Child of Fortune (20 page)

True to his word in letter and spirit, Pater never displayed a moment of jealousy, or indeed anything less than open- hearted enthusiasm for my enterprises and amours, though truth be told my initial motivation had been the eliciting of same. And once I had quite convinced myself that his dedication to the spirit of our mutual freedom was quite genuine and unconstrained, I had to admit to myself that I would have been a fool to have had it any other way.

For it was a grand and glorious time. Having known nothing of life but an existence based on parental largesse and then a period of utter penury resulting from the exhaustion of same, the vie of the Gypsy Jokers was more to me than a garden of delights, it was my very first experience of a world in which I was neither the darling daughter nor the helpless waif but a free, equal, and independent agent. The strip of Cloth of Many Colors that I wore sometimes as scarf, sometimes as sash, sometimes as headband, was purchased with ruegelt earned by my own efforts, as were the simple meals I bought in the camp in lieu of fressen bars. While the former was hardly an item of haute couture and the latter could not pretend to haute cuisine, I was adorned with the ensign of my own enterprise and dined on the fruits thereof.

I was Moussa Shasta Leonardo, Gypsy Joker, true avatar of the spirit of the Child of Fortune, a free and equal lover of Pater Pan, and indeed he had seen my future self truly, for having attained this station, never would I have then willingly traded it for being the mere consort of even the noblest of men.

Chapter 9

While at first I was more than content to find myself earning my way as a Gypsy Joker via the various modes available to a tantric performer of modest artistry and secret power, after a time I became gradually seized by the somewhat incoherent desire to expand my sphere of interest and enhance my possibilities, for I could not forever deny that my sole means of earning ruegelt consisted of a smattering of my mother's noble art and the electronic enhancement of my modest attainments in the disciplines of same which was mine courtesy of my father's craft.

Moreover, the more I took minor parts in tantric tableaus whose feature players displayed a diligent and indeed obsessive dedication to the true mastery of the high art of which I was no more than a feckless dilettante, the more I realized that I lacked the inner drive to endure the long hours of study and exercise required to achieve the status of a tantric maestra.

Indeed, the atmosphere of the carnival was not exactly conducive to dedicated diligence in the pursuit of any single craft or art, at least not for a youthful spirit new to the life of a true Child of Fortune, for every waking hour offered up a smorgasbord of possible pursuits, not to say a plethora of diversions to distract me from any thought of gainful employ whatever. There were jugglers, sleight of hand artistes, singers, musicians, und so weiter wandering the grounds, and to a Gypsy Joker, admission to the shows and performances taking place within tented walls was gratuit. Not to mention endless possibilities for idle hours of amorous dalliance, though this began to lose a certain piquancy for a laborer in the vineyards of the tantric trades.

Then too I had the example of the polymathic Pater Pan, by the definition of our tribe the ideal Child of Fortune incarnate, far more interested in playing jack-of-all-trades than in becoming a true maestro of any of them, whom, naturellement, I desired to please with the ultimate homage of successful emulation.

Moreover, the Gypsy Jokers did not confine their trades to the environs of the camp; the buskers who thronged our caravanserei also roamed the nearby vecinos giving impromptu performances on the streets thereof for contributions. So too did other members of the tribe hawk finger food, geegaws, and our simple crafts beyond the confines of our bidonville of tents. The street trade served to spread the repute of our carnival; contrawise, the mythos of the permanent fete enhanced the street trade.

Indeed, as Pater Pan would often enough declare, the true venue of the Child of Fortune was out in the streets among the bustling throngs of the quotidian worlds of men, for here we had performed our highest public roles when we were Troubadours and Tinkers, Romany and Hippies, for by playing the part of the Free Spirits of the worlds, we did our part to keep the spirit of the people free. In this, he told us, pecuniary profit was happily at one with a sense of noblesse oblige.

Be such grandiosity as it may, it began to seem to me that it was time to venture forth from the cozy confines of the encampment I had come to call home into the streets of Edoku where once I had been a helpless waif but where I now might carry the piebald banner of the Gypsy Jokers forth as a soldier of a Children's Crusade whose Holy Grail was the ruegelt to be gained therein.

While the spirit was willing, my skills were, to say the least, somewhat circumscribed. I could not sing, dance, juggle, do sleight of hand, or play a musical instrument, and the opportunities for tantric performances on crowded thoroughfares were few and far between. Yet such was my desire to venture forth as a true Child of Fortune of the streets that at length 1 swallowed my pride and deigned to try my hand at the street hawkers' trade.

Exerting my erotic charms to gain the good graces of Dani Ben Bama, a youth who, while he could in no way be mistaken for a chef maestro, was generally regarded as our premiere artiste of finger food, I spent several days wandering the vecino of glass towers with trays of his dainties. These were a cunning assortment of steamed dim sum of variously flavored doughs filled with all sorts of viands, legumes, sweet curries, and flavored creams, liberally spiced with assorted mild intoxicants, and I knew full well that I could find no more promising fare to hawk than this.

But truth be told, though I sallied forth each day with high hopes, more often than not I would return with but a few coins and a great heap of stale buns. For once on the street, I lacked the chutzpah and enthusiasm to continually proclaim the virtues of my wares at the top of my voice or to accost strangers; instead, my technique consisted of wandering aimlessly about in a daze with the haughty expression of one performing a task she clearly considered below her natural station.

At length even Dani, avid though he was for my continued tantric ministrations, was reluctantly moved to suggest that I favor another enterprise with my services.

I met with little more success hawking such items of adornment as embroidered sashes, netsuke of wood and metal, belts woven of silver wire, mirror-berets, und so weiter, though at least the craftsmen of same could afford to be more tolerant of my failures, since these items were not perishable and could be sent back to market with a peddler of more puissant skills.

Finally, I did somewhat better with jewelry crafted by Ali Kazan Bella. Ali was a lusty young man whose good humor and considerable tantric skills I quite enjoyed, and his jewelry , while crude by Edojin standards, manifested a skill and somewhat demented energy for which I could generate a sincere enthusiasm. With cunning little knives he had fashioned himself and under the influence of central nervous system enhancers, Ali carved necklaces, bracelets, earrings, and brooches out of single blocks of wood; filigree bijoux of such intricate fineness that at first glance they appeared to be twisted together out of wire.

This jewelry epitomized precisely those qualities which charmed the Edojin when it came to quaint Child of Fortune crafts: rude materials mimicking those of a higher technological level, clear evidence of long hours of tedious hand labor, and what they called "the wu of blood, sweat, and tears."

Adorned, indeed bedecked, with several rings on every finger, bracelets up and down each arm, a dozen or more necklaces, several pairs of earrings, and brooches pinned all over my tunic to the point where I was fairly armored in wooden filigree, I cut a figure of sufficient bizarrite to attract considerable attention even on the streets of Edoku, and even I, the least forward of street hawkers, was able to do a reasonable trade.

Still, even this modest success as a peddler left me discontent with my place in the life of the streets, or rather, perhaps, such success at the expense of my own dignity after a series of failures resulting at least in part from the disdainful husbanding of same, forced upon me the perception that I was really quite indifferent to success or failure as a mere merchant of the wares of others. Indeed, if I had desired such a vie, I would have been much better advised to remain on Glade and become an agent for the wares of my own father in the haut monde of the wealthy rather than a peddler of snacks and trinkets in the streets.

No, though I continued to hawk his jewelry upon occasion out of affection for Ali, and though I continued to supplement my modest share of this trade with tantric performances in the camp, at length I admitted to myself that I had developed a genuine personal ambition that went beyond mere membership in the Gypsy Joker tribe or even becoming a free spirit of the streets.

It seemed to me, then as now, that it was the Gypsy Joker buskers who wandered Great Edoku performing for what fortune and the impromptu audiences tossed their way who were the true Children of Fortune, the spiritual raison d'etre of our very existence in the wider scheme of things. For it was they who were in truth both living out and extolling the ancient and noble legends of the Gypsies and Hippies, the Troubadours and the Arkies, and, by serving as avatars incarnate of the spirit of the Child of Fortune's millennial romance, keeping it alive in the Second Starfaring Age.

With hindsight's vision, I perceive that this was my first dim inkling of my own future calling, the formless desire to live a life where the spirit meets the mind, to share the vie of the tale-teller or performer, to immerse myself in some higher enterprise for the ding an sich, to present the product of my own inner being for the titillation and edification of an audience of kindred spirits.

Vraiment, at the time I desired nothing more than the egoistic pleasure of the vie itself, for I had no tale to tell or song to sing, nor the craft to do so if I had. Indeed, that was the precise nature of my dilemma: I had fixed my heart's desire upon the life of a street performer, yet I lacked even a passing acquaintance with any entertainer's art.

Naturellement, it was to Pater Pan that I turned for wisdom in the sated afterglow of an evening's erotic exercises in his tent.

"Pas problem, girl!" he told me airily after a less than cogent recitation of my desires. "For sure you will have little difficulty extracting free instruction from some male maestro of your chosen art!"

Curled in his sheltering arms, I nodded my assent. "But what art may that be?" I said.

"You know not?" he said in some perplexity.

I shrugged. "I am less than pleased by the sound of my own voice in song, when it comes to musical instruments, I seem to have several thumbs, I have no interest in sleight of hand, juggling, or dance ..."

Pater laughed. "Apprentice yourself to a street theater group then," he told me. "You can hardly converse for ten minutes without betraying thespic talent!"

I rolled this conceit around the palate of my mind; while it seemed to me that my life on Glade and my small successes on Edoku gave a certain evidence of my talent for playing roles, these had always been of my own crafting, and something about a life of mouthing other people's words left a taste for which I did not entirely care.

I shook my head. "Something about it pleases me not ..."

"Q'ue?"

'Je ne sais pas ..."

"If not you, then who?" Pater demanded. "Speak, girl, I command you, the free sprach of your heart of hearts!"

Something in the tone of his voice, some arcane magic of personal puissance, did indeed impel me to give free verbal rein to the glossolaia of my unformed thoughts.

"I wish to do what you do, Pater, which is to say, I wish to be like you, or rather my own version of the spirit you say we share, which is to say, I wish to live the life of that which I speak, or speak the life of what I am. I mean, you speak, vraiment to become, as you say, both the singer and the song, metaphorically of course, since even I lack the hubris to attempt to subject an audience to my cracked warblings, I mean, that is ... Merde!"

I threw up my hands and snorted in frustration, unable to encompass with any precision that mystery for whose clear image I was searching.

But Pater Pan understood more than what I was saying, or perhaps was able to see the unoccluded vision behind my fog of words. "Aha!" he cried. "It is a ruespieler you wish to become, though perhaps you know it not."

"Ruespieler? Me?"

On the one hand, his declaration rang a chime in my spirit which immediately harmonized with its vibration, but on the other hand, the notion was one which I had never consciously considered. Certainement, ruespieling required not the least bit of musical ability or physical dexterity. Nor was one constrained to play out a role crafted by another or mouth someone else's words. Au contraire, a ruespieler needed only stories to tell, the loquacity to tell them, and the chutzpah to stand in the street and begin spieling in the confident hope that passersby would be moved by her art to listen and then be moved by her tale to contribute to the cause.