Gypsies, Tramps and Thieves

Old man Kudinyonok, as he is known in our village, approached me in the yard one afternoon as I was saddling our mare to go for a ride. 

“Laura, can you call my cousin in Smelizh? Here’s the number,” he pleaded, extending a piece of paper toward me. “Some gypsies just robbed my house, and maybe she can do something to stop them on their way to town. They’ve only been gone about an hour. They were on foot. Three women and a man.” 

“Shouldn’t we call the police?” I asked. “What did they steal?”

“They broke into our trunk in the main room and took 40,000 rubles ($1,500) and all of our documents!”

I went to tell my husband Igor what happened. Igor phoned the police in the district center of Suzemka, 60 kilometers away. The police said they would send a car to intercept the perpetrators. 

Igor threw on his coat and grabbed the rifle out of the safe, loading it as he went out of the house. As an inspector in the nature reserve where we live, he has a permit to carry a rifle.

“Where do you think you’re going?” I called after him, as he barged out the door.

“I might still be able to catch them,” he called back. “They can’t have gotten far on foot along the forest road with all the mud and puddles.”

He grabbed the horse I was fixing to ride and jumped on, saying that he could sneak up on them on horseback, whereas they would be able to hide if they heard the jeep.

Gypsies are notorious for descending upon remote Russian villages, selling odds and ends or promising to cure the sick with their charms. When they sell an item of clothing to local villagers, the gypsies follow them into the house to see where they take their money from to pay for the wares. Last summer, learning that a woman sold her house in the next village of Smelizh, gypsies convinced her to let them in to treat her ailments. After hypnotizing her, they stole 60,000 rubles (over $2,000). Sometimes gypsies steal horses and cattle, leading them away at night and selling them to the sausage factory. Several times they had attempted to steal our horses, which graze freely in the fields around our village. But our horses are wary of anyone but me, Igor, and our caretaker Sergei, and shy away when approached.

Igor galloped down the muddy road, the rifle slung over his shoulder. Every so often, he stopped to study the tracks. Small puncture-like imprints in the mud testified that one woman wore heels. Another wore flip-flops. Igor followed them. Soon he met our caretaker Sergei on his way back to the village in the jeep after a weekend away. Sergei stopped to ask Igor what happened. Igor explained that the gypsies had robbed Kudinyonok. Sergei said he hadn’t met anyone on the road. They must have hid in the woods upon hearing the car. Igor told Sergei to turn around and lend him a hand, and then galloped on. Sergei found a place on the narrow road to turn, but got stuck as he maneuvered the jeep about. 

Up ahead, Igor heard a car. Soon he saw four people climbing into a yellow Lada. The driver noticed Igor and quickly put the car in motion. Evidently the gypsies had driven the car as far as they could down the muddy road and walked the rest of the way to our village. Now they meant to escape. As their car emerged from the forest, it dipped into a mud-filled gully and the front wheels sank into the mire. Realizing they were stuck, the gypsies abandoned the car and ran down the road. Igor galloped after them and rounded them up with the horse, taking the rifle from his shoulder.

“Don’t move,” he said, “The police are on their way.” 

The three women and man waited with Igor guarding them. At first they waited silently, but soon began to protest. First they tried pleading with Igor, saying they were sick and had children at home. Then the women began to chant various curses, damning Igor and his kin for generations to come. They tried to hypnotize him. Seeing it was no use, they began to threaten him. One of the young women, who must have been about 16, said she would tell the police that Igor raped her. She said she was pregnant, and she would claim the baby was his. Igor laughed, hiding his distress that the police had yet to arrive. Using his cell phone, which worked only from the raised clearing, he called the police again. They said they had sent a car an hour earlier. It should have been here by now. They promised to send another. 

Seeing that Igor was without reinforcements, the gypsies decided to make a run for it. They scattered in all different directions, running across the field and through the woods. Igor ran after them on the horse, but then leapt from the horse and fired his rifle in the air, yelling at them to stop. They stopped, but the mare bolted upon hearing the gunshot and made a beeline down the road toward home. In about a mile, she came upon Sergei digging out the jeep. Sergei intercepted the horse and jumped on, galloping back to Igor. 

Sergei arrived on the horse as Igor rounded up the gypsies. Together they guarded them, until the police car finally arrived from Suzemka. The police loaded the gypsies into the vehicle, and wrote down Igor’s statement. 

The next day, as I was cleaning up in the kitchen, there came a knock at the door. I knew it couldn’t be one of the villagers, as they didn’t knock. I opened the door to see three Russian men dressed in civilian clothes and two small, colorfully-clad young gypsy women. One, about 16, wore an old fleece sweater, a long colorful skirt and pink flip-flops with socks, even though the temperature outside was below freezing. The other woman was slightly older and bundled more warmly, wearing spiky heels.

Saying they were looking for Igor, the men walked right into the door, the gypsy women trailing behind. I blocked the entryway, saying that Igor was out. The men said they were policemen and needed to talk to Igor. I asked what right they had to bring the thieves into my house, where they could size up their next job. Realizing their mistake, they directed the two young women to wait outside. 

One of the policemen stank of alcohol. I told them Igor would be returning from town soon, and they would probably meet him on their way down the road out of the village. I walked them out, seeing that they all made it out the gate. On the way to Smelizh, they met Igor on the road, and got his signature for the statement. The gypsies showed the police where they had tossed the documents and stashed the money. In Smelizh, the woman who had been hypnotized by gypsies the summer before identified the perpetrators as those who had stolen her money.

Later I heard that the older of the two women took the blame and was put in jail for two years, while the other two went free. Meanwhile, other members of their extended family continued to comb the countryside for vulnerable peasants. While Chukhrai would remain vigilant, in all likelihood stories of the armed horseman would spread through the gypsies’ ranks, and they will give Chukhrai a wide berth for some time to come.