She pulls out a deck of cards. Now, that is much more to my liking! The wagons are once again pulled into a tight circle and we set up. Buba Nadya is at her table with her crystal ball and Tarot deck. I have my own table for the shell game, and that is what I do in the daytime. I have been doing quite well at it, and my purse begins to fill. Of course, I have to give half to Zoltan for my board and keep, but that seems fair—after all, I could be out alone in the wilderness, with neither food nor friends, and I much prefer it here.
In the nighttime, I perform. While Gyorgy plays the gypsy melodies on his fiddle, with Jan on his guitar, Marko and I dance the flamenco. We start, back to back in full glorious costume, clap hands, and go into it, feet pounding, castanets clicking, faces arrogant and held just so, but with eyes flashing and possibly promising I am not the only dancer, of course.
There is Lala and Yanko, and Fifika with her Luka, and when the six of us are whirling around the campfire, well, it is all very exciting. And since the dancing is fiery and wild, sometimes the men who come to watch get a little too excited and are rude, thinking we are loose. We are not loose. The Romani are very protective of their women.
These men make unwanted advances to us, offering up fists full of reales for services other than dance. We point them to our tip jar, but sometimes they insist too strongly and Zoltan has to come up and announce that there are no women for sale here and then warn the men to leave, as the show is over. I also know that I am not the only girl here with a shiv up her own sleeve as well. They do leave, but they are generally quite surly about it and mutter curses as they go At night when we are abed, I begin telling stories to the girls to help put them to sleep.
Mostly Cheapside Tales, as stories of the urchin gangs of London would be closest to their experience—after all, they are often called beggars and thieves, so they can appreciate the similarity. I certainly cannot tell them of my meeting with Napoleon, or the Duke of Clarence, or any of that ilk—I would be tossed out of camp as a liar.
