No wonder, then, he was looking forward to two weeks at Christmas when he thought he could put other people’s troubles out of his head, and enjoy long walks, a mass of detective stories, and a great deal of good food and drink. He had made his reservation at an expensive hotel in the north woods, where there would certainly be other holiday-makers, but perhaps not of the heartiest, most athletic kind.
He had forgotten about his promise to take Dr. Gunilla Dahl-Soot to visit Maria’s mother, the seeress, the phuri dai, the element in Maria’s background that Maria was still anxious to put behind her.
“You really ought to talk to your mother,” he said to Maria, during a divano when they were discussing the pressing problem for, it seemed to him, the twentieth time. It was really not more than the fourth. “She’s an extremely wise old bird. You ought to trust her more than you do.”
“What would she know about it?” said Maria.
“For that matter, what do I know about it? I tell you what I think, and you tell me I don’t understand. Mamusia would at least see the thing from another point of view. And she knows you, Maria. Knows you better than you think.”
“My mother lived a reasonably civilized, modern sort of life so long as she was married to my father. When he died, she reverted as fast as she could to all the old Gypsy stuff. Of course there is something to be said for that, but not when it comes to my marriage.”
“You are more like your mother than you care to think. It seems to me you get more like her every day. You were very like her the first time you came to talk to me about this wretched business, all dolled up in red like the Bad Girl in a bad nineteenth-century play. But you have been getting stupider ever since.”
“Thanks very much.”
“Well, I have to be rough with you when you won’t listen to common sense. And I mean your common sense, not mine. And your common sense goes right back to Mamusia.”
“Why not right back to my father?”
“That devout, ultra-conventional Catholic Pole? Is it because of him you’ve never considered doing the modern thing and having an abortion? Cut the knot, clear the slate, and begin again?”
“No, it’s not. It’s because of me. I am not going to do violence to what my body has undertaken without consulting my head.”
“Good. But what you have just said sounds like your mother, though she would probably put it in much plainer terms. Listen, Maria: you’re trying to bury your mother, and it won’t work, because what you bury grows fat while you grow thin. Look at Arthur; he’s buried his justifiable anger and jealousy and is giving a very respectable impersonation of a generous man who has no complaints. None whatever. But it isn’t working, as I expect you know. Look at Powell; he’s the lucky one of you three because he has the trick of turning everything that happens to him into art of some sort, and he is chanting away all his guilt in juicy Welsh rhetoric. He’ll be off and away, one of these days, and as free as a bird. But you and Arthur will still be right here with Little What’s-His-Name.”
“Arthur and I call him Nemo. You know—Nobody.”
“That’s stupid. He is somebody, right now, and you will spend years finding out who that somebody is. Don’t forget—What’s bred in the bone, etcetera–What is bred in the bone of Nemo, as you call him? That gospel-roaring old father of Geraint’s, among other things.”
“Oh, don’t be ridiculous!”
“Anything I say to you that makes sense to me you dismiss as ridiculous. So what’s the good of threshing old straw?”
“Threshing old straw! One of your Old Ontario expressions, I suppose; one of your pithy old Loyalist sayings.”
“That’s what’s bred in the bone with me, Maria, and if you don’t like it, why do you keep coming back to me to hear it?”
8
Darcourt and Dr. Gunilla Dahl-Soot arrived at the Gypsy camp in the basement of the Cornishes’ apartment building well provided with food and drink. He had insisted on it, and the Doctor had agreed that they should, if possible, avoid the enormities of Gypsy cuisine. But they understood that if they were not to eat soviako and sarmi and kindred delights, they must take something tempting with them; they had a smoked turkey, and a large, rich Christmas cake as the foundation of their feast, and a basketful of kickshaws, as well as half a dozen bottles of champagne and some excellent cognac. Mamusia was delighted.
“This is kindness! I have been so busy these last days. My Christmas shop-lifting, you know,” she confided to Gunilla, who did not blink an eye.
“It must take a lot of cleverness,” said she.
“Yes. I must not be caught. Maria says that if I am caught and it gets out that she is my daughter, she will kill me.”
“Because the Cornishes are so very Kater Murr?”
“I don’t know what that is. But Arthur has a very respectable position.”
“Yes, of course.”
Mamusia went off into a fit of deep-throated laughter.
“No, no, not to be disgraced by his mother-in-law.” She looked inquiringly at Darcourt. “But you know all about this business, Father Darcourt.”
“What business are you talking about, Madame Laoutaro?”
“Father, we are old friends, aren’t we? Must we pretend? Oh, you kiss my hand, very polite, and call me ‘Madame’ but we have a real understanding, don’t we? We are old friends and old rogues, eh? Or do we have to keep quiet because of this very fine lady you have brought with you? Will she be shocked? She doesn’t look to me as if she would be very much shocked.”
“I assure you I have not been shocked in many years, Madame Laoutaro.”
“Of course not! Shock is for stupids. You are a woman of the world, like me. So—you understand this joke? I must not disgrace the great Arthur because shop-lifting is a sin against money, and money is the Big God. But disgrace of the bed, and the heart, doesn’t count. Isn’t that a good joke? That is the gadjo world.”
The door opened and Yerko came in. Unshaven, longhaired, unkempt, he was wearing a skin cap and some sort of rough skin coat. How he is reverting to his Gypsy world, thought Darcourt; who would believe that this fellow was once a business man, a gifted, inventive engineer.
“What is the gadjo world?” he said, shaking snow generously in all directions from the cap.
“We are talking of the little raklo upstairs. I will not call him the biwuzo.”
“You’d better not, or I’ll take my belt to you, sister. And you know that it is very rude to use Gypsy words when we are talking with our friends who are not Romany. You can never keep your mouth shut about the child upstairs.”
“Only because it is such a good joke.”
“I do not like your joke.” Yerko turned to Gunilla and bowed deeply. “Madame, it is an honour to greet you.” He kissed her hand. “I know you are a very great musician. I, too, am a musician. I honour greatness in our profession.”
“I hear you are a noble player on the cimbalom, Mr. Laoutaro.”
“Yerko. Call me Yerko. I am all through with Mister.”
“They have brought a feast, brother.”
“Good! I want a feast. I have at last beaten the insurance robbers.”
“They are going to give us money?”
“No; but they are not going to sue us. That is victory enough. I went to them like this, and said, ‘I am a poor Gypsy. I have nothing. Are you going to put me in jail? Are you going to put my sister in jail? We are old. We are sick. We do not understand your ways. Have mercy.’—Lots of that—At last they were tired of it, and of me, and told me to go away and never come into their grand building again. ‘You are merciful,’ I said, weeping. It is Christmas. You are moved by the spirit of Bebby Jesus, and He will reward you in Heaven.’ I even tried to kiss the feet of the most important man but he jerked his foot away. Nearly kicked me on the nose. I said, ‘You have forgiven us, before these witnesses, whose names I have. That is all I ask.’ So now they can’t sue us. That is gadjo law. We have won.”