The Nostradamus prophecies

21

‘Can you walk?’

‘Yes. I think I can manage.’

‘You must come with me, then.’

Sabir allowed Samana’s sister to ease him to his feet. He noticed that, although she was prepared to touch him with her hands, she made great play at avoiding any contact with his clothes.

‘Why do you do that?’

‘Do what?’

‘Veer away from me whenever I stumble – as if you’re afraid I might be diseased.’

‘I don’t want to pollute you.’

‘Pollute me?’

She nodded her head. ‘Gypsy women don’t touch men who are not their husbands, brothers, or sons.’

‘Why ever not?’

‘Because there are times when we are mahrime. Until I become a mother – and also at certain times of the month – I am unclean. I would dirty you.’

Shaking his head, Sabir allowed her to usher him towards the caravan entrance. ‘Is that why you always walk behind me, too?’

She nodded.

By this time Sabir was almost grateful for the perverse and mysterious attentions of the camp, for they had not only secured him from the notice of the French police and cured him from an illness which, on the run, may well have resulted in his death from septic shock – but they had also comprehensively upended his notions of sensible, rational behaviour. Everybody needed a stint in a gypsy camp, Sabir told himself wryly, to shake them out of their bourgeois complacency.

He had resigned himself, in consequence, to only eventually learning what they required from him, when and where it suited them to enlighten him. And he sensed, as he supported himself down the rootstock balustrade outside the caravan, that this moment had finally come.

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.’