American Gypsy (37 page)

The candles seemed to be releasing too much smoke, filling my nostrils, creating a stifling cocoon around me. Of course, I knew better than to ask for a cracked window. During an exorcism, all windows and doors must remain shut.

Except for the steady murmur of my father's prayers, the room grew even quieter; so much that my ears went numb. Then I heard another moan. This one more forceful.

Tanya's eyes caught mine. She was right there, hair a bit disheveled, most of the tomato-colored lipstick left back in the kitchen on the rim of her teacup. Yet something else peered out at me from underneath her lowered lashes. Her mouth turned down at the corners, and a long sigh escaped her lips. Everything she did appeared to be in slow motion.

Despite the way my pulse thrashed, I glowered right back at her. What was it Dad had said about not showing fear?

Tanya's gaze slid to my father. “Aren't you going to ask my name?” she said. Raising her hand, she tried to grab the sleeve of his black jacket. She halted inches away from him, then sneered at the line of salt around her. “Look at me, fucker.” She began to hum a song every Russian child knows by heart.

The horned goat is coming to small children. Her legs go … clop, clop!

I clenched my teeth so hard that my jaw pulsed.

Her eyes go … blink, blink!

Dad kept chanting.

To those who don't drink porridge.

To those who don't drink milk.

To those children she will go … butt, butt, butt!

The moment the spirits entered the room, I felt their presence in the air prickling around my shoulders. Tanya flinched, almost as if she heard an unpleasant noise that hurt her ears.

What the spirits lacked in physical form, they made up for in the powerful presence of their energies. They rode the candles, forcing the flames to bend in obedient horizontal lines.

Tanya jerked her head from left to right, watching something invisible to my eye fly outside her reach.

“I thank you, Avadata, Azhidana, and Kevoidana, for acknowledging my plea,” Dad said. Taking the cross from Olga's fingers, he dipped it into the three saucers filled with holy water. He handed it back and came around to face Tanya. “Release the physical body and show your true self.”

The voices I heard came from somewhere within Tanya's circle, but none of them sounded like her. Then came the knocking, traveling around the room in an uneven, syncopated rhythms.

“Release the physical body and show your true self.”

Tanya's fingers bent into arthritic claws.

Suddenly she crumpled to her knees and started to gag. Her body convulsed with dry heaves. Something invisible to my eyes pounded on her back, but her face remained set in stone, void of any outward signs of agony.

Time dragged. I tried to swallow again, my throat scorched with panic, and wiped the sweat from my palms.

Tanya kept throwing up. After a while, the wooden floor inside her circle was sullied with tiny puddles of bile. My own stomach churned.

It seemed like nothing else could possibly come out of her body when a dense puff of smoke escaped her lips, followed by another. With a sob, Tanya collapsed. The orbs hovered, held captive by the salt.

“In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit,” my father said. The final prayer was recited faithfully. Dad and Olga continued it through the earsplitting wails, the source of which I could not locate. They grew frenzied, like the screeching of cats.

Dad and Olga prayed, their eyes closed, heads bowed in concentration, and I with them. They still murmured after the noise abruptly ended. The candle flames reached their swaying bodies up toward the ceiling once again. The spirits had gone and so had the demons.

Judging by the candles' half-burned stems, a few hours had passed since we started. It felt like an eternity. I raced out of that room as soon as I could move my legs. And from that day on, no amount of Olga's marriage threats and my father's reminders of our deal could make me agree to learn the craft.

 

PAVEL

The exorcism spooked me for a long time, even more so because it actually worked. Soon after, Tanya moved back to Russia, health and happiness restored. But in Los Angeles, nightmares still drove me to cower beneath my blankets. Every minute of that experience played through my mind like a car crash, frame by frame.

I prayed that my father would stop performing exorcisms, but after Tanya, the word of his expertise spread. Soon more clients came for help. Some demanded he sign a vow of secrecy, to protect their identity lest they end up in
The
National Enquirer
under the headline
THE BIG HOLLYWOOD SO-AND-SO TURNS TO GYPSY PSYCHICS TO RID HOME OF DEMONIC INVASION
.

If done through religious means, an exorcism has to be sanctioned by the church higher-ups. The priest requesting it must attest to the need. On average it takes months to hear back, and frequently the requests are denied based on insufficient evidence. Dad's clients could not wait.

Once, he confided in me that 90 percent of the “possessed” were not possessed at all. Many suffered from psychological disorders such as depression and simply needed a mental nudge in the right direction—a spiritual purge, if you will.

After a particularly draining session, he'd often admit that the line between Hell and neuroses got so blurry that he didn't know what kind of treatment to provide. Regardless, he always advised his clients to see a doctor before his sessions. A strong mind and a healthy body are more likely to withstand possession as well as illness.

When Dad first started getting into the more serious stuff, he took every safety precaution he knew. But like a cop desensitized by the daily atrocities he sees, psychics too frequently experience unwanted aftereffects. Dad and Olga cleansed the house at least three times a week to get rid of any spiritual residue left over from clients. This was done with incantations and the burning of special herbs. But as time passed and they continued to fight, they started to neglect their own rules, and the atmosphere inside the house began to rot.

It is difficult to explain, but if you've walked into a mortuary and felt the heaviness in the air, or if you've ever left a mental hospital and breathed easier, then you'll know what it was like inside that house. It felt like a dumping ground for all the garbage that people carried in their souls. They came, unburdened their troubles, and left happier. Meanwhile, the black muck accumulated in the corners of our house.

I found even more excuses to get out, preferring the company of Cruz and Annie to that of my family when I wasn't at work or school; they'd become my sanctuary. Olga discovered more illicit gambling halls to pour her savings into. When the money ran out, her diamond rings vanished one by one. Dad, preoccupied, didn't seem as keen on teaching me the craft anymore. He found more gigs and more women. On occasion I'd hear him mention Baba Varya's curse. He felt that his neglect of it was bringing this odd unrest into our house. We didn't set the table as often, but then again, the guests didn't stay as long as they used to.

It was during this time, at the beginning of my senior year, that Olga's cousin Pavel finally came to visit from Ukraine. He was tall and thin-boned, with the best posture I'd ever seen in a man, the imaginary string at the top of his head taut all the way to Heaven. A giant bushy mustache drooped over his upper lip. When he ate, some of the food hung off it like a stranded climber. I felt embarrassed to mention it. He was a priest, after all.

“Throw away that book and light a candle at your church” was the first thing he said after Olga gave him the details of her and Dad's business.

We had moved into the living room after dinner one night. Dad and Pavel reclined on one of the leather couches, and Olga took the one across. I'd brought out a tray with tea and pastries and offered our guest a cup, an eldest daughter's duty that I usually disregarded. At this, my father lifted an eyebrow; my noncompliance had become legendary among our guests. But that night I had my reasons. I found Pavel's profession strange but also a most fortunate coincidence. Who if not a priest to talk sense into my father? On several occasions I wanted to ask if Pavel had proof of his vocation, a wallet-size seminary diploma, perhaps.

When I was a little girl, Pavel was one of the best dancers in Grandpa's show. His Gypsy flamenco shook you like a hurricane taunting roof shingles. His polyrhythm (tapping two different rhythms simultaneously) was legendary among the Tzigane.

My first memory of Pavel was of watching him adjust the small oval plates at the bottom of his high-heeled flamenco shoes before one of the shows. He sat in a chair, one foot resting on the opposite knee with a shoe balanced on top of his shin. With a screwdriver, he was loosening the tiny screws on an ivory-colored tap.

“What's that for?” I remember asking.

Pavel lowered the shoe to the floor and beat it against the dusty planks, which produced two sharp raps.

“You see? Spanish dancers. Their sound is thick, heavy, because they use rows of metal tacks. But for a Rom like me to dance a proper
Vengerka
, these loose hollow plastic plates will create a crisper sound, almost like hands clapping.”

Pavel was nearly as good at dancing as he was at stealing other men's wives. That's why for the longest time no one believed the rumors of his transformation. I remember the last time I saw Pavel onstage. It was the summer of 1984.

*   *   *

With a delicate caress of the bow, the violin began its song. The
Taborny
dance started off slow, with a woman's graceful hands and the froth of her emerald skirts.

From my usual spot in the wings behind the curtain, I watched the audience, because every time Rubina took center stage, people leaned forward in their seats. Her cat eyes slanted at the corners and she smiled down at the crowd, unfurling her arms with a swan's elegance. And it seemed that was all it took to enchant them further.

Most of the men in the ensemble were either in love or in lust with her. At least that is what Grandma Ksenia said. She did not approve of her presence in the troupe, but since Rubina was one of the most talented dancers, Grandma kept her opinions to herself.

At ten, I was old enough to understand the reasons behind her complaints. When Romani kids grow up on the road, backstage, in hotel rooms, they mature quickly. Not to say that our parents behaved any way they pleased. But when you saw a Romani perform, you experienced the range of pure, untainted emotion. You knew, through her voice, the sorrow for a lost love. Your heart flared at the rhythm with which his feet tapped out the beat of rage itself. Every performance was tears, loneliness, pleasure, delirium.

In a cloud of skirts, Rubina gave the stage one generous turn, her raven hair gleaming in the spotlights. With a shoulder-shimmy and a toss of that mane, she drew delighted shouts from the audience when she bent back until the top of her head brushed the floor and then straightened up in one fluid motion. One more turn around the stage, to catch her breath and for the audience to settle down.

At first Rubina did not notice when another dancer joined her: a tall man with burning black eyes. Tosi was her husband in real life, but during this number, I always forgot that he already had her. They regarded each other like curious lovers. The violin swept down into more opulent registers, and with a strum of fingers, a twelve-string guitar staccatoed underneath.

Husband and wife touched fingertips as the two instruments painted their melody with longing and uncertainty. Draping an arm around Rubina's waist, Tosi was determined to steal a kiss, but she fled his possessive embrace to where I stood hidden in the wings, and I reached out to feel the silk of one beaded sleeve.

Another guitar announced a third dancer. Judging by Pavel's arrogant stance, his polished boots, and a fine shirt the color of garnet, he was rich and wanted for nothing. Until now. The three dancers gathered, Rubina in between her two Romani suitors, and the music ignited like a flash of dynamite, setting the audience ablaze with the struggle of wills onstage.

The men circled. With a sharp whip, a pair of shiny knives appeared in their hands, and they lunged and parried on the wings of jealousy and lust. Rubina drove her way between them. Just as Tosi jabbed his knife.

I heard a collective intake of breath as Rubina's lifeless body slid to the floor and the music dropped away.

The audience was silenced, bound by shock: something every artist yearns for and dreads. One by one, the people stood, and my heart jumped as if my own life depended on their reaction. The dancers stepped to the rim of the stage to take their bows, faces flushed with elation to mirror that of their admirers, but they didn't hold hands, and I caught Rubina smiling at Pavel the way she should've been smiling at Tosi.

Taborny
dance