, intent only upon the raising of his eight-year-old sister.

As time went on, Jeta began to take András’s perceived snubbing of her advances to heart. She stayed in her tent, refusing to eat, until finally Nosh came to speak to András.

“What have you done to my daughter?” he said, his voice low so that others would not hear.

“I have done nothing.”

“She is in love with you. She wishes to marry you.”

“Yes. But I have no intentions towards her.”

At this Nosh Mór became angry. “You think I would allow you to marry my daughter, orphan? I have overlooked many things. You burn a church, a bad omen. You do not become one of us. You do not sing with us. You do not share the stories I know you have. All these things I overlook.” He took a deep breath, collecting himself. “You would not be fit to marry Jeta. But for you to think yourself above her is another matter.”

“I do not think myself above her. I simply do not love her.” András did not say that neither did he love any of the Mór Roma. If pressed for an explanation he would have been unable to supply one; he could not pinpoint why he was unable to fit in with this group.

“Love?” Nosh spat. “Ursari, that is the least of your worries.”

Etel burst into the tent. Tears ran down her face. András forgot Nosh Mór and focused on his sister. Never in her life since she had been a baby had he seen her cry, let alone with such ferocity. He knew at once that something terrible must have happened.

“Vyusher,”
she said.
“Vyusher.”
She was too upset to say more. András understood what she was talking about, and he went where Etel led him, Nosh following right behind.

One of his favourite stories that their father Miksa had told—and one that András had repeated to Etel since she was old enough to listen—was the story of the Rom and the wolf.

“Not so long ago,” he would begin, trying his best to sound like his father, “an old Rom who was once a great leader of his people but was now sick and weak sensed that his tribe was about to turn on him. So late one night he crept from their caravan and slipped into the deep of the forest, where, with his remaining strength, he set to building himself a shack. One day, when he sat down to rest, he was cornered by a pack of hungry wolves. He was unarmed, having left his axe at the edge of his clearing, and had no way to defend himself. The wolves were just about to devour him when their leader, a strong silver giant of a wolf, leapt between the Rom and the wolves and bade them leave him alone. The wolves grumbled at this, but they respected their leader’s authority and retreated into the brush.

“A few years went by, and soon the silver wolf was not so strong, not such a giant. He was old, and though he still had cunning, he could feel his control over the pack waning. So one quiet night he fled into the forest. The other wolves heard him leave, however, and they took after him. They were nearly upon him when he reached the Rom’s shack. The Rom, remembering the favour this silver wolf had once done him, took him into his house and saved him.

“From that time on, the Rom and the wolf lived together until their days were done, dying only moments apart, and they were as happy as they had ever been.”

The Móra Rom camp was full of dogs. They were never consciously collected; they just arrived one day and travelled with the
wagons, content to live off discarded scraps and whatever was seen fit to give them. Many of them were affectionate towards their human providers, and many were indifferent, but none was vicious. They were smart dogs, and they had quickly learned that any aggression towards humans led to an abrupt end. The dogs were, however, quite violent amongst themselves, fighting often and without mercy. There was one dog, a small brownish cur, that Etel found one day dragging part of its stomach behind it, having had its gut torn open in a fight. Etel picked the creature up and brought it to András, who was inclined to put the poor thing out of its misery, but Etel begged him to try and save it. They washed the distended pieces, pushed them back into the dog and wrapped a bandage around it. András doubted the dog would last the night, but there it was the next day, still alive, and the day after that, and so on, with Etel looking after it, washing its wound and feeding it, as well as keeping the other dogs at bay. Until one day the dog was well enough to get up, and eventually it appeared to be fine. Etel remembered the story of the Rom and the wolf, naming the dog
Vyusher
, the Romany word for wolf.

They became inseparable. Vyusher was always beside her, licking her swollen feet after a hard day of walking, guarding over her while she slept. Etel, for her part, fed the dog half of all her food, brushed its fur with her own hairbrush and kept other dogs from injuring Vyusher further.

That had been over a year ago. As András arrived at the bare spot of earth where Vyusher now lay motionless, he knew that this time the dog would not recover. Its head was caved in on the side, unrecognizable as the former face of a dog, an iron pipe on the ground beside it.

“Who has done this?” he asked Etel.

“Nicolae and Dilaver,” she replied. “But all of them were there.”

András looked at Nosh. Nicolae and Dilaver were two of his sons, one a year older than András and one a year younger. They did not like András, nor the idea of their sister being in love with him, and they liked it even less that he did not care for her. They were too afraid to come after him, having felt his fist at their heads more than once, but there were other ways, they knew.

“It’s just a dog,” Nosh said.

“It was my sister’s dog. You do not kill a child’s dog.”

“They love their sister.”

“And I mine.” András stared Nosh Mór hard in the face, and his glare was returned with a smirk. András, infuriated, lunged towards Nosh, his hands at the man’s throat.

Etel opened her mouth but no sound came out. She had never seen András lose his temper before. In all his fights he was never the one to make the first move, and even afterward he did not appear angry. That was usually his advantage.

As András lunged, Nosh dissipated before him, there and not there. András felt a breeze at his side, and from behind him a cool, hard pressure at his throat and solid flesh constricting his wrist. He grasped with his free hand to keep Nosh’s knife from going into his neck, but Nosh’s arm was strong and he had no effect on its position. For a moment András thought he was dead, but death did not come, and he knew that if Nosh had wanted him dead, he would already be so.

“You have made a bad mistake,” Nosh whispered into his ear. “I should kill you where you stand.”

András said nothing. He couldn’t think of anything that was certain to make things better, and he didn’t want to risk making the situation worse.

“I took you in five years ago, when others would not have. I protected you from those who thought you should pay for burning down their church. I fed you and your sister. You shared our fire. And for this you first bring shame upon my daughter, then you come at me with fists. Tell me one reason why I should let you live.”

András thought for a moment. “Because you would do the same thing for your family. You would kill to protect them.”

Nosh released András, shoving him to the ground. András was unprepared and lost his wind as he connected with the hard earth, and he lay on his back, gasping.

“You look like a dying fish,” Nosh said. His dagger was already back in its sheath at his waist. Neither András nor Etel had seen it come out or go back. Nosh turned to Etel, who knelt beside her dead dog.

“I am sorry for your friend,” he said. “All over the world other dogs will be sick of broken hearts for his absence.” Nosh looked at András. “Be gone before sunset. Your sister may stay, but if you are here in the morning, you will not see noon.” Just then others began to arrive, drawn more out of intuition, a feeling that trouble was near, than by the commotion that had been raised. Nosh pushed his way past a group of onlookers and disappeared into his wagon.

No one spoke to András. He was, from the moment of Nosh’s pronouncement, outcast from the entire group. Whatever personal feelings any of them held, and a few did think that Nosh was overreacting, they did not go against his word, nor hold out a hand to András as he got up off the ground. They looked at their feet as he moved past them, and they walked away silently once he was inside his tent.

Etel took one last look at her friend Vyusher and followed her brother.

András gathered together what few belongings he had. He watched Etel in the doorway, wondering what to do. A part of him believed that she would be better off staying with the Mór Roma, that without him they would accept her as one of their own, and that in time she would come to understand why he had left her. Another part of him, a larger part, needed her to come with him, could not fathom the thought of leaving without her. Do not be selfish, he told himself. She has a right to a better life than you can provide.

“It is a bad thing about Vyusher,” he said.

Etel nodded. “Hearts are broken, dogs’ and mine.”

András did not like her rephrasing Nosh, but said nothing. “I must go.”

Etel stepped back. “And me?”

“I think you should stay.”

“I will not.” She held her hands tight at her sides.

“It’s best. The future will be difficult.”

“I will go with you.” Etel made herself as big as she could go. “Ursaris hold together. You will not leave me.”

András agreed, not letting on how relieved he was. Her loyalty made him proud, made him happy to leave the Mór Roma. The prospect of a life on the streets of a large city was less daunting, almost appealing. She’s right, he thought. Ursaris hold together.

O
n the wire, thought of any sort was the first step towards a fall. Salvo learned as much as soon as Tomas bade him walk. What was on the wire was unlike what was on the ground; walking on the earth was a one-sided proposition. The wire was animate, the wire breathed, and the wire was always stronger than anyone who walked it. The only way to live was to work with the wire, to breathe in such a way that would not disturb its breathing, to walk softly at times and on places that the wire didn’t mind.

Tomas had been right; Salvo learned quickly, far more quickly than the others Tomas had tried to teach. In less than two months he was proficient enough that Tomas felt sufficiently confident in him to book some performances, to trust Salvo with his own life.

Training the girl, Margit, had been a more difficult proposition. Tomas wanted her to be part of the act, but while she was satisfactory in other areas, she did not take naturally to the wire. Tomas did not require her to walk, only to be carried or to balance, but it was clear that the girl didn’t trust him, which made her a difficult student. He resolved to use her in the act as sparingly as possible, limiting her to one or two tricks. She would still be useful on the road.

The act was a simple one. Tomas was not a fan of skywalks, preferring instead the confines of a hall or a tent. Tomas would
start the show with the dance of the drunk, in which he would lurch across the wire as though intoxicated. It was a good opener and always got a cheer. Next he would do some somersaults, which were more difficult. Then he would send Salvo out to do some handstands. On Salvo’s last handstand, Tomas would carry Margit out on his back, place a chair on the soles of Salvo’s feet and lift the girl onto the chair. He would then sit on the wire and eat an apple while Margit howled, only half pretending to be terrified. When he finished his apple, he would retrieve Margit from the chair, where she would first slap and then kiss him, much to the delight of the audience. Salvo would return to the platform for a short rest as Tomas prepared the finale. Both Tomas and Margit wore a belt with a brass ring at the front. Tomas would lead Margit to the middle of the wire and secure a rope between their two rings. As he lowered Margit from the wire, Salvo rejoined him. With Margit dangling in the air below them, suspended horizontally, Salvo would climb up Tomas’s back and do a handstand from his shoulders. It was a very difficult trick, and it always brought the audience to their feet.

Whenever Salvo did this trick, he had to work very hard not to look at Margit’s face. He knew she was there, staring up at the wire, and he knew that if he looked her in the eye, he would lose his focus and fall. In general, he tried to have as little to do with her as possible. She was not Roma, that was certain, and the way she sometimes looked at him made him feel as though she might not like him. That they had much in common mattered little; the circumstance of each being a needy beneficiary of both kindness and cruelty from Tomas Skosa had not made them allies.