***
Yola indicated that Sabir should accompany her towards a group of men seated on stools near the periphery of the camp. An enormously fat man with an outsized head, long black hair, copious moustaches, gold-capped front teeth and a ring on every finger, sat, in a much larger chair than everybody else’s, at the head of the convocation. He was wearing a generously cut, traditionally styled double-breasted suit, made notable only by an outlandish sequence of purple and green stripes laced into the fabric and by double-width zoot – suit lapels.
‘Who the heck’s that?’
‘The Bulibasha. He is our leader. Today he is to be Kristinori.’
‘Yola, for Christ’s sake…’
She stopped, still positioned just behind him and to the right. ‘The Chris you were searching for? That my brother spoke to you about? This is it.’
‘What? That’s Chris? The fat guy? The Chief?’
‘No. We hold a Kriss when something important must be decided. Notice is given and everyone attends from many kilometres around. Someone is elected Kristinori, or judge of the Kriss. In important cases, it is the Bulibasha who takes this role. Then there are two other judges – one for the side of the accuser and one for the person who is accused – chosen from amongst the phuro and the phuro – dai. The elders.’
‘And this is an important case?’
‘Important? It is life or death for you.’
22
Sabir found himself ushered, with a certain amount of formal politeness, on to a bench set into the earth in front of and below, the Bulibasha. Yola settled on the ground behind him, her legs drawn up beneath her. Sabir assumed that she had been allocated this spot in order to translate the proceedings to him, for she was the only woman in the assembly.
The main body of women and children were congregated behind and to the right of the Bulibasha, in the position Yola always took in relation to him. Sabir noticed, too, that the women were all wearing their best clothes and that the older, married women were sporting headscarves and prodigious amounts of gold jewellery. Unusually, they were made up with heavy kohl around the eyes and their hair, beneath their scarves, no longer hung free, but was instead put up in ringlets and elaborate braids. Some had henna on their hands and a few of the grandmothers were smoking.
The Bulibasha held up a hand for silence, but everybody continued talking. It seemed that the debate about Sabit was already well under way.
Impatiently, the Bulibasha indicated that the man who had stretched Sabir’s testicles for the knife should come forward.
‘That is my cousin. He is going to speak against you.’
‘Oh.’
‘He likes you. It is not personal. But he must do this for the family.’
‘I suppose they’re going to joint me like a pig if this thing goes against me?’ Sabir tried to sound as though he was joking, but his voice cracked halfway through and gave him away.
‘They will kill you, yes.’
‘And the upside?’
‘What is that?’
‘What happens if things go my way?’ Sabir was sweating badly now.
‘Then you will become my brother. You will be responsible for me. For my virginity. For my marriage. You will take my brother’s place in everything. ‘
‘I don’t understand.’
Yola sighed impatiently. She lowered her voice to a harsh whisper. ‘The only reason you are still alive today is that my brother made you his phral. His blood brother. He also told you to come back here amongst us and ask for a Kriss. You did this. We then had no choice but to honour his dying wish. For what a dying man asks for, he must get. And my brother knew that he would die when he did this thing to you.’
‘How can you possibly know that?’
‘He hated payos – Frenchmen – more even than he detested gadjes . He would never have asked one to be a brother to him except in the most extreme of circumstances.’
‘But I’m not a payo. Okay, my mother’s French, but my father’s American and I was born and brought up in the United States.’
‘But you speak perfect French. My brother would have judged you on that.’
Sabir shook his head in bewilderment.
Yola’s cousin was now addressing the assembly. But even with his fluent command of French, Sabir was having difficulty making out what was being said.
‘What language is that?’
‘Sinto.’
‘Great. Could you please tell me what he is saying?’
‘That you killed my brother. That you have come amongst us to steal something that belongs to our family. That you are an evil man and that God visited this recent illness on you to prove that you are not telling the truth about what happened to Babel. He also says that it is because of you that the police have come amongst us and that you are a disciple of the Devil.’
‘And you say he likes me?’
Yola nodded. ‘Alexi thinks you are telling the truth. He looked into your eyes when you thought that you were about to die and he saw your soul. It seemed white to him, not black.’
‘Then why is he saying all this stuff about me?’
‘You should be pleased. He is exaggerating terribly. Many of us here feel that you did not kill my brother. They will hope that the Bulibasha gets angry with what is being said and pronounces you innocent.’
‘And do you think I killed your brother?’
‘I will only know this when the Bulibasha gives his verdict.’
23
Sabir tried to look away from what was happening in front of him, but couldn’t. Yola’s cousin Alexi was giving a masterclass in applied histrionics. If this was someone secretly on his side, then Sabir decided that he would rather sup with the Devil and have done with it.
Alexi was on his knees in front of the assembled judges, weeping and tearing at his hair. His face and body were covered with dirt and his shirt was torn open, revealing three gold necklaces and a crucifix.
Sabir glanced at the Bulibasha’s face for any signs that he was becoming impatient with Alexi’s dramatics, but, to all intents and purposes, he seemed to be drinking the stuff in. One of the younger children, whom Sabir assumed must be one of the Bulibasha’s daughters, had even crept on to his capacious lap and was bouncing up and down in her excitement.
‘Do I get to say my piece?’
‘No.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Someone else will talk for you.’
‘Who, for Christ’s sake? Everybody here seems to want me killed.’
‘Me. I will speak for you.’
‘Why would you do that?’
‘I have told you. It was my brother’s dying wish.’
Sabir realised that Yola didn’t want to be drawn any further. ‘What’s happening now?’
‘The Bulibasha is asking whether my brother’s family would be happy if you paid them gold for his life.’
‘And what are they saying?’
‘No. They want to cut your throat.’
Sabir allowed his mind to wander briefly into a fantasy of escape. With everybody concentrating on Alexi, he might at least manage a five-yard head start before they brought him down at the edge of the camp. Action, not reaction – wasn’t that how they trained soldiers to respond to an ambush?
Alexi got up off the ground, shook himself and walked past Sabir, grinning. He even winked.
‘He seems to think he put that over rather well.’
‘Do not joke. The Bulibasha is talking to the other judges. Asking their opinion. At this stage it is important how he begins to think.’ She stood up. ‘Now I shall speak for you.’
‘You’re not going to do all that breast-beating stuff?’
‘I don’t know what I shall do. It will come to me.’
Sabir dropped his head on to his knees. Part of him still refused to believe that anyone was taking this seriously. Perhaps it was all some gigantic joke perpetrated on him by a tontine of disgruntled readers?
He looked up when he heard Yola’s voice. She was dressed in a green silk blouse, buttoned to one side across her chest and her heavy red cotton dress reached down to just above her ankles, interleaved with numerous petticoats. She wore no jewellery as an unmarried woman and her uncovered hair was bunched in ringlets over her ears, with ribbons alongside and sewn into, the chignon at the back of her head. Sabir underwent a strange emotion as he watched her – as if he was indeed related to her in her some way and that this intense recognition was in some sense relevant in a manner beyond his understanding.
She turned to him and pointed. Then she pointed down to her hand. She was asking the Bulibasha something and the Bulibasha was answering.
Sabir glanced around at the two surrounding groups. The women were all intent on the Bulibasha’s words, but some of the men in Alexi’s group were watching him intently, although seemingly without malevolence – almost as though he were a puzzle they were being forced to confront against their wills, something curious that had been imposed on them from the outside and which they were nevertheless forced to factor in to whatever equation was ruling their lives.
Two of the men helped raise the Bulibasha to his feet. One of them passed him a bottle and he drank from it and then sprinkled some of the liquid in an arc out in front of him.
Yola came back to Sabir’s side and helped him rise to his feet.
‘Don’t tell me. It’s verdict time.’
She paid him no mind, but stood, a little back from him, watching the Bulibasha.
‘You. Payo. You say you did not kill Babel?’
‘That is correct.’
‘And yet the police are hunting for you. How can they be wrong?’
‘They found my blood on Babel, for reasons that I have already explained to you. The man who tortured and killed him must have told them about me, for Babel knew my name. I am innocent of any crime against him and his family.’
He turned to Alexi. ‘You believe this man killed your cousin?’
‘Until another man confesses to the crime, yes. Kill him and the blood score will be settled.’
‘But Yola has no brother now. Her father and mother are dead. She says that this man is Babel’s phral. That he will take Babel’s place. She is unmarried. It is important that she has a brother to protect her. To ensure that no one shames her.’
‘That is true.’
‘Do you all agree to abide by the Kristinori’s rule?’
There was a communal affirmative from around the camp.
‘Then we will leave it to the knife to decide in this vendetta.’
24
‘Jesus. They don’t want me to fight somebody?’
‘No.’
‘Then what the Hell do they want?’
‘The Bulibasha has been very wise. He has decided that the knife will decide in this case. A wooden board will be set-up. You will lay the hand that you killed Babel with on to it. Alexi will represent my family. He will take a knife and throw it at your hand. If the blade, or any other part of the knife, strikes your hand, it will mean that O Del says you are guilty. Then you will be killed. If the knife misses you, you are innocent. You will then become my brother.’
‘O Del?’
‘That is our name for God.’
***
Sabir stood near the Bulibasha and watched as two of the men erected the board that was going to decide his life or death. You couldn’t make it up, he thought to himself. No one in their right minds would believe this. Not in the twenty-fi rst century.
Yola handed him a glass of herb tea.
‘What’s this for?’
‘To give you courage.’
‘What’s in it?’
‘A secret.’
Sabir sipped the tea. ‘Look. This guy Alexi. Your cousin. Is he any good with knives?’
‘Oh yes. He can hit anything he aims at. He is very good.’
‘Christ, Yola. What are you trying to do to me? Do you want me to be killed?’
‘I don’t want anything. O Del will decide on your guilt. If you are innocent, he will spoil Alexi’s aim and you will go free. Then you will become my brother.’
‘And you really believe that they will kill me if the knife strikes my hand?’
‘Without a doubt they will kill you. It must be that way. The Bulibasha would never allow you to go free after a Kriss has decided that you are guilty. That would go against our custom – our mageripen code. It would be a scandal. His name would become mahrime and he would be forced to go in front of the Baro-Sero to explain himself.’
‘The Baro-Sero?’
‘The chief of all the gypsies.’
‘And where does he hang out?’
‘In Poland, I think. Or perhaps it is Romania.’
‘Oh Christ.’
***
‘What happens if he misses my hand and gets me?’ Sabir was standing in front of the board. Two of the gypsies were attaching his hand to the board with a thin leather strap, which passed through two holes in the wood, above and below his wrist.
‘That means O Del has taken the decision away from us and has punished you Himself.’
‘I knew it.’ Sabir shook his head. ‘Can I at least stand at an angle?’
‘No. You must stand straight on, like a man. You must pretend that you don’t care what is happening. If you are innocent, you have nothing to fear. Gypsies like men who behave like men.’
‘I can’t tell you how encouraging that is.’
‘No. You must listen to me. It is important.’ She stood in front of him, her eyes locked on to his. ‘If you survive this, you will become my brother. I will take your name until I take my husband’s. You will have a kirvo and a kirvi from amongst the elders, who will be your godparents. You will become one of us. For this, you must behave like us. If you behave like a payo, no one will respect you and I will never find a husband. Never be a mother. What you do now – how you will behave – will show to my family how you will be for me. Whether the ursitory allowed my brother to choose wisely, or like a fool.’
***
Alexi upended the bottle into Sabir’s mouth, then finished it himself. ‘I like you, payo. I hope the knife misses. I really do.’