“Is she any good?” Ada asked Andor.
“I don’t know. I’m the only one here who has never had a reading. Everyone else says she’s incredible.”
“Why didn’t you?”
He shrugged.
“Who wants to know the future? Not me.”
But Ada did. There was so much future stretching ahead of her, shrouding its content in a white fog. Her life was bound to change again and again and again, there were so many more doors to be opened, like a sequence of rooms leading one into the next. New landscapes, new faces to be seen. Who wouldn’t want to peek through that fog? Taste what was waiting ahead?
She looked at Andor with pity. His life had already been mapped out. She might be the last surprise he would ever come across. No wonder he wasn’t keen to find out how little was left for him after she’d be gone.
* * *
The Flying Hawks caravan smelled of strong detergents. It was messy, cluttered, with lots of mirrors hanging on the walls, dusty plastic flowers scattered in ugly vases, two big dolls dressed in synthetic lace propped on the couch. Nadya was intent on scrubbing the kitchenette wearing bright-yellow plastic gloves. She sure looked different without the makeup and the feathers. More like a regular housewife in a slackened sweatsuit, with darker roots showing under the bleached hair, her face reddish around her nose, eyelids drooping underneath overplucked eyebrows. In a corner of the small room, the oldest of the daughters, in a skimpy dress, was sprawled on an armchair, listening to her Walkman with earphones, her muscular leg beating the tempo on the armrest. She hadn’t bothered to turn her head to greet Andor and Ada when they walked in.
Andor spoke to Nadya in Hungarian—or was it Czech, Serbian, Polish? Ada couldn’t tell; all those guttural languages sounded pretty much the same to her. Nadya kept answering with short nasal grunts. She pulled off her gloves and wiped her hands on her hips. She pointed at a small table.
“She says she can do the reading now if you want. Is that okay?” Andor said to Ada. Something was bothering him, she could tell.
“Yes. That’s great.”
“Okay, then, let’s sit down. I’ll have to translate,” he said, evidently annoyed.
“No. I don’t want you in here,” Ada said.
Andor opened his arms, exasperated.
“But how will you understand?”
Ada stared at him fiercely.
“It’s not your business. This is private.”
“You go now,” Nadya said to Andor in Italian, indicating the door. He turned around without saying another word.
Droopy shoulders, Ada thought, as she watched him walk away.
* * *
Nadya began to shuffle the cards. It was an old pack, the cards’ edges curling, their surface oily, like banknotes that had changed too many hands. With a single, skillful move, she spread them facedown in a fan shape and said something in her language, showing her five fingers.
“I pick five cards?” Ada asked, and she nodded.
Ada floated her hand on top of the cards, hovering it in midair, as if waiting for a magnetic force to guide her. She felt a shift, a thickening of the air inside the stuffy room—everything including her breath was denser, scintillating. Yes, something was definitely about to happen. Then she began to pick one card at a time as if her life depended on it.
Nadya placed each card facedown in a cross. She flipped the one in the center. It showed a handsome young man in a chariot led by two sphinxes. Ada realized the girl on the armchair had removed the earphones and was now listening to them.
Nadya stared at the card, then spoke quickly without lifting her eyes from the table. Her Italian was stilted but rather good.
“You are being pressured in a situation by someone. You are not very happy. Maybe a little bit but not entirely. You must move forward,” she said, and placed her finger on the Chariot card. “This means moving away, into new life.”
Ada nodded, pretending this piece of information was unimportant and it didn’t affect her in any way. Actually, it bothered her that the other girl had decided she was more interested in the tarots than in her music. Ada encouraged Nadya to disclose the next card.
A man with a crown. Nadya made an approving sound, as if that were the card she had been waiting for: a king. This couldn’t possibly be a bad thing, Ada thought. Nadya tilted her head and tapped on the card pensively, then she started talking almost to herself.
“Yes, the Emperor. You see this? Older man. He’s probably in love with you. This is the pressure the Chariot is showing. This man want to bind you to him; maybe he is very lonely.”
Ada felt uneasy. Had this been a good idea? Was the girl going to laugh behind her back with her sisters, with the rest of the circus people?
But Nadya was already flipping the next card. It showed two dogs howling at the moon. Nadya stared at it, tapped her fingertips very lightly on it—doubtful for a few seconds, then she spoke again.
“The Moon. This means confusion. You are not telling yourself truth about current situation. Maybe you are depressed and you don’t know. Maybe this is because of Emperor?”
Ada shrugged dismissively, as if she had no idea what the cards might be referring to. But Nadya seemed to be getting more excited, as if the picture were finally coming together. She turned the next card.
“Ha!” Nadya slapped the card with a joyful expression. Two figures, a man and a woman with flower garlands in their hair, were holding two cups next to each other in a toast. They looked beautiful. And young.
“Two of cups! New partner is coming into your life. Maybe a friend, maybe a lover. This partner will influence your destiny. It will bring happiness and trust.”
Ada looked at the tarot reader’s daughter. She caught a flash of recognition in her eyes at last. A hint of a smile. Nadya said a word in her language and repeated it a couple of times.
“She says this is very good,” the Flying Hawks girl said languidly from her armchair.
“Okay. That’s nice,” Ada said. “When?”
Nadya tapped forcefully on the card twice.
“Soon. Very soon.”
Then she turned up the last card. It was a man hanging upside down from a tree. Ada frowned.
“Wow. Is this bad?”
Nadya shook her head vigorously. She spoke quickly. The girl nodded.
“Hanged man is change. Old must die to create the new. You leave this situation. Soon, in the next future. That is very good.”
* * *