Zoli

The song of the wandering is in all the trees

And is heard in the last stars of daybreak.

It ripples in the bend of the river

Turning backwards towards us again.

Soon you shall see nothing in the chimney

Except silence and dim twilight.

The sky is red and the morning is too—

All is red on the horizon, Comrade!

Old Romani mother, don't hide your earrings,

Your coins, your sons, your dreams,

Not even inside your golden teeth,

And tell this to hell's dark brother:

When he goes collecting

He won't take any more of us along.

Who has said that your voice will be strange

To those who have risen from you?

Sun and moon and torn starlight,

Wagon and chicken and badger and knife,

All the sorrows have been heard

By those who suffered alongside us.

You who were sad at evening

Will be happy now at dawn.

Since by the bones they broke

We can tell new weather.

When we die and turn to rain

We shall stay nearby a little while

Before we go on falling.

We shall stay in the shade of the mossy oak

Where we have walked

And cried and walked and wandered.

Zoli Novotna

BRATISLAVA, SEPTEMBER I 9 5 7

Paris

2003

SHE DESCENDS THE TRAIN in the amber light of afternoon, shading her eyes with her hands. Her daughter steps from the shadows, looking tal, short-haired, lean. They kiss four times and Francesca says: “You look beautiful, Mamma.” She dips to the ground to pick up the smal bag at Zoli's feet. “This is al you brought?” They link arms and walk out under the wide ceiling of Gare de Lyon, past a newspaper stal , through a throng of girls, out into the sunlight. At the corner they hear the shril beeping of a car horn. Across the road, a young man in an open leather jacket clambers from a car. His hair is cut close, his shirt ambitiously undone. He rushes across to Zoli and his stubble bristles against her cheek when he greets her.

“Henri,” he says, and she rests for a second against a lamppost, winded, the name so close to that of her husband.

Francesca half-skips around the front of the car and helps Zoli into the front seat. “Does he speak Italian?” Zoli whispers, and before her daughter can respond, Henri has launched into a speech about what a pleasure it is to meet her, how young she looks, how marvelous it feels to have two such beautiful women in his car, two, imagine, two!

“He speaks Italian,” says Zoli with a soft chuckle, and she closes the car door.

Francesca laughs and hops in the backseat, leans forward with her arms around the headrest to massage the back of Zoli's neck. She has not, she thinks, been so careful y touched in a long time.

The car jolts forward and merges into traffic, swerves around a pothole. Zoli puts her hands against the dashboard to brace herself. The streets begin to branch and widen and clear. Out the window she watches the quick blip of traffic lights and the flash of bil boards. I have arrived in Paris so many times, she thinks, and none of them ever like this. They speed through the yel ow of a traffic light and down a long avenue shaded by half-grown trees. “We'l show you around later, Mamma,” says Francesca, “but let's go home first. We've a nice lunch ready, wait until you see how many cheeses!” It is a thing her daughter seems to have invented for her, that she is a lover of cheese, and she wants to say, That's your father, not me.