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

Again, Varzha responded with a shy smile. She resembled a girl one minute, a ninja warrior the next, like a gem with many varied facets. She wore a string of small gold coins around her neck, the kind of adornment Brand had often seen in Lehtonen’s photos of Romani women. In a graceful move, Varzha bent her head, removed the necklace and presented it to Brand, along with a beautiful multi-colored scarf.

“Oh, no, no, no, I can’t accept!” Brand said. But a glance at Sandri’s stern expression prompted her to take the gifts.

“Thank you!”

Varzha stood. “Moro? Moro Part?”

“Yes?” Brand rose also. “Of course I know Moro.”

“You go to him now,” Varzha said, managing the sentence in clear English.

“Um, okay, yes,” Brand said, looking over at Sandri, who nodded.

“You must,” Varzha said, showing a flash of stern authority. She floated toward the door, a Romani princess putting to shame the insipid environment of the suite, with its modern, mass-produced furnishings.

She stopped before leaving, turned, and impulsively hugged Brand. “I will see you…?”

“Oh, yes. I would be delighted to come to your engagement ceremony. Sandri knows, right? Where it is, where I should go?”

Varzha nodded. “Sandri knows,” she said.

Brand laid a hand on Varzha’s arm. “This…this vendetta is over. Is it over? Someone has to say it’s over. Otherwise it’s just bitterness.”

Varzha remained expressionless. “Go to Moro. Important.”

Then she left, taking most of the magic out of the room when she did.

Sandri returned to the suite an hour later, giving Brand time to bathe. She wondered how one dressed for a Romani engagement ceremony. When she emerged from the bathroom she found Sandri had entered the suite and left behind, on a hanger hooked to the mirrored door of the suite’s bedroom closet, a simple burgundy frock, quite stylish. She would have gladly worn it to a cocktail party in New York.

On a side table was a small pouch full of cosmetics. Not her particular choice of war paint, but in a pinch… When Sandri came for her she was more or less as ready as she was ever going to be. She wore the coin necklace given to her by Varzha.

“He says you should come and I will show you where you meet.” Whenever Sandri said “he,” it referred to his boss, Moro Part.

“Okay,” Brand said. “Then we’ll go to this… I don’t know, what is an engagement ceremony, anyway?”

“The blessing of the union foretold,” Sandri said soberly.

“Do I look all right? Presentable?”

Sandri made a motion to her hair. “You must cover.”

This was the reason for Varzha’s gift of the scarf. Brand hated to give in to what she considered a sour stricture on female behavior, but figured, when in Rome… She put on the headscarf and followed Sandri out the door of the suite.

He conducted Brand down the long corridor to the elevator, punched the button to take them to the basement, and led her across the cavernous parking garage to the parked Mercedes sedan. They met no one on the way.

Brand could see Sandri struggle with himself as he opened the driver’s side door for her. “He said you drive.” A frown of doubt showed in his face that was almost laughable. Clearly, for him, the natural order of things was being disrupted.

Never a passenger, always the driver.

“Thanks,” Brand said, and slipped in behind the wheel. “You tell me where to go.” Sandri went around to the other side of the vehicle and climbed into the passenger seat.

“Gamla Stan,” he said. “To Stortorget, the Great Square.”

He directed her out onto the busy streets of the capital. The day was 3 March. The bright, unseasonably warm pre-noon held a tantalizing hint of spring. The clear expanse of the sky shone bright blue. Everywhere on the streets and in the parks Swedes shamelessly shed their heavy clothes, faces raised to capture the copious onslaught of Vitamin D. They passed a good number of people leaning up against buildings, basking in the intense rays of old Sol pouring down on them.

Had they gone mad? But no, it was a communal coming out party, a poke in the eye of the long unending winter.

Traffic was severely restricted in the narrow streets of the Old Town. Sandri had to guide her on a circuitous route, passing the island on something like a belt highway, exiting, then approaching the central square from the south.

“Here,” he said, pointing to a truck-loading space along an impossibly clogged street. Brand could feel the man itching to get back into the driver’s seat. She was being kicked to the curb.

“Moro will be in the café, voila,” Sandri said, indicating a coffee house a few doors away. Brand left the car, yielding the wheel to her minder. Heading toward the open square, she passed another line of flagrant sun worshipers soaking in heat reflected off a bank building’s stone façade.

The café was as crowded as the sidewalks. The mood on the street and inside the restaurant was giddy with sunlight. Brand saw Moro Part before he saw her. He sat alone at a table, reading a newspaper. Examining him, she recalled the enormous portraits in Aino Lehtonen’s studio. The photographer had caught a very different version of the man.

That Moro had been dressed in a shabby brown overcoat. As he trudged his collection route, visiting each member of his street cadre in turn, Lehtonen had followed along. He carried a black cloth bag and accepted money from Roma street beggars, children, men and women both. Lehtonen’s camera caught a great shot of Moro’s mitt-like hand, reaching out with the black bag to receive the mendicant’s kronor coins and crumpled Euros.

In the café the man wore an entirely different guise, that of a sophisticated businessman, with an expensive tailored three-piece suit in pinstripe gray. There was not a hint of Fagin about him. She was surprised to see he was reading Svenska dagbladet, the conservative daily.

She approached. Moro’s face lit up.