Vashengo stood and asked if she understood the charges. She had betrayed her people, he said, she had told of their affairs, brought unrest down upon them. He spat on the ground. He looked like a man in a state of gentle decay, water left stagnant in a pail. Zoli pinched the front of her dress, felt the weight of pebbles sewn in her hem. She talked of settlement and change and the complicated sorrow of the old days, of which she had often sung, of the hewers of tin and the drawers of water, of stencils of smoke and fire that tightened the skin, of patterns and snapped twigs, of the sound of wood against the land, of roads and signs, of nights on the hills, making from broken things what was newly required, how the gadze used words, delegations, institutions, rules, of how she had misunderstood them, how they had hastened the dark, of brotherhood, decency, tower-blocks, wandering, of how these things would be felt amongst the souls of the departed, of wisdom, whispered names, things not to be repeated, of her grandfather, how he was waiting, watching, silent, gone, of what he had believed and what that belief had become, of water turning backwards, banks of clay, snowfall, sharp stones, of how they could still only call her black even after she had been soaked in whiteness.
It was the longest speech she had ever made in her life.
A riffle of whispers went around the tent. As they conferred, Vashengo lit a cigarette with brown hands and studied the lit end deeply. Another cough and a silence. He was the one designated to speak. He still wore his cufflinks coined from red bicycle reflectors. He lit a match off his fingernail so that it looked as if fire was springing from his hand. He sat, tunneling mud from his boot with a stick, gripped his nose between his thumb and forefinger and blew, wiped his hand on his trousers which were lined, on the seam, with oval silver studs. He stood up, neck cords tight, walked towards her. The sound of his voice was redundant, for she knew the punishment already. Vashengo slapped her face with the back of his hand. Something gentle lay in his slap, but one of the rings on his fingers caught her jawbone. She turned her face in the direction of the blow, kept her head to her shoulder.
Nobody would ever eat with her now. Nobody would walk with her. If she touched any Romani thing it would be destroyed, no matter what value: horse, table, dish. When she died, nobody would bury her. She would not have a funeral. She could not come back, even as a spirit. She could not haunt them. They would not talk of her, they could not even mention her: she had betrayed the life and she was beyond dead, not Gypsy, not gadzi, nothing at all.
Zoli was told to close her eyes as Vashengo ushered her out of the camp. Her late grandfather's breathing came in behind her: in it, the sounds of years. The other elders did not touch her, but instead they guided her with the sound of their boots. All the children had been taken inside. She glanced at Conka's caravan, the chopped wheels making it list sideways. A corner of the curtain trembled and a half-shadow shot back. If I could take all my foolishness and put it in your hands, piramnijo, you would be bowed over for the rest of your life. None of the other women were looking out: they had been told not to, otherwise they too would feel the hand.
It was close to morning and a thin line of cloud had appeared on the eastern rim of the sky. In the distance stood a few warehouses, more stray towers, and an emptiness of hills, stretching beyond. No place seemed more or less sheltered than any other. It was then that she had begun to walk.
In the morning she stands, gripping the doorframe, staring out at the puddled vineyard, the terraced slopes, and the mist of middle-distance where a sheet of gray hangs across the low Carpathian hills. She has, she thinks, become unused to such a clean silence: only the wind and the rain and her own breathing.
For an hour she waits for the rain to slacken, but it doesn't, so she hikes her belongings, pulls her scarf over her head, and walks out into the downpour.
She stops and pulls the sleep from her eye, eats the small yellow deposit from the tip of her finger.
Close to the road, she clambers over a stone stile towards the pine forest. Raindrops bell down from the branches and fall to the forest floor. She bends to fill her skirt pockets with brittle needles, pinecones, dry twigs, and carries them all, bundled in her zajda, back towards the hut.
At the doorway she throws the bundle in a heap to the middle of the floor. She shakes the lighter for fuel-enough for a week or two perhaps-and builds the fire using broken wine-crate. When it is lit, she drops the pinecones into the flames and waits for them to crack open. She touches her swollen jaw, quite sure the seeds will break her bad tooth and dislodge it altogether, but when she bites down into one, her front tooth quivers.
I will not lose my front teeth. Of all things, I will not lose those.
She hunkers down, eating. What might it be like to stay like this forever, she wonders, moving back and forth between forest and hut, over the empty field, through the colorless rain, eating pine seeds, watching the flame crackle? To lie on the floor and slip down into the boards, to wake again in silence, saying nothing, recalling nothing, with not a soul in sight, to have her name pass silently into the walls of the hut?
Zoli feels her stomach churn. She gathers the folds in her dress, shoves open the door and hurries to the stone wall. She pulls down her undergarments, the cold grass brushing against her skin. She steadies herself against the wall, one arm draped around the rock. Her stomach gives. The stench of her insides. She turns her head to her shoulder, away from the filth.
A huge brown dog stands lantern-eyed at the far end of the wall. The dog raises its head and howls, the rheumy folds of skin above its eyes shaking.
Zoli hikes her dresses, slips on the top stone of the wall. The stone scrapes the length of her knee. Her feet slosh in the muck. By the time she reaches the road the dog is already nosing in her filth and raw seeds.
She pulls her overcoat tight around her and hurries down the road, sandals slapping, away from the hut. She crosses another stone wall and sits with her back against it, chest heaving. Small swallows scissor soundlessly through the trees. No signs of houses or horsecarts. She rests awhile and recleans herself with wet grass, wipes her hands clean, swings her legs over the wall.
A larger road, this, blacktopped, long, straight.
The rain stops and she walks the shining tarmacadam in a spell of lavish winter sunlight. Her sandals squelch and rub her torn feet. I am, she thinks, a twenty-nine-year-old woman walking like one already grown old. She touches her chest with the fingers of her right hand and stretches her spine long. Her coat feels wet and heavy and an idea comes, almost comforting in its simplicity-I should just drape it over my arm. Lightheaded, she negotiates the middle of the road. All about her are long rows of vines, sheds from the collectives, and, in the distance, the mountains standing simple against the sky.
At a bend she stops to look at a lump in the roadway behind her. A thing, a person, a body, in the road. She pulls deep into the brambles. How did I step past a body in the road? How could I possibly miss it? She pushes herself further into the hedge, branches crisscrossed in front of her. How did I fail to see a dead person lying there? She waits for a sound, any sound- a vehicle, a rifle shot, a moan-but nothing comes. She hooks her fingers around the strand of bushes to look again: the body lies flat and dark and prone in the roadway.
“Idiot,” she says aloud to herself.
Zoli climbs from the bushes and wearily trudges back to pick up the dropped coat. It lies on the roadway in a sprawl, one arm outstretched as if pointing in another direction.