Bohemians of Sesqua Valley (2 page)

August 1, 1944

I have stopped asking about the Yellow deck or individuals with silver eyes, as it most emphatically terminates every interview with both the Rom and the Negro readers. Even a Red Indian (Duwamish) woman refused to speak to me further after I had described the back pattern.

Marta was also correct about brick dust and the Negro fortune-tellers.

Cross ref: “Charms and Gestures Against the Evil Eye” file.

I don’t know what upsets people more: the deck itself, or the people with the silver eyes.

February 2, 1945

informant: Maria Tzaddic

Sacramento, California

verbatim except re: deck from shorthand: see stenobooks

“I have heard that you are asking unwise questions. Promise me that you will ask no questions of others, and I will tell you all I know of ‘The Yellow Deck.’

I agreed. Marta seemed relieved on my behalf, but became more emotional as she related the following:

“It was when I was young and beautiful myself. I had many clients, even the Mayor’s wife and the wife of the Chief of Police, and we had settled well and were healthy and happy. This was after the Great War, the georgios were making money, all of our children were fat in those days…I had lovely clothes and good manners, the ladies of society came to me.

“Then the woman with silver eyes came [spits on her thumb at this point] and all my ladies went to her. I met one on the street outside of her parlor, my lady cast her eyes down in shame, for who had been the first to warn her about her husband and give her a charm? None but I...the faithless one, she told me that my rival was more gifted than I, I should try her and see, I would myself agree in the end. Though, as she said this, perhaps I saw a tear fall to the pavement from her eye.

“Under a false name I entered and crossed my rival’s palm with silver. It was well that I had not taken time to curse the coin, for then it truly would have gone ill with me for such effrontery.

“She looked at me and smiled, the smile of a sow that has eaten her own litter, that one. She set aside the cards on her table. ‘I knew you would come. You, you deserve a different deck, a most special deck.’ and she opened a wooden box and unwrapped the Yellow Deck. I saw the backs of the cards their wicked eyes unblinking at me. I crossed myself. My mothers had told me of this deck, ‘No thank you, ma’am.’ I said, ‘I don’t want special treatment, I can’t afford to pay you more,’ and she laughed.

“‘You were right to say no to me. I know who you are and I know you have come upon harder times recently. It will go harder still if you stay. Leave me these fat pigs, I’ll walk them to their fates gracefully, with art. You would be too kind.’

“‘I can’t promise you that we will leave, that is for all of us to decide,’ though in truth, all the men would have taken my counsel without question, but I was only a young woman and my mothers would have been angry if I had bound us with a promise out of my place.

“So I took very polite leave of her, shaking my shoes.

“We did not depart. My mothers did not want to leave so fat a place. If the society ladies had left us, that was poor fortune, but their husbands and sons still came to our men to dice and play at cards and to buy remedies and charms. Perhaps the Silver Eyed One would get bored and leave,or be driven out, who knows?

“Then the men and children and horses got ill. They fevered and shook in their beds, they were marked with strange markings of spots and stripes and letters we did not know. The mothers sent me back to her with our finest white horse to say we were leaving and beg her mercy.

“She took the horse and said to me, ‘I am in a generous mood today. Today is your day of good fortune. I will make a pact between yours and mine, mine of Sessquaw Valley, you will know us by our eyes, from now until the falling of the stars: when one of mine enters a town on one side, you and yours will leave by the other without hesitation or pause. Swear to this and your men and your children and your horses will be well.’

“‘I am most expansive. I will tell you something else, my sister in the Art. These cards, had you seen them all, you would have died. The eyes of your spirit would have been opened far beyond your capacity to understand and you would have gone mad, then, weak, then fallen dead in a world you could not recognize without its falsehoods intact.’

“We packed our wagons and left within the hour. On the road before our eyes the markings faded, the fevers broke, we cried and hugged our babies but did not stop for a moment our travel away, not for at least seven nights, and we have never gone so far North again.

“That is my story. It is all I know of those people and those cards. It is all I need to know. My oath has bound me and mine; you are not of us so it does not bind you and it does not protect you. Do you understand? I cannot protect you.”

My question: “If it is dangerous to see all the cards, how is it this woman could read them?”

Marta gave me a pitying look. “Surely you have come across decks of cards missing the Ace of Spades?”

Indeed I have and Marta knew it. She was referring to the custom of the wholly commercial fortune-tellers to remove the Ace of Spaces (the Death card) from their decks so that the card would not come up in a reading and frighten customers; Marta herself was above such chicanery. Marta’s implication was that the student of such a dangerous deck could remove one card and set it aside never to be seen, thus preserving her life at the expense of the accuracy of her readings.

June 22, 1947

informant: Marta Tzaddic

Sacramento, California

(verbatim except re: deck from shorthand: see stenobooks)

notes: Marta looked older than her age would suggest. The Rom have lost many in the war.

“We will continue as a people, God will see to that and I trust God. I must tell you, do not become complacent, I have never again seen a man or a woman with silver eyes but I know they are not gone. Their numbers have not been diminished by war nor tyrants. Their numbers grow slowly. They travel widely, every one of them. You must not seek them. I know, you have not been asking unwise questions, that is good, but your heart still burns with curiosity. It is who you are. Let not curiosity kill the cat! [a nice pun on my name]

“I cannot lose another one I love. Promise me you will stop your search of books and maps. Promise me that you will never seekout those cards or those people.”

September 5, 1947

re: Marta Tzaddic (1901-1947)

personal note: I had a dream in which Marta burned a box of cards in front of me. There is only one deck I can think of that she would burn. The smoke had a horrible stench that woke me up. I’ve never dreamed a smell before. I didn’t know one could. I don’t think I’ll ever forget it.

Stanley set aside the journal and switched on the motor. As he pulled out of the rest stop, he felt a peculiar sense of excitement. Yes, the study of rare Tarot decks was his profession—but it was also his passion. He sensed that he was on the trail of something very rare and wonderful. Images from the woman’s journal formed in his imagination, and he drove in a state of semi-dream until, suddenly, his vehicle moved into a lush vale. There, in the soft glow of late-afternoon sunlight, Stanley beheld the twin peaks of a titanic white mountain. The highway led downward. He had entered Sesqua Valley.

II

He entered into a town of buildings that looked like something from the country’s past. Oddly, Stanley could not now remember where he was or why he was there. He parked the car and then sat for a little while rubbing his forehead, as if by doing so he could loosen memory. His hand fell to his side and touched the opened notebook. He looked at the crude hand-drawn map and at the name of the place it indicated. “Sesqua Valley.” Stanley spoke the name aloud, and a chill caressed his flesh. Shuddering, he glanced out the window at the old town. “Sesqua Valley” he spoke more loudly, and as the words fell from his lips his mind began to clear. Taking up the notebook, he opened the car door and stepped onto the ground, breathing deeply of the scented air. Someone must be burning something that smelled sweet and cloying. He walked to the wooden sidewalk and casually looked into the windows that he passed. Some few citizens that he encountered smiled at him blandly, except for one fellow whose face was unfortunately malformed, from birth defect he surmised. This unlucky chap peered at him with eyes that were pale and of an alabaster hue. Why did the idea of such eyes cause Stanley’s flesh to chill and prickle?

The planks of sidewalk came to an end, and so he hopped onto the road so as to continue his investigation of the town. Finally, he came to a large mansion of ancient design, in the window of which was a faded sign that read “Antiques.” Stanley walked up the few steps that led to the front door and entered in. Charmed, he ambled past the items that crowded the mammoth room, stopping now and then to reach out and gently touch the past. Had he been a person of wealth, he would have lived in rooms filled with such furnishings, in a house as ancient as the building in which he now found himself. It was a lovely fantasy, to dwell in a home that glowed with mellow lamplight, a residence that was cozy and quiet, filled with only the absolute necessities of modernity.

And then Stanley’s heart began to beat wildly, as he chanced upon a display of Tarot decks. He was familiar with all of the decks, but had actually seen none of them. They were very rare, and he felt slightly guilty as he gently handled a few of the cards, holding them by their sides, not wanting to smear fingerprints onto the wonderful images with which the cards had been decorated. He then sensed a presence at his side. The figure nodded to him, saying nothing. Stanley took in the weird pale face, the dark twinkling eyes and shock of wild white hair. He waited for the other to speak, and at last, impatiently, he muttered, “I was looking for the Sesqua deck. It doesn’t seem to be here.”

How queerly the ancient creature’s dark eyes glimmered. “Ah, that is not a thing we openly display, it being one of a kind. How do you know of it?”

Stanley turned at the sound of the door opening and watched the weird gentleman creep into the room. He nodded as the fellow bowed to him, an odd smile playing on the man’s peculiarly shaped mouth. Turning back to the proprietor, Stanley opened Kathleen’s notebook and allowed the old one to scan a page, then let go as the elderly fellow took the notebook from Stanley’s grasp and carefully turned its leaves.

“Look here, Simon, at this charming hand-drawn map of the valley. Rather quaint, isn’t it?”

The other gentleman silently joined them and chuckled as he scrutinized the diagram in the notebook. Then he offered a large hand to Stanley. “Simon Gregory Williams, and this is Leonidas Creighton.”

Stanley introduced himself.

“But this is fascinating. The yellowed paper bespeaks of age, but I can find no date.” Simon continued to examine the notebook as he spoke, and then he smiled at Stanley inquiringly.

“I believe the woman who wrote it compiled this information in the early 1950’s. She doesn’t seem to have actually visited your valley, judging from what she has written. You can see that the various maps are in pencil and that the lettering is markedly different from the journal’s text.”

“And what is your interest in the so-called Sesqua deck, Mr. Kaplan?” asked Leonidas.

“Purely professional, I assure you.” He explained his occupation, becoming so caught up in the love and excitement his work brought to him that he did not notice the troubled expressions exchanged by his listeners as he described his desire to copy the cards and reproduce them as commercial product.

It was Simon who finally spoke up. “Of course, the cards are not for sale. We have a passion for collecting all aspects of representation of Sesqua Valley. Our sense of place and pride is curiously keen. However, we can loan you the deck, for a limited time, and allow you to copy it for the purpose of reproduction. I think, Leonidas, we may want to procure this charming notebook for our archives. Is it for sale, sir?”

Simon’s face was very close to Stanley’s, and as the outsider gazed into the calm silver eyes he thought he could detect an odd suggestion of peculiar colors that swam as translucent light upon the surface of those outré eyes. Stanley breathed in the fragrance that exuded from the Sesquan’s skin, the sweet and seductive scent of Sesqua Valley. He glanced at the notebook in Simon’s grasp. It had served its purpose and brought the Yellow Deck to him, if but temporarily.

“I have no future use of it,” Stanley informed them, smiling. “Let me donate the notebook to your archives, in thanks for your cooperation in allowing me access to the Sesqua deck. I’ll be right back. I need to go to my car and get the protective sleeves into which I’ll slip the cards. Every aspect of care and protection will be given them.”

“Excellent,” Simon replied as he continued to examine the pages of the notebook as Stanley hurried to his car.

Leonidas snarled a guttural sigh. “I need to join Cyrus at the second shop. This is an intrusion. What are your plans?”

“Plan? We need do nothing. The Yellow Deck will accomplish what is required. Oh, his tremulous eyes! He is enthralled by the very idea of looking at the cards. We shall leave him alone, give him all the time he needs. You will offer him an evening room at no cost. The valley will work its wonder over him, the lure with which she has already snagged him. No, Leonidas—we need do nothing.”