Trouble in Transylvania (7 page)

Eva whispered, “Cassandra, don’t tease the poor man so much. He’s paying for our meal.”

“Cassandra, you
are
being just the slightest bit
rude,
dear.” Jack smiled wickedly. “See? There’s my mother speaking.”

I opened my mouth for another jibe, but put in a bite of duck in plum sauce instead. I’d just caught, from the corner of my eye, the entrance of the Snapp family into the restaurant. Cathy saw me first and waved, and then Archie dragged them all over to say hello. I wondered why Emma was staring so hard. But then I realized she wasn’t looking at me at all. Her attention was completely absorbed by the frenzied musician between me and Eva and, of course, by his violin.

“Don’t let us disturb you,” said Archie, as he crowded his children almost on top of us.

“Not at all, not at all, sit down here with us,” I said, with a heartiness that astounded Jack. “Let me introduce you all around. This is Eva Kálvin, and Jacqueline Opal, and I’m especially delighted for you to meet Señor Martínez from Spain. Señor Martínez is in the bathroom fixture business. I think he’d make a great interview for your newspaper. He grew up in the Franco period, so of course he sympathizes with the Hungarians getting their first taste of freedom, with all the excitement and pitfalls that go along with a market economy…”

“Just the kind of information I’ve been wanting to get,” said Archie happily.
“Cómo está usted,
Señor? I forgot to tell you in the train, Cassandra, that I speak a little Spanish myself.”

“All the better,” I said. “All the better.”

A
WEEK HAD PASSED
since my arrival in Budapest, and already I’d established my little routines, although they were not the routines I’d imagined for myself on the train from Vienna. No, I’d envisioned a leisurely spring experience in the heart of Central Europe: reading newspapers in cafés, strolling along the Corso above the Danube, queuing for tickets outside the Opera House. And if I’d also hoped for a wild, though brief, romance, who could blame me?

But instead, the days had slipped into a dispiriting sameness. Yes, I was awakened every morning with a kiss on the cheek and a cup of coffee from blond, red-suited Eva. But the sweet nothings she whispered to me were only invitations to join her in the office at nine o’clock sharp. And even if I’d had an inclination to lie in bed all morning, the sight of Mrs. Nagy, lurking in the winter garden with her crazed hair and tightly buttoned cardigan, was enough to get me on my feet.

Señor Martínez was still hanging around Budapest, attempting to sell his line of bathroom fixtures to hotels and office buildings. I accompanied him on several sales trips. He poured his heart out to me about Eva, and I told him that underneath her flirtatious exterior she was a hard-hearted businesswoman and a raging feminist, but this put him off somewhat less than I had hoped.

Of course, I could have moved out of Mrs. Nagy’s flat and found myself a nice room in a hotel and lived just the way I wanted while waiting for my ticket to China to be confirmed. Call it curiosity, call it infatuation… or call it a simple case of inflation. Prices had jumped since I’d last been to Hungary. In spite of my constant travels, which hint at trust funds or other fabulous resources, I live on a slim budget provided by my work as a translator. The money to travel to China had come mainly from six months in the SAB office. I hated to admit it, but the forints from O.K. Temporary Secretarial Services were coming in handy.

Still, I was restless, and when I got my train reservations and found out I couldn’t leave for another two weeks, I chafed. Jack was restless too. Every afternoon, if we could manage it, we met at four for tea and pastries somewhere, at either a small espresso bar near the
O.K.
office or at one of the deliciously expensive cafés, Ruszwurm’s on Castle Hill or Gerbeaud’s in Pest. There we’d briefly commiserate about our current, if temporary, fate as secretaries in Budapest, and then spend the rest of the time arguing about how serious Jack had really been about converting to Hinduism in Java, if it had really rained the entire month we were in Chile and whether I still owed Jack money for the train fare to Recife from São Paulo.

Late one afternoon, as we were on our second strudel at the espresso bar, the door opened and in came Eva, clutching her cellular phone in some agitation. Jack and I both started guiltily—such was the effect this hard-working Hungarian entrepreneur had on us. My first thought was that Señor Martínez had come to grief somewhere in Szeged, where he’d gone to introduce his fixtures and where I’d refused to accompany him. But that was incorrect.

“It’s a murder,” Eva said, pointing at the phone as if the terrible news were still flowing out of it.

It was some time before we could get all the details.

“But I don’t
know
how this Bree—is she a cheese?—has got my phone number,” repeated Eva irritably. “I only know I’m in a taxi after my meeting and the phone rings. It’s a girl asking for Cassandra. She says she’s calling from a place in Romania and something bad has happened to her grandmother. A murder.”

“But you’re sure she didn’t say that Gladys had been killed?”

“No, I told you! She said that her grandmother has
done
the murder. No, I mean, the police think she has done the murder, but of course she hasn’t.”

“Of course not,” I said warmly. It was completely impossible to imagine Gladys Bentwhistle with her raspberry dice bolo tie
killing
anyone, especially in Romania. “And
where
was she calling from, did you say?”

“The Arcata Spa Hotel, in the village of Arcata. It’s in Transylvania, in the Carpathian Mountains.”

“But how did she know how to reach me in Budapest?” I asked again.

“For the hundredth time, Cassandra,
I don’t know!
But I do know she wants you to go there because you speak Romanian. She was very upset.”

Jack had been eating our second strudels through most of this. Now she said calmly, “Well, of course you have to go, Cassandra. It’s your duty to help them. And I’ll have to go with you to make sure nothing happens to you, in case it’s a dangerous situation. And Eva will have to drive us there because she knows where the hell the Carpathians are and because she speaks Hungarian.”

Jack looked more lively than she had since I’d arrived.

“I’ve never been to Romania. I suppose we’ll have to take lots of supplies.”

Eva was staring at her. “But we can’t just drop the business, Jack. It’s not … professional.”

Jack glanced at her watch. “It’s only five o’clock. How long would it take to drive there?”

Eva shook her head. “I don’t know. Four or five hours to the border at Oradea and then perhaps another six, depending on the roads, to Arcata.”

“There you have it. It’s Friday night. Ten hours and we’re at the scene of the crime. You and Cassandra help sort this thing out and we’re in the car and headed back to Budapest. Maybe we’ll even have time for some sightseeing in Transylvania.”

I had been about to protest that I was on my way to China and didn’t need a side trip to Romania, whatever the reason, but Jack caught me up in her desire to be away and quickly. Eva had not seen this side of her partner yet, but I certainly had. Any sort of jaunt always brightened Jack’s face; she was pining away for a change of scene after two months in Budapest.

I had to admit too, I was curious—and worried—about Gladys. Romania wasn’t technically a police state anymore, but I wasn’t completely confident in their legal system. If Gladys was in any kind of trouble, she would definitely need help.

“But we have dinner arranged with Señor Martínez tonight!” said Eva.

That settled it.

Jack and I stood up at the same time. “If you’re not going with us, we’re renting a car and driving there ourselves,” Jack announced. “And who knows if we’ll ever come back?”

An hour later the three of us were stuffed into the Polski Fiat, me in the front with my legs jammed up to my chin and Jack in the back seat amidst a hastily purchased basketful of sausages, fruit, biscuits and wine.

Like most Hungarians Eva believed that Romania was the Devil’s own country, filled with backward, starving serfs, ruled by vicious, Magyar-bashing communists. She reminded me of the Hungarian proverb: “Outside of Hungary there is no life, and if there is life, it is not the same.”

“Of course, if we go to Transylvania, it is not like we are going to Romania,” she consoled herself, as we headed out of the city and found our way to the highway that would take us across the Hungarian plain to the border.

“How’s that again?” inquired Jack, trying to get settled so her elbow was not in my ear, nor her dress above her waist.

“Transylvania was part of Hungary for a thousand years,” Eva said. “And then, after the First World War—which Hungary was
forced
to join, because it had been
forced
to be part of the Habsburg Empire—we lost two-thirds of our land. Some went to Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia, but most of it went to Romania. Because the Romanians and the French,” Eva held up two crossed fingers, “they were like
this
.”

“The Treaty of Trianon,” I nodded. “It carved up the Austro-Hungarian Empire in a way that satisfied no one. But then, how could they satisfy everyone? In this part of Europe, political borders have never coincided with the ethnic boundaries.”

“But Cassandra, you must admit that there are two and a half million Hungarians trapped inside Romania, trapped for seventy years now.”

“Seventy years and they’re still arguing?” said Jack.

“How long have the Arabs and Jews been at it? What about the Hindus and Moslems, or the Catholics and Protestants in Ireland? I won’t even mention ex-Yugoslavia. In the Balkans, seventy years is
nothing
.” I said. “Part of the problem is that Transylvania doesn’t actually border the current state of Hungary anymore. It’s two hundred miles to the east. And there are several million Romanians living in Transylvania now—what would happen to them? I know that Ceauşescu encouraged them to move there—but there’s some evidence to suggest that the Romanians have been in Transylvania for centuries. They believe that anyway, that they’re descended from the Roman colonists of ancient Dacia…”

“The Romanians just are liars, if they told you that,” interrupted Eva.

“You can read it in any history book,” I said.

“Not in Hungarian history books!”

From the back seat we heard the rustle of cellophane and cardboard as Jack unwrapped the first box of biscuits. “I don’t know,” she said through a mouthful of chocolate biscuit, “I was never great at history, but I’ve never understood all this ethnic squabbling in Europe. Back and forth, and forth and back, across the same boring old territory. First one group is in power and oppresses the other, then the other group is in power and oppresses the first. But way before the Hungarians and the Romanians, way before the Romans and the Huns this was Old Europe, home of one of the Great Goddess civilizations. There are paleolithic and neolithic sites all through this area of the Balkans.”

“I thought you weren’t great at history,” I said, impressed. I wasn’t sure I knew the difference between paleo and neo.

“It’s prehistory I’m interested in, not patriarchal bullshit like kings, wars and empires. Charis Freespirit told us all about the work of Riane Eisler and Marija Gimbutas this winter on our tour. Gimbutas is an archeologist and Eisler based some of her new theories about dominator and partnership societies on Gimbutas’s research. The Great Goddess cultures weren’t dominator societies, they were partnership communities. None of the ruins that have been excavated show fortresses or anything that would suggest they fought with each other. Most of the statues are fertility figures.”

I thought of the little statue in Vienna. “So, did the Venus of Willendorf come from around here?”

“Yeah, but she’s no Venus. That was just something that the male archeologists said, because they couldn’t imagine a powerful figure without sexualizing her. But in the old agrarian Goddess societies, she was a fertility figure—back in the days when fertility belonged to women and wasn’t controlled by men.”

“Still, Cassandra,” interrupted Eva. “You must admit that the Hungarians were treated very badly in Transylvania by Ceauşescu.”

“The Hungarians have no great claims as defenders of human rights. You want to talk about what happened to the Jews who were shipped off to Auschwitz the last year of the war? You want to talk about how the Hungarians treat their own population of Gypsies?”

“The Romanians treat the Gypsies worse! All the Romanian Gypsies have run away to Germany and now Germany is selling them back to Romania.”

“In a partnership society,” said Jack, “we wouldn’t know how to talk like this about other people. The words wouldn’t even begin to make sense.”

“In a partnership society, wouldn’t we be sharing the biscuits?” I said, taking the package away from her before she could devour them all.

“You’ll see when we get to Romania,” said Eva, who was determined to get the last word in. “That’s the real Stone Age there. And they don’t have chocolate biscuits, either!”

It had been dark when we set out, but away from the city it was darker still. We were crossing the
puszta,
once a thick forest, then, after the trees were chopped down, a bog. Still later, by some peculiar twist of geography and climate, the
puszta
turned into grasslands like the American prairies or the Argentinian pampas. Years before I’d been to a great livestock fair in Debrecen. It had been like some version of America’s Wild West, with cowboys and hundreds of head of steer.

We were in marchland, borderland, a buffer zone, where the frontiers had shifted dozens of times over the centuries and the maps had been drawn and redrawn. But where maps showed lines, the landscape rarely did. Sometimes there was a river or a mountain chain, sometimes there was nothing but a fence through a pasture, and sometimes there was nothing at all. Sometimes when you passed from one country to the next, there was a sharp and immediate change. Sometimes the barbed wire, armed sentries and floodlights spoke of enmity and tragedy. Sometimes there was only a softening, a gentle blurring, people speaking two languages, eating similar foods, sharing relatives, customs and memories.