1
Romanian Orthodox Epiphany, celebrated on 6 January, is the most important religious holiday after Christmas and Easter. January 24, the date on which two of the country’s three constituent regions united in 1859, is also a national holiday.
2
Abraham Zissu was a millionaire Bucharest socialite and leader of the Romanian Zionist movement.
3
Jacques-Bénigne Bossuet (1627–1704): French bishop and royalist preacher.
4
Popular summer and winter mountain resort north of Bucharest.
5
Transylvania, where these scenes are set, had a significant German-speaking minority at this time.
6
Capital city of Transylvania.
7
Raoul Duffy (1877–1953): Popular French painter and decorator.
8
The most popular Black Sea resort in Romania between the two world wars, a favourite of the Romanian Royal Family. Today it is the Bulgarian town of Balchik.
9
The painters named in this passage were all leading avant-garde figures in the Bucharest art world of the 1920s and 1930s.
10
Ştefan Luchian (1868–1917): Romanian painter whose artistic legacy was the subject of controversy in 1930s Bucharest.
11
On June 30, 1934, Adolf Hitler’s SS began to eliminate the rival right-wing paramilitary group, the SA (or Brownshirts), killing dozens, or possibly hundreds, of its members.
12
“All right, okay.”
13
“In a difficult ascent, nothing can replace the use of sealskin. The seeming inconvenience of the procedure is largely compensated for by the greater security and stability obtained.”
14
The Siebenbürgischer Karpaten Verein (literally, “Transylvanian Carpathian Society”) was founded in 1880 to develop the region’s winter sports facilities.
15
“You’ve really lost your way. Where were you going? Where are you coming from?”
16
“Oh no! That’s just Saxon dialect. The two of us always talk to each other in Saxon dialect.”
17
“Many, in their wandering/ Reach the door by dark paths….”
18
“Traveller, enter silently/ Pain studs the threshold/ There shining in clear light/ Are bread and wine on the table.”
19
Georg Trakl (1887–1914).
20
“Wednesday, May 5, 1932.”
21
“Break, lovely morning light/ and let the heavens dawn/ fear not, you shepherds / for the angels speak to you…”
22
“The family path.”
23
“Sing out joyfully, rejoice and praise the days!”
24
Transylvania derives its German name (Siebenbürgen, or “seven towns”) from the seven fortress-towns founded in the region by Saxon settlers in the 12th century.
25
“Young Grodeck, young Grodeck….”
26
Hungarian: “An Agreement Was Reached in Rome!”