This Land is no Stranger Sarah Hollister (best biographies to read .txt) 📖

movie posters. The edges of the enormous photographs were left ragged and uncropped. The subjects were varied. There were business people posed in expensive suits, a trio of what looked like members of a farm family, an extravagantly dressed and accessorized young artist in front of a sculpture.

A few of the photographs portrayed the Romani mendicants of Stockholm. Brand abruptly came face to face with a teenage girl wearing white makeup and a wedding dress.

Varzha Luna. The vanished young soul whom Hammar was so worried about. A disturbing memory came back to Brand, a torn shred of wedding gown, discarded in the blood-soaked manor house of the Vosses. The same dress appeared in the photograph.

In the portrait, the girl displayed a fierce beauty, proud and unyielding behind her odd theatrical makeup. A slender boy of around the same age knelt beside her, sporting a neon green Statue of Liberty crown of foam rubber. His olive makeup rendered him into an emaciated version of the Incredible Hulk. In another of the big prints, the two were together again. This time they walked alongside a hapless bourgeois woman. She gripped her shopping bags and stared straight ahead. One foot was extended, the other lifted off the ground as if ready to bolt.

“Brother and sister,” Lehtonen commented. “Vago and Varzha.”

Lehtonen proceeded along the gallery of her startling, gigantic photographs. Brand followed a step behind, taking in the artist’s lean, straight body, more soft boy than woman. The whole package impressed her, the short spiky haircut, the tight jeans, the ivory blouse of wild silk that came off as expensively simple. Lehtonen’s violent red lipstick looked as though it had been tattooed on.

“Why gypsies?” Brand asked. “Why focus on them?”

“Oh, I’m interested in interesting people,” Lehtonen responded. “And by the way, the word is ‘Roma’ or ‘Romani’. ‘Gypsy’ is now heard here as an insult. There are a good number of legitimate names besides Roma, different groups in different parts of the world, like Dom, Sinti, Manus.

She moved on to another Romani portrait, the only one in color, showing a thickset male on the street. He wore a brown overcoat, wire-rimmed spectacles and a fur hat.

“Moro Part,” Lehtonen said. “The big man. He sees himself as a godfather figure. It’s a very hierarchical community. Some of my sources say he may be a people trafficker, or at least a smuggler of some kind. His money comes from somewhere. I’ve followed him for a while now, and he’s very hard to pin down.”

Aino turned back to the photos of the white-faced wedding girl and the comical clownboy. “These two I’ve spent time with,” she said. “Moro Part treats them very well. There seems to be a special relationship between them. I don’t know, maybe he rescues these kids. I’ve heard that as well, that he’s a Robin Hood character, stealing from the rich and giving to the poor.”

Brand examined the portrait. She felt the challenge in Varzha Luna’s gaze, as though it were fixed upon her personally. “I don’t know about him, but her I’d be afraid to meet in a dark alley.”

“I know what you mean. I had to work for ages just to get a single word out of her. Krister knows more.”

“Her eyes look much older than the rest of her,” Brand said.

“She’s sixteen, if you can imagine that. It took a while for me to earn her trust, paying them for taking a photo. I know a church that works with refugees, the Roma, the homeless. My friends and I collect second-hand sweaters and coats, blankets, something warm for the night. We’re not alone in this kind of thing. A lot of Swedes donate.”

“What are the Roma doing living in the subway?” Brand asked. “I saw a whole encampment at the station.”

“Look to Eastern Europe if you want to understand why the Roma come. The mud they slog through, the suspicion and abuse they get from non-Roma. Many times they have no shelter at all, other than tents and makeshift shacks in the woods.”

Aino rapped her knuckles on the wall next to Varzha Luna’s portrait. “Here is the stereotype—a street beggar singing folk songs. But in Sweden and elsewhere many Romani are academics, entrepreneurs, members of parliament. We are everything, teachers and writers and artists.”

Brand pulled up short. We? Had she heard right?

Lehtonen read the expression on her face. She gave a short laugh. “Oh, yes, I am Kaale Roma, Finnish, through my father’s side.”

“I apologize,” Brand said. “I shouldn’t have assumed anything.”

“The Romani you see on the streets, like Varzha and Vago, are mostly from Romania or Bulgaria, in social systems that keep them mired in poverty. As you understand from your work with sex crimes and trafficking in New York City, poverty renders the young vulnerable.”

“Why is it everyone here knows so much about me?” She found it mystifying. This woman she had just met referred knowledgeably to her experiences on the job in New York City.

“Sweden is a small country with a small population,” Aino explained, laughing apologetically. “Nothing remains secret for very long.”

“What about shelters for these people? And where are the fucking police? I feel for the homeless, believe me I do, but having them camped in a train station can’t be the answer. Or maybe I should speak more politely, like ‘where in the bloody hell are the po-po?’”

“Oh, it’s perfectly okay to drop the f-bomb around here. I sometimes teach photography to teenagers. These kids nowadays watch so many Hollywood films, they believe every American family sits down at the table and says, ‘what the fuck’s for dinner?’ I try to disabuse them of the idea.”

“Krister Hammar is very much involved with the Roma, isn’t he? In his work as an immigration lawyer. What happened to him today? Where is he?”

They heard the door of the studio open. Without looking around, Lehtonen said, “Speak of the devil and he appears.”

“Hello?” Hammar’s voice called out from the front entrance of the loft.

He emerged into