The Magic Circle (41 page)

“I’m sorry,” he said. “Since we’ve come late, it’s possible that he
is
here already. Let me try to find out. Meanwhile why don’t you order some appetizer or fish for us to begin with? I’ll send the waiter to you.” Standing, he looked around once more, then left me alone at the table.

I sipped some more wine while I studied the menu. I’m not sure how much time passed, but just as I was wondering whether I ought to go on my own to find the waiter, a shadow fell across the table. Glancing up, I saw a tall figure bundled in a green loden greatcoat. His broad-brimmed hat shadowed his face against the light pouring from the windows behind, so I couldn’t make out his features. His leather satchel, much like my own, was slung casually across one shoulder. He set the bag down in the far side of the booth that Wolfgang had recently vacated.

“May I join you?” he asked in a soft voice. Without waiting for a nod from me he’d unbuttoned the coat and was hanging it on a nearby hook. I glanced around nervously to see what was keeping Wolfgang. The soft voice added: “I saw our friend Herr Hauser back in the kitchen just now. I’ve taken the liberty of asking him to leave us.”

I turned to object, but he’d slid into the booth opposite and removed his hat. For the first time I got a clear look at him. I was absolutely riveted.

His face was like nothing I’d ever seen. Though weathered like ancient stone, it seemed a timeless mask of sculpted beauty and enormous power. His long hair, nearly black but mixed with strands of silver, was pulled back to reveal his strong jawline and high cheekbones, then tumbled in ropes of braid about his shoulders.

He wore a quilted leather vest and a shirt with loose white sleeves, open at the throat to reveal a string of intricately carved beads in various colored stones. The vest was embroidered with bird and animal motifs in rich and vibrant colors: saffron, carmine, plum, cerulean, scarlet, pumpkin, viridian, colors from a primal forest.

His ancient eyes, beneath brooding brows, were of a depth and hue that might be equaled only in the rarest of gemstones, pools of mingled color, midnight purple and emerald green and ebony, with a dark flame burning in their depths. Of all the descriptions I’d heard of him, I thought Wolfgang’s seemed the best.

“The way you’re looking at me makes me quite self-conscious, my dear,” he said.

Before I could reply, he’d reached over and casually plucked the menu from my hands, commandeering my wineglass too. “I’ve taken another liberty,” he told me in that soft, exotically accented voice. “I’ve brought some Côtes du Rhône from my vineyards at Avignon. I put them in the kitchen earlier to—how you would say?—help them breathe. Before our friend Wolfgang agreed to leave, he insisted you hadn’t eaten all day and must have some food to go with it. You’re fond of
Tafelspitz
, I hope?”

The waiter unobtrusively set the new bottle on the table with fresh wineglasses, poured, and quickly vanished as Dacian went on.

“Since you’re my only heir, my vineyard and its wines will one day belong to you, so I’m pleased for you to make their acquaintance—as I’m delighted to make yours. Shall I introduce myself formally? I am your grandsire, Dacian Bassarides. And I regard so lovely a granddaughter as a better gift than all the wines in the Vaucluse.”

Holy shit, I thought as we clinked glasses—that’s all I need, to be heir to one more bequest. If all my inheritances turned out like the
last
one, I wouldn’t be around long enough to collect on anything!

“I’m delighted to meet you, too,” I told Dacian Bassarides—and I meant it. “But I want to explain that I learned of our relationship only moments ago, so I hope you can appreciate that I’m still in shock. My grandmother Pandora died before I was born. She was rarely discussed by my family, so I know as little of her as I do of you. But if you’re truly my grandfather as you say, I have to wonder why it’s been hidden from me all these years. Do others know it?”

“Of course, it must be a shock for you,” Dacian said with a sweep of his long, graceful fingers, the fingers of a violinist, I recalled. “I’ll explain everything—perhaps even a few things you’d rather not learn—though I myself always prefer even the rawest of facts to the prettiest of fiction. But you must tell me what you’ve already heard, before I can provide the rest.”

“I’m afraid I know very little,” I told him. “All I’ve heard about that side of the family is that you and Pandora were cousins; that she was a music student in Vienna who worked as a companion or tutor in the Behn household; and that you taught my uncle Lafcadio to play the violin. He says you were young, but a great master.”

“Quite a compliment—but, here, our meal arrives,” he said. “As we eat, I can explain everything. It’s not so much a mystery as one might suppose.”

I watched as the waiter set down an array of covered platters. When he lifted the lid of my
Tafelspitz
—that traditional Austrian dish of hot boiled beef accompanied on its divided plate by cold applesauce and horseradish, hot vinegary potatoes, creamed spinach, fresh green salad with white beans—it looked and smelled fabulous. But Dacian’s lunch was unfamiliar. I asked him what it was.

“It’s the best way to find out about people: to learn how they eat,” he told me. “For example, in this tureen we find a Hungarian cold soup of sour cherries. Then the dish you asked me about is
ćevapčići
, a kind of kebab made from ground beef, lamb, garlic, onion, and
paprikesh;
it’s smoked over charcoals of smoldering grapevine so it has a taste of the vineyard. In Dalmatia they claim the Serbs invented it, but it’s older than that. This dish was really invented by the Dacians—my namesakes—an ancient tribe that once inhabited Macedonia, now part of Yugoslavia. They were known even as far east as the Caspian, where they called themselves
Daoi:
the wolves. We wolves, it’s how you recognize us—we very much like to eat meat.” And he stabbed one of the patties with his fork and closed down on it with those magnificent white teeth.

When the first bite of
Tafelspitz
melted in my mouth, I realized how truly hungry I was. Dacian plucked choice items from various dishes and passed them across to me. I wanted to wolf down everything I saw, but I forced myself back to the topic.

“So you come from the Balkans, not Austria?” I asked.

“Well, I’m named for the Dacians, but my people are really of Romani descent. And who can say where the Rom originally come from?” he said with a shrug.

“The Romani?” I said. “Are they named for Rome? Or did you mean Rumania?”

“Romani is the name of our language, rooted in Sanskrit, and also what we sometimes call ourselves—although we’ve been called many names by others over the years:
Bohémes, Cingari, Tsiganes, Gitanos, Flamencos, Tartares, Zigeuner.…
”

When I still looked perplexed, he explained, “Most would call us by the common name Gypsies, because it was once believed our origins were in Egypt, though there are plenty of other opinions: India, Persia, Central Asia, Outer Mongolia, the South Pole—even places of magical belief that have never existed at all. There are those who think we came from outer space. And those who think we should be shot back there as soon as possible!”

“Then you and Pandora are Gypsies?”

I admit I was confused. One hour ago I had an Irish mother and a father I’d thought part Austrian, part Dutch. Now all at once I was illegitimately descended from a pair of Gypsy cousins who’d abandoned my father at birth. But befuddled as I might be about
my
ancestry, I had little reason to doubt Dacian Bassarides’s description of his own: he looked every bit as wild as everyone described.

“The details of our family are never to be shared with the
Gadje
—the others, the outsiders,” Dacian cautioned me seriously. “This is why I have sent our friend Hauser away. But to your question: yes, we were Rom. Though Pandora grew up and lived partly among the
Gadje
, in her heart and blood she always was one of
us
. I knew her from childhood. She sang so wonderfully that she already had the marks of a great
diva
. Perhaps you know that in Sanskrit this term describes an angel, while in Persian it means a devil? Pandora was a little of each.

“As for the origin of the Rom, our sagas say we came to earth aeons ago from an aboriginal home which can still be found in the night sky: the constellation Orion, the mighty hunter. Or more precisely, the three stars forming a belt at its center—the
omphalos
, the navel or umbilical cord of Orion—called the Three Kings because they shine like the star the Magi followed to Bethlehem. In Egypt, Orion was equated with the god Osiris, in India with Varuna, in Greece with Ouranos, and in Norse countries with the Spindle of Time. In all cultures he is known as the messenger, the chief guide for each transition into a new age.”

I wasn’t about to get sidetracked just when the plot was thickening. And there was more than stardust clouding Dacian’s story. How could he and Pandora have been Gypsies when, by all the accounts I’d heard, the Nazis considered Gypsies lower on the evolutionary totem pole than Catholics, Communists, homosexuals, or Jews?

“If you and Pandora were Gypsies,” I said, “how could she have lived as she did, and
where
she did, running around with the kinds of people she did, both before and during the Second World War?”

Dacian was regarding me with an odd half smile. “And how did she live? I thought you knew almost nothing about her.”

“No,” I agreed. “But what I meant was, how could Pandora and Laf have stayed in that luxurious apartment in Vienna all during the war—I’ve been there myself, so I know what it’s like—and lived such a lavish lifestyle? How could she have mingled with Nazis and such? I don’t mean just being able to pass herself off as an upper-class Viennese rather than a Gypsy. I mean, how could she have permitted herself to stay here in Vienna when her own people were being”—I dropped to sotto voce—“I mean,
how could she have stayed on here as Hitler’s favorite opera star?
”

Dacian was looking at our wineglasses as if he’d just noticed they were empty; he replenished them himself. Knowing the punctiliousness of Viennese waiters in such matters, I could only assume he’d instructed them all to stay away.

“Is that what you’ve been told?” he asked, as if to himself. “How interesting. I should like to know where you heard it, for it appears this tale must have been the collaboration of a number of creative minds.” He looked at me and added: “
Very
creative. Completely appropriate for a descendant, such as yourself, of a family line originating in the constellation Orion.”

“Are you saying none of it is true?”

“I am saying that every half truth is also a half lie,” he said carefully. “Never confuse people’s beliefs with reality. The only truth worth exploring is one that leads us closer to the center.”

“The center of what?” I asked.

“Of the circle of truth itself,” Dacian replied.

“So are you going to help rid me of those half truths and beliefs I’ve collected, and shed a little light on my own reality?”

“Yes—though it’s hard to answer questions properly unless they are put properly.”

Unexpectedly, he reached out and put his hands over mine, which rested at either side of my plate. I felt electricity moving into my flesh, my bones, suffusing me with warmth. But before I could speak, he motioned for the waiter, rattling off something in German I couldn’t make out.

“I’ve ordered us a sweet,” he said, “something good, lots of chocolate. It’s named for a famous Gypsy violinist of the last century, Rigo Jancsi, who broke the heart of every noblewoman in Vienna—and not only by his playing of Paganini!” He laughed and shook his head, but as he withdrew his hands from mine, he seemed to be observing me closely.

Without a word, he took something from his inside vest pocket and gave it to me. In my open hand lay a small gold locket, oval in shape, etched with an animal-bird design similar to the one on his vest. There was a hinge at either side; when I clicked the pin one side of the locket popped open. Inside was a picture, quite old—a shimmering hand-tinted photo on metal like the platinum-coated tintypes from around the turn of the century. But unlike many photos of that era, whose subjects had the glassy expression of sockeye salmon, this picture with its lifelike tints had the freshness of a recent snapshot.

The face in the oval was clearly the young Dacian Bassarides. I regarded with a kind of awe that magnetism everyone had described; in this time capsule from his youth, his elemental primitivity leapt out like a force of nature. His loose black hair was swept back and his shirt was open to reveal his bare chest and powerful neck. His handsome face with its straight, slender nose, intense dark eyes, and slightly parted lips exuded a wildly breathless essence that called to mind Laf’s steaming jungle panther—companion to the god.

But when I pressed the pin again and the other gate opened, I nearly dropped the locket. It was like looking into a mirror at my own reflection!

The face within the locket had the same pale-tinged “Irish” coloring as mine, my unruly mass of dark hair and pale green eyes. But also, each detail—even to the identical cleft in the chin—was a flawless match. Although the clothes were of another place and time, I thought this was how one might feel walking down the street and unexpectedly meeting his own twin.

Dacian Bassarides still watched me closely. At last he spoke.

“You are exactly like her,” he said simply. “Wolfgang Hauser had warned me, but still I wasn’t prepared. I watched you from the back of the restaurant for some time before I could bring myself to come to this table and meet you. It’s hard to say what it’s like for me—like vertigo, like falling through a tunnel in time.…” He drifted into silence.

“You must have loved her very much.”

As I said it, I was only just realizing myself, with full and painful impact, exactly what issues that raised about him and the role he’d played regarding my family. But brutal though it might be, it couldn’t be helped. I had to ask.