The Nostradamus prophecies

55

Sabir resettled the blanket over his groin. There were times – and this was one of them – when he wished that Yola could wean herself off the habit of bursting into people’s rooms unannounced. Earlier that afternoon she had taken their clothes to the communal washtub, leaving both of the men wrapped in blankets, like shipwreck victims and forced to contemplate indefinite, unwanted siestas. Now Sabir found himself frantically searching around for something innocuous to say in order to defuse his embarrassment.

‘All right. I’ve thought of another riddle for you. This one is a real stinker. Ready? “What is greater than God? More evil than the Devil? The poor already have it. The rich want it. And if you eat it, you die.’’ ’

Yola scarcely looked up from what she was doing. ‘Nothing, of course.’

Sabir slumped back against the wall. ‘Oh Christ. How did you get the answer so quickly? It took me well over an hour when my cousin’s boy tried it out on me.’

‘But it’s obvious, Adam. I got it in the first line. When you asked what is greater than God. Nothing is greater than God. The rest falls into place when you realise that.’

‘Yeah, well, I got that bit too. But I didn’t stop to think that it might be the answer. I just got irritated and outraged that anyone could imagine that there was something greater than God.’

‘You’re a man, Adam. Men are born angry. That’s why they have to laugh at everything. Or strike out at things. Or act like children. If they didn’t, they’d go mad.’

‘Thank you. Thank you for that one. Now I know where I get my sense of humour.’

Yola had conjured up an entire change of clothing for herself. She was sporting a red-flowered blouse, buttoned to the collar and a hip-hugging green skirt with a flared rim, reaching to just below the knee. The skirt was cinched in at the waist with a broad leather belt studded with small mirrors and she was wearing Cuban-heeled shoes with ankle straps. Her hair was partially up, just as it had been at the Kriss.

‘Why don’t you ever wear jewellery? Like some of the other women?’

‘Because I’m a virgin and still unmarried.’ Yola cast a loaded glance at Alexi, who somehow contrived to ignore it. ‘It wouldn’t be seemly to compete with the bride and her married female relatives.’ She fussed around laying out two sets of clothes on the bed, near Alexi’s feet. ‘Your own clothes are still drying. I’ll bring them in when they’re ready. But here are two suits and two ties I borrowed. Also some shirts. They should fi t you. Tomorrow, at the wedding, you must also have some paper money ready to give to the bride. You’ll need to pin it on to her dress with this.’ She handed each man a safety pin.

‘Eh, Adam…’

‘Don’t tell me, Alexi. You need to borrow some money.’

‘It’s not only me. Yola needs some too. But she’s too proud to ask.’

Yola flapped her hand in irritation. Her gaze was focused on Sabir. ‘What were you going to tell us in the car? When I stopped you?’

‘I don’t understand…’

‘You said you had something important to say. Well. We’ve eaten. We’ve rested. Now you can speak.’

It had to come, thought Sabir. I should have learned by now – Yola never leaves a thing alone until she’s worried the juice out of it. ‘I think you both ought to stay here. For the time being, at least.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Alexi’s injured. He needs to recuperate. And you, Yola… Well, you had a terrible shock.’ He reached across the table for his wallet. ‘I’ve figured out the rhyme on the foot of the Black Virgin, you see.’ He pulled out a crumpled piece of paper and flattened it against his knee. ‘I think it refers to Montserrat. That’s a place in Spain. In the hills above Barcelona. At least that seems to be the gist of it.’

‘You think we’re wasting our time, don’t you? That’s why you don’t want us along? You think this man will appear again and harm us if we continue along this path. But worse this time, maybe?’

‘I think we’re on a dangerous wild goose chase, yes. Look. Nostradamus, or your ancestors, or whoever carved these things on the Virgin’s feet – they could have carved stuff on half a hundred Virgins around the country. Things were much looser then than they are now. People made pilgrimages all over the place. It doesn’t take a genius to work out that eighty per cent of the Virgins that existed then are probably gone – victims of a dozen different religious wars. Not to mention the Revolution, the First and Second World Wars and the war with Prussia. Your people were nomadic, Yola. Far more so than they are now. They spent their time avoiding armies, not going in search of them. It’s odds on that if we find writing on the Montserrat Virgin’s feet, it’ll just lead us somewhere else. And then somewhere else again. That the verses, or whatever it is we are searching for, are long gone.’

‘Then why did the man follow us? What does he want?’

‘I think he’s crazy. He’s got some notion in his head that there’s money tied up in this thing and he simply can’t leave it alone.’

‘You don’t believe that.’

Sabir shook his head. ‘No.’

‘So why are you saying this? Don’t you like us anymore?’

Sabir felt momentarily at a loss, as if he had been blind-sided by a child. ‘Of course I like you. These last few days… well… they’ve felt like years. Like we’ve always been together. I don’t know how to explain it.’

‘Because we’ve met before? Is that what you are saying?’

‘Met before? No. I wasn’t…’

‘Alexi has told you I am hexi. This means I know things sometimes. Sense things. That happened with you. I instantly sensed that you meant the right thing by me. That you hadn’t killed Babel. I fought against it, but my instinct told me I was right. Alexi felt it too.’ She cast a surreptitious glance back towards the bed. ‘He’s not hexi, though. He’s just a stupid gypsy.’

Alexi made a rude sign at her but his heart wasn’t in it. He was watching her intently. Listening to her words.

‘We gypsies feel things stronger than payos and gadjes. We listen to the voices inside us. Sometimes it sends us wrong. Like it did with Babel. But most times it’s right.’

‘And where’s it sending you now?’

‘With you.’

‘Yola. This man is evil. Look what he did to you. To Babel. He would have killed Alexi, too, if we’d given him the time.’

‘You were going to leave without us. To sneak out at night. Like a thief. Weren’t you?’

‘Of course I wasn’t.’ Sabir could feel the lie reflected on his face. Even his mouth went loose in the telling of it, muffling his words.

‘Listen to me. You’re Babel’s phral. He exchanged his blood with you. Which means that we are related, all three of us, by blood as well as by law. So we’re going to this wedding. Together. We’re going to be happy and joyful and remind ourselves of what living on this earth really means. Then, when the morning after the wedding comes, you’ll stand in front of us and tell us whether you want us to go with you or not. I owe a duty to you now. You are my brother. The head of my family. If you tell me not to come, I shall obey. But you will scar my heart if you leave me behind. And Alexi loves you like a brother. He will weep and be sad to know you do not trust him.’

Alexi put on a mournful face, only half mitigated by the holes left by his missing teeth.

‘All right, Alexi. You don’t need to lay it on with a trowel.’ Sabir stood up. ‘Now that you’ve decided what it is we need to do, Yola, could you please tell me if there is anywhere to wash and shave around here?’

‘Come outside. I will show you.’

Sabir caught Yola’s warning look just as he was about to include Alexi in his intended exodus. Clutching the blanket about him like a Roman toga, he followed her out of the hut.

She stood, hands on her hips, looking out over the camp. ‘You see that man? The blond one who is watching us from the steps of the new caravan?’

‘Yes.’

‘He wants to kidnap me.’

‘Yola…’

‘His name is Gavril. He hates Alexi because Alexi’s father was a chief and gave a ruling against his family that resulted in an exile.’

‘An exile?’

‘That is when a person is banished from the tribe. Gavril is angry, also, that he is blond and an only child. People say that he was abducted from a gadje woman. That his mother couldn’t have children of her own and so her husband did this terrible thing. So he is doubly angry.’

‘And yet he wants to kidnap you?’

‘He is not really interested in me. He just pesters me to go behind the hedge with him because he knows it angers Alexi. I was hoping he would not be here. But he is. He will be happy that Alexi has been injured. Happy that he has lost some teeth and cannot afford to replace them.’

Sabir could feel the tectonic plates of his former certainties shifting and resettling themselves into a subtly different configuration. He was getting used to the feeling now. Almost liking it. ‘And what do you want me to do about him?’

‘I want you to watch out for Alexi. Stay with him. Don’t let him drink too much. In our weddings, men and women are separated, for the most part and I will not be able to protect him from himself. This man, Gavril, means badly by us. You are Alexi’s cousin. Once you’ve been introduced to the head man here and formally invited to the wedding, people will stop staring at you and you will be able to blend in more. No one will dare to denounce you. Now you stick out like an albino.’

‘Yola. Can I ask you a question?’

‘Yes.’

‘Why does everything have to be so damned complicated around you?’