"He wasn't born a Rom?" I asked.
"Werner Von Doom? With that Von in his name? No, he was the last of the Von Dooms, the old aristocracy. The Soviets went around every so often, getting rid of them. That was how he joined us. He was at University, studying medicine, when a friend of his sent him the word that the Black Squad was coming for him. He needed to get away, fast and quiet as he could. So he came to us, and asked if we would get him out of the city.
"Our headman asked him 'And why should we do that?' He could tell Werner hadn't any money.
"Werner gave him a look up and down, and replied, 'Because I can help your gout.'
"He did, too. Once we were out in the country, he made a medicine out of autumn crocus bulbs for our chief to take, and told him to stay away from red wine and organ meats. That put out chief a little out of temper. He was fond of grilled kidneys, when he could get them. Anyhow, six months later, he was still among us. Werner liked the life, the traveling. He just slipped into the role of our healer, and he was a good one. He made most of his own medicines from what he could gather or buy along the way.
"Then there was Cynthia. She was—fifteen, sixteen then. About the age of my daughter, Mayra. Cynthia took a good look at Werner, and that was it. She started hanging around him, going to him with any little cut or bruise she could find for him to treat it. It got so bad her father went to Werner and had a word with him. It turned out she was hurting herself on purpose, to have an excuse to go to him.
"Werner asked her why she was doing that, and Cynthia spoke right up. She told him she loved him and wanted to marry him. Oh, she was a willful one! That's where her son gets it from. Young girls among us aren't often that bold.
"Werner said he didn't know if he wanted to get married or not, but she had to stop hunting for reasons to see him, and hurting herself. He said that he'd think about marrying her, but he wasn't going to marry a girl who couldn't read and write and do her numbers. I think it was his way of trying to put her off, because of course she couldn't—not then.
"But she learned. Some said, afterward, that it was learning to read that was the problem, she never would have started trafficking with demons if she hadn't, but I don't agree. It was all there in her from the start—you don't need to know how to read to do that, you just need to find someone to teach you. The power was in her from the day she was born.
"So two years later, Werner married Cynthia, and my girl Mayra married too. It wasn't long before both of the brides were going to have babies. They were brought to bed within a month of each other. Cynthia gave birth to Victor, and Mayra had Valeria. Only Mayra died in childbirth…
"My wife and I took Valeria. If she'd been a boy, her father and his people would have wanted to keep her, but being a girl, they were glad enough that we took her. Mayra was our only child, you see."
"Then you're much older than Werner and Cynthia would be, if they'd lived." I remarked, keeping track of all the relative ages.
"Yes. We got to be close, though, what with having two babes the same age. Werner was a good friend, and the gentlest man that ever lived. Cynthia—if ever there was a mother who loved her child more than Cynthia loved him, I never heard of her…You know what happened to Cynthia." He looked at me.
"Yes." I replied.
"Werner…He was never the same, afterwards. She was the fire in his life, in his heart…But he had the boy, and he looked after him as tender as any woman ever could. We helped him out, here and there—he was terrible at mending clothes, so my wife did that for them. She died not long after that, though. A cancer in her breast."
"I'm sorry." I said.
"It was so long ago…That was an ailment Werner could do little about. So much the worse, when the 'baron'—more of a 'robber baron'—had heard of the miraculous gypsy healer—" I had never heard Boris speak with sarcasm before—"and sent armed men to get him, to tend to his ailing wife—who was dying already, of cancer. All the medicines and doctors and hospitals could do nothing for her, but Werner was supposed to cure her.
"The baron said if his wife died, so would Werner—and Victor. Four days later, Werner returned—escaped, in truth! All that he could do was give her something to ease her passing. He had come back only to get Victor and get away, as far away as they could. He bundled up just what he could carry, and told Victor to do the same. They fled into the mountains. The problem was, it was late October. I don't have to tell you what that means around here."
"A lightning blizzard." Latverian winters were long, fierce, and capricious, especially in the higher elevations. When a lightning blizzard was about to hit, the temperature would drop by twenty degrees Celsius in a few hours, and then came snow so thick and heavy it was blinding. Up in the mountains, it was doubly dangerous, because someone caught in one had to choose between staying still and freezing to death—or keep moving and fall down a precipice. Even people who were used to such weather patterns could make a mistake.
"When we found them, Victor was wrapped up, as warm as toast, fast asleep. Werner had put every spare garment on Victor, even his own hat and gloves, and then buttoned the boy inside his coat with him, wrapping himself around the boy.
But Werner… His head was bare, and so were his hands. Had he lived, he would have lost both feet, I'm sure of that, and most of the one hand—the other was tucked up inside his coat, holding his son close. I don't know what the frostbite would have left of his face—not much of it, I don't think.
"He died of exposure. We did what we could, but without a hospital, without even a bathtub of warm water, there wasn't much. I poured plum brandy down his throat, and we made a fire.
"Through all of this, Victor hardly made a sound. He watched us with big dark eyes. He didn't scream, or cry. He kept out of the way. I looked at him once, and I knew his heart was breaking…
"Werner came round for a while, before the end. It was with his dying breath that he asked me, as his friend, to look after his son.
"What could I do but swear I would, and having sworn, be true to it?"
The land around us, the gentle pastures, the trees, the vaulted sky above, took Boris' words in, in understanding silence.
Finally I asked, "How old was Victor then?"
"Eight. It was almost thirty years ago. Mind you, it wasn't easy. I had Valeria to bring up as well, and in some ways, she was harder to raise, there being things I couldn't tell her or teach her. I thought he would be the son I never had, and so he was, up to a point. That boy…It was like his head was on fire, like that Human Torch's, only on the inside, where it didn't show as much. I'd show him or tell him something once, and he'd remember it forever.
"That didn't mean he always obeyed me—he was the one for coming up with all kinds of things! He'd put these chemicals in a baked clay pot, and throw it at a truck, like a grenade, and it would freeze up like it was in an ice storm. Or he'd get hold of a busted up old violin, and fix it up so anyone could play it like they'd been practicing for years. Then he'd sell it to someone, and it would work—until we left town. To this day, I don't know how he managed that. And books. He always spent the money on books."
"That's what I would have done." I commented.
"You too, eh? I'm not surprised. For all of that, though—for all the years, and me doing what I could to keep him fed—which, when he started growing like a weed, wasn't easy—and then him coming back and looking after me, buying me this place and the horses…I know that what ever I wanted or needed, he'd get it for me. I'd only have to say the word—but he's never once called me father. Thirty years. I know he wouldn't want to say it out in public, that would never do, but now and then, if he'd…He doesn't want to forget Werner, I know that. He always speaks of me as his father's friend. Sometimes it's on my lips to call him my son, but, then, how can you call a wildfire or a mountain son? That's what he's like."
"I know what you mean." I said. "But, Boris, when he speaks of the importance of a father in a child's life, he speaks of you and Werner in the same breath. You said he gets his willfulness from Cynthia—I can see that he gets his sense of honor from you. Werner was the father of the boy, but you—you're the father of the man."
He looked at me, and blinked, several times. "Thank you," he said, hoarsely. He tucked away the empty bag that had the dried fruit in it—we had fed it to several horses as he talked—and took out his handkerchief. He wiped his eyes, and sagged against the nearest fence.
"Thank you. You don't know what it's been like for me—Werner didn't say, 'look after my boy', he said, 'look after my son'. Just because he was grown to be a man didn't mean I could leave off looking after him, so I've kept on—wondering what was going to happen when I would die, because in all the world, for years—I was all that he'd got, who he could trust in. Once I was gone, who would he have?
"Because I know him. After he got back in power, the next morning, they found Rudolph Haasen, and there was hardly a bone in his body that wasn't broken. I know he did that. For me, though, around me—he'll hold that part of himself in check. But now there's you, and I can see that he's going to be all right. You bring out the better side of him. You make him laugh. You can stop him when he's going off into one of his rages. When it's my time, I can die knowing he's got someone in this world that truly loves him."
"Oh—please—" I wasn't sure what to say. "Yes. I know. I know him. I do love him." I put my hand on Boris' shoulder, trying to comfort him. Our moment of tearful communion was broken by the mare, who nudged her nose rudely in between us to see if we had any more fruit. I had to laugh, and Boris joined me.
He put his handkerchief away. "I've got to tell you this part, too. My granddaughter, Valeria. I brought them up together, and it was never as brother and sister. When they were five years old they were saying they were going to marry each other, as innocent as two buds on a twig. If he'd been anyone else, like as not they would have, too, when they got to an age for it, but I knew. I knew he was going to have to go away, among the gadjin,"—Gadjin was the Rom word for anyone who wasn't Rom— "to learn what he had to, to become what he was going to become. Only Valeria didn't see that. She didn't want to see it.
"One day she came crying to me, saying, 'Victor says he doesn't need love, or a wife and children. He says such things are for lesser men, and not for Doom! He says he wants power, such as the world has never known. He says he's going to make everyone pay for what they've done!'
"I said, 'Those are big words coming from a lad who isn't shaving yet. Val, sweeting, calm yourself down. You and he are only half grown. Don't go crowding him about when you're getting married. There's nothing that puts a lad off worse than having a girl clinging on him and making him feel trapped. As for what he said, he's only fifteen. Give him time, and he'll come around. When I was his age, I had a head full of plans myself. Getting married and having children weren't part of them.'
" 'How long?' she asked me.
" 'I don't know.' I said. 'He needs to go to a university, where there are more books than even he can read in a year, and he can't do that if he's got a wife and little ones.'
" 'What does he need to do that for?' she shot back. 'That's no life for a Rom!'
"It was bad in my caravan after that, for months. She was snappish and he was sulky. He could sulk something amazing when he put his mind to it."
"He still can." I remarked.
"He can at that, can't he?" Boris and I exchanged glances of perfect understanding. "Then he went off to America."