Disharmony

‘I’ll be right back,’ he said. ‘I’ll bring the drinks, and then I’ll be right outside.’

Able to think again, Samantha considered how strange this situation was. If the king had wanted a consultation so badly, surely he could have summoned them to his palace. Just last week, she, Mirela and Birthday Jones had walked past the huge, ornate gates in Pantelimon, trying to get a glimpse of the place everybody talked about, but the curved drive and the hostile guard had prevented them from seeing much. Man, imagine if she’d been invited right into the palace by the king himself!

This, though, was looking like it was going to make for an even better story. The king sat on Lala’s day bed, a tattered brown velvet double-seater lounge that she usually reserved for dream analysis. He fitted into it as though it were a single-seat armchair. Lala had taken the reader’s chair and Samantha sat in the client’s. They angled themselves to face the king.

She and Lala waited awkwardly for him to speak, but he sat silently, watching them. Still Sam could not read his mood. His aura felt guarded, as though he was deliberately hiding the way he was feeling. Why would somebody do that? She lowered her eyes a little so as not to stare, but she had a mental image of him sitting there, sprawled like a gigantic toad on a log. She felt like a fly.

Tension from the front of the van suddenly climbed again and Tamas appeared in the doorway. He made his way in with the drinks and she gave him a reassuring smile, felt him relax just a little.

‘Are you all right?’ he asked her.

‘Why wouldn’t she be all right?’ said the king. ‘What kind of question is that?’

‘Please forgive him, your Grace,’ said Lala. Samantha could sense her heart racing. ‘He is just a child, my son’s nephew. You can see he is too young to go with the men to the horse fair. His mother has passed, your Grace, and since then he has been a little touched in the head.’

Tamas drew a breath. Lala snapped her head in his direction. Whatever he was going to say went unsaid.

‘Well, he’s a very rude boy,’ said the king. ‘And now he can go.’

Tamas looked down at Samantha. ‘I’ll be outside,’ he said.

‘Which you already told us,’ said the king.

‘Get out, Tamas,’ said Lala.

The king cracked his Coke and guzzled. When he put the can down on the lamp table next to him, Samantha thought that it sounded near empty. He belched loudly.

Delightful.

‘Now, your Grace,’ said Lala. ‘How can we help you? Would you like a charm for your business dealings? A spell for your luck?’

The king raised a pudgy hand to his many chins and stroked. He faced Samantha. She met his eyes and finally felt something from him. Ravenousness.

‘I want a reading,’ he said.

Lala hissed. ‘A what!? My Grace, you know that we don’t read the cards for other Rom. Card reading is only for the Gaje! It is terrible, terrible luck, your Grace, to have your cards read by another gypsy. It is never done. We are happy to write a curse for your enemies or create great blessings for your wealth or health, but we can’t read your cards, my King.’

‘I am speaking to the child,’ the gypsy king said, staring at Samantha. ‘And I want a reading.’

Huh. Well, she hadn’t expected that. Samantha had never even considered performing a reading for another Rom. Lala had drummed the bad-luck thing into her for a year before she’d even allowed her to hold a tarot deck. Before today, Samantha would no more have read cards for a gypsy than strip naked and streak through the camp carrying Bo’s flag.

And yet, here she was, about to read for the king of the gypsies. She shrugged, and as the king watched her, she felt his greed swell further. Oh well, though she didn’t like to admit it, even to herself, she wasn’t sure that she believed a lot of the stuff Lala had taught her about the cards. I mean, what Lala told her they meant, and what she saw for the clients when she read, were usually two very different things.

She reached for the shiny, jet-black lacquered box containing her deck and Lala hissed again, quietly. Samantha sent calm towards the chair beside her. The king’s eyes widened as she did so, and for the first time she faltered.

How had he sensed that?

He smiled and licked his lips.

She loosened the gold cord wrapped around the box and opened it. As always, the sounds faded around her. The drone of the old electric fan on the lamp table became a mosquito in the distance. The heavy breathing of the king and Lala’s rapid gasps fell silent. Sam smiled, closed her eyes, and fondled the red silk wrapped around the deck, slipping into the fabric as though into a blood-warm river. The cards welcomed her, had missed her, swam with her, darting over and under, each clamouring to whisper their secrets. They tickled; she giggled. Then she opened her eyes.

The king regarded her hungrily.

She decided then and there to make this as brief a reading as possible – just three cards: his past, present and future. It was not Lala’s discomfort; it was the gypsy king’s eyes that warned her to get this over with quickly.

I wonder if he didn’t eat at lunch because his favourite food is teenager, she thought.

She slipped the silk from the cards and they hummed feverishly in her hands. She began to sweat.

‘Um, okay,’ she said, wiping a hand across her brow, ‘you need to think of a question.’

She decided to forget about the witchy-poo theatrics to set the mood. Nothing she could say would make this scene any weirder than it already was.

‘I have my question,’ he said, his eyes oil slicks.

‘Good. Do not speak it aloud,’ she said.

She shuffled the deck, eyes again closed, some cards battling to find her hands, others shirking from her touch. She listened as their whispers tumbled over and under one another as she shuffled: snatches of thought; cobwebs of consciousness; what will be, what is now, what will come nevermore. She stilled her hands, put the deck on the table, opened her eyes.

‘Cut the cards,’ she said. ‘Three piles, any size. Face down.’

She wrinkled her nose in distaste as he grabbed greedily at the deck, his fat fingers fracturing its symmetry as he spread the cards in his haste. He slapped down three piles on the table and lifted his eyes.

‘Put them back together again,’ she said. ‘Any order. Face down.’

She could feel Lala bristling at her lack of etiquette, but she sensed that her mentor also wanted this over with quickly.

When her deck was whole again on the table before her, Samantha rubbed her palms together twice and reached for it.

‘Hold your question in your mind.’

She turned the first card. ‘A spirit card,’ she said. The whispers began. ‘This card represents your present – what is happening in your life right now.’

The ornate picture was dominated by a giant hourglass, golden sand trickling through its transparent innards. In the background stood a man, eyes down, contemplative, worried, while looping the whole card, in dizzying rings, spun a series of concentric circles. A circular maze.

The king watched her, seemed to breathe her in.

‘The Waiting Game,’ she said. ‘You have a decision to make.’

‘That is correct,’ he said.

Samantha chewed her thumbnail. She worried about what to say next. Lala would tell her that these circles meant that there were numerous possibilities open for her client to take, but the card whispered the truth.

‘There are two options,’ she said. ‘You may select only one.’

The king made a guttural sound deep in his throat. ‘Go on,’ he said.

‘You have been setting your plan in motion for a long time,’ she said. ‘And the journey has been painful and dangerous. You realise that you are very close now, and you are waiting, waiting for the results to come to fruition.’

‘Yes, yes,’ he said.

Samantha tuned out Lala’s worry. Nothing she had spoken had been taught by her teacher. Her words came