Being skilled in escape and evasion, great numbers of Gypsies ran away, and took refuge in the countryside that had always been so kind to them. That was when the greatest horror began; troops hunted them through the woods like animals, and shot on sight. Those who could not escape were in the hands of the Einsatzgruppen, the exterminators, and they were gassed. The Gypsies are not a numerous people, and so the statistics concerning their extermination are unimpressive, if you are impressed chiefly by numbers: there were just a few less than half a million who died thus, but when one human creature dies a whole world of hope and memory and feeling dies with him. To be robbed of the dignity of a natural death is a terrible deprivation.
It was these souls I thought of, Canadian as I am by birth, but half-Gypsy by blood, as I listened to Liszt’s three final Hungarian Rhapsodies, all in minor keys, and all speaking the melancholy defiance of a medieval people, living in a modern world, in which their inveterate criminally expresses itself in robbing clothes-lines and face-to-face cheating of gadje who want their fortunes told by a people who seem to have the old wisdom they themselves have lost in their complex world of gadjo ingenuity, where the cheats and rogueries are institutionalized.
Half a million Gypsies dead, at the command of this gadjo world; who weeps for them? I do, sometimes.
I do.
6
“So: my bad child has told you about the bomari?”
“Very little; nothing that would give me a clue to what it really is. But enough to rouse great curiosity.”
“Why do you want to know? What has it to do with you?”
“Well, Madame Laoutaro, I had better explain as briefly as I can. I am an historian, not of wars or governments, not of art or science—at least not science as people think of it now—but of beliefs. I try to recapture not simply the fact that people at one time believed something-or-other, but the reasons and the logic behind their belief. It doesn’t matter if the belief was wrong, or seems wrong to us today: it is the fact of the belief that concerns me. You see, I don’t think people are foolish and believe wholly stupid things; they may believe what is untrue, but they have a need to believe the untruth—it fills a gap in the fabric of what they want to know, or think they ought to know. We often throw such beliefs aside without having truly understood them. If an army is approaching on foot nowadays, the information reaches us by radio, or perhaps by army telephone; but long ago every army had men who could hear the approach of an enemy by putting their heads to the ground. That wouldn’t do now, because armies move faster, and we attack them before we can see them, but it worked very well for several thousand years. That is a simple example; I don’t want to bore you with complexities. But the kind of sensitivity that made it possible for a man to hear an army marching several miles away without any kind of artificial aid has almost disappeared from the earth. The recognition of oneself as a part of nature, and reliance on natural things, are disappearing for hundreds of millions of people who do not know that anything is being lost. I am not digging into such things because I think the old ways are necessarily better than the new ways, but I think there may be some of the old ways that we would be wise to look into before all knowledge of them disappears from the earth—the knowledge and the kind of thinking that lay behind it. And the little I have heard about your bomari suggests that it may be very important in my research. Do I make any sense to you?”
To my astonishment, Mamusia nodded. “Good sense indeed,” she said.
“Can I persuade you to talk to me about it?”
“I have to be careful; secrets are serious things.”
“I understand that perfectly. I assure you that I am not here as a snooper. You and I understand the importance of secrets, Madame Laoutaro.”
“Bring tea, Maria,” said Mamusia, and I knew that much, perhaps everything, had been gained. This was Hollier at his best. His honesty and seriousness were persuasive, even to my suspicious Mother. And her capacity to understand was far beyond what I had expected. Children often underestimate what their parents can grasp.
As I made the scalding strong tea which Mamusia wanted, and was more appropriate to this meeting than any merely social brew, I could hear her and Hollier talking together confidentially. In transcribing their conversation I shall not attempt to reproduce Mamusia’s version of English literally, because it would be wearisome to read and a waste of time. Besides, it would appear to diminish her dignity, which suffered not at all. When I returned, she was apparently putting Hollier on oath. “Never, never to tell this for money; you understand?”
“Completely. I don’t work for money, Madame, though I have to have money to live.”
“No, no, you work to understand the world; the whole world, not just the world of little Here and little Now, and that means secrets, eh?”
“Not a doubt of it.”
“Secrets are the blood of life. Every big thing is a secret, even when you know it, because you never know all of it. If you can know everything about anything, it is not worth knowing.”
“Finely said, Madame.”
“Then swear: swear on your Mother’s grave.”
“She has no grave; she lives about a mile from here.”
“Then swear on her womb. Swear on the womb that bore you, and the breasts you sucked.”
Hollier rose splendidly to this very un-Canadian request. “I swear most solemnly by the womb that bore me, and the breasts that gave me suck, that I shall never reveal what you tell me for gain or for any unworthy reason, whatever it might do for me.”
“Maria, I think I heard Miss Gretser fall; there was a thump upstairs a minute ago. See that she is all right.”
Damn! But much depended on my obedience, so off I went, and found Miss Gretser in as good a state as might be expected, lying on her bed with old Azor the poodle, eating stuffed dates, her favourite indulgence. When I returned something had happened to solemnize the oath, but on what Hollier had sworn, apart from the organs of his Mother stipulated, I never knew. Mamusia settled herself on the sofa, prepared to talk.
“My name, you see on the door outside, is Laoutaro; my husband, Niemcewicz-Theotoky, is dead, God rest him, and I have gone back to my family name. Why? Because it tells what I am. It means luthier; you understand luthier?”
“A maker of violins?”
“Maker, mender, lover, mother, bondwoman of violins and all the viol family. The Gypsies I come from held that work as their great craft, and every craft means secrets. It is men’s work, but my Father taught me because he sensed a special aptitude in me, and my brother Yerko wanted to be a smith—you know?—work in fine metals and especially copper in the best Gypsy style, and he was so good at it that it would have been a black sin to stop him. Besides, we luthiers needed him, for a reason you shall know in good time. I learned to be a luthier from my Father, who learned from his Father, and so back and back. We were the best. Listen to this—spit in my mouth if I lie—Ysaye never allowed anybody but my Grandfather to touch his violins—the great Eugene Ysaye. I learned everything.”
“A very great art, indeed.”
“To make violins, you mean? It’s more than that. It’s keeping violins alive. Who wants a new violin? A child. You make half-size and quarter-size for children, yes, but the big artist doesn’t want a new fiddle; he wants an old one. But old fiddles are like old people, they get cranky, and have to be coaxed, and sent to the spa, and have beauty treatments and all that.”
“Is repairing your chief work, then?”
“Repairing? Oh yes, I do that in the ordinary way. But it goes beyond repairing. It means resting; it means restoring youth. Do you know what a wolf is?”