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Copyrighted soley to Susan (c)1997
(one of Coquirie's travel-tales)
I'm sure you've guessed, by the title of this story, that it's not a happy one. And you would be right -- it's not. But it's a true story, and it needs telling.
It begins many years ago now, when three Gypsies were travelling together. Travelling lightly, on foot, with no more than they could carry: a man and two women. I was one of the women; the other was my friend, and the man was Clopin. And all I will say about my friendship with him is that he and I had once shared an apple.
One evening in Bretagne, we came to a crossroads and fell into disagreement about which road to take. We knew we wanted to travel to the coast, but each of us had a different idea which was the quickest route there. My friend caught sight of a peasant, ploughing his field; she climbed up onto the fence, waving to catch his attention, and asked him, "Which way should we go to reach the seacoast?"
Now, this peasant was an ugly redheaded Breton farmer. Even at a distance, and even with my poor eyesight, I could tell he was ugly. I'm not going to say he was a tall man, because he wasn't. And I'm not going to say he was a strong man ... but it *looked*, to my eyes, as though he pointed the way down one of the roads with his plough. Picked up plough, harness, ox and all, and pointed them down one of the roads.
Perhaps that was the sight that started my friend so. Certainly she can't have been taken aback by the man's beauty. But the fact remains, she was so astonished that she lost her balance and fell from the fence. Clopin and I hurried to her side, and I found that she'd turned her ankle badly.
When he saw that we couldn't travel any further that night, the farmer --who was an unmarried man - offered us the hospitality of his house. He gave us a good meal, stew and bread and cheese, and put us up beside the fire for the night. I had my cittern with me, so after dinner I played and my friends sang ... and our host watched one of us with what I suspected might be a little more than hostly interest. But, to be fair, she was looking at him in much the same way. And in the morning, when we saw that her ankle had swollen and she could put no weight to it -- well, nothing would do, the man said, but that we stay in his house until she could travel.
And so it began. We did earn our keep, since we didn't want to abuse our host's hospitality. Clopin and I worked around the place, and on feast days we entertained the villagers; and my other friend, as soon as she could limp about a bit, began keeping the house as if she'd been born in a farm cottage, rather than a Gypsy wagon.
That was at the end of autumn. By
the time my friend's ankle had mended, it was winter, and our host insisted
the roads were too muddy for travel. So we stayed there for the winter
... and at some time during the winter, Clopin and I, who had shared more
than one apple in our lives, began sleeping in one of the outbuildings.
Our friend stayed in the house, and we didn't ask, since it was none of
our business, just *where* in the
house she was spending her nights.
Finally spring came. And when it did, only two Gypsies left the cottage. Clopin and I stood among the witnesses as the Gypsy woman and the Breton farmer made their year-and-day promise, and later that day our friend and her man waved to us from the door as Clopin and I went down the road. And for my friend's sake, and her man's sake, I wish this story could end right there.
It was nearly a year before I passed that way again. I was traveling alone now. Clopin was in Paris, and he couldn't leave ... but you know me, one place is never enough for me. So I'd taken to the roads again.
I was happy at what I saw when I approached the house. The farmer was prospering, and my friend was radiant. She was in love, and with a man who loved her; and they were expecting a child soon. They were even thinking of having their marriage priest-blessed, on the steps of the church. I was glad for them. And again, I wish I could end the story.
They insisted I stay with them for a time. One day my friend's husband took a cow to his neighbor's bull to be bred. My friend and I went to meet him and take him some bread and sausage, for noon meal. Even big with child as she was, she hadn't given up her old habit of balancing on fences. So that's where she was standing when she caught sight of her husband -- but she didn't know that the fence she was on surrounded the bull's pasture.
I think her husband and the bull must have seen her at nearly the same moment. The bull charged the fence, and the jar knocked my friend down on *its* side -- right in the pasture with the bull! I couldn't reach her, but her husband leaped the fence without breaking his stride, picked his wife up in one hand, and went *back* over the fence in almost the same movement, carrying her as if she were no heavier than a chicken.
He almost made it. But just as he went over, the bull struck him, and one of its horns went through his lung. In an hour, he was dead.
He was buried in the churchyard. I stayed with my friend, to help her through her grief. So when her child was born, at the beginning of summer, I was there to deliver it.
All the neighbors thought it must have been the horror of losing her husband -- and in such a manner -- that marked the child. For it was indeed born marked, with an upturned nose like an animal's, and a huge swelling over one eye as if it were trying to grow a bull's horn. But for all that, it was a strong lusty boy -- smaller than most, but with a good loud voice.
I stayed on with my friend and her child, through the autumn and into the winter. Her husband's tenancy was due to run out soon, and although she could have renewed it, she decided she didn't want to stay there. But in time she did renew it -- because she had to have a place to stay. By the time spring came, her child had taken sickness.
Some disease of the bones, it was. Before our eyes the strong boy -- who'd been trying to crawl about the floor before he was half a year old, and pulled himself to his feet in his tenth month -- grew weak and sickly, his limbs crooked, his back twisted and humped. We nursed him and kept him alive, but I feared he would be a helpless cripple all his life. Sometimes I wondered whether it wouldn't be better to let him die ... but he was all his mother had left of the man she had loved. In one spring, she'd been a happy bride; in the second, she'd become a widow; and in the third, she was the mother of a deformed child.
The neighbors drew away from us. They'd never quite trusted this Gypsy outsider: she'd brought misfortune on her husband; she had scandalized them all by wearing red to his funeral, as a Gypsy woman must; and now she had borne a child sickly and malformed, and likely to be half-witted as well.
But as he mended, we realized that the illness hadn't affected his wits in any way. His body was broken and misshapen, but his mind was sharp enough. She nursed him through the summer and began weaning him in the fall; and even with his deformities, he was trying to crawl about and get into trouble, as child in its second year should. He'd inherited his father's red hair; perhaps he'd inherited his strength as well. Anyway, I began to have some hope that he might live to grow up, and even earn his own living.
Late in the winter, a small party of Gypsies came through the area on their way to Paris. One of them was my friend's brother. She could no longer bear to live in the place where she had known so much sadness, and among _gaje_ who did not like or trust her. So she wrapped her baby in a shawl and set out with her brother, for Paris. I couldn' return to Paris then, so I bade her farewell and good travels, and set out on another road.
I never saw her again.
I'm told that she died the night she arrived in Paris. Her child, it's said, was taken in by a _gajo_ for charity. It was truly an orphan now, with neither father nor mother to think of it or care for it.
I don't know how that _gajo_ has
treated his half Gypsy orphan. But I hope he remembers what their Book
says: never to trouble or oppress a stranger, and never to afflict a widow
or fatherless child. For their God, so they say, will surely send punishment
to anyone who does so.