The Nostradamus prophecies

63

‘I think you’ve had enough to drink, Alexi. You’re going to feel like Hell tomorrow.’

‘My teeth and my ribs are hurting now. The rakia is good for them. It is antiseptic.’ He slurred the word so badly that it sounded like ‘athletic’.

Sabir looked around for Yola, but she was nowhere to be seen. The wedding celebration was on its final legs, with musicians gradually dropping out either through exhaustion or inebriation, whichever came first.

‘Give me the gun. I want to shoot it.’

‘That wouldn’t be a good idea, Alexi.’

‘Give me the gun!’ Alexi grabbed Sabir by the shoulders and shook him. ‘I want to be John Wayne.’ He threw his hand out in a great arc to encompass the camp and the surrounding caravans. ‘I am John Wayne! You hear me? I am going to shout-out your lights!’

Nobody took any notice of him. Throughout the evening, at surprisingly frequent intervals, men had stood up, in a fever of alcohol and declared themselves. One had even claimed to be Jesus Christ. His wife had hurried him off to catcalls and jeering from as yet less inebriated souls. Sabir supposed this must be what the novelist Patrick Hamilton had meant when he defined the four stages of drunkenness as plain drunk, fighting drunk, blind drunk and dead drunk. Alexi was at the fighting drunk stage and clearly had a long way still to go.

‘Hey! John Wayne!’

Alexi swung around dramatically, his hands falling to his hips and to an imaginary pair of six-shooters. ‘Who asks for me?’

Sabir had already identified Gavril. Well here goes, he thought to himself. Whoever said life isn’t predictable?

‘Yola tells me you lost your balls. That the same guy who kicked out your teeth also bit your balls off.’

Alexi weaved a little, his face contorted in concentration. ‘What did you say?’

Gavril wandered closer but his eyes were elsewhere, as if part of him felt detached from whatever it was he was machinating. ‘I didn’t say anything. Yola said it. I don’t know anything about your balls. In fact I’ve always known you didn’t have any. It’s a family problem. None of the Dufontaines have balls ‘

‘Alexi. Leave it.’ Sabir put one hand on Alexi’s shoulder. ‘He’s lying. He’s trying to wind you up.’

Alexi shrugged him off. ‘Yola never said that. She never said my balls didn’t work. She knows nothing about my balls.’

‘Alexi…’

‘Then who else told me?’ Gavril threw out his arms in triumph.

Alexi glanced around, as if he expected Yola suddenly to appear from around the corner of one of the caravans and confi rm what Gavril was saying. He had a peeved expression on his face and one side of his mouth was hanging down, as if he’d suffered a minor stroke alongside his crushing by the chair.

‘You won’t find her here. I just left her.’ Gavril sniffed his fingers melodramatically.

Alexi lurched across the clearing towards Gavril. Sabir reached out one arm and swung him around, just as you would do a child. Alexi was so taken aback that he lost his footing and landed heavily on his rump.

Sabir stepped between him and Gavril. ‘Leave it off. He’s drunk. If you have a problem, you can sort it out another time. This is a wedding, not a kriss.’

Gavril hesitated, his hand hovering over one pocket.

Sabir could see that Gavril had worked himself up into thinking that he could deal with Alexi once and for all – and that Sabir’s presence between him and Alexi was not something that he had made any allowances for. Sabir felt the cold weight of the Remington in his pocket. If Gavril came at him, he would pull out the pistol and shoot a warning round at his feet. End the thing there. He certainly didn’t fancy taking a knife-thrust through the liver at this early stage in his life story.

‘Why are you talking for him, payo? Hasn’t he got the balls to talk for himself?’ Gavril’s voice had begun to lose its urgency.

Alexi was lying face down on the ground, with his eyes shut and was obviously way beyond talking to anybody. He had clearly moved from fighting drunk all the way through to dead drunk without bothering to visit blind drunk in between.

Sabir pressed home his advantage. ‘As I said – you can both sort this out another time. A wedding is certainly not the place to do it.’

Gavril clicked his teeth and gave a backwards thrust of the head. ‘All right, gadje. You tell that prick Dufontaine this from me. When he comes to the festival of Les Trois Maries, I shall be waiting for him. Sainte Sara can decide between us.’

Sabir felt as if the earth was gently rocking beneath his feet ‘The festival of Les Trois Maries? Is that what you just said?’

Gavril laughed. ‘I forget. You are an interloper. Not one of us.’

Sabir ignored the implied insult – his eyes were fixed on Gavril’s face, willing him to answer. ‘Where is that held? And when?’

Gavril turned as if to go, then changed his mind at the last moment. It was clear that he was relishing the sudden turnaround in the dynamics of the conversation. ‘Ask anyone, payo. They will tell you. The festival of Sara-e-Kali is held every year at Les Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer in the Camargues. Four days from now. On the 24th of May. What do you think we are all doing here at this piss-pot of a wedding? We are making our way south. All French gypsies go there. Even that eunuch lying next to you.’

Alexi gave a twitch, as if he had registered the insult somewhere deep inside his unconscious mind. But the alcohol proved too powerful a soporific and he began to snore.