The Nomadic Alternative – Page 152

villagers", the Mouti Pygmies say, meaning, "We eat their substance."

The Gipsies who 'hunt' settled populations take care not to deplete their sources of supply by an overkill. As their proverb says, "It is easier to milk a cow that stands still."

You do not find pining lovers among the Gipsies. Romantic love is played down as to be almost non-existent. Yet both sexes live more amicably together and closer to each other than any settled group. The reason for this is clear. The occupations of men and women never overlap, and jealousies cannot occur. Women do their thing, men theirs. New York City, the gipsies have found, is most prolific hunting ground, but one where the men have little opportunity to practise their skills. The men are musicians; but the call for gipsy music fluctuates according to the caprices of fashion, and no gipsy would burden himself with the absurd electronic equipment nowadays held to be essential to the production of sound. They are also horse-dealers; and while the second-hand car has to some extent replaced the second-rate horse, the competition is ferocious. Raiding and stealing to supply basic needs are - to say the least - unnecessarily hazardous. Employment is unthinkable. And so the men lounge about, and do virtually nothing. Meanwhile the women exercise their talents.

New Yorkers are notoriously obsessed with their own fortunes, the fortunes of others and the fortunes of the future in general. Gipsy women are fortune tellers of long standing. Fortune-telling by a gipsy to a gipsy would evoke outrage and scorn. Anxiety for the future denies the whole point of gipsy life. Gipsies live today. The future is irrelevant. They know that crystal-ball gazing, prediction by cards, magical spells, clairvoyancy and planchette are a pack of nonsense, although this does not prevent them valuing and cultivating the occult. An aura of the supernatural reinforces the barrier which separates them from the gaie (outsider). And in one sense they do give value for money. Practice has taught them a lot about the gaje's neuroses. They also charge less than their psychiatrist competitors.