This is the story of the Gypsies of the little town of Lo Condo, that I’m telling you before the said Gypsies disappear, as they are bound to be expelled, due to the galloping frenzy for paper money to which the inhabitants are devoted. Lo Condo is a quaint little town at the extreme Northwest of a huge, wild country known as the United Swamps of Analphabetism. Lo Condo’s population is divided into two main groups: the wood people, who live on a reservation on the other side of the channel separating the town from the island, and the waterfront people, living on the mainland. Two worlds cohabiting cahin-caha, with not much in common, but trying to make the best of it. The best of it the waterfront people get, thanks to their elaborated cult of a powerful goddess, paper money.
Now on the mainland, a few years ago a group of Gypsies came by that wouldn’t fit in any of those two categories. They came gradually, some on flying carpets, some on flying boats, and then started gathering in a grotto of their own downtown. Those Gypsies came from all over the place, some of them from other, remote lands locals only knew by name. So they found a comfortable enough grotto where they could gather and worship a different Goddess: friendship.
Every morning you could see them dragging themselves to the grotto for regeneration purposes, so as not to be contaminated by the ambient money frenzy. Those Gypsies were interested in ideas, concepts, Arts, instinctive, popular expression, and poetry, values on the brink of extinction in the rest of the town, too busy trying to snatch paper money, make their cashiers ring, and amass colossal quantities of crap they thought would secure them a place in the pantheon of the greenback.
Pretty soon the Gypsies decided that was not enough, and that they also needed to gather periodically to have full sessions of regeneration. So they also met once a week to have a feast, Gypsy style, where all talents, real or imagined, great and small, could express themselves. Pretty soon the weekly meetings of the Gypsies of Lo Condo became popular, and even reached out to people from the waterfront. The meetings were known by word of mouth, no publicity by the classic mercantile channels.
Those Gypsies were an incredible mixture of improbable encounters: you had first Rigoberto the pew, officiating as Master of Ceremony, a patriarch like figure,who had the power and license to produce a magic beverage, of a deep brown color, that would come out of a formidable steaming engine, and who also officiated as the distributor of speech, with his imposing scepter, thus preventing the meetings from getting too rowdy, which would have attracted the attention of the omnipresent town police. Rigoberto also treated the assembly with stories that he wrote, and that nobody but the Gypsies themselves would understand. Every now and then he would also come up with a magic trick, or a crystal ball, and thus would state his unique position as MC.
Then you had Garido the ukulele player, and magician, who would show up at every meeting with new musical instruments and wild, custom made campfire songs that brought joy and hilarity in the assembly. Garido’s magic powers didn’t stop there, he also used to bring about home made dishes and strange beverages that had magic powers: As the goodies were consumed, a raven appeared on top of Garido’s head, thus stating his sanctity.
Theses assemblies counted two main other musicians-magicians: Bobbonet and Eduardo El Grande. Bobbonet was exiled from his own home while Eduardo El Grande was about to be ousted from his own flying boat, as the port authorities had decided that no flying boat could moore any more at Lo Condo’s once peaceful marina. They made a terrific team that had the faculty, at a certain hour, to produce two dwarf female gypsies, that would come out of their guitars to crush cockroaches with their wild flamenco stomping, crushing all those demons with the heels of their dance shoes.
The assembly also counted writers and poets: Kyledo, who would read organic haikus, only at a certain hour. Haikus require a certain setting, and the right frame of mind to be ready for it. The other poet, Jeffredo, would read pieces he wrote that nobody would understand in the first place but that everybody would appreciate – that’s the magic of poetry- at the antipodes of the rational world of the waterfront people, who’d always want something nice, not offensive, not threatening, that would look or sound nice, and above all, that would bring paper money.
There was also for a while a wild, Gypsy woman artist named Janondo, who’d also read, only at certain hours too, wild things she’d have written at the wee hours, as she was insomniac. She looked like the queen of Saba, draped in rich, iridescent velvety capes, with extravagant hats that made her look like a tsarina.
You also had, only on certain particular nights, and at a certain hour, Rigoberto that would call his muse, and suddenly you’d have Noronda’s trembling voice coming out of nowhere to sing
Summertime, and while she sang, you could actually see her levitating over the assembly on a thin veil of iridescent butterflies.
The weekly assembly of the Gypsies also included dogs, among which Tugondo, who would drag his master Ricondo at the end of a rope. Tugondo was a highly energetic being, living with his hairy master on a flying boat. Tugondo had magic powers of his own too, what humans would call a circus dog I guess, that were pretty fascinating. I guess that without Tugondo, Ricondo wouldn’t survive in the tough little town of Lo Condo. Now you got to understand that they form a team, a perfect Gypsy team: Tugondo amuses the crowd while Ricondo fools them with his incessant blabbering, and then when everybody surrenders, and fall into a drowsy state of abandonment, God only knows what happens...
There was also a witch in the assembly, known only as Catinda, who invariably would come up with devilish cakes and pies aimed at bewitching whoever dared to taste them. As a regular attendee of the sessions myself, I never got to know what she puts in those...
