The Cousins‘ Inn

Having licked yesterday’s wounds, I boarded an early train that was to take me to the next stage of my journey before daybreak. Until now I had been travelling through Saxon territory. It was time to change sides and approach a people whose language I did not speak, and with whom Italian would be of no use to me: the Székely.

The link between the two peoples lay in my grandparents, and at the beginning of the twentieth century such a union was anything but commonplace. Saxons and Székely respected one another. Friends they were not.

My Saxon grandfather had survived most of the First World War in Italian captivity and returned to Schäßburg in his early twenties, where he completed his training as a cabinetmaker and went on to earn his master craftsman’s certificate.

My Hungarian grandmother, a well-brought-up young lady of minor nobility, lived a good thirty kilometres away, in a place with a name that left little room for doubt: Székelykeresztúr, a settlement of Székely built around a Christian cross.

How they met has not been passed down. How their marriage came about, however, has. Or rather, how it pedalled into being. My grandfather never tired of telling us how, every Saturday, he would cycle to Keresztúr to collect his beloved for the evening dance in Schäßburg, then deliver her home again at the appointed hour. This meant covering the same route four times in one day, twice with ‘luggage’.

The rides were worth it, and before long they married. In 1928 their first child was born, a daughter — my mother — and in Székelykeresztúr, of all places. Here I hoped to find the house where she was born, perhaps a few revealing documents — and possibly even a trace of the dogskin, whose trail Dénes had set me on.

I stepped off the train into the murky yellow glow of the station lamps. It reached just far enough beyond the tracks for me to make out a gravel path in the half-light.

I turned in a full, blue-black circle, trying to work out which way to go, when something nudged me gently. There was a heavy tread behind me. A second nudge followed, then a third, slightly firmer one, and at the same moment I saw and smelt what had happened: I was surrounded by cows. A herd had casually absorbed me into its ranks. The animals looked as sleep-deprived as I felt and were pushing me, harmlessly and without a herdsman, along their morning route to pasture — which, unfortunately, was not in the town centre.

Slipping, shuffling and edging my way along, I slowly extricated myself, cow by cow, from the rustic rabble. By the time I was master of my own route again, I was standing somewhere in an open field.

The first hint of sunlight revealed something resembling houses some distance away to the west.

Like almost every Transylvanian settlement, Székelykeresztúr consists essentially of a more or less straight main street, with houses lined up on either side, their narrow ends and gates facing the road and everything that matters concealed behind them.

This house–garden–house rhythm, occasionally interrupted by a motel, a betting shop or simply a ruin, took me past several churches and a small green whose newly planted trees were decorated with balloons, and eventually into the town centre, with its indispensable monument to the national poet Sándor Petőfi. More than 150 years after his mysterious death, many still revere him almost as a saint. No doubt the square surrounding the monument bore his name too. In fact, the bilingual street sign displayed not Petőfi’s name but his noble ideal: Plaţa Libertaţii / Szabadság Tér — Freedom Square.

The first shops were opening now, among them a most welcome café. When I tried to order the kind of breakfast I had grown used to in Schäßburg, the expected difficulties began. Here people spoke Hungarian, and Gogoşi were now called Lángos again. Except there were none, because they had yet to be made. Instead, there was coffee, which was also rather different from what one normally expects.

As there was still some town left farther west, I continued in that direction, awake but hungry, and soon reached another church, this one Unitarian. Architecturally it differed little from the others, but its front garden was another matter. On a neatly tended lawn stood a group of dark-stained wooden posts, decorated with carvings and, in some cases, ribbons in the Hungarian colours. From a distance they reminded me of torture stakes.

All I knew about the Unitarian faith was that my grandmother had belonged to it and had never spoken about it. Surely she would have mentioned it to her grandson, a devotee of Winnetou and Old Shatterhand, if torture stakes had played any part in her religion. Apparently they did not. As there was no Unitarian church in Munich, she sometimes attended the New Apostolic Church on Sundays, of which my Protestant mother said that it was ‘a similar sect’. At twelve I had no idea what a sect was, and since my grandmother had never given me the impression that there was anything wrong with her, I left it at that and asked no questions.

Just beyond the church, only a few houses farther on, I came upon the next large building. It was so imposing that I crossed the road to take in its full width. Before me rose something like a two-storey palace, its windows and entrance adorned with Neo-Renaissance pediments, though neither cleaned nor whitewashed since the last war. Beside the door, set into one of the pillars supporting the arch above it, an iron flagpole held a faded, tattered Romanian flag twisted around its shaft. The windows were blind; some were missing panes.

Could this be the town hall?

A weathered blue sign with pale lettering made things clear: it was the hospital. The state hospital, no less, Székelykeresztúr branch.

I would not even have had my blood pressure taken here, I thought, as it slowly dawned on me that children were actually born in this place!

Could my mother have entered the world in this wreck of a building?

Surely not. It must have been as it had been with her father: the child was born in the mother’s family home. That had to be it. Surely my grandmother, too, had travelled from Schäßburg, where she lived as a married woman, back to her old home to give birth to her first child.

And I wanted to find that home!

Dénes had told me that the Mátéffys came from Szentábrahám, a village only a few kilometres away. After my great-grandfather died young, his widow moved into town with her four daughters, here to Székelykeresztúr. And I knew the address, too — from a handwritten envelope among my mother’s papers. Csekefalvi utca, it said.

But there was no house number, because the postman had not needed one. In those days he probably knew everyone in the town personally.

Still, I would leave no stone unturned. The street was only a short way behind me, beside Petőfi’s monument. On the corner where it met Freedom Square, a second, smaller sign hung beneath the street-name sign:

In the boarding house that had once stood on this spot, it told me in Hungarian, the poet had spent the last night of his life.

Petőfi had indeed disappeared without a trace not far from here on 31 July 1849, probably killed by Russian soldiers after the already lost battle for Hungary’s freedom. But his body was never found.

Just like Great-grandmother’s house.

For Csekefalvi utca followed the same pattern as the main street. A house was followed by a garden, then another house. Every now and then there was a field between them, perhaps a little stream as well. Through most of the gates one could see into the courtyards. Chickens pecked everywhere; a dog dozed almost everywhere. The gardens were lovingly tended and looked much alike: flowering perennials edged the beds, while implements and tools hung from posts, the sort of things that back home would have served only as decoration. Here and there someone was working, but I could not ask. No one would remember which garden my grandmother and her sisters had played in. It was simply too long ago.

And so Keresztúr had exhausted its possibilities for me sooner than expected. Little suspecting what it still had in store, I chose a new, obvious destination: Szentábrahám.

Since nothing went there, I would have to — walk again. This time along the main road, without shortcuts, sheepdogs or other menaces.

Need I mention that it was another hot day? That the air was already shimmering by mid-morning and my shirt was sticking to my back? This time, at least, I had water with me. Only the road offered no shade. Instead, it ran between two ridges through a valley with ample capacity for storing heat.

Csekefalva marked the halfway point. The village was small and slowly falling into decay, yet allowed itself the luxury of two churches, one on either side of the road. Both towers leaned alarmingly, as though they had made a wager as to which could remain crooked the longest. In reality the churches stood a fair distance apart, but from afar their towers seemed to incline towards each other like two hard-of-hearing old people searching for the other’s ear. Had my grandmother seen them that way too? Or had the towers still stood straight a hundred years earlier?

Two sweltering kilometres later, beyond a long, shimmering stretch of road, a surprisingly well-kept football pitch marked the edge of Szentábrahám. Three maize silos stood behind it; opposite was a small ornamental wooden Székely gate with the customary greeting Isten hozott! (‘God has brought you!’) and a line of runic script beneath it.

How long had those seven kilometres taken me? I had set off shortly before ten. Now it was … where was my watch?

I searched every pocket, my rucksack, the most unlikely places, even walked back to the football pitch, where I had stopped for a drink — but the watch was gone. It must have slipped from my wrist, washed away by the sweat that had been streaming down me for hours as I walked both after and towards the past, until here, in this small, ancient Transylvanian village, there was no longer any need for time.

The Unitarian church stood not far ahead. It looked freshly painted, though its tower, too, leaned to one side. That was where I was headed.

There had to be documents here, a minister, an old one if I was lucky. Here I would learn everything about my ancestors; here, perhaps, I would even find the dogskin, in a casket like the one containing my copy at home. How convenient that nothing had changed here for centuries!

The shingles of the sharply pointed church tower roof glittered silver from afar. As I drew closer, a scene out of a fairy tale appeared before me: the little church, neat and clean, gently nudged sideways by age, stood beside vines and a hillside planted with fruit trees. A meadow separated it from the village, where a solitary horse grazed peacefully in the shade of the only tree. On the roadside the church was protected by a wall in name only: the whitewashed barrier was scarcely shoulder-high, capped with red tiles like the church roof. Entrance to the small forecourt and former graveyard on the south side of the nave was through a wooden gate with a masonry gable, bearing the Unitarian emblem of a serpent biting its own tail. Above it all the midday heat hung a little less heavily than usual, for a breath of wind came from the north. Cicadas rasped in defiance of the silence; a bird whistled in reply.

The gate stood open. Singing came from the church. I pressed my ear to the door; it soon grew as wet as my eyes. The whole congregation must have been assembled inside. Of course! It was Sunday, shortly after twelve. The service was drawing to a close.

Time to get away, I thought. Sweaty as I was, I had no wish to make a first impression in the village of my ancestors. Leaning against the outside wall of the church as though I were merely seeking its shade, I waited for the bell to ring. Soon a wave of worshippers flowed leisurely past, the men in their Sunday black as though it were not scorching hot outside, the women in pale, decent dresses.

Only when the last of them had passed did I venture into the courtyard. Curious to see the inside of the church, yet still cautiously on edge, I stopped by the doorpost and peered around the corner. At that very moment the minister stepped outside.

I recoiled. The minister stopped dead. Three men behind him nearly collided with him.

‘Bocsánat! Sorry!’ I babbled, backing away.

The minister smiled. Like the three men behind him, he wore a black suit to match his moustache. But while they recovered their formation and straightened their rather undersized black hats, he stood there bareheaded. He merely slung the clerical robe he had been carrying over his shoulder and addressed me in Hungarian.

Did I understand a word? Of course not.

‘Bocsánat!’ I said again. ‘sajnos nem beszélek magyarul.’

The only sentence I can say fluently in Hungarian informed him that I did not speak Hungarian.

At once he repeated his question, now in quite good English, with an even broader smile:

‘You’re not from around here, it seems. What can I do for you?’

‘Quite a lot, probably.’

At last I had reached my destination, and the words poured out of me almost beyond my control.

‘At least, I hope so. I’m looking for my great-grandfather. His name is Mátéffy. Ferenc Mátéffy. I believe he lived here.’

The minister looked at me in astonishment, and with unmistakable amusement. He hesitated for two seconds, then said:

‘Mátéffy I can offer you. All three gentlemen behind me are called Mátéffy. But not one of them is Ferenc, I’m afraid.’

The minister was considerably more delighted with this joke than I was and took advantage of my stunned silence to explain matters to his three companions. But they understood no more than I did about what was happening. One of them asked a question. The word ‘Mátéffy’ occurred in it.

‘Are you a Mátéffy too?’ the minister translated.

‘Not really. That is, in a way I am. It’s my grandmother’s maiden name. But my grandfather was German, you see? So I have a different name, but …’

‘Well, my name is Boros. Pleased to meet you. I think we’d best sort all this out at the parsonage. I’m hungry. Are you?’

Mr Boros turned back to the three Mátéffys, who now burst into delighted laughter and began talking to me all at once. To be on the safe side, I laughed along without understanding a word. Then we were out on the road, and a few steps later, in the heavenly coolness of the parsonage kitchen, considerably nearer to paradise.

The Hungarian method of interrogation proved remarkably effective. They placed me on a chair in the middle of the room and began feeding me. In no time Mr Boros, while the Mátéffys stood around staring at me in amazement, had shown me the instruments: wine, sausage, bread and cheese, a few onions, water and two bottles of schnapps.

Then he broke the bread with practised hands, one of the altar boys sliced the sausage, and another pressed a glass into my hand. Between chewing and drinking I had only to mention a few names, which Mr Boros translated and sorted into family trees that began to sprout spontaneously there in the kitchen.

All three Mátéffys, it quickly became clear, were related to me. Cousins among themselves as well, they were descended from siblings and cousins of my great-grandfather. It was a regular family racket, in which every new connection was now toasted with a glass of Pálinka, while the minister, once again a go-between in more ways than one, soon had sweat beading on his forehead from all the translating.

After an hour the interrogation had turned into a proper family celebration, and the entire company was decidedly tipsy. I thought about my return journey. Nobody had yet offered to drive me back to Keresztúr, and by now nobody appeared capable of doing so. I therefore pressed Mr Boros to reveal the parish registers, so that I might at least take photographs home for later study before setting off on foot. But the minister shook his head regretfully.

‘There are no parish registers. No old ones, anyway. What the Russians didn’t destroy during the war, the Romanians took away. What little survives is in their state archives in Csíkszereda, as far as I know. I’m sorry. Another schnapps?’

Yes, because that was sobering news. If even parish registers had not been spared, surely no one would have cared about an old sheet of parchment …

The minister promptly poured another round, and once again we raised our glasses.

I managed to stand up quite well, all the same. I was just about to begin the round of embraces and farewells when the minister launched into an urgent discussion with one of the Mátéffy cousins. The man seemed to have an idea.

‘Csaba has just said,’ the minister told me, ‘that he knows someone who researches family histories and could help you more than I can. He’s a clever man, a university professor. I know him too, through the church. We can telephone him!’

‘And then?’ I asked.

‘Then you meet him. He can explain everything, he knows all about it. Just go and see him!’

While I was still wondering whether, in my present state, calling on a complete stranger was such a good idea, the minister had produced his mobile phone. Csaba dictated the number, we heard it ringing — and Boros quickly thrust the telephone into my hand!

A friendly, slightly hoarse voice answered in Hungarian. I understood only the name, Farkas, and nothing else.

‘Please forgive me for disturbing you on a Sunday,’ I stammered in English. ‘I’m calling from the parsonage in Szentábrahám. The minister, a few cousins and I have been … er … celebrating a little, and now they say I should call you about my ancestors. Please don’t hang up. This isn’t a prank call.’

The reply came in accent-free English:

‘I understand. Don’t worry. Perhaps you could put the minister back on the line? Thank you.’

Mr Boros and Mr Farkas seemed to get on well, judging by their tone of voice and the occasional laughter I could hear. After a few minutes the minister hung up without handing the phone back to me.

‘It’s all arranged,’ he said. ‘You can go and see Mr Farkas. He’ll show you everything and tell you what he knows. He’s very nice.’

‘Ah. Right, then. And where do I find this Mr Farkas?’

‘In Kolozsvár.’

‘Where, er, is Kolozsvár?’ I asked.

Mr Boros now laughed heartily.

‘Too far to walk.’