Divisadero - Michael Ondaatje [64]
The thief would disappear early in the mornings, before anyone was awake, returning at noon with berries, fresh herbs, sometimes a hare, all rescued, as he called the act, from the surrounding fields. Coming over a rise, they would first smell the smoke of a fire and then see him beside it, cooking by the edge of the road. He had a rough grey stubble that made him appear ponderous, as if used to lazy movement, but he could disappear in an instant or arrive just as quickly, providing the alfresco lunch. Lucien therefore felt he himself should be responsible for other meals—first of all, beverage and fig jam at four in the afternoon, and then dinner, to be purchased at an inn in one of the villages they passed through.
The cart would halt whenever Lucien smelled the possibility of an available house. He spoke with mailmen and carpenters as to where there might be an abandoned farmhouse for sale. Meanwhile the thief’s young wife would go off on the spare horse, the boy riding behind her, to search along the side roads for a possible settlement for her family. The three of them were travellers, Gypsies, gitans, who had left their caravan in the south and were coming north to find a new home. They might, he knew, at any moment curl off and decide to remain in some anonymous field. Already Lucien felt he would miss them. He was enjoying the man’s company, as well as the woman’s singing in the mornings. Which had come first, he asked her, her name, which was Aria, or her pleasure in singing? ‘Who knows,’ the husband said, ‘She’s Romani, they have so many names. The secret name, which is never used but is her truest name, which only her mother knows, that’s hidden to confuse supernatural spirits—it keeps the true identity of the child from them. And the second name, which is a Roma name, is usually used only by them. And that one is Aria.’
And your name, then? Lucien asked.
I am not Roma, the husband said. I have simply attached myself to her, I live in her world. I am not important.
The whole family felt half dreamt, especially in the way each of them wandered off whimsically, the man in the morning, the woman and the boy in the afternoon. Sometimes Lucien would be in front, guiding the horse, talking about something, and would realize all at once that there was no one else with him. They had slipped off, as if from a boat, and were swimming towards those poplars.
No, I don’t have a name, a permanent name, the husband said, when asked again. I know the Roma language, enough to survive, but … His sentences were halfhearted, unpersuasive. He appeared uncertain of all things, and was content to reside in a state as humble as a sparrow. The boy, whose name was Rafael, longed for information and practical lessons and constantly asked the opinions of the old writer. Because of this, Lucien assumed there might be a jealousy from the father, but the man turned out to be happiest listening to their discussions, while pretending to take none of them in.
From the beginning each man regarded the other almost as a mirror. Two or three times a day one would catch the gaze of the other. Even Aria recognized the echo between them. They had a similar build, and the writer, in spite of his supposed fame, had a hesitancy that made him as guarded as this shyest of thieves. If the man was a thief. Lucien would never witness any illegal act by him. And while the writer was considerably older, it was Aria’s husband who was not quite of this world, his remarks porous, his talents invisible, the paths he took almost erased. Once Lucien picked up a book that the thief had been reading, and saw a sprig of absinthe leaves used as a bookmark. That felt like the only certain thing about the man, and from then on, every few days, the writer carefully noted the progress of the absinthe, making its own journey through the plot.
‘I went to the war and I never came back,’ the thief said, crossing a field