I paused, startled, in the doorway of Budapest’s empty West Station restaurant. Had I strayed into the 1890s section of some Central European Victoria and Albert Museum? Gilded chandeliers shed a mellow light on immaculate damask table-linen. The tables stood far apart on a floor of inky blue and carmine marble. The mahogany dining-chairs, rather pompously carved, were upholstered in dark green velvet. Slowly I moved to the centre of the room, passing fluted porphyry pillars. Burgundy and silver tapestry wall-hangings shimmered beneath golden rosettes sprouting from the cornice. Silver candelabras gleamed on square marble corner pillars and on either side of intricately bevelled window embrasures. One expected several archdukes to appear at any moment.
Instead, the door was pushed open by a tall, thin, slightly stooped young man with longish mousey hair and pale blue bloodshot eyes. He too seemed momentarily bemused by this imperial left-over. Then, taking courage from me and my rucksack, he asked, ‘OK just to sit?’
I nodded. ‘There’s no staff around to object.’
Noticing my London–Arad luggage label, Klaus suggested, ‘Reporter?’
‘No,’ I said, ‘just a tourist.’
‘A tourist? Why? There is no tourist comfort in Rumania, no food or heat in the hotels – nothing!’
‘But I have a tent – and lots of dehydrated food.’
‘A tent!’ snorted Klaus. ‘Don’t you know there’s snow? And the Securitate won’t let you camp, they hate foreigners. You go home!’
‘Mine is a Himalayan tent,’ I soothed. ‘And aren’t the Securitate gone – disbanded, defeated?’
‘Only foreigners believe that,’ said Klaus. ‘They still have the best weapons and could be more dangerous now. The other Ceausescus could be organising a counter-revolution. Last week my cousin ran from Timisoara, he doesn’t like to live in a country without a government. He wants the army to take over until the election. Now all the criminals – Securitate, Party activists, policemen – can do what they want.’
Klaus, a Swabian from a village near Timisoara, had been working in Germany since illegally crossing the border near Kikinda in 1988. That escape route, across the flat Banat, was not too difficult by night yet required courage. If caught, Klaus could have been sentenced to three years’ imprisonment. His only sibling, a fourteen-year-old brother, had been badly wounded during the uprising on 17 December and though his farmer parents were against his returning, he felt they needed him. His arrival would be a surprise – ‘I wish they won’t get angry. Now they have passports and I want to take them to Munich. There my brother can have good medical treatment to help him walk again. We are two hundred years in that village but since Communism came – and especially since Ceausescu came – most of our neighbours have gone back to Germany. I wanted my parents to escape with me but they were frightened. Not frightened to make the journey but frightened to live outside, in Germany.’
A waiter appeared in the distance, briefly considered us, then tactfully vanished.
Klaus frowned at my notebook; old habits die hard and I was keeping a daily journal for – as I then thought – my daughter Rachel’s benefit. ‘You are a reporter!’ he insisted. ‘Why do you not trust me? I am your friend. I tell you, if you write like this in Rumania, where people see you, it is dangerous. I am nearly two years in the Occident, I know how you think. For you repression is not real, you believe you can always act free. But in Rumania you will find trouble, saying you are a tourist but making reports!’
The door opened slowly, and a frail fur-hatted young woman dragged two bulging suitcases over the threshold – then retreated to fetch four cardboard cartons, roped together. When Klaus hurried to help her they spoke Rumanian.
Maria was a Szekely, now living in Vienna with her Szekely husband. They were trying to get visas for Canada, but losing hope … She had not been home for three years; pre-revolution, she feared being forbidden to leave Rumania again. Even post-revolution, she seemed frightened; her hands shook as she chain-smoked. ‘I must now bring luxuries to my family, but I cannot stay long – it is too horrible there!’ She paused, looked intently at me, then asked, ‘Do you know who are the Szekely people?’ I assured her that I did. ‘So you know we are persecuted?’ Her voice rose shrilly. ‘The Rumanians want to kill us if we won’t give up our culture. You know Transylvania belongs to us for one thousand years? To the Szekely and the Magyars – until in 1920 we are tricked and cheated and Rumania takes it!’
I glanced at Klaus, who was staring at a chandelier. This was not his problem.
Maria leant forward and tapped my wrist with long shocking-pink nails. ‘Do you understand all I say?’ Her tone was desperate, her fear palpable. She needed to be reassured, on the eve of venturing back into a threatening – as she perceived it – environment, that the outside world sympathised with her situation.
Vaguely I remarked, ‘We have a slightly similar difficulty in Northern Ireland. There, many people …’
Suddenly Klaus looked at his watch and shouted, ‘Come! The train will be leaving!’ Flinging his knapsack over his shoulder, he seized both Maria’s suitcases and made for the door.
I left last; my giant rucksack was so abnormally heavy that loading up took time. On the uncrowded platform I was at once approached by four Rumanian Gypsy youths who politely pleaded, ‘Change dollars?’ Maria and Klaus, already boarding the train, observed this encounter and Klaus beckoned vigorously. ‘Come!’ he yelled. ‘Leave those Gypsies, they are bad people! Come!’
The swarthy youths stood staring hopefully at me. They were offering only sixty lei to the dollar though the unofficial rate was then, Klaus had told me, eighty or ninety. Their anoraks and frayed jeans were filthy, their eyes red-rimmed with exhaustion, their dull uncombed hair betrayed serious vitamin deficiency. At that time most Western Europeans were riding on a wave of horrified sympathy for all Rumanians and I felt no temptation to haggle. We sat on a bench while I excavated twenty dollars from my money-belt. Counting the repulsively soiled and almost illegible hundred lei notes, I found one too many. On my returning it the youths were overcome with astounded gratitude; one of them took a small wrinkled apple from his pocket and pressed it into my hand. Then I hurriedly boarded the last coach moments before the train pulled out, punctually at 8.15 p.m.
Seeking my friends, I walked up the corridor; the last two coaches were empty. This service is described as ‘the Orient Express’ but the gravy-brown leatherette seats were hard, the corridor windows mud-caked, the floors strewn with sunflower seed shells, the loos noisome. And at the end of the penultimate coach a locked door prevented my joining Maria and Klaus.
Settling in a corner seat, I tied the rucksack’s long waist-strap to my right wrist and read the Rough Guide to Eastern Europe, dozing at intervals. Never before had I carried such a weight. It would however be much reduced in Arad, when I had donned several layers of garments and distributed the heavy goodies: medicines, soap, chocolate, coffee beans. The light goodies – Kent cigarettes, tights, condoms, tampons, warm socks and sachets of shampoo – were for use en route as gifts or bribes.
The border control stop – an ill-lit rural station – seemed deserted at 1.15 a.m. Rumanian time (two hours ahead of GMT). But soon a couple of uniformed figures, with hard unsmiling faces, appeared at my carriage door. Oddly, they ignored my offered passport, stood staring silently at me for a moment, then vanished. Seconds later they reappeared nearby on the platform, talking to two other uniformed figures. On their return the customs officer said in English, ‘Visa check! Quickly get off – quickly! Five minutes this train go!’ I protested; normally passengers’ visas are checked in situ. ‘Quickly!’ repeated the customs officer, advancing into the carriage as I – slightly alarmed by his harshness – untied the rucksack from my wrist. The police officer then pushed past him, seized me roughly by the forearm and half-dragged me into the corridor. Instinctively I leant sideways and grabbed the Hatchards plastic bag that held my notebooks and pens.
My captors hustled me far up the platform to join two heavily laden Magyar peasants, the only people here leaving the train. Given my need to re-board quickly, they would surely not have objected to my passport being stamped first. Yet I had to wait seven or eight minutes, while their documents were being carefully scrutinised and argued about. Then, without delay, my visa was stamped and an entry form provided.
Back on the train, I assumed myself to be in the wrong carriage – until I saw my discarded London matchbox. Otherwise the carriage was empty. Yet it was impossible immediately to accept the fact that my rucksack had been stolen. The magnitude of the disaster made it seem, literally, incredible. As though disbelief could somehow reverse the situation, I stood pushing this reality away. Then suddenly I accepted it and panicked. Leaping to the platform, I raced towards the distant officers, standing in the shadows near a half-open door.
‘Everything’s stolen!’ I yelled. ‘My baggage, it’s all gone, everything! Someone has stolen my rucksack!’ As I approached they shrugged and gestured dismissively, then sharply turned into the lighted room and slammed the door.
I looked up and down the dark empty platform, wondering about the other two uniformed figures … My fellow-passengers were dormant; no one stood at the corridor windows and the silence was broken only by the panting hiss of the train’s central heating pipes. Now I was trembling with shock. It seemed pointless to continue; the sensible thing would be to wait here for the next homeward-bound train. I hesitated, then realised I couldn’t, at this stage, turn away from Transylvania. And the idea of trying to survive with nothing but the inadequate garments I wore had a certain macabre attraction; it appealed to what some people unkindly describe as my masochism. Of course the nature of this journey would be changed; the Rough Guide (also stolen) had just reminded me that in Rumania ‘life is literally at risk during winter unless you come … equipped as if for a short walk in the Himalayas’ – which is exactly how I had come equipped. Therefore I couldn’t trek deep into the mountains and would be totally dependent on Rumanian hospitality.
The train was jerking forward when I scrambled into a half-full coach with clean curtained windows and soft seats upholstered in old-gold velveteen. Briefly I considered looking for my friends, whose commiseration would have helped; but that would be feebly parasitic – they had enough problems of their own. In an empty carriage I took stock of my worldly goods: a compass, torch, comb and Swiss knife in my pockets. And in the Hatchards bag – apart from notebooks and pens – a map and a bottle of whiskey for which, mercifully, there had been no room in the rucksack. After a few swigs I stopped trembling and counted my money: £165 and $310. Irrelevant affluence; it was then impossible to buy even a toothbrush, never mind a flea-bag or tent, and Rumanians, however poor, won’t accept payment for hospitality.
Arad’s railway station restaurant – large, dirty, dreary, cold – stays open all night. On one damp-streaked beige wall an unfaded rectangle marked the spot recently vacated by Ceausescu. Under a solitary low-watt bulb a dozen shabby unshaven men sat around conversing in hoarse mutters – if at all – while sipping glasses of ground-acorn coffee-substitute. They surveyed me with swivelling eyes, not turning their heads. When I greeted a man sitting alone near the door his lips twitched in a nervous parody of a smile and he moved to another table. Turning to the bar, I reflected that men who spend all night in railway restaurants are not Average Citizens.
The long shelves behind the bar supported two dusty bottles of a pseudo-fruit juice that would seem drinkable – I later discovered – only if one were lost in the Sahara. The nourishment on offer consisted of a few grey slimy sausages, dreadfully resembling dog turds, and three pale pastry rolls from which oozed something yallerish-green. Recoiling from this display, I became aware that the barmaid was surveying me with concern; evidently I still showed signs of shock. She was a haggard young woman with rotting teeth and a nasty boil on her neck. ‘Irlanda’ puzzled her but she reached across the counter to shake my hand vigorously while welcoming me to Rumania. When I tried to pay for a large glass of luke-warm ‘coffee’ she laughingly returned my lei, tapped the glass, wrinkled her nose and said ‘Nu bun!’ (No good.)
Sitting at a small circular red plastic table, cigarette-burnt around the edges, I considered my next move. Should I report the theft to Arad police headquarters? In theory, yes. The guilty uniformed quartet – there were no alternative culprits – plainly formed a border mafia that threatened other unwary foreigners. Yet I lacked the courage to confront their Arad colleagues (a humiliating realisation) since these were likely to be of the same ilk and might well deport me on some trumped-up technicality. I recalled Klaus’s cousin’s comment about living in a country without a government. That national deficiency would not have worried me pre-theft, but now it did. There was nowhere for the buck to stop. If some Arad policeman decided to deport me, to whom could I appeal?
At that point the barmaid brought me a steaming hot glass of ‘coffee’ and apologised for the last having been cold. Her blunt-featured, coarse-skinned face became quite beautiful when she smiled. She was the first of many Rumanians whose spontaneous caring took the sting out of major misfortunes.
At 3 a.m., warmed by hot liquid and kindness, I left the restaurant – feeling an overwhelming compulsion to walk and walk and walk, on and on and on, until bodily exhaustion exorcised emotional pain. Striding east out of Arad, through unlit canyons between gaunt rows of high-risery, it suddenly seemed that all this could not be true, that I was about to wake up. In real life people don’t set off in the middle of the night through freezing fog – hatless, ungloved and possessing only a bottle of whiskey – to explore an unknown and recently traumatised country. Until dawn, this strong sense of outrageous improbability persisted; without my gear, I felt as disorientated and vulnerable as an unshelled crustacean.
Near Arad’s edge the faint light of a half-moon, filtering through the fog, revealed a stack of milk crates outside an alimentara (food shop). I took a litre bottle, leaving fifty lei in its place – forty-five and a half lei too many, I later learned. Then for four hours I followed a straight level icy main road, keeping to the rough verge, so treacherous was the tarmac.
One-storey dwellings lined the road on both sides for several miles and collective farm buildings provided powerful odours of pig-shit and silage: delicious aromas after four days amidst Budapest’s nauseating air pollution. No motor traffic broke the cold windless silence but at about 4 a.m. long farm wagons, drawn by pairs of briskly-trotting horses, began to move towards Arad. The clip-clopping, gradually approaching and receding, was comforting; as was the cock-crowing, now weaving a strident sound-pattern all over the wide plain.
By then my numbed sense of unreality had been replaced by a sharp grief: the sort you can feel, like something physical, in your heart. I recalled another slightly similar crisis on the Galapagos Islands, way back in February 1979 when Rachel and I were returning from Peru. Addled by the equatorial heat, I left all our cash and travellers’ cheques, and our return tickets to Guayaquil, and our return tickets from Quito to London, momentarily unguarded on the counter of the village store. Everything was stolen and on one level that was an even more dramatic crisis. There were then no postal or telephonic communications with the outside world and we might have had to sit indefinitely on the equator, 600 miles out in the Pacific, but for the trusting generosity of a young Norwegian couple who lent us our fares to Quito – where, pending the arrival of replacement funds, a British Embassy official magnanimously sustained the feckless Irish. Yet that loss had not been so emotionally shattering. It was my own fault; people who leave wallets on shop counters in deprived areas deserve the consequences. Also, it merely involved money. In contrast, the theft of my rucksack and its contents represented a bereavement. Several of the stolen items had formed part of my trekking gear on four continents for twenty-seven years and could not be thought of as replaceable, extraneous objects. They had become – or so I felt, immediately after their loss – an integral part of me, so unique were their associations. On the eve of a journey I am often accused of parsimony, advances in design and technology having long since made much of my gear obsolete; few seem to understand that the sentimental value of a traveller’s equipment may far exceed its monetary value. To replace my stolen rucksack and contents would cost more than £1500, including the £400-worth of medicines, yet for weeks I was unable to focus on the economics of the calamity. First I had to recover from my bereavement – and from the disappointment of having to postpone, into the indefinite future, a trek for which I had already waited fifty years.
By six o’clock many groups of peasants were walking silently to their collective or state farms – never suspecting, in the pitch darkness, that a foreigner (for decades past a rarity in this area) was among them. It felt almost uncanny to be at last with the Rumanians yet unable to see them.
An hour later it was just light enough for me to read ‘Ghioroc’ on a signpost. I turned north off the highway onto a rough, narrow road. In that monochrome dawn – greyness gradually replacing blackness – it was hard to believe that somewhere on my right the sun had risen. All around flat brown ploughland stretched to the horizon; there was not a dwelling, a person, an animal, a fence, a tree – even a bush or a bird – to be seen. But soon a line of low humpy mountains became faintly visible not far ahead, through banks of dissolving cloud. Stopping for the first time, I sat on the frost-bound verge to drink my litre of milk – which proved, unsurprisingly, to be at least 50 per cent water. While walking fast my meagre garments had been adequate but now, within moments, I was shivering. After a swig of whiskey, to counteract the chilling milk, I hurried on.
Ghioroc is a mining settlement on the litter-strewn shore of a lake – in winter a large oval of solid bottle-green ice. At 8.15 scores of workers of both sexes were thronging the old village street, looking half-starved and either apprehensive or defiant. No one returned my greetings. The place had a taut, sullen feeling and I walked with downcast eyes lest some Securitate informer might suspect me of spying on Rumania’s metallurgical activities. While ‘breakfasting’ I had planned my route: a dirt track through the mountains, from Ghioroc to the village of Siria, where someone would surely provide a night’s shelter. However, my turning onto the track displeased a plump young man who moments before had been haranguing the workers. He shouted angrily at me, pointing down the tarred road. Unlike everyone else, he was well dressed in a smart suit and bum-length leather jacket. But for his tone, I would have assumed him to be a helpful character, trying to prevent my going astray. As it was, I meekly obeyed him, making no attempt to explain my situation; the shadow of deportation still hung over me.
Beyond Ghiroc the monotonous state farm landscape was replaced by hilly, partially wooded countryside that might have been in Ireland. On either side of the winding road stretched a succession of small villages, rows of red-tiled carefully maintained dwellings set in neat gardens. The few visible peasants were old or middle-aged. I made several attempts to communicate, unfolding my map and pretending to seek directions, but no one would speak to me; only a few weeks previously, it had been illegal to talk to foreigners.
Two hours later the sun began at last to disperse the high fog and, coincidentally, an ancient ruddy-cheeked man in a tattered smock smiled shyly at me from the arched gateway of his unusually large farmhouse. My greetings were returned in German; his family had been among a group of Saxons who generations ago settled here, far from the Saxon heartland in southern Transylvania. Now only he and his half-crippled wife were left in the homestead; he pointed to her as she hobbled across the spacious square courtyard beyond the archway. One son was teaching in Brasov, the other three and a daughter had migrated to Germany. It seemed that hospitality was about to be offered when the old lady noticed me, and there was fear in her voice as she summoned her husband. Hurriedly he shook my hand and retreated, closing the high wooden double door behind him.
Approaching the town of Lipova, another hour later, I again noticed that all the roadside houses – some new, or recently extended – were smartly painted and embellished and curtained. Looking at them, no one would guess that for years Rumania had been enduring a major economic crisis. But of course it was impossible for a stranger to buy food and by then I was ravenous, having walked twenty-one miles and eaten nothing since leaving Budapest. On the outskirts, I despairingly tried one last shop – much smaller than the standard alimentara – where an amiable woman behind the L-shaped counter took pity on me. Fumbling under the counter, she produced half a rock-hard loaf for which she would accept no payment. To make it chewable I bought a bottle ambiguously labelled ‘Aperitif’ and containing a mildly alcoholic red-brown liquid derived from who knows what. In retrospect, that ranks among my least palatable meals. Yet I was hungry enough to finish the loaf and empty the bottle.
Elena, my tubby hostess – fortyish, with frizzy black hair and an unhealthy pallor – was elated to meet a foreigner. Her grey-blue eyes glittered excitedly as she joined me by the high tin wood-stove, inviting me to relax on a beer crate which at once drove a needle-like splinter into my left thigh. Between strenuous bouts of mastication, I answered her questions as best I could with the aid of two mini-dictionaries. Meanwhile Ion – her burly, balding husband, polite yet much more guarded than she – was studying a smudged ledger, breathing heavily and whispering to himself.
For some time the shop remained customerless, though its long shelves were stocked from floor to ceiling. It can serve as the prototype of all Rumanian shops during that period. Three items were on offer. One set of shelves held the Aperitif – which, time revealed, had sinister after-effects, explaining the presence of so many hundreds of bottles. The other shelves, behind Ion, held rusty-topped jars of off-colour tomatoes and whole pears floating in some greyish-green chemical. The only other food for sale was a powdery substance, allegedly flour, and two old men eventually rambled in to collect their meagre rations in cloth bags. Wistfully they asked for sugar and salt but neither was available. Probably they spread the news – ‘A foreigner is here!’ – because soon the shop began to fill up with young men and teenage boys who at first feigned to ignore me, while thawing hands at the stove or horse-playing on the wide open spaces of the shop floor. Then, reassured by Elena’s intimacy with me (Rumanians are compulsive huggers and kissers), they became cautiously friendly.
The atmosphere changed when a Fat-Cat entered, expensively dressed and already, at noon, smelling strongly of Scotch – a luxury not available to honest Rumanians. His smooth round face didn’t seem to match thin lips and narrow, fast-blinking eyes. Curtly he demanded to see the ledger – whereupon Ion slammed it shut, thrust it beneath the counter and shouted ‘Ceausescu is dead!’
The young men cheered and clapped and laughed derisively; when Elena joined them so did I. In response to a quick signal from one youth she produced a grimy, tattered ‘Ceausescu flag’ with its Communist emblem intact – which the youth used to wipe Fat-Cat’s supple Italian boots. Then all the young men ritualistically used it on their own (mostly disintegrating) shoes, before passing it to me. Exhilarated by this symbolism, I vigorously rubbed my muddy boots, deliberately meeting Fat-Cat’s eye. I won’t soon forget his expression of baffled hatred as he left the shop.
Moments later – there was no time for collusion – two female Fat-Cats entered, heavily made-up and wearing nylon ‘fur’ coats. Again the atmosphere changed dramatically. Now a hush fell: plainly everyone was scared. One woman opened a file of documents and spread them on the counter while the other challenged Ion about something. The instant these two appeared Elena moved away from me, back to her position behind the counter, and thereafter she refused to catch my eye. Abruptly one woman turned to me, asked quite civilly to see my passport – and at once pronounced my visa invalid. It should, she asserted, have been issued for only fifteen days, not thirty, and I should have paid £20 (the fee pre-revolution) not the £8.50 requested by the Rumanian embassy in London. How had she come to know so much about visa charges? Who was this termagant? Could she be bribe-hunting? Given courage by the previous incident, I emerged from under the shadow of deportation and boldy followed Ion’s example. ‘Ceausescu is dead!’ I declaimed, stretching a hand towards my passport. The visa expert stared at me with such venom that for a moment I regretted my daring. Then I chose the most appropriate weapon and steadily held her gaze. Seconds later she swung away, threw my passport on the counter and resumed her harassment of poor Ion.
I left immediately, feeling bad about not saying goodbye to Elena; but plainly she wished to avoid giving any impression of having ‘cultivated’ me. And it would have been imprudent to linger within reach of those mysteriously potent females. Afterwards, I realised the value of that encounter; having survived it, I no longer felt afraid of Rumanian officialdom.
The sky was cloudless and the sun almost warm as I followed the valley of the Mures – ‘between the woods and the water’. I hoped Patrick Leigh Fermor would never be rash enough to revisit this area. Trekking in June 1934, he described ‘the trees of the foothills … with sprays of wild lilac scattered among the branches … The women in the fields wore kerchiefs on their heads under hats of soft plaited straw as wide as cart-wheels … Pale cattle with wide straight horns grazed by the score … Wherever horses and mares with their foals moved loose about the grass, a few ragged tents were sure to be pitched. Everything in those reedy windings was inert and hushed under a sleepy spell of growth and untroubled plenty’.
My memories are of fast, tormenting trucks trailing eye-stinging fumes. On this main but narrow highway I was repeatedly forced to take refuge in the ditch. Few of the trucks were Rumanian; they came from all over Europe – there was even one from Albania – and included a convoy of six snow-white gigantic refrigerated Red Cross vehicles from Luxembourg. The occasional local motor-car, old and overcrowded, was only recently back on the road after years of severe petrol rationing and proudly flew that strangely poignant post-revolutionary flag with its holed centre.
During a seven-mile walk I saw only one vestige of the Starkie/Leigh Fermor era. A shepherd in an ankle-long fleece cloak, wearing a high black conical hat, leant on his crook as he stood with his back to the rapid raucous traffic, contemplating his flock. They were nibbling between tree stumps on eroded forestry wasteland and, though fleeces are deceptive, one could detect their emaciation. Where would that shepherd’s grandfather have been grazing his sheep in 1929 or 1934? Not, assuredly, on wasteland.
Another sort of gloom assailed me when indigo clouds swarmed suddenly and spat coldly. This was crunch-point. I couldn’t afford to get wet, having nothing to change into and no possibility of drying sodden garments. But, sans waterproofs, I couldn’t avoid getting wet … As the cold spits became sleet a tractor drawing a load of firewood overtook me and stopped to offer a lift. It was awesomely ancient – in Ireland people pay good money to witness such machines in action – and already had two passengers in the cab, one of whom sat on the other to make room for me. Jolting towards Birzava, I decided a tip would not come amiss; as a newcomer, I still had much to learn. When I offered 100 lei – more than a day’s pay for a state farm tractor driver – my rescuer flushed with insulted embarrassment. In rural Rumania, humans helping humans is not yet a commercial enterprise.
The big village of Birzava was half-hidden by soft, slowly swirling snow. Having forgiven my attempt to pay for an act of kindness, the driver indicated a café where I might – he didn’t sound optimistic – find sustenance. The street door led directly into a small low-ceilinged room where an elderly widow, dressed all in black and wearing too-loose wellingtons, peered doubtfully at me through the early twilight. She had nothing to offer, not even herbal tea or acorn coffee, and seemed slightly scornful of my naive hopes. Suddenly I felt the effects of having walked so far after a sleepless night. Collapsing into a wobbly easy-chair, I took out my last mini-cigar – provoking a yelp of horror. The widow indicated a ‘No Smoking’ notice, referred agitatedly to the police, beckoned me to the door and pointed out a nearby restaurant.
My arrival caused a frisson of alarm among the thirty or so men hunched over stained tables fiddling with empty coffee glasses. (The supply of ground acorns had just run out.) Everyone stared silently at me – except two army officers, sitting by the long street window where there was still enough light to play backgammon, with the collars of their greatcoats pulled up and the ear-flaps of their fur hats pulled down. Choosing an empty corner, opposite the door, I wondered if the Boss had a room with bedding to let. By now I had identified my sleeping-bag as my single greatest loss, on the practical level. With it, I could survive a night in a barn, a stable, an outhouse; without it, I might not survive a midwinter night in this unheated restaurant. But of the Boss there was as yet no sign.
Then a dark-skinned young man stood up, unsteadily, and lurched towards me, drawing a bottle of home-distilled tuica from his pocket and pulling off his scarf. ‘Frig!’ (cold) he mumbled, thrusting the bottle into my hands and draping the scarf around my neck. When someone behind him sniggered he quickly turned, his face transformed to a snarl – and fell heavily as he moved to attack the sniggerer. Simultaneously the Boss appeared, a handsome, well-built, neatly-dressed man in his thirties. He kicked my prone would-be benefactor – hard, on the buttocks – and shouted something that made all the men laugh. Appalled, I laid a restraining hand on his arm. As he impatiently shook it off the street door opened and three Gypsy women entered, their long swirling brilliant skirts seeming to light up that dismal cavern. The Boss looked from them to me to the groaning drunk. ‘Tigani!’ he explained, loading the word with the accumulated contempt of centuries. In 1950 I would have tongue-lashed him in a white-hot rage, regardless of the fact that he couldn’t understand me. In 1990 I merely turned away and took a swig of whiskey, cannily keeping the bottle concealed in its plastic bag. Meanwhile the Gypsy trio – hefty women, though low of stature – had got their man to his feet and were half-carrying him to the door, ignoring everyone.
The Boss sat opposite me, apologising for the lack of coffee and alcohol and offering his cigarette packet. Plainly he felt no embarrassment and had we met in normal circumstances I would have thought him an affable fellow, as no doubt he usually was. He had no room to let but looked genuinely concerned about my accommodation problem and at once sent his wife out into the snow to look for suitable lodgings.
During the next half-hour, as though the Boss’s talking to me had lifted some embargo, the village men crowded around, asking to see my passport, leafing through my notebooks and poring over my road-map of Rumania – a fascinating novelty – their horny unwashed forefingers jumping excitedly from one familiar place name to another. Several of them were animated by more than curiosity; evidently not only Gypsies carry tuica in their jacket pockets.
Wife returned from her quest accompanied by Livia, the cafe widow, who now greeted me like an old friend, and an extravagantly obese woman with fair hair pulled tightly back from a round weather-beaten face dominated by a hooked nose. Anna’s close-set hazel eyes were tired and sad; soon I learned that her husband, a chemical factory worker, was dying of cancer in an Arad hospital. For some time a leggy fourteen-year-old remained invisible behind Mamma’s vast bulk. Anna was eager to entertain me but Livia, claiming prior knowledge, insisted that she should enjoy that privilege. A cynic might have thought them greedy for dollars; in fact they were greedy for a foreign presence. When the Boss adjudicated in Anna’s favour it was agreed that Livia should join us later.
We hurried up the main street through a swaying curtain of light snow. Anna’s flat was on the ground floor of one of several oblong four-storey mini-blocs that fifteen years ago had replaced rows of village houses. The unlit alleyway approach to the rear flats – between two blocs – was so narrow that my hostess had to compress herself before squeezing through. Then we stumbled over rough slushy ground in total darkness, Anna leading me by the hand, and climbed six concrete steps – two perilously unstable – to a warped door leading into a minute hallway. There eighteen-year-old Bogdan, lanky and spotty and grinning from ear to ear, pumped my hand wordlessly while drawing me into an overheated bed-sitter; two divan double beds took up most of the floor space.
Uncle had followed us in – he lived next door – bearing a bottle of his own excellent wine, full-bodied and warming. As he opened it, Anna fetched an earthenware platter on which were artistically arranged discs of salami, chunks of beef sausage, thin slices of slanina (smoked raw bacon fat) and cubes of a fetta-like cheese. Ada followed, carrying bowls of pickled mushrooms and cucumber and a plate piled with bread. Everything was home-made and delicious, except the sour sticky grey-brown bread; it’s anybody’s guess what substance was then being used to adulterate Rumanian flour. One didn’t expect such a spread in ‘starving Rumania’, yet its instant appearance proved that villagers, even then, had their resources: though almost certainly this was not the family’s daily fare. Unluckily, I was just then beginning to feel the drastic purgative effects of the Aperitif and my lack of appetite caused general disappointment and concern.
A wide, six-foot tiled stove – creamy porcelain – occupied one corner and was too regularly fed with logs from a neat pile. In another corner a walnut china cabinet contained orange glass fishes standing on their tails, green glass sitting ducks, pink glass begging poodles and red glass running rabbits. (Uncle worked in a glass factory.) Behind this menagerie could be glimpsed some attractive Czech cut glass and my admiring it caused Anna’s eyes to fill with tears; it had been a wedding present, twenty years ago. A large solid wireless stood beneath an outsize television set – identical to all other Rumanian television sets and not expensive, that medium having been Ceausescu’s favourite propaganda tool. Above the beds hung shiny tapestries, some four feet by two, depicting the Last Supper (which it would be blasphemous to describe accurately) and a romantic mountain scene – brick-red deer drinking from an electric-blue lake surrounded by lime-green trees under a salmon-pink dawn (or sunset?) sky. The adjacent room was much bigger and also overheated, for my benefit. Near the stove stood a double bed; eight simple, monastic-looking chairs circled a fine oak dining-table; the handsome matching sideboard held a long row of empty Scotch whisky, English gin and French brandy bottles.
Only the cramped bathroom fitted one’s image of ‘Ceausescu’s Rumania’. Green-black mould grew on the naked breeze-block walls; all the paint had long since peeled off a small rusty bath full of dirty garments; the stained loo had never worked; the washbasin taps were immovable; the iron stove’s cracked chimney pipe had blackened the ceiling. Bogdan – whose self-taught English was impressive – explained that for fifteen years the residents of these blocs had been awaiting running water, while continuing to fetch their daily requirements from the nearest well.
A snow-loaded Livia arrived in time to watch Mr Iliescu talking persuasively on The Box. Everyone stared worshipfully and applauded at the end. He was, they assured me, a good man who had delivered the nation from the Ceausescus, provided normal heating and lighting, unbanned foreign television and raised the wages of many workers – including Bogdan.
By then Dorana had also joined us: a trim, vivacious neighbour with brassy dyed hair. She set about solving the mystery that had been bothering my new friends all evening – why did I have no baggage? And no headgear, gloves, scarf, warm socks, waterproofs, nightwear? Had nobody told me about Transylvania’s winter climate? Was Ireland always warm? My sad story provoked shame and sympathy but little surprise. Everyone nodded sombrely, agreeing that police and customs officers are very bad men – which sweeping statement I did not feel moved to contradict.
Ada got out her homework as Uncle and Bogdan settled down to watch a Western. Already I was almost asleep but Dorana insisted that we womenfolk move to her flat to sample something special: double-distilled apricot tuica. In design this flat was identical to Anna’s but seemed more spacious because Dorana lived alone. Her two sons worked in an Oradea factory; her husband had recently run off with a glamorous young woman from Bucharest who had been compelled to teach in Lipova. Husband’s photograph still adorned the TV: he had a treble chin, a down-turned mouth and a crew-cut. The glamorous young woman must have been desperate. But possibly an accommodation problem, rather than other needs, had fuelled this romance. As an engineer working in Lipova, husband was entitled to a flat there – a better flat than any fledgling teacher could ever hope to get.
That tuica was indeed something special; I have rarely tasted its equal. As it flowed, I found it increasingly difficult to keep awake – especially as Dorana, obsessed by my inadequate clothing, had ordered me to recline on the bed, against a pile of vividly embroidered cushions, wrapped in a soft homespun blanket. Yet it was my duty to remain alert, striving with dictionary aid and sign language to understand and answer countless questions about the trivia of daily life in the Occident.
At last Anna suggested that it might be my bedtime. Dorana then insisted on presenting me with new socks and a pair of slacks that, though well-worn, were soon to prove invaluable. This was a hard-to-take irony, my having crossed the border laden with thermal socks for the deprived natives. But being so dependent is a good lesson in humility. And, at least among the Rumanians, it quickly shows you the best side of the national character.
My walking-therapy worked well. That night I slept for ten hours: a deep sleep, not rucksack-haunted.