In Time, Out of Place

by You Jin

  “What is the average income for a university graduate?” I asked.

  She considered, then said, “Roughly five or six thousand forint a month.” (About seventy-five or eighty US dollars.)

  “Is that enough to cover daily expenses?”

  “Of course not!” She quickly added, “It is a common thing for people to have two jobs. The Balaton Lake District grows grapes in abundance, and there are many wineries. In the peak season, many go to work in the vineyards or wineries to earn a little additional income.”

  “In the long run, won’t you run out of energy like that?”

  “What choice do we have?” she said. “Being worn out is better than being hungry.”

  “Is the situation really that serious?”

  “It is!” She continued very seriously. “Just think, my father makes ten thousand forint a month, but just my monthly food and lodging come to more than one thousand forint. All the additional fees, including tuition, and daily expenses total up to at least another three thousand. Eighty per cent of my father’s salary goes toward paying for my and my sister’s education. If he didn’t look for an additional source of income, we could not make ends meet.”

  Saying this, she sighed, then went on, “In Hungary today, only our wages remain unchanged. Inflation, the soaring prices of goods and everything else seem extremely unstable.”

  After a moment’s pause, she said, “Let me tell you something funny. The Hungarian government is encouraging people to have more children. For each child one has, the government will give one thousand five hundred forint a month. But a pair of infant’s shoes costs seven hundred, and a decent set of clothing at least nine hundred. So you see, people will receive the government aid, but it is not even enough for shoes and clothing, so who dares to have more children?”

  As we talked, we reached the edge of the lake. The moonlight fell on Lake Balaton, turning it an inky green like the gentle eyes of a lover. There was light all around falling on the lake. When the breeze blew, it was like there were countless little sprites playfully blinking their eyes.

  We found a stone bench and sat down.

  “Zenevieva, what are your plans for the future?”

  “I am applying to go to England.”

  “Migrating?” I asked, surprised.

  “No.” She laughed. “I am very interested in language studies. I have always felt it is the key that opens up the whole world. I’ve already been accepted to a university to study history in English. But I feel my standard of English is not good enough. And many introductory English or English conversation textbooks are stiff and unnatural, far removed from the language used in daily life. So, before I enter the university, I hope I can immerse myself in an English environment and improve my language skills…”

  “Isn’t it very expensive to study in England?”

  “I have an aunt there, and I’ve already asked her to help me look for a job. I’ll be a nanny, a cleaner, a waitress, or whatever. As long as it helps me reach my goal of studying there.”

  She was only eighteen, but she already had a clear idea of what kind of life she wanted. What was more admirable was how she had carefully made preparations to pave the way for her own life.

  I offered my sincere praise. “You are very independent.”

  “Independent?” She laughed lightly. “Thanks to my parents for that. When I was fourteen, they sent me hundreds of miles away to a boarding school in Pecs. They settled everything for me early on. Then on the first day of school, they just bought me a train ticket and put me on the train by myself. When I reached Pecs, I didn’t know anything, not even where I was, nor did I know anyone. I was in a daze. That night, I lay in my bed crying until my pillow was soaked. I really hated my parents then, hated their cruelty for tossing me out like a discarded bag and sending me to a strange place. It’s funny that I couldn’t see my parents’ kind motive. It took me a whole year to adapt. Once I had adjusted, I felt that there was nothing in the world that couldn’t be overcome. This is a very difficult way to learn, but it’s also the most effective.”

  Seeing the firm, straight set of her mouth, another face suddenly came to my mind, a cold, proud face. I could not help but ask, “You and your sister—your personalities seem quite different…”

  Before I had even finished, she nodded vigorously. She said, “Yes, that’s right. Quite different. My sister was very sheltered at home, and when she got to boarding school, she depended on me for everything. She’s still an immature little girl. She’s already fifteen, but until now, she does not dare to take the train home from school alone. She likes luxury, enjoying life, and spends money frivolously. She’s not very good at her studies either. She has her heart set on being an actress. She is typical of the new generation of young Hungarians. I predict there will be more and more of this type of young people in our gradually less restrictive society.”

  When Zenevieva said this, I could feel her frustration.

  “Just as an example, I am not fussy about my clothing, only buying something good on occasion if I have earned the money, and then I can hardly bear to wear it, keeping it for a special occasion. But my sister is very different. As soon as she gets new clothes, she takes them out and puts them on. Even worse, she will borrow my clothes and wear them, not taking care of them at all. When she returns them to me, there is always a coffee or tea stain here or there. Once, there was even a hole. I have often argued with her over these things, not because I care about these material goods, but because I can’t stand her attitude.”

  “I think what you can’t stand is her values.”

  Zenevieva cocked her head to one side and thought, then nodded and said, “You’re right, it’s her values. Though we were brought up in the same family, because of how we were taught, we have very different views of life.”

  In fact, this skewed sense of values in the younger generation can be found in every country and every group of people. In the short term, it might not be evident, but over the long term, one’s national roots will certainly be shaken. For instance, the people’s skewed sense of values is like termites in a house. They do their work unseen, chipping away until the whole house is weakened from the inside. On the outside, everything still looks all right. But when the storms come, the whole thing suddenly comes crumbling down.

  “Our new political party came into power in March this year. But before a new light can shine, the old clutter must be cleared.” Zenevieva seemed much older than her years as she analysed the situation. “There are tangible problems, such as inflation and waves of unemployment, and all of these need to be controlled. But the intangible issues, such as the increasingly weak sense of nationalism amongst the people and the increasing prevalence of hedonism, these also need a radical cure.”

  When I heard Zenevieva sum up her country’s major problems so succinctly, I could not help but ask, “Would you be interested in going into politics?”

  “Go into politics?” She laughed softly. “I’m not the least bit interested. My dream is to be a teacher. I believe that a good teacher can be influential in moulding the values in her students’ lives.”

  The wind was blowing harder. The gentle lapping of the waters suddenly sounded a little sorrowful to the ears.

  Zenevieva and I stood up, and we made our way home slowly along the mountain path in the dark.

  When we reached the house, we ran into Zenevieva’s sister, who was returning home from an outing. She wore a purple outfit. The blouse, reaching over her knees, was of shimmering satin and bound with a thick purple belt around her waist. She wore tight purple pants underneath her blouse, showing off the shapeliness of her slender legs.

  “Where did you go?” Zenevieva asked her.

  “There was a party at Szilarda’s house.” She bent down and untied her shoes; the heels were at least four inches high!

  “Why is there a party every weekend?”

  “It’s fun!”

  As she said this, she carried her shoes a
nd pranced into the house.

  Without a word, Zenevieva looked at me and shrugged.

  The Merry Cemetery

  Guarding Against Worldly Strife

  WE TOOK THE train to Sighetul Marmatiei, a city in the northernmost part of Romania, found accommodations, tossed our luggage into the room, and promptly went out in search of a taxi.

  The place Risheng and I had our hearts set on was in a small, sparsely populated village, Spanta, about twenty kilometres from where we were.

  In the square, several taxis were waiting quietly. One driver stuck his head out of the window and, with a friendly smile, said in poor English, “Are you two going to The Merry Cemetery?”

  Ah, what a clever guess! Happily, we climbed into his vehicle. He asked for sixteen thousand leu (about eight Singapore dollars) for the round trip and, feeling it was reasonable, we agreed to the price. Romanian taxi fares were generally quite cheap, usually a few hundred leu for a short trip, so being able to earn over ten thousand leu in one trip was considered generous earnings. It was no wonder that, as soon as the engine started, this seemingly refined driver began whistling happily.

  Located in an out-of-the-way place, Spanta had only about five thousand residents. For many years, they had sealed themselves off from the strife in the world around them, so they were not affected by any social changes. They continued in their traditional customs, completely self-reliant and with a determined, unwavering nature. Here, having many kids and grandkids is considered a blessing, each person in the family going about their duties faithfully—the men trekking up the mountain to cut lumber, the women tending the house, the boys tending the livestock, and the girls tending to the garden and the weaving. The majority were Greek Orthodox Christians, and every Sunday, old and young, male and female would don their traditional clothes and joyfully attend church.

  The Unrivalled Merry Cemetery

  Risheng and I did not take the trouble to travel this long, circuitous road just for the sake of seeing the isolated little village. What we really wanted to see was a unique cemetery in the village.

  That morning, the weather was especially good. The sky was bright without a hint of clouds, blue as far as the eye could see, sparkling in its grandeur.

  As the car sped along the road, Godoired, our driver, became garrulous. English is not often spoken in Romania, but what really surprised us was that Godoired had mastered the English vocabulary necessary to communicate with others. It was not until we had chatted for a while that I found out that this apparently refined and cultured taxi driver had formerly been a clerk for the Romanian government. In 1989, when Romania had undergone political changes and implemented economic reforms, he, in a snap decision had chosen to become a taxi driver.

  He laughed and said, “As a taxi driver, I get the chance to interact with tourists from many countries. Isn’t that something like a cultural ambassador? And, in this job, the hours I keep and the sort of work I do are all up to me. I get to choose when I come or go. If I feel like going home to see my wife and children, it’s just a short drive, and I’m home. It’s not like before, a nine to five job which, honestly, is extremely stifling. Really, life is short, and we should live for ourselves, doing the work we like to do.”

  I thought, The reason Godoired changed careers and became a taxi driver wasn’t simply because he wanted to earn more money? In Romania, for people who held stable jobs, salaries were very low. A university graduate who became a teacher, for example, would earn a monthly salary of just twenty thousand leu (about one hundred and twenty five Singapore dollars), and a manual labourer would earn about ten thousand leu a month (around one hundred Singapore dollars). When Godoired became a taxi driver, ferrying tourists around, certainly he made more than he would have as a civil servant.

  As we chatted, we reached Spanta. In this village surrounded by woods—it was truly a “forest village”—the local residents really had a great love for the oak tree, lacquering the wood, carving it, and using it to build houses, churches, furniture, handicrafts, chests, and almost anything else. Everything there was made of wood. The body and soul of the oak tree was everywhere and in everything.

  Godoired drove several times around the village, and when we had got a little feel of the town, we turned with anticipation toward The Merry Cemetery.

  As the car coasted into the cemetery, there came from it an amazing, continuous string of laughter that was clear, bold, innocent and tender all at the same time.

  We got out of the car and made our way eagerly to the famous cemetery, which was renowned both near and far.

  A Novel Approach to Tombstone Design

  There were more than two thousand graves, all in orderly arrangement. Most eye-catching were the original designs of the tombstones. They were made of wood and lacquered in a great variety of colours, with many lively pictures, and interesting inscriptions.

  Several teachers had brought their students to view the grounds, and we saw them standing before several different graves reading the information about those buried there. The students filled the air with unbridled laughter, which dispersed the sort of solemn, quiet atmosphere one expects to find in a cemetery, replacing it with a lightness of spirit.

  Flooded with this sort of heartfelt laughter, for the first time in my life I stood in a cemetery surrounded by the dead and found that a smile filled my face.

  The Merry Cemetery was built in 1930 by a Spanta-born sculptor, Stan Patras. He was from a family of woodcarvers and possessed the exquisite sculpting skills handed down from generation to generation.

  In Patras’s view, death was just the path to eternal life (of course, he meant a natural death), so about sixty years earlier, when he was designing a tombstone for one of the villagers who had passed away, he boldly tossed aside the proper and serious approach to building tombstones, and took a novel tack. First, he highlighted the unique aspects of the deceased, their profession or hobbies, carving pictures on the tombstones and lacquering them in bright colours. Then, he attached a huge cross to each tombstone, painting it sky blue, a colour symbolising hope and freedom. The whole tombstone had a warm, gentle, harmonious and bright appearance.

  Also worth mentioning is that the abundant oak wood in Spanta is strong and durable. When Patras used this oak wood in his tombstone designs, he had to apply special measures to protect the tombstones from decay—once the oak trees had been felled, he dried the wood in the sun for a year or two, then he cut them into various shapes and sizes, and dried them for several more months until all the moisture had evaporated from the wood. Only then would he begin to work.

  His unique handcrafted tombstones were well received. After four years, he put his mind to work again, and to those tombstones with prominent paintings, he added a short text commemorating the deceased. These lively verses were full of unforgettable wit and humour. To enhance the theatrical effect, Patras used lots of lyrical local language, sometimes even purposely misspelling words. The majority of these epitaphs were written in first person so that readers would feel they could hear the voices of the dead telling what was in their hearts. Each epitaph had its own character, so the whole cemetery was like a kaleidoscope, or like a collection of humorous books. Each colourful tombstone expressed a person’s life and passions, described in a concise, meaningful, lively, and eloquent way by the epitaph. The whole cemetery was filled with a merriment that could not be described in words. It was a brave challenge to the darkness of death, and a song of praise for eternal life.

  Immortalising a Creative Spirit

  I regretted that I didn’t understand Romanian, and was left out of the side-splitting humour of the epitaphs on the tombstones. But I could not tear myself away from the depictions engraved there. Some of the tombstones had images on both sides. On the front, there was a picture of the occupation of the deceased, whilst the reverse depicted his or her manner of death.

  For instance, one of the tombstones was inscribed on the front with an image of a man building a
table by hand. On the back, the same person was driving a fiery red car. This meant that the man had been a carpenter in life, and had died in a car accident.

  Another tombstone showed a woman who carried an infant in one arm and held a child’s hand on the other side. The reverse showed her in a sea of fire. This indicated that she had two children, then had met with an accident in the factory and been burned to death in an explosion.

  The Merry Cemetery was a microcosm of life in Spanta. Shepherds, farmers, woodcutters, weavers, carpenters, sculptors, tailors, homemakers, businessmen, doctors, musicians, as well as drunkards and gamblers were all buried, harmoniously and without social distinction, in the same cemetery. It was said that when they let go of life in this world and were sent here to be interred, there was no sound of mourning. Instead, their family and relatives indulged merrily in drinks, breaking into songs of joy. Here, the path of death did not stretch out into boundless darkness, but was an opening into eternal life.

  To use the word “merry” in the name of a cemetery was rather controversial because some people found it lacking in respect, or a violation of filial reverence. But the simple Stan Patras candidly stated his belief that death, being the passageway to eternal life, was to be celebrated, thereby making death more deeply meaningful. He believed he was expressing the joy of an unseen realm of life.

  Stan Patras died in 1977, but his creative spirit has been immortalised. Now, the Merry Cemetery has become an enduring “museum” in Romania. People come from all over the world to see it, and in this one place, they can see Stan Patras’s smiling face in the tombstones. This smile celebrates, for all the world to see, the joy and pride of eternal life’s victory over death.