Jeanette was something special. I met her at an express restaurant while I was waiting in line to eat. I got the chicken drumstick with spinach. "I will do the same," I heard a voice behind me. I turned and saw a young dark-skinned girl. Our eyes collided and remained as if riveted. We sat at the same table. She had thin black pants, short boots, a short leather jacket, bold metal jewelry around her neck, and a colorful shirt. Large black eyes stood out on a semi-round face. I immediately attacked and started questioning her. She said that her name was Jeanette and that she worked in the circus that visited Mostar in those days. It seemed to me that I had something from which I could write a story.
"And what are you doing?", she asked.
"Journalist, I write for the newspaper."
"Some journalists wrote about me. They took pictures of me and said that I was the most beautiful girl in the circus. There was a big headline: 'Gypsy from Požarevac - the star of the Pavlović circus'. My stage name is Jeanette, it's a French name, and it means Jovanka. The boss gave it to me. I ride a motorbike on the wall of death, it's a huge barrel made of special wood. First Dragan goes alone, and then the second act goes, I sit behind Dragan. 'And now Dragan and Lepa Jeanette', that's how they announce me in the program. It's a very dangerous act, everything shakes, we're whipping two hundred per hour. I'm scared. But when I feel good, five hundred cubic meters from the engine hits that thing between my legs, I want to cum. The audience doesn't know that, they all go silent with fear... We also did trapeze, the boss's daughter did that. She was born in the circus, but she fell and broke her leg. Then the boss abolished the trapeze. Now we have an amusement park and a wall of death."
"How did you get into the circus?"
"I'm from Požarevac, a white Gypsy. There are white and black Gypsies. I'm from white. I have three brothers and two sisters. My real name is Gordana, Goca. I was a waitress in a tavern in Požarevac. Then one evening a man came, said he had his own circus and picked me up. The tavern owner sold me to that man, I don't know for how much money. He took me to a motel and fucked me. I was eighteen, now I'm twenty-one."
I went to the bar and got us some beer. An hour later we were in Meh's studio. We had three hours before my friend got home from work. The day was cool, pleasant and quiet.
"I have to take a shower," Jeanette said and began to undress. Her clothes smelled of gasoline, tobacco, and sweat.
"Don't come like that and lie down. I'm not going to shower either."
"You're a real gypsy," she said, plopping down on the old woolen mattress with a big smile.
We stripped down to nothing. Her body seethed with sensuality, like a model from a Rubens nude. Doesn't Hamlet say: "It is most beautiful to fantasize among maidens' legs"? He was lying with his head on the lap of the chaste Ophelia in her dress, and I sank down, as if on soft leaves, between the legs of the beautiful gypsy. Janette was pushing herself and squeezing me with her strong thighs. She pounced on me and we began to devour each other, pressing into each other until the very end. Passion changed her restless face which became more and more lascivious, convulsing like her whole body. Cumming, Jeanette said something in Romani. She wouldn't tell me what. "Don't, it's very rude," she said.
Our bodies trembled, drained of orgasmic ecstasy. Jeanette was as gentle as a geisha, until our senses were once again overwhelmed by wild lust.
I escorted her to the exit of the building. The sun occasionally disappeared under the gray clouds that came from the horizon. Music from the circus speakers reached us. Jeanette became suddenly agitated and stopped. "The boss is very jealous, he would kill me if he saw us together," she said, kissed me and walked away with quick steps.
The next day we met again in front of the express-restaurant. It was eleven o'clock. We ate chicken with spinach again, drank beer and headed to the studio apartment. We held hands. She was wearing the same clothes as the day before, but a different shirt, a bright red color.
Yesterday was repeating itself.
"Do you want me to marry you?", she asked me while our wet bodies trembled on the mattress under the accelerated pulse.
"Honey, I love gypsies, but I'm not a marriage candidate."
“And why do you love them?”
"Because they sing even when it's hard for them, and they cry if they have to cry. They love children. They'll kill for love."
"That's what you read in books. Or did you watch gypsy movies?"
"I saw gypsies up close. I would stop whenever I came across them. They had several queues in Bišće polje. We were the first neighbors. Last year, on St. George's Day, I went to wish them a happy holiday. I found them cheerful. One boy was playing the accordion and singing, and the other was beating his palms on a drum hung around his neck. We were all drinking, men and women. Then the Ceribasha started urging him to marry me to his young daughter. 'Come on, little one, let the journalist see what gypsy blood is,' shouted her fat mustached father. Sometimes I wish I could be a gypsy, to steal horses and young gypsy women, but I'm not capable of that."
“So steal me.”
“I don’t have the strength for that.”
"And what am I going to do? I don't want to grow old in the circus, everyone there is crazy. I like Dragan, but he has a girlfriend. I want some young and beautiful gypsy to come and take me away. If he doesn't come, I'll run away alone. I had a good time with you, but your gypsy is leaving tomorrow."
“Really?”
“The boss said we were going to Banja Luka. We have to get up early.”
“My beautiful Jeanette is leaving me?”
"I have to, and I would like to stay with you."
The day was gloomy and promised rain. Around nine in the morning I stopped at the edge of the park and watched workers busily loading things into a long, covered truck, painted in various colors. Several vans were waiting to leave. Music was blaring from the speakers on the roof of one of them.
The Pavlović Circus was leaving.
I didn't see Jeanette, although I was sure she was there somewhere and noticed me, but she couldn't do more than that.
We meet some people only once in our life, but they remain in our permanent memory. And we never find out what happened to them. Sometimes I think how one dark night a young and beautiful gypsy appeared from somewhere on a stolen horse and took Beautiful Jeanette away from the circus.
She wished so much that such a fate befell her.