Zoli Read Online Free PDF Page A

across the wooden counter without even looking at them.
    All right, she must come in and register every three months.
    What about the other children? asked Grandfather.
    All the Gypsy children have to do it.
    And the other children?
    Oh, them? he said. No, why?
    Grandfather made a rattling sound in his throat and signed the papers with an XXX. On the way out I asked him why he didn't write using the letters he ‘d taught me, but he turned and pinned me with a look. Halfway down the steps he caught me by the ear and said: Never tell them that story, never. Do you hear me?
    He almost lifted me in the air by my ear.
    They'll make it twice as bad, he said. And then they'll just shove us under again. D'you understand me, child? Never.
    The pain shot through me. We walked down the last of the steps. I looked at my hands. They were black with fingerprint ink. I sucked at my fingers, but he slapped my hand.
    A respectful girl keeps her insides clean, he said. Don't bring that ink down into your belly.
    The wagon was listing sideways on the cobblestones. I went up and held on to Red's reins, rubbed against her, my ear hot against her pulsing neck. Grandfather climbed up and sat a long time, staring at the building. Finally he said: Come up here, precious heart. He lifted me up with one hand and sat me on the board beside him. He sat quiet a long time, then he spat sideways, put his arm around my shoulder, and said to me that one of the reasons he wrote XXX was that he would not let them make an idiot of him with their rules.
    He took the reins in his hands and was about to slap them down on Red's rump, but then he looked back over his shoulder and whispered: Go ahead, horse, and shit. And as if by the very string of heaven, Red lifted her tail and left two steaming loads on the cobbles outside the grand white building, and we drove away laughing, we never laughed so hard. At the end of the road we looked back and saw a man lifting the clumps up on a shovel with a scrunched red look on his face. We laughed even harder until the building was out of sight and we went out on the country road with the trees in bloom and the midges rising and blue dragonflies on the air, the kind that leave the shine from their wings on the glass once you put them in a jar.
    Grandfather put his hat back on his head and wound his curling mustache around his finger and said very loud again to the road: Go ahead, horse, and shit.

    We followed signs—a knotted wishbone to turn left, a broken twig for a right fork in the road, a white cloth for a friendly farmhouse where we could water Red and fill our canteens.
    It was late summer and the cherry trees were heavy and drooping. We crossed a lovely clean river and went deep into the forest where we were shielded from view by thick lines of yew, green oak, sycamore. Among the wiry grasses grew wild orchids and dandelions. Grandfather brought me into a clearing where fourteen caravans stood, they took my breath away, beautifully colored and carved. Water came up from the ground around a piece of swampy grass. A tin cup was upended on a nubbed pole. A girl came towards us with a drink. It ran cool against the back of my throat. I watched as Grandfather took giant strides across the camp and put his arms around the shoulders of his very own brother who he had not seen in years. He shouted at me to hurry up and come meet my cousins, and cousins of cousins, and cousins of other cousins. Soon we were surrounded, and I was scooped up immediately into a new life which was so much like my old life.
    A few of them had strayed down from Poland, carrying harps. I had never seen instruments so tall, beautifully carved and strung with catgut. They stood twice my height. Even when I stretched on my toes I could not reach the top of the strings. They were varnished and carved with wheels and griffins and birds. The plucked sound carried through the trees. There was nothing so lovely. The women who played the harps had very long