Zoli

“I'm happy there,” says Zoli.

A note jumps out from deep in the apartment, a hard discordant thing moving through the air, surrounded a second later by a new one, as if testing the old one, until they start to col ide, rising and fal ing, taking air from each other.

“Idiot,” says Francesca. “I'l tel him to shut up.” Her body pul s taut, but Zoli taps her hand. “Wait a moment,” she says. The music rises and draws itself out, quicker, more turbulent.

“Get dressed,” says Zoli.

“Mamma?”

“Let's get dressed.”

Laughter bursts out with the music now and the smel of smoke filters along the corridor. The women step away from the bed. Their clothes lie scattered in the darkness. They fumble a moment: a nightgown, a blue dress, a high-heeled shoe. Francesca's arm gets caught in her sleeve, and Zoli helps it along. She strokes the side of her daughter's face. They stand together at the bedroom door.

“But you're in your nightdress,” says Francesca.

“I don t care.”

They cross the wooden floors of the corridor and a sharp silence fil s the room when mother and daughter appear. Henri stands, wide-eyed, with a thin joint at his mouth. “Oh,” he says, swaying on his feet. Scattered around the room are the Scottish musicians. One of them, tal and handsome and curly-haired, stands and bows deeply. He stubs out his joint in a flowerpot. Francesca giggles and looks across at her mother. How glorious, thinks Zoli, how joyful, that it is al , stil , even on this night, so unfinished.

Zoli nods to them and simply says: “Smoke away.”

The musician looks around, a little startled, fishes his joint from the pot. He straightens it, lights up, and laughs.

“What happened to the music?” says Zoli.

She used to play the sugar upon the metal, she recal s, in those old days when she gathered children at the back of her wagon—she would place a sheet of siding on a wooden saw-horse, sprinkle the sugar on the sheet, sometimes salt, or, if nothing else, seeds. She teased the violin bow along the very edge of the plate until the metal began to hum. The sugar jumped and swerved and found its own vibrating patterns: standing waves, circular clumps, solitary grains, like smal white acrobats. Afterwards the children clamored to lick the sheet clean. She had loved those maps, their random patterns, their odd music, the way the children clapped the sugar into place. She had never thought of them as anything new or unusual, although she heard that others cal ed them chladnis, sound charts—the sugar settling at the points where there was least sound—and she thought, even then, that she could have looked at the metal sheet and found a whole history of her people painted there.

“Go on,” she says. “Play.”

The curly-haired one strikes a note on the mandolin, a bad note, too high, though he rinses it out with the next, and the guitarist joins in, slowly at first, and a wave moves across the gathering, like wind over grass, and the room feels as if it is opening, one window, then another, then the wal s themselves. The tal musician strikes a high chord and nods at Zoli—she smiles, lifts her head, and begins.

She begins.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS/AUTHOR'S NOTE

WE GET OUR VOICES from the voices of others. I am enormously indebted to a number of people who have helped me research, refine, and radically change the structure of this novel over the past four years. I can claim no familial link with the Romani culture—it is, I suppose, the novelist's privilege to play the fool, rushing in where others might not tread. I have scavenged from all over and am indebted to so many sources that it would be impossible to list them all. Our stories are created from a multiplicity of witness.

The following artists and writers have inspired me—Ilona Lackova in A False Dawn: My Life as a Gypsy Woman in Slovakia (University of Hertfordshire Press); Milena Hiibschman-nova; Bronislawa Wajs (Papusza) and Jerzy Ficowksi. I have found enormous help in the work of Ian Hancock from the Center of Romani Archives at the University of Texas. The Romani language and orthography are only now in the process of being standardized. As Hancock has written, the word “Gypsy” is intently disliked by some Roma and tolerated by others. The persistence of the use of “Gypsy” lies in the fact that there is no single Romani equivalent universally agreed upon. Time and scholarship is changing this. I have used certain spellings and constructions determined by geography, history, and political affiliations that were current at the time when the novel takes place, sometimes purposely confused. The choices and mistakes are purely mine.

The story of Zoli was suggested to me after reading the extraordinary study Bury Me Standing: The Gypsies and Their Journey, by Isabel Fonseca. Zoli is loosely inspired by the life of Papusza, the Polish poet who lived from 1910 to 1987. Zoli's poem in this novel is original, though it takes some of its form from the poetry of Papusza and others. Despite published reports to the contrary (including some statements attributed to characters in this novel), there have been many Roma poets in Europe down through the years—their work has been careful and loving, even if consistently ignored.

I would like to give very special thanks to Laco Oravec and Martin Fotta and everyone else at the Milan Simecka Foundation in Bratislava who, over the course of two months, helped me negotiate the contemporary Romani experience. The novel would have been impossible without their help. I can think of no better guides, nor no better hosts than the people of the settlements that I visited in eastern and western Slovakia. The following know their own role; I only wish I could give them deeper thanks: Richard Jurst, Robert Renk, Valerie Besl, Michal Hvorecky, Jana Belisova, Anna Jurova, Daniela Hivesova-Silanova, Zuzanna Boselova, Mark Slouka, Zdenek Slouka, Thomas Ueberhoff, Dirk Van Gunsteren, Thomas Bohm, Manfred Heid, Tom Kraushaar, Francoise Triffaux, Brigitte Semler, Martin Koffler, Barbara Stelzl-Marx, and the various people of the Roma camps and housing estates that I visited.

In New York I want to give sincere thanks to Lorcan Otway for all his advice and scholarship. Thanks to Hunter College and the Hertog fellowship program. A deep bow to Emily Stone, my research assistant. Gratitude also to Roz Bernstein, Frank McCourt, Terry Cooper, Gerard Donovan, Chris Barrett Kelly, Tom Kelly, Jeff Talarigo, Jim Harrison, Aleksandar Hemon (for the music!), Bill Cobert, and all at the American Irish Historical Society. The book is dedicated to all at the New York Public Library, including the scholars at the Cullman Center, but a specific thanks goes to Marzena Ermler and Woj-ciech Siemaszkiewicz, and of course to Jean Strouse, Pamela Leo, Adriana Nova, and Amy Aazarito.