These remains, just the first sight of them, affected me more strongly than I had been prepared for. Lawyers—all lawyers—live in a land of concepts and words, with precious little physical reality intruding. In the years I was a prosecutor, hearing a judge pronounce sentence and watching a US deputy marshal clap cuffs on the defendant and lead him to the lockup tended to distress me. It was only then that I seemed to fully appreciate that my efforts were aimed not simply at accomplishing that abstraction I called justice, but more concretely, at caging a human being for a good portion of his remaining life.
Goos had exposed most of the pelvis and the top of the femur, when Attila’s A8 bumped down the road, raising dust as it came. I was relieved to have a reason to leave the gravesite and handed the camera to one of the day laborers.
Esma, who’d also kept her distance, approached me.
“Finding anything?”
I nodded.
“I don’t like blood or bones,” she said.
“I’m with you,” I said.
She laughed and threw her arm through mine as we moved up toward Attila. I made introductions.
“The famous Attila,” said Esma. Her driver, seemingly like half the working people in Tuzla, was in Attila’s employ.
“Not half as big a prick as they say,” she answered. “If you ask me.”
“On the contrary, you’re very well liked.”
Attila beamed. Being shunned so often had undoubtedly left her vulnerable to any compliment. After a minute, Attila, with her rolling, slightly pigeon-toed walk and her oddly erect posture, strolled over to the gravesite to confer with Goos, just to be sure he was getting the help he needed. While she was gone, I had an inspiration for something useful I could do that would get me away from the boneyard.
“Esma, didn’t you tell me that you first heard about Ferko in a Roma village?”
“Indeed. I’ve been back now and then.”
“Is it far?”
“Lijce? I’m not sure.”
Given the closed circuitry of the Rom community, I thought we were likely to find the best information about Barupra there. When Attila came back, she said the town was no more than twenty minutes and offered to drive me.
I returned to Goos. He’d already felt his way to a second skeleton, but at the moment he’d fixed a fine tungsten carbide needle to a hand pick to loosen the dirt on the first set of leg bones, examining them for signs of trauma.
He listened to me long enough to agree with the plan. As I turned away, Goos said behind me, “Wasn’t trying to up myself on you, Boom.” He was apologizing for being pretentious.
“Hardly,” I replied. “Fault was all mine. I should have known.” He nodded, apparently satisfied by that answer.
When I returned to Esma and Attila, I found that Esma was preparing to dismiss her driver and come with Atilla and me. All Roma were her people, to whom she had a proprietary connection, and Esma was known in Lijce. Even so, I was reluctant to have her present, since confirming Ferko was one principal reason to go. I drew her aside to explain that.
“Do you speak Romany?” she replied. “Because many of those people are fluent in no other language.”
She had me there. I checked back with Goos, who thought overall she could help more than hurt, at least on an exploratory visit. We could always come back with our own translator later.
11.
Lijce
Attila drove us back to Tuzla, since Esma wanted to stop to buy small things for the children in Lijce.
“They are so desperately poor,” she said, “and it will also make the gadje more welcome.”
In the meantime, Attila walked me a few blocks to a steel bridge over the highway to point out Lake Pannonica, a local curiosity. Late in the twentieth century, the hundreds of years of extracting the briny water beneath Tuzla in order to produce salt took its toll and the downtown area began to sink. Salt production ceased, but after the war, the former pools, where the subterranean waters had been stored, were turned into a recreational facility, becoming a network of saltwater lakes, an inland sea with graveled shores that were thronged in the summers.
When we returned to the main square, Esma was waiting with two bulging plastic bags. We drove from town, passing the immense site of Tuzla Elektrik, with smokestacks in the sky like the arms of a cheering crowd, and hourglass-shaped vents, stories high, wafting steam.
Soon we were ascending again. It was a lovely country of green mountains. Haystacks, with the silage spun around a pole, lay in some of the fields looking like huge tops. Esma, far shorter than I, had volunteered for the backseat. She leaned forward to hear Attila, supporting herself when we sped through the switchbacks by applying her strong hand to my shoulder.
“Salt mine,” Attila said, pointing right, where large white storage tanks loomed on a hilltop. Two narrow pipelines, yellow and green, ran parallel to the road.
In another twenty minutes, we turned down a yellow dirt path to enter the Roma town of Lijce. We had barely reached the first house when a little boy recognized Esma, whose prior largesse obviously had made an impression. He let loose a joyful shout, which brought more than a dozen kids running our way, preventing Attila from driving farther. The children were waifish, dusty from playing in the street and dressed in ill-matched faded old clothes, but seemed nourished and happy, leaving aside one boy who had an open sore on his face, rimmed in green. The boys wore shorts and a variety of footwear, mostly open plastic sandals or Velcroed running shoes, none with socks.
Esma exited, laughing as the kids jumped around her. She questioned each child about her or his family, and then distributed gifts based on her estimate of needs. Attila rolled down the window, chatting with the kids in Bosnian.
“What are they saying?” I asked.
“What would you expect? ‘Give us money.’ They’re bargaining. Just one keim,” she said, naming the Bosnian currency. It was officially half a Euro, meaning the kids were asking for about fifty cents. Attila handed out all the change she had. The boy with the sore insisted that he would accept a bill.
It was Thursday now, a little after noon, and once Esma was back in the car, I said, “Why aren’t these children in school?”
She smiled. “Ask. See if you get the same answer twice. Some barely speak Bosnian, though. Throughout Europe, people lament that the Roma won’t send their children to school, but in very few places have the local authorities tried to teach in our own language, or with respect for our customs. After puberty, Rom beliefs require students to separate by gender, which the gadje will not indulge. Because of that, even the children who get some education won’t go much beyond the first form.” Age eleven or twelve.
Once Attila was parked, I stepped out to view the town. The road ran through two rises on which sat no more than thirty houses, almost all with yards that had become dumping grounds. Hillocks of refuse, including most frequently the rusted pieces of old cars, were piled beside silted-up garbage, old shoes without laces, discarded appliances, bedsprings, used pots, pieces of building material—a remarkable goulash of items, seemingly preserved because they might have some future use. As for the houses, a few looked quite substantial, with stucco or cinder-block bases and frame exteriors, although in those cases the siding was unfinished, as if the wood had been slapped up before anyone arrived to take it back. Beside the bigger places, late-model cars were sometimes parked, and on three or four houses I saw satellite dishes mounted at the rooflines. But most of the dwellings in Lijce were tiny, built of stone or concrete blocks and roofed in overlapping pieces of salvaged corrugated steel.
After a few minutes, several people ventured a few steps from their houses, staring darkly at us. Finally, one voice rang out, singing, “Ays-Ma,” and with no more, the residents began surging forward. In a matter of seconds, there was a circle surrounding us, all women, usually heavyset with long skirts and colorful head scarves that framed scraps of black hair and coppery faces. They were clearly intrigued by Esma and, given their prior acquaintance, touched her garments with no hesitation, especially the wooly, fringed lavender scarf around her throat. Esma took this well, laughing and thanking the women for their compliments, before turning to me.