Excerpt: Zitchi - part 2

Hungary, 1591

As near as can be spoken by Western tongues, his name is Raoul, which means wolf counsel. Five hundred miles or so may not seem far to have progressed in one lifetime, but his people have come from half a planet away; from the rice-fields of Burma and the foothills of the Himalayas, from Madras, where they danced under a turmeric sun, from the Hindu temples of the south where the Tamils turn their wheels, from all of those places and from more places besides, where they were mindful of each other and trod lightly on the earth.

Once upon a time, they gathered in Rishikesh in the north of India, at the source of the great turquoise River-Mother. (Names are important; Rishikesh is the sound she makes as she rushes from the mountains.) This was in the days before the bridge was built, all of them in their covered carts and their caravans, and while the planets turned like cogs above them, they set off on their journey.

They left behind the Hindu temples and the fat silver fish which swam in the Ganges, and if it seemed to them that the further they travelled, the leaner it was, well, they knew that it was their destiny as sure as they knew the words of the River-Mother, as sure as they felt the clunk and whirr of the giant rocks overhead. And so, like them, they moved. But being human, they hoped that before too long they would come upon another turquoise river.

Raoul's half-brother is Yosjka, which means God rescues, and whilst it could be said that the gypsies do not worship your god or mine, it is also true that Yosjka has experienced personal salvation in his own lifetime. To him, his dead mother Sarkosi is a goddess.

Much has happened in Raoul's seventeen years. Their father, Djordji, drank himself to death, or at least, almost to death, then took himself off one night into the Turkish Occupied Zone. Raoul's mother - and we do not even remember her name - did not survive his birth. Some say she did not want to stay to compete with Sarkosi's sainthood. Some say she could not stay where she was not loved. Yosjka, at thirteen, found himself largely responsible for the care of an angry baby. As Raoul grew into the shape of his red rage, Yosjka withdrew into his, and the colour of his was white.

Raoul has taken over from old man Nagy on the cymbalom. He has the knack for it, and the wolf which is in him swims downstream from his heart, down his arms and out through his fingers, hits the sinews of the cymbalom, runs away. Even old man Nagy was startled at his protegé, because he had thought that he'd heard - or at least imagined - every tune that ever there was. Then on his deathbed, Raoul serenaded him with a curtain made out of devils.

And that should have been the end of it, except that Raoul is convinced that the old man's spirit lives on, speaks to him through the cymbalom, tells him what he should do and where he should go. It's not his fault; Nagy was the nearest thing to a father to him - you cannot count Yosjka who is as wet as a blanket - and now that Nagy is gone, he falls asleep each night wrapped around the hard-soft form of his cymbalom.

For instance, Raoul has a memory. He has many memories, but this one he suspects is not his. He mentioned it to Yosjka once when he was very young, and knew in that instant he must never mention it again; a rich girl with a perfect face, laughing, standing on a chair in a market square. It can only be Nagy who told him - or was it Yosjka? The cymbalom, for once, is silent on the matter.

And now they have come, all of them, the Nagys and the Laszlos, to the might-be-turquoise River Váh. They have followed its course and wound up in Piest'ány, where its shores are made of rocky stones, none of them smooth, because each year's winter crunches them up with its teeth come springtime. It is that time of year now, and the river is loaded with houses of ice, rushing downstream like daughters of Rishikesh, overspilling Piest'ány's banks like tears through eyelashes.

The Crossed Thorns Inn has no rooms or food, or none for gypsies, but will they allow water for the horses, perhaps, in return for work? Yosjka knows better than to ask anyway, and shrugs at his brother's folly. He leads the horses to the river to drink. "You cannot rage at every man who refuses you," he says, turning his back. He does not need to see Raoul's eyes to know what lurks there.

Cymbalom skills, and songs, are things which get passed on from generation to generation like blood is, like a light passing from hand to hand. They settle on the banks of the tumultuous Váh, light a fire, and appease their hunger with songs learnt at the milk-floes of the River-Mother a hundred generations ago:

I asked if I may enter her
I asked if I may enter her
She said yes
I wondered whether it would make a difference

I asked if I may take away
I asked if I may take away
She said unless
I wondered whether it would make a difference

She said unless you give yourself
You may not take away
There must be no difference

She babbled stories of many years
She babbled stories of many years
She sipped my skin
I knew she'd never still her incantations

I gave my tears into her
I gave my tears unto her
She washed me away
I knew she'd never cease her incantations

I met the sand at the place she goes
The place she touches it
The place she washes it
With her incantations
With her incantations
With her incantations

And the way the cymbalom weaves its stairways, its halls and its corridors, it's like a kind of cloth is made, or a carpet, and Yosjka lets it seep into his mind and feels a kind of untidy peace, for tonight at least.

Tomorrow, they will go to see cousin Thurzó.