I’m in a Romanian bar soaking up mulled red wine. It’s a seedy place, everyone sitting mutely at his or her table. I’m not the only woman present; an even more elderly lady is ensconced in the stairwell’s shadow. High on the wall, a television is tuned to a station with traditional music, and Gypsy musicians hammer at cimbaloms or make fiddles weep. Up there, in a fantasy world of carved wooden houses and primeval forests, famous songsters warble traditional tunes, swaying mixed choruses trill, and dancers whirl. All wear traditional Romanian costumes. A handsome husband in a loose white shirt and black vest smiles adoringly at his exquisite full-skirted wife; an elderly couple, ever in love, are holding hands; here comes the jaunty son, axe slung over his shoulder, singing as he struts past blue-hazed mountains.

Where can I find that quaint and mythical Romania? Only in a television studio or at one of the country’s uninhabited ethnological museums. Oddly enough, the music is not synchronised with the action: the singer’s lips, the musicians’ gestures, have nothing to do with what we’re hearing. The sound is right, though, and from time to time, the drink-sodden men in the bar bestir themselves, whistle, and slap their thighs.

One man signals to me from a table across the room. He’s evidently quite drunk, yet a handsome fellow, nonetheless, with his broad grey handlebar moustache and large head. I ignore his signalling, but he’s quite determined to offer me a drink. I refuse with a smile, show that conversation is impossible—I know only a little Romanian. But he is charmed.

And straight away everyone perks up. The blowsy female bartender is on my side; the men at neighbouring tables look cheerily at me, discuss me with one another, also offer me drinks. The atmosphere becomes decidedly merry, and all gather around my table to wait. For what? For my stories? Am I to be the traveller who regales the enthusiastic company with tales of foreign parts? With adventures of the high road? With a poem or two? A song?

I can’t, even in my little way, emulate Velvel. What words can I use? Yiddish was the passepartout language in his day; you could travel all over Eastern Europe on its wings. But no longer. So I remain in my seat, smiling blandly. Stupidly and ineptly silent.

 


A Contrary Journey, with Velvel Zbarzher, Bard

https://books2read.com/A-Contrary-Journey

 

Velvel Zbarzher, rebel and glittering star of fusty inns, spent his life singing his poems to loyal audiences of poor workers and craftsmen, and his attacks condemning the religious stronghold resulted in banishment and itinerancy. By the time Velvel died in Constantinople in 1883, the Haskalah had triumphed and the modern Jew had been created. But modernisation and assimilation hadn’t brought an end to anti-Semitism.

Armed with a useless nineteenth-century map, a warm but lumpy second hand coat and an unhealthy dose of curiosity, Culiner trudged through the snow in former Galicia, the Russian Pale, and Romania searching for Velvel, the houses where he lived, and the bars where he sang. But she was also on the lookout for a vanished way of life in Austria, Turkey, and Canada.

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