The Witch of Portobello Read online

  "Don't do that," I said. "Look across the street at that woman, the one with cruel eyes. She's put the girl there purely in order to--"

  "I don't care."

  She took out a few coins. I grabbed her hand.

  "Let's buy her something to eat. That would be more useful."

  I asked the little girl to go with us to a bar and bought her a sandwich. The little girl smiled and thanked me. The eyes of the woman across the street seemed to glitter with hatred, but for the first time, the gray eyes of the young woman walking at my side looked at me with respect.

  "What were you saying?" she asked.

  "It doesn't matter. Do you know what happened to you a few moments ago? You went into the same trance that your dancing provokes."

  "No, you're wrong."

  "I'm right. Something touched your unconscious mind. Perhaps you saw yourself as you would have been if you hadn't been adopted--begging in the street. At that moment, your brain stopped reacting. Your spirit left you and traveled down to hell to meet the demons from your past. Because of that, you didn't notice the woman across the street--you were in a trance, a disorganized, chaotic trance that was driving you to do something that was good in theory, but, in practice, pointless. As if you were--"

  "In the blank space between the letters. In the moment when a note of music ends and the next has not yet begun."

  "Exactly. And such a trance can be dangerous."

  I almost said: "It's the kind of trance provoked by fear. It paralyzes the person, leaves them unable to react; the body doesn't respond, the soul is no longer there. You were terrified by everything that could have happened to you had fate not placed your parents in your path." But she had put her suitcases down on the ground and was standing in front of me.

  "Who are you? Why are you saying all this?"

  "As a doctor, I'm known as Deidre O'Neill. Pleased to meet you, and what's your name?"

  "Athena. Although according to my passport I'm Sherine Khalil."

  "Who gave you the name Athena?"

  "No one important. But I didn't ask you for your name, I asked who you are and why you spoke to me. And why I felt the same need to talk to you. Was it just because we were the only two women in that cafe? I don't think so. And you're saying things to me that make sense of my life."

  She picked up her bags again, and we continued walking toward the bus station.

  "I have another name too--Edda. But it wasn't chosen by chance, nor do I believe it was chance that brought us together."

  Before us was the entrance to the bus station, with various people going in and out--soldiers in uniform, farmers, pretty women dressed as if they were still living in the 1950s.

  "If it wasn't chance, what was it?"

  She had another half an hour before her bus left, and I could have said: "It was the Mother. Some chosen spirits emit a special light and are drawn to one another, and you--Sherine or Athena--are one of those spirits, but you need to work very hard to use that energy to your advantage."

  I could have explained that she was following the classic path of the witch, who, through her individual persona, seeks contact with the upper and lower world but always ends up destroying her own life--she serves others, gives out energy, but receives nothing in return.

  I could have explained that although all paths are different, there is always a point when people come together, celebrate together, discuss their difficulties, and prepare themselves for the Rebirth of the Mother. I could have said that contact with the Divine Light is the greatest reality a human being can experience, and yet, in my tradition, that contact cannot be made alone, because we've suffered centuries of persecution, and this has taught us many things.

  "Would you like to have a coffee while I wait for the bus?"

  No, I did not. I would only end up saying things that might, at that stage, be misinterpreted.

  "Certain people have been very important in my life," she went on. "My landlord, for example, or the calligrapher I met in the desert near Dubai. Who knows, you might have things to say to me that I can share with them, and repay them for all they've taught me."

  So she had already had teachers in her life--excellent! Her spirit was ripe. All she needed was to continue her training, otherwise she would end up losing all she had achieved. But was I the right person?

  I asked the Mother to inspire me, to tell me what to do. I got no answer, which did not surprise me. She always behaves like that when it's up to me to take responsibility for a decision.

  I gave Athena my business card and asked her for hers. She gave me an address in Dubai, a country I would have been unable to find on the map.

  I decided to try making a joke, to test her out a little more. "Isn't it a bit of a coincidence that three English people should meet in a cafe in Bucharest?"

  "Well, from your card I see that you're Scottish. The man I met apparently works in England, but I don't know anything else about him." She took a deep breath. "And I'm...Romanian."

  I gave an excuse and said that I had to rush back to the hotel and pack my bags.

  Now she knew where to find me. If it was written that we would meet again, we would. The important thing is to allow fate to intervene in our lives and to decide what is best for everyone.

  VOSHO "BUSHALO," SIXTY-FIVE, RESTAURANT OWNER

  These Europeans come here thinking they know everything, thinking they deserve the very best treatment, that they have the right to bombard us with questions that we're obliged to answer. On the other hand, they think that by giving us some tricksy name, like "travelers" or "Roma," they can put right the many wrongs they've done us in the past.

  Why can't they just call us gypsies and put an end to all the stories that make us look as if we were cursed in the eyes of the world? They accuse us of being the fruit of the illicit union between a woman and the Devil himself. They say that one of us forged the nails that fixed Christ to the cross, that mothers should be careful when our caravans come near, because we steal children and enslave them.

  And because of this there have been frequent massacres throughout history; in the Middle Ages we were hunted as witches; for centuries our testimony wasn't even accepted in the German courts. I was born before the Nazi wind swept through Europe and I saw my father marched off to a concentration camp in Poland, with a humiliating black triangle sewn to his clothes. Of the five-hundred-thousand gypsies sent for slave labor, only five-thousand survived to tell the tale.

  And no one, absolutely no one, wants to hear about this.

  Right up until last year, our culture, religion, and language were banned in this godforsaken part of the world, where most of the tribes decided to settle. If you asked anyone in the city what they thought of gypsies, their immediate response would be: "They're all thieves." However hard we try to lead normal lives by ceasing our eternal wanderings and living in places where we're easily identifiable, the racism continues. Our children are forced to sit at the back of the class, and not a week goes by without someone insulting them.

  Then people complain that we don't give straight answers, that we try to disguise ourselves, that we never openly admit our origins. Why would we do that? Everyone knows what a gypsy looks like, and everyone knows how to "protect" themselves from our "curses."

  When a stuck-up, intellectual young woman appears, smiling and claiming to be part of our culture and our race, I'm immediately on my guard. She might have been sent by the Securitate, the secret police who work for that mad dictator--the Conducator, the Genius of the Carpathians, the Leader. They say he was put on trial and shot, but I don't believe it. His son may have disappeared from the scene for the moment, but he's still a powerful figure in these parts.

  The young woman insists; she smiles, as if she were saying something highly amusing, and tells me that her mother is a gypsy and that she'd like to find her. She knows her full name. How could she obtain such information without the help of the Securitate?

  It's best not to get on the wr
ong side of people who have government contacts. I tell her that I know nothing, that I'm just a gypsy who's decided to lead an honest life, but she won't listen: she wants to find her mother. I know who her mother is, and I know too that more than twenty years ago, she had a child she gave up to an orphanage that she never heard from again. We had to take her mother in because a blacksmith who thought he was the master of the universe insisted on it. But who can guarantee that this intellectual young woman standing before me really is Liliana's daughter? Before trying to find out who her mother is, she should at least respect some of our customs and not turn up dressed in red if it's not her wedding day. She ought to wear longer skirts as well, so as not to arouse men's lust. And she should be more respectful.

  If I speak of her now in the present tense, it's because for those who travel, time does not exist, only space. We came from far away, some say from India, others from Egypt, but the fact is that we carry the past with us as if it has all just happened. And the persecutions continue.

  The young woman is trying to be nice and to show that she knows about our culture, when that doesn't matter at all. After all, she should know about our traditions.

  "In town I was told that you're a Rom Baro, a tribal leader. Before I came here, I learned a lot about our history--"

  "Not 'our,' please. It's my history, the history of my wife, my children, my tribe. You're a European. You were never stoned in the street as I was when I was five years old."

  "I think the situation is getting better."

  "The situation is always getting better, then it immediately gets worse."

  But she keeps smiling. She orders a whiskey. One of our women would never do that.

  If she'd come in here just to have a drink or look for company, I'd treat her like any other customer. I've learned to be friendly, attentive, discreet, because my business depends on that. When my customers want to know more about the gypsies, I offer them a few curious facts, tell them to listen to the group who'll be playing later on, make a few remarks about our culture, and then they leave with the impression that they know everything about us.

  But this young woman isn't just another tourist: she says she belongs to our race.

  She again shows me the certificate she got from the government. I can believe that the government kills, steals, and lies, but it wouldn't risk handing out false certificates, and so she really must be Liliana's daughter, because the certificate gives her full name and address. I learned from the television that the Genius of the Carpathians, the Father of the People, our Conducator, the one who left us to starve while he exported all our food, the one who lived in palaces and used gold-plated cutlery while the people were dying of starvation, that same man and his wretched wife used to get the Securitate to trawl the orphanages, selecting babies to be trained as state assassins.

  They only ever took boys, though, never girls. Perhaps she really is Liliana's daughter.

  I look at the certificate once more and wonder whether or not I should tell her where her mother is. Liliana deserves to meet this intellectual, claiming to be "one of us." Liliana deserves to look this woman in the eye. I think she suffered enough when she betrayed her people, slept with a gadje [Editor's note: foreigner], and shamed her parents. Perhaps the moment has come to end her hell, for her to see that her daughter survived, got rich, and might even be able to help her out of the poverty she lives in.

  Perhaps this young woman will pay me for this information; perhaps it'll be of some advantage to our tribe, because we're living in confusing times. Everyone's saying that the Genius of the Carpathians is dead, and they even show photos of his execution, but who knows, he could come back tomorrow, and it'll all turn out to have been a clever trick on his part to find out who really was on his side and who was prepared to betray him.

  The musicians will start playing soon, so I'd better talk business.

  "I know where you can find this woman. I can take you to her." I adopt a friendlier tone of voice. "But I think that information is worth something."

  "I was prepared for that," she says, holding out a much larger sum of money than I was going to ask for.

  "That's not even enough for the taxi fare."

  "I'll pay you the same amount again when I reach my destination."

  And I sense that, for the first time, she feels uncertain. She suddenly seems afraid of what she's about to do. I grab the money she's placed on the counter.

  "I'll take you to see Liliana tomorrow."

  Her hands are trembling. She orders another whiskey, but suddenly a man comes into the bar, sees her, blushes scarlet, and comes straight over to her. I gather that they only met yesterday, and yet here they are, talking as if they were old friends. His eyes are full of desire. She's perfectly aware of this and encourages him. The man orders a bottle of wine, and the two sit down at a table, and it's as if she's forgotten all about her mother.

  However, I want the other half of that money. When I serve them their drinks, I tell her I'll be at her hotel at ten o'clock in the morning.

  HERON RYAN, JOURNALIST

  Immediately after the first glass of wine, she told me, unprompted, that she had a boyfriend who worked for Scotland Yard. It was a lie, of course. She must have read the look in my eyes, and this was her way of keeping me at a distance.

  I told her that I had a girlfriend, which made us even.

  Ten minutes after the music had started, she stood up. We had said very little--she asked no questions about my research into vampires, and we exchanged only generalities: our impressions of the city, complaints about the state of the roads. But what I saw next--or, rather, what everyone in the restaurant saw--was a goddess revealing herself in all her glory, a priestess invoking angels and demons.

  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.

&n
bsp; "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.