Witch of Portobello Read online

  Her eyes were closed, and she seemed no longer to be conscious of who she was or where she was or why she was there; it was as if she were floating and simultaneously summoning up her past, revealing her present, and predicting the future. She mingled eroticism with chastity, pornography with revelation, worship of God and nature, all at the same time.

  People stopped eating and started watching what was happening. She was no longer following the music, the musicians were trying to keep up with her steps, and that restaurant in the basement of an old building in the city of Sibiu was transformed into an Egyptian temple, where the worshippers of Isis used to gather for their fertility rites. The smell of roast meat and wine was transmuted into an incense that drew us all into the same trancelike state, into the same experience of leaving this world and entering an unknown dimension.

  The string and wind instruments had given up, only the percussion played on. Athena was dancing as if she were no longer there, with sweat running down her face, her bare feet beating on the wooden floor. A woman got up and very gently tied a scarf around her neck and breasts, because her blouse kept threatening to slip off her shoulders. Athena, however, appeared not to notice; she was inhabiting other spheres, experiencing the frontiers of worlds that almost touch ours but never reveal themselves.

  The other people in the restaurant started clapping in time to the music, and Athena was dancing ever faster, feeding on that energy, spinning round and round, balancing in the void, snatching up everything that we, poor mortals, wanted to offer to the supreme divinity.

  And suddenly she stopped. Everyone stopped, including the percussionists. Her eyes were still closed, but tears were now rolling down her cheeks. She raised her arms in the air and cried, “When I die, bury me standing, because I’ve spent all my life on my knees!”

  No one said anything. She opened her eyes, as if waking from a deep sleep, and walked back to the table as if nothing had happened. The band started up again, and couples took to the floor in an attempt to enjoy themselves, but the atmosphere in the place had changed completely. People soon paid their bills and started to leave the restaurant.

  “Is everything all right?” I asked when I saw that she’d recovered from the physical effort of dancing.

  “I feel afraid. I discovered how to reach a place I don’t want to go to.”

  “Do you want me to go with you?”

  She shook her head.

  In the days that followed, I completed my research for the documentary, sent my interpreter back to Bucharest with the hired car, and then stayed on in Sibiu simply because I wanted to meet her again. All my life I’ve always been guided by logic and I know that love is something that can be built rather than simply discovered, but I sensed that if I never saw her again, I would be leaving a very important part of my life in Transylvania, even though I might only realize this later on. I fought against the monotony of those endless hours; more than once, I went to the bus station to find out the times of buses to Bucharest; I spent more than my tiny budget as an independent filmmaker allowed on phone calls to the BBC and to my girlfriend. I explained that I didn’t yet have all the material I needed, that there were still a few things lacking, that I might need another day or possibly a week; I said that the Romanians were being very difficult and got upset if anyone associated their beautiful Transylvania with the hideous story of Dracula. I finally managed to convince the producers, and they let me stay on longer than I really needed to.

  We were staying in the only hotel in the city, and one day she saw me in the foyer and seemed suddenly to remember our first encounter. This time, she invited me out, and I tried to contain my joy. Perhaps I was important in her life.

  Later on, I learned that the words she had spoken at the end of her dance were an ancient gypsy saying.

  LILIANA, SEAMSTRESS, AGE AND SURNAME UNKNOWN

  I speak in the present tense because for us time does not exist, only space. And because it seems like only yesterday.

  The one tribal custom I did not follow was that of having my man by my side when Athena was born. The midwives came to me even though they knew I had slept with a gadje, a foreigner. They loosened my hair, cut the umbilical cord, tied various knots, and handed it to me. At that point, tradition demands that the child be wrapped in some item of the father’s clothing; he had left a scarf, which reminded me of his smell and which I sometimes pressed to my nose so as to feel him close to me, but now that perfume would vanish forever.

  I wrapped the baby in the scarf and placed her on the floor so that she would receive energy from the earth. I stayed there with her, not knowing what to feel or think; my decision had been made.

  The midwives told me to choose a name and not to tell anyone what it was—it could only be pronounced once the child was baptized. They gave me the consecrated oil and the amulets I must hang around her neck for the two weeks following her birth. One of them told me not to worry, the whole tribe was responsible for my child, and although I would be the butt of much criticism, this would soon pass. They also advised me not to go out between dusk and dawn because the tsinvari [Editor’s note: evil spirits] might attack us and take possession of us, and from then on our lives would be a tragedy.

  A week later, as soon as the sun rose, I went to an adoption center in Sibiu and placed her on the doorstep, hoping that some charitable person would take her in. As I was doing so, a nurse caught me and dragged me inside. She insulted me in every way she could and said that they were used to such behavior, but that there was always someone watching and I couldn’t escape so easily from the responsibility of bringing a child into the world.

  “Although, of course, what else would one expect from a gypsy! Abandoning your own child like that!”

  I was forced to fill in a form with all my details, and since I didn’t know how to write, she said again, more than once: “Yes, well, what can you expect from a gypsy. And don’t try to trick us by giving false information. If you do, it could land you in jail.” Out of pure fear, I told them the truth.

  I looked at my child one last time, and all I could think was: Child without a name, may you find love, much love in your life.

  Afterward, I walked in the forest for hours. I remembered many nights during my pregnancy when I had both loved and hated the child herself and the man who had put her inside me.

  Like all women, I’d dreamed of one day meeting an enchanted prince, who would marry me, give me lots of children, and shower attentions on my family. Like many women, I fell in love with a man who could give me none of those things, but with whom I shared some unforgettable moments, moments my child would never understand, for she would always be stigmatized in our tribe as a gadje and a fatherless child. I could bear that, but I didn’t want her to suffer as I had suffered ever since I first realized I was pregnant. I wept and tore at my own skin, thinking that the pain of the scratches would perhaps stop me thinking about a return to ordinary life, to face the shame I had brought on the tribe. Someone would take care of the child, and I would always cherish the hope of seeing her again one day, when she had grown up.

  Unable to stop crying, I sat down on the ground and put my arms around the trunk of a tree. However, as soon as my tears and the blood from my wounds touched the trunk of the tree, a strange calm took hold of me. I seemed to hear a voice telling me not to worry, saying that my blood and my tears had purified the path of the child and lessened my suffering. Ever since then, whenever I despair, I remember that voice and feel calm again.

  That’s why I wasn’t surprised when I saw her arrive with our tribe’s Rom Baro, who asked me for a coffee and a drink, then smiled slyly and left. The voice told me that she would come back, and now here she is, in front of me. She’s pretty. She looks like her father. I don’t know what feelings she has for me; perhaps she hates me because I abandoned her. I don’t need to explain why I did what I did; no one would ever understand.

  We sit for an age without saying anything to each other, just looki
ng—not smiling, not crying, nothing. A surge of love rises up from the depths of my soul, but I don’t know if she’s interested in what I feel.

  “Are you hungry? Would you like something to eat?”

  Instinct. Instinct above all else. She nods. We go into the small room in which I live, and which is living room, bedroom, kitchen, and sewing workshop. She looks around, shocked, but I pretend not to notice. I go over to the stove and return with two bowls of thick meat and vegetable broth. I’ve prepared some strong coffee too, and just as I’m about to add sugar, she speaks for the first time.

  “No sugar for me, thank you. I didn’t know you spoke English.”

  I almost say that I learned it from her father, but I bite my tongue. We eat in silence, and as time passes, everything starts to feel familiar to me: here I am with my daughter; she went off into the world and now she’s back; she followed paths different from mine and has come home. I know this is an illusion, but life has given me so many moments of harsh reality that it does no harm to dream a little.

  “Who’s that saint?” she asks, pointing to a painting on the wall.

  “St. Sarah, the patron saint of gypsies. I’ve always wanted to visit her church in France, but I can’t leave the country. I’d never get a passport or permission…”

  I’m about to say: “And even if I did, I wouldn’t have enough money,” but I stop myself in time. She might think I was asking her for something.

  “…and besides, I have too much work to do.”

  Silence falls again. She finishes her soup, lights a cigarette, and her eyes give nothing away, no emotion.

  “Did you think you would ever see me again?”

  I say that I did, and that I’d heard yesterday, from the Rom Baro’s wife, that she’d visited his restaurant.

  “A storm is coming. Wouldn’t you like to sleep a little?”

  “I can’t hear anything. The wind isn’t blowing any harder or softer than before. I’d rather talk.”

  “Believe me, I have all the time in the world. I have the rest of my life to spend by your side.”

  “Don’t say that.”

  “…but you’re tired,” I go on, pretending not to have heard her remark. I can see the storm approaching. Like all storms, it brings destruction, but at the same time, it soaks the fields, and the wisdom of the heavens falls with the rain. Like all storms, it will pass. The more violent it is, the more quickly it will pass.

  I have, thank God, learned to weather storms.

  And as if all the Holy Marys of the Sea were listening to me, the first drops of rain begin to fall on the tin roof. The young woman finishes her cigarette. I take her hand and lead her to my bed. She lies down and closes her eyes.

  I don’t know how long she slept. I watched her without thinking anything, and the voice I’d heard once in the forest was telling me that all was well, that I needn’t worry, that the ways in which fate changes people are always favorable if we only know how to decipher them. I don’t know who saved her from the orphanage and brought her up and made her into the independent woman she appears to be. I offered up a prayer to that family who had allowed my daughter to survive and achieve a better life. In the middle of the prayer, I felt jealousy, despair, regret, and I stopped talking to St. Sarah. Had it really been so important to bring her back? There lay everything I’d lost and could never recover.

  But there too was the physical manifestation of my love. I knew nothing and yet everything was revealed to me: I remembered the times I’d considered suicide and, later, abortion, when I’d imagined leaving that part of the world and setting off on foot to wherever my strength would take me; I remembered my blood and tears on the tree trunk, the dialogue with nature that had intensified from that moment on and has never left me since, although few people in my tribe have any inkling of this. My protector, whom I met while I was wandering in the forest, understood, but he had just died.

  “The light is unstable, the wind blows it out, the lightning ignites it, it is never simply there, shining like the sun, but it is worth fighting for,” he used to say.

  He was the only person who accepted me and persuaded the tribe that I could once again form part of their world. He was the only one with the moral authority to ensure that I wasn’t expelled.

  And, alas, the only one who would never meet my daughter. I wept for him while she lay sleeping on my bed, she who must be used to all the world’s comforts. Thousands of questions filled my head—who were her adoptive parents, where did she live, had she been to university, was there someone she loved, what were her plans? But I wasn’t the one who had traveled the world in search of her. On the contrary, I wasn’t there to ask questions, but to answer them.

  She opened her eyes. I wanted to touch her hair, to give her the affection I’d kept locked inside all these years, but I wasn’t sure how she would react and thought it best to do nothing.

  “You came here to find out why…”

  “No, I don’t want to know why a mother would abandon her daughter. There is no reason for anyone to do that.”

  Her words wound my heart, but I don’t know how to respond.

  “Who am I? What blood runs in my veins? Yesterday, when I found out where you were, I was absolutely terrified. Where do I start? I suppose, like all gypsies, you can read the future in the cards.”

  “No, that’s not true. We only do that with gadje as a way of earning a living. We never read cards or hands or try to predict the future within our own tribe. And you…”

  “I’m part of the tribe. Even though the woman who brought me into the world sent me far away.”

  “Yes.”

  “So what am I doing here? Now that I’ve seen your face I can go back to London. My holidays are nearly over.”

  “Do you want to know about your father?”

  “No, I haven’t the slightest interest in him.”

  And suddenly I realized that I could help her. It was as if someone else’s voice came out of my mouth. “Try to understand the blood that flows in my veins and in your heart.”

  That was my teacher speaking through me. She closed her eyes again and slept for nearly twelve hours.

  The following day, I took her to the outskirts of Sibiu where there’s a kind of museum of the different kinds of houses found in the region. For the first time, I’d had the pleasure of preparing her breakfast. She was more rested, less tense, and she asked me questions about gypsy culture, but never about me. She told me a little of her life. I learned that I was a grandmother! She didn’t mention her husband or her adoptive parents. She said she sold land in a country far from there and that she would soon return to her work.

  I explained that I could show her how to make amulets to ward off evil, but she didn’t seem interested. However, when I spoke to her about the healing properties of herbs, she asked me to teach her how to recognize them. In the park where we were walking, I tried to pass on to her all the knowledge I possessed, although I was sure she’d forget everything as soon as she returned to her home country, which by then I knew was England.

  “We don’t possess the earth, the earth possesses us. We used to travel constantly, and everything around us was ours: the plants, the water, the landscapes through which our caravans passed. Our laws were nature’s laws: the strong survived, and we, the weak, the eternal exiles, learned to hide our strength and to use it only when necessary. We don’t believe that God made the universe. We believe that God is the universe and that we are contained in him, and he in us. Although…”

  I stopped, then decided to go on, because it was a way of paying homage to my protector.

  “…in my opinion, we should call ‘him’ ‘goddess’ or ‘Mother.’ Not like the woman who gives her daughter up to an orphanage, but like the Woman in all of us, who protects us when we are in danger. She will always be with us while we perform our daily tasks with love and joy, understanding that nothing is suffering, that everything is a way of praising Creation.”

  At
hena—now I knew her name—looked across at one of the houses in the park.

  “What’s that? A church?”

  The hours I’d spent by her side had allowed me to recover my strength. I asked if she was trying to change the subject. She thought for a moment before replying.

  “No, I want to go on listening to what you have to tell me, although, according to everything I read before I came here, what you’re saying isn’t part of the gypsy tradition.”

  “My protector taught me these things. He knew things the gypsies don’t know and he made the tribe take me back. And as I learned from him, I gradually became aware of the power of the Mother, I, who had rejected the blessing of being a mother.”

  I pointed at a small bush. “If one day your son has a fever, place him next to a young plant like this and shake its leaves. The fever will pass over into the plant. If ever you feel anxious, do the same thing.”

  “I’d rather you told me more about your protector.”

  “He taught me that in the beginning Creation was so lonely that it created someone else to talk to. Those two creatures, in an act of love, made a third person, and from then on, they multiplied by thousands and millions. You asked about the church we just saw: I don’t know when it was built and I’m not interested. My temple is the park, the sky, the water in the lake, and the stream that feeds it. My people are those who share my ideas and not those I’m bound to by bonds of blood. My ritual is being with those people and celebrating everything around me. When are you thinking of going home?”

  “Possibly tomorrow. I don’t want to inconvenience you.”

  Another wound to my heart, but I could say nothing.

  “No, please, stay as long as you like. I only asked because I’d like to celebrate your arrival with the others. If you agree, I can do this tonight.”

  She says nothing, and I understand this as a yes. Back home, I give her more food, and she explains that she needs to go to her hotel in Sibiu to fetch some clothes. By the time she returns, I have everything organized. We go to a hill to the south of the town; we sit around a fire that has just been lit; we play instruments, we sing, we dance, we tell stories. She watches but doesn’t take part, although the Rom Baro told me that she was a fine dancer. For the first time in many years, I feel happy, because I’ve had the chance to prepare a ritual for my daughter and to celebrate with her the miracle of the two of us being together, alive and healthy and immersed in the love of the Great Mother.