Being a Green Mother (6 page)

“But don’t go there alone,” the travel agent warned her. “A tourist can get into trouble. Hire a guide who knows the language.”

“The language?”

“The Gypsies speak their own language among themselves. They will cheat you, or worse, if you go alone.”

She thanked him. Then she went to a private place, changed the aspect of her cloak to male apparel, bound up her hair, and rubbed a little dirt into her cheeks and chin to simulate the first shadow of a beard. She intended to avoid the peril of being a lone woman by passing for a man. She unrolled her carpet, rode it to the Albaicin, and landed out of sight of the Gypsies. She rolled up her carpet and packed it away.

She stepped out toward the Gypsy quarter. The hill was dotted with holes, and it was apparent that the Gypsies lived in these holes, for music emanated from them. That was one
thing about these folk; wherever they were, there was music. No one who really liked music could be all bad!

She started up the hill. Immediately an old woman approached her, carrying flowers, speaking in Spanish. Orb shook her head. “I do not speak that language,” she said gruffly, walking on. She hoped she sounded like a man.

The old woman faded back, and a young one appeared. “Ah, you are from England,” she said.

“Ireland,” Orb replied shortly, keeping her voice gruff.

“I would adore being your guide,” the young Gypsy said, unconcerned by the distinction. “There is an ancient Moorish castle close by—”

“I am looking for music,” Orb said.

“Music! Why it just happens that the finest Gitano guitarist is my best friend!”

“Gitano?”

She smiled. “This is our name for ourselves. A man is a Gitano, a woman Gitana. I will tell you all about it—”

Orb concluded that this Gypsy woman did not have the information she desired. “No, thank you.” She moved on.

The young woman brought herself up straight, inhaling to make her breasts stand out. She caught Orb by the shoulders and turned her around so that she could stare into her face. “Señor, are you a hundred years old? Do you not see how I am longing for you? For years I have been waiting for a man like you! How can you deny me so cruelly!”

Orb, caught completely off guard, burst out laughing. She had forgotten for the moment that she was masquerading as a man.

The Gypsy girl, thinking she was being mocked, reacted with fury. A knife appeared in her hand.

“No, wait!” Orb cried. “Can’t you see that I am a woman, like yourself? I didn’t want to come alone—”

The Gitana’s mood reversed as quickly again. Abruptly she was laughing, too. “Ah, now I understand! You fear the Gitanos!” The knife was gone.

“I just want to locate the source of Gypsy music.”

“I can take you to an old woman who knows songs that have been long forgotten!”

That sounded promising. “Very well.”

“For just a few pesetas …”

Oh. Of course the girl wanted money. Orb didn’t have the
local currency, but tried a small Irish coin, and the girl accepted that. Then they were off to see the woman who knew the forgotten songs.

But when Orb mentioned the Llano, the old woman shook her head. “If I knew that, I would be there myself!” she exclaimed. “Only at the source of the Gypsies can that information be found!”

“But where is that?”

“That, too, I can not tell you. We came from Egypt, but that may not be the source. Perhaps the Gypsies of the Pyrenees …”

This was Basque country. The Pyrenees marched to the water of the Bay of Biscay, and the Basques were on either side of the border between Spain and France, speaking their own language. Orb made no progress here, speaking none of the three tongues. She knew the Gypsies were here, but they were hidden from her, keeping their nature secret.

She refused to give up. She rented a room in a village house and went out daily to talk with the people, asking about the Gypsies. No one professed to know anything about them.

Finally she became desperate. She went to the center of the village square, brought out her harp, and began to play. In a moment people appeared, listening, as she had known they would. No true Gypsy could remain aloof from magic music, and hers was special. Soon virtually all the village was present, the folk standing in a great circle around her.

She stopped, put away her harp, and walked though the crowd, back to her room.

It was not long before there was a knock on her door. Orb answered, hoping that her ploy had been successful.

A dark urchin stood there, dressed in bright rags. “Nicolai bids you come,” the child said.

This smelled like victory. Orb did not question the message; she wrapped her cloak about her and stepped out.

“With your music,” the child added.

Orb smiled. She fetched her harp, then accompanied the child out and down the street, to a hidden hovel fashioned from refuse. She was appalled to think that anyone should live in a place like this, but so it was.

Inside was an old man. She knew immediately that he was
a Gypsy; his whole appearance and manner spoke of it. He sat on a decrepit wooden chair and held an ancient fiddle.

The man stared at her for a long moment. At last he spoke. “Teach my child your music,” he said.

Startled, Orb glanced around for the urchin, but the urchin was gone. “I can not do that,” she protested. “I only want to know—”

Nicolai stilled her with an impatient gesture. “Tinka!” he called.

A buxom young woman appeared, her dark hair bound under a colorful kerchief. This was evidently his daughter.

But there was something odd about the way Tinka looked about. Her gaze was random, her eyes not focusing. Orb realized that the girl was blind.

Nicolai lifted his fiddle and played. The hut seemed suddenly to come alive, animated by his evocative music. It was as if the walls became transparent, and the world outside was tinged with gold. The instrument sang of wonders barely beyond vision.

Abruptly he stopped. “But Tinka—see,” he said. He reached out and took his daughter’s left hand and brought it up. She looked away, but did not resist.

Orb gasped. The hand was shorn of the ends of all its fingers. Only the first joints after the knuckles remained, and the thumb. The girl had suffered some terrible accident in childhood.

“She cannot play,” the man said gruffly. “She cannot dance.” He glanced down at the girl’s feet, and Orb saw that they were twisted. “Fifteen, and unmarried, and no children. Yet she is comely. Teach her your music.”

“But—” Orb did not know how to get hold of this situation. “I—what I do, it can’t be taught—”

“Take her hand,” Nicolai said.

Fighting against her own repulsion, Orb reached out and took Tinka’s mutilated hand. As she touched it, she heard a faint sound, as of a distant orchestra.

Tinka had the magic!

“I can’t teach her,” Nicolai said. “My music is all in my fiddle. But you can.”

Sorrow, sympathy, and surmise played through Orb’s emotion. “Perhaps I can,” she agreed.

“Take her,” he said.

Numbed by this prospect, Orb obeyed. She led the girl by the hand from the hut, and out to the street.

People were all around, but they went about their business with studied unconcern. No one seemed to look directly at Orb as she led Tinka to her apartment, yet all were aware.

Orb had sought the Llano. Instead she had found a student. Somehow she knew that this was her rite of passage. If she taught the girl, the Gypsies would cooperate.

Tinka was shy, volunteering nothing, merely shrugging when Orb questioned her. Her clothing was ragged, her shoes falling apart. Orb realized that it would be pointless to try to teach her anything in her present state. First she had to win the girl’s confidence, and before that she had to get her presentable.

“Come on, Tinka,” she said briskly. “We’re going shopping.”

The girl stared blankly past her.

“For clothing, shoes, whatever,” Orb said. “You’re a pretty girl, if—”

Tinka continued to look blank. Orb suddenly realized that she had not heard the girl speak. Was she dumb as well? No, for she had answered to her father’s call, and a person who could hear, could speak. If she wanted to.

All in good time, she decided. Surely the girl could sing, or her father would not have sought Orb’s instruction for her.

Yet why was she so unresponsive? “You do understand me, don’t you?” Orb asked.

Tinka shrugged. Now it was evident that she did not. She had responded only to the inflection of questioning.

Orb sighed. “Well, come anyway,” she said. She took the girl’s hand and led her out. Tinka followed docilely.

They went to a store that sold clothing. “I want this girl properly dressed,” Orb told the proprietor. Because this store catered to the tourist trade, English was understood here. “Dress, shoes—and gloves, I think. With—you’ll have to do something for the fingers. But not like a tourist—like a proper village girl, a pretty one. You’ll have to choose the colors; she can’t see. Can you handle it?”

The man brought out his fat wife. They spoke in what Orb assumed was Basque. The wife took Tinka away. Orb began
haggling about payment; she was learning how to manage, here. She had enough money to cover any reasonable contingency, but those who spent too freely were not held in high esteem. Even so, the storekeeper was asking too much; Orb’s bargaining became serious.

It took some time, but when the wife brought Tinka back she was stunning. She was clean, and her hair had been brushed out and fastened back with nylon combs, and she wore a bright print dress, white blouse, flowery shawl, and slippers that made her feet look almost normal. Sturdy gloves on her hands masked the missing fingers. She was, indeed, a pretty girl.

The wife stood Tinka before the mirror. Orb thought that was a mistake, but it wasn’t; the woman was verifying the hang of the dress, making final adjustments.

“Lovely!” the storekeeper exclaimed, and his voice rang with a sincerity not entirely inspired by the money he had made on this transaction.

Tinka heard. For the first time she spoke—but her words were unintelligible to Orb.

“What language is that?” Orb asked quietly.

“Calo,” the storekeeper said. “She’s a Gypsy wench. I thought you knew.”

“But I don’t know Calo!”

“Why would you want to? Teach her English.”

Orb took the girl back to her apartment. Again the villagers affected not to notice, but Orb knew they were watching more closely than before. Apparel could make a significant change in the appearance of any woman, but Tinka’s transformation was remarkable. The girl even held her chin higher and walked with more confidence, as if conscious of the impression she was making.

Orb fixed something for them both to eat, not certain whether Tinka was conversant with civilized food, but the girl had no trouble.

At last Orb tackled the problem of teaching. “Can you sing?” she asked, and when the girl did not react, Orb brought out her harp and sang a brief song.

Tinka smiled. In a moment she was humming along, picking up the melody immediately. Her pitch was perfect, her voice good. She could sing, certainly.

But that was not what Nicolai wanted from Orb. He wanted the magic.

Orb put her hand on Tinka’s arm. Then she sang, using the magic. She knew that the girl heard the sound of the hidden orchestra.

Indeed she did. She spoke a veritable torrent in the Gypsy language. She wanted to learn this.

“But I can’t understand your words,” Orb said. “It would really be better if we understood each other.”

Tinka, having heard the magic, was eager to cooperate. She was not a stupid girl, and soon she was meeting Orb more than half way. She pointed to herself and said her name, then touched her new dress and said a word for it, and a shoe with its word. She was telling Orb her language.

Orb considered only briefly. It occurred to her that if she wanted to get real information from the Gypsies, it would help to speak their language. It should be as easy to learn Calo as to teach Tinka English.

There was a great deal more to it, but that was the point of decision. Orb proceeded to learn the Gypsy language, and Tinka learned to invoke the magic orchestra. They went at both projects with almost total immersion, so that in a day Orb knew a few basic words and some of the syntax, and Tinka had succeeded in making the orchestra respond in a minor way. In a week they were communicating freely with each other on both the verbal and musical levels, though with far to go on each.

Orb discovered that the Gypsy language had no words for what in her own were rendered as “duty” and “possession.” This was because these concepts were foreign to the Gypsy nature. Gypsies felt something like duty only in the manner they honored their own culture, and they owned only what they wore and used. They had no vested property, no estates, no mortgages; they acceded to such things only in deference to the demands of the other cultures with which they interacted.

This explained a lot. Others might call the Gypsies thieves—but how could there be theft, when there was no ownership? Others thought them shiftless—but that only meant that the Gypsies felt no need to do anything other than survive. To hold a regular job, to serve in a nation’s armed forces—this sort of thing simply did not relate to the
Gypsy nature. The bad qualities the Gypsies were judged to have were mostly the misunderstandings of outsiders. Gypsies did have values, and these, when understood, did honor to them. Music, joy, sharing, love, loyalty to one’s own—the Gypsies were like one huge, scattered family, and Orb related to that. She had always wanted to belong—to something.

Tinka stayed with Orb, at Orb’s expense. It was obvious that the Gypsies had no money; this was the only way it could be done. Orb didn’t mind; she had never dreamed she would be in such a situation, but she felt really fulfilled when she worked with the Gypsy girl, making steady progress. The quest for the Llano could wait long enough for this.

One day the urchin showed up again. “Nicolai says come to the dance.”

“Dance?” Orb asked blankly.

But Tinka came alive. “We must go,” she said in Calo. “I know where.”