Charles de Lint - Mulengro.pdf

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MULENGRO
MULENGRO
MULENGRO
A ROMANY TALE
by Charles de Lint
for
Charles R. Saunders who got the ball rolling
Andrew J. Offutt who pushed it a little further
and for those folks
who bounced it back and forth
a few times:
Barry Blair
Roger Camm
John Charette
Larry Dickison
Ronald Grossey
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MULENGRO
Loay Hall
Richard Hall
Gordon Linzner
“ Far and near as fool’s fire,
they come glittering through the gloom.
Their tongues as strong and nimble,
as would bind the looms of luck… ”
—from “The Road the Gypsies Go”
by Robin Williamson
“ The boshom engro kils, he kils,
The tawnie juva gils, she gils
A puro Romano gillie,
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MULENGRO
Now shoon the Romano gillie .”
—traditional Lowara
Romany refrain
[The fellow with the fiddle plays, he plays,
The little lassie sings, she sings
An ancient Gypsy ditty,
Now hear the Gypsy ditty.]
PART ONE
PATTERAN
With every light another color.
—Romany description of themselves
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MULENGRO
Wagon, tent, or trailer born.
last month, last year, in far-off days;
born here or a thousand miles away,
there’s always men nearby who’ll say:
You better get born in someplace else,
So move along, get along, move along, get along!
Go! Move! Shift!
—from
“The Moving-On Song”
by Ewan MacColl
1
Janfri Yayal watched his house burn down without expression.
The two-story, wood-frame structure was beyond rescue. Flames leapt half its height into the night skies.
Smoke erupted from windows and eaves, roiling upward like a ghost escaping the doomed flesh of its
host body. A gasp came from the watching crowd as a section of roof collapsed in a shower of sparks.
The firemen pulled back, all too aware of how ineffectual their efforts were at this point. Janfri’s only
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MULENGRO
response was a nerve that twitched in his cheek.
The red light of the flames and the glare of the rotating beacons on the police cars and fire trucks
flickered across his dark skin, highlighting the strong features set in their mask of indifference. He was
oblivious to the growing crowd of thrill-seekers who jostled for position against the hastily-erected
barricades that the police had set up. He watched the home he’d known for three years burning and
remembered other fires. Not the cook and camp fires of his childhood, nor the pleasant crack and spit of
seasoned wood burning in a stone hearth. Instead his mind thrust up memories of a man set afire and the
crowd around him, jeering and laying wagers as to how long he would live. Of the wagons of his parents
and grandparents and others of their kumpania burning in the night. Of the men who wore the four-
armed symbol of the swastika and set countries alight with the same single-minded purpose with which
they burned Gypsy wagons.
But there were no swastikas here. It was another symbol that had erased the expression from Janfri’s
features. He had seen it on the wall of his home before the flames and smoke took it from his sight—a
scrawl of black paint that was meaningless to the Gaje, the non-Gypsies, but that he understood with a
bleak emptiness. It meant marhime. Ceremonially defiled. Unclean. It was a message from another Rom
to him that there was no welcome among the Gypsies for a Rom who had become too Gaje. And yet,
though he understood, he could not believe that one of his people could have done such a thing. Such a
display of violence was not the way of the Rom. One who was marhime was not tolerated in the
company ophral, the true Rom. He was ostracized from every facet of Rom society, but he was not
treated with violence. Or fire.
And yet… He had seen the symbol, the black paint with the excess liquid dripping from its lines like
drops of blood; and who else but a Rom knew that he was one of their own? Who else but a Rom would
know the secret patrin and defile the wall of his home with it?
“Jesus, John,” a voice said in hushed tones at his side. “You’ve lost everything.”
Janfri’s companion knew him as John Owczarek—one of Janfri’s Gaje names. Like all Gypsies, Janfri
used and discarded names as a Gajo might a suit of clothes. Only the other Rom of his kumpania knew
him as Janfri la Yayal—Janfri son of Yayal—and they were most likely to call him by his nickname, o
Boshbaro, “the Big Fiddle,” for his skill on the instrument that was at this moment tucked under his arm,
forgotten. To Rom who didn’t know him as well he was simply Boshengro, “the fellow who plays the
fiddle.”
“I sure as hell hope you’ve got enough insurance to cover it,” Tom Shaw added. He glanced at Janfri’s
face, puzzled by his friend’s lack of emotion. It had to be shock, he decided, because the stiff lack of
response he saw in Janfri’s features simply didn’t jibe with the man Tom knew him to be. The John
Owczarek that Tom knew was expansive in his moods, apt to gigantic joys and sorrows.
Tom stood a half head taller than his friend. He was a burly six-two, barrel-chested and meaty. Amongst
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