Tamas drew a breath. Lala snapped her head in his direction. Whatever he was going to say went unsaid.
‘Well, he’s a very rude boy,’ said the king. ‘And now he can go.’
Tamas looked down at Samantha. ‘I’ll be outside,’ he said.
‘Which you already told us,’ said the king.
‘Get out, Tamas,’ said Lala.
The king cracked his Coke and guzzled. When he put the can down on the lamp table next to him, Samantha thought that it sounded near empty. He belched loudly.
Delightful.
‘Now, your Grace,’ said Lala. ‘How can we help you? Would you like a charm for your business dealings? A spell for your luck?’
The king raised a pudgy hand to his many chins and stroked. He faced Samantha. She met his eyes and finally felt something from him. Ravenousness.
‘I want a reading,’ he said.
Lala hissed. ‘A what!? My Grace, you know that we don’t read the cards for other Rom. Card reading is only for the Gaje! It is terrible, terrible luck, your Grace, to have your cards read by another gypsy. It is never done. We are happy to write a curse for your enemies or create great blessings for your wealth or health, but we can’t read your cards, my King.’
‘I am speaking to the child,’ the gypsy king said, staring at Samantha. ‘And I want a reading.’
Huh. Well, she hadn’t expected that. Samantha had never even considered performing a reading for another Rom. Lala had drummed the bad-luck thing into her for a year before she’d even allowed her to hold a tarot deck. Before today, Samantha would no more have read cards for a gypsy than strip naked and streak through the camp carrying Bo’s flag.
And yet, here she was, about to read for the king of the gypsies. She shrugged, and as the king watched her, she felt his greed swell further. Oh well, though she didn’t like to admit it, even to herself, she wasn’t sure that she believed a lot of the stuff Lala had taught her about the cards. I mean, what Lala told her they meant, and what she saw for the clients when she read, were usually two very different things.
She reached for the shiny, jet-black lacquered box containing her deck and Lala hissed again, quietly. Samantha sent calm towards the chair beside her. The king’s eyes widened as she did so, and for the first time she faltered.
How had he sensed that?
He smiled and licked his lips.
She loosened the gold cord wrapped around the box and opened it. As always, the sounds faded around her. The drone of the old electric fan on the lamp table became a mosquito in the distance. The heavy breathing of the king and Lala’s rapid gasps fell silent. Sam smiled, closed her eyes, and fondled the red silk wrapped around the deck, slipping into the fabric as though into a blood-warm river. The cards welcomed her, had missed her, swam with her, darting over and under, each clamouring to whisper their secrets. They tickled; she giggled. Then she opened her eyes.
The king regarded her hungrily.
She decided then and there to make this as brief a reading as possible – just three cards: his past, present and future. It was not Lala’s discomfort; it was the gypsy king’s eyes that warned her to get this over with quickly.
I wonder if he didn’t eat at lunch because his favourite food is teenager, she thought.
She slipped the silk from the cards and they hummed feverishly in her hands. She began to sweat.
‘Um, okay,’ she said, wiping a hand across her brow, ‘you need to think of a question.’
She decided to forget about the witchy-poo theatrics to set the mood. Nothing she could say would make this scene any weirder than it already was.
‘I have my question,’ he said, his eyes oil slicks.
‘Good. Do not speak it aloud,’ she said.
She shuffled the deck, eyes again closed, some cards battling to find her hands, others shirking from her touch. She listened as their whispers tumbled over and under one another as she shuffled: snatches of thought; cobwebs of consciousness; what will be, what is now, what will come nevermore. She stilled her hands, put the deck on the table, opened her eyes.
‘Cut the cards,’ she said. ‘Three piles, any size. Face down.’
She wrinkled her nose in distaste as he grabbed greedily at the deck, his fat fingers fracturing its symmetry as he spread the cards in his haste. He slapped down three piles on the table and lifted his eyes.
‘Put them back together again,’ she said. ‘Any order. Face down.’
She could feel Lala bristling at her lack of etiquette, but she sensed that her mentor also wanted this over with quickly.
When her deck was whole again on the table before her, Samantha rubbed her palms together twice and reached for it.
‘Hold your question in your mind.’
She turned the first card. ‘A spirit card,’ she said. The whispers began. ‘This card represents your present – what is happening in your life right now.’
The ornate picture was dominated by a giant hourglass, golden sand trickling through its transparent innards. In the background stood a man, eyes down, contemplative, worried, while looping the whole card, in dizzying rings, spun a series of concentric circles. A circular maze.
The king watched her, seemed to breathe her in.
‘The Waiting Game,’ she said. ‘You have a decision to make.’
‘That is correct,’ he said.
Samantha chewed her thumbnail. She worried about what to say next. Lala would tell her that these circles meant that there were numerous possibilities open for her client to take, but the card whispered the truth.
‘There are two options,’ she said. ‘You may select only one.’
The king made a guttural sound deep in his throat. ‘Go on,’ he said.
‘You have been setting your plan in motion for a long time,’ she said. ‘And the journey has been painful and dangerous. You realise that you are very close now, and you are waiting, waiting for the results to come to fruition.’
‘Yes, yes,’ he said.
Samantha tuned out Lala’s worry. Nothing she had spoken had been taught by her teacher. Her words came from the cards themselves. She wanted to hurry now, learn what else they had to say.
She turned another card, placed it to the left of the first.
‘The past,’ she said. ‘This card tells where you’ve come from.’
The caravan was motionless as its occupants stared at the card. A study in blue: a beautiful woman draped in a deep-indigo dress stood, head bowed, in an inky ravine. The only other colour in the card glowed at the woman’s chest: a blood-red fabric heart formed the bodice of her dress, stitched up through the middle by the fasteners for the garment – a heart endlessly destined to be torn apart and constantly re-stitched.
An open wound.
‘Heartache and loss,’ she said. ‘Your history.’
The king’s fishy lips twisted into a sour, venomous smile. ‘Touché,’ he said.
What did that mean, she wondered. Does he think this is some kind of mental duel?
The card called her back.
‘You have suffered greatly in your past,’ she said. ‘And although you live now in a completely different world, this sorrow and disappointment still greets you every new day when you open your eyes. The love that you gave her is still inside you, available to heal you, to be given to another -’
This time the king made a hissing sound.
Samantha continued. ‘But you have kept the pain inside, fed and watered it daily. You’ve encouraged the toxins, nurtured them, sought them out and loved them. This agony is now a part of you. It is your closest friend and your most powerful, poisonous weapon.’
Suddenly, Lala heaved herself from her chair.
‘My King,’ Lala said, tottering over to stand between Samantha and her client, ‘I apologise. I tried to tell you that she is a mere baby. Sixty years I have been studying the tarot. I beg of you, please ignore this child and allow me to complete your reading. Or better yet, your Grace, let us leave this sweltering hotbox and find solace in some cold wine and fruit.’