I haven't had time today to write about the horsemeat scandal - too much work and the writers' group for a couple of hours during the evening. I'll need to find time tomorrow to write.
So, by way of compensation, here is an extract from the story that I have been writing these past couple of months. In this scene the protagonist Stefan, a boy aged seventeen who is riding a newly-bought horse homeward across Transylvania, encounters an unruly group of British 'aid workers'.
To me this epitomises the sheer degree of difference and, all too often, misunderstanding between the two countries. But, more than that, motives differ. One group struggle to survive, using every tool available. The other want to interfere, keen to make the foreigners into facimiles of themselves. It's as if two nations are cursed each never to truly grasp what the other is about, but instead to depend parasitically upon the other preying on weakness to reinforce one's own failings. The current scandal is just playing out more of the same: and still neither nation has the least intention to confront its failings.
***
The road deteriorated to a rutted dirt track. It wriggled
uphill, following the river for a couple of kilometres before steepening to
embrace the serpentine contours of the hillside. The forest retreated to admit
a broad swath of rough grassland in the process of tumbling back to scrub. Near
the summit Stefan stopped to graze Pintea as Dumitru had advised. His horse
tied to the stout trunk of a bush, Stefan lay in a shady spot. It was so quiet.
No traffic moved on the road. There was not a soul in sight, not even a
herdsman. A few fluffy little clouds dotted the light blue late spring sky. The
temperature was so comfortable in the shade, the mossy turf so pleasantly soft.
Tired after a late night followed by an early morning Stefan slipped into
welcome slumber accompanied by Pintea’s steady munching and the occasional
swish of his tail.
Stefan awoke to voices. Foreign voices - several of them.
A man said, “Look at that guy sleeping.”
“Do you think he’s drunk?” added a woman.
“They all get drunk,” a second man opined. He had a peculiar
accent.
“Let’s tie his boot laces together,” the first man
suggested, sniggering.
Stefan opened his eyes. Two men and a woman stood a couple
of paces away. They looked little older than him and must have walked because
no vehicle was in sight. The woman wore a pink strappy top and lycra shorts.
One man wore a grubby white tee shirt and dark blue football shorts. The other,
who carried a faded red knapsack, had removed his shirt to expose a well tanned
chest. Stefan glanced over his shoulder to check Pintea, who grazed contentedly
as if nothing at all was happening. The three pedestrians laughed.
“So, more English,” Stefan remarked, smiling at the looks of
surprise that this solicited. He wasn’t going to get to his feet for these
three.
“Are you Romanian?” the bare-chested man asked.
“Sigur ca da,”
Stefan drawled – ‘yes of course’.
“He says yes,” the woman remarked.
“Do you come from Cusma?” Stefan asked.
“You’ve heard of us, then,” the second man asked.
Stefan shrugged. “There are English everywhere now.”
“I’m from Scotland. Can’t you tell by my accent?”
“You are not wearing your skirt,” Stefan added deadpan,
having seen pictures of Scots costume in a school textbook.
“It’s called a kilt,” he protested as his two companions
laughed.
“He’s got nice legs, he should wear one,” the woman added
bringing further laughter. “I am Amanda. What is your name?”
Slowly Stefan got to his feet. One could not introduce
oneself politely from a supine position.
“Stefan.”
“I am James,” the bare-chested man announced, “and he is
Gordon.”
“So you do come from Cusma?”
“Yes,” James commented rather bluntly. “We’re sorting out
part of the mess you’re country is in. How could you allow children to live in
such conditions?”
The remark annoyed Stefan. Didn’t these people understand
what things had been like before Ceausescu had been shot?
“My family lives four in one room and we eat mamaliga and potatoes. What should we
do?”
“What about the government?” James went on.
“We didn’t choose them.”
“But you could change this country.”
“How? Until December everyone was hungry. Now everyone is
confused.”
“We made a difference,” Gordon interjected in his rich
accent which Stefan still found difficult to follow.
“Come and see,” Amanda added. “But first we’ll sit and rest
a bit. It’s a long walk.”
The three slumped down onto the ground, stretching themselves
out in the sun.
“Are you riding far?” James asked.
“I’ve travelled four days and I have two weeks ahead. I am
going to Suceava County.”
“Why?”
“To take this horse home to my family,” Stefan replied. Then
thinking of what these foreign people might want to hear, he added, “Then we
can grow enough food for us and also help our neighbours.”
“So you do have an idea then about helping people,” Gordon
butted in. “I wish more Romanians did. Anyway how did you afford a horse?
Aren’t they expensive?”
“Some English bought him.”
“Which group?”Amanda asked curiously.
“Polehill Baptist Church.”
“Bloody religious people,” James responded with vehemence.
“Are you one of those, what do the Romanians call them....?”
“Pocaiti.”
“Yes, them.” James sounded irritated.
Stefan laughed. “No, of course not.”
“So they didn’t convert
you?” James spoke the word ‘convert’ with disgust.
“They think that they did.”
“You Romanians are all the same, tricking foreigners to get
what you want,” Gordon joked. But it sounded to Stefan as if the Scotsman
believed what he had said.
“Let’s walk back to the orphanage,” Amanda added. “Stefan,
you should see the children. Your government hid a lot away from you.”
***
In ten minutes they had reached the summit of the road,
leaving the broad scrubby pasture for the depths of a pine forest. Stefan led
Pintea both to stretch his legs and to rest the horse. Besides, walking with
the group made conversation easier. Stefan discovered that James came from
London and Gordon from near Edinburgh, both places he’d seen on the map. Amanda
came from a small place in the middle of England, Bredon, that isn’t shown on
the atlases. She told him of the famous hill there, which she’d climbed many
times as a child.
“How high is it,” Stefan had asked.
“Three hundred metres.”
“It’s small then.”
“But it has stories and poems written about it.”
“Tell me one.”
“In
summertime on Bredon
The
bells they sound so clear;
Round
both the shires they ring them
In
steeples far and near,
A
happy noise to hear.”
“Is that all?”
“I’ve forgotten the rest. It’s a long poem, all about a
lover dying.”
“In a war?”
“No, just dying.”
That’s different to our stories. Maybe England is a more peaceful place
and that’s why these people want to come here and help us. They don’t have
problems like we have.
***
An hour’s walk took them all the way back down to the valley
floor where they emerged from the forest’s eaves into a swath of strip fields.
A small village lay a little lower down to the left. The forest swept around
enclosing this pocket of arable land like a glove about a hand. At the upper
end of the fields to their right a building with three storeys and many windows
stood. To Stefan it looked like a boyar’s house in a historical illustration:
the sort of house from which some malevolent landowner had repressed the
peasants, so his school textbooks said. He thought back to Dumitru’s comments.
Yes, the boyars used us like slaves until King Ferdinand gave us land
after the First World War. But did the communists treat us any better? Give a
dishonest man a little truth and he will make a bigger lie.
“That’s the orphanage, Stefan” Amanda explained.
As they approached Stefan saw a high wall around the
grounds, about a hectare in total. Plaster peeled from the wall exposing old
brickwork, which rose from a mass of weeds. Children’s voices carried from
beyond the wall. But they were shrieks and shouts that seemed to report madness
rather than the happy sounds of children playing. Stefan shuddered at what he
might see.
“It’s pretty bad in there,” James remarked.
“Do you live in there?” Stefan asked.
“No, thank goodness,” James replied. “We’re round the back
where the staff lived.”
James led them around the periphery next to the wall. Amanda
walked just behind Stefan whilst Gordon lagged a few paces, smoking.
Behind the house two single storey wings extended fifty
metres, more simply constructed than the house. An arch led through the near
wing, and through this the party entered a courtyard where once the landowner’s
horses and carriages were prepared. But now the stables were store rooms and
the roof that had sheltered carriages and carts between the far ends of the
wings covered a light blue Dacia and a red foreign minibus. It looked as if
space remained under the roof for the car that had passed Stefan on the road. A
man and a woman stood by the minibus smoking.
“Hey, guys,” James called.
“Ho, man. Shit, why’d you bring that peasant? Has he got
fire-water for sale?”
Gordon sidled up by Stefan. The smoke from his cigarette
carried a strange sweet smell quite unlike the rough local Carpati.
“He speaks English, you know.” Gordon’s Scots accent was as
rich as ever but to Stefan he sounded remote and uninterested.
“Fuck, man, when will these people sort their country out?”
The man ambled down the yard followed by the woman. They were both young and
clad similarly in grubby jeans and tee shirts. “What booze do you have for sale,
mate? It’d better be less nasty than the shit they make in the village.”
“I have nothing to sell,” Stefan replied plainly.
The man turned to Gordon. “Then why the fuck is he here?”
“Rick, we invited him,” Amanda interjected. “He might learn
something from seeing our work.”
“Yes, show him the kids his people shut away here. Then he
can piss off.”