A Time of Birds

by Helen Moat

  Next morning, I slept in and was annoyed with myself for keeping Tom and Patrick waiting. The short cycle into Budapest seemed interminable – the twists and turns, the rough surfaces, the underpasses and road crossings, the traffic and people always in the way. We lost the route, but somehow found our way into the centre of the city. We were now late. Tom and Patrick would be waiting at our hotel, and I was wasting our precious long weekend together. We found our way back to the water’s edge – the parliament strung out along the shore, the castle complex mushrooming along the ridge of Buda.

  We pushed on, weaving through the crowds. Tom would be wondering where we were. We passed bridge after bridge. One of them was ours; one of them had Tom and Patrick waiting on the other side. I counted: one, two, three, four, five bridges. At last, we crossed into Pest and turned into a quiet side street. And there they were – my two redheads, one peppered grey – waiting on a bench outside the hotel in the morning sunshine, father and son with arms intertwined across the back of the seat.

  My Christmas Day at Summer Solstice had arrived.

  3. Budapest Reunion

  Tom and I had met for the first time outside a post office depot in Southampton on a soggy December morning, his head peering out from under his hood as the rain fell, pale as a Celtic ghost, his red-brown hair plastered to his face. He was tall and thin as a string of spaghetti, and looked about sixteen, but his winter-grey eyes, paradoxically, held warmth.

  We were both starting a Christmas job sorting parcels that would fling their way across the UK, Europe and the world beyond – one that required good geographical knowledge to sort the parcels into their appropriate cages. The irony wasn’t lost on me as I failed to find the entrance of the depot. ‘Are you lost too?’ Tom had asked. And in that moment, we found each other – unceremoniously in the cold drizzle outside the P.O. headquarters, dripping and half-concealed from each other beneath the hoods of our waterproofs. I hadn’t realised at that point that I had met the man who would double my life and then quadruple it with our children.

  Tom was in the background over the next couple of days: kind, attentive and friendly. He was the man to go to when I didn’t know where a place was; when I didn’t know which cage a parcel belonged in. Tom’s knowledge of his country’s geography was impeccable. I liked his intelligence and soon discovered that he was no sixteen-year-old – he was a PhD geology student heading towards thirty.

  As quickly as we’d met, I was gone – a mercy deed to look after my sister’s children as she had come down with flu, followed by the Christmas holidays in Northern Ireland. I returned to Southampton and my damp student flat, the kitchen carpet covered with silver snail trails, to find Tom had called. And called again. And I understood his attention to me had been more than casual interest.

  The rain fell hard that winter, and the rain brought us together. Twice. I visited Tom, my clothes plastered to my body, caught in a flash-storm. He removed my coat, towelled dry my hair and kissed me.

  A relationship is built on moments: Tom cooking a meal for me in his student flat, the kitchen window steaming up; freezing in unison as we stumbled on a deer crossing a New Forest path one summer’s dusk; Tom bent over my floor with a jigsaw as I studied; Tom’s arm on my shoulder after lectures as I wheeled my bicycle back to my flat in Portswood.

  And in those moments, I realised I’d come home.

  *

  Budapest is a city made up of two parts: Buda tucked into the hills of the west bank, and Pest spreading out across the sand plains on the east side. The two settlements united in 1873 to form one city: Budapest. It seemed a fitting place for our split-in-two family to come together.

  The next three days had a surreal quality to them. Our journey across Europe had metamorphosed into a city break. The bikes were stowed in the underground garage of our hotel and forgotten as we took to the streets on foot as weekend tourists. We breakfasted in quiet cafés in tucked-away side streets and drank wine and beer in hipster bars on the riverbank.

  Patrick and Jamie soon slipped back into brotherly needling and camaraderie. Long gone were the boys who had raced on that Northumberland beach – they were young men now, as tall and pencil-thin as their father had been. Like Jamie, we’d measured Patrick at the age of two and doubled our findings to find out his adult height: he had come in at a more believable six foot two. Now, here they were: Jamie’s head was in the clouds; Patrick’s a few inches below him – the same height as his father. My neck was always straining, my head tilted upwards. We took a series of silly selfies at Buda Castle, my chin cut off at the bottom – Jamie’s head sliced off at the top – our mouths wide open with laughter as he failed to fit us all into the picture frame.

  That weekend, we walked until our feet stung: by the banks of the Danube and along the ridge from the castle to the Fisherman’s Bastion. The days passed in a blur of baroque and neoclassical grandeur; Hungarian cottages of orange, rose, creams, russets and fifties greens; and elegant art nouveau buildings. We climbed to the citadel and saw the city spread out beneath us, a living, three-dimensional map at our feet. I traced the sweep of the river back to Margaret Island, with Szentendre and the hills beyond. The eye took in, with a single glance, what had taken Jamie and me long hours to travel, following the curves of the Hungarian Danube with our bikes, inching forward. It already seemed a distant existence. I tried not to think of our onward journey south and east away from Tom and Patrick. I was determined to live in the moment – but those moments were slipping like sand through my fingers.

  We tried to cram in as much of the city as we could – as if we could expand time with a bulging bag of Budapest sights. But it was only when we stopped, breathed in the city and listened to its music that we captured the moment, metaphorically cupping our hands with fingers squeezed tight to hold onto something ephemeral: a violinist scratching Gypsy music across the higher notes on the steps below the Fisherman’s Bastion; a wind quartet playing baroque music from the balcony of the National Archives of Hungary; a swarm of buzzing Vespas at Heroes’ Square, horns blasting; the whisper of foliage in the park below the citadel; echoing spa halls; and the boys’ voices weaving through each other. And Tom’s voice, with his softened Glasgow lilt, telling me that he and Patrick would be waiting for Jamie and me by the boat terminals just before the Galata bridge in Istanbul, two months’ hence.

  This was the soundtrack I would carry with me along the Danube as we pedalled towards the Black Sea and on into Turkey. That, and the fading voice of my father as the cuckoo slipped away and the birds began to hush.

  4. A Tale of Two Teachers

  I found Eszter, our next CouchSurfing host, among the kayaks and bicycles of her long Danube garden on the edge of Ráckeve. A crumpled car sat at the entrance to the property and Eszter stood in front of the door, arms outstretched in a welcome, her son standing back in the shadows of the hallway.

  Eszter, slight and light on her feet, danced around the kitchenette, making tea and chatting in careful, precise English. ‘I have a student coming at four for an English lesson. Just relax and make yourself at home until I’m finished.’

  She left us with a pot of tea and a couple of fridge-cold snacks called Túró Rudi, which were covered in red polka-dot wrappers. I bit into the chocolate-covered bar and was surprised by the burst of sourness – like buttermilk or cottage cheese – in contrast to the sweetness of the chocolate. The curious taste was surprisingly agreeable to my palette.

  ‘Túró Rudi is our national snack, you could say,’ Eszter explained later. ‘Túró means “curd” and rudi means “rod”.’

  That evening, when Eszter’s husband came home, we sat round the table drinking some of the best rosé wine in Hungary, followed by a rich paprika stew.

  ‘You know our government is building a wall,’ Eszter told us over the stew.

  ‘A wall?’

  ‘A wall because of the black ones.’

  ‘The black ones?’ I cringed at my echolalia, but I was stru
ggling to follow Eszter.

  ‘You know, the refugees. It’s a big problem in our country.’

  Her tone was one of satisfaction, which was a surprise as Eszter had opened her home to so many strangers from around the world – mostly bicycle tourers like ourselves – and she seemed curious and open to other cultures.

  ‘What do you think about the black ones?’ she continued. ‘Is it a problem in your country?’

  ‘Well, no. I don’t think so,’ I answered cautiously, not wanting to argue, all too aware that I was a guest in this stranger’s home. ‘I mean, the United Kingdom once had a large empire and as a result we’ve taken many immigrants from around the world – and since we invaded their countries and helped ourselves to their resources, it seems only fair to me. So, I personally don’t see it as a problem.’

  She looked doubtfully at me over the top of her glasses. An awkwardness hung in the air and I changed the subject, asking about work and jobs. Eszter’s husband didn’t speak much English but communicated with smiles and nods from behind drooping eyes after a long shift at the local Coca-Cola factory.

  ‘Our friends are jealous of his job,’ Eszter commented. ‘But even though the money is good, there’s a price to pay in the long shifts and the extended working week before a leave day.’

  This was a family making the best of their lives on the Danube, in an area of high unemployment. They had built around their one-room holiday house to make a family home, the building swelling with the years. In summer they moved into the garden, playing outdoor ball games, or heading down to the Danube with the kayaks or out into the countryside with their bikes.

  As we set off in the morning, Eszter sighed at the cloud-covered sky. ‘Summer is so late this year.’ But as Jamie and I took off down the riverside road, we were pleased to be shaded from the heat of the sun – and grateful to Eszter for offering us a small slice of her Hungarian family life behind the Danube.

  *

  This was our first day of cycling since Budapest. The Danube bike book had warned against the road out of the city, and we had sheepishly packed the bikes onto the train for the journey to the little town of Ráckeve and Eszter’s home. It had taken the train an hour and a half to travel the twenty-five miles. ‘You could have cycled faster,’ Eszter had laughed. ‘The train is so slow.’

  Now, as we took a sharp turn right and dropped down to the water’s edge, the wheels slapped through puddles and growled on stone and asphalt, as if protesting the friction of earth and wind. The road deteriorated further to rough gravel. Holiday homes lined one side of the lane, some Swiss-chalet smart, others little more than sagging garden sheds. Across the road, families cupped mugs of coffee on landing stages and fishermen cast lines into the water. Once, a scrappy rope half-hidden in the mud on the riverbank sprang to life: a water snake! On the far side of the river, children’s voices bounced off the water.

  Cycling was now our life. Every day, I took up my existence on the saddle and pushed out into the Danube blue – green or grey or creamy-white. Was this an escape? A restlessness? A soul unwilling or unable to find a home? Unable to find an inner peace? Was it curiosity that drove me on? Or a yearning? If I didn’t stand still, I wouldn’t have to think. If I didn’t stop, I wouldn’t have to acknowledge the world was spinning uncontrollably away from me.

  Was this what had driven my father on during all those hours behind the wheel? Just driving, driving, driving. Those long days on my mother’s knee in the front seat had seemed endless. But arriving at the end of the road, in front of the Irish Sea or the Atlantic, had made it worth it: the roar of the ocean, the thud of the waves on sand, the wind whipping my hair in my face. Maybe, that was all it was – a joy in the unfamiliar and the thrill of the open road that drove us both on. A freedom.

  *

  ‘Call your dogs off. Call off your bloody dogs!’

  From Szentgyörgypuszta, we climbed onto the grassy dyke to cycle alongside the Danube. In the dip, a shepherd was crouched on the ground with a smattering of sheep. He and his German Shepherds eyeballed us before the dogs leapt up, bounding along the dyke towards us. The shepherd watched his dogs snap at Jamie’s ankles, a glint of amusement in his eyes. This was the best piece of entertainment he’d had all week, I imagined.

  I turned around and shouted with fury. The shepherd smirked and the dogs made a deep, low-throated growl. They circled the bikes, and the older bitch sank her teeth into Jamie’s pedal.

  ‘Call your dogs off,’ I shouted again. Only then did the shepherd stand up and gave a low, lazy wolf whistle, and the dogs slunk back to him.

  So these were the Eastern European dogs we’d been warned about. Over the next weeks, street dogs would often run at our wheels, barking furiously – but I soon discovered they were all bark and no bite. They were lousy actors. I found if I stopped my bike, pointed back in the direction from which the hounds had come, and spoke in my sternest voice, they’d slink back into the shadows.

  It was mid-afternoon when we reached a green criss-cross bridge of iron and pedalled over the Danube to Dunaföldvár. We pushed the bikes up the hill to the castle tower and Tourist Information, in search of a place to spend the night among the castle ruins and the narrow streets, before pushing on to Kalocsa.

  ‘Welcome. Welcome,’ Zita called with a hoarse thick-tongued Hungarian accent, pushing open the door in the garden wall that led into the courtyard. The sun was washing the low-lying building with a caramel light that faded out the grass to a yellow-beige. Summer had come to Zita’s garden. Bobo, her golden retriever, bounded around the cherry tree before circling us, tail flicking lightning-fast.

  ‘Please, do you need cloths washed?’ Zita asked, her dark eyes peering anxious-to-please from her soft round face as she led us past a series of doors to the kitchen entrance. She held it open for us: ‘Please, come in.’

  Zita’s home lay in a quiet side street, a short distance from the centre of Kalocsa, the paprika capital of Hungary. Like many of the single-story buildings that lined Hungarian towns and villages, Zita’s house lay sideways to the road, with only an unassuming gable announcing its existence.

  Our Hungarian host led us from kitchen to living room to bedroom, a string of inter-connected rooms (each with a door leading to the outside) filled with dusty ornaments, worn furniture and a lumpy sofa buried in throws – my bed for the night.

  Back in the kitchen, Zita indicated the small Formica table. ‘Please. I call my son. I have little English. I learn Russian in school.’

  In the box-room of a kitchen, Zita and her chef son made us a Hungarian feast. While Zita stood over the deep fat fryer cooking potato wedges, Benedek served ragout with sour cream – thick with chicken, celery, parsnip, swede, mushrooms and peas, all flavoured with lemon juice and fresh tarragon and accompanied by a cucumber salad with Kalocsa paprika the colour of fire.

  ‘Eat, eat,’ Zita implored us.

  I held my hand over my tummy and puffed out my cheeks. ‘It’s so good, but I am full.’

  ‘No, please. Eat. You are hungry bicyclists. Eat, eat!’ And with that Zita spooned more soup into our bowls.

  I licked my lips with a cyclist’s satisfaction, but Zita and Benedek were not finished yet. They placed in front of us large bowls of brassói, a filling stew of pork, potato, garlic and marjoram, along with the fried wedges.

  That evening, Bobo took Zita and me for a walk around Kalocsa, pulling us past the paprika museum and the mustard twin-towered cathedral. Earlier, while Zita was still working at her school, Jamie and I had cycled around the town, and I had felt acutely aware that I was far from home. No one spoke to us. No one acknowledged our presence. We might as well have been ghosts. But with Zita, all that changed – and the town became mine too.

  ‘Helló!’

  ‘Jó estét.’

  ‘Hogy állnak a dolgok?’

  I listened carefully for something recognisable in the concoction of greetings, but the language was incomprehensible – with no roots
in Latin, or Saxon. Even the word for ‘restaurant’ – which barely changed all the way to the Turkish border – was an unfamiliar étterem. But the faces were friendly and the smiles wide: the language of body and face is universal.

  *

  In the early morning sunlight, as we prepared to leave, Zita plucked a handful of cherries from her garden tree and poured them into my hand, then presented us with a small hessian sack of Kalocsa paprika tied in a pink gingham ribbon.

  We pushed our bikes through the garden door and headed out along the last of the Hungarian Danube, past settlements of hovels splashed with blood-red geraniums and bored children doing wheelies on village greens. Once a café dog adopted us and followed us through an entire town before turning for home. We spent one last night in Hungary – on the banks of the Danube, beside the ferry landing stage at Mohács. In the morning, the long, straight road out of town would lead us to Udvar and the Croatian border.

  *

  5. Croatia – Bullets, Landmines and Deadly Mosquitoes

  On the border at Udvar, a large sign splashed blobs of primary red, blue, green and yellow, with the word Croatia painted in child-like capitals. It suggested a sunny, carefree Croatia – the Croatia I knew from the Dalmatian coast, with its chic baroque quarters, waterside cafés, coastal pine forests and sun-speckled oceans. A terrible irony, I was soon to discover.

  I pulled our passports out of my money-belt. It was the first time we’d had been asked for them since leaving the ferry terminal at Europoort.

  ‘Where have you come from?’ the border guard asked.

  ‘The Netherlands.’

  ‘And where are you going?’

  ‘Istanbul.’

  The guard looked bemused and waved us through. We mounted our bikes and cycled into our seventh European country.