Gypsy Life

== GYPSY LIFE ==
=== By Steen Steensen Blicher ===
Translated from the Danish by Hanna Astrup Larsen and Published in Twelve stories as Kjeltringliv, 1829
 I HAVE two things to apologize for: the title and the story. The first is low, vulgar, and perhaps disgusting to a refined and delicate taste; the second is like unto the first.  [Footnote: Kjeltring, the word applied to the Danish gypsies, means "rogue," "villain," although Blicher claims, in his introduction to this story, that it had lost much of its obnoxious meaning. Blicher's friend, N. V.  Dorph (see note on page 303), thought it should be written Keldring and that it was originally Kedeldreng, from Kedel, "kettle," and Dreng, "boy," having reference to the skill of the gypsies as tinkers.--TRANSLATOR.
True, the account of great villains is the most interesting aspect of history and romance; but in the first place we don't call them that, and furthermore such racy characters must be people of high degree, or at least of honest degree, not people with whom no farmer would eat from the same dish. Who can deny that Claudius and Messalina, Pope Sergius and Marozia, Front de Beuf and Ulrica lived the life of villains, but, be it noted, in palaces and not in sheepcots? That which is becoming in royal personages and holy prelates, or in Norman barons, is not proper in Jutland nightmen. Nero was a great monster--Jens Long-Knife a vulgar scoundrel. It never occurs to a well-bred person to moralize over the manners of the Turkish Sultan _in puncto sexti;_ when he keeps three hundred mistresses, while a Christian prince often gets along with three, that is gallantry on a grand scale. But if a travelling glazier has three wives, it is quite rightly called lewd conduct. Our moral sense is outraged when a gypsy throws his stick to anyone he fancies, but if a king desires the wife or daughter of one of his subjects, we smile and say, "He throws the handkerchief."
It is not the thing itself that is weighed on the scales of justice, but who does it and how it is done. To steal from an enemy country is called to levy a contribution; to kill and maim thousands of people is called a brilliant victory; to burn a city and lay waste a province is called conquest. But when our Jutland nightmen levy contributions, it is stealing. When a gypsy wins a decisive victory in a duel with thorn-staves and clasp knives, it is murder, and if he should burn down a straw hut (which very rarely happens), it is genuine arson. To steal a country, as everybody knows, is a grand undertaking; to steal a pig or a sheep is a vulgar theft.  Attila and Semiramis get their places in history; Stoffer One-Eye and Big-Margret get theirs in Viborg jail.
But I am myself in danger of talking like a villain and, instead of my intended apologies for the villainous life of my heroes, I am straying into a kind of defense of them. Yet that was not my purpose! I have enough to do defending myself; I am really at my wit's end, and have no recourse but to say: a good friend asked me to do it. But let no one think I am lying in this matter, too, or that I am guilty of the usual prudery. No, this time I am speaking the unadulterated truth, and I could even name my man, if I were not afraid of compromising him. "Write a story about the gypsies," he has said several times, "it might be amusing enough."--"Faugh," I have always replied, "that's a vulgar subject."--"Why so?" he has answered. "Don't the 'Egyptians' have their places on the canvases of Scott, Goethe, Müller, and others? Our Danish 'nightmen' are the same breed. Call them 'Egyptians' if you like." But that does not appeal to me. _Kjeltring_ is a good Danish word, which I mean to keep.
But before I end this Introduction I must add a few words of explanation. _Kjeltring_ [villain] is the name which the common people in Denmark give to the vagrant "nightpeople" particularly, but one which these people do not themselves own. The word as the peasants use it in this sense does not involve any criminal tendencies, and they can perfectly well say "a decent Kjeltring." The true _Kjeltringer_--not those who are found in all classes of society--constitute an isolated association, a state within the state; and therefore a certain French traveller spoke more truly than he knew when he said: _"En Danemarc il y une nation, qui s'appelle Kieltrings, elle n'est pas si bien cul-tivée comme les autres danois."_
This nation calls itself "Travellers." A name that hits the bull's-eye! For life is to these people more than anything else a journey. They journey, in the most literal sense, through life, for they have no fixed habitation, but wander from one town to another; they have no home, but only a shelter. They are born, marry, and die--all while on the road. But if anyone on that account should call them tramps or vagrants they would feel very much insulted, and rightly so. They are nomads, just as much as Kalmucks or Bedouins. They are travellers, just as much as Mungo Park, Belzoni, or Colonel Sundt--men whom nobody thinks of characterizing as vagrants, because their vagrancy is on a large scale; that is the difference. And I find it an attractive feature in the small _voyageurs,_ contrasted with the great ones, that they wander about incognito, without pretensions or letters of introduction, and do not torture us afterwards with "Travels" which are more wearisome to read than to perform. Would we might learn from their silence! Would that many might imitate them, instead of filling whole volumes with misinformation and wrong opinions--with looks askance at the great men or prominent writers who have not made enough of them--with still more shameless and impertinent praise of others who have had no desire to be dragged out and displayed to the public view in payment for a meal or a bed--with kaleidoscopic landscape paintings and enthusiastic ravings, both equally obscure and incomprehensible--or with menus which are sometimes the fattest morsels in the book and, so far as they arouse the appetite, the most inoffensive.
So much for the Introduction.
 THIRST----THE _PRAEVLIQUANTS_[2]--_LAKVIRUM_[3]----GYPSY LATIN---- GYPSY WEATHER
[2] Persons who speak a fine (gypsy) language. . [3] Bad weather.
 THE day was sultry. A strong southeast wind swept the heat down over us--a veritable sirocco. Whitish red thunder-clouds were piling up above the horizon both in the east and the west.
They looked like a distant range of snow-capped mountains, their summits gilded by the sun, their bases divided by deep, dark valleys. One by one the clouds lost their sharp contours, were thinned and spread out in lighter, more tenuous strips--a sign that "the artillery of heaven" was about to thunder; but the noise was drowned in the bluster of the wind, as the gleams of lightning were in the golden effulgence of the sun.
I walked on between the two fire-spewing batteries. Driven by my thirst, I walked fast, in spite of the intense heat, bent on reaching a bog which I was certain must be found in the general direction in which I was headed. How far away it was I could not tell, for on the flat expanse of heath there was no elevated object that could have guided me, and even had there been one, the quivering of the hazy air would have obscured and confused the outlines. At last I caught sight of the tops of some scrubby willows and a pale green strip in the heather. My dog, who was suffering even more from thirst than I, sniffed the air and ran on ahead. I envied him his greater speed. Alas, without reason! I soon saw him scraping the ground, and knew that the bog was dried out. There we both stood, baffled in our ardent longing. I threw myself down on the ground, discouraged; but my poor companion howled and panted and eagerly scraped aside the dry grass in order to cool his heaving chest in whatever slight moisture the meadow retained.
Pity us not, kind reader! I have known a man--a darling child of fate, a pet of fortune and of men--who plumed himself on never in his life having known real hunger or thirst. Pity him! The unhappy man did not know the taste of water, still less what it means, when reeling with heat and burning thirst, to plunge into the cool, invigorating embrace of the waves. This luxury awaited me only a short mile from the dried-out bog, where I found a lake surrounded by heather and bog myrtle.
Revived for new exertions, with an unspeakably pleasant tingling of all my nerves, I sat a little ways up from the lake on the windy side of a grave-mound--the only one in the vicinity as far as my eye could reach. The dog lay at my feet and shared my ambrosial repast of bread and cheese, when an animated object attracted his attention; he raised his head a little, pricked up his ears, drew his eyebrows together, growled, and emitted a few short yelps.
I turned and saw a spectacle approaching that might well astonish both men and dogs. It was in fact an amphibious creature, or a hermaphrodite, an enormously tall Holofernes in petticoats, a creature that was man above and woman below. The apparition came toward me carrying a lance in either hand--my thumb automatically pressed the trigger of my gun. But in a moment I discovered that the lances were only sticks, and that the creature was a double figure with two heads, four arms, four sticks, and four legs--to put it briefly and clearly: a man carried by a woman. A boy a little less than half grown walked close behind them. The path ran below the mound on the opposite side, but as the approaching trio had the sun in their eyes, they could not see me. The dog was silent, either from fear or amazement.
A man who--figuratively speaking--patiently carries his domestic cross through life, or who from love of his wife carries her on his hands, is no great rarity, but a female cross-bearer in a literal sense, actually with her husband on her back, was something I had never encountered. The story about _die Weiber von Weinsberg_ has always seemed to me a little suspicious; it happened far away and long ago. At any rate, it was only a question of a short walk and no more; _einmal ist keinmal._ And these celebrated women were moved by fear of widowhood, perhaps also by a desire to make a sensation among the officers of the enemy. Here on the wide, barren heath there must be other motives; the first one, I discovered, was that the man lacked both his feet.
When the little party had arrived at a spot right in front of the mound, they made a halt. The woman turned her back to the slope, leaned over, and allowed her burden to slide down.
Then she straightened up, stretched her limbs, drew a few long breaths, and sat down between the man and the boy. The latter laid a little bag in her lap. Food was taken out and eaten in silence. When the scanty meal was ended, they began a brief conversation, of which I only caught a word now and then; for it was carried on in a language which--from such expressions as _jup, brall, pukkasch--_I soon realized was the so-called Romany. In a few minutes the topic seemed to be exhausted, and all three lay down to sleep.
Now I rose and went around to the other side of the mound to examine the group of sleepers. The man was of a small but--barring the fact that he lacked feet--well-shaped figure with a fresh face of a brown complexion; he seemed to be in the prime of life. The woman was of a much darker color; had thick, black eyebrows which almost met, a short nose, full cheeks, a rather wide mouth with thick lips which, when parted, revealed snow-white teeth that anyone might envy her. Torso and limbs were large and strongly built; she looked as if she could throw a man or carry him.
So far I had come in my observation of this strange pair, but what have we seen of a human being when the shutters hide the windows of the soul? No more than the binding shows of a book.
I had already turned away and was about to go on, when the boy cried out, _"Madrum, padrum,_ a dog, a hunter!" The woman opened a pair of black, deep-set, serious eyes, slowly rose to a sitting position, and nodded to me in the peculiar manner these people use when they greet anyone. In the same instant the man opened the shutters of two large, light blue, merry and lively eyes. He took off his hat, but did not stir from his relaxed position.
I like to speak foreign languages, not to show off my linguistic accomplishments, but because there is something particularly pleasant about getting on familiar terms with foreigners, for without this means of communication, we should have to regard each other as deaf mutes. The magic words loose the tongue, open the hidden treasure trove of the soul, and stimulate that barter of thoughts by which both parties are gainers.  Moreover, there is the sweetly tingling surprise; when a traveller who is laboriously trudging along in a strange language suddenly is addressed in his beloved mother tongue then thoughts and speech get life and wings, words pour out in an unbroken stream--the stranger is suddenly at home, he is among friends and kinfolk.
Not for any of these reasons--but rather without reason, as we so often speak and act--I had a fancy not to hide my gypsy light under a bushel. I returned their nods with a _"Goddeis Genfer_."  [Footnote: Good-day, folks.] A quick smile played over the Asiatic features of the woman, but the man raised his body, supporting himself with the palms of both hands, and looked suspiciously first at me, then at the lady.
"Is she your Maze?" [Footnote: Wife.] I asked.
_"Sibe, sibe_,'" [Footnote: Yes, yes.] he said quickly and gave her a kindly look.
"It must be hard work for you to carry your _Knaster_," [Footnote: man.] I said to her. _"Nobes_" [Footnote: No] she replied curtly, and whipped the heather with her stick. I then put my hand in my pocket, gave the boy a few coppers--for which the man thanked me politely--said good-bye, and left.
It was not till I had gone some little distance that I began to regret not having questioned these people more closely. But that is always the way; the nearer we are to the unusual, the remarkable, the less it awakens our interest. A man may live ten years at Möen and not see the chalk cliffs, but may travel to Switzerland to see Schreckhorn or Staubbach. Another man has twice been to see the Rhine falls, but has never once seen the Western Ocean, although he can hear its mighty thunder every day. When I visited Rosenborg, it was in the company of four Copenhageners--and all five of us were there for the first time. Anyone who had the time and the means might easily get a notion to run down to Norwood or Siebenbürgen to see a gypsy camp, but our Danish pariahs can pass him every day without being thought worthy of a glance.
How strange, I thought afterwards, is not this little caravan! How unselfish, how strong, faithful, even heroic is not this woman's love for a helpless cripple, whom she has carried on her shoulders--heaven knows how far or how long! How mighty is not the invisible power that has united these two beings--wild children of a wild and barren nature! And yet it is against the fundamental principle of nature, for usually it is the vine that clings to the elm, the weak woman who seeks protection from the man; here it is just the opposite.
Filled with these thoughts, I turned back to retrieve my neglect and learn more about this strange couple and their--no doubt--strange fate. I walked back about a mile to the mound, but the caravan had already disappeared; as far as my eye could reach, there was not a living creature to be seen.
It was toward evening; I had to think of the night. The town where I had intended to spend it was six miles distant, and in the intervening stretch there was not--so far as I knew--a single human habitation.
"Southeast squalls and women's quarrels are apt to end in water," the Jutlanders say. The latter may fail, if the person in question is allowed to remain in possession of the field and the last word; but the truth of the former was soon brought home to me in a very forcible manner.
The wind had gone down, but the sky was hidden by black, low-scudding clouds. The rumbling of the thunder became louder and louder, and an occasional flash of lightning appeared here and there in the distance. I realized that I could not escape the storm, and I therefore prepared myself for a wet coat, but also for the enjoyment of the most impressive natural spectacle our country can show. "Heath--night--thunder and lightning," such is the description of the stage on which Lear's madness rages more furiously than the elements. Here I had the same setting and the same scenery, the same stage machin-ery, and--I was alone. Unchecked, undisturbed, my imagination could fly on the wings of the storm and ride on the bolts of the thunder.
Fear not, grave reader, that I shall jar you out of the staid and measured ambling of your soul! This time I shall not plague you with what I thought and felt; for some of it is of such a nature that I want to keep it to myself, and some of it is such that I could not tell you even if I wanted to. If this story should happen to fall into the hands of one who has allowed himself to be drenched through in order to witness a thunderstorm at night, such a one will know what I mean. Others must be satisfied with what I saw and heard.
Evening came; night came. The storm was around me, was over me. Thor's chariot rumbled; the axles blew sparks, the feet of his goats clattered up and down the hills and vales of the clouds; rain and hail poured down in torrents. Pitch dark and blinding light alternated. One moment I walked in a darkness that one could see and feel; the next moment the heath lay before me in a baffling light, and for an instant the sky showed me its curtain rent asunder. In such moments nothing was lacking but the witches of Macbeth.
_ PENNEKAS [9]--DRALLERS_ [10]--GYPSY BALL
[Footnote 9: Shelter.] [Footnote 10: Dancing.]
SOME distance ahead of me there appeared a stationary light, which was blotted out each time the lightning illuminated the sky, but shone again in the darkness that followed. I knew just about where I was on the heath, and I knew that there could not be--at least there had not been a few weeks ago--any human dwelling here. I stood still now and then in order to see whether the light moved. No! Then it could not be a lantern or a will-o'-the-wisp, but perhaps one of those mysterious meteors that are thought to mark the spot where treasure is hidden, or where a corpse is buried. I did not fear the latter, still less the former; so I walked on. The light became larger and clearer.
I had just made a halt when a terrific flash of lightning revealed an object in front of me which looked like a house without a roof. I was startled, and involuntarily I thought of those shifting ballrooms which the underground people are said to build for their nightly orgies. And yet--what sensible hill man or hill woman would care to dance above ground on such a night as this? The light of the heavens was extinguished, but this earthly light was lit again. I stared, I listened--faint tones of a stringed instrument, sometimes lost in the din of thunder and the howling of the wind, reached my ears. So then it was a dance--at night, here on the wild heath, in the wild storm! Should I stay where I was, or go back or forward? Curiosity prompted me to go on, for I had never before been in an assembly of witches or a festivity of hill people. (My adventure at Dagbjerg Dos was, to be honest, neither more nor less than a dream.)
Again I walked on, determined to penetrate this horrible mystery, but if I should find here one of the castles of the seductive Morgana, to beat a hasty retreat. Now I was so near that the light took shape as a square--it shone from a window in the enchanted castle. Again I made a halt. The music sounded quite distinctly; it was a fiddle and no harp. This circumstance reassured me as to any seductive Morgana, but on the other hand it made me think of picnics at which the fiddlers were billy goats. I listened; the music was mixed with shouts and laughter. I stared; dark figures moved back and forth inside the window. I was in a strange mood.
Meanwhile the storm had passed; the rain had stopped; a few stars glistened here and there with "weeping" eyes through the quickly drifting clouds of mist. The outlines of the oriental house were now plain. I ventured to stretch out my hand to find out if it was made of earthly stuff or of such materials as the elves and fairies use. I felt, I saw; the hut was built of heath turf, as substantial, as real as anything could be. So there was a human shelter here; _ergo_ there could be one, and I had come to a false conclusion a little while ago, as one often does when one deduces from _posse_ to _esse._ A man of firmer principles would have said, "Here is no house, for there cannot be any." But I, who am not so strong in _logica,_ accepted the bona fide house for a house, and merely wondered how it came there, and for what purpose.
I must make a digression; it is neither long nor uncalled for. Anyone who really loves dancing is never at a loss for a ballroom. When the French (who are a genuine dancing nation) had stormed Constantinople, they danced in the Sophia Church, just as sweaty and bloody as they came from the city walls. When they had stormed the Tuileries, they danced in the royal halls, where the floors were painted with bloody roses. When the Bastille had been levelled with the ground, they danced on the site. This last pleases me best; and the brief inscription, "Dancing here," on the simple monument that marks the site of the prison, seems to me clever, poetic, and pregnant. There--right there--where people sighed and groaned, where there was nothing but wailing and gnashing of teeth, where the victims of despotism were thrust living into the grave, where there should have been the same device as over Dante's hell, "Leave hope behind!" And here, too, on the barren heath, four miles from the nearest house, where a short time ago nothing was heard but the soughing of the wind in the heather and the shrieking of the plover, where the wanderer trudged on in the darkness of night, languishing for a warm stove and a dish of warm groats--here, too, they are dancing. I felt cheered and went close to the window to get a good view of the ballroom and the dancers.
Where shall I find a Netherland brush with which to paint this netherly scene? How shall I describe for the reader who is quite a stranger to such a stage set the "pleasant" room with ceiling of clay, walls of clay, floor of clay? How picture for him the noble simplicity of the furnishings?--benches of rough pine boards, dun-colored oak chests littered with black clay pots and dishes, with green brandy bottles, and bright glasses on wooden feet. How convey to him an idea of the _camera_ _obscure_ caused by four tallow dips stuck on the walls? And above all the living figures? I shall confine myself to these last.
In the middle of the room two couples were whirling around in the well-known _schwäbischen Wirbeltanz,_ but the rotations were so vehement that I could not see what the faces of the dancers looked like.  On the bench opposite the window two other couples were resting, their flushed faces showing that they had just left the floor. To one side the fiddler sat on the corner of a flat chest, beating time with the heel of his wooden shoe, and on the other side two ragged children were scraping the burnt crusts out of the bottom of a black kettle.
Now the waltz was over, but at that moment a person appeared who had hitherto been hidden from me. I saw only his profile, but that was enough for me to recognize the chap. When I say that he was a thickset fellow, had hanging shoulders with an enormous head set on them, that he had a horse face, a wide mouth with thick lips, small eyes which seemed to be constantly flitting--much as those of the Bushmen are said to do--that his big, pock-marked face showed rapid transitions from surly gravity to rough mirth, that the whole figure moved with such a firm, hard, rapid step that one only had to see his back in order to say, "That fellow is one who wouldn't stop at sticking his knife into anyone who interfered with him"--when I thus describe him, there are certainly at least three people besides myself who would remember having seen him, though only one of them has profited by his special knowledge of the gypsy language. It is hardly necessary to complete my description by saying that he had the image of the Crucified One tattooed on his left arm.
Presently our professor in the gypsy and Romany language stepped backward out on the floor, looked around at the fiddler and nodded, stamped hard on the floor a few times, and twined his arms together across his chest. In this position he awaited the lady he had just engaged, whom in my present position I could not yet see. The music began; it was a kind of reel in a quick two-quarters beat.
Like a--like what shall I say? Like a fury? No, for that she was too good-looking. Like a Penthesilea _furens, quae mediis in millibus ardet?_ No, not that either; for that she was too stocky, too plump, too simply and peacefully dressed. Like Madame Schall in a gypsy dance? That comes a little nearer, but I think I had better use similes of my own invention and according to my own taste. Like a peg top, a teetotum, a whirligig, darted out on the floor and in front of and behind and round about the lightly skipping professor--who? None other than the cross-bearer, the woman with the man on her back.
It was a genuine gypsy dance which I had the good luck to be a spectator of. The lady's feet moved like drumsticks and hit the clay floor with quick taps. The arms, too, were in motion, as were the fingers, which successfully imitated the clatter of castanets. With all this, her movements and play of expression had nothing of the bayadere or dewidoschi; on the contrary, her face was so cold, sulky, even defiant that it was in complete contrast with that of the professor. His whole face was spread out in a constant, unchanging, immovable grin; his small eyes were wide open, the mouth half open, the upper lip almost touching the nose, the lower hanging down halfway to the chin; teeth and gums were revealed--unquestionably he had, during this dance, a very "open" face.
I was not the only one who was entertained by the skill of the dancers; the spectators who stood in a half circle around them gave their delight both audible and visible expression, by cries of astonishment, bursts of loud laughter, by lifting their shoulders, rubbing their arms, and clapping (with the back of the right hand in the hollow of the left). At the same time they turned their faces, glistening with perspiration and pleasure, from one side to the other. I could not help thinking of the trolls in Thor's masquerade: "In their innocent merriment, with goat horns in their brows, they butted again and again. And really there was nothing except this Jotunheim decoration lacking to make the illusion perfect. Certainly the gypsy woman made a very passable Gerda.
This dance, too, came to an end, and Gerda returned to the place from which she had darted out. I moved quickly to the other side of the window in order to see what became of her. Ah, there stood a chest, and on top of it sat the legless wanderer. His brisk partner in the dance of life turned her back to the chest, rested her hands on it, and vaulted up to him. Just then I heard a door creak, and the learned gypsy scholar came out to me. In the light from the room, we stood face to face, and he--knew me just as quickly as I did him, and with even greater surprise.
I told him that I was bound for Örre, that I had missed my way in the storm, and had gone after the light from this house. He obligingly offered to show me the way, and I accepted his kind offer gratefully, not so much because I needed a guide as because I wanted to learn something about the scene I had just witnessed and especially about the strange couple. What he told me I shall now set down.
 PETER LEGLESS AND GYPSY LINKA
 THE mysterious house had not been built with the aid of Aladdin's lamp or a sorcerer's wand, but--so my companion told me--by the poor relief of Örre parish upon order from the county, to house the well-known traveller Johannes Axelsen whom the gypsy described to me (1) as a learned man, for he could both read and write; (2) as a clever man, since no one hitherto had been able to get anything on him; (3) as a mighty champion who in strength yielded only to "Jens Munkedal, Chresten Strong in Hveisel, and Chresten Jensen in Örre" (three athletes who--judging by descriptions and sworn facts--must have been comparable to Milo, Palydamas, and Eutellus--to Starkodder, Bue Digre, and Orm Storolfsen--to August the Second, the Marshal of Saxony, and Frank).
This subject gave me a natural opening to speak of the gypsy woman who must also possess more than ordinary strength, since she could carry her man from town to town.
"Gypsy Linka," he said, "is strong as sin. I found that out once I tried to be a little sporty with her. She socked me one in the jaw--I never want a better one. But we're just as good friends for all that."
"Then she's faithful to her cripple?" I asked.
"True as gold," he replied; "if anyone tries to get near her in that way, she's fierce as a bandog."
"How did it happen," I went on, "that those two people got together?"
"I'll tell you the story," he said. "Peter Legless--as we call him--and I were born in the same place--"
"Where?" I interrupted.
"That I don't know," he answered laughing. "My mother said it was somewhere on the heath here."
"Then it was in a big house," I remarked.
"So it was," he nodded laughing, "the roof was high and the walls were wide. I and Peter travelled together till we got big, and then we thought we'd like to look around in the world. In White-Matini--" [Footnote: _White-Matini,_ Austria. _Blue-Matini,_ Prussia. _Buffalo-Matini,_ Mecklenburg-_Matini_ means "state," "realm," "kingdom." According to Dorph, gypsies named the countries after the most prominent color in the soldiers' uniforms. Denmark was called _Red-Matini._ Possibly, _Buffalo-Matini_ refers to the jerkins of buffalo hide worn for protection against the enemies' weapons.--TRANSLATOR]
"That was a long jump," I broke in.
"It's many thousand miles," he said with all the smug self-satisfaction of a great traveller. "From Blue-Matini we'd been in the company of gypsies. Then it happened neither worse nor better than that we'd made our quarters for the night in a great big wood, and in the morning when we got up there was war all round us, an uproar everywhere. The gypsies knew about a cave in a mountain a good ways off, and we tried to get there and crawl in for shelter. But the fighting came nearer and nearer, and the cannon balls whizzed around us and chopped branches off the trees. One of them fell right on the head of a half-grown girl, and that was none other than Linka--Gypsy Linka we call her, Peter's _Maie--_and she dropped on the ground. All the gypsies went on running, and no one wanted to wait for Linka; for she didn't belong to any of them, she'd been stolen some place way down South.  'Let's see if she's really dead,' says Peter. 'Let her lay,' says I. But she wasn't dead, only pretty well smashed up and one arm broken, and she begged and prayed that we take her along. So then Peter picked her up, and we set off after the others. When we came to the cave we were all right, and there Linka was taken care of. But when the war had passed by and we were going to start out again, there was nobody but Peter who wanted to carry Linka; she couldn't walk, and the gypsies were going to leave her a little food and let her stay in the cave. So he kept on carrying the girl for many days and a long way, till she could begin to put her feet on the ground. So it isn't for nothing that she carries him now; it's paying off old scores."
"Well, then," I broke in, "the first part of the payment was that she married him."
"Oh, yes," he smirked, "sure, they were married a couple of years later--in a way. You know how we do it. But it's just as good as if parson and clerk had tied the knot. If they want to serve strange gods, or to run away from each other, it's all the same whether they came together on the road or in a _Siongert_." [Footnote: Church.]
I did not feel called upon to answer such an impudent jibe; I felt it was beneath my dignity to defend respectable people against such a scamp. He continued his story.
"But Peter and Linka stuck together. Then it happened neither worse nor better than that we were caught by a bunch of soldiers. What became of the gypsies I don't know, but I know that Peter and I got each a white _Rokkelpoj_ [Footnote: Coat] and a _Sneller_ [Footnote: Gun] and more lickings than money till we learned soldiering. So then we fought the Frenchmen, and Linka went along in our regiment with the other women and the baggage. When we weren't fighting she was always with Peter and did everything she could for him. It was hard enough, for first she was with child and then she had the youngster to drag along--the same little fellow that's with them now. But she never croaked.
"For a year or maybe three, things went fairly well, but then one day we got into a big battle, and there poor Peter got both his feet spoiled by a cannon ball. I didn't know what had become of him till evening when we were in our quarters, and there came Linka with him on her back and carried him into the sick-room. The surgeon cut both his feet off, and when he was cured, they let him go wherever he pleased. He had his discharge--there was nothing the matter with that, but they forgot about the pension. So Linka took him on her back again and the youngster by the hand, and set out in the world. She had a tough time, I'll wager, for she had to earn the food for them all three. But she was never at a loss--she was good as a man. She begged, and she danced, and she told fortunes--for she knows how to tell fortunes," he added in all seriousness, "both in coffee grounds and cards, and from people's hands. And what she says comes true--that's sure.
"So she had struggled through, all the way from a river out there they call _die Donau_ and up to Buffalo-Matini.  [Footnote: Mecklenburg.] There I happened to find them again, and so we came home together."
"But," I interrupted, "you have both your feet, how did you manage to get your discharge?"
"I took it," he replied grinning. "I thought that war had lasted too long. One day I was standing guard in a big wood--the same one where Linka had got her arm broken--and I got to thinking I'd like to get back to Denmark again. So I chucked the _Rokkelpoj_ and _Sneller_ and cartridges and the whole outfit and took to my heels, and it went fine."
During this story, which was much more long-winded, more epic and episodic than I have thought necessary to tell it, we had reached a more beaten track to Örre. My travelled companion went back, and I went forward, although I should have liked to see more of the faithful gypsy couple and to talk with them. I never saw them before or since.
I cannot deny that this tale filled me with many thoughts, feelings, conjectures, but most of them never saw the light of day--nor will they. One I still remember--a fancy--whether Romany or romantic I don't know: what if this nightman's lady, who is now dancing in a turf hut on Örre heath, should be a Hungarian countess or baroness? What if she were destined by birth to dance at court balls in Vienna--to see barons, counts, and princes at her feet--instead of, as now, carrying a gypsy without feet through life? Perhaps her cradle stood in "golden halls," and her grave will be in a corner of a Jutland rural graveyard. But it may be that her faithful love is written down where imperial palaces and turf huts stand side by side.
Category:Blicher
Category:Published