She shook my hand and said she’d have a driver here in an hour to bring Esma and me back to Tuzla when we were ready to go. She’d moved off about five paces, when she circled back and leaned over the table, bringing close her small eyes and bad skin. Her voice was low.
“Tell Esma nice to meet her. But watch yourself, dude. That chick is way too slick. Don’t never forget: She’s still a Gypsy.” She was gone again with a quick wave.
The food—grilled lamb and vegetables crowded onto a large stainless platter—arrived a few minutes later, only seconds before Esma returned. I explained Attila’s departure and we both marveled about her for a minute. Esma seemed completely charmed. I noted only now that Esma, who’d been seated across from me while Attila was here, had settled now on my side of the table, close enough to brush elbows.
“So, Boom. Did you learn anything useful today?”
“I need to process,” I said. I was still loath to share my thoughts with her about the investigation. Instead, I asked about Lijce, knowing that her passion for her people would distract her.
“The challenge of the Roma, Bill, is to open your society to those Roma, like me, who wish to join it, without imposing your values on the many who don’t.”
“But how can Roma kids make that choice without an education?”
“The value of schooling is not self-evident to many of my people,” said Esma. “In Romany, there are no proper words for ‘read’ or ‘write.’ There is wonderful Roma music. But no literature. Whenever my grandmother saw me with a book, she was concerned. ‘So keres?’ she would ask me. ‘What are you doing?’ For my people, knowledge is acquired in social interaction, by talking.”
“An oral tradition?”
She smiled a bit, amused by the elusiveness of Rom ways.
“Yes, but do not think of Native American elders repeating legends to circles of young listeners. The Roma, Bill, are a people without a history, with no shared understanding of the past. My grandmother refused to believe it when I told her we did not emerge from Egypt, which is the common misunderstanding that led to this ‘Gypsy’ name. For us, there is no prevailing myth of creation, no seven days and seven nights. The Gypsy men I grew up with were fierce prizefighters, but there has never been a Gypsy army, because there is no land we have ever been inspired to conquer, or to defend, or even to return to.
“And unlike almost any other group on earth, our sense of identity is not forged on the countless injuries of the past. We do not tell the tales of our centuries as slaves, unlike African Americans or Jews. Instead the Gypsy way is to excel in forgetting. You saw that with Tobar when you asked about Barupra. We live in the present. To Westerners we are as strange as Martians.”
Again Esma delivered that huge smile, full of her delight and pride about this legacy of difference.
“And what’s the impact on you, Esma? Do you feel caught between two worlds?”
“Not really. I made my choices. To Roma like that old woman we saw in Lijce, I am not Rom at all. That is why she didn’t want to speak Romany to me.”
“And what about your family? Is your mother more accepting of you than your father?”
“My mother is gone. Cancer. All those cigarettes. She brawled with my father about my schooling, but I always felt that was more to oppose him than because she saw much value in it for me. When I was approaching fifteen, my mother started to talk to me about marriage. She had already spoken to another family. The boy, name of Boris, seemed to have a great fancy for me, but it wasn’t mutual. So Boris kidnapped and raped me. That is not unusual among the English Roma, for whom a stiff cock is often tantamount to a marriage proposal. Having had his way with me, Boris would declare we had eloped. But he was furious there was no blood on the bedsheet. His family of course disavowed his intentions toward me, and my father was irate.
“Yet that was my liberation. Since I was now widely regarded as unmarriageable, I was free to continue in school and go on to university.”
“Oxford?”
“Cambridge. Caius College.”
“And never a marriage?”
“No, no. I am too independent, Bill. I still think about a child in wan moments, but I am not constant enough to be much of a mother.”
The food, which we’d been eating as we talked, was excellent, prepared without much fanfare but flavorful and beautifully presented, with a grilled onion in the center of the plate from which banana peppers sprouted like antlers. Idling through the meal, we had started on a second bottle of wine.
When we finished the pastries we ate for dessert, I called for the check, only to find that Attila had beaten me to it. Esma laughed and immediately pointed out that, as a result, I still owed her dinner.
Outside, the limo Attila had promised was waiting, an old Yugoslav tank of a vehicle. Esma and I slid into the backseat and we headed down toward Tuzla, winding through the hills as it grew dark. I was not surprised when Esma, who’d outpaced me with the wine, became silent and heavy-lidded, and then disappeared fully into sleep, with her head tossed back and a small whinny escaping with each breath. A sharp switchback threw her against me, and she lay with her face on my shoulder, while I was caught in the net of sensation. I could caution myself as much as I cared to, but with her fine looks and power persona, Esma’s sex appeal felt like a live current, and I was not surprised that the heat and substance of her body so close, her breath on my neck, and the thick air of her perfume left me with a hard-on most of the way to town.
Once we were bumping again over Tuzla’s cobbled streets, Esma roused and shook the sleep out of her head. She found her phone, but spoke only for a second in Romany.
“I must meet Ferko,” she said when we’d stopped in front of the Blue Lamp. “I told him I would find some time tonight to discuss a few things.”
I finally remembered to ask her about what Goos had overheard.
“Goos said Ferko was insisting you give him what you’d promised. Forgive me, please, since I know I don’t need to tell you this, but if you’re compensating him somehow for his testimony, it’s worthless.”
She took that with a laugh.
“You do not need to tell me that. The only talk we’ve ever had of money is when I advised him years ago that he might receive reparations from the Court in the distant future if there is ever a conviction. But he hasn’t spoken of it since. What I did promise Ferko when he agreed to testify was that you would do your utmost to keep him safe. And he was well within his rights to insist that promise be kept. No?”
I nodded. I had to be satisfied with that response.
She said, “I have not yet had a chance to press him again about Kajevic, as you asked, but I’ll take that up now and shall report back to you.”
Esma had listened to Sinfi, just as I had. It was hard to doubt the young woman, which meant it would be quite peculiar if Ferko—or anyone else living in Barupra—had not heard about Kajevic’s threats.
She slid the phone back into her large bag, but took a moment to face me again with one foot in the street.
“Thank you for letting me sleep a minute, Bill,” she said. “I was comfortable beside you.” She said no more but gave me a long look, frank in its intimacy, before walking off.
Stepping onto the cobbles in front of the hotel, I was reverberating. And suddenly in mind of Layton Merriwell.
13.
Regret
Entering the lobby, I caught sight of Goos. He was in the lounge with his beer glass, as I might have expected, making friends with two middle-aged British women, both short-haired blondes who seemed to be enjoying his company. I shook hands with each, Cindy and Flo, and noted their clear disappointment when I pointed Goos to one of the small two-tops in the breakfast room. His glass was empty and I took it from him.
“You’re drinking on me tonight, Goos.”
I returned with another for him and bubble water for myself. I’d had enough wine with Esma.
“Sorry to have missed the bulletin on your background, Goos.”
“Yep. Doctorate. The whole la-di-da. Probably prouder of it than I ought to be.”