Before the war had started, Salvo’s family had owned a tame bear. Their family name, Ursari, meant “bear” in Romany, and the family had made a living from the animal, who could do several tricks and was very smart. The bear’s name had been Bella, which someone told them meant “good” in Italian. Bella Ursari the Bear, or “Good Bear the Bear,” supported Salvo’s family for seven years, but when the war started there was not enough food, and even though he ate better than anyone else, Good Bear the Bear got sick and, after a while, he was dead. Salvo had not seen his father cry when his younger sisters and brother died, but when Good Bear the Bear finally died, his father had buried his face in the creature’s fur and cried like a young widow at her own husband’s funeral.
For a long time after that Salvo’s father refused to go out. He sat cross-legged on the floor and drank strong coffee and smoked cheap cigarettes, eating little, rarely sleeping, and never, ever telling stories. Then, in the spring, Salvo’s mother’s stomach began to swell, and three days before the war ended she gave birth to a girl.
After that Salvo’s father seemed to forget about Good Bear the Bear and set to work providing for his family. He knew how to work as a blacksmith, and he made a little money shoeing horses and doing the odd repair job. The war had brought a shortage of skilled labour, but as more men returned from military service there was less demand for his work. Most people would rather go to a Hungarian smith or a Romanian smith than a Romany smith, even if the Rom did a much better job. The only jobs Salvo’s father got lately were those that were either too difficult or too dangerous for anyone else.
THE ROAD CURVED TO THE LEFT, and as father and son rounded the corner, a church came into view. It was still half a mile away, but its steeple was tremendously high, so high as to be seen from a long way off. It was a very old church, at least four hundred years old—remarkable given the amount of fighting this land had seen in that time and the fact that the church was made out of wood. Rarely did a wooden structure see such an age in a place where people were prone to setting torches to buildings during times of upheaval.
The church was not particularly large, but it did not have to be. There had never been more than six or seven hundred people living in the vicinity, and of that number perhaps only two people in five were regular Catholic churchgoers. The main part of the building was two storeys high, with a steeply sloped roof designed to withstand the large amount of rain that usually fell there. Its white paint had long ago peeled away. Though the church was well maintained by the new priest and his helpers, there was simply no paint to be had.
On the west side of the church, directly above the entrance, was the steeple Salvo had seen from half a mile down the road. It stretched from the roof up towards the sky for eighty feet—square for the first fifty, then tapered for the last thirty and peaked with a flattened knob less than four inches across. What was most remarkable about the steeple, however, was the lack of a cross upon its summit.
The church did possess a cross for the steeple, the cross itself perhaps more valuable and remarkable than the actual church. It was said to be over nine hundred years old, made from an iron that had been forged in Rome and sent from a pope to celebrate the coronation of Saint Stephen, the king who had brought Christianity to Hungary. The cross was on its way to Budapest when the knight sent to accompany it had become ill and died, as luck would have it, in this very village. Since then it had consistently graced the steeples of a succession of churches built on this spot.
When the war came the old priest was worried that the church might be burned, and he had the cross taken down. Exactly how he had done it no one knew; he had died soon after. There had been a succession of temporary priests, but none of them much cared for the place, and they had left one by one. It wasn’t until a year ago that a new priest had finally come and stayed. He did not mind this place so much, he said, but he did not like that the cross was not upon the steeple.
While it was decided that the cross should be restored to its proper place, no one knew how it could be done. Various people from the church had tried, but none had even succeeded in climbing the steeple, let alone in getting the hundred-pound cross to the top. Finally the priest had put up a small reward for anyone who could figure out a way to raise the cross. Knowing the inventiveness of the Roma, he made sure that the news of the reward would reach them, and that is how Miksa heard of the problem.
He immediately volunteered for the job, telling the priest that all he would require was a strong rope twice the length needed to reach the top of the steeple. The priest was puzzled, wondering how he hoped to climb the steeple, but Miksa remained tight-lipped. He told the priest he would have to wait and see and that he would come the following day to do the job.
A crowd of about forty people had gathered to watch, not all of them happy about the prospect of a Rom being the one to restore the cross. As he and his father edged through the crowd, Salvo heard the mutterings of an old Bible legend, often told by people who saw the Roma as descendants of Cain, and told by Roma who appreciated it as a good story. Salvo remembered his father telling it to him and his elder brother, András.
“When it came that the Romans decided they would crucify Jesus, they sent two soldiers to buy nails to do the job. The soldiers were given money to buy four nails. But instead of going out and buying the nails, they spent some of the money on drink and food and women. After they had had their fill, they realized that they must have nails for that morning’s work, so they went and found a blacksmith, a Jew.
“ ‘Make us four nails, quickly, man,’ they said to him, and they lit his beard on fire to make him hurry.
“The man screamed from his beard being on fire, and the soldiers stuck his head in a water trough. ‘Hurry! We must have four strong nails so that we can crucify Jesus this morning,’ they said.
“The man, knowing who Jesus was and not wanting to have a part in killing him, refused to make the nails. The soldiers stuck their swords into him and spilled out his guts. Then they went to another blacksmith, a Serb, and they said the same thing to him, and he refused, and they killed him.
“Then they came to a Rom, who was hard at work in his forge. ‘Make us four nails,’ they said, ‘or you are dead where you stand.’ The Rom hesitated, and one of the soldiers took out a little money, a very small amount, the little that was left in his pocket from the night before. ‘I will give you this coin for the nails.’
“Well, the Rom did not want to be killed, so he took the money and put it into his pocket and set about making the nails. When the first nail was finished, the soldiers took it and put it in their bag. When the second was finished they did the same, and again they took the third nail as soon as it was finished. The Rom had just started to forge the fourth nail when the soldiers said to him, ‘Thank you, gypsy, for soon we’ll have four nails with which to crucify Jesus.’
“At that moment the souls of the men the soldiers had killed appeared and began to plead with the Rom not to make nails that would kill Jesus. The soldiers became afraid and they ran off, leaving the Rom with the fourth nail still hot in his forge. Not wanting to waste good iron, the Rom finished the nail, but when he poured water on it, the metal would not cool; it remained glowing hot. All day long he poured water on it, but the nail never ceased to glow red, like a burning body with fire for blood.
“Terrified, the Rom packed his wagon and moved on. He pitched his tent again only after he had travelled several days, but when he did a man brought in a wagon’s wheel for mending. The Rom took the fourth nail and fixed the wheel with it, and the man took the wheel away with the nail imbedded within it. The Rom again moved on, fearful that the man with the nail would return.
Months later, he was many miles away when a different man brought him a sword to be repaired, and when he touched the sword he saw the nail in the hilt, glowing red. He fled again but wherever he went the nail would eventually find him, and he would have to flee. So it went for that man and all his descendan
ts, and that is why the Roma always have to keep moving on, and that is also why Jesus was crucified using only three nails.”
The people around them knew this story well, and they knew versions of it where the Rom was not such an unwilling victim of circumstance. Salvo could feel their eyes upon him, and he knew that they were not friendly eyes. This was surely not the village the great thief’s wife had saved from the snake.
They made their way to the front of the crowd, where the priest was waiting, the cross lying on the ground at his feet. He shook Salvo’s father’s hand and spoke to him in a hushed tone that Salvo could not quite hear. And the priest gave Miksa the longest rope Salvo had ever seen.
“You go wait over by that tree,” Miksa told his son, pointing to what was once a flourishing tree, standing dead at the edge of the clearing in front of the church. The boy reluctantly obeyed, making his way back through the crowd. Miksa didn’t want his son to wait with the Hungarian Christians. There were a lot of bad feelings going around, on account of the war and the revolution and Romania’s troops going in and out of the area, and he didn’t want the boy to become the object of anyone looking to vent a little frustration.
When he saw Salvo reach the tree, Miksa went inside and climbed a narrow, twisting staircase to a catwalk that traversed the length of the church’s interior. It ran to the very back of the building, made a turn and spanned the width. In the middle of the rear catwalk, there was a window, very small, just large enough for a man to squeeze through. Looping the coiled rope over his shoulder so his hands would be free, Miksa pushed open the window and, headfirst but facing the church, climbed out. He stood on the narrow sill, up on the tips of his toes, and was only barely able to reach the lip of the roof. With all the strength in his bony fingers he pulled himself up, as if doing a chin-up, until his chest was touching the edge of the roof. Because it was so severely sloped, he was able to swing one foot, and then the other, over to the side and onto the roof. He walked along the ridge towards the front, where the steeple began. There he saw the crowd of people below, and beyond that he saw Salvo perched in the crook of the dead tree.
It was at this point that the others had failed in their attempts. The steeple was nearly straight up, and there was nothing but smooth wood to hold onto. Miksa adjusted the rope slung over his shoulder and spit on his hands. His foot stepped into the air and outward towards the far edge of the steeple. As he reached the top arc of his stride, his foot landed on a nail, no more than three inches long and less than half an inch thick, nearly invisible to the eye, certainly invisible to the crowd below. Even those who had been up here before had missed the nail, but Miksa had known about it and the others that pierced the steeple, and was relieved when it held his weight.
Miksa Ursari knew about the nails because he was the one who had put them there. In fact, he was the one who had helped the old priest remove the cross in the first place. The old priest had been something of a friend to Miksa, and when he asked him for his help Miksa had agreed without hesitating. They’d taken the cross down early one morning, in secret, and hid it in the forest to prevent it from being stolen. After the old priest died, Miksa wondered if he should go and tell someone where it was, but he hadn’t trusted any of the successive priests. They never lasted long enough anyway. Apparently it didn’t matter; the old priest had written down where it was, fearful that something might happen to Miksa or that in his old age he would forget where he had hidden it. The new priest found the paper and recovered the cross, but had no idea how the old priest had got it down. When Miksa offered to put it back up, he thought it best not to mention that he had been the one to remove it. Nowadays, he did not volunteer any more information than was absolutely necessary.
At its base, the steeple was about five feet wide for the first fifty feet, and Miksa had placed the nails in an upward spiral, each two and a half feet up and over from the previous one, leaving a nail in each corner and one in between. When he was on the corner he was relatively safe—it was easier to hold on and to switch his feet on the nail—but when he was on the middle nail, he had to stretch his arms out all the way, barely able to wrap his fingertips around each corner of the steeple. The wood occasionally splintered into his hands, but he dared not wear gloves for fear of losing his grip. There would be a brief moment at each nail when he had to switch feet, and here he was most vulnerable. Very quickly, using all the strength in his thickly skinned fingers to clutch the edges of the spire, he would pull his body up, just slightly, lifting one foot off the nail and replacing it with the other.
As Miksa ascended in this manner, he discovered something he was not prepared for. The last time he had climbed the steeple, it had been early in the morning, before the sun had risen. Now, however, in the heat of the afternoon sun, the wood of the steeple had been heated to a temperature that made holding on to it much more difficult. He could feel its heat on his cheek, which he’d pressed roughly against the siding, and his fingers protested vehemently, though he was sure they weren’t actually burning. At any rate, it was not their decision whether to hold on or not, so he kept climbing. He wound his way around the spire, rising five feet on each side, making two and a half full revolutions. He reached the top of the square section, fifty feet from the roof of the church, pulled himself over the lip of an eight-inch ledge, and there Miksa Ursari rested.
To the people below it appeared as though Miksa was able to stick to the side of the steeple like a fly to a wall, although there were some who guessed that there were nails. Salvo didn’t need to figure the nails out; he had known about them all along. His father had sworn him to secrecy, a secret that Salvo would keep if it cost him his very life. As he watched his father climb the spire that stretched towards the sky like a holy finger, Salvo’s heart swelled with joy, and a little envy.
His father rested on the edge of the upper part of the towering steeple for several minutes before continuing. The final thirty-foot portion was triangular in shape, so instead of circling the structure as he had done in the lower section, Salvo’s father shimmied straight up. As the steeple narrowed he was able to move faster, and to Salvo it didn’t feel like very long at all until his father had reached the top. From where he sat in the crook of the dead tree, Salvo thought his father seemed a long way off, almost in another world. Salvo wondered what it must feel like to be up there, where no one else had been able to go, and as he saw the jealous faces of the gadje in the crowd, he was glad that Miksa Ursari was his father.
Miksa did not look down to see the admiration on his son’s face. Though he had never told anyone, he was slightly afraid of heights. Sometimes it bothered him and sometimes it did not, and that day it did. He continued, drawing in a sharp breath and digging his fingertips into the hot wood. His face was slick with sweat, and his heart was beating so loudly that for a moment he wondered if the people below could hear it. He glanced down to confirm his suspicion, and the ground swayed and twisted, and he felt his chest tighten up and his stomach flip, but still he made himself keep looking. Face it, and you will either fall or you will get past it, he told himself. So he kept focusing on the ground, and just when he thought he might not be able to control his fear any more, it vanished, and he was as comfortable up on the top of the steeple as he would have been standing on the top of a fence post.
He reached into his pocket and removed an iron ring, four inches in diameter, and hooked this ring over an iron peg that protruded from the top of the spire. The peg was intended to bolt onto the bottom of the cross. Then he untied the rope from around his neck and shoulder, glad to be free of its oppressive weight. Through the iron ring, he strung one end of the rope, lowering its length to the ground. When the one end was on the ground, he dropped the other.
On the ground, one end of the rope was attached to the cross, and three men pulled at the other end. Slowly the cross rose to the top of the steeple. Miksa saw the new priest smiling to himself down below as he watched its ascent. The old priest would never have seen
a symbol of resurrection here. All he would have seen was a cross going up on a rope.
When the cross reached him Miksa moved down slightly, resting his feet on two nails that were about eighteen inches below the apex of the structure. He flexed his knees together and removed his hands from the steeple. He supported the weight of the cross with one hand and unhooked the iron ring with the other. Then, with all of his strength, he lifted the cross to rest its base on the edge of the steeple. The peg that held the cross in place protruded six inches upwards, and the base of the cross had a hole to receive it, but a great deal of effort was required to lift the hundred-pound cross that extra six inches and then guide the peg into its sheath.
Miksa braced his knees more tightly than ever and took a deep breath. With a hand on each arm of the cross he lifted it up and over, shifting the base back and forth until he felt it meet the peg. He rested the cross on top of the peg for a moment and attempted to force it down. He managed to get two inches through, but the peg was rusted from its recent exposure and wouldn’t go in any more. Slowly, tentatively, Miksa removed one hand and then the other from the cross, prepared to quickly grab it should it move, but it didn’t. He tested its stability with a shake, first light and gradually harder, and still it held. Satisfied that it wouldn’t fall on him, Miksa turned his attention to the rusted portion of the peg, which was about twice as thick as his thumb. With one hand he rubbed at the rust, feeling it crumble roughly under his ministrations. He jerked his hand back as the cross settled an inch further on the peg. Then he took the cross by the base and twisted it from side to side, feeling it move downward a little at a time.