A Table of Green Fields by Guy Davenport (ebook reader .txt) 📕

My eyes were blind with tears. I looked at the old woman and looked at Tarpy. My hands trembled. I went to Tarpy and searched his face. Could I be wrong? I blubbered. Tarpy looked at me with interest and then smiled at the boys in the red shirts. He turned his hands palms up as if to ask the gypsies if he could be held responsible for this unseemliness.

Tarpy! I shouted.

He turned away.

A man took me by the arm. I realized that it was night. Fires crackled and flared. A ring of gypsies parted for us to pass through. I was being led away. Many of the faces were kind.

I had no sense of wanting to say anything to anybody and no curiosity as to where I was being led or as to what I was next to do. We stopped at the steps of a caravan where an old man sat holding a carved staff.

Gadjo! he laughed. You have known our gold-haired niglo? He is now a rom. Forgive him he cannot to you come back. He can say na janav ko dad m'ro has. Miro gule dai merdyas. The gadji beat him and starved him. We are better people. He has now mother and father. Like you he has a brother.

He raised his hand. And there was Florent. He wore one rucksack and carried the other. My boots were under his arm.

Florent gave me a hard look. He took two kronor out of his shirt pocket and offered them to the old man. Who closed his ancient hand upon them with a complacent smile. He raised his staff as if in farewell. Florent threw my boots and stockings at my feet.

I put them on in confusion. He handed me my rucksack but did not help me strap it on.

A gypsy said that we could not walk in the dark.

Florent replied that we could walk in the dark.

We had trudged along what I supposed to be the overgrown road for quite awhile before I noticed we were walking in rain. Florent was ahead. I simply followed. My rucksack rode sloppily in the small of my back and my stockings were ruckled messily in my boots. My hair streamed down into my eyes. We plodded on without any word or sign between us. The night was very dark.

I turned my ankle and fell sprawling but scrambled up as quickly as I could find my balance. Florent walked on in indifference. It was so dark that I could only hear him. Hear his measured and even tread. My rucksack was askew. I had to run to catch up. Never knowing where I was stepping. I could feel my face pinch up to cry and fight back the sting of tears and taste their salt in my mouth. I was soaked through to the skin. So must Florent be.

We had got into muddy ground where my boots sank into slush. I could hear Florent's boots sucking in and out of mire. The mud showed me how tired I was. My legs ached. My back ached. My nose ran. Water dripped off my fingers.

Florent went on. I followed.

I began to shiver. A pain across my shoulders made me gasp. My feet had turned to lead and were like cakes of ice.

The rain let up to a drizzle and stopped altogether at a moment I did not notice. A false dawn came grey in the east. I began to make out Florent's back. We seemed to be climbing a hill. I fell on my knees and skinned them and felt a lash of fire across them as I forced myself up. Florent was at the top of the hill in full outline against the cold grey of the sky.

Thank God he was standing still. He was taking off his rucksack. He spoke for the first time. He ordered me to gather sticks. Small sticks from under trees and dry ones if I could find them. He was on his knees blowing on a heap of leaves and twigs when I came back with sticks most of which were wet. He ordered me to lay out the tarpaulin and take off my clothes and get into the bedroll.

Carefully he nurtured the fire. He brought bigger sticks. Dawn and the fire showed me that he was as wet as if he had just climbed out of a river. The fire cracked and lept and danced tall. It was practically a bonfire as he piled on more and bigger sticks. Then he stripped. He dried his hair with a shirt from the rucksack and tossed the shirt to me with orders to dry my hair. We stood naked at the fire red in its light. Florent's underlip was split and swollen ugly.

He handed me slices of dried fruit. Its taste was a kind of blessing. He saw my knees and painted them with iodine. Too tired to stand any more I sat on the bedroll.

Was it Tarpy? Florent asked.

I said that he had refused to recognize me. It was Tarpy all right. Could they have done something to him that he wouldn't know me?

Florent squatted by the sinking fire. He said that they had taken him in. Had given him a home.

I was too tired to think or answer. I fell asleep before Florent joined me in the bedroll. Never had I been so grateful for warmth and rest and sleep.

We woke at noon and packed and set out as if we were in a hurry. Florent's split lip throbbed so much that I could see it pulse. He did not mention it. We did not talk. We made camp early and slept as soon as we had eaten dried beef which we did not bother to heat.

Florent asked next day if I wanted to go home. I supposed so. We were tired of each other's company.

Far into the next day deep in a forest with patches of wild flowers and a racket of wind splashing the highest branches together and the smell of green and earth as fresh in the nose as baking bread or butter risen in the churn I asked him to tell me more of the Iliad. He did not answer