Trouble in Transylvania Page 11

  Dr. Gabor smiled. “No because, how do you say it in your country? We have all got to go sometimes.”

  Chapter Nine

  IF VERBS ARE the engines of language, then German is a series of freeway accidents. All the nouns and adjectives travel sedately in front while at the end of every sentence there’s a traffic pile-up of verbs to sort out. I usually keep my German language skills firmly locked away in the emergency room of my brain, lest the syntax disrupt the smoother highways of French and Spanish, but sometimes I have to bring them out.

  “Frau Ackermann, Guten Tag,” I said.

  She was sitting in the main square, knitting what seemed to be a sweater.

  “Who’s that for?” I asked.

  “Dr. Gabor,” she said. “I knit him one every time I’m here.”

  “And how many times did you say you’d been here?”

  “Ten. But it used to be much different.”

  “In what way?”

  “The restaurant was full of people, many Germans and Austrians came here, along with Romanians and Hungarians and even Russians. There were flowers on all the tables and a band in the evening for dancing. The government made sure there was food; there was sometimes lovely food—mushroom soup and roast pork and mutton with cream sauce, fresh rolls and cheese for breakfast, fruit and delicious pastries and cakes. Now, it’s changed. The food is dreadful, I bring my own.” She put down her knitting and pulled out of her leather handbag a small tube of liverwurst and some crackers.

  “Would you like some?”

  “Not right now, thanks… I wanted to ask you about Ionvital.”

  “Look at me!” Frau Sophie thumped her hefty chest. The starched little sail of her pressed handkerchief rode the wave of her bosom. “How old do you think I look?”

  She looked about seventy. “Well,” I prevaricated. “You look very young.”

  “I’m seventy!”

  “No!”

  “It’s because of Ionvital that I still work. I’m a secretary back home in Graz. I have a zest for life that none of my friends do.” Frau Sophie spread some liverwurst on a cracker and munched on it. “I come here every year for three weeks and that gives me enough stamina for the rest of the year.”

  “What does it feel like, this treatment?”

  “It fills me with joy, and with energy. I feel the life coming back to my stiff shoulders and my knees. I feel like walking and singing. I feel hungry—but there’s nothing to eat.” She finished off her liverwurst with a sigh. “I must bring my own snacks. In a cooler.”

  “And you get the Ionvital as a shot, yes?”

  “Every morning, a shot.”

  “Do you know anyone who might have killed Dr. Pustulescu?”

  “He created a magnificent drug, but he himself was not a good person.”

  “I heard he chased girls.”

  “That I don’t know. But I know he was greedy. For Dr. Gabor this work is a labor of love, a gift to humanity. For Dr. Pustulescu it was only money. He smiled at me because he thought I was a rich Austrian, but he treated the Hungarians badly. You should have heard how he talked to the nurses sometimes.”

  “Yes? What did he say?”

  “I don’t know Romanian. But his tone was always harsh and threatening. A few days ago, when Dr. Pustulescu arrived, he took over, pushed Dr. Gabor out of his office and took over his patients. Can you imagine?”

  I would have liked to have pursued this line of questioning with Frau Sophie, but at that precise instant I recognized Eva’s Polski Fiat coming slowly up the hill towards us on the square. I was relieved—then worried. Eva would want to get back to Budapest immediately. But there was, in fact, no danger that we’d have to be leaving soon, for I soon noticed that while Eva sat in the driver’s seat, the power was provided by the shoulders of Nadia Pop and a burly man with a moustache.

  The car came to a halt outside Nadia’s office on the square. Leaving Frau Sophie to her knitting, I went off and asked what was going on.

  “We start car, then it stop again,” Nadia said, puffing hard. She had taken off her orange polyester suit jacket, but was still wearing the same pink and green flowered dress. It was hard to imagine that she’d helped push the car very far in those tottery heels. Sweat ran down her round face, and her bun draggled.

  “They’ve destroyed my car!” said Eva, who looked almost as disheveled. “Romanians are idiots!”

  “It going fine, until recently,” said Nadia. “Polski Fiat, not good cars.”

  The brother-in-law didn’t bother to add his remarks. He opened the hood and began rummaging around.

  “Nicolae will find the problem!” Nadia said. “No worry about that.”

  At dinner that night there were fewer of us. Eva and Jack had gone off to eat biscuits and fruit from Budapest and to discuss what should be done about O.K. Temporary Secretarial Services during their absence. Eva refused to leave her car in Arcata, even temporarily, so convinced was she that Nadia’s brother-in-law was planning to steal it or sell it for parts once she was gone. However, staying on indefinitely created problems. Eva wanted Jack to return to Budapest to at least answer the phone at the office and tell everyone what was happening.

  Their absence left me and the Snapps and Gladys and Bree together at one large table. While Frau Sophie and the Vanderbergs were gracefully served their dinner by the male waiter, the six of us were in Zsoska’s section and thus subject to her imperious ways.

  Archie had brought with him The Rough Guide to Eastern Europe, as well as a Berlitz Hungarian phrase book that he’d picked up in Budapest.

  “Last time we were in Romania,” he said, “I didn’t quite understand that there were all these Hungarians here, or that there was some kind of problem between the Hungarians and the Romanians. I’m going to read you my bare-bones version. I want to juice it up but first I wanted to try to get the facts straight.”

  Archie opened his notebook, as Cathy writhed. I had a feeling this might be a nightly feature at their dinner table.

  TWO CULTURES IN CONFLICT

  If you asked the average person on the street about the former country of Yugoslavia, most people would say it was a crying shame. And then they’d probably say they didn’t understand what it was all about anyway. Living in America, a multicultural society made up of immigrants from all over the world, it’s sometimes hard for us to understand what all the brouhaha in the Balkans is about.

  Why can’t people just get along?

  None of the immigrant countries, like Canada, Australia or the U.S., is just one ethnicity. Our feeling of being a nation comes from—or should come from—shared values, not our ethnic or religious background. Our nation’s creed is based on respect and tolerance for difference.

  But Bosnia is only one of many areas in Eastern Europe that is experiencing ethnic strife. I am in the Transylvanian part of Romania with my two daughters, Eldest Daughter Cathy and young Emma, who was born here. After only a short time here, I can tell you that though the discord between the Romanians and Hungarians is nothing to the hatred that the Serbs, Croats and Muslims have for each other, it’s still worth worrying about.

  “Well,” said Bree. “I don’t know. I understand your need to reach the average reader, but I think it’s misleading to paint America as such a tolerant, multicultural society. And it’s not just an immigrant country. The Native Americans were there first and they were practically wiped out, and African Americans didn’t exactly immigrate of their own free will.”

  “Oh, you’re just so smart, aren’t you?” Cathy sneered. “I’m so impressed.” And then she turned to her father. “Well, she’s right, you know. Think about what the pioneers did to the Indians!”

  “Kit-Kat, Bree has a good point there. I’m going to think about that, and work it in somehow. Thanks for being constructive, Bree.”

  “Dad, this is totally boring,” said Cathy. She glanced at Bree to see if she agreed. Although the two didn’t seem to be getting on at all, I could see
that Cathy was still hoping to be friends. She had come to dinner with leggings under her jeans skirt and two different earrings—and the rip through Willa Cather’s forehead was getting bigger. “I mean, who at home is going to be interested in why Romanians and Hungarians don’t get along?”

  “Why not just reduce it to ethnic stereotypes?” I suggested. “The Hungarians believe that the Romanians are corrupt, lying and lazy. The Romanians believe that the Hungarians are arrogant, power-mad and bloodthirsty. The Romanian myth about themselves is that they’re a Mediterranean people who unfortunately ended up on the Black Sea, left behind by the Romans. They believe that their Latinate language and culture connects them more to France and Italy than Mitteleuropa. They think the Hungarians are the descendants of savage tribes who swept through the Carpathians to rape, murder and pillage. The Hungarian myth about themselves, on the other hand, is that they are a hard-working, proud, independent people, who bravely battled the Turks for centuries, and who created the Magyar culture that exists here, with all its important ties to Central Europe.”

  “Seems to me,” said Gladys, “that people live in these countries like beans in a pressure cooker. Navy beans, kidney beans, lima beans, black beans. They could make a real nice chili but instead, they want to keep their shape, no matter how hot it gets.”

  “And don’t forget to put in your article something about the other minority cultures that are here or were here once.” I instructed Archie. “Most of the Jews were deported to the camps during the war and the rest have emigrated to Israel. Ceauşescu let them go, at a price from the Israeli government. The Saxon Germans, who did as much to create Transylvanian culture as the Hungarians, are leaving their traditional cities for Germany in droves. And what about the Gypsies? There are more Gypsies in Romania than there are Hungarians, but nobody cares about them. Since the revolution they’ve become the scapegoats of the new order. You ask either a Hungarian or a Romanian about the Gypsies and they’ll spit on the ground.”

  “The Gypsies are mighty picturesque,” said Gladys, “but you’re right. I’ve noticed that people here don’t exactly cotton to them.”

  “It’s interesting you should mention the Saxons,” said Archie. “It’s Transylvania where the children that the Pied Piper spirited away are supposed to have come out again. That’s the legend of how the Saxons came to live in Transylvania. Kit-Kat, do you remember Robert Browning’s ‘The Pied Piper of Hamelin’?”

  In Transylvania there’s a tribe

  Of alien people who ascribe

  The outlandish ways and dress

  On which their neighbours lay such stress,

  To their fathers and mothers having risen

  Out of some subterranean prison

  Into which they had been trepanned

  Long time ago, in a mighty band,

  Out of Hamelin town in Brunswick land

  But how or why they don’t understand.

  “Dad, please!” Cathy was ready to sink under the table. I noticed, though, that Emma, who had been sitting on her child’s seat in her usual stolid, blank-faced way, was swaying, almost imperceptibly, to the rhythm of the words. Perhaps Emma’s mother tongue was not words at all, but music.

  Archie noticed too, and his face brightened. “Emma loves poetry,” he said. “We do a lot of reading aloud at home, don’t we, Emma-Demma?” Zsoska chose that moment to appear at our table. Pen and pad in hand she stood sullenly, waiting for us to all order the same thing. Although she could only have been a few years older than Bree, she projected the toughened fierceness of someone twice her age. She was beautiful, but in a frightening way.

  Archie hastily whipped out Hungarian for Travellers. “Zsoska,” he began. “Hogy van?”

  “Swine? Fry potatoes? Salat?” Zsoska asked impatiently. Her English was bad, but to the point.

  Archie tried again. “Hawd-y von?” (“It’s how are you?” he told the rest of us.)

  “Köszönöm, jól,” Zsoska snapped.

  “Wait a minute, wait a minute.” Archie peered down at the phrase book. “Kursurnum yawl… Okay, she’s saying, ‘Fine, thanks.’ ”

  Zsoska turned to Gladys. “Swine?”

  “No, hon, my stomach is acting up a tad. I think I’ll just have an omelette.”

  “Me too,” said Bree.

  “Let’s see, let’s see… Honnan jött?” said Archie. “Hawn-non jurt?”

  Zsoska burst into a torrent of Hungarian, which none of us could understand, but which gave the distinct impression that she’d had about enough of this intercultural exchange.

  “I just asked her where she came from,” said Archie plaintively. “The more I look at Zsoska, the more I believe she might be from one of the ancient Székely tribes. The guidebook says that most of the Hungarian people in this part of the Carpathians are Székelys. They were a group of Tartar nomads who came here in the twelfth century and defended the border for the Kingdom of Hungary.”

  Cathy said, “I think Emma and I will have an omelette too.”

  “No, wait,” said Archie, determined to make contact with Zsoska somehow, “Tojást … Tawyaasht. That’s eggs in Hungarian. The little girl would like an omelette. Her name is Emma. Emma, this is Zsoska.”

  “You too, omelette?” Zsoska jerked her yellow and black mane in my direction.

  “Yeah, okay.”

  I asked Archie if I could see his phrase book. The Berlitz people really tried to cover all contingencies, by supplying phrases for road accidents and health problems. To read the little book straight through was to become nervously aware that life on the road was nothing but a series of aggravations and catastrophes. Although my own travels had taken place on a different scale—I had rarely had occasion to ask, “Where’s the nearest golf course?” for instance—the core needs in the book were familiar: I need a place to sleep; I need food; I need help; I need to go somewhere; I’m lost.

  I flipped through the book to “Eating” and heard my stomach growl. Eggs stuffed with caviar, dumplings, apple soup, pike in cream and paprika sauce, sweet pancakes with nut-cream, flambéed.

  The “Relaxing” section was also pretty useless, with its suggestions about movies and theatres, boxing matches and tennis. And, no, “Shopping” wasn’t quite appropriate for Arcata either. That afternoon Jack and I had investigated the one store and two kiosks down the hill from the square. They had very few things, out of the many consumer words listed here, for sale. Aside from a few basics, like bread and more bread, there were only plum brandy and canned whole plums and plum jam.

  Flip, flip. Here was a phrase, under “Hotel,” that might come in useful.

  Mennyi a feszültség? Maenyee o faesewlshayg. What a tough language! I tried to memorize it before handing the dictionary back to Archie.

  It meant “What’s the voltage?”

  “Now I’ve got a question for you, Archie,” said Gladys. “Why do you see the country’s name written sometimes as Rumania and sometimes as Romania?”

  “I think Romania is the correct version now,” said Archie. “What do you say, Cassandra?”

  “The Romanians like Romania because it connects the current state with the Roman Empire and makes them feel good. The Hungarians always want to call it Rumania. Of course, some feminists prefer the more modern spelling of Romynia, so as not to privilege the men any longer, the people naturally being called Romminians. Finally,” I added, watching Zsoska slam forward through the swinging doors, with her arms full of plates and a hostile look on her face, “some think the citizens are more properly called Romaniacs.”

  A pork chop slid off one of the sharply angled plates Zsoska was carrying. She retrieved it and slapped it back on a pile of French fries, then handed the whole thing to Archie.

  “Swine!”

  He pretended not to notice.

  “Zsoska,” he said, thumbing quickly through the phrase book. “Zsoska…”

  But before he could find the right words, she was gone again.

  Chapte
r Ten

  AFTER DINNER our party repaired to the square by the lake. Gladys’s dogs were patiently waiting for her and crowded around as she fed them French fries and some pork bones. Bree had disappeared, saying she was going to look for Jack and Eva, and Emma and Cathy wandered away too. Archie sat down by me on one of the benches by the lake.

  It was still light and the evening was, on the cusp of April and May, scented in layers. The fresh, piercing scents of the evergreens were like sopranos that soared over the altos and tenors of the spicy plum and apple blossoms in an a cappella group. The cuckoos sang their falling two notes with sweet regularity.

  Archie had on his soft felt hat and a tweed jacket with suede elbow patches.

  “I’m not getting anywhere with Zsoska,” he said. “Do you think you might be able to help?”

  “With that phrase book? Probably not.”

  “She speaks a little English. And she speaks Romanian, too, so you could talk to her.”

  “What about?”

  “You know.” Archie looked furtive.

  “Archie, do you honestly think this is the best idea? The poor woman gave up her child three years ago. Isn’t it going to be kind of a shock when you tell her Emma is hers?”

  “It might be good for both of them. Listen, I thought how you could do it. Ask Zsoska if she would take you sightseeing tomorrow. She might be glad of the extra money. I’m not saying you have to tell her about Emma, though if it comes up, it comes up. But maybe you could find out something about her past and her circumstances now. It would be a start anyway.”

  “Archie, I can’t. I’m here to help Gladys. I can’t get embroiled in something else.”

  “It’s just that I feel so frustrated,” he burst out. “Cathy and Mark were such great kids. You wouldn’t think so to see Cathy now, but she and I had a ball when she was growing up. We drew pictures, wrote stories, made our own post office. Mark had a mathematical bent like his mom, and pretty soon he outstripped me, but Cathy was always special to me. We made cities and harbors with Legos; we did science experiments, we looked at the stars through telescopes, and at the insect world through microscopes. I didn’t mind staying home with the kids while Lynn worked. I loved it!