Gypsy affairs

Print Dmitry Faleev

It's always nice to visit good old friends. On New Year's Eve - doubly so! Taking a liter bottle of homemade apple wine, on Christmas day I went to a gypsy camp located near the village of Panevo, Ivanovo region, to find out how Greko, Zheniko, Lisa, Timur were doing. What's new with them? Share yours.

I got off at the bus stop and started walking. There was not a soul on the snowy street: no children, no women. I think it’s strange, did something happen? Because the camps are usually very lively - like in the Moscow metro.

Suddenly Ruslan comes out of the house. Alone too. Some mongrel is accompanying him.

I speak:

— Hello, more (“more” is gypsy for “friend”). How are things going?

He:

- You won’t believe it! One was stabbed to death here.

- Who?!

- We!

- Whom?

- Let's go - I'll show you!

And it leads straight into the house. Behind the threshold are two basins with dark blood. There is a body in the middle of the room. Next to the refrigerator is a severed head. There is a mark from a blow on the forehead. The look is meaningless and glassy, ​​the ears are drooping, the nose is a snout. The gypsies slaughtered the pig! The carcass is butchered right in the house. This is done exclusively by men. Women and children watch enthusiastically. This is a real show for them.

The boar is lying on his back with his belly cut open. The hooves on the paws have already been chopped off. After a couple of minutes, the carcass is opened like a double bass case, two paws to the left, two to the right.

One of the young gypsies cut out the heart and showed it to the baron...

They explain to me: the piglet was fed by a pool of five or six families, and now it will be tyafi.

- What's this?

“But when a pig is slaughtered and everyone is invited to celebrate and have a drink - we call it “tyafi.”

They cook it right there - in a large cauldron, with onions, with seasonings... An hour later everything is ripe. Only men sat at the table. Some brought vodka, others beer. And my wine came in handy! By the way, only I was given the fork and knife, but I decided to join the company like everyone else - with my hands! It turned out that it tastes better with your hands! The juice flows, you lick your fingers. The gypsies are vying with each other to mutter something in their native language. There is a red towel floating around the table to dry your hands.

I speak:

- Bakhtale, shchavale! (Happiness, gypsies!)

- For the friendship of peoples! - Mustafa the Baron clarifies.

And I’m not afraid, and I’m not bored, and the first time I was going to the camp, mom and dad were scared for me - they thought they would eat me alive there, as if I were going to join a pack of wolves! Gypsies have a very bad reputation. This is sad and undeserved. The gypsies, however, have themselves to blame - they live in isolation and try not to let strangers in. Willy-nilly, an aura of secrecy and mystery develops around them, but in everything hidden, unclear, hidden, a person, as a rule, tends to suspect something terrible rather than good, more a vice than a virtue. Add to the fact that Russians usually draw all their knowledge about Gypsies from crime reports, but it’s nonsense to draw up a generalized portrait of a nation based on criminals who grew up from its midst!

In fact, the gypsies are all different, like the Indians in the novels of Fenimore Cooper. Only he has Delawares, Mohicans and Iroquois, and the gypsies have Servs, Kotlyars, Magyars, Vlachs... This article will be about the Kotlyars. It just so happened that I crossed paths with them most often. They migrated to Russia at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries from the Romanian principalities of Wallachia and Moldavia, where they remained in slavery for a long time. There they were called gypsies-calderars (from the Romanian “caldarar” - “boiler maker, tinker”). Subsequently, having penetrated into Russia through the Carpathians and the Kingdom of Poland, they received the nickname “Kotlyars”. Rich Russian horse-riding gypsies sometimes mockingly said, “Kastryulitsiki,” while those, in retaliation, considered the Russian gypsies to be fake—they say that they have eaten too much, have become Russified, and have forgotten the ancient rules and customs. To this day, Kotlyars stand apart in the Russian Gypsy community. They observe traditions more zealously than others, but at the same time they are the most “dense” - poorly educated or completely illiterate. Longer than other gypsy “nets” (tribes), the Kotlyars tried to live in the old fashioned way - away from progress and new trends, according to the same norms and the same customs that their ancestors adhered to. This, by the way, saved the Kotlyars from drug trafficking, which, like a plague, struck many Roma families at the end of the last century. If the Kotlyar camp suddenly finds out that one of its members has begun to secretly deal in weed, hashish or heroin, the gathering will recognize him as “desecrated.” The guilty person and his family will be expelled from the camp, or rather, he will leave himself, because no one will sit at the same table with him, will not extend his hand, will not say a word. Otherwise, you yourself risk becoming “desecrated.” The Kotlyars have such a concept - “pekelimos”, that is, ritual impurity that arises as a result of a person’s violation of some taboo. Drug trafficking, from this point of view, is not only a shame, but also a terrible sin, a huge evil that cannot be washed away. The fate of those expelled is tragic - prison, poverty, degradation.

The concept of “pekelimos” defines a lot in the way of life in Kotlyar. A woman, for example, according to him, from the moment of losing her virginity until menopause, was considered “unclean” by the Kotlyars for a long time, especially the part of her body located below the waist. This explained her greatly diminished status within the community or, as they themselves say, “kumpania.” When a husband mentioned his wife in a conversation, he usually apologized to his interlocutor, as if he had said something indecent. The concept of "uncleanness" also extended to women's underwear, skirts and shoes. Therefore, at home, a married gypsy woman always wore an apron - it was supposed to protect her relatives from damage that she could allegedly send even by accidentally touching a man, child or cooked food with her skirt. Now this is rapidly becoming a thing of the past, although the rigid patriarchy within the camp is unshakable.

The camp is headed by a baron. At least, that’s what they think among non-Gypsies. And here is what the baron of the Paneevskaya company, Greco Mustafa, thinks about this:

- That's just what they say - "baron." Well, what kind of “baron” am I? I'm the foreman! Tabora foreman! I am responsible for my people. So you asked me a question: “How does a baron differ from a simple gypsy?” What makes him different is that he speaks politely, behaves culturally, calmly, intelligently. For example, some boss or someone from the police comes - everyone comes to me. We sort everything out with him. Or for work - we arrive at a new place, I go to the plant - I talk with the chief engineer, I organize an opportunity for my people to earn money. If suddenly there is a scandal, a fight, they also call me, so that I can calm the people down and resolve someone else’s dispute peacefully. What else? Well, the executive committee will not call all the gypsies, it calls only me. We have to work hard, adjust benefits for children, pensions, register people... Almost all of us here are mothers-heroines, but they are not paid. How to feed your family? The commission arrives, I show them and tell them. They say: “We’ll help,” but nothing happens. And we need help! The government must take care of the people so that they do not rebel, so that there are no spies or bandits. Otherwise, the pension will be increased, and food prices will immediately become more expensive! They give with one hand and take with the other. There are scammers all around. I saved all my life, I have twelve children, I took the money to the bank so that the capital would grow, so that I could then transfer it to them - so what? My bonds burned! So the bank told me: “Your money is gone! Gone!” Where did you go? Robbery!

Greco is generally an amazing gypsy. At 80 years old, he’s a hero! Fair, kind, wise, sympathetic. It was not for nothing that he was chosen as a baron. Putin, perhaps, could learn from him how to manage people so that everyone is happy and no one gets loose. This is despite the fact that Greco does not have any special power over the campaign. The camp is ruled by a gathering, and the baron simply represents the community in resolving most organizational and business issues, mainly related to resolving conflicts or finding work. After all, the main difference between the Kotlyars and other gypsies is that they originally earned money not by singing and dancing or by buying and selling, but by the labor of their hands. In the gypsy world, kotlyars are honest workers and artisans. Their specialty is working with metal (manufacturing zinc troughs, tanks, drainpipes, gratings, fences, tinning dishes, tanks, hooks). In the Soviet Union, they performed tasks that the Russians simply did not undertake - in some cases they were disdainful, in others they simply lacked the qualifications. Real Kotlyar artels were created. They come to one area, fulfill all orders and then move on to where there is work. To live, they rented apartments for themselves. Once in Russia, they abandoned horses and tents quite quickly. We rode trains. The baron negotiated with the station master, and the camp traveled in empty carriages. Now only a few old people remember the nomadic times - for example, Greco, who spent the winter in a tent for two years. His father also had horses. Mom is a completely different story.

“It was winter,” Greco recalls. — We lived in tents. We call them tsers. These tanks are very large - you can cover a tank. And then, I remember, it started snowing - it went on for a day, then two days, and on the third day I filled up all the tents. They were no longer visible! The Russians come and throw up their hands: “Where are the gypsies? Have they really left? Then we dug out from under a snowdrift, the Russians took pity on us and said: “Let’s move into the houses before you are completely covered up. We will rent you rooms." So we moved, put everything in new rooms, and we looked - my mother’s mother was dying. “Why are you dying?” - the father asks, and she answers: “I can’t live in the apartment, there’s no air!” So I’m dying.” What to do here? They cleared the snow next to the house, set up the tsera, took mother out into the street, and watched what she would do now. And she gets up, tied a scarf, lit a fire, threw the meat and beans into the pan, sits contentedly, and cooks. I made tea. That's it - she's recovered! What a hero! He says to his sons: “I’m not used to living in houses. I feel more comfortable here!”

Another friend of mine - Grandma Briya from a camp in Peri (Leningrad region) - also saw the end of the nomadic period and this is the moral she came up with: “When we lived in tents, everyone was healthy and strong, but do you know why? We walked barefoot."

During the war, the Germans buried this Bria’s relatives alive! First, at gunpoint, they forced the gypsies to dig their own grave - a huge trench, drove everyone into it, put concrete slabs and heavy sleepers on top, rolled it up with earth, “patted it down” with a tank, left them to suffocate... “For three days the earth shook! No one was saved." The memory of this tragedy still lives on in several campaigns. At the same time, other tales are being compiled.

“This happened during the war with my grandfather,” says a round-faced gypsy, younger than me, from the now dispersed camp in Kolyanovo. - And my grandfather was desperate, strong. One day he got hold of a pistol and made his way to the Nazis’ camp. He went into the general’s tent, pointed a pistol at him and ordered: “Undress!” The general stripped naked, his grandfather tied him to the bed, gagged his mouth with a rag, and he put on his uniform and went for a walk. Around the German camp. All the fascists salute him. He came to where the tanks were, climbed into the tank, and said to the Germans: “I’ll go on reconnaissance and see how things are going at the front.” He goes in a tank to where the Russians are, but the tank is German! With black crosses! “As if they wouldn’t shoot me there by mistake,” the grandfather thinks. - What should I do?" Then he remembered that that general had red shorts. Grandfather tied them to a stick and put them out of the hatch like a Soviet flag. The Russians let him in, they didn’t bomb the tank under the red “flag,” his grandfather sold it to them and returned to the camp with a large sum of money.

Here it must be said that the Kotlyars did not serve in the Patriotic War, and quite legally, because they had not yet managed to obtain Soviet citizenship and no one could draft them into the Red Army.

“We were migrants, refugees,” Greco tells me. — They worked for the military, for canteens, at hospitals. Camp kitchens, thermoses, kettles for soldiers... It was bad for us. We walked through the forests. Hungry. We ate grass - it's called kolba. They made cakes from potato peelings if they could get at least a little flour. After the war everything got better.

During the Khrushchev-Brezhnev period of Soviet history, the Kotlyars really got rich.

“Those were good times,” Greco recalls. — We moved from Kursk to the Leningrad region. I turned to the director of the brewery - is there any work? "Eat! - speaks. “Here we have refrigeration containers - twenty tons, thirty tons each, we need to clean them, because there is scale in there.” Have you seen scale on your kettle? That's it there. We got involved with the people. There were strong guys in my brigade. They climbed there on all fours through the hatch, washed it with acid so that the metal was clean, like a glass, so that it would shine. This is, in fact, the same tinning - also zinc, ammonia, acid, tin... And the work is harmful, dirty. The air is heavy. In refrigerators there is ice on the walls, always in water. We are wearing sweatshirts and masks. We worked in shifts, otherwise it would have been completely unbearable... They did it. We went over it with baking soda one last time, the chief engineer looked at it and said: “What a job you did! Well done!” And he gave us a contract for the same work in breweries throughout the country! We were called to Moscow and to Kyiv. We traveled all over the Baltic States, we traveled all over Siberia - from one brewery to another. We didn’t have work books, but we had work. And they even paid for the trip. That's how they loved us at the factories!

During perestroika the situation changed. Industrial enterprises have switched to new equipment, but why tin when there is stainless steel all around? The Kotlyars turned to barter trading. What would previously have been called speculation became a legal business in the late 80s. Former “sauce-suckers”, without thinking twice, opened cooperatives, some went bankrupt, but in general things worked out. According to old memory, they preferred to trade in rolled metal, pipes, valves and other “iron”. Now the range has expanded. But still, if the boiler resells the car, it’s more pleasant for him than fussing with the manufacture. They also collect non-ferrous and ferrous metals, repair electric motors, and push illiquid goods. I know gypsies who work on construction sites and sawmills. But these are men. Women traditionally tell fortunes at kotlyars - at train stations, in markets, bazaars, squares. At home they are peaceful and hospitable, but at “work” they turn into breadwinners. Like beautiful birds of prey, with feigned participation, with courageous impudence, they take their “victims” into the ring, and don’t yawn. To their credit, I can assure you that the kotlyarki almost never pick their pockets, but make it so that the money is given to them as if of their own free will. The methods of “divorce” have been fine-tuned by many years of practice. In 99 percent of cases, the notorious palm fortune telling is not some kind of “revelation from above,” but an arbitrary combination of common formulations, memorized by heart and extensive enough to touch every person in one way or another.

For example:

- Good young man, can I ask you? Help out on a bun for a child. For this that you gave, thank you very much. For this respect you need to tell fortunes. Take an interest - don't be afraid. You look cheerful, but in your heart you are dissatisfied. You lost your first love, your first destiny, because people interfered with you, “ruined” the whole thing for you. Your melancholy is worse than illness. You don’t drink yourself, but you walk around like you’re drunk. You were in the hospital, but you had no benefit, but you suffer not from God, but from people, from evil spirits. But the change in your life will be very good, just be cunning. What you have in your soul, do not have on your tongue. If you receive an invitation on the 5th or 10th, don’t go. You will have troubles, troubles...

That's what Masha told me. She tells everyone this fortune, but the further into the 21st century, the more difficult it is for the gypsies to fool people. All the well-read people began to distrust and laugh: “I’ll tell your fortune myself.” Young cats are no longer dark, they admit openly - they say, we know no more about the future than you do.

“But it happens,” notes Yulanta, a beautiful catwoman, wooed last year from Ivanovo near St. Petersburg, “a gypsy will say good things to a man, he will believe her, he gets down to business with more confidence, everything works out for him as it should, and it turns out that the gypsy is for him.” I guessed the truth.

Gypsies never tell fortunes to each other. Another thing is the evil eye. They believe in the evil eye and are really afraid. And just as we, for example, experience fear of a black eye, they do not trust a blue one! You never know...

The camp men burn the engines - pour a stinking flammable mixture over them, cover them with boards and burn until all the plastic and rubber parts burn out, which there is no other way to get rid of. Black smoke is pouring out in a column, the gypsies - some with a hammer, some with a crowbar. Very picturesque, I want to click them on film, one waves his hands:

- Don’t take pictures - you’ll jinx our work, there won’t be any work...

Or in the house there is a law: you cannot photograph the dishes from which you eat.

It is quite easy to check whether there is an evil eye or not. However, I didn’t get this secret for nothing; Bria sold it to me. It’s good that I know how to bargain, otherwise this secret would cost a pretty penny. Gypsies always set a “golden” price, but they are always ready to halve it, unless they are stupid. At first, Briya charged me 3,000 rubles and also said: “Reporters from NTV came to see me and gave me five thousand just to look into their camera once.” As a result, after half an hour of trading, which immediately involved Bria’s two daughters, a neighbor and a bare-bellied six-year-old great-great-grandson, hilariously posing as an authoritative godfather, the price dropped to 300 rubles. But now I know how kotlyars are checked for the evil eye. Bria took nine matches and a glass of water. She gave me the glass to hold for a couple of seconds. I divided the matches equally into three piles. Then she lit one of them, saying a prayer, crossed the glass and threw the match into the water. Ta, half burned, lay on the surface. The prayer was in Gypsy, and its essence boiled down to good wishes - be healthy, strong, rich, happy. So Bria repeated nine times. All the matches were located horizontally - I was “clean”. Then she checked on her great-great-grandson. One of the matches, thrown into the water, stood upright.

“Look,” Bria pointed. - This means there is one evil eye. Come on, grandson.

She scooped some water from a glass with burnt matches and, muttering something, washed the boy’s face. Then she addressed me in Russian:

- That's all, there is no evil eye.

Gypsies also love scary stories - about dead witches and murdered sorcerers. They are usually remembered at wakes, when there is a coffin with the deceased behind the wall, and relatives sit all night long at a set table. According to legends, “mulo”, i.e. the living dead, always return with one purpose - to take someone with them or drive them crazy.

Once they buried a gypsy. Suddenly he hopped and sat down in a coffin! Everyone ran, and the dead man jumped out of the coffin and chased after the camp. Old people know: to get rid of a dead person, you have to cross the river. An ordinary mule cannot cross the bridge further, but those gypsies crossed seven rivers - he followed them, his teeth clicking, the shroud fluttering... At night he caught up with him and came to his wife. He says: “Don’t be afraid. I’m not the devil, I’m from God.” His wife: “Get out, I don’t want to see you.” He went, took a rope, hanged himself in the forest, and in the morning his son went mushroom hunting, saw his father on a branch and hanged himself nearby.

Or this. Once a gypsy went to tin and solder and stopped for the night in a hut. But that hut was bad. Every night a dead grandmother came there - she was a witch. The owner told the gypsy about this.

- OK! You feed me and give me something to drink, and give me a beautiful scarf for my wife, and I will arrange everything!

The owner fed and watered the gypsy, and he went out into the yard, cut down an aspen tree, cut a stake out of it, and also left a stick and wrapped it in a rag.

Night has come. Everyone was awakened by a knock on the door. Someone entered the hallway. Then to the hut. It was a dead witch. The gypsy quickly put a stick and a rag into the stove, and it caught fire. He shoved fire into the witch's face. Ta screamed. Her head caught fire and she ran out of the hut, and the gypsy put out the stick and went back to sleep. And in the morning he and the owner went to the cemetery. On one grave, with a fallen cross, the grass was black and burnt. The gypsy and the man dug up the ground and found a witch with a burnt head. The gypsy pierced her with an aspen stake. She screamed and turned to ash. The owner gave the gypsy a beautiful scarf for his wife, and the gypsy left to tinker and solder...

Isn’t it true - it’s very similar to children’s horror stories, the folklore of Soviet pioneer camps? Only gypsies tell these stories seriously. No one doubts the authenticity of what they heard. Ghosts mean ghosts. Mermaids mean mermaids. And in front of small children, you shouldn’t mention “mulo” at all!

In general, this genre is still alive, but it is already fading, just as Kotlyar’s fairy tales practically faded and disappeared. I heard them only from Baba Masha, a boilermaker from Ivanovo, from Sortirovka. Here is her granddaughter Gagashka’s favorite fairy tale.

Once upon a time there lived a grandfather and a woman. They had no children. One day they went into the forest to pick mushrooms and took a bag. They see a hare running. Grandfather caught it, put it in his bag, brought it home and said: “Bunny hare! Live with us. You will be our son instead!” He agreed because he had nothing better to do, but his grandfather and grandmother kept him locked up all the time - they were afraid that he would run away. The bunny got bored in the forest. One day, my grandfather and grandmother went to town to buy clothes for the little bunny, they returned, and he tied his head, lay by the window and moaned: “Oh-oh-oh!” Grandma asks:

- Zainka, you are my dear, what happened to you?

- My head hurts.

- So we’ll give you a pill now.

He ate the pill, but everything was bad for him. Speaks:

- Can I go outside and get some fresh air?

- So go. But not for long.

The hare jumped through the door onto the lawn, pulled off the bandage and shouted to his grandparents:

- And I deceived you! My head doesn't hurt! I'm running away from you, home into the forest!

And he dived into the bushes. Grandfather and grandmother are behind him. They run and run and run and run, but they can’t catch them. Winter has even come. Grandfather and grandmother were frozen, tired, and barely alive. They ask the eared one:

- Bunny hare, bring a little firewood there, light a fire for us, to keep us old people warm.

- No-no! - answers the hare. - You caught me, kept me locked up! I won’t make any fire for you! Now sit and freeze, and I went on for a walk!

This is where the fairy tale ends, and whoever listened, well done.

By the way, I don’t know why, but in most gypsy fairy tales the ending is bad. They will definitely kill someone, or the person will commit suicide, or the dead will finish him off...

The situation is even worse than with fairy tales with “lungo gili” - Kotlyar ballads. Literally translated, “lungo gili” means “long song.” It can be performed by one or more (usually two) performers for an hour, without musical accompaniment. I have never heard a single one, the Kotlyars have forgotten their ballads. They are now listening to the group “Cabriolet” - a kind of gypsy chanson with all the ensuing taste failures. The generation of thirty and forty year olds still plays accordions and guitars. Young people are only interested in business, “deeds.”

“Musicality is disappearing,” laments Goga Mihai, nicknamed Composer. He is the only kotlyar in Russia who himself writes and performs songs in Russian and Gypsy. He only has a couple of classes of education, but that’s not important in art. When I first brought a disc with his recordings to my dacha, the entire female half fell in love with Goga in absentia, and my grandmother, who herself did not know how to handle a CD player, kept asking me: “Play a gypsy. Put on a gypsy." And I learned the words.

The road is our life, and we walk along it.

We wander all our lives, we don’t expect a different fate.

What happened, we know - those paths have been traveled.

We won’t guess what will happen.

Just think! “We won’t guess” - this was written by a purebred gypsy! However, there is truth in these words. The Kotlyars are also gradually “civilizing.” I think that in twenty years, street fortune tellers will only be seen in documentaries, if they ever make them. And this must be done immediately, otherwise we will simply lose this culture. It will be sad.

Textbook “for the shelf” Moscow period. Memoirs*