Tales and Stories

Chapter 26 - Gypsy Dreams

Gypsy Lou laughed bitterly.

"You call that suffering? You seriously imagine you know anything about tragedy?" She cried, shaking her hands at the sky.

"You must understand that I am a Gypsy. Any misfortunes you might endure will end when you cease to breathe - And, Gene, please don't give me any shit about reincarnation. I'm too tired to listen to that. For my people the doors of Paradise are forever closed. There will be no well-deserved reward, no resting place where we may lay our heads in everlasting bliss.

After we die, as in life, we shall be welcome nowhere, denied entrance to Heaven and Hell, condemned forever to roam.”

She brushed back her long hair and her high cheek bones rose a little as she forced a smile.

“It is our fate to be free. And though the longing for the road pounds in my heart like the thud of hooves, yet sometimes when the fire has burnt out and the last instrument laid to rest for the night, we feel forsaken. Overlooked.

Through the great treadmills of history, empires have swept over Europe, churches and mosques raised to the sky and a hundred thousand battlefields fed with wasted blood - And amid all of this we picked an anonymous path, ignored by all unless it was to take us into slavery. Or to hunt, rape and murder us for the sheer hell of it. For a long time in Europe it was punishable by death just to be a Gypsy. A crime to exist.”

She paused for a moment as though she had to digest again the appalling history of her people. Kifkef and Baba Gebe thought she might be about to pray. Instead she raised her head and spat in the sand to her side.

“And this is why we piss upon the altars and spit on the forms that the government would have us sign. ‘The meek shall inherit the earth’. Hah. And the moment they do they’ll throw the Gypsies off it.

We have no fear of God. He has already caused the worst to befall us. And if there ever was a hell then we have surely already served our time.

And I ask myself why? For what were we made to suffer? And I can only think that our hardships have been dealt out of jealousy. Go ahead - wince at my blasphemy. But the truth is the Almighty is bound and tied by His own divine nature - He hates with a passion those who relish their freedom to be less than perfect.” She gave the finger to heaven and lit another cigarette.

“And no one relishes it like us. Our liberty makes us retch with its acidity at times, true. But the other side of the coin is that there’s no flavour so delicious as to dance upon time, surfing the wave towards the unknown. And though I once strayed from this course and became enmeshed in the material world, seduced by pretty things and false ambition, yet there was hope...