The Broken Road

I asked her: who on earth were these peculiarly dressed, high-voiced Muscovites who drove all the carriages? She began to laugh, and interrupted the general conversation to relay the question in Rumanian. Laughter broke out all round: the Muscali! The Skapetz! Viorica clicked her tongue twice, making a brisk scissoring gesture with her forefinger and its neighbor in mid-air twice. Tania explained. They belonged to a religious sect widespread in Bessarabia and southern Russia, and their Rumanian headquarters were in Galatz, in the Danube delta. After marriage and producing one or two children, she wasn't quite sure, the men castrated themselves, hence the beardlessness, the high voice and the expanse, and the general eunuch style. Their wives were said to submit to some similar ambiguous ceremony, I learnt. Some said that the women began to grow beards.