by Tom Fort
‘Je crois qu’il est ivre,’ István whispered. He mimed swigging from a bottle. I nodded. ‘Mais nous avons de la chance de trouver une chambre.’ ‘Absolument,’ I agreed.
Conditions in the bathroom upstairs were basic verging on squalid. The lavatory was surrounded by a pool of liquid. Someone had disconnected the down pipe from the basin. The walls were mouldy and the bath itself, standing on a black, dank floor, was horrible.
We were shown into the bedroom next door, which was an improvement. It contained a large antique wardrobe, colourfully decorated with floral motifs, a table, and two beds set a yard apart. István indicated that the Horváth family would occupy one. The other was for me. I looked forward to the night with foreboding.
While Mrs Horváth made ready to prepare the evening meal, István and I descended the precipitous road to the lake. It was a depressing sheet of water, trapped between steep walls of loose rock. Lorries roared in all directions, gears grinding, throwing up long plumes of dust. There were two or three anglers casting spinners into the water. István, who was a fisherman in a minor way, joined them. I made a few desultory casts where the river flowed into the lake. There was no sign of fish life.
Back at the hostel, I immediately regretted having accepted István’s offer to provide the food. Laid out on the table were a loaf of stale bread, a slab of greasy processed cheese in a cellophane pack with the words ‘Denmark – Food Aid’ stamped on it, a pot containing a slimy brown substance said to be pâté, and a tin of pork luncheon meat from Finland, also stamped ‘Food Aid’. I ate what I could, which wasn’t much, and surreptitiously swallowed a sleeping pill along with a couple of slugs from a bottle of malt whisky that I had concealed from István. Rather to my surprise I slept peacefully, with the three Horváths an arm’s length away.
Breakfast was the same in its essentials as supper. István collected the leftovers and packed them away to serve for our lunch in the mountains. I suggested taking one of three bottles of beer that I had been given by Dana. ‘L’alcool est mauvais dans les montagnes,’ István said sternly. ‘Nous buvons de l’eau de la rivière.’ I slipped the bottle into my fishing bag.
Leaving Mrs Horváth and daughter to amuse themselves as they might, we set off in the car. My spirits began to revive as the dam and the lake disappeared from sight behind us. It was a dewy, refulgent morning, the sunlight flooding across a brilliant sky, although trails of cloud were curled around the highest ridges ahead. For a few miles the unmade road was open and easy. We passed another hostel, markedly better appointed than ours; reserved, István said resentfully, for Romanians with connections.
Further on, the road became alarming. Squeezed between a soaring wall of rock on one side and a plunging gorge on the other, it was no more than a foot or two wider than my car. I began to sweat with the strain of trying to keep the wheels out of the worst of the ruts. Every so often the undercarriage thudded horribly against the ridge of compacted mud and rock down the middle. István sat at my side issuing a stream of advice and encouragement, puffing at his cigarette, tugging at his moustache and occasionally leaning out of the window to adjust the wing mirror to improve his view of our rear end. Twice I stopped, confronted by seemingly impossible stretches of bare, jagged rock. István urged me on, until I ordered him out of the car. I inched forward, dimly aware of the crashing of the water below, acutely conscious of my pounding heart and the mist creeping across my spectacles.
After what seemed like hours, the road came to an end in a clearing in the trees at a height of more than 5,500 feet. Three hardy individuals watched us as we got out. They wore thick woollen cardigans, rough grey trousers, and boots. One had on a beret, the other two wore shapeless brown felt hats. Their horses stood behind them, packsaddles bulging. They told István cheerfully that they were off to the pastures to tend their sheep for the summer. He asked them how they liked the life. They laughed, shrugged their shoulders, looked at each other. What other life was there?
‘These are good people,’ István said as they bade us farewell. ‘It is a hard life but good for them.’
He lifted his rucksack on to his shoulders, exhaling sharply. I asked him what was in it, apart from lunch. He explained that one must not take the mountains lightly. A sudden storm, a fall – one must be ready for an emergency. It was therefore necessary to have a tent, spare clothes, medical supplies, cooking utensils, blankets and so on. What about maps? I asked. He looked at me scornfully and tapped his head. The map was here. He knew these paths as well as the streets of Târgu Mureş. He held out his hands towards the bare ridges above the trees like a priest officiating at communion, inhaled deeply, then strode forward. I followed with my fishing bag over my shoulder, my bottle of beer within, and my rod in one hand.
Mountain men
The path led down into a gulch, over a small stream, then up a steep slope in a series of zigzags. To our left a much bigger stream descended in haste from the distant lakes. The path, marked by blobs of yellow paint, continued to ascend. The trees thinned and became progressively smaller. To begin with I had some difficulty in keeping up with István. But halfway up the first slope he slowed drastically. I noticed that he was stealing frequent rests, leaning for a moment on his thighs, head down. When we reached the top of the first ridge he pulled off the rucksack and crumpled to the ground, drawing quick shallow breaths. His face was grey and shiny with sweat.
‘We are going too fast,’ he said accusingly. ‘It is foolish to hurry in the mountains.’ I offered to take the rucksack, but he dismissed the idea. ‘It would be too difficult for you. You are not accustomed to the mountains.’
Thereafter the way became easier. Tremendous views opened up in all directions. Across the gorge, screes of bone-white boulders had spilled down, broken by streaks of green grass and ferns and darker clumps of stunted rhododendrons and dwarf pines. Further on, naked ridges thrust serrated edges into a cottony mist. Our side of the valley was gentler, scattered with colonies of sturdy little trees and shrubs. Clusters of pale saxifrages and purple bell-flowers brightened the lees of the boulders. Bony, fawn-coloured cattle wandered through the grass, the bells at their necks clanging softly.
Mountain lake
We came to the first of the lakes, Lia. There were two or three tents at the far end, the flat ground between them and the water disfigured in the usual Romanian way by bottles, rusty cans and scorchmarks from campfires. I scrambled down to the shore and began to cast while István went off to chat to the campers. When he rejoined me he said: ‘I think we will not fish here.’ I said I thought it looked promising. ‘They say the dam workers were here yesterday. With nets. They took away enough trout to fill this. That is what Romanians do.’ He patted his rucksack. ‘We will go on.’
I again offered to take the rucksack, but István waved me away. ‘The mountain air is making me better. I should not smoke so much.’ He lit a cigarette. ‘Yes, fifty or sixty a day. It is too many.’
The next lake, Ana, was a place of fond memory for István. The previous year he had caught a trout of nearly two kilos here. He assured me that there were many more just as big. I wandered along the leeward shore, casting my flies towards the middle. The weather was showing the first signs of a change for the worse. Dark clouds were hurrying in from the west, turning the water from glacial blue to slate grey as they passed in front of the sun. Sharp gusts of wind wrinkled the glassy calm of the surface. I looked back and saw István winding in a well-conditioned trout of about eight ounces.
We ate a lunch whose austerity was only partially mitigated by my beer. As he munched his slice of stale, cheese-smeared bread, István reflected on the deteriorating state of the weather. He said it would not be safe to attempt the rest of the eight-hour round trip he had originally envisaged. I was rather relieved to hear it. I climbed up the hill behind us. From the top I looked down on to the largest of the Retezat lakes, Bucura. Beyond it towered the jagged heights of Peleaga, rising to nearly 8,000 feet. Stretched across the
distant skyline, like a sheet on a washing line, was the ridge known as the Bucura Saddle.
I lay on the soft grass, feeling the breeze against my cheek. It was cold enough for my breath to hang in the air momentarily. I dozed on a pillow of heather until an odd sound, a tinny, rhythmic tinkling, roused me. Using field glasses I searched the slopes for the source. A movement caught my eye. I made out a line of horses, with tiny figures astride them, in the middle of the Bucura Saddle. They must have been ten miles or more away, mountain people on their way to remoter pastures deep in the massif. I could not begrudge them their last link with the outside world, the music from their radio cheering them as they followed the path between the boulders.
István was already on the move as I came downhill. He gestured dramatically at the pass leading from Ana up to the next lake in the chain. A mist with a menacing, metallic texture was leaking through it and spreading over the neighbouring screes. István said something about hailstones the size of eggs, and hurried forward. We managed to keep in front of the mist, István almost trotting as the gravitational pull of the rucksack propelled him down the slope.
Near the car we overtook a party of three young men who had walked 30 miles or so from the Jiu valley in the east, skirting Peleaga and Lake Bucura before hitting the same path as us. They caught us up as we were getting into the car to begin the dreadful journey back to the dam, and begged us for a lift towards their destination for the night, a campsite near Sarmizegetusa. I asked István to tell them that the car was not up to carrying them and their gear, which he did with relish, brushing aside their appeals. He settled in his seat, twiddled his moustache, lit a cigarette and adjusted the wing mirror. We soon passed the three walkers plodding dispiritedly down the road.
‘Ce n’est pas une grande tragédie pour eux,’ Istvan said cheerfully. ‘Une distance de vingt kilomètres seulement.’ A few moments later the storm broke, blotting out the mountains and sheeting the slopes with rain.
In the evening I explored the Riul Mare above the dam and managed to catch a trout about three inches long. The fish István had caught earlier brightened our evening meal considerably. I had managed to commandeer a separate bedroom in the hostel and went to bed early. I was kept awake for some time by the drunken yells of the caretaker couple in the room below me and the periodic baying of the sheepdog tethered outside my window. When I did sleep, I was bitten extensively by bedbugs, and there was a further disturbance towards dawn when a car pulled up and a group of men began hammering at the door and shouting. Soon afterwards the cocks struck up a penetrating crowing, joined a little later by a horrible belching antiphony from the turkeys.
István’s provisions took their final bow at breakfast. I commented irritably on the various noises in the night. He said he had heard nothing. In the mountains, he said, he always slept well. We returned to the lake for a last fling before returning to Târgu Mureş. This time I followed a smaller stream that flowed in from the west. Ten minutes’ walk took me out of sight of István, the lake, and the dam into an enchanted valley. The crests of the enclosing hills were covered in spruce and pine. Below, sweeping down to the stream, were banks of grass spotted with grub-like sheep. To left and right rose escarpments, each bluer and less distinct as they stretched away into the distance. A mass of green blocked the farther end, its summit hidden in thin grey cloud. I swung my binoculars across it and saw a silver gleam, a cataract by which the stream issued from the mountain.
I came upon a clump of wild strawberries and half-filled my cap with them. I ate them beside the stream, watching a peregrine falcon circle above, so slowly as to seem to defy all laws of gravity and motion. After a time I felt strong enough to face István again.
The drive back was hot and tiresome. Near Haţeg we jumped a two-mile queue at a petrol station, as I was legally entitled to by virtue of having coupons bought with dollars. Two or three Romanian drivers protested furiously as I slid up to the pumps in front of them, which delighted István almost as much as it mortified me. In Sebeş we contrived to mislay the main road. I drove like a madman to make up for lost time, and was congratulating myself on the daring manner in which I had overtaken two huge trucks and a bus when the passenger in the car in front flagged me down. I stopped, assuming some emergency had arisen. The man sauntered over, smiled ingratiatingly, and asked if I wanted to change money. As I stared at him, the two trucks and the bus roared past.
Such behaviour, István observed, was typical of Romanians. Wearily, I admitted that I had never had such an experience in Hungary. He relapsed into silence, fingering his moustache. By then we had entirely run out of things to say to each other. What surprised me was his complete lack of curiosity about me and my life – or anyone else’s – in England. The only question I can remember him asking about Britain concerned the extent of the domestic airline network. Having put me right on the Transylvanian issue and introduced me to the wonder of the mountains, he had done all that could be expected of a good Magyar.
I asked after István when I came back to Târgu Mureş in 2008, even though I had no great desire to pick up where we had left off, or to reacquaint myself with the hangdog look, the moustache tweaking, the yellowed teeth and ashtray smell. Grigore did not even suggest a reunion. He said István was still living in the town, still smoking, now working for a Hungarian company – ‘she is happy about that’ – still bemoaning the unfairness of everything. He admitted his ulterior motive in landing István on me all those years before. ‘Was black propaganda,’ he said, laughing.
As for the ethnic divide, it was no longer the burning issue. The two communities remained separate and distinct. Hungarian schools, the Hungarian university, the Hungarian newspaper and club, all proclaimed the superiority of the Magyar way with every appearance of pride and conviction. But the people themselves had learned to rub along together in a way difficult to imagine two decades before. Mihály Spielman, the Hungarian director of the magnificent Teleki Library in Târgu Mureş, told me that the new generation had no interest in the old history, only in making money. ‘And not just money,’ he said, shaking his head. ‘It must be Euros, always Euros.’ The last two elections for mayor had been narrowly won by the Romanian candidate, and he said it was difficult to see how a Hungarian could win again.
The market forces had done much to erode ancient antagonisms. Significantly, an increasing number of Hungarian parents were choosing to send their children to Romanian schools at secondary level, in the knowledge that future jobs and prosperity would depend on a proper command of the language. Grigore told me he had recently interviewed a Hungarian woman for an engineering job: ‘He very nice, intelligent, good qualifications, but he not read Romanian. She. I said, please, I am wasting my time.’
The two governments now talk to each other with wary courtesy, keeping off the question of the rightful ownership of Transylvania. There are even moves afoot for Hungarian and Romanian academics to get together to look for common ground between two versions of history so far apart that an outsider is surprised to find they apply to the same place.
Even so, dealing with the other side is very different from respecting the other side, and it is difficult to imagine Hungarians ever being able or ready to consider Romanians as being on an equal footing with themselves. A visit to Debrecen, the Hungarian city closest to Transylvania, helps explain how vast and deep is the sense of Magyar superiority.
Debrecen could not be mistaken for a Romanian city. Its graceful, clean, orderly centre is gathered around the northern end of a wide boulevard that extends from the railway station in the south to the Great Church with its twin clocktowers and eight clock-faces. There is none of the atrocious traffic din and general grubby confusion that blights all Romanian conurbations. Instead, a splendidly smart little tram clatters up and down every few minutes, making buses and even taxis quite unnecessary. At dawn every morning the cleaners are trundling about in their machines, hoovering up the litter and washing the paving slabs so that they spark
le in the morning sun. The fine old houses to either side of the boulevard and around the square in front of the church – now mostly converted into shops, bars, restaurants and hotels – speak of a long history of prosperity and cultured living.
The Reformation in its Calvinist form took a firm grip on the hardy, hard-working people of Hungary’s Great Plain. Debrecen grew into a great centre of Protestant learning, heavily influenced by religious teaching from Switzerland, the Netherlands and England. The Reformed College, which stands a little way behind the Great Church, was founded in 1538 by high-minded pastors and teachers determined to build on the city’s reputation as ‘the Calvinist Rome’. Despite its remoteness and the notorious difficulty of getting to and from it, Debrecen stood squarely in the mainstream of the Protestant movement in Europe. The oak stairs leading up to the library and the oratory of the school have been worn into hollows by the feet of generations of scholars eager to grapple with the secrets and challenges of science, natural history, philology, philosophy, mathematics and – above all – religion. Biblical translations and commentaries flowed from the local printing presses. Debrecen and its school were to be counted with Geneva and Wittenberg as centres of educational excellence and doctrinal orthodoxy.
It was in the Great Church that Kossuth stood in 1848 to declare Hungary’s independence from Habsburg tyranny; and it was in the oratory of the Reformed School that the first and short-lived National Assembly gathered. And while Hungary was making a stand for liberty and enlightenment, and could count among its sons a host of intellectuals, poets and statesmen who commanded respect across Europe, what did Romania have to offer?
