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"How strange it is to talk to you just as if--as if you were like everyone else."
"I am like everyone else!” he burst out angrily. “Inside, I am just like everyone else! Why should that seem so strange?"
Duchina stared at him for a second, her dark eyes narrowed, and suddenly tossed her head. “Think what you like, chava. You’re a devil’s child.” Coolly now, regaining ground from her earlier surprise, she appraised him. “Or at the very least, cursed. No one has a face like that and good luck both at the same time.”
Erik grit his teeth—and steadfastly turned away. She had no idea what he was talking about, and upon reflection, he couldn’t really blame her. Who that believed in any almighty power could believe him anything but cursed? If God, or Del, or Whoever It Was, had seen fit to give him such a visage, then something must really be wrong with him—as she so astutely pointed out. His transcendental realization that he could overcome his lust was dimmed by the fact that he might never overcome his desire for a simple human connection, and that he might even be denied that, forever.
“And you talk funny,” she said suddenly. “Like a little Gajo prince. Tell me, where were you before this?” Her air was imperious, as if she was not a bit afraid now. Abruptly, he knew more certainly what he was dealing with. He was already in the habit of doing that, sorting people into categories, like a jaded old man who is too tired to know new people. There were those who were afraid of him and stayed away, those who were afraid of him and morbidly fascinated by him, some to the point of falling under his control. There were those who were afraid of him and petulantly tried to control him because their own fear scared them—that had been his mother. That was Javert. That was Duchina. And he had yet to meet a person who was completely unafraid of him.
“Come now, tell,” she commanded impatiently. “I hardly believe you were hatched out of lizard’s egg like they say, if you don’t ride a dragon either.”
He felt his temper flare, and for a moment, Erik was tempted to show her that he could hurt people, although several minutes earlier he had assured her that he never did. He leashed his anger, but he hadn’t gained control enough to subdue it completely. “And I hadn’t believed the rumor that the Romany were children of Satan and a random Gypsy woman until you started talking,” he spat.
Duchina froze. And slowly, she began to laugh. “Maw! I take it back! You are not a white man. You have a Romany tongue in you!”
She was looking at him and laughing at him, but not in the way that was intensely riddled with ridicule, which seemed to be the only sort of laughter he had ever provoked before. Defensively, he muttered, “At least there’s something inside me you admit is just like everybody else’s.”
This caused her to laugh even more. “How long have you been here? Don’t you know a Romany tongue isn’t like anyone else’s?” She paused and peered at him. “Well, chava, of course you don’t know. You’re too young.” And then she positively cackled.
Erik frowned, suddenly ill at ease. He realized with an abrupt thread of fear that she did not fit into his category so neatly as he had thought. He had rarely had a conversation with any of the Gypsies for this long, much less a conversation such as this, almost . . . civil, despite that she had called him a devil’s child earlier. She had done it matter-of-factly, he realized now, not jeeringly. And she had just implied in the very ribald, Gypsy way that he was not party to certain . . . “knowledge” . . . not because he was so hopelessly revolting, but because he was merely too young. It was almost as if she thought that in the future he would know the things a tongue could do . . . and he found his gaze wandering uncontrollably to her mouth. He shut the thought off with an almost audible click.
Still laughing silently at her own joke, or perhaps, now, at the obvious direction of his eyes—had she seen?—Duchina regarded him curiously. He met her gaze stonily, on guard, realizing suddenly that he had no idea what she would do next. Blinking, she met the tension in his eyes and let the moment build. Then she quirked a brow, flicked her hand, and said, “You’re far too serious, even for a corpse. It’s bad luck, you know.”
Erik remained stiffly staring at her for a moment, and then partially turned away. “You shouldn’t be out here alone,” he said at last, his voice cold. “They will come looking for you.” He instinctively moved back to offer her his hand, as he had been taught was appropriate to a lady, then paused. She had screamed at the sight of him and fainted at his touch. Then she had proceeded to call him derisively: boy, devil-child, and corpse. She couldn’t very well want his hand. Bitterly, he wondered why anyone had bothered to teach him how to treat a lady, when there would never be a lady who knew how to treat him. Twice as bitterly, he wondered what it was in him that made him desire pain, that made him sure that he would give his hand to this snide and cruel Gypsy-girl anyway, just because he longed to be touched so very badly.
“They must not find you here,” he said simply, and held his hand out. She looked at it, and then looked down at her wrapped ankle, shuddering, obviously remembering the feel of his touch. Slowly, his fingers furled themselves back into each other, and his hand fell away. The look in his eyes remained unmoved.
“You’re hands are very cold,” she said abruptly, still sitting in the pool of her colorful skirt on the ground. “I didn’t expect them to be. That’s why I fainted.”
He cocked his head, regarding her. “Forgive me,” he said stiffly.
“Never mind about that,” she said carelessly, more intent on some other purpose. “Why are they? Why are they cold like that? Do you commune with the spirits?”
Erik gave a fluid little shrug. “No.”
“But why are they like that? There must be some reason,” she persisted.
“They’ve always been,” Erik said sharply, and turned away a fraction, allowing his eyes to close in a weak moment of memory: ‘Get away from me! Don’t touch me, Erik, don’t ever touch me!’ Then to hush Mademoiselle Perrault’s protests, in a disgusted mutter: ‘The child’s hands feel like death!’ “Why aren’t you at the wedding feast?” he asked abruptly, more harshly than perhaps he should have. “Are you meeting a lover?” he demanded. “A gorgio lover?”
Suddenly, Duchina smiled, tossing her head. “And what if I am?”
Erik shrugged. “Your father will beat you and drive you from the camp when he finds out.” His voice was careless, but something savage in him was pleased; he wanted to hurt her somehow, for reminding him of his mother in that way.
Duchina pursed her lips and tilted her head to one side. Suddenly, she looked up at him with an expression he couldn’t identify—neither fear nor loathing nor anger. She seemed almost to be appealing him—and then abruptly, she was. “If he finds out,” she said, and her voice was arch and light, as if she was making a joke, but her eyes betrayed her.
No one had ever in his life appealed to his trust before. It abruptly made him uncomfortable. She was asking him to tell no one. Of course he wouldn’t if she wished it; he had no reason to betray her. What disturbed him was that she thought he could be trusted at all, just as if he was another human being. “Where is your lover?” he demanded, to cover his sudden uncertainty. “Why has he left you here alone? What’s his stake in it?”
“Maw,” she exclaimed, in a hearty expression of disgust. “He promised to marry me, that Spanish pig . . . They’re right about gorgios, filthy lying gorgios! May the devil rot him! I hope his manhood shrivels and drops off on his wedding night!” As if sensing his sudden embarrassment, she grinned at him maliciously. “Would you be any help with that, chava? I hear you’re good with spells and potions.”
Erik’s jaw dropped a little. Though the Gypsy community had come to accept his abilities as a makeshift apothecary, they never solicited him. On more than one occasion he had discovered someone was deathly ill only by the slant of people’s eyes around the fires, retina resting on him and then hastily slipping away. No one actually had the courage to ask for his services. And here was this girl, flippantly asking him to make a spell to make her lover’s manhood shrivel. “Never mind about that,” she said after a moment, and then held out her hand.
Uncomprehendingly, Erik grasped it, and helped to steady her as she stood. His hand pressed into the softness of her back; her hair brushed against him; he could abruptly smell her, and it was too much. It had been so long since any human contact, and she was so very warm. He wondered if there was a sick, sad day in his future when he would find Javert’s beating pleasurable merely because someone was touching him, acknowledging the fact that he existed. He hoped he died and burned in Hell first.
Hastily jerking away, he found that Duchina still clutched his fingers. “You won’t tell my father, will you?” she asked, and her voice, for the first time in their conversation so far, was earnest, open. “Please?” Involuntarily, he glanced down at the contact of their hands, her slender, nut-brown fingers between his long, bone-white ones. “Remember. Romany never forget to repay a favor.” And then she squeezed his hand.
She couldn’t really mean what he thought she did; somehow, she was toying with him. He pulled hastily away, so unsettled that he lashed out. “I did you one favor already,” he said harshly, and pointed at her ankle.
“Oh that? That’s nothing,” she assured him, looking down at her feet and adjusting her skirts so that her ankles could no longer be seen. “I get worse than that dancing all night. I just have to have your word that—”
“How do you know I’ll keep my word?” Erik challenged her, defensive again to hide the fact that idea that anyone could think his word could mean something meant so much to him.
Suddenly, Duchina grinned, a dark dusky smile that showed bright teeth. “You have a Romany tongue, chava. It’s something in you that’s in us, and that’s how I know.” She leaned closer to him, as if confiding something. “And we don’t go back on our word. Not like foolish gringos who wilt on their wedding nights.” She laughed. “And don’t worry about that end of the bargain, chava; my grandmother knows all sorts of charms for bringing men down to size.” Still chuckling, she suddenly touched his hand again, a feather light touch, just to his fingers, and then her hand was gone. “Remember your promise,” she said, winked, and hobbled away before he could find it in himself to speak.
*
Erik kept the oath he hadn’t quite given, and Duchina, in her way, kept hers. She repaid him in . . . a strange currency . . . which he desperately needed. Oh, she was like the others in public; she never met his eyes and she kept her distance. He even heard her talking about him behind cupped hands, whispering with other girls her age who wondered about his father, his prowess, and whether he slept with his eyes open, insulting him carelessly to handsome young men who liked to laugh at him when they thought he couldn’t hear.
But there were nights, every week or couple days, when she slipped away from the dancing and the fires and found him, alone, as always—in the woods, generally waiting for her. And she would talk to him, speak with him, bring him the spice bread her mother baked just for her, and once or twice during a conversation, even touch his hand. After the first few times she found him and he’d heard the things she said about him—she was often the loudest, the most ribald in the jokes she made about him—he’d demanded an explanation. She’d laughed, rolled her eyes, and made fun of him. “Sometimes I forget why I am always calling you ‘boy’, and then you say things like that. What do you think they’d say to me if they thought I spoke with the devil himself? Do you think they’d still treat me the way they do?”
Erik had been thoughtful for a moment. “No.” Then: “The Devil Himself? Is that what they call me now?”
He had sounded oddly pleased, and Duchina had laughed heartily. “You know, for looking like such a revolting corpse, you certainly do think a great deal of yourself.”
And that was the long and short of Duchina. The things she said to insult him to her friends were in fact no different than the things she said to his face. She was always blunt with him, and he found it oddly reassuring. It meant, in his still adolescent reasoning, that she sought him out on these occasions not because she felt she owed him something, but because she actually enjoyed his company. He mentioned this once. In response, she’d sighed dramatically and demanded, “Why are you always making me say things you can figure out yourself? You just want attention, you brat. That’s why you have that face, so people will pay attention.”
He did not love Duchina, at least, not in the way a boy can love a girl who happens to be somewhat in his age range. She was continually saying things like this that proved she did not understand him, could not understand him, and would never bother to do so. She still did not quite regard him as a human being, though in so many more ways than others, she treated him like one. If he said something or did something that might have given her to understand that he was merely a lonely, lost boy, she put it down to the fact that he was probably possessed or at least occasionally visited by a lost soul or two.
Still, Duchina was of the careless, straight-forward nature that didn’t see why something so essentially different than herself was to be so emphatically feared; and despite her vulgar humor and cruel frankness, she had always been the sort of girl who bullied in to save the cat when some children were ignoring it, other children were watching it, and still other children were the ones skinning it alive. Perhaps that best described what he was to her: a pet that amused her, that she loved in her own extremely devoted, entirely flippant way.
Despite all this, he couldn’t help but desire her. She was not pretty. There were other girls in the Gypsy camp who set off the dusky complexion, golden play of limbs, and silky, shimmering ebony hair to perfection, but not Duchina. Her mouth was too wide and her chin was too pointed; her shoulders were too broad and her limbs were gawky. But she had a way about her that Erik could see appealing to another man, her gorgio, perhaps, or even some of the boys around camp that looked at her with hungry eyes, despite all her faults. She could be stubborn to the point of mulishness, but there was merit in never backing down; she was loud, outspoken, and almost annoying in a way that made a person feel immediately at ease with her. She flaunted convention, appalling the tradition-bound elders and amusing the children, creating for herself the freedom she desired and bringing down on her own head all the constrictions of the consequences of her rash actions. She was full of spirit was Duchina, full of laughs and fire.
He didn’t desire her for these reasons; he couldn’t. He knew that if he was ever cursed enough to fall in love it would be for a more gentle soul, someone who would be kind to him, someone too sensitive to call him names, and soft-hearted and innocent enough to appeal to the child within him that had never been given room to breath. No, he desired her simply because she was in a woman’s shape and she was the first woman he had ever known that spoke to him without evincing fear. He couldn’t help himself. She was the only one who touched him, and thousands of times, he had questioned his revelation that a man could truly and completely control a thing like lust. But he did, and in the end, it was just something he accepted. With resignation, he figured he’d probably end up wanted any woman who gave him a second glance, as so few of them ever would. As he had come to understand in those first moments seeing Duchina, unconscious and alone in the forest: lust happened like any other bodily function. Like the others, it could be controlled and quashed.
He did love her, in his own way. She was a sister. He watched her when she didn’t see to make sure she was alright, as if she was his own daughter. He obeyed her when she bossed him as if she was his mother. He behaved in her presence as if she was his only friend, and the fact of the matter is: she was. He had said that one day, much as he had ventured before to suggest that she spent time with him because she liked him. This time, she didn’t poke fun at his vanity. Instead, she had looked at him seriously. And then suddenly, out of the blue, without a flicker of expression in her earnest eyes, she’d poked him soundly between the ribs. “You’re skinny, chava. Skinny skinny skinny. Like a skeleton.”
Laughing at his confused and slightly hurt expression, she’d sighed impatiently. “Of course I like you, you skeleton, is that what you want to hear? Who else could I feed all my mother’s dung to?” And she’d begun to unwrap her scarf, full of her mother’s bread.
Surprised, Erik had raised his brows beneath his mask. He’d always thought she loved her mother’s cooking, that it was a special thing for her to give it to him. Despite her coarse words, he was not assured his assumption was wrong. Duchina was always frank, but you could never tell when she was being serious. “I’m not hungry,” he’d finally replied.
“Of course not. You never are. I’ll make you eat it if I have to. Got to get some flesh on those bones, chava! I feel like your mother. It makes me happy to watch you eat.”
He had forced himself to eat before to make a mother happy, and it had never seemed to be enough. But he ate for Duchina, and it seemed to work with her. “Hog!” she’d call him as he ate, grinning mischievously. “Soon you’ll be like Javert!”
“I’ll never be like him,” Erik had replied that time, shuddering.
Duchina had been suddenly silent. “I didn’t mean it like that,” she had said abruptly, her voice low. It was almost an apology, which, out of Duchina, was rare. There was something furtive in her expression, and then her eyes seemed to harden with a sudden courage. “I don’t like that man,” she told him decisively. “I don’t like how he treats you.”
Erik had stiffened. “Oh, I love it,” he had replied, nonchalantly, and abruptly stood and walked away. They didn’t speak of Javert after that for a long time.
*
“Take this.”
“What is it? It smells vile. You take it, chava; you’re the stick-skeleton who needs nourishment, remember?”
Erik rolled his eyes, and continued to proffer the small bottle to her. “It will help to calm the nausea,” he said at last, mildly.
“What nausea? I’m not having any nausea. Who said anything about nausea?”
“Don’t lie to me, Duchina; it’s not going to work.”
“What lie? I’m not lying. Who said anything about—oh you devil, stop staring at me like that. I don’t want your damn potions.”
Erik paused. She had not snuck off into the woods to meet him at night in nearly two weeks; the longest interval since two months ago when they had struck their odd sort of pact. He had watched her closely, and discovered that it was probably because she wasn’t feeling well. Then he had watched more closely, and discovered that she was not staying away because she was sick, but because she was trying hide her sickness. Duchina was pregnant.
Pregnant woman in the Gypsy culture were, by their very nature, unclean, no matter how chastely they went about conception. An unmarried, unpromised pregnant woman brought on marim, impurity; she was impure to the point when she would no longer be welcome to her own people at all, probably for the rest of her life. But he knew her secret. And she knew he knew.
He rolled his eyes, and with resignation, told her drolly: “This is the concoction you asked for. You know, the one for your gorgio, to . . .” Duchina was waiting, eying him. She was going to make him say it, by God. “To shrivel his manhood,” Erik finished, mustering himself up against embarrassment. “Only, you have to drink it.”
It was perfect nonsense of course, and both of them knew it. But somehow, the joke made Duchina comfortable, as he had known it would. “Oh that. In that case, good.” And she grabbed the bottle from him and downed the contents in a single swig.
His mouth fell open. “You’re supposed to drink that slowly!” he paused, looking at her with something akin to awe. “How did you even manage?”
“Amateur,” she called him, and smirked. And then abruptly began to throw up.
He instinctively moved forward, his hand suddenly on the small of her back, the other hand pulling her hair away from her face. His touch was medical, cool, and self-assured, and yet he was intensely aware that it was the first time he had touched her of his own initiative, completely sensitive to the soft feel of her hair in his hand even as she vomited four times in succession.
“You dung-slicked incompetent tad-pole fart!” she exclaimed at last, wiping her mouth. “You said it was supposed to ease the nausea!”
“Not when you drink it in a single gulp,” he replied mildly, not at all perturbed by her colorful insult. He had heard much worse from Duchina. Suddenly, he smirked. “Amateur.”
“High and mighty now, aren’t we,” she muttered. Then, quite suddenly: “thank you.” Erik merely nodded, knowing it was hard for Duchina to express gratitude, to intimate that she might need anyone, anyone at all.
He was silent for a moment, and then said finally: “I could help you. I could . . .” Erik took a breath and continued: “end it.” The idea did not disturb him, despite his hesitancy. In his opinion, such a method was a form of mercy. If someone had “ended” him in his mother’s womb he would have never had to leave her, and the short expanse of his life would have been spent in warmth, comfort, and a love that was unconscious of his appearance. He would have never had to come out to find a mother that had never wanted him.
“No!” Duchina exclaimed in horror, wrapping her arms instinctively around her lower belly. “How could you even think such a thing? You are a devil.”
She said this with such vehemence and sudden disgust, backing away from him, that he hastily tried to make up for it. He was not yet to the point when he could watch someone connected to him withdraw, without first trying to make amends. “I’m sorry,” he said simply, helplessly. “I didn’t mean . . . to . . .” I didn’t mean to make you look at me that way, my sister, look at me the way everyone else does . . . He regarded her helplessly, struck dumb by her cold silence. Duchina was never cold, not with anybody, even people she hated. Only people she feared. “What are you going to do?” he said at last, his tone dull, for lack of anything better to say.
Her gaze grew hard. “I will find a way,” she said simply, and spun on her heel and marched away.
*
For a week, Erik lived in the assurance that he had lost the only friend he had ever had. He had slipped another vial of the treatment for nausea into Dochina’s possessions, where only she would find it, with that deftness he had already acquried for slight of hand. There was a note attached in his crude writing, meant as another sort of apology, a peace offering, a sad attempt at humor: ‘Drink slowly." But Dochina ignored him, and no longer met him at night, though he waited until morning hours.
He berated himself for bringing up her pregnancy at all, for alluding to the fact that he knew, that he knew everything and could condemn her with far worse than simply her pregnancy could, with the fact that it was a gorgio’s baby . . . and yet, given the same circumstances, he would have made up the medication as he had, and also would have offered her the escape he had—because he cared for her. He was incapable of watching her suffer; his hands itched every time he saw her covertly vomitting, or knew she was secretly in pain but not showing it.
And after their conversation about it it was worse; for the first time in his life he had been given the chance to comfort another human being with physical touch, and he found that he loved the sensation and wanted to repeat it. As disgusting as the whole process of her heaving had been, he had reveled in helping her. Even more than a mother to care for him, he realized, he wanted someone to care for, and that was utterly impossible. He would never stand beside a woman and hold her hair because she was suffering the effects of bearing his child. He would never have offspring, not ever.
If there was a God, he wondered, why had He made him so intensely long for the company of other people? A family, a child . . . a wife? Even a sister, just a single sister, would have been enough, and now he had lost that too. Erik shut the thought away. He had to accept that he had not been born a hermit, that he could only endeavor to become one.
*
It was eight nights later when her hand shook him in the darkness before morning as he slept fitfully in his tent, and it was a moment later when he pulled a knife on her, and a second after that when she exlaimed in a saucy, whispered tone, "Maw, chava. You sleep awful jumpy for a corpse."
Blinking groggily, Erik made the knife disappear and sat up. He had taken to sleeping with the blade, though he had never used it and was convinced he never would. It made him feel better around Javert; it made him feel safer against the thing Javert seemed to threaten but had not yet attempted, which Erik still could not comprehend. "What are you doing here?"
She had backed away and was standing up. Now she shrugged, hooking a smile at him. "Nothing much. The others bet me you sleep with your eyes closed, but I always say dead men do it open . . ."
He looked at Duchina standing defiantly in the middle of his tent, the soft tendrils of false dawn creep under and through the black fabric of his tent and giving him more than enough light to see her by. He wondered, suddenly, why he’d considered Duchina less beautiful than the rest. She was more beautiful than all of them. Not a single woman had ever dared to enter his tent before—and Duchina had done it on a dare. It made him smile.
"I’m leaving," Duchina said suddenly, decisively.
"What?"
"Oh come on," Duchina huffed. "You’re not ugly, dead and stupid, are you?" she asked. Erik didn’t lose his smile. She had asked him that a thousand times before, whenever he happened to make her impatient. "Why do you think I’m wearing travel clothes? I’m leaving, and I’m going right now."
"You’re running away?" Erik asked, eyes widening, as he finally pushed the rest of his bedding away and stood up.
"More like swiftly walking. It’s better than waiting to get turned out in front of everyone, at any rate. I like walking. My bum wouldn’t appreaciate getting kicked."
"But maybe there’s some other way," he insisted, ignoring her flippancy and trying to subdue the dread he felt for her rising up in him. "Maybe your father won’t turn you out—"
"Maybe geese won’t fart on foggy days; maybe castrated roosters will lay rotten eggs; maybe—"
"You don’t have anywhere to go; no means, no money, no—You’ll never survive out there alone!"
"Who said anything about alone, chava?" she asked, now genuinely annoyed.
He was silent for a moment, stunned. Slowly, he ventured, "I thought you hated me. For . . . for offering what I did."
"What are you talking about? Of course I despise you. How does anyone love a dead little monster like you?"
He swallowed, and with monumental effort, forced back everything he wanted to scream at her. "I’m sorry, Duchina," he said at last.
She looked away. "I was only angry because for a second, I was tempted," she said simply. Then she glanced back at him and frowned. "What are you doing, sitting there? We’ve got places to go, boy. Get dressed. Don’t worry; I’ll turn my back. But you’d better hurry, or both our bums are going to suffer."
*
He wondered if he’d ever have the initiative to have left on his own without Duchina. The idea had crossed his mind, certainly, many times, ever since he had been taken out of the cage. But every day, every month, every year that passed, he hadn’t left the Gypsy camp for the same reason he hadn’t left in the first place: he hadn’t anywhere to go.
With Duchina it was different. The difference was simply: Duchina was a place to go.
It was mostly him that kept them alive. He refused to let her sell herself—though she offered, half-heartedly, despite the child in her—and though she danced and sang as well as any other Gypsy, these were not so marketable, and, unlike her kinsmen, she had no wares to sell. Erik, on the other hand, had many useful skills. Aside from his magic tricks and ventriloquist acts, he had an uncanny knack for scaring people out of where they picked to sleep at night, and he no compunction about stealing to feed them both. He did so frequently with a deftness that never ceased to make Duchina wonder—and Duchina was a practical girl who never took much trouble to be awed.
"Most of us are soul and body," she’d told him one night, over a leg of lamb he’d lifted and a ripe canteloupe. "But you, chava, are one or the other. I can’t figure out whether you’re a corpse sometimes or just a spirit, a black, dead one that goes around stealing gorgio pocket-watches and goat cheese."
It was an oddly philosophical comment for Duchina, but she never ceased to make him laugh. If it was him that kept them alive, it was Duchina that made life worth living. She was always complaining—"I’m hungry, chava! I’m tired of radishes and beets, chava; it’s wet here; it’s cold here; it’s too dark here chava, couldn’t you find us a better place? This kid is kicking me, the hog-spawn; when it’s born it will smell like beets; I hate it!"—and yet there was something so good natured in her whining that it lifted both of their spirits.
The only time she ever seemed sad were those fleeting moments when she placed her hand on her belly and told him, with a determinedly cheerful smile: "I’m such a shame to all the Romany, chava. Who needs them anyway?" Once she’d paused, head to one side, and grinned mischeviously, and added, "I’m going to be the slut kind of Mother Mary and have my child in stable. Do you think the asses will like to watch?"
As the weeks passed by her levity never died, but her body began to change in size and proportion; she began to walk slower; she began to need rest. "We can’t go on like this," he told her one night softly, right in her ear, though they never slept beside each other, even for warmth. He knew he’d never stopped disgusting her, physically at least, and he probably never would. It was understood between them, and he’d accepted it long ago.
He was only glad that she’d seen fit to bring him with her—in her condition, she probably needed him quite badly to survive, but the truth was, he could not convince himself of it. Duchina was too strong to go quietly; he knew beyond the shadow of a doubt that if she’d struck out on her own, she would have survived somehow on her own. No, she’d demanded he come with her because she’d hated the thought of leaving him behind at the mercy of Javert without her to protect him.
She never hesitated to say as much, either. "Fast as you are, muló, spirit-ghost, I’m just not sure you’d have survived without me around to protect you." She’d never raised a hand to protect him back at the camp, and had anyone else ever said it, Erik’s pride would have been up in arms in a moment. But Duchina liked the thought that she had saved him, and her own pride liked to think that now she was acting as his shield from the world—though he was much more hers—and he let her think it. He was too young to find being pitied insulting, and besides, Duchina’s pity was of a singular kind. At any rate, her desire to care for him precisely because no one else would was also understood between them, and he treasured that.
"Can’t go on like what?" Duchina asked, in reply to his statement.
Erik forgot he had spoken. "Like this," he answered vaguely, gesturing. They were huddled in the attic of an abandoned building; they had been there three weeks at least.
"It’s a touch gloomy; you’re right. But with some velvet tapestries and china tea-sets, it would be almost quaint, don’t you think?"
Erik pursed his lips and looked away. "When I went out today . . ." It was going to be hard to say. Very hard to say, and yet he was going to say it. For her. "I went farther than normal. Out beyond the city a good ways."
"Well, what’d you see? Don’t keep me in suspense, here, chava."
"A Romany camp," he said simply. Duchina had instinctively moved them away from the Gypsy routes, not wanting to run into any of her people, lest they see her in her shame. They had not seen any for quite some time, and Erik had thought that perhaps it was better that way. He didn’t want to lose her—not now.
She was silent for a long time. Then suddenly: "Maw. What do I care for Gypsies?"
He regarded her steadily. She was now eight months pregnant, and the going for a long time now had been slow. "You need people to take care of you and warm places to sleep. Not this," he said, more sharply than he meant to, flicking his hand to indicate the attic around them. Then, quietly, the root of the matter: "I don’t know anything about giving birth." He swallowed. "I won’t see you harmed."
"And what makes you think that kumpania will want me? I left my own, remember? Because they didn’t want me." Duchina was laughing, but he could hear the hurt in her voice. "Face it, chava, you and I are alone. No one in the world wants a corpse like you." More softly: "No one in the world wants impurity like me."
"They wouldn’t have to know," he insisted. "You could tell them your husband died. You got separated from your camp. They wouldn’t have to know."
"They would know," she said levelly. "My people are not dumb idiots like you always are."
Erik knew he should argue. He should keep on wearing her down until she went. He should tie her up and leave her at the Gypsy camp himself if she resisted. But somehow, he knew he could never do it. The Gypsy camp might not accept Duchina—but then again, they might. They would never accept the likes of Erik though—not until they put him in a cage first. And Erik was still a child, for all his resourcefulness. He didn’t think he could stand a cage again, and he wouldn’t even try. If Duchina went back to the Gypsies, he would not go with her.
As much as he loved her, as much as he feared for her, he couldn’t bear that thought. He couldn’t bear their time together ending. He couldn’t bear being alone in the world, all over again.
*
In the end, he forced himself to bear it.
Some time after their conversation in the attic, she’d abruptly asked him what the camp he had seen was like. She’d asked him to describe it to her. "Just because I’m curious. I don’t want them," she assured him hurriedly. "I don’t need them. I just miss the dung-infested Gypsy smell."
She masked it completely, but he had heard it all the same. She missed her people—of course she did; he had known that all along. But he had believed that she didn’t want to return to them because she was unwilling to abase herself; she was unwilling to come crawling back when she had so determinedly turned her back on them. She was very proud, and he knew she loved her freedom. She’d hated the convention and harsh traditions of her people. And yet, he heard in her voice that day the truth of it: she’d be willing to face it. She’d give up her pride, her freedom, even her own spirited, high-strung will, for the comfort and familiarity of her people.
What she wouldn’t give up was him.
He heard it in the way she had so quickly reassured him, as if she understood his anxiety and sensed he feared her desertion. And so she stayed in poverty, in homelessness, in this stinking, rat-filled attic—for him.
It touched him as nothing else could. Duchina was not the sort of person to give of herself in that way, he knew. She’d told him once that she thought self-sacrifice was vile, that if someone wanted you to sacrifice yourself for them then they were most likely evil, and if they didn’t want you to but you wanted to for them, then they were just bad luck and you were just stupid.
"Do what you want, Erik," she’d said one day, quite fiercely. They had been walking through the streets at night, in an area that had been relatively unpopulated before-hand, but then was filled with children playing ball. He’d wanted to go around. "Don’t sacrifice for them; they don’t count. Even if they count, it doesn’t matter. You don’t think I loved my father, Erik? Well, it wasn’t going to stop me from doing what I wanted." And she’d marched forward and thrown their fruit—their only dinner that night, he’d mentioned later—in the children’s faces when they proceeded to point and whisper at Erik’s mask.
But Erik made his decision quite quickly after he’d realized Duchina’s reasons for refusing to rejoin her people. There really was no option. At last, he’d learned what love was: and knew it had something to do with the fact that he could live alone forever, if he knew the only person he’d ever loved was safe and happy, even if that meant without him.
Instead of describing the camp to her, like she’d asked, he’d said, "It’s indescribable, really." He’d faked a yawn at her disappointed face. "I’ll take you there tomorrow if you’d like."
Eventually she’d nodded, and now that they were here, he could see the longing on her face. The camp was in the distance, fires already lighted. They could see people dancing through the smoke, tents, and trees. "Why did you bring me here?" she demanded suddenly, whirling on him.
He shrugged. "You wanted to know what the camp was like."
Duchina narrowed her eyes, and sudden venom was in her voice. "You’re lying, chava." She swallowed and looked back at the camp. "You brought me here to leave me."
"Yes," was all he said.
"Why? I’m such a whale now you can’t stand to look at me, you bag of bones, is that it?" It was a joke, but Duchina was not smiling. "Well, I won’t let you. You’re stuck with me. You’re stuck with me for a good long time. And when I have this hog-spawn, I’ll give you some of my hips and thighs. You always did need some fat on you. Do you hear me chava? I won’t let you go out in the world alone!"
Quickly, he turned away. Hearing that admission from her lips was enough to make sudden tears spring to his eyes, and he didn’t want her to see. He’d misjudged Duchina. All this time, he had thought he was taking care of her, providing for her. He’d tolerated her idea that she had saved him and was protecting him; it had even ironically amused him. He realized now that that was exactly what Duchina had been doing. Their were forms of protection more important than food and shelter. She had known it—and planned to stick to it, no matter what. "You won’t be able to catch me," he said finally, his voice dull. "You’ll run, perhaps, but I’ll be faster. And even if you refuse to turn to the Romany, you’ll collapse soon from chasing me, and they will find you anyway."
That silenced her for a moment—something he’d never been able to do to her in the past. Then, her voice quite light, she said: "What? I’m hurt, chava. You don’t want my whale-fat?"
His laugh was half a sob. "You had best go, Duchina," he said at last, when he had control of his voice. "While I can still let you."
She was silent for a long while. "You’re morbid, you know that? You’re very serious and morbid, and if you leave me I’m going to sit up every night worrying about my chava, thinking about how serious and morbid he is." He was silent, and she went on, in that same light, detatched tone. "Do you know what you need? You need a woman. You need a very good lay, an extremely good lay, and then you wouldn’t be so morbid."
He glanced at her, aghast. She’d always been crude, but these coarse words hurt. She knew very well the reason he would never—never have a . . . and she was going on, in that same tone, as if she was laughing at him. "It’d perk you up a little bit. Make you look alive, instead of the corpse you are."
Then suddenly, she looked away. There was a long, tense moment, and then her voice was very low, and strained. "I am a very good lay, Erik," she said simply, and then was silent.
The enormity of what she was offering struck him only after a moment, and then quite suddenly. He felt himself floundering, as if someone had just dumped a bucket of ice water over his head and he was still registering the cold, gasping for air.
She was going to go, he could tell. She was going to enter that Gypsy camp and leave him, if only because she believed he would leave her first, to force her to get the proper care she needed. What she was offering now, with that single, intensely risque comment, was . . . a parting gift, as obscene as it sounded. But it did not sound obscene to them. The knew the implications behind her proposition.
She had phrased her words in her usual jesting, foul language because she didn’t know how else to do it. They both knew it was not an offer of gratitude on her part. They were both proud, and she would have never offered him a payment like that; it would have been an insult to their friendship. The heart of the matter was that she loved him like a brother, and they both knew that despite the fact that he was very, very young, he would probably never be given this chance again.
But he could see, though she tried to hide it, that she did not want this herself, and the truth was that the idea of it disgusted her, even frightened her, friends though they had become. He had thought his self-sacrifice was complete. He could see now that it had only just begun.
He looked away, and, with effort, said steadily: "No. No, Duchina, that will not be necessary." His comment was cool and simple.
For a while she was silent, and they both knew it was to hide her secret relief. Finally, her voice issued from the darkness and quiet of the wood. "It means everything to have known you," she told him quietly. "Good-bye, prala." He could hear a stick cracking as she turned away.
"Prala?"
"It means ‘brother’, you nit-wit."
"I know; it’s just that . . ." He spoke with effort, watching the lovely figure of her in the darkness. His voice, when he spoke again, was wistful. "I didn’t know you called me that in your heart."
"Are you ugly, dead, and stupid?" she said, her voice suddenly filled with all the annoyance of old. And then she stepped toward him, ripped of his mask before he knew she was about to do it, and kissed him soundly on the cheek. "And don’t forget that. Don’t ever forget," she told him. "In your deepest darkest hour—and there will be darker hours than this, trust me, prala—you are not alone. You have a sister in the world who loves you. Someday when you are dying of a broken heart—and I have no doubt you will someday, with a heart like yours—don’t forget that. You are not alone." And then she walked away, and the darkness enveloped him and his tears.
But he was not alone.