Flamingo Boy by Michael Morpurgo
Then Maman would play her barrel organ for a while to entice everyone in, and I would go on with my shouting. I would hang on to the pole, one-handed, swinging myself out, as Papa turned the carousel round and round. I would leap from ride to ride, whooping with joy, showing the whole town how much fun it was. I loved to show off. I could put on quite a performance, Vincent – you should have seen me! We were a good team, Maman, Papa and me. Some days it could be slow, but most days, especially on market days and weekends, we would soon have children queuing up for a ride, all of them impatient to have their turn, to be off.
In the darkening summer evenings, the carousel would be a blaze of colour and lights – providing that Papa’s generator worked. Sometimes it did; sometimes it didn’t. It was – how do you say this? – a bit temperamental, that machine. Everyone in the town loved hearing Maman’s barrel organ and watching the carousel going round. In the spring and summer of every year, the Charbonneau family carousel was the heart and soul of Aigues-Mortes, and that made me very proud.
But, much as the townspeople might have loved the bright lights and music and the fun of our carousel, there were a few who did not like us, who shunned us in the street. I was still young, and I could not understand why. It upset me greatly, and made me angry too. Maman told me to pay no attention, that this was just how some people were, and that I would have to get used to it, that there were kind people in this world, and nasty people. That was just how it was. But I never really understood any of this properly, not until I went to school.”
CHAPTER 8
Rousel Rousel!
“I never wore shoes in the summer, as all the other children did. And the clothes that Maman had made for me – the long red skirt I always wore – did not look like anything they wore. And I had long, straggly dark hair down to my shoulders. My hair did not look like their hair. Some of them would sneer at me, and say how poor I must be to live in a caravan and not in a proper house. Soon enough, though, I realised there was more to it than that. There were other reasons, deeper reasons, I discovered, for their hostility. I was Roma, a “gypsy”, to them. I was “gyppo girl”. I looked different. I had darker skin than most of them – and that was true, of course – but they said I was dirty, which I was not. It was also because I could not read or write as they could – which was true as well. That, after all, was why Maman had sent me to school.
Some of them just avoided me, looked the other way, or walked off. I could tell also that they were nervous of me, and I did not understand why they should be. I mean it was true that if someone taunted me, if someone picked a fight – boy or girl – I always fought back and I always won. I was good at fighting. Winning was my way to survive in that school, whether in fights or in races. I found I could run faster, jump further, stand on my hands for longer than anyone else, do somersaults and backflips better than any of them. But none of that helped me to make friends.
There were some children – and a few teachers too, sad to say – who made it quite clear they did not like having me in their school, or even in their town. When I told Papa and Maman about all this, both of them told me to be proud and ignore them. But it was hard for me to realise that so many of those children who loved riding on our carousel, whom I had often helped climb up on to Tiger or Horse or Elephant, had in fact despised me all along, and not just me, but Maman and Papa too, all Roma people like us.
I was glad we lived away from them, in our caravan outside the town walls, on the other side of the canal. But I never minded at all being in the town square, working on the carousel. I was so proud of it, of Maman and Papa, and anyway I loved the bustle of the place. I did miss my Roma friends and family, though. I was away from my cousins, who were really my only friends, with whom we so often travelled during the rest of the year. Until the day I met Lorenzo, I had no one in that town I could really call a friend.
As I said, it was on a market day in spring in the school holidays that Lorenzo first came into my life. The carousel was turning, the music was playing, the rides were full of laughing children, all enjoying themselves. I was enjoying myself – everyone was. I noticed then a boy jumping up and down on the far side of the square. Even far away, I could see he was in a state of high excitement, waving his arms and clapping with joy at the sight of the carousel. Then he was taking his mother’s hand and dragging her towards us. I was used to seeing children come skipping up to the carousel, begging to be allowed to have a ride. The music drew them in – like moths to a flame, Papa always said – and I could see that this particular moth, this clapping boy, was fluttering with frantic excitement. The next time I came round on the carousel, he was still standing there, watching as the ride slowed down, calmer now, waiting, waiting, as children often did for their favourite animal ride to come by.
But, when the carousel came to a stop, I could see he was not looking at all at Elephant or Dragon, or Bull or Horse; instead, he was gazing higher up, mouth open in wonder, at the dozens of flying pink flamingos that Papa had carved, and Maman had painted, which made up the frieze that crowned our carousel.
“Flam flam! Flam flam!” he cried, pointing up at the flamingos, clapping his hands and bouncing up and down, quite unable to contain his excitement. Some people were laughing at him, but he didn’t notice. He had eyes only for the flamingos. Other children were already climbing up on the carousel by now, choosing their animal for the next ride, and I was helping them up one by one, looking after them as best I could, telling them as usual to hold on tight, not to get off while the carousel was turning.
By the time I had finished doing all that, I could see this boy was becoming quite agitated. His mother was trying to encourage him to go for a ride on Horse, but he kept shaking his head and pulling away. “I can’t understand it,” the mother was calling up to me. “Lorenzo wants to get on – I know he does. He loves horses, but he loves those flamingos up there more.”
The boy was looking at me now and – don’t ask me how – I knew at once what he was thinking. I said to him: “Flamingos need to fly free, don’t they? You can’t ride them. They would not like it. But you could ride Horse. He would love you to ride him.” I was standing right beside Horse, patting the saddle, inviting him up. “He’s a kind horse, never bites or kicks, I promise. We could ride him together, if you like.”
He was unsure. He was still thinking about it. I held out my hand. After some moments of hesitation, and a nervous look back at his mother for reassurance, he reached up and took my hand. I helped him up, and settled him on Horse, showed him how to hold on to the pole in front of him with both hands. I mounted up behind him, and put my hands on his shoulders. By now, he was bouncing up and down in the saddle, longing to get going.
“He won’t fall off, will he?” his mother asked me. “You will look after him?”
“I will stay with him,” I told her. He turned to me then and gave me such an open-hearted smile, a smile of complete trust. I have never forgotten the warmth of that first smile.
“Renzo,” he said, tapping his head. “Renzo.”
Then he tapped mine. “Kezia,” I told him.
“Zia Zia,” he said. And that is what he has called me ever since.
I waved my hand high in the air, the signal for Maman and Papa to begin the ride, that everyone was settled and ready to go. She started up the music on the barrel organ – the first tune was always “Sur le Pont d’Avignon” – and then we were moving, turning.
I had one hand on Renzo’s arm now to reassure him. I felt his whole body tense, heard a sharp intake of breath, saw the white of his knuckles as he gripped the pole with both hands. He was letting out loud shrieks of alarm and excitement. After just one turn of the carousel, these shrieks had turned to peals of ecstatic laughter, screeches of joy. Within a few minutes, he was daring to hold on to the pole with only one hand, and was waving to his mother. He was not just sitting on Horse now, he was riding him, rising to the movement, and loving every moment of it. His mother was too. Ev
“Val Val!” he called out to her.
“Val Val!” she echoed. I had no idea what they were saying. They had their own language, those two.
Then, all too soon, it was over and they were walking away under the trees, back towards the market stalls. He kept looking over his shoulder at me, skipping along beside his mother, hopping with happiness. I hoped that he would be back, that at last I might have made a real friend in this place. But then he was lost in the crowd around the market stalls and was gone. I looked for him day after day, after that first meeting on the carousel, but he did not come back.”
CHAPTER 9
Fly, Flamingo, Fly
“I was never more miserable than in the days that followed. At school, our teacher, Monsieur Bonnet – I still hate the sound of his name – was picking on me and punishing me continuously. He kept telling me in front of the whole class that I was an ignorant child, a stupid gypsy child, a wicked heathen child. In the playground, some of the children in my class – Joseph and Bernadette were always the ringleaders – began to gang up on me. They told me to my face that they had decided from now on that no one would speak to me, because I was a “gyppo girl”, who dressed in rags, they said, who couldn’t even read. They did not speak to “dirty gyppos”, they said. Joseph would grab at my skirt, and Bernadette would pull my hair!
There was only one teacher I liked, Madame Salomon. She would come over and talk to me sometimes when no one else would. She wasn’t my class teacher, but I wished she was. But then one day Monsieur Bonnet told us that Madame Salomon had left the school and would not be coming back. “A good thing too,” he said. “We don’t need her kind here.” I had no idea what he meant. Not then.
I ended every day at that school feeling I was utterly alone in the world. I begged Maman and Papa to let me stay home with them, to help them every day on the carousel, like I did in the evenings and at the weekends, but they were adamant. They had never learned to read or write, or to do their sums, they said, but the world was changing. Everyone needed school these days. The old ways were going, like it or not. Roma children had to learn just like other children, or else everyone would think we were ignorant. I had to go to school: that was all there was to it. I argued, I cried, I threw tantrums. Nothing would change their minds.
But then one day Monsieur Bonnet lost his temper with me, worse than he ever had before. It was probably my fault. I had a way of looking at him I knew he hated. I would glare at him, my eyes full of insolence and defiance.
He yelled at me in front of everyone in the playground. “We don’t like you at this school! We don’t like you gypsies round here!” So I lost my temper too, and told him just what I thought of him, that I didn’t like him or his stupid school either. Seething with anger, he came over to me, and slapped me across the face.
That was it. I ran off out of the playground, out of the school, promising myself I would never go back. Even then, Maman and Papa tried to change my mind. Time and again, Maman took me to the school gates, day after day for a week, and made me walk in, which I did. But I stayed only for a few minutes, then climbed back over the gate, and ran home. Nothing they said, or the teachers could say or do, would make me stay there a day longer. I had my way in the end. Maman and Papa gave up. I was back where I wanted to be, working with them full-time on the carousel.
So I was there a couple of weeks later, on market day again, when I saw Lorenzo come running across the square towards us.
“Flam flam! Rousel!” he was calling. “Rousel! Zia Zia!”
His mother was trying to hold him back, but he broke free of her, and came running up to the carousel. I gave him a hand and helped him up. He went straight to Horse, swung his leg over and got on by himself, much to my surprise. He grasped the pole and began bouncing up and down, raring to go, willing the carousel to get moving. But Papa never liked to begin turning the carousel until we had as many children as possible mounted up and ready to ride.
“Val Val, Val Val!” Lorenzo was shouting again and again. I still had no idea what he meant.
His mother, who had arrived breathless by now, was trying to tell me. “Cheval,” she explained. “He means ‘cheval’. He likes to say bits of words for some reason. He doesn’t speak whole words very often. Just bits of words, don’t you, Renzo? ‘Renzo’ is for ‘Lorenzo’, ‘rousel’ for ‘carousel’, and ‘val’ for ‘cheval’. ‘Rousel’ has been his favourite word all week. He loves your carousel, talks about it all the time, about the horse, about those flying pink flamingos up there. He loves flamingos. And he talks about you. He calls you Zia Zia. You have been very kind to him.”
“He has been very kind to me,” I told her as the carousel began to turn, and the barrel-organ music filled the square. Round we went, Lorenzo abandoning himself to his laughter. Every time we came round again now, I saw his mother and Maman talking together beside the barrel organ. I had a feeling even then that they were hatching something, but had no idea what it might be. I could see they were enjoying watching us both.
So I was not taken entirely by surprise when Maman told me that evening what she had in mind. I was sitting on the edge of the canal with Papa, dangling a line, hoping for a fish. She came to sit beside us. “I was talking to Madame Sully, Lorenzo’s mother, your friend’s mother,” she began. “Papa thinks it’s a good idea too, don’t you, Papa?” Papa nodded, and shrugged, which was always his way of half agreeing with Maman.
“What’s a good idea?” I asked, not really listening.
“Well, I told her about school, about you not liking it, not going there any more,” Maman went on. “It was her idea, not mine. She told me she’d be more than happy to give you some lessons, in reading, writing and mathematics. She was a teacher once, you know, before she married. She’d like to do it. So we made a deal. You know how I like to do deals! I said that maybe we could give Lorenzo lots of free rides on the carousel whenever they come to town on market days, and in exchange you could go out to their farm once a week for your lessons. It’s not far. Papa said he would mend the tyres on the bicycle for you, didn’t you, Papa? What d’you think?”
And there the story stopped for a few moments as Kezia leaned forward and threw another log on the fire. I thought for a moment she might not continue. But, much to my relief, she went on.
“So now you know, Vincent. That’s how it happened. I first came to the farm, to this house, forty years ago now. I cycled out here once a week – it took me no more than thirty minutes or so to get here. I’d sit down in this room with Madame Sully, Lorenzo’s mother, and have my lessons. And every week, on market days, Lorenzo would come into town for his ride on the carousel, all the rides he wanted. I think each of us looked forward to those days as much as the other.
It is maybe difficult for you to believe, Vincent, but I had never in my life been in a proper house before, one that was not pulled by a bad-tempered horse called Honey, never been in a house that did not shake in the mistral, that did not move on wheels. And Madame Sully, my new teacher, was as unlike the horrible Monsieur Bonnet at school as it was possible to be. She was the best teacher anyone could have, as kind to me as Madame Salomon had been. She made lessons fun. She was strict with me, though. She expected me to concentrate, to do my work, but she was always friendly and fair. There was no fear any more in my lessons, as there had been with Monsieur Bonnet.
Even so, I found it hard to learn sometimes. My concentration was not good. The older you are, Vincent, the harder it is to learn. But Nancy – after a while, she did not like me to call her Madame Sully – was endlessly patient with me, always encouraging. I could do mathematics easily enough, but reading, and especially writing, I found hard. She would always end each lesson by reading me a story, from one of the books on her shelf. And I looked forward to that every time.
I had always loved listening to stories. But, before this, no one had ever read
But I was never so keen to practise my writing. She always gave me copying to do for my homework, and this did not come easily to me. Maman tried to make me do it at home, in the caravan, but I never liked it. I preferred to be outside, working on the carousel in the town square, or going fishing with Papa, or even looking after horrible Honey. Usually, I put off doing my copying until the day before my next lesson with Nancy out at the farm. I think I only ever did it then because I did not want to upset her.
“I so looked forward to those lesson days, loved arriving at the farm out on the marshes, because Lorenzo would always be waiting for me. He would come running down the farm track when he saw me, to escort me to the farmhouse, honking his flamingo greeting, arms outstretched in welcome. But after that, during my lessons, I would not see much of him. Sometimes I did catch glimpses of him riding out over the farm up behind Henri, on their horse, Cheval, herding sheep, or the black bulls, or the herd of white horses, or he’d be out in the farmyard, feeding the hens. He was always busy outside and I was busy inside.
He came into the house for lunch with Henri, but he never sat down. He ate on the move, grazing, usually sausage and sometimes cheese – sausage was his favourite even then, Vincent. There was always a restlessness about him. One moment he was a honking flamingo, wheeling about the room. But, in a trice, he could turn from flying flamingo to hopping frog to galloping horse, with sound and voice to match, and match perfectly too. He was never doing it to show off either. He became these creatures, inhabited their whole being. It wasn’t a game. Whatever creature he became at any moment was part of who he was.