The Magic Circle by Katherine Neville (top 10 books of all time txt) 📕

as I do of you. But if you’re truly my grandfather as you say, I have to wonder why it’s been hidden from me all these years. Do others know it?”

“Of course, it must be a shock for you,” Dacian said with a sweep of his long, graceful fingers, the fingers of a violinist, I recalled. “I’ll explain everything—perhaps even a few things you’d rather not learn—though I myself always prefer even the rawest of facts to the prettiest of fiction. But you must tell me what you’ve already heard, before I can provide the rest.”

“I’m afraid I know very little,” I told him. “All I’ve heard about that side of the family is that you and Pandora were cousins; that she was a music student in Vienna who worked as a companion or tutor in the Behn household; and that you taught my uncle Lafcadio to play the violin. He says you were young, but a great master.”

“Quite a compliment—but, here, our meal arrives,” he said. “As we eat, I can explain everything. It’s not so much a mystery as one might suppose.”

I watched as the waiter set down an array of covered platters. When he lifted the lid of my Tafelspitz—that traditional Austrian dish of hot boiled beef accompanied on its divided plate by cold applesauce and horseradish, hot vinegary potatoes, creamed spinach, fresh green salad with white beans—it looked and smelled fabulous. But Dacian’s lunch was unfamiliar. I asked him what it was.

“It’s the best way to find out about people: to learn how they eat,” he told me. “For example, in this tureen we find a Hungarian cold soup of sour cherries. Then the dish you asked me about is ćevapčići, a kind of kebab made from ground beef, lamb, garlic, onion, and paprikesh; it’s smoked over charcoals of smoldering grapevine so it has a taste of the vineyard. In Dalmatia they claim the Serbs invented it, but it’s older than that. This dish was really invented by the Dacians—my namesakes—an ancient tribe that once inhabited Macedonia, now part of Yugoslavia. They were known even as far east as the Caspian, where they called themselves Daoi: the wolves. We wolves, it’s how you recognize us—we very much like to eat meat.” And he stabbed one of the patties with his fork and closed down on it with those magnificent white teeth.

When the first bite of Tafelspitz melted in my mouth, I realized how truly hungry I was. Dacian plucked choice items from various dishes and passed them across to me. I wanted to wolf down everything I saw, but I forced myself back to the topic.

“So you come from the Balkans, not Austria?” I asked.

“Well, I’m named for the Dacians, but my people are really of Romani descent. And who can say where the Rom originally come from?” he said with a shrug.

“The Romani?” I said. “Are they named for Rome? Or did you mean Rumania?”

“Romani is the name of our language, rooted in Sanskrit, and also what we sometimes call ourselves—although we’ve been called many names by others over the years: Bohémes, Cingari, Tsiganes, Gitanos, Flamencos, Tartares, Zigeuner.…”

When I still looked perplexed, he explained, “Most would call us by the common name Gypsies, because it was once believed our origins were in Egypt, though there are plenty of other opinions: India, Persia, Central Asia, Outer Mongolia, the South Pole—even places of magical belief that have never existed at all. There are those who think we came from outer space. And those who think we should be shot back there as soon as possible!”

“Then you and Pandora are Gypsies?”

I admit I was confused. One hour ago I had an Irish mother and a father I’d thought part Austrian, part Dutch. Now all at once I was illegitimately descended from a pair of Gypsy cousins who’d abandoned my father at birth. But befuddled as I might be about my ancestry, I had little reason to doubt Dacian Bassarides’s description of his own: he looked every bit as wild as everyone described.

“The details of our family are never to be shared with the Gadje—the others, the outsiders,” Dacian cautioned me seriously. “This is why I have sent our friend Hauser away. But to your question: yes, we were Rom. Though Pandora grew up and lived partly among the Gadje, in her heart and blood she always was one of us. I knew her from childhood. She sang so wonderfully that she already had the marks of a great diva. Perhaps you know that in Sanskrit this term describes an angel, while in Persian it means a devil? Pandora was a little of each.

“As for the origin of the Rom, our sagas say we came to earth aeons ago from an aboriginal home which can still be found in the night sky: the constellation Orion, the mighty hunter. Or more precisely, the three stars forming a belt at its center—the omphalos, the navel or umbilical cord of Orion—called the Three Kings because they shine like the star the Magi followed to Bethlehem. In Egypt, Orion was equated with the god Osiris, in India with Varuna, in Greece with Ouranos, and in Norse countries with the Spindle of Time. In all cultures he is known as the messenger, the chief guide for each transition into a new age.”

I wasn’t about to get sidetracked just when the plot was thickening. And there was more than stardust clouding Dacian’s story. How could he and Pandora have been Gypsies when, by all the accounts I’d heard, the Nazis considered Gypsies lower on the evolutionary totem pole than Catholics, Communists, homosexuals, or Jews?

“If you and Pandora were Gypsies,” I said, “how could she have lived as she did, and where she did, running around with the kinds of people she did, both before and during the Second World War?”

Dacian was regarding me with an odd half smile. “And how did she live? I thought you knew almost nothing about her.”

“No,” I agreed. “But what