Trouble in Transylvania

by Barbara Wilson

  The brochures were printed on thin paper in colors that managed to be lurid and faded at the same time. They showed happy spa-goers in bellbottoms and sideburns strolling in front of large hotels, and women in bathing suits and shower caps receiving various forms of treatment, including “galvanic baths,” “mud wrappings” and “medical gymnastics.”

  I read aloud:

  On the shores of these famous heliothermal lakes rises a complexity of hotels and spa which is one of the very most popular in all Europe. Well-situated on a salt massif, Arcata is known since antiquity times for many healing possibilities in its mineral-rich waters and fresh, healthful air. Under the directorship of Dr. Ion Pustulescu, Discoverer of Ionvital, a drug known widely to slow or even stop the aging process, Arcata has become the premiere destination for people everywhere suffering from rheumatological, gynecological and geriatric complaints.

  Archie was looking over my shoulder. “Those galvanic baths look like they can give you quite the kick!” His laugh boomed and I saw Cathy wince.

  “What are you going to do there?” I asked Bree. She was really very pretty, in a pale, postmodern kind of way, and self-possessed in a way I could never have managed at her age.

  “Keep my eye on Gram,” she smiled. “Make sure the vampires don’t bite her.”

  “My daughter pays good money for Bree to take classes on horror movies, can you beat that?” said Gladys.

  “Nosferatu’s a classic, Gram.” She glanced sideways at me. “So’s The Hunger.”

  Gladys said, “I always liked the one with Bela Lugosi best.”

  I looked at the small map that showed the location of the spa. “Then you’re in luck. Arcata is very near some of the real Dracula’s special places in Transylvania. He was born in Sighişoara.”

  “Sighişoara!” said Archie. “Oh, that sounds like a fun place to visit, doesn’t it, Kit-Kat?”

  Cathy put her book down and stood up, taking Emma by the hand. “Come on, Emma, let’s go for a walk.”

  Still silent, Emma got up and followed Cathy out into the corridor. She took her violin case with her.

  “Isn’t Emma a doll?” Archie asked us after they’d left. “My wife and I adopted her almost three years ago from Romania.” He snapped open his leather briefcase and pulled out a folder of xeroxed newspaper clippings.

  “These are the columns I wrote about going there and adopting Emma,” he said, passing them around.

  The first one read:

  OPENING OUR HEARTS

  by Archie Snapp

  Readers of this column know that the Snapps are not the average family in every way. How could we be when Dr. Lynn is a world-renowned scientist and your editor has taken responsibility for raising the kids and doing the housework? But in some ways we are the typical nuclear family. We have two kids, a boy and a girl, a dog and a “fixer-upper” farmhouse.

  Our life seemed set in an unchanging routine. We might get another dog, or maybe some chickens (daughter Cathy wanted a boa constrictor), but we certainly didn’t plan to have any more kids. Until the first news of the thousands of abandoned babies in Romanian orphanages began to seep out.

  We couldn’t stand by at the thought of those friendless, scared, lonely little children, hidden away in dark, cold institutions all over the country. Not while we had the resources to help. While Dr. Lynn arranged time off from the university and scouted the stores for baby clothes and supplies to take with us, I did my research.

  After Romania’s dictator Nicolae Ceauşescu (pronounced Chow-chess-cu) was deposed and killed in December 1989, the world’s eyes turned to scenes of unparalleled child neglect. Ceauşescu had banned abortion and birth control since the mid-sixties, causing the birthrate to skyrocket. The mandatory number of children was four, then five. Families, already reeling from the dictator’s decision to export nearly all the country’s food, were forced to put their children into orphanages.

  Even worse, due to a contaminated blood supply and unsterilized needles, combined with the Romanian “health” notion of injecting newborns with blood, many of these orphans had tested positive for AIDS.

  It sounded like a nightmare situation. Still, our minister and friends urged us to go ahead with our plan. We received papers from the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service that would enable any child we adopted to enter the U.S. Someone gave us the name of a Romanian lawyer in Bucharest.

  Somehow, in all this whirlwind of activity, we never lost sight of the fact that somewhere, in Romania, there was a little baby waiting for us.

  Other headlines told the rest of the story: ORPHANS OF CHANCE; LOVE TO THE RESCUE; WAITING FOR A MIRACLE; EMMA COMES HOME.

  We were still reading the clippings and I had gotten to: “Well, it took a little longer than we thought—two months longer in fact—but here we are back home, safe and sound, the proud parents of little Emma …” when the door slid open and Cathy and little Emma came back in.

  “Dad, do you really have to show those to everybody?”

  “Oh, Kit-Kat, relax. People are interested.”

  “I hate Romania,” Cathy announced, slamming into her seat and taking up Thomas Mann again. “I don’t know why we have to go there.”

  “You shouldn’t say that, if Emma’s Romanian,” Bree admonished her.

  “She’s not Romanian, she’s American,” said Cathy.

  “Gladys, I was wondering if you’d have time for an interview?” Archie tried to change the subject. “In fact, I’d like to interview all of you. You all seem so interesting. Pets, film, an Irish translator. That’s what I love about trains, you meet all kinds of fascinating folks.”

  “I’m flattered,” Gladys said. “I’ve never been interviewed before. Well, there was that little piece about me in the paper when I pulled the pitbull off Eddie Lamb, but that was only two paragraphs.”

  “So why are you going back to Romania if it’s so awful?” persisted Bree. “Are you looking for more kids?”

  Cathy groaned, but Archie laughed, “If I could, I’d adopt a dozen. But you can’t anymore. It wasn’t easy then and now it’s impossible. No, we’re happy, we’ve got our Emma. That’s enough.”

  “Well, compared to my kids when they were young, Emma is sure a quiet one,” remarked Gladys. “I remember Teresa—that’s Bree’s mother—never shut up. And Bree was just the same. Jabber, jabber, jabber.”

  “Gram, that’s not true!”

  “Emma doesn’t speak at all,” said Archie. “Not yet, anyway. Now, tell me all about your grooming salon, Gladys.” He took out a pad of paper. “You say it’s called Coyote’s Pet and Wash?”

  “That’s Pet-n-Wash,” Gladys corrected him and spelled it. “I named it after Coyote because according to the Southwest Indians, Coyote is a trickster and a clown. He loves to get into things and he loves a good joke, and so do I.”

  “But doesn’t Coyote also bring evil into the world?” I asked. “He’s a glutton, a lecher, a thief. That’s what I remember about the Coyote stories.”

  “Oh, he’s trouble all right. When he gets a mind to, he stirs up all kinds of trouble.” Gladys took off her glasses and gave me a wink. “But to my mind, trouble is more interesting than lying around waiting to die, any day of the week. And you can quote me on that, Mr. Snapp.”

  Chapter Two

  I HAD CALLED AHEAD and Jack was waiting for me at the train station in Budapest. She and I had met in Colombia some twenty years before and had taken to each other immediately. She’d been traveling alone then, armed with a blazingly white smile and a good strong bowie knife. In fact, she’d gotten me out of a tough situation in an alley behind the seedy hotel where we were lodging. Tough situations seemed to be Jack’s line; when she was in London she always seemed rather wan and forlorn. She drank a bit too much and lived in an impossibly chaotic flat with three other Australians in Stoke Newington.

  Lately she had turned, somewhat dramatically, to women’s spirituality. The last time I’d run into her, at Ca
mden Locks on a Saturday, had been just after the winter solstice, when she was returning from a tour of sacred stones of the British Isles. Jack had been wearing a layering of ethnic and athletic clothes, reminiscent of certain tribeswomen in a transitional state of civilization. She talked quite a lot about passage graves and stone circles and, most suspiciously, about the tour leader, an American called Charis Freespirit.

  Obviously things with Charis hadn’t worked out spectacularly well, for here was Jack in Budapest, in a cotton dress from the forties and a short, boxy sweater. Her curly brown hair was carefully cut, and she was even wearing a bit of eye makeup and lipstick. Could the woman next to her have anything to do with this new fashion development?

  “This is Eva Kálvin,” Jack flashed her white smile. “My new business partner.”

  Barely five feet tall, Eva had a heart-shaped face with thickly-lashed brown eyes and heavy blond eyebrows. Her light hair was tucked under a hat and she wore a sharp red suit and high heels that contrasted with a physical impression of coiled muscularity.

  “Cassandra, welcome to Budapest,” she said in beautiful, charmingly accented English.

  From the corner of my eye I could see Gladys, Bree and the Snapps searching around for me on the platform. I’d purposefully said my good-byes in the compartment and had been one of the first off the train precisely in order to avoid the confused, beseeching looks that arrivals in foreign cities inevitably provoke. Although I was sure that the Snapps, at least, had hotel reservations, I also knew that even experienced travelers can undergo utter disorientation in a strange train station at night.

  “Are those people waving at you?” Jack asked. “Do you want to say good-bye?”

  “I’ve already put them out of my mind,” I said firmly. “I don’t expect to see any of them ever again.”

  Eva had a car, a tiny Polski Fiat shaped like a snub-nosed revolver. As we walked toward it I asked Jack, “Any problem booking me into that little place in the Buda Hills?”

  Although it was my idea to come to Budapest, Jack had said on the phone that she would make all the arrangements, and not to worry; she was dying to see me, and if I wanted to I could bring her a bottle of Glenlivet. That had been two weeks ago; I’d remembered the Glenlivet but had somehow forgotten that Jack had trouble with follow-through.

  “It’s shocking,” Jack said impatiently, looking at the queue for taxis in front of the station. “You can’t get a taxi, you can’t get a meal, you can’t get a room. There are tourists everywhere, even now at the end of April. It’s really terrible. You know how I love Germans—one of my best friends is Edith, you know that I’d do anything for her since that time in Tierra del Fuego; she was so incredibly resourceful with that sheepskin—but I have to tell you, Cassandra, the Germans have discovered Budapest. They come here with their Deutschmarks, which are just like gold really, and they can buy anything, do anything. The cafés are full of Germans, the concerts are full of Germans, the streets are packed with them—Cassandra, the Germans have moved into Budapest. Real estate, industrial investment, shopping complexes, this country is going to be completely transformed within a few years and it will all be because of the Deutschmark…”

  “Jack,” I interrupted. “Can we back up a moment? To the innocent phrase ‘you can’t get a room?’ Does that mean what I think it means?” I said, my voice rising. “Does that mean you only remembered that I was coming about an hour ago and you called around and it’s Friday night and all the rooms are booked?”

  Jack squeezed my arm sympathetically. “Well, I don’t even have a place to stay,” she said. “I’m sleeping on a futon in our office. The first futon in Hungary, I think.”

  “I’m not sleeping in your office,” I said.

  “Of course not,” Eva said calmly. “You’ll be staying with me.”

  “Oh. Well. That’s all right then.” I was mollified.

  “Cassandra, would I ever let you down?” Jack said plaintively. “Okay, don’t answer that, I know you’re thinking of that time when I let the boat sail without you to the Galápagos. But believe me, now that you’re in Budapest Eva and I will show you a wonderful time.”

  At first I believed the wonderful time might start that night. I had plenty of energy and was ready to hit the new nightlife of the city. But Jack said she was exhausted and didn’t think she was up for much. Could we drop her at the office? We’d all meet tomorrow. She whispered in my ear as I got out of the back seat to get into the front, “We only have a business relationship.”

  “Meaning?”

  “Good luck!”

  I got back in the car, scrunching my long legs up to my chest, and we drove off into the József District. Eva said her flat wasn’t far; it was just off Baross Street. Did I know Budapest well?

  I told her I’d been here several times, but not recently, and never for long. But even as we chatted about how rapidly Hungary was changing under capitalism, I was imagining Eva’s threadbare old flat on the fifth floor, full of antiques her family had saved from before the war, a flat smelling pungently of paprika and apples and chocolate. Flowering begonias on the windowsill and complete editions of nineteenth-century Hungarian poets in leather bindings, along with old green Penguin editions of Chandler and Hammett. Perhaps a claw-footed piano draped in embroidery and lace, with framed sepia photographs of stout Hungarian generals and little children with enormous bows in their hair. But I was confusing Eva with someone else, Elias Canetti’s mother perhaps, for although the Polski Fiat carried us into the right sort of neighborhood, badly lit, shabby but suggesting better days, its driver stopped in front of a complex of apartment towers, six of them, twelve stories high, that could have come straight from the Bronx, though there was less graffiti.

  Still, not everyone could live in the past, there wasn’t enough of it left. Anyway, at my age what did I want with romance, if it meant having to walk up five flights of stairs and wash in a sink with cold water? Elevators and showers were much better, I reminded myself, and Eva would give me tea and we’d have a good conversation about Eastern Europe’s transition to a market economy.

  “This is my home. Welcome!” said Eva in front of a door on the fourth floor that looked like all the other doors.

  I wondered why she didn’t put the key in. Oh dear, I suddenly thought, is there a Mr. Kálvin inside? Eva as a married woman didn’t seem quite as attractive somehow.

  She pressed the buzzer and the door opened immediately, as if whoever was on the other side had been watching us through the peephole. An elderly woman with an expression of worry etched into her forehead stood there smoothing her apron and staring at me with great disapproval.

  “Cassandra, my aunt, Mrs. Nagy,” Eva murmured.

  “Enchanted,” I said, inwardly cursing Jack. “So kind of you to let me stay, probably only a night or two, other accommodations fell through, but I’ll find something else, don’t worry about a thing.”

  “Cassandra,” said Eva. “She doesn’t speak English. But it’s late, come in. I’ve put you in my bedroom.”

  The flat was tiny, consisting of a kitchen, a bath, and two other rooms, one of which was Eva’s. There was also a winter garden, a glass-enclosed balcony, full of potted plants and boxes of potatoes and cabbage.

  Mrs. Nagy was like one of those fascinating flip books where you can put together different heads with different torsos and legs. Her lower half did not correspond with her upper; looking only at her feet, for instance, in their little-girl white ankle socks and single-strap shoes, you would not deduce a face with the consistency of moldy Spam. Like Eva, Mrs. Nagy was very short, but her figure went straight from the shoulder of her tightly buttoned cardigan to the hem of her wool skirt. She held her arms stiffly by her sides, as if afraid to touch anything in her own flat. Yet her eyes were as inquisitive as a ferret’s. Her white hair was bundled on her head in a way that suggested she was just about to take it out with the garbage.

  Mrs. Nagy may not have spoken English, but sh
e knew how to get her point across. Eva might have foreign women friends, but her aunt didn’t have to like them. Mrs. Nagy gave me a push on the shoulder and pointed in a threatening manner in the direction of the bathroom. It appeared she was telling me not to use the shower. Eva said brightly, “She says, Our home is your home.”

  Mrs. Nagy frowned and waved at the kitchen door; she snapped her fingers and said, “Papf, papf.” I thought she might be warning me not to use a gas stove that might blow up. Eva smiled. “She says, Help yourself to anything you want to eat.”

  Mrs. Nagy pantomimed either a flood or a vast conflagration.

  “My aunt wishes you a good sleep.”

  “Tell her not to worry. I won’t destroy anything. Once my head hits the pillow I’ll be out like a light. I won’t be any trouble at all.”

  I thanked both of them for their kindness in putting me up and went into Eva’s bedroom and closed the door. It was a long narrow room, with a single hard bed covered in cushions, a small desk and bookshelves that held economics textbooks in English and German. Over the desk there was a cork bulletin board, fluttering with notes, cartoons and postcards from countries around the world. There were some framed color photographs of a little gymnast doing handsprings and bar work with the Olympic logo in the background, but as I moved closer to study them, there came a harsh tapping on glass, and I looked up to see that the window at one end of Eva’s room faced the winter garden. Mrs. Nagy was standing there, with her solid body and deranged hair, watching me suspiciously.

  I waved in a friendly manner as I stepped away from the photographs; then I sat down on the edge of the bed and mimed yawning and closing my eyes. When I looked back up she was gone.

  It wasn’t what you would call private accommodation.

  I got into my nightshirt and went out to the bathroom to brush my teeth and wash my face. When I came back to Eva’s room the light was off. I turned it back on, all 30 watts, and got into bed to read Elias Canetti. Without a knock the door opened. Mrs. Nagy was standing there with a pained expression on her face. I couldn’t have left a mess in the bathroom, could I? She pointed to the weak bulb in the lamp overhead and slapped her palm a few times with the fingers of her other hand. Eva appeared behind her, wearing a thin red slip that came straight out of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. She said, apologetically, “My aunt wants to tell you that she is a widow.”