Gypsy Blood
Cód:
491_9781443775113
THAT winter had been a very severe one in Roumania. The Danube froze solid a week before Christmas and remained so for five months. It was as if the blue waters had been suddenly turned into steel. From across the river, from the Dobrudja, on sleighs pulled by long-horned oxen, the Tartars brought barrels of frozen honey, quarters of killed lambs, poultry and game, and returned heavily laden with bags of flour and rolls of sole leather. The whole day long the crack of whips and the curses of .the drivers rent the icy atmosphere. Whatever their destination, the carters were in a hurry to reach human habitation before nightfall- before the dreaded time when packs of wolves came out to prey for food. In cold, clear nights, when even the wind was frozen still, the lugubrious howling of the wolves permitted no sleep. Indoors people spent the night praying for the lives and souls of the travellers. All through the winter there was not one morning but some man or animal was found torn or eaten in our neighbourhood. The people of the village at first built fires on the shore to scare the beasts away, but they had to cease doing so because the thatched roofs of the huts in the village were set on fire on windy nights by flying sparks. The cold cowed the fiercest dogs. The wolves, crazed by hunger, grew more daring from day to day. They showed their heads even in daylight, When Baba Rana, the old gypsy fortune- teller, ran into the school-house one morning and cried, Wolf, wolf in the yard, the teacher was inclined to attribute her cry to a long drink the night before. But that very night Stan, the horseshoer, who had returned late from the inn and had evidently not closed the door as he entered the smithy, was eaten up by the beasts. And the smithy stood in the centre of the village A stones throw from the inn, and the thatch-roofed school, and the red painted church Stan must have put up a hard fight. Three huge dark brown beasts, as big as yearling cows, were found brained
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