Ascension

  He did this again on his own street, where there were fewer people. He was at the point where the side road met the main road when he heard the approaching mob. They were moving fast, and Miksa was tired from his recent exertions in the heat. He forced his legs into a run and sprinted for the house.

  Salvo reached the top of the road just as the mob spotted Miksa darting into the house. Such was Salvo’s haste that he nearly caught up with the crowd and stumbled into them; only their preoccupation with his father saved him from detection. As the mob rushed his house, Salvo slipped behind a cart that lay abandoned in the tall grass outside a house belonging to a Rom who was imprisoned in a Romanian army camp up the road. No one knew quite why the man was being held, but his house had gone untouched since his incarceration four months ago.

  Salvo peered over the top of the cart and watched as the mob swarmed around his home. Someone tried to open the door, but it had been barred from the inside, and the window was too small to crawl into. Besides, someone else speculated, this Rom was dangerous and could not be trusted to submit to punishment without violence.

  That Miksa Ursari had no intention of surrendering himself was true, but he also had no intention of fighting the mob. He looked at Azira and the baby crouched in the corner of the front room, and he knew that the situation was dire. He began to assess his options. If he were to go outside, the crowd would, at the very least, throw him into some jail for a deathly long time, but he thought it more likely that they would kill him. He remembered being somewhere in Germany and seeing a crowd rip apart a man accused of raping a girl. They had torn his limbs right off and flayed the skin from his bones and ripped out his eyes in a matter of minutes. He shuddered to remember the sight. No, he thought, it’s no good to go out there.

  So he would stay in the house. The door was strong, and unless someone in the crowd got overly ambitious, they should be safe. It would not take long for the mob outside to grow restless, and he hoped that when they did they would move on, looking for an easier target.

  It is likely that Miksa would not have come to this conclusion if he had been able to see what Salvo did. Once the crowd realized that they couldn’t get into the house and the people inside were not going to come out, someone called for a torch. Salvo’s mind seized; surely they would not light the house on fire with his father and mother and sister inside it. But with every subsequent action taken by various people in the crowd, it became more and more apparent that that was exactly what they planned to do.

  There was one man in particular who seemed to be spearheading the burning of Salvo’s house. Salvo recognized him from the church. He had never seen him before that, and he thought that he must be one of the ex-soldiers who had moved into the village immediately following the Romanian annexation of Transylvania. He was a large man, nearly six feet tall, with a neatly trimmed beard that grew into a point at the chin. His hair was brown and his forehead was creased with wrinkles. When he called for a torch Salvo heard his voice, rough and deep, his tongue thick with an accent the boy could not quite place.

  The man was handed a torch, and he lit the oily rags with an expensive silver lighter. Salvo had never seen such a lighter. A long, thin flame rose out of it, spreading onto the torch and into the sky. Even though it would still be several hours before the sun went down, the light from the torch was clearly visible to Salvo, and he could see wavy lines of heat radiate from it. A sticky line of tar-black smoke followed the heat skyward. The man returned the beautiful lighter to his pocket and moved to the edge of the house.

  Other people had been reluctant to go right up to the structure, perhaps afraid that the inhabitants would be armed, but this man was not, or if he was he hid it well. He casually walked around the perimeter of the dwelling, as though on a lazy Sunday stroll, stopping occasionally to hold the torch to the desiccated limbs that formed the roof. He lit the house in five places, showing no emotion as orange streaks of flame shot up the roof. He stepped back to evaluate his work. Seemingly satisfied, he tossed the torch through the tiny window and returned to the crowd.

  The fire seemed to have a hypnotic effect on the mob. Where before there had been much shouting and pushing and jostling, now the crowd stood relatively still and quiet, as though transfixed by the flames.

  Salvo watched from his hiding place as the fire engulfed the roof. He desperately wanted to rush forward, to individually smash apart every member of the mob and cut a path to the house, but he knew he could not, and he forced himself to stay where he was. He knew his father, and thought it was only a matter of time before his family would emerge from the burning building. As the flames grew brighter and the smoke thicker, he began to worry, his fear reaching a crescendo when a part of the blazing roof collapsed.

  WHEN MIKSA URSARI FIRST REALIZED that the mob had set his house on fire, he yelled to Azira to lie down on the floor and cover herself and the baby with blankets. He hurriedly emptied the trunk he kept his tools in. When the torch was thrown into the front room, he stamped it out as best he could and hurled it into the back room. With a medium-sized pickaxe he put two holes in the bottom of each side of the chest and dragged it to the centre of the room. Ignoring Azira’s protests he took his daughter, Etel, from her arms and placed her in the chest. Over her he draped the tanned hide of Good Bear the Bear. The girl did not cry as he closed the lid, but after it was closed he heard her shrieking. He went to where Azira lay just as a shower of fire fell from the roof. Its debris landed beside him, continuing to burn on the dirt floor. He never had any intention of leaving the house. He did not think that the walls would burn, being made of stone and plaster. As he pressed his face to the earth, trying to escape the smoke that was rapidly filling the air around him, he knew that while he would probably not burn to death, there was a good chance that he and Azira would be suffocated.

  He remembered something he had heard about poison gas, and he thought that it was possible that it would help here too. He removed his shirt and tore it in half. Then he rolled onto his back and pulled open his pants and urinated on the two strips of cloth as best he could. He gave one to Azira but she would not put it to her mouth. He held his soaked rag to his own mouth with one hand, and with the other he forced the second rag over his wife’s face. After several seconds she stopped resisting him, surrendering to the necessity of the situation.

  The rags dried quickly with the intense heat and did not seem to help. Miksa did not know how long they had been lying on the floor of the burning house when Azira stopped gasping and lost consciousness, but the fire was still going strong as he felt himself slipping away. He felt as though he was inside hell’s own furnace, and he could not control his coughing. He briefly thought about trying to make it to the door and out of the house, but found he could not move. It was then that Miksa Ursari knew he was going to die. He found he did not want to die, which surprised him. He’d always liked to think he was ready to accept whatever came. That he wasn’t ready for death somehow gave him some small consolation. If he were to have no sorrow over losing his life, then it wouldn’t have been much of one. This fleeting notion was soon overwhelmed by despair, though, and the tears that ran down his face were not entirely the result of smoke.

  As the room rapidly faded, Miksa thought of his children. They are Ursari, he told himself. We are a Lazarus stock.

  Although it did not take long for the house to burn, it seemed to Salvo that his whole life passed in the time it took the flames to die. When the roof fully collapsed, he slumped down to the ground at the base of the wagon and hid his face in his hands, no longer able to watch. It would be dark very soon and a cool wind had picked up, pushing scattered blackened clouds across the sky. He thought of his father and mother and how they were almost certainly dead, and the baby, Etel, too, and he tried to remember better times, when his brothers and sisters were all still alive with Good Bear the Bear, but he could not. He could hear the fire and the mob, and he could taste the smoke in the air, and he could smell the hous
e he had lived in for most of his life becoming a pile of ash. The memory of good things was lost to him at that moment.

  Then he grew angry. Where was his brother, András? They shouldn’t have waited for him. And why hadn’t his parents come out of the burning house? Why had they just stayed inside and died like sheep? This mob, though, he thought, they are the worst of it. They should feel their own rage. They should burn like my parents. They should burn now like they someday will when they must answer for what they have done here today. But as soon as he had thought it he knew that no one would be held accountable for his own actions. Not by the authorities, and not by God. Well then, he told himself, I will hold them accountable. They will answer to me.

  As the fire began to burn itself out, so did the mob’s vehemence. There were some who were as keen as ever but most were satisfied, and a few even looked as though they felt things had gone too far. As the sky darkened the mob dispersed, some crossing themselves with fallacious piety as they left the Romany street. When they were all gone, Salvo emerged from his hiding place and cautiously crept towards what remained of the house. The roof was completely gone, save for a piece that lay smouldering beside the building. The walls had not burned, but they were charred black from the smoke. Salvo did not enter the house. He peered through the tiny window and saw the bodies of his mother and father lying under some sooty blankets. He was surprised to see that they did not appear to be burned; they looked so much like they were sleeping that he almost called out to them. He did not see the body of his baby sister, and he assumed that she was somewhere in the back room, or under the blankets. He did not think to look in his father’s tool chest, which lay undisturbed in the centre of the room.

  Salvo walked back up the street to the house of the man who was in prison. In it he found some rags and some thick oil. He took these to his own house, and with a piece of wood from the ground, he made a torch. He lit the torch on the smoking ashes that lay beside the walls of the house, and after a final wordless goodbye to his parents and sister, he turned and left that place.

  Avoiding the main road, he skirted around the edge of the town, keeping a wary eye out for anyone who might be watching him. The wind was blowing hard now, and he had to walk backwards in places to keep his torch from being extinguished. When he was clear of the town he walked on the road, ready to jump into the brush at the first sign he was not alone. There was no moon, and the clouds that were coming made it unusually dark. Salvo was glad for the light of the torch.

  He passed through the front courtyard of the church and past the dead tree where he had spent much of the afternoon. In the dark he could not see whether there was a stain on the ground where the priest’s head had split open, but he imagined there was and took great care not to tread on that spot. He looked up at the church for a very long time, admiring the building. There was nothing magnificent about the church. It was a plain building, but it had a sort of quiet sadness about it, as though it had witnessed a great deal in its time and the things it had seen left its heart on the verge of breaking. Salvo felt sorry for this old church, sorry that such wicked people worshipped within its walls, sorry that tonight it would burn to the ground.

  He pushed his regret out of his mind. Fate did not rest in the hands of those it governed, and surely this church knew that as well as he did. Neither of them was above the whim of man or God, and if it was to be that Salvo would burn down this sad, old church as revenge for his parents, then that was how it was to be.

  But revenge was something his father would never have considered, Salvo knew. Maybe revenge was only a way of fighting with fate. And certainly God would not want him to burn down a church, no matter how evil its inhabitants were. Or would He? Salvo did not know.

  He caught a whiff of the torch, and the greasy smell reminded him of why he had come. His resolve strengthened. The church would burn regardless of his own damnation. Salvo lowered the torch and held it to the door. His hands did not shake.

  The moment the door began to singe, he felt a drop of rain splash down on his cheek. He looked up just in time to see a streak of lightning skid across the sky, followed seconds later by an explosion of rolling thunder. The promise of rain diluted his resolve. His desire to see the church in flames was replaced with something bigger. He knew his quarrel did not lie with this old church. He jerked the torch back from the door and kicked out the small flame that crept up the wooden slat. He stepped away from the church and dropped the torch to the bare ground at his feet. The raindrops were few and scattered, and he stood and waited for them to hit him. His eyes focused on the dying torch. With his foot he rolled it back and forth on the hard-packed dirt, until it was extinguished. Lightning shattered the sky again, the thunder coming sooner than before, and Salvo knew that soon it would pour and the drought would be broken. He looked up at the steeple to where the cross had been, and he knew what he must do.

  He leapt into the tree by the side of the church and went up it like a cat on a pole. From the tree onto the roof and up he climbed, as quick as if he were walking down the side of the road. He danced along the crest of the roof, his feet light and his legs strong. As he reached the steeple and stepped onto the first of the nails, he remembered a story his father had told him when he was very small and repeated many times as he grew older, a story he would never hear again except in his mind.

  “Once, in a village like this one, at the foot of mountains like the ones near here, there was a Rom who was not a good man but a truly wicked man who stole the souls of other Roma. Some said he had magic, which may be true or may not. Then it came that a man who was a good man and a great thief, who never stole from those who could not afford it and certainly never from another Roma—and most certainly he never stole any man’s soul—this man came to the village at the foot of the mountains.”

  Salvo climbed fast, and he climbed the spire very efficiently, much better than his father had done. His balance was perfect, and he had no fear of heights. He went from one nail to another to another so lightly that he barely even stepped on them. When he reached the end of the square section of the steeple it began to rain a little harder.

  “When the Rom who was not wicked found out what was going on, that men’s souls were being stolen, he made a pledge to the people there that he would find their souls and return them. The people were grateful to hear the man’s offer, but they told him that it would not be possible, for the evil Rom had taken their souls to the top of the mountains, and there was no way to climb there. The Rom assured the people that he would do exactly that, and he set off early the next morning.

  “When he reached the mountains he began to climb, but before long he got to a place that he did not think he could climb, and he stopped. He thought for a very long time about what to do, and then he spoke aloud to God. ‘God,’ he said, ‘here is a place that I do not know if I can go, but there are men’s souls beyond, and so I will try. I will do this knowing that whether I fall or not will be up to you. You are the master of my fate. So if I must fall then that is fine, but remember that there are souls that depend upon my success.’ ”

  Salvo wrapped his arms around the rapidly narrowing steeple and shimmied his way upwards. The rain had made the wood a little slippery, but it did not slow him down. That he was nearly eighty feet off the ground did not bother him at all. He was in a place that was not Transylvania, not Romania, not Europe. He was in a place where only his father had been before, where no one else alive could go. Here, there was only him, and maybe God. He gained the top of the steeple and the rain poured down over him.

  “The man climbed to the top of the mountains without falling, and there he found the wicked Rom guarding over the souls he had stolen. There was a great fight, in which both men were mortally wounded. When the wicked Rom died, the ground opened up and swallowed him. The Rom who was not wicked was frightened, and wished not to die. He did die, very soon after, but the ground did not open up. Instead, the man began to rise up towards heaven. As he asc
ended, though, he looked back to Earth and saw that the stolen Romany souls still lay on the mountains. He struggled to return to retrieve the souls and managed to do so.

  “When he arrived in heaven he was not allowed to enter with all these extra souls. ‘You did not fall,’ he was told. ‘That is enough. These souls are no longer your concern.’ But the Rom remembered his promise to the people of the village, and so he struck a deal that he himself would not go into heaven if the stolen souls were admitted. As a result, he was destined to stay in limbo for all eternity.

  “When other Roma found out how this great hero had been treated, many cast their own souls out of their bodies in protest. The Rom who was not in heaven was moved by this action, and he gathered their cast-out souls and returned them again to their owners. There is a consequence to casting out one’s soul, however, and the descendants of these loyal Roma have loose souls that sometimes escape from their bodies. Without their souls, they sometimes do things they otherwise would not do. The Rom who was not wicked knows about it, and he collects each soul for safekeeping until such time as that person is ready to take it back.”

  Salvo stood atop the cusp of the steeple and stretched his arms out wide, palms skyward. The rain was warm and soon he was soaked to the skin. Tears ran down his cheeks and were diluted by sweat and rain, but he did not sob or shake or move a single muscle. He closed his eyes and willed his soul to leave his body. When it would not leave voluntarily he ripped it out, and he could feel it fall to the earth, where it lay in the mud. His tears stopped. He felt his soul rise up, only slightly at first and then with preternatural speed. It shot straight up the height of the church, hung even with him for a moment and was gone.

  Back on the ground he could not remember having descended. The rain had eased up a bit, and Salvo realized he was hungry. He looked back in the direction of the town, pulled his sodden shirt tightly around him and set off in the opposite direction, northwest, towards the Transylvanian mountains and, far beyond, Budapest.