Ascension (7 page)

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.

I
t was a cool October day, and Esa Nagy sat rigidly in the front room of the apartment she lived in with her husband, László, and her son, Leo. Cradled in her hands was a steaming teacup. At a casual glance it might have appeared that Esa had company over; she seemed to be holding a polite and restrained conversation. But the fact was that she was completely alone. Esa Nagy, who had recently turned thirty-two, was having an imaginary tea party.

She knew that it was an odd thing for a grown woman to do, and every time she engaged in the fantasy, she told herself afterwards that she would do it no more, but her resolve never held and she was beginning to wonder what the point of fighting it was. She had never actually been to a tea party, or anything that even remotely resembled one, and she was therefore unsure precisely what went on at these gatherings. They belonged to a whole world outside of hers, but she didn’t think her one indulgence could be harmful to herself or others in any way. Still, she knew it was definitely not normal.

Normal, what is normal? she asked herself. She thought she heard a knock at the building’s main door and turned her ear to the street, which was one floor down. Maybe this craziness is what keeps me sane, she ventured. Maybe everyone should do this. Maybe then things in Hungary would go back to normal. Whatever that is.

But now her brief respite was ruined. She couldn’t tell whether there was someone down at the building’s front door, but like a person prematurely awakened from a dream, she knew there was no going back.

She rose and moved herself into the room that faced the street. This room served as both a kitchen and an eating area, and was the warmest room in the house on cold winter days, thanks to the coal stove that stood in the corner. A large arched window allowed her a view of the street. Esa leaned out the window and searched the area surrounding the door. She saw no one at first and then, just as she was sure it was all in her head, she saw, protruding from the edge of the entrance alcove, an arm. It was a small arm, and no sooner had she seen it than the arm disappeared from view.