Leah Giarratano: Disharmony

‘Disconnected from my spirit?’

You’re an alcoholic, said Samantha in her head. An over-fed, under-exercised Gaje woman who won’t make it to fifty; you need to eat salad and ease up on the whisky.

‘Ah, yes, the spirits are speaking now, clamouring for my attention,’ she said instead. ‘Silence!’ She sat bolt upright in her gilded witch’s chair, its golden paint chipped and scratched. ‘Ah, yes, it is just as I thought. A curse, and an ancient and powerful one at that. A mighty spell has been cast, Mrs Nicolescu. You have come to me not a moment too soon.’

Samantha placed her hands flat on her crimson-draped tarot table, eyes boring directly into those of her client’s. They met awe, fear, disgust, blind faith. Liver disease.

She sighed again and turned another card.

Samantha stretched in the doorway of the caravan, watching the dust swirl up from her client’s car as she left the camp. Mrs Nicolescu would be back tomorrow with nine candles, a chicken, a jar of honey, and three coins blessed in a church. Oh, and her wallet. Samantha had promised her a talisman ceremony. What she hadn’t told her was that three weeks of rituals were necessary to perfect the talisman spell, and that a visit each week would be required, each time with more money and gifts as offerings for the spirits.

She blinked in the brilliant sunlight and held up her hand to shade her eyes.

Oh my God! She ducked back into the van.

Tamas!

She raced over to the mirror framed in faded fabric roses and fairy lights at the back of the caravan. She leaned in close. What was he still doing here?

She tugged her fingers through her tangled hair, scowling at her reflection. She wished – as she had every day she could remember – for the liquorice locks and dark eyes of the other Roma in the camp. Her cheeks burned the same pink as the favourite singlet top she wore, and her heart scudded in her chest. Tamas. She grinned and rummaged quickly through the jewellery in the painted box on the table. She unhooked the small green beads dangling from her ears and looped through her big silver hoops. She tied a thin leather thong around her forehead and then skipped back through the van, poking a rose from the mirror into one of the tangles in her hair. She didn’t know why she bothered. Tamas always looked straight through her, the same way that he did all the little kids in the camp.

Well, I’m fifteen now, Tamas, she thought, jumping barefoot into the hot, dry grass. She ran across the paddock, her lime green skirt billowing behind her, the bells around her ankles clinking.

Bo, Esmeralda’s little boy, smashed two toy cars together in the dirt by the remnants of one of last night’s fires. He jumped up when she passed him.

‘You wanna race me, Sam?’ he shouted, already bolting along beside her, cocoa cheeks smeared with ash, heavy eyebrows framing squid-ink eyes. His older brother’s tiny dog, Hero, who resembled a bewitched yellow washing-up rag, tore in from the other side of the camp and flashed in and out through Bo’s heels, yapping. Bo managed to run without tripping while grinning up at her, his smile an irresistible blend of six-year-old baby teeth and missing six-year-old baby teeth.

She laughed down at him. ‘Not right now, Bo. I think your mamma is calling you. Shouldn’t you be getting cleaned up for lunch?’

Sam didn’t feel too bad about the lie. Esmeralda wasn’t calling him, but she would be soon. Cooking aromas wafted over from the other end of the camp. She ran on when Bo stopped, head cocked, listening for his mum. You didn’t want to be called twice when Esmeralda was looking for you.

Tamas stood under the trees with one of the ponies. The rest of their horses had been herded out with the men before light. Sam had half-watched them leaving, bundled under her quilt with Mirela and Shofranka breathing deeply either side of her. She’d frowned across the dying campfire, watching the dogs racing madly after the group, unused to such early-morning action. At the time, she’d figured that her day would suck – Tamas would be gone until dark came again – but there he was: red bandana, the bare skin of his back as brown as the pony, his jeans loose and low. Her stomach flip-flopped.

She skidded to a stop next to the pony, who blinked up at her.

‘Hey, baby,’ she said, rubbing her palm over its muzzle.

Tamas threw a rock out across the thirsty paddock. His favourite dog, Oody, bounded after it.

‘What are you doing here, Witch?’ he said, watching Oody. He twitched his head and his long, plaited ponytail whipped a fat, sun-addled fly into the sky.

As always, she could not take her eyes from his dark lashes, his gorgeous, strong nose.

‘Making money,’ she said. ‘What are you doing here, more like it?’

Tamas kicked at the dirt.

‘Well? Why aren’t you at the horse fair?’ she tried again.

‘I don’t want to talk about it.’

‘All the other men are gone,’ she said. She scratched at her bare midriff. ‘Oh, is that it? You’re too young?’

‘I’m seventeen,’ he said. ‘And I’d like to shoot Besnik.’

‘Yeah, well, that’s called patricide, and the Gaje lock you up for it,’ said Sam.

Tamas looked at her. Looked away. Looked back.

She bit her lip.

‘You read too much,’ he said. ‘No one understands you.’

‘Patricide,’ she said. ‘It means murdering your father. Apparently it’s frowned upon. You’re supposed to love your father.’

Tamas scudded another rock out across the field. Oody went crazy.

‘Well, you don’t have a father like mine,’ he said. He rubbed at his chin and blinked down at her. ‘Oh, sorry,’ he said.

‘That’s cool, don’t worry about it.’ Her throat tightened. She studied her bare feet. ‘The whole princess-stolen-by-gypsies story pulls in the punters.’

‘I didn’t mean…’

‘I said don’t worry about it.’

But she always did. For the Roma, family – ancestry – was absolutely everything. Everybody knew that x was the son of y who was the nephew of z and the great-grandson of abc . Hour-long songs were dedicated to the lineage of a family. Dirt poor or filthy rich, nothing was more valuable to a gypsy than knowing where you came from, who you were.

Samantha had no idea.

‘Well, you are bringing in a lot of rich Gaje these days, Witch,’ said Tamas. ‘Besnik and Milosh were pretty happy about the money they had to horse-trade today. You wait and see what they come home with.’ His full lips twisted like he’d just tasted sour milk. ‘I just wish I could have been there.’

Samantha was beginning to wonder when her recent luck was going to run out. It was true – she was raking in money for the camp. For the first time in years she’d been able to walk close to Milosh without copping a filthy look. Lala still kept a close watch and warned her with their secret whistle whenever he was on the move, but even she seemed less tense, smiled more often. Last week, Samantha had even watched Lala fall asleep before she did, and that had never happened.

For as long as Sam could remember, Lala had been the camp witch and Samantha her apprentice, but their main income had come mostly from the horses. Besnik was gifted when it came to spotting a potentially great horse and buying it at a dirt-cheap price. He had an eye for horses who were mistreated, underfed, whipped too often, worked too hard. He and Tamas would lead the limping creatures back to camp and Tamas would spend hours and hours with them.

Whenever she could, Samantha would steal away from afternoon chores to watch, leaning against a tree in the twilight until she grew too cold, too hungry, or it became too dark. Tamas didn’t let any of these things stop him, though. He’d sit in the paddock by the broken horse, whispering quietly, continuously, late into the night. The camp fires would spark and spit into the night sky, striving to rejoin the stars, but still Tamas would sit. As the light left, he seemed to merge into the dirt, become part of the evening.