Photo: Sam Beale.

International SQUALL

Wishes For Zuzana

Following her article on Romany Gypsies in the last issue of SQUALL, Sam Beale was invited over to the Czech Republic to witness a Romany christening and to experience first hand the vibrancy of European Gypsy culture.

Squall 12, Spring 1996, pp. 42-44.

On the day before Zuzana’s christening, women and children filled the kitchen in Rusenko’s small Prague apartment and began preparing vast quantities of food. One year old Zuzana, blissfully ignorant of all the fuss, was to celebrate her initiation into the rites of the Catholic Church as the newest member of the Romany community. Whilst the furore of activity swirled around her, Zuzana crawled around the floor, inquisitive with her big beautiful Roma eyes, shoving into her mouth anything she was handed, edible or otherwise.

Miraculously to English eyes, the other children, apparently without question or prompting, worked alongside their sisters, mothers and aunts. They refused categorically to allow visitors to help. Guests must sit and be served refreshments at regular ten minute intervals; food, strong coffee, cigarettes, vodka and smiles.

Zuzana’s grandfather, Jan, was the subject of much concerned conversation. He lay in hospital recovering from a heart attack and wouldn’t be making it to the Christening. For ten years he has led a traditional Roma ensemble - Perumos (thunder/lightening in Romani) - a musical troupe involving most of his family. They work all over Europe performing Gypsy songs, dances and music-based stories in stunning traditional costume.

“We sing traditional arrangements of old songs which were sung by my grandmother and great grandmother” explained Jan’s sister, Margita, a primary singer with the ensemble.

Margita is spellbinding. Her smile is broad and wise, her manner both powerful and tender. She shouted across the kitchen to the other women as they worked; joking, teasing and laughing. With the Perumos troupe, she sings lamenting, ecstatic Gypsy songs in a strong, deep voice, irresistibly gravelly with tobacco and vodka. She is also a writer, an artist and a collector of Gypsy fairy tales.

“They say I am a Romany writer. I don’t know how; someone ‘dictates’, I just write it down,” she explains. “Writers can sometimes see better, see further on. They can see a problem and express it.” With her visions and writing abilities, Margita edits a Romany magazine called Gendalos (Romani for ‘mirror’). She speaks candidly of censorship, threats and, without paranoia, of the facts of life for politically radical Roma in a country shaking off the remains of a long Communist history.

She and her brother are long-time civil rights activists for Roms and are both well-known and well-respected within the international Gypsy community. The long list of Margita’s creative talents also includes poetry, with two of her poems appearing in school textbooks as examples of world literature: “I hope that when the children read them, their teachers will let them know they have been written by a Rom and our children will be proud.”

The children winced as they downed the strong Czech spirit. Little Margeta, tipping rather a lot on the grave, was chided by a tearful Margita: “Not so much! You’ll get him drunk!”

Jarmila, known to all as Jarka, is Jan’s wife. She is a non-gypsy woman and a mother of four children: Hana, Marketa, Jiri and Redana. Although Redana is Zuzana’s mother, she was conspicuously absent from the preparations for the christening. Stunningly beautiful in old photographs of the Perumos, Redana was mentioned rarely, at least in the presence of visitors. It seems that when very young, she fell in love and ran away with a man the family strongly disapproved of. When she returned, her father made her cut off all her hair (a Gypsy woman’s ‘crowning glory’); a traditional punishment for Roma women who are considered to have behaved ‘shamefully’. However, she did not stay long, running away again to be with Zuzana’s father, reluctantly leaving her baby with the family. Her relationship with them, particularly her father, is strained and she doesn’t visit often. Some video footage of the ensemble performing after she had returned, shows her with cropped hair, dancing and singing alongside her father. That particular performance poignantly acted out an intensely compelling story very similar to her own tale of forbidden love.

The preparation of food for the Christening took 24 hours. A constant stream of visitors the day before brought deliveries and went on errands for meat, bread, cakes and drinks. Meanwhile the women and the girls worked; with the amazing Jarka (whose severe facial expression masks her emotional and gentle nature) working harder than anyone. The women in this family are the home; nothing happens without them and they know it. Their roles are clear; traditionally and pragmatically concerned with amily, food and practicalities. On the eve of such an important family occasion the men were quiet in comparison. They seemed less sure of themselves.

In between pampering visitors, preparing dishes for the next day’s guests and cooking regular family meals, Jarka made a special soup with fresh pasta for her husband and took it to him in the hospital. This was your stereotypical, no-frills Communist institution. Nothing gleamed white and chrome, and you couldn’t see your reflection in any of the floors. There didn’t appear to be a shortage of medical care or hygiene just a slow pace, a lack of money and the distinct absence of NHS Trust managers. Everything, accept the ludicrously young orderlies, appeared old.

Rusenko had just been taken out of intensive care which, he said, could not have been less intensive. He had been sandwiched between two old women who groaned, cried, chattered and snored until, desperate for peace, he demanded a bed on his own. The family, blatantly ignoring visiting hours and restrictions on numbers, popped in to see him at all hours. The man at the door, fag hanging from his sad-faced clown mouth, appeared miserably resigned to just about everything, making only minor, disinterested attempts to complain.

With his family around him Jan Rusenko, a proud Rom with soulful eyes and a thick, greying beard, looked tired and depressed by his incarceration but was still able to issue instructions for Zuzana’s big day. Even from his hospital bed he was determined to be the head of the family. He asked how the preparations were going, who was coming and what the little girl would look like.

A teenage orderly in short uniform and ankle socks skipped in with Jan’s drugs for the night, flashing a seductive smile at everyone but not noticing the two strictly forbidden cigarettes Jan’s wife had left at his bidding. He hung out of the window smoking one, raising his hand in farewell as his family made their way back home to start work again.

The Christening itself was a relatively quiet affair. It was held on the outskirts of Prague in the Rusenko family church, a small, classically Eastern European building, stunningly beautiful inside with its incense, candles and suffering saints. The smiling priest, robed in purple and gold Christening garb, looked puzzled but pleased that English Gypsy Peter Mercer, Zuzana’s godfather, needed to have the ceremony translated into English by the child’s Godmother, Hana. Despite being a Czech gadje (non-Gypsy), Hana is a long-time family friend who studies Romani language, loves Roms and Romani culture and today was being ritually welcomed into the family. Fortunately for both myself and Peter Mercer, she is also an interpreter.

After the rites were completed, Margita slipped out for a smoke and to perform some rites of her own. As the rest of the congregation emerged from the church, they found her weeping by the grave of her brother who had died of a heart attack a year before aged only 40. Two lighted cigarettes were placed on the grave, “for him” explained Hana. Margita then produced a bottle of vodka and a glass and everyone in turn was poured a shot. Reverently, they each tipped a few drops onto the dead man’s grave before knocking back the rest. The children winced as they downed the strong Czech spirit. Little Margeta, tipping rather a lot on the grave, was chided by a tearful Margita: “Not so much! You’ll get him drunk!”. Everyone laughed and moved on to repeat the ritual at another grave, that of the second of Margita’s brothers to die young from a heart condition. His grave was decorated with beautiful engravings of horses and a picture of the handsome Rom himself. With tears in her eyes, Margita explained that this brother had been a great horseman and that horses loved him. At his funeral, she recalled, his coffin had been bourne by a horse which had wept real tears. Everyone nodded. They had seen it.

Next stop was another hospital visit to present Jan Rusenko with his grandchild. Confused, vaguely interested patients and staff watched as the godparents handed Zuzana to him saying, in Romani: “We took from you a baby; we bring to you a baptised child.” He smiled and nodded approval. Zuzana giggled, her bonnet and Christening gown glowing white, as Jarka rearranged the purple, green and white sash, a gift from godfather Peter Mercer (given to him, bizarrely enough, by English Gypsy-champion David Essex). Jan’s children kissed him, his youngest son Jiri, clinging to him. As he stood in his pyjamas waiting for the antiquated lift to take them all away from him, he was gently smiling, bidding Peter to drink his share of whisky.

Back at the house yet more vodka-drinking rituals. Zuzana, resplendent in Christening robes and gold earrings (another gift from Peter), was held high whilst each member of the family in turn toasted her with vodka; wishing her health, wealth, love, beauty, long life and a strong heart.

The guests trickled in with warm smiles and yelps of delight; drinking proper began. The Perumos’s accordion player began to play, feet tapped and the women began to sing. Tears welled up in the dark eyes of even the most apparently gruff old men with Jarka, her niece Natasa and the other children darting in and out with food and bottles. Meanwhile, Zuzana was being fussed over, with her great-grandmother proudly posing with her for photographs.

Children ran about everywhere, dragging the youngest behind them as the music got wilder, the laughter louder and the dancing began. Margita bossily re-filled half-full glasses, teasing the most unlikely characters to their feet. At one point the women, arms raised high and with wicked grins on their faces, engaged in a sort of dancing combat to win the man they wanted, barging each other violently out of the way in mock anger. The men loved it.

After lunch Jarka passed round a silver tray and each guest threw notes into it “for the child”. Everyone wept, Jarka most of all. Tears for the generosity of her guests, for the high emotion of the Christening and the hope it symbolised were all mingled with sorrow that her husband and their daughter - Zuzana’s mother - were absent from the celebrations. The music played on and, as always with these people for whom extreme emotions seem constantly interchangeable, the tears turned once more to laughter and singing. Everybody sang, with solos demanded and generously applauded. Margita sang till she lost her voice completely, the children stayed up far too late and Jarka didn’t sit down all day. Drunk beyond belief, the accordion player was the last to leave.