Star of Gypsies

THEN SHANDOR CAME STORMING IN, HIS FIRST VISIT TO me in a very long time, and distracted me. He was so lit up I would almost have thought it was Shandor's ghost coming in, all sparks and crackles and hums. But both his feet were on the floor and the sparks were metaphorical, not electrical.

He was enraged and practically incoherent. He paced up and down, back and forth, sputtering and twitching. Despite his recent remake he looked like an old man, this firstborn son of mine. I took real malicious pleasure in seeing how gray his skin was, how sharp his nose was getting, how rounded his shoulders. This babe that I had bounced on my knee only a hundred years ago, give or take ten or twenty.

He was burning up. He was consuming himself. He was the candle that was all flame from tip to tip.

That is a thing the Lowara Rom like to say: "A candle is all flame from tip to tip." In other words a candle is supposed to burn, and the thing to do is to let it burn, to let the tallow be translated into the flame that is the candle's true destiny. It is an argument against thrift. Polarca lives that way: he sets nothing by for the future, but burns and blazes all the time. He is lavish and generous to the point of craziness; but he does burn brightly.

Among us Kalderash the same saying has a different shade of meaning. Which is that when you merrily let your candle burn from end to end it gives you much warmth and light, but eventually it is consumed and then you are left in darkness. Therefore burn what you need, but nothing more. Especially when the candle that you burn is yourself. Shandor, it seemed, was wasting himself in the fervor of his rage.

It was quite a performance. I watched in amazement. I doubt that I could have done better. Finally he got himself enough under control to speak words that made sense, but even so they came out in a thicktongued frantic way. "One last chance, God damn you!" he thundered.

"I can be merciful if that's what I have to be. I'll give you goddamned mercy, you cagy old bastard. But you have to cooperate. You have to cooperate! Or I'll finish you."

"Finish me how?"

"Finish you! Don't ask me. Just don't ask!"

"You don't look good, Shandor. Are you sleeping well these days?" "I'm going to hold a coronation."

"Are you, now?"

"Stop talking to me in that patronizing tone of voice!"

"I'm trying to hold up my end of the conversation, that's all. I was inquiring about your health. There are things you could take. Water from nine places, you know that one? You'll need a drabarni to throw charcoal embers in it first. Maybe Bibi Savina would do it for you. And then there's bear's grease-you could send to Marajo for some, I think Damiano keeps bears there-eye of crayfish, powdered cantharis beetle-"

"I'll cut your tongue out if you don't shut up." "The merciful Shandor, yes."

"There will be a coronation," he said, forcing the words out as though they were teeth bursting through his lips. "A nine-world ceremony, first here on Galgala, then Xamur, Iriarte, Nabomba Zom, Clard Msat-"

"You may have trouble with part of that. I understand that for some reason the starships aren't landing on Iriarte or Clard Msat these days." (6

- and after the rite has been sanctified on all nine of the kingly planets, you and I will go to the Capital and present ourselves before the emperor to receive confirmation."

"Confirmation of what?"

"My title to the throne. The legality of my succession."

"You still want to be king, Shandor? Give it up. It's a dreadful job." "On each of the nine kingly planets you will stand beside me as the phuri dai puts the seal of office over me-"

"I will?"

"The passing of the mantle. The transfer of authority. You will do it freely and joyfully."

"I would freely and joyfully spend ten years in the tunnels of Alta Hannalanna first. "

"It wouldn't be a big problem for me to send you there." "You'd do it, too."

"I could. Maybe you'd prefer Gran Chingada? Megalo Kastro, in the mines? Trinigalee Chase?"

"That's the best you can do? Trinigalee Chase?"

"I can send you anywhere. How about Mentiroso again? I can really make you suffer, Yakoub."

"And make yourself even more beloved throughout the Rom worlds than you are already."

"Damn you, Yakoub-"

"Threaten me some more, my son. This is the best exercise I've had in months."

"There's war out there, do you know that? Rom turning against Rom. Whole kumpanias splitting in two over the issue of the kingship. And you are responsible."

"I am?"

"By trying to reclaim the throne. By trying to displace a king legitimately chosen and anointed."

"Pot calls kettle black."

He was looking more apoplectic by the moment. I had a quick satisfying fantasy of goading him into a stroke right here in my cell. But no, Shandor would never be so obliging. He went ranting on about this coronation he was going to stage, in which I would stand by beaming benignly while he put my crown on his head. Pig's eye, I would. Preposterous notion. But give me full credit: I didn't for a moment get angry. Here stood my own firstborn son going straight for the Freudian jugular and I listened to him amiably, interjecting a bit of easy banter whenever he paused for breath. I even told him about Freud. He hadn't heard of him, obviously. Ancient Gaje philosopher, said I. I reached into my anthropological storehouse and pulled out Uranus and Cronos, Cronos and Zeus, David and Absalom, and one or two other famous father-and-son goodies. I threw in Lear and his daughters, too, though that story wasn't entirely appropriate to the situation. Close enough, though. "Is that what you want?" I asked. "To reduce me to a mere archetype? How sharper than a serpent's tooth it is to have a thankless child!"

"What are you talking about?" said Shandor. "You crazy old bastard!"