Colum McCann - Zoli

“She's more beautiful than she's not,” he said.

Elena cracked her husband's knuckles with a rolled-up newspaper. She stood, her hair full of colored pencils, and went off to bed. Stränsky winked and said he would join her shortly, but he fell asleep at the table, bent over the transcribed pages.

I found Zoli again, the following week, on the steps of the Musicians Union, where she stood with her hands outstretched, fingers apart.

A crowd of Gypsies had gathered together in front of the union. There'd been a new decree that all musicians had to have licenses, but to have a license they had to be able to fill out a form, and none of the Gypsies, except Zoli, were able to write fluently. They carried violins, violas, oboes, guitars, even one giant harp. Vashengo wore a black jacket with red bicycle reflectors as cufflinks. When he moved his arms, his wrists caught the sunlight. He was trying, it seemed, with Zoli's help, to calm the crowd. A small battalion of troopers stood at the other end of the street, slapping truncheons against their thighs. Moments later a loudspeaker was passed out of the window of the union and the crowd hushed. Vashengo spoke in Romani at first-it was as if he had laid a blanket underneath the crowd. He commanded a further silence and spoke in Slovak, said it was a new time in history, that we were all coming out of a long oblivion, carrying a red flag. He would speak with the leaders of the union. Be patient, he said. There'd be licenses for all. He pointed at Zoli and said she would help them fill out the required forms. She lowered her head and the crowd cheered. The troopers down the street dropped their truncheons and the officials from the Musicians Union came out onto the steps. A small boy came pushing past me, laughing. He was wearing the yellow blinker from Stränsky's motorbike on a chain.

I tried to elbow my way towards her, but she leaned down to whisper something to her husband.

I moved away through the milling bodies, past the horses and carts they had lined up along the street.

I'd already memorized the tilt of her chin and the two dark moles at the base of her neck.

In the National Library, amid the dust and the shuffle, I tried to read up on whatever little literature there was. The Gypsies were, it seemed, as fractured as anyone else, their own small Europe, but they were still lumped together in one easy census box. Most had already settled down in shanty towns all over Slovakia. They were as apt to fight among themselves as they were to pitch battle against outsiders. Zoli and her people were the aristocracy, if such a word could be used; they still traveled in their ornate caravans. No dancing bears, or begging, or fortune-telling, but they did wear gold coins in their hair and kept some of the older customs alive. Modesty laws. Whispered names. Runic signs. There were thousands of them in Slovakia. They were linked with extended groups of tinsmiths and horse-thieves, but some, like Zoli's kumpanija, moved in a group of about seventy or eighty and made a living almost entirely from music. They were written about in exotic language-no photographs, just sketches.

I shut the pages of the books, walked out into the streets, under the swaying banners and the loud grackles in the trees.

From an open window came the low moan of a saxophone. These were still vibrant times-the streets were full and pulsing, and nobody yet sat waiting for the knock of the secret police at the door.

I found Stränsky swaying in the beerhalls. “Come here, young scholar,” he shouted across the tables. He sat me down and bought me a glass. I lapped it up, the high idealism of an older man. He was sure that having a Gypsy poet would be a coup for him, for Credo, and that the Gypsies, as a revolutionary class, if properly guided, could claim and use the written word. “Look,” he said, “everywhere else they're the joke of the week. Thieves. Conmen. Just imagine if we could raise them up. A literate proletariat. People reading Gypsy literature. We-you, me, her-we can make a whole new art form, get those songs written down. Imagine that, Swann. Nobody has ever done that. This girl is perfect, do you know how perfect she is?”

He leaned forward, his glass shaking.

“Everyone else has shat on them from above. Burned them out. Taunted them. Branded them. Capitalists, fascists, that old empire of yours. We ‘ve got a chance to turn it around. Take them in. We ‘11 be the first. Give them a value. We make life better, we make life fairer, it's the oldest story of all.”

“She's a singer,” I said.

“She's a poet,” he replied. “And you know why?” He raised his glass and prodded my chest. “Because she's called upon to become one. She's a voice from the dust.”

“You're drunk,” I said.

He hoisted a brand-new tape recorder, a spare set of reels, eight spools of tape, and four batteries up onto the table. “I want you to record her, young scholar. Bring her to life.”

“Me?”

“No, the fucking pickled eggs there. For crying out loud, Swann, you've got a brain, don't you?”

I knew what he wanted from me-the prospect thrilled me and knocked the air from my lungs at the same time.

He spun a bit of tape out from a reel. “Just don't tell Elena that I spent our last savings on this.” He wound the spool on and pressed Record. “It's made in Bulgaria, I hope it works.”

He tested it out and his voice came back to us: It's made in Bulgaria, I hope it works.

How inevitable it is; we step into an ordinary moment and never come out again. I raised my glass and signed on. I might as well have done it in my own blood.

The equipment fitted into a small rucksack. I strapped it on my back and rode Stränsky's Jawa out into the countryside. Under the grove of trees, I killed the engine and waited. The kumpanija was gone. A scorched tire in the grass. A few rags in the branches. I tried to follow the rutted marks and the bent grass, but it was impossible.

Beyond Trnava I went towards the low hills where the vineyards stepped down towards the valley. I leaned the bike into the corners, wobbled to a halt when a rifle was pointed at me. The tallest trooper smirked while the others gathered around him. I was, I told them, a translator and sociologist studying the ancient culture of the Romani people. “The what?” they asked. “The Gypsies.” They howled with laughter. A sergeant leaned forward: “There's some up there, with the monkeys in the trees.” I fumbled with the kickstand and showed him my credentials. After a while, he radioed in and came back, snapped to attention. “Comrade,” he said, “proceed.” Stränsky's name, it seemed, still held some sway. The troopers pointed me in the direction of some scrubland. I had rigged a cushion in place where the seat had been stolen: the troopers guffawed. I slowly turned, pinned them with a look, then took off, scattering dirt behind me.

From the hills came a strange series of high sounds. Zoli's kumpanija carried giant harps, six, seven feet tall, and, with the bumps in the dirt roads, you could sometimes hear them moving from a distance away: they sounded as if they were mourning in advance.

When I came across her, she was draped across the green gate of a field and her arms hung down, limp. She was dressed in her army coat and was propelling herself with one foot, slowly back and forth, in a small arc over the mud. One braid swung in the air, the other was caught between her teeth. On the gate was an ill-painted sign that warned trespassers of prosecution. As I approached, she stood up quickly from what had seemed an innocent child's pose, but then I realized that she had been reading while draped on the gate. “Oh,” she said, tucking the loose pages away.