Marco took a deep breath, hardly aware of what he was doing as the door slid open and he went inside.
“Excuse me,” he said, reaching the wallet toward her. “Were you the one who dropped this outside?”
The woman stiffened, her facial expression blurring like a strip of film caught in the projector, melting. Worry turned to dark suspicion, then to the kind of relief a person might feel when an object hurtling toward them misses by a centimeter. It was strange, watching her reactions. Marco braced himself, unsure what to expect.
If her movements were too fast he would drop the wallet and leg it. He had no desire to feel the tight grip of her hand on his wrist.
Marco watched her intently as she finally thanked him and reached to take the wallet.
He bowed almost imperceptibly and turned quickly toward the door, already on his way.
“Stop!” The woman’s voice cut through the air. It seemed obvious to Marco that her life had been defined by issuing commands.
He glanced warily over his shoulder as the doorway was blocked by two incoming customers. Why did he have to go and hand back the wallet? They had seen through him, of course they had. Anyone could tell what sort of an urchin he was.
“Here, take this,” the woman said. Her voice was so soft now that everyone heard it. “Not many people would be as honest as you.”
He turned slowly to face her, staring at the hand extended in front of him. In it was a one-hundred-kroner note.
Marco reached out and accepted it.
Half an hour later he tried the trick with the wallet again, this time without success, as the woman he had picked out became so upset by her carelessness and loss that she clutched at her breast, unable to staunch the shock wave of sobbing that Marco had precipitated.
So he withdrew without his reward, but with the resolve that this had been the very last time.
The hundred kroner would simply have to last.
6
Early 2007 to late 2010
Marco received the shock of his life the day Zola gathered the flock and without warning revealed that from now on they would no longer live as Gypsies and had never belonged to that tribe, anyway.
It was the day Marco reached the age of eleven, and at that moment his respect for Zola ceased.
He expected his uncle to explain what he meant, but Zola merely gave a wry smile when he saw how the children reacted. Then he told them of the nights he had lain with a raging fever, his mind suddenly becoming clear, his thoughts collecting to focus on whole new pathways in life.
Marco turned and stared at the grown-ups who stood in a ring behind the children. They looked so odd with sheepish smiles creasing their otherwise stern faces, as though at once both glad and apprehensive. It was obvious something momentous was in the offing.
“I have awoken from my delusions,” Zola went on, this being the way he spoke to them when they were gathered. They were used to it.
“As from today, you are blessed with a spiritual leader, a man who not only serves to unite the family in common endeavors, but who will also steer you on toward new and greater goals. Do you know what I mean, children?”
Most shook their heads, but Marco sat quite still, absorbed by the intensity of the man’s piercing gaze.
“No, I am sure you do not. But though we have lived as Gypsies for many years, Roma we are not. Now you know.” His words were as simple as that.
Marco frowned as his window on the world disintegrated. It was as though all life had suddenly been sucked out of him.
“And even though we feel tied together by the flesh as a family, this is not the case for all of us. But fear not, for we are all of us brought together by God.”
Everyone sat as though hypnotized, but not Marco. He stared at the ground and tried to focus his gaze on a blade of grass. Zola said they were not all family. What then?
Zola spread his arms as though to embrace them all. “Yesterday it came to me that Almighty God created one singular day on which nothing whatsoever occurred in the world. A day when everything stood still. Yes, yesterday I read about this one unique day on which no plane fell from the sky, no wars raged, no event of significance found its way to the front page of any newspaper. On this day, not one notable personage died or was born. The wheels of history ceased to turn, if only for a day, for God desired that this day should be the purest, least eventful day on earth. And it was surely on a day such as this that the Lord Jesus was born.” He nodded pensively. “And why did God create such a day? I shall tell you. He did so to perfectly frame one, single momentous event that took place on exactly the day in question.” He closed his eyes tight. “And do you know what day that was, children?”
Once more, the majority shook their heads, even many of the adults could not refrain.
“The day was April 11, 1954, the least eventful day of our time. And several of us present here know why he chose that very day, and why the silence of sudden peace in the world descended in veneration of one special occurrence that was to outshine all others. And now I shall reveal to you all what it was.” His face lit up in a smile wide enough to expose his gums. It had been a long time since he had smiled so much.
“The reason God did so was because this was the day on which I was born.”
Nearly all the adults broke into applause, but most of the children merely stared blankly at Zola as though having failed to truly grasp the momentous nature of that fantastic day. Marco was among them.
For he believed it to be a lie.
Zola lifted his head and gestured for them all to be quiet. And then he told them of how as a young man in Little Rock he had fled the draft that would have sent him to the war in Vietnam, and of how later in Italy he saw the flowers of peace and love bloom among like-minded peers in the Damanhur movement.
The garb of the hippies became his uniform and during those first months he became enthralled by northern Italy, soon joining up with the other flower children who would become his family. And on one particularly enchanting night when the stars were out in their multitudes they vowed to establish their own community on the plains of Umbria, where they would live together like the Roma in solidarity with the fate and circumstances of that martyred people.
There were many difficult words, but Marco understood what they meant. The grown-ups had lied to him and the other children. They were not Roma at all, and from that moment, being Marco would be so much harder, no matter what Zola said. It was like having your skin removed and replaced by another.
Marco looked around at the other children. They were silent and motionless. He didn’t like it at all.
Behind him stood two of the adults with somber faces. Once, Marco had heard them whisper that Zola had been expelled by the Damanhur movement for stealing. The other adults seemed not to have paid attention to this seditious comment, for they stood like an arcade of statues, as entranced as the children.
Zola raised his arms above them. “Just as with the Jews, God sentenced the Roma to wander the earth until they made themselves deserving of his grace. A curse lay upon them, as it had upon Job, so they were compelled to beg, steal, and rob their way through life. Yet this was but one example of the trials imposed by God, as when Abraham was instructed to sacrifice his own son. But friends, I say to you: we no longer need to bear the chalice of the Roma, for I have received a message from God and will show you how from this moment forth we can live as ourselves.”
At this point Marco stopped listening. What could he ever believe in now? Were the clothes they wore not like those of the Roma? Had the spittle with which the local inhabitants so often had humiliated them been hawked for no reason at all? Had he listened to their oaths and been shoved aside daily on account of something he was not?