People Say They Can T Remember a Summer Like It. in the Grocery Store the Girl at the Checkout

Indians

People say they can’t remember a summer like it. In the grocery store the girl at the checkout jokes with a customer that in a few years’ time the local farmers here in Hargita will be growing bananas and pineapples instead of apples. Pretty soon, the girl says, fruit like pears and apples will have to be imported from someplace further north, maybe the Ukraine or Russia.

Young people with time on their hands and a little money to spare head for the public pool. You can stay as long as you like, chatting and fooling around with your friends. Whenever the heat became unbearable they slip into the water to cool off, or buy an ice cream and a chilled drink at one of the booths.

Pensioners, unless they’re looking after their grandchildren for the day, prefer to spend the hottest hours indoors, the curtains tightly drawn against the sun. In the late afternoon they begin to emerge from their concrete apartment blocks, tentatively at first, like snails poking their heads out of their shells. If the heat has abated by then or if a light breeze has sprung up, which happens some days when the sun begins to wane, they slowly make their way to the municipal park by the Nagy-Küküllőriver. Unlike the public pool, entrance to the park is free. That counts for something in a country like Romania, particularly if you’re eking out a state pension. The luckier ones find an unoccupied bench in the shade, although most of the benches are damaged or warped and they’re badly in need of a fresh coat of paint.

Even the town’s stray dogs, who mostly keep to the park and to the scruffy strip of wasteland on the far side of the river where the homeless men have set up camp, are out of sorts. During the day the dogs are too listless even to scavenge for food. They find themselves a shady spot early on, burying their muzzles in the dirt, too hot and apathetic to move.

The widow Tompa, who is eighty three years old and who still lives in her father-in-law’s house in the centre of town, next to the fort that the Szekely burnt down several times, prays that no-one will bother her today in all this heat. Normally, she’s only too pleased to collect the modest entrance fee from visitors who come to look at her father in law’s study with its writing desk, shelves of classics, pen and ink drawings and glass-topped display cabinets containing published volumes of his poetry. In one or two of the cabinets there are faded, no longer decipherable letters that her father in law received from some of the leading writers of the day.

Many of her father-in-law’s poems, written in his native Hungarian, are about the beauties of the Transylvanian landscape. They were translated into several languages, including English and French. The poet wrote some of his most affecting verses in that room during a life that was marked by increasing isolation and adversity. The widow Tompa, who lives all alone since the death of her husband and since her only daughter moved away, likes to reminisce about her famous father-in-law and about his family. But it’s too hot to talk about anything on a day like today.

Only the Gypsies don’t complain about the heat. With their wiry, mud-brown bodies they seem perfectly at ease even though temperatures in the hills and forests of Harghita have soared to those more usually associated with Egypt or North Africa. During the day, tousle-haired Gypsy kids aged seven or eight wander the baking streets, often barefoot, pestering passers by for a little money. Tourists, taking their ease at the pavement cafes that have sprung up in recent years, are their favourite target. The tourists are dumber or more soft-hearted than the locals and they often have more money. The Gypsies know that, if they pester a tourist for long enough, he will often part with a few coins just to be left alone to enjoy his glass of ice cold beer in peace.

“May God protect you,” the Gypsy kids intone reverentially, over and over, although they aren’t noticeably devout at other times. They stand as close as they can to their intended victim, a grubby hand outstretched. Usually, after a while, the man or woman relents, reaching into a pocket for a little money. If the tourist is a man and over forty, which is old for a Gypsy, the kids address him respectfully as “Bácsi”, or “Uncle”, until he’s given them what they want.

That’s the thing about Gypsies. People who don’t know anything about them often say that they’re stupid. In this part of the world there are plenty of jokes about dumb Gypsies, like the jokes that were once commonplace about Polacks in America or about Micks in Britain.

It’s true that, even in this day and age, many Gypsies grow up not knowing how to read or write. But that doesn’t mean they’re stupid. The way many Gypsies look at the world, which isn’t how you might expect, it’s the Gadje who are dumb, often parting with their money for no good reason.

Take the public pool at the edge of town. You have to fork out several Lei apiece to use the pool, which is a lot of money for Gypsies, particularly in times like these, while access to the nearby river is free. Yet the Gadje insist on paying for the privilege of cooling off.

“Just look at them!” snorts an elderly man, standing on a footpath at the park’s edge, overlooking the river. “You’d think this was the Ganges and that we were in India!” The man is staring at the river and pointing at some Gypsies who are making the most of the water on this baking hot day. A muscular, dark skinned youth, naked above the waist, is standing in the middle of the river, just below a small weir, energetically soaping himself. Grinning, the youth ducks repeatedly under the fast-flowing water to wash off the suds. A couple of times, while I and others watch him, he steadies himself, placing his hands wide apart on the concrete surface of the weir, several inches beneath the water. Maybe he’s noticed us staring him and he’s showing off or perhaps he just wants to cool down. Who can say? As we continue to watch the young man slowly lowers his head into a foaming jet of water. You can see from his posture that he’s summoning all his strength just to stand still.

Nearby, a couple of toddlers, aged no more than three or four and naked as the day they were born, are playing in the shallows at the river’s edge. A fleshy woman squats comfortably in the shadow of a tree, watching over them.

“Gypsies!” mutters the old man, still rooted to the spot. “You can’t teach them anything!”

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