“Romanticizing the Gypsies?” interrupted a balding man wearing a duffle coat. He stepped out of the crowd. “Free spirits? Music lovers? Pah, all clichés. I live here. Talk to my neighbor. Our street’s had three break-ins, all by eleven-and twelve-year-olds. The Roma teach kids to steal.” He shook his head, clucked in disgust. “They use their own children.”
Marco stepped forward. “You’re right, they’re being used. Used and victimized by the system that’s kicking families out on the street. Where can they go, how can they survive? Don’t they have a right to live as they wish, like we do?”
Two other men joined the man in the duffle coat. “By stealing? Nothing justifies robbery, the filth and garbage they leave behind in the encampments, the begging.”
“But you see, it’s a vicious circle. If we made it easier for them to access our social services and education—”
“Education?” The man was shouting. “But their children drop out of school!”
Rose noticed several figures in hoodies moving toward the center of the crowd. Filing in behind them on the paths they had cleared were skinheads with tattoos on their necks, brass knuckles glinting on their fists.
Robert jumped down to face the trio who’d pushed their way forward.
“Living in squalid caravans and stealing?” The duffle-coat man was saying. “That’s a lifestyle to promote?”
More shouting. Any minute, Rose realized, a fight would break out. She edged backward, nervous, frantically looking for Nicu under the coved stone arch. Earlier, she’d been wishing he would show up, but now she was hoping he wouldn’t.
Her phone vibrated, and this time she answered. Her sister. “Why don’t you pick up?”
“I told you never to call. Quit bugging me, Lisette. Tell Maman I’m studying.”
“Maman’s out. Least of your worries. Your boyfriend Nicu’s in trouble.”
“He’s not my … what trouble?”
Glass shattered in the crowd. The raised voices drowned out her sister’s reply.
“Lisette?”
She clicked off, searching through the crowd. She had to warn Nicu, get him out of here if …
She was shoved hard from behind, and her leaflets scattered to the concrete as she fought for balance. Marco and the graffiti artists were facing off against the skinheads. “You’re talking about a people that’s been persecuted, disenfranchised and run out for centuries,” Marco was shouting.
Rose’s chest felt tight in the humid air. Angry mumblings and red perspiring faces surrounded her. Why couldn’t people discuss this reasonably?
“This is a complicated situation, with a long and entrenched history,” she said, raising her voice to be heard and earning herself some dirty looks. “There’s no simple solution. But if we all work together, the entire community will benefit, not just les manouches.”
“Quit with the bleeding-heart excuses,” the duffle-coat man said. “If they live here, they need to follow the law like you, me and everyone else.”
“Who says they don’t?” Marco shouted. “You can’t jump to conclusions about an entire group of people based on one or two members.” He’d climbed onto a chair now and was speaking to the crowd. “How can these people trust a country that rounded them up and put them in internment camps during the war?”
Looking around, Rose realized her friends from Sciences Po had scattered and gone. The shouting was escalating. She felt a hand close around her ankle, then she was tumbling to the ground and into a whirl of arms and legs. Afraid, she yanked her leg free and crawled, panting, to a peeling boat hull. She pulled herself up. The entrance doors were open, three steps away. If she could just reach them, she could get out of here.
Then her foot caught on something, and the next thing she knew she was landing on her knees and elbows on the damp concrete and staring at the trailing black laces of a pair of military boots.
Monday Night
THE WHITE TRAILER by the exit to the Ségur Métro stop looked out of place, René thought, with its sign reading MADAME RANA: Chiromancie; Tarologie; Médium; Voyante du Passé, Présent et Avenir; Spécialiste des Photos et de l’écriture. Quite a varied clientele she must get here, René figured; she was right on the border of the chichi 7th arrondissement and the more proletariat 15th.
From Gypsy café to circus to a damn fortune-teller. Madame Bercou, or whatever name she went by, from La Bouteille aux Puces, had called him and given him this fortune-teller’s address. He’d paid enough for it. Now he wanted answers. But what could a fortune-teller, who lied for a living, tell him about the Constantins?
The well-lit street lay deserted. He knocked on the clean, white trailer door. “Madame Rana?”
“Un moment, s’il vous pla?t,” came a voice.
A few minutes later a woman, in what René recognized as a cobalt-blue Givenchy wool coat like one Aimée had in graphite, descended the trailer’s steps. A Maltese peeked out from her matching leather tote. She disappeared around the trailer in a mist of Guerlain.
“Entrez,” came the voice.
Inside the caravan, the decor favored purple and red; the walls were padded, cushion-like. A young woman stood before a purple-draped table. She wore a long skirt with small mirrors woven into the fabric, an embroidered peasant blouse, gold hoop earrings and plenty of eyeliner. A little too much for René’s taste.
The young woman sat down before a brass tray, shuffled a deck of tarot cards. To her right was a display of quilled feathers and satiny, polished hematite stones that invited one to touch. For a moment he visualized Chloé, who put everything in her mouth these days, choking on one. A chandelier of black glass hung from the ceiling, and a clump of sage smoldered in an abalone shell. He fought the urge to cough and run out of this bordello-like herbal cocoon.
“A tarot reading, or your palm?” She looked up with a rehearsed smile. “Or for you I’d suggest throwing the stones. The stones respond to magnetism, your will and courage.”
Choices, choices, choices.