Between the Woods and the Water (2 page)

—J
AN
M
ORRIS

D
EAR XAN
,

The first part of this narrative,
A Time of Gifts
, ended on a bridge over the Danube between Slovakia and Hungary, and as it must be unlucky to change in midstream, please let me begin the second part with a letter to you, as I did before. Nor will this be the last; there is one more book to come which will carry us to the end of the journey and beyond.

I had set out from Holland in 1934 meaning to mix only with chance acquaintances and fellow-tramps, but almost imperceptibly by the time I got to Hungary and Transylvania I found myself having a much easier time of it than I had expected or planned: ambling along on borrowed horses, drifting from one country-house to another, often staying for weeks or even months under patient and perhaps long-suffering but always hospitable roofs. Many things made this part of the journey quite different from the rest. It was a season of great delight; all seemed immeasurably old and at the same time brand new and totally unknown and, thanks to my dawdling rate of progress and those long sojourns, lasting friendships sprang up.

I suffered occasional pricks of conscience about straying so far from my original intentions, but when I look back now after putting these months together in writing, these twinges vanish. The next decade swept away this remote, country-dwelling world and this brings home to me how lucky I was to catch these long glimpses of it, even to share in it for a while. A subconscious wisdom might almost have been guiding this stretch of the journey and when it came to an end south of the Danube, it struck me,
climbing through Balkan passes at my earlier brisk pace, how unusual were the regions I had just traversed: they had begun to take on a glow of retrospective magic which the intervening half-century has enhanced.

The notebook covering this period, lost in Moldavia at the beginning of the War and restored a few years ago by a great stroke of luck, has been a great help, but not the unfailing prop it should have been. When I came to a standstill during those long halts, writing stopped too: as I was keeping a journal of travel, I wrongly thought there was nothing to record. I was often slow to take it up again when I moved on and, even then, jotted notes sometimes took the place of sustained narrative. Fearing some details might have got out of sequence when I started writing the present book, I surrounded these passages with a cloud of provisos and hedged bets. Then the thought that these pages were not a guidebook persuaded me that it didn't matter very much, so I let the story tell itself free of debilitating caveats.

Books about this part of Europe incline to be chiefly, sometimes exclusively, devoted to politics, and this abundance lessens my guilt about how small a part they play in this one, where they only appear when they impinge directly on the journey. I had to give some account of how I thought history had affected life in Transylvania—its aftermath was all about me—but my inconclusive ponderings are offered with well-founded diffidence. Nothing could be less professional or ‘inside Europe,' and my political torpor at this early stage of life is touched on at some length in
A Time of Gifts
(pp. 123–30). News of grim events kept breaking in from the outside world but something in the mood of these valleys and mountain ranges weakened their impact. They were omens, and sinister ones, but there were three more years to go before these omens pointed unmistakably to the convulsions five years later.

Place names are a minor problem, but a vexing one. For well-known ones I have stuck to the forms longest established by history, and for the lesser, those in force at the time of the journey. Political fashion has altered many; more changed later; Rumanian
spelling has been reformed, and earlier shifts of sovereignty have affected the precedence of the three place names that often adorn the smallest hamlet. I have tried to cite the official name first, followed by the others if they are needed. I know there is confusion here and there, but as this is not a guide nobody will be in danger of losing his way. I must apologise for these shortcomings and I hope it will be clear that they have nothing to do with partisanship. A few people's names have been changed when it seemed expedient but very sparingly, and usually of friends who are still actively on the scene from which many of the others have vanished. ‘Von' is ‘v.' throughout.

The debts a writer owes in a book of this kind are enormous and longstanding and if I fail to thank everyone I should, it is from neither forgetfulness nor ingratitude. I am deeply beholden to my old friend Elemer v. Klobusicky; to the Meran family, then and now; to Alexander Mourouzi and Constantine Soutzo. I would also like to thank Steven Runciman for encouraging words after the first volume, Dimitri Obolensky for wise advice during this one, and David Sylvester, Bruce Chatwin, Niko Vasilakis, Eva Bekássy v. Gescher and, as ever, John Craxton. Also many retrospective thanks to Balas, a Cantacuzène for help in translating
Mioritza
, in Moldavia long ago. My debt to Rudolf Fischer is beyond reckoning. His omniscient range of knowledge and an enthusiasm tempered with astringency have been a constant delight and stimulus during all the writing of this book; his vigilance has saved it from many errors, and I feel that the remaining ones may be precisely those when his advice was not followed.

Many thanks to Stella Gordon for her patient Champollion-Ventris flair for decyphering an illegible hand.

Lastly, devoted thanks for kindness and haven during restless literary displacements to Barbara and Niko Ghika (to whom the book is dedicated) for many weeks among the loggias and swallows of Corfu; to Janetta and Jaime Parladé for high-perched Andalusian asylum at Tramores; to the proprietors of the Stag Parlour near Bakewell for fevered sessions of revision and for the
all-but-irresistible suggestion of
Shank's Europe
as an overall title for these books; to Jock and Diana Murray for editorial patience and shelter during the last phase; and lastly, dear Xan, to you and Magouche for diligent spells of cloistered seclusion in the Serrania de Ronda.

P.

Kardamyli, 11 February 1986
 

P
ERHAPS
I had made too long a halt on the bridge. The shadows were assembling over the Slovak and Hungarian shores and the Danube, running fast and pale between them, washed the quays of the old town of Esztergom, where a steep hill lifted the basilica into the dusk. Resting on its ring of columns, the great dome and the two Palladian belfries, tolling now with a shorter clang, surveyed the darkening scene for many leagues. All at once the quay and the steep road past the Archbishop's palace were deserted. The frontier post was at the end of the bridge, so I hastened into Hungary: the people that Easter Saturday had gathered at the river's side had climbed to the Cathedral square, where I found them strolling under the trees, conversing in expectant groups. The roofs fell away underneath, then forest and river and fen ran dimly to the last of the sunset.

A friend had written to the Mayor of Esztergom: ‘Please be kind to this young man who is going to Constantinople on foot.' Planning to look him up next day, I asked someone about the Mayor's office and before I knew what was happening, and to my confusion, he had led me up to the man himself. He was surrounded by the wonderfully-clad grandees I had been admiring beside the Danube. I tried to explain that I was the tramp he had been warned about and he was politely puzzled; then illumination came, and after a quick and obviously comic conversation with one of the magnificent figures, he committed me to his care and hastened across the square to more serious duties. The charge was accepted with an amused expression; my mentor must have been saddled with me because of his excellent English. His gala costume
was dark and splendid; he carried his scimitar slung nonchalantly in the crook of his arm and a rimless monocle flashed in his left eye.

At this very moment, all eyes turned downhill. The clatter of hoofs and a jingle of harness had summoned the Mayor to the Cathedral steps, where a scarlet carpet had been laid. Clergy and candle-bearers were ceremoniously gathered and when the carriage halted a flame-coloured figure uncoiled from within and the Cardinal, Monsignor Serédy, who was also Archbishop of Esztergom and Prince-Primate of Hungary, slowly alighted and offered his ringed hand to the assembly and everyone in turn fell on one knee. His retinue followed him into the great building, then a beadle led the Mayor's party to the front pews which were draped in scarlet. I made as though to slink to a humbler place, but my mentor was firm: “You'll see much better here.”

Holy Saturday had filled half the vast cathedral and I could pick out many of the figures who had been on display by the river: the burghers in their best clothes, the booted and black-clad peasants, the intricately-coifed girls in their coloured skirts and their white pleated sleeves panelled with embroidery, the same ones who had been hastening over the bridge with nosegays of lilies and narcissi and kingcups. There were black and white Dominicans, several nuns and a sprinkling of uniforms, and near the great doors a flock of Gypsies in clashing hues leaned whispering and akimbo. It would scarcely have been a surprise to see one of their bears amble in and dip its paw in a baroque holy-water stoup shaped like a giant murex and genuflect.

How unlike the ghostly mood of Tenebrae two nights before! As each taper was plucked from its spike the shadows had advanced a pace until darkness subdued the little Slovak church. Here, light filled the great building, new constellations of wicks floated in all the chapels, the Paschal Candle was alight in the choir and unwinking stars tipped the candles that stood as tall as lances along the high altar. Except for the red front pews, the Cathedral, the clergy, the celebrating priest and his deacons and all their myrmidons were in white. The Archbishop, white and gold
now and utterly transformed from his scarlet manifestation as Cardinal, was enthroned under an emblazoned canopy and the members of his little court were perched in tiers up the steps. The one on the lowest was guardian of the heavy crosier and behind him another stood ready to lift the tall white mitre and replace it when the ritual prompted, arranging the lappets each time on the pallium-decked shoulders. In the front of the aisle, meanwhile, the quasi-martial bravery of the serried magnates—the coloured doublets of silk and brocade and fur, the gold and silver chains, the Hessian boots of blue and crimson and turquoise, the gilt spurs, the kalpaks of bearskin with their diamond clasps, and the high plumes of egrets' and eagles' and cranes' feathers—accorded with the ecclesiastical splendour as aptly as the accoutrements in the Burial of Count Orgaz: and it was the black attire—like my new friend's, and the armour of the painted knights in Toledo—that was the most impressive. Those scimitars leaning in the pews, with their gilt and ivory cross-hilts and stagily gemmed scabbards—surely they were heirlooms from the Turkish wars? When their owners rose jingling for the Creed, one of the swords fell on the marble with a clatter. In old battles across the puszta, blades like these sent the Turks' heads spinning at full gallop; the Hungarians' heads too, of course...

Soon, after an interval of silence, sheaves of organ-pipes were thundering and fluting their message of risen Divinity. Scores of voices soared from the choir, Alleluiahs were on the wing, the cumulus of incense billowing round the carved acanthus leaves was winding aloft and losing itself in the shadows of the dome and new motions were afoot. Led by a cross, a vanguard of clergy and acolytes bristling with candles was already half-way down the aisle. Next came a canopy with the Sacrament borne in a monstrance; then the Archbishop; the Mayor; the white-bearded and eldest of the magnates, limping and leaning heavily on a malacca cane; then the rest. Urged by a friendly prod, I joined the slow slipstream and soon, as though smoke and sound had wafted us through the doors, we were all outside.

As the enormous moon was only one night after the full, it was almost as bright as day. The procession was down the steps and slowly setting off; but when the waiting band moved in behind us and struck up the opening bars of a slow march, the notes were instantaneously drowned. Wheels creaked overhead, timbers groaned and a many-tongued and nearly delirious clangour of bells came tumbling into the night; and then, between these bronze impacts, another sound, like insistent clapping, made us all look up. An hour or so before, two storks, tired by their journey from Africa, had alighted on a dishevelled nest under one of the belfries and everyone had watched them settle in. Now, alarmed by the din, desperately flapping their wings and with necks outstretched, they were taking off again, scarlet legs trailing. Black feathers opened along the fringes of their enormous white pinions and then steady and unhastening wing-beats lifted them beyond the chestnut leaves and into the sky as we gazed after them. “A fine night they chose for moving in,” my neighbour said, as we fell in step.