“Helen explained to me that her aunt wanted me to know about the reconstruction of the bridge. ‘ Budapest was very badly damaged in the war,’ she said. ‘One of our bridges has not even yet been fully repaired, and many buildings suffered. You can see that we are still rebuilding in every part of the city. But this bridge was repaired for its-how do you say it?-the centennial of its construction, in 1949, and we are very proud of that. And I am particularly proud because my aunt helped to organize the reconstruction.’ Aunt Éva smiled and nodded, then seemed to remember that she wasn’t supposed to understand any of this.
“A moment later we plunged into a tunnel that appeared to run almost under the castle itself, and Aunt Éva told us she had selected one of her favorite restaurants, a ‘truly Hungarian’ place on József Attila Street. I was still amazed by the names of Budapest ’s streets, some of them simply strange or exotic to me and some, like this one, redolent of a past I had thought lived only in books. József Attila Street turned out to be as politely grand as most of the rest of the city, not at all a muddy track lined with barbaric encampments where Hun warriors ate in their saddles. The restaurant was quiet and elegant inside, and the maître d‘ came hurrying forward to greet Aunt Éva by name. She seemed used to this sort of attention. In a few minutes we were settled at the best table in the room, where we could enjoy views of old trees and old buildings, strolling pedestrians in their summer finery, and glimpses of noisy little cars zooming through the city. I sat back with a sigh of pleasure.
“Aunt Éva ordered for all of us, as a matter of course, and when the first dishes came, they were accompanied by a strong liquor calledpaálinka that Helen said was distilled from apricots. ‘Now we will have something very good with this,’ Aunt Éva explained to me through Helen. ‘We call thesehortobàgyi palacsinta. They are a kind of pancake filled with veal, a tradition with the shepherds in the lowlands of Hungary. You will like them.’ I did, and I liked all the dishes that followed-the stewed meats and vegetables, the layers of potatoes and salami and hard-boiled eggs, the heavy salads, the green beans and mutton, the wonderful golden-brown bread. I hadn’t realized until then how hungry I’d been during our long day of travel. I noticed, too, that Helen and her aunt ate unabashedly, with a relish no polite American woman would have dared to show in public.
“It would be a mistake to convey the impression that we simply ate, however. As all of this tradition went down the hatch, Aunt Éva talked and Helen translated. I asked the occasional question, but for the most part, I remember, I was very busy absorbing both the food and the information. Aunt Éva seemed to have firmly in mind the fact that I was a historian; perhaps she even suspected my ignorance on the subject of Hungary ’s own history and wanted to be sure I didn’t embarrass her at the conference, or perhaps she was prompted by the patriotism of the long-established immigrant. Whatever her motive, she talked brilliantly, and I could almost read her next sentence on her mobile, vivid face before Helen interpreted it for me.
“For example, when we’d finished toasting friendship between our countries with thepaálinka, Aunt Éva seasoned our shepherd’s pancakes with a description of Budapest’s origins-it had once been a Roman garrison called Aquincum, and you could still find the odd Roman ruin lying around-and she painted a vivid picture of Attila and his Huns stealing it from the Romans in the fifth century. The Ottomans were actually mild-mannered latecomers, I thought. The stewed meats and vegetables-one dish of which Helen calledgulyás, assuring me with a stern look that it was not goulash, which was called something else by Hungarians-gave rise to a long description of the invasion of the region by the Magyars in the ninth century. Over the layered potato-and-salami dish, which was certainly much better than meat loaf or macaroni-and-cheese, Aunt Éva described the coronation of King Stephen I-Saint István, ultimately-by the pope in 1000 AD. ‘He was a heathen in animal skins,’ she told me through Helen, ‘but he became the first king of Hungary and converted Hungary to Christianity. You will see his name everywhere in Budapest.’
“Just when I thought I could not eat another bite, two waiters appeared with trays of pastries and tortes that would not have been out of place in an Austro-Hungarian throne room, all swirls of chocolate or whipped cream, and with cups of coffee-‘Eszpresszó,’Aunt Éva explained. Somehow we found room for everything. ‘Coffee has a tragic history in Budapest,’ Helen translated for Aunt Éva. ‘A long time ago-in 1541, actually-the invader Süleyman I invited one of our generals, whose name was Bálint Török, to have a delicious meal with him in his tent, and at the end of the meal, while he was drinking his coffee-he was the first Hungarian person to taste coffee, you see-Süleyman informed him that the best of the Turkish troops had been taking over Buda Castle while they were eating. You can imagine how bitter that coffee tasted.’
“Her smile was more rueful than luminous this time. The Ottomans again, I thought-how clever they were, and cruel, such a strange mixture of aesthetic refinement and barbaric tactics. In 1541 they had already held Istanbul for nearly a century; remembering this gave me a sense of their abiding strength, the firm hold from which they’d reached their tentacles across Europe, stopping only at the gates of Vienna. Vlad Dracula’s fight against them, like that of many of his Christian compatriots, had been the struggle of a David against a Goliath, with far less success than David achieved. On the other hand, the efforts of minor nobility across Eastern Europe and the Balkans, not only in Wallachia but also in Hungary, Greece, and Bulgaria, to name only a few countries, had eventually routed the Ottoman occupation. All of this Helen had succeeded in transferring to my brain, and it left me, on reflection, with a certain perverse admiration for Dracula. He must have known that his defiance of the Turkish forces was doomed in the short term, and yet he had struggled for most of his life to rid his territories of the invaders.
“‘That was actually the second time the Turks occupied this region.’ Helen sipped her coffee and set it down with a sigh of satisfaction, as if it tasted better to her here than anywhere in the world. ‘János Hunyadi overcame them at Belgrade in 1456. He is one of our great heroes, with King István and King Matthias Corvinus, who built the new castle and the library I told you about. When you hear the church bells ringing all over the city at noon tomorrow, you can remember it is for Hunyadi’s victory centuries ago. They are still rung for him every day.’
“‘Hunyadi,’ I said thoughtfully. ‘I think you mentioned him the other night. And did you say his victory was in 1456?’
“We looked at each other; any date that fell within Dracula’s lifetime had become a sort of signal between us. ‘He was in Wallachia at the time,’ said Helen in a low voice. I knew she didn’t mean Hunyadi, because we had also made a silent pact not to mention Dracula’s name in public.
“Aunt Éva was too sharp to be put off by our silence, or by a mere language barrier. ‘Hunyadi?’ she asked, and added something in Hungarian.
“‘My aunt wants to know if you have a special interest in the period when Hunyadi lived,’ Helen explained.