The Gypsy Village

A 1960's Volkswagon van painted orange and converted into a mini-bus bumped along the half-paved road through the gypsy village, along the route across the border from Hungary to Romania. 1

At the last rest stop, miles back, a Swedish family had gotten on the bus next to Anasztazia – a man, woman, and their little daughter all with white skin and frosty hair like the snow and rime they had come from. They wore sleek new parkas and were all drinking strawberry Fanta out of pop-lid cans and talking in Swedish. 2

It was a rainy day. Every so often the flushed ashen white sky left its tears streaked across the dirty windshield of the bus, which only had one windshield wiper. 3

"From where?" Anasztazia asked them in English as they sat. 4

"Stockholm," the man smiled and drew out both syllables very long and proud. His eyes were so clear and pale Anasztazia expected to be able to see through them. But she had already known they were Swedish. Somehow she had just known. 5

She did not smile. She never smiled, and especially not at strangers. The bus hit a pothole and nearly careened off the road into the gutter where garbage and rainwater collected and a few emaciated egrets waded in hopes of catching a meal. A very black gypsy carrying an Italian backpack and an accordion had been staring at Anasztazia the whole time, not that she was pretty. Neither was he. An enormous black wart bulged beneath his lower lip. 6

"Please," he looked at the Swedes, then burst into a mournful story in quick Hungarian about how his mother was in the hospital and he needed money. The Hungarian was gibberish to them and they only shook their heads as he slung the accordion across to his chest and began to sing to them to the loud bleating of its of its warn leather pleats. 7

"Silence!" the bus driver shouted. 8

Anazstazia returned the black gypsy's stares. She looked at him with hard eyes, as hard as cracked glass and a color that shifted between a sallow yellow in some light and dark like walnut wood in others. Nevertheless those eyes always shined … like her hair. It was sleek with going several days unwashed. 9

"What do you think you're doing? We don't pay the bus fare to listen to you," she told him. 10

"I know you, you're from the village," he said. "I know you sing … in Romany like my mother always did when we were very little kids."11

"Well, you're wrong. You don't know me. And I don't sing. Not in Romany or any language. I don't even speak Romany."12

"You do," the gypsy leaned in close. A mouthful of teeth – two missing and the rest stained from years of downing thick black coffee and crooked from crowding – smiled at her. "I remember you from when you were very little. I remember everything. It is impossible for me to forget. Some say it is a disease. That I'm crazy, or I have a demon."13

Anasztazia's fingers clenched at her Hungarian passport and shoved it deeper into her leather handbag. 14

The gypsy's gaze was still. 15

"Don't tell anyone you saw me here," she whispered. 16

"Meeting a man ... " the gypsy wisely guessed. 17

"He is an educated man with a good job. He'll make me a rich man's wife. But he is no gypsy. He doesn't have a drop of gypsy blood and the village isn't speaking to me anymore. We married secretly." She flashed her gold ring, purer gold than the dulled earrings she wore on her ears, pierced three times. "You won't tell. You won't go back to the village and tell," she warned. And it was a command. 18

The accordionist sat back down in his seat, propped up his feet as if to sleep and lulled back into his seat. He swore he would not tell. But he would never forget. He began staring at the Swedes and offering them pitiful eyes as if to garner handouts. They ignored him and forgot him their first day back in Stockholm. But he always remembered. 19