Dragosani lay back, put his hands behind his head, looked at the other through eyes slitted against the glancing sunlight. ‘Research,’ he finally said. ‘Local history. At only two weeks each year, it should take me another four years.’
‘History? This country is steeped in it! But it’s not your job, then? I mean, you don’t do it for a living?’
‘No,’ the man on the bed shook his head. ‘In Moscow I’m … a mortician.’ That was close enough.
‘Huh!’ Kinkovsi grunted. ‘Well, it takes all kinds. Right, I’m off now to sort out your room. And I’ll make arrangements for a meal. If you want the loo, it’s just out here in the corridor. You just take it easy . . .’
When there was no answer he glanced again at Dragosani, saw that his eyes were closed – the warm sunshine and the quiet of the room. Kinkovsi picked up his guest’s car keys from where he’d tossed them down at the foot of the bed, quietly left the room and eased the door shut behind him. One last glance as he went; the rise and fall of Dragosani’s chest had taken on the slow rhythm of sleep. That was good. Kinkovsi nodded to himself and smiled. Obviously he felt at home here.
Dragosani chose new lodgings each time he came here. Always in the vicinity of the town he called home -within spitting distance – but not so close to the last place that he’d be remembered from the previous year. He had thought of using an assumed name, a pseudonym, but had thrown the idea out untried. He was proud of his name, probably in defiance of its origin. Not in defiance of Dragosani the town, his geographical origin, but the fact that he’d been found there. As for his parents: his father was that almost impregnable mountain range up there to the north, the Transylvanian Alps, and his mother was the rich dark soil itself.
Oh, he had his own theories about his real parents; what they’d done had probably been for the best. The way he imagined them, they had been Szgany, ‘Romany’, Gypsies; young lovers out of feuding camps, their love had not had the power to reconcile old slights and spites. But they had loved, Dragosani had been born, and he had been left. As to actually tracking them down, those unknown parents: he had thought to do that three years ago and had come here for precisely that reason. But. . . it had been utterly hopeless. A task enormous, impossible. There were as many gypsies in Romania now as ever there had been in the old days. Despite their ‘satellite’ designation, old Wallachia, Transylvania, Moldavia and all the lands around had retained something of autonomy, of self-determination. Gypsies had as much right to be here as the mountains themselves.
These had been the thoughts in Dragosani’s mind as he drifted into sleep, but the dream he dreamed then was not of his parents at all but of scenes from his childhood, before he’d been sent out of Romania to complete his education. He had been a loner even then, had kept himself to himself, and sometimes he’d wandered where others feared to go. Or where they had been forbidden to go. . .
The woods were deep and dark on hillsides steep and winding as fairground Figures-of-Eight. Boris had only ever seen a Figure-of-Eight once, three days ago on his seventh birthday (his seventh ‘found’ day, as his foster-father would have it) when his treat had been to go in to Dragosani and visit the little picture house there. A short Russian film had been shot entirely from fairground rides, and the Figure-of-Eight had been so real that Boris had actually suffered from vertigo, so that he’d nearly fallen out of his seat. It had been very frightening, but exciting, too; so much so that he’d devised his own game to simulate the thrill of the ride. It wasn’t as good and it was hard work, but it was better than nothing. And you could do it right here, on the slopes of the wooded hills not a mile from the estate.