The Stolen (27 page)

‘You have a single bed?' he asked in amazement. Her slight frame fitted the utilitarian structure perfectly but at six foot three he knew it would be a balancing act for the both of them, especially for the session of lovemaking he envisaged.

‘It was a vow I took after my divorce – no more men, like a disincentive to myself to seduce anyone.'

‘It doesn't seem to be working,' he said, trying to hide the fact he knew he would be appalled if he found out that she was promiscuous, and hating himself for being so old-fashioned. Again, she seemed to sense his reservations.

‘You're the exception to the rule.' She smiled up at him then drew him down to the bed. With a laugh she threw herself down, her hair spilling like a halo over the pillow, eyes gleaming.

He glanced at the bedside lamp, at the broad pool of light spilling out over the cheap beige carpet, then reached across and switched it off. Immediately the small room was transformed into a cavern of shadow and darkness. Kneeling beside her he pulled his shirt over his head, throwing it down to the floor, then began slipping his belt off. To his surprise Helen reached across and switched the lamp back on.

‘No, I want to watch you,' she told him in English, as if by using her native tongue she was more comfortable with intimacy. ‘You're beautiful.'

He paused, momentarily perplexed, his hands suspended in the action of taking his belt off. Reaching across she slowly pulled the belt from his trousers. Staring up, she unzipped his fly to take his heavy, hard cock into her hands. Closing his eyes, he felt himself throb against her cool touch.
Oh God, it feels so good to be taken like this, to surrender control.
She bent down and took him into her mouth, deeply, circling her tongue round the tip of him as she moved backwards and forwards down the length of him. Watching her, he knew this would happen too fast, too fast for him to pleasure her. He lifted her away from him and pushed her down onto the bed. Smiling up at him she unclipped her bra, the large nipples erect on her small breasts – he cupped both in each hand as he buried his face against the pale, cool skin of her torso, the scent of her making him even harder. He ran his tongue down to her navel, then, parting her slim thighs gently bit the inside of her legs. Above he could hear her moan in expectation as, teasingly, he worked his way up to her pussy. He parted her with his fingers, then began licking and sucking her. Her hands tightening in his hair, the muscles in her thighs quivering in pleasure, he played her like a musical instrument – the memory of lovemaking infusing his whole sensibility, the simple glory of having sex, of being reminded of both the humility and sheer joy of being animal, of being anchored to earthbound sensual pleasures.

He was close, too close now – he pulled himself up and put her ankles over his shoulders then plunged into her. She was tight and wet, each entry more delicious than the last – faster and faster – her auburn hair now damp with sweat, her cheeks flushed, her lips swollen. Then he paused, holding the base of his penis to stop himself coming too soon, her sex pulsating around him, drawing him back. He pulled her up onto his hips as he sat on the bed. And she rode him. They caught at each other's mouths like starving people, his tongue a mirror of his cock, his huge hands cupping her buttocks, his fingers teasing her anus. Her screams filled his head until he couldn't tell where she stopped and he began. Faster and faster she rode until she yelled, ‘I'm coming!' and triggered an orgasm that shot through him and exploded into a delicious oblivion as both of them fell back on the bed.

 

Matthias woke, his back pushed into the wall, one arm dead from the weight of something lying across him. For a second he couldn't work out where he was, as his eyes adjusted to the unfamiliar space and darkness. A moment later the shape and softness of her body jolted him back into the night, Helen's bedroom, their lovemaking.

‘What time is it?' he asked. The top of her head was a tangled mess of hair. She flicked her eyes open, the caress of her eyelashes spidery on his skin.

‘Does it matter?' she answered huskily.

He sat up.

‘I wish it didn't, but it does.'

‘Because of Liliane?' Her voice was disembodied in the darkness. Matthias didn't answer. Feeling across the bedside table, he found his watch.

‘I mean, aren't you allowed to have a grown-up life?' Helen continued, wanting nothing but to stay wrapped round his long torso. Matthias pushed the tiny switch on the watch's rim.

‘Jesus, it's four a.m.'

He swung out of the bed and fumbled for his underpants and trousers. There was a click as Helen switched on the lamp, casting a pool of light down onto the chaos their lovemaking had made.

‘You're not trying to run away, are you?' she asked, her voice small.

Surprised, he looked over. She was staring at him, eyes wide, her narrow shoulders childlike and fragile against the dark wallpaper.

‘God no.' He sat back on the bed and kissed the inside of her wrist. ‘Helen, I thought you must have guessed that I am not a flippant man. I'm just one with responsibilities.'

Pulling him towards her, she cradled into his chest.

‘Take me with you.'

‘But that would be too disturbing for Liliane —'

‘No, I mean today, to East Germany. Take me with you. I could help you – I speak Romanes. I've been there before…'

For a moment he was tempted, but who knew what the encounter with Standartenführer Ulrich Vosshoffner would entail?

‘No, it might be dangerous and I can't guarantee your safety. But I'll need your help later, Helen, I know it.'

‘Then call me as soon as you get back?' she asked, trying to keep it light and failing.

He stood and slipped on his trousers and shoes, then reached for his scarf.

‘Oh, I intend to do a lot more than just that.'

He lifted up the blind on the small single window. Outside it was still pitch dark and a light snow floated down. He turned back and, after pulling on his shirt and jacket, kissed her again, the scent of their lovemaking rising up from the bed like something aggrieved that wanted him to stay.

 

Destin watched the old Citroën drive off. Looking back at the balcony window, he made a note of Helen's address.

 

Matthias glanced into his rear-view mirror. The BMW had been trailing him for the last half hour, discreetly at a distance but persistently.
One of Inspector Engels' men or someone else?
Matthias didn't intend to find out. As he pulled onto the freeway to Küsnacht he concocted a plan that would allow him to slip away to East Germany with Latcos undetected.

 

Flames flared up, sending tongues of yellow light over the faces of the three men huddled round the small campfire. Vedel, a Sinto who was married to Latcos's cousin, had agreed to accompany them. A dark-skinned man, with a long, angular face that seemed marked by some unspoken tragedy, murmured something in Romanes. Latcos, smiling, made a quick retort, a reply that made Vedel laugh. Latcos poked the clay ball containing the dinner roasting in the embers of the fire with a stick then leaned over to Matthias.

‘He says a witch just leaped over my bed, so I told him I'd rather she leaped into my bed and fuck the consequences.'

Latcos examined the end of the stick then shrugged, pushing the clay ball back into the flames. ‘I've been too long without a woman. May God protect my wife and keep her faithful even if I'm not,' he joked again. Somewhere an owl hooted, a low, haunting cry, and there was a rustle in the snow-laden bushes that lay beyond the tiny clearing. Both gypsies froze, their dark eyes scanning the undergrowth. After the silence resumed, they relaxed.

‘Vedel chose a good camping place. The nearest patrol is five miles away. And anyway, if the Stasi come into the forest, they come with a lot of noise to frighten away the wolves.'

Matthias glanced across, not sure whether he was being serious. Latcos grinned. ‘Don't worry, the wolves are our friends – besides, who would you rather be eaten by, a wolf or the Stasi?'

‘Neither. I like my life.'

‘I would like your life too,' Vedel responded, quick as a flash. ‘A rich man like you —'

‘Leave him alone, he has his own problems,' Latcos said, determined now to defend his brother.

Matthias, shivering, pulled the old sheepskin coat Latcos had given him tighter round his shoulders. He was dressed in an outfit virtually indistinguishable from his Rom companions – a trilby hat, a coloured waistcoat, old trousers and a long embroidered coat. Latcos had insisted he wore the outfit, claiming this made him look like a local gypsy – the sheen and polish of his moneyed Swiss appearance meticulously scuffed away by his Rom sibling who, he was beginning to discover, was a master of disguise. Latcos was like an amoeba, a creature that seemed to mutate and adapt according to whatever new environment he'd been dropped into; it was a skill he'd learned to survive as a Rom travelling into countries where it wasn't just dangerous but near-suicidal to be young, Rom and male. But what Latcos couldn't change was his own colouring and features. He was too distinctively gypsy-looking to disappear into the crowd completely, and certainly in Germany his dark skin and aquiline features were a liability, whereas Matthias's physique made him virtually indistinguishable.

Matthias stared into the fire, the heat and the dancing flames hypnotic. After getting Johanna to smuggle him out of his house in the back of her car so that he lost the man trailing him, he finally left, in disguise, with Latcos. They had been travelling by small roads and rough tracks from Zürich along the Swiss-German border until Innsbruck, and then they'd crossed into West Germany, to travel the country roads until they reached Munich, parking for a night in an abandoned potato field on the outskirts. From there they travelled up towards Nuremberg, then Bayreuth, culminating in both of them scrambling under a barbed wire fence while the Sinti on the East German side created a distraction for the patrol guards. While the guards were still chasing what would turn out to be an empty stolen car, Matthias and Latcos – his clothes padded out with contraband – were picked up by the local Roma and driven away.

On the other side the contrast was astounding to Matthias – the roads, paved and pristine on the West German side, were pot-holed in East Germany. The people, even the country folk, were thinner, hollow-eyed, and their clothes cheaper-looking. The only people they met who looked virtually the same either side were the Romanes themselves, an observation Matthias made to Latcos, who pointed out that his people lived above and outside
gadjé
law – they were harassed almost as much by the Swiss police as they were by the Stasi, he'd told Matthias. Besides, it was a little easier to make a good black-market trade east of the border, where American jeans and cigarettes guaranteed a much better price – a trade Latcos exploited. By Matthias's calculations it had taken five pairs of Levi jeans and four cartons of Winston cigarettes to get them this far without a local informant betraying them to the local Stasi – that and the four hundred US dollars Matthias had to provide to pay for the old Volga car the Sinti had sold them.

The whole experience had been like entering a different country for Matthias – the sudden comprehension that under ‘normal' settled society there existed this substratum of alternative living – his mother's people. To his surprise he'd found he enjoyed sitting up front with Latcos, watching the road peel out in front of them. It was like living a more vivid existence, one that existed only in the present tense with very real and very pressing demands that had to be solved moment to moment – where the next camping ground lay, which were the right roads to take that would avoid harassment either by police or local fascists and racists, which villages were gypsy-friendly and which were not. Latcos called it the Lungo Drom – life on the road. As he drove he talked about how once his people lived like this, in the traditional wooden caravans moving from summer camps to winter ones, delivering the copper wares they made, or working as fruit-pickers, basket-weavers or blacksmiths for farmers that had employed them in some cases for generations – a symbiotic relationship that served both the Roma and
gadjé
. And, despite the Kalderash now having houses, how he missed the freedom of the Lungo Drom. A state of mind as much as the act of travel, Latcos told Matthias, a supreme right of the Roma that both defined them as a people and as superior survivors who did not need the manufactured commerce of the
gadjé
world – enslaved by industry and Time. No, Latcos elaborated, we regard ourselves as luckier and freer. We respect Nature; we don't have to rape her by planting fields – we find all we need in the forests and in the rivers. And we have the glory of our traditions, the strength of our
Vuršutarja
and our songs. Keja, our mother, taught me this.

By the third day of driving Matthias decided the Lungo Drom might be the original form of existentialism, a state of being that crystallised the moment into a sharp awareness of what it was to be mortal. He just thought it a paradox that they were driving towards a collision of the past and the present, that it had taken a man like himself, a freak of both nature and history, a child who shouldn't have been born, to pursue a tragedy most Roma believed should be buried and forgotten.

 

A sudden noise from the fire brought Matthias out of his reverie. Latcos had cracked open the ball of clay. Now he gingerly peeled the two halves apart so that the spikes stayed embedded in the baked clay, revealing the roasted meat – a little like a plump, naked rat.

‘Have you ever eaten hedgehog before?'

‘No, and I'm not sure I will now,' Matthias said, his rumbling stomach betraying him. The last time they had eaten was ten hours before, in the car park of a small roadside café outside Kulmbach – and, despite its repellent appearance, the hedgehog, dug from its hibernation nest by Vedel, smelled delicious.

‘You're honoured; this is a great delicacy,' Vedel informed him as Latcos pulled the flesh apart and offered Matthias a hind leg. He sniffed it, then delicately bit a piece off. The other two laughed and Vedel spoke in Romanes.

‘He says you eat like a woman,' Latcos translated, grinning, then joining Vedel, wolfishly began eating, fat running down his chin, the two men obviously relishing the experience. Matthias, studying them, followed. To his surprise the meat had a delicate, nutty flavour. While the two Roma conversed in Romanes they were interrupted by a short burst of birdsong. To Matthias's astonishment Vedel put his hands to his mouth and duplicated the exact same sound. A second later they heard twigs snapping underfoot and two gypsies stepped quietly out of the forest; the older man, who looked to be in his seventies, used an old tree branch, smoothed down and whittled as a walking stick. As they approached, the old gypsy caught sight of Matthias and stumbled, as if in horror. The younger man caught his arm, murmuring encouragement. As they came closer Matthias could see the boy was not much older than sixteen. He was too shy to look any of the other men in the eye, but the older man stared at Matthias as if he'd gone into some kind of shock. Vedel scrambled to his feet, shouting a welcome, then gestured for them to join them.

‘Friends, not family – from another
Vuršutarja
far away,' Latcos told Matthias in a low voice. Latcos handed them both a beer and they sat down on the spread tarpaulin. After a moment the old man reached into his waistcoat pocket and pulled out a seashell that was inlaid with gold and had some markings etched upon it. He placed it carefully in front of him, before Matthias, as if protecting himself. An awkwardness settled over the four men until Vedel slowly lifted his beer bottle to toast the visitors. The young boy followed, then both Latcos and Matthias held theirs up – the bottles touching awkwardly mid-air as they all waited for the old man to make the gesture. Time stretched dangerously until finally the old patriarch lifted his bottle and a toast was made, breaking the tension. Vedel started to explain their presence to Latcos, who in turn translated for Matthias.

‘They have walked a long way – as far as two villages north of here. Rajko is the
bulibasha
, the leader of his community, and this is his grandson, Andro. It is an honour to have Rajko sitting here.'

Without warning the old gypsy interjected angrily in a deep voice that seemed to resonate through the forest, his words directed towards Matthias. When he finished, Vedel and Latcos looked at each other, then Latcos began to translate.

‘He says he would kill you for being a ghost if he didn't know your story.'

‘He knows my story? How?' Matthias was angry. The purpose of their journey had to remain secret for their own safety.

‘Matthias, our uncle was well-travelled and well-loved. News of his murder has spread quicker than wind.'

‘But he knows
my
story?' Matthias insisted, rattled by the intensity of the old man's stare.

Vedel cut in, speaking German for the first time since he had joined them that afternoon.

‘Rajko is Vlax, from Hungary. The Nazis took many of his people. When he heard of your existence, he thought it was one of those stories people made up to explain the past. So he decided he had to see you for himself.'

‘And?' Matthias asked, his heart beating uncomfortably against his throat.

The old man lifted his wrinkled and olive-skinned hand and pointed at Matthias, hissing something in Romanes.

‘He says he has seen you at Buchenwald thirty-seven years ago, not a day older than you look now. You murdered his first wife,' Vedel translated solemnly.

At this, Rajko lunged at Matthias, knocking him into the snow. Latcos immediately threw himself in front of the Swiss, while Vedel and the boy struggled to hold back the seventy-year-old, Vedel shouting at him in Romanes.

‘It was not me! It was my father! I have the same face, that's all!' Matthias yelled at his attacker, pulling himself up and brushing the snow from his clothes. Finally Rajko squatted back on his heels and, pointing again at Matthias, began to speak slowly and deliberately as if cursing him.

‘He says although you are pas Rom, because of your Nazi father you will have to change your blood to full gypsy blood. You will have to undergo an acceptance ceremony,' Vedel told Matthias, at which Latcos spun round and began arguing furiously with both Vedel and Rajko.

‘What's going on? What's an acceptance ceremony?'

‘No,' Latcos shouted. ‘I will not let you do this; this is dangerous. They have my word you are my half-brother. This should be enough.'

‘Just explain the ceremony to me!' Matthias's raised voice made the others fall silent.

‘Normally we never let a
gadjo
into the
Romanimos
– the Roma way. But occasionally someone is accepted. The chosen person must drink a potion from the magical gypsy cup belonging to the
bulibasha
, the leader of the community,' Vedel finally said.

As if on cue, Rajko reached into the leather satchel around his shoulder and pulled out an old copper cup inscribed with symbols.

‘If the
gadjo
is unworthy the potion will kill him; if he is worthy of becoming a Rom he will live and afterwards his blood will be changed to full gypsy blood,' Latcos said, avoiding Matthias's gaze. Then he leaned forward and whispered, ‘My brother, this could kill you.'

Matthias thought about Helen, her statement about the importance of acceptance and the role of ceremony, how she'd learned never to belittle another culture, no matter how alien, and that in the end all rituals stemmed from the same basic human needs. And was he not Latcos's brother, the son of a
phuri dej
?

‘I will do this, for Keja, for my mother,' he announced. Immediately Rajko got up and, holding his cup, walked into the forest. Latcos leaped up and followed him for a few paces.

‘Where's he going?' Matthias asked Vedel nervously.

‘To collect the herbs for the potion. He will find them under the snow and, after he's made it, you drink.'

Just past the trees Latcos stopped Rajko. ‘Poison him and I kill you,' he murmured quietly in Romanes, before letting the old man's arm go and watching him disappear into the shadow of the forest.

 

The concoction swirling round in the copper cup was an amber colour; green herbs floated on the top along with pieces of straw. Having just been poured from a boiling pot balanced on the campfire, a thin vapour of steam curled up from the surface. The pungent scent, drifting across the expectant faces of the waiting gypsies, reminded Matthias of the smell of burned hops.