The Gypsies were an undesirable but harmless lot traveling at leisure through the countryside. They moved through the enclave on horse-drawn wagons on to which was built a wooden house with tiny windows on the sides and in the back, a door and fold down steps for easy access. A stovepipe chimney poked through the pitched roof and up front the roof extended forward to cover a bench used by the driver and other members of the tribe. The scraggy horses that pulled the wagons were undernourished as was evident from the protruding bones of their ribcage.

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When such a small caravan of three or four wagons pulled into our village, usually in the warmer months, they made for the square near the linden where they would camp for the next few days. Their arrival was an event and the caravan was quickly surrounded by the village kids and eventually if at a distance, by grown ups. The wagons disgorged women in billowing multicolored skirts, children in much patched clothing and from the bench up front climbed unshaven men in striped shirts and pants shining from a lack of soap and water. All of them exuded a strange and pungent smell. Some of the men immediately set out to beg for hay to feed the horses while the women and children made for the cistern to get water.

Soon Schaffer would arrive with an assistant or two, all decked out in uniform, including medals and ribbons, to discuss with the leader of the caravan the purpose and length of stay in the village. “Buy some provisions, use the communal water to wash, help with farming or other chores in return for food or money” was the usual reply, for which Schaffer allocated only the shortest number of days. He spelled out to them the rules to follow while in the village, rules which they surely heard often and were the same wherever they camped. They were discouraged from roaming the village and also asked to stay near their wagons on the square unless engaged by someone for a task. Schaffer also reminded them that they would be watched.

Later, Schaffer met to report to the villagers in a meeting at the Jaklitsch inn and assess their needs for the Gypsies’ labors to get a sense of how long he was to let them stay. He reminded all present to gather up the chickens, lock up the sheds and livestock in the stables and keep a sharp eye on the uninvited guests. He also met with his firemen at the firehouse and assigned volunteers to maintain a watch through the night and raise the alarm if necessary.

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The Gypsy men generally followed Schaffer's rules and stayed near their wagons, knowing the villagers would come to them to engage them for work. The women were less compliant and soon, in groups of two or three, followed by their children, were making their way from door to door soliciting their services to the woman of the house. Hardly any of them were ever let inside, but raking the yard or cleaning out the hen house or stable was a chore they were hired to perform in return for provisions or a small sum of money agreed upon after much animated haggling. But the hen house job was no longer given out after it became apparent that the chickens of the shed cleaned by the gypsies had laid fewer eggs on that day. They were still hired to clean the stable but only while carefully watched by a member of the family ever since it was discovered that without such precaution, the cows suddenly had less milk.
 
But the Gypsy women always found ways to divert suspicion and attract the attention of the housewives with glass beads, cheap perfume or tales of magic healing potions. One such potion had the power to heal sore and callused feet with "magic crystals" dissolved in hot water. While the woman patient was sitting in front of her house with her feet in a bucket of hot salty brine and her watchful eyes diverted by the chatter, the companions of the healer or her children looked about for easy take.
 
The most exciting part of their stay, however, was on evenings when some of them started to play their instruments, drawing many a villager to the benches around the linden. Their music, mostly from a flute, a guitar or a violin or even a combination of all, was usually accompanied by a pretty young dancer, shaking her skirt and tambourine at the smiling villagers. And when done, she made the rounds again; this time with a wicker basket into which were dropped the coins she coaxed from the embarrassed if reluctant village men. She had more luck with the youngish ones to which she devoted more of her seductive charms in spite of knowing that they had the fewest coins.

At least one young Gottscheer succumbed to the charm of such a young Gypsy woman whom he married and who gave him several children, one of whom became my best friend. But not for long, for fate would intervene. The full story is told in the chapter The Rabbit.

This was also the time Schaffer’s men were on the alert and on the look out in case any of the Gypsies wandered off. But the travelers knew they were being watched and stayed in their place. And, if anything did disappear, it was usually minor, not missed for days after they left the village and soon forgiven and forgotten.

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One exception to this was when after one such stay, some of the Gypsy men returned at night to steal horses, including, without success, Father’s horse Yiorgo. The following morning a posse of villagers, including two gendarmes from Dolenja Vas was assembled for a hot pursuit and after following their tracks through the forest, the horses were recovered while the thieves managed to get away.

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Another exception, certainly less severe than the theft of horses but definitely more humorous involved Schaffer, the ever watchful and alert fire chief and village elder.

Schaffer had contracted with the leader of one caravan to produce 50 cubic meters of gravel by breaking up large boulders of quarry stone that had been delivered to a site along the road between Masern and Dolenja Vas.
 
Gravel had for centuries been used to produce a firm roadbed for the heavy wagons transporting raw lumber from the forests via our village to distant mills.  Due to this heavy and continuous traffic, constant replenishment of gravel was needed to maintain the solid surface. To obtain the gravel, large boulders were transported in specially designed tipping troughs on horse-drawn wagons and dumped at sites along the road where more gravel was required to restore the surface.
 
To get this done, the county contracted responsible villagers, in our case Schaffer, who in turn hired sub-contractors to break up the boulders with sledge hammers into smaller pieces and afterwards at roadside into gravel to repair the surface wherever repair was necessary. The sub-contractors were our own village men, otherwise idle during early spring before the plowing season. During this time they were happy to sit at 100 meter intervals hammering away at the granite to produce small piles of gravel which they later shoveled into ruts in the road and wherever restoration and repair was needed.

As a middleman, Schaffer was suspected of making a hefty profit which he vehemently denied. But since many of the village men desperately needed the extra money, they were happy to be chosen by Schaffer to do the work, which he doled out as he saw fit. One spring, when to the consternation of village men, he selected a group of Gypsies camping in the village to produce 50 cubic meters of gravel he was publicly accused of lining his pocket. It was suspected that he paid the Gypsies a lot less and kept the difference himself. He forcefully denied the accusation and stuck to his decision. But in the end, his accusers had the last laugh.
 
At the site where a large number of boulders had been dumped, the gypsies went to work. Schaffer ordered that the gravel produced be placed in a pile so that it could be measured for the agreed upon 50 cubic meters and payment made. Schaffer monitored them often and was pleased at their progress. The mountain of boulders shrank rapidly as the pyramid of gravel grew and when he agreed that it was equal to 50 cubic meters, he paid the Gypsies who left the following day.

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Later on, the gravel was transported to various locations along the road where it was needed for repair. For this task, Schaffer hired Father who had a tipping trough for his wagon and one of the two horses needed to pull the heavy load. He got the second horse from another villager as he did on other occasions whenever a team was needed, an arrangement that both horse owners used to mutual benefit.  To load the gravel on to the wagon, Schaffer hired a number of other men. Unloading at the site was by tipping the trough with the crank of a lifting jack.
 
It took only a few loads before the perfidy of the Gypsies was discovered.  Beyond the outer layer of gravel, the pile consisted mostly of the original bulky boulders which they covered with gravel whenever Schaffer or any other villager was not watching.

Schaffer was beside himself, loose with invectives.  Knowing that the villagers were laughing behind his back for having been had by a bunch of deceptive Gypsies put him into a prolonged rage. When the village men asked for increased payment to complete the unfinished work, their request only added to his fury.  But when he threatened to bring in Slovene from the neighboring villages to do the job, the men backed away from their demand for more money and went to work for what he offered.
  
As was usual, he tried to drown his rage with wine at the Jaklitsch inn.  Unfortunately the main recipient of his fury was his wife Maria, who as many other times before, sought refuge with Mother to escape the beatings. He terrorized his two grown sons Hubert and Karl who tried to stay clear of his blows and the children of the village ran when we heard him coming. The rest of the villagers kept out of his way leaving him to be the only person in the guest room of the Jaklitsch inn since he would quickly pick a fight all tried to avoid, as he was the strongest man in the village.

It took some time for Schaffer to regain his normalcy even after he returned from a determined search to track down the Gypsies, an effort in which he got little support from the authorities. They also knew of his tricks and were as amused over the incident as were the villagers of Masern and its surroundings.

Generally, the Gypsies knew the limits to their transgression, and certainly of one that could be discovered while they were still in the village or nearby. But the group of Gypsies that made a fool of Schaffer did not return.
 
A part of the mosaic, the Gypsies brought a not unwelcome diversion to the otherwise uneventful existence, not only to the villagers of the Masern, but to other parts of Slovenia as well. Their arrival and departure were part of a cycle as regular as the inevitable changing of the seasons. Unfortunately their centuries-long desire to remain free spirits put them at odds with the concepts of uniformity required by the Third Reich. And all who deviated, such as the father of my friend Josef, paid a bitter price for doing so.  But more on this later.

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