Part II

The Danube. This map is included for the edification of our American readers.

An Offer of Garlic

Schmitz woke with a headache and a rumbling in his ears. The headache was from too much beer and being coshed in a Hungarian Gaststube. The rumbling turned out to be the wheels of a train. He sat up and looked around. He seemed to be in a second-class carriage. An empty one.

It was still night, but there were glimmerings of light on the passing horizon. A horizon that was surprisingly high: the train was obviously headed into the mountains. Schmitz had a lot of questions, once his head cleared. Questions like How did I get on board a train?, Where am I?, Why am I in a second-class carriage?, and most pressing of all, Do I have enough money for the ticket? Once a Beamter, always a Beamter.

He waited, but no conductor came to whom he could complain about being shanghaied into rolling stock. The answer turned out to be in his pocket when he reached in there for a headache powder. There was a note, written in a clean, precise hand on very bad Bulgarian notepaper.

Dear Herr Schmitz,

Sorry that you have had to make this journey in such unexpected fashion, but we couldn't have you alarming the authorities. You will find your luggage in the overhead rack, and your ticket in your breast pocket.

Please alight at Klausenburg. A calèche will be waiting for you. The driver is named Igor. He is sensitive about this. Please be patient with him as his German is poor.

We will meet you at the castle.

Count Rákoczy

Schmitz located his headache powder and washed it down with brandy from his hip flask. Donnerwetter!, he inwardly fumed. Overwhelmed by a Transylvanian count! What next? Oh, yes, explanations at 'the castle', I don't think! This looks more and more like cheap fiction. Being at heart a phlegmatic and uncomplicated nature, Schmitz decided to cross his bridges when he came to them. He leaned back and fell fast asleep in his second-class carriage.

It was good he did: Schmitz wasn't alone for long. At Temesvár, the train filled up with local passengers who gossiped noisily in several languages at once, it seemed. The elderly lady in the headscarf who sat facing him offered to share her breakfast. As her breakfast consisted of black bread with butter and slices of raw garlic, Schmitz declined as gracefully as he could manage. The journey seemed endless, but it was only noon when the train arrived at Klausenburg station. Schmitz alighted and went to look for his calèche – which was, indeed, waiting exactly as foretold.

Igor turned out to be a very bad-tempered Bulgarian with equally bad breath, but it was unnecessary to say too much to him beyond his name – Schmitz's, not Igor's – and soon the calèche was rattling its way over roads that might possibly have seen better days, although Schmitz seriously doubted it. The general direction was east, and beyond that, Schmitz was clueless. He only hoped the horse knew his way up the mountain roads, such as they were. He wasn't feeling too sanguine about Igor.

Fortress in the Forest

It took a long time to get into the mountains. The roads wound so severely that several times Schmitz felt there was imminent danger that the calèche would plummet down the mountainside with them in it. However, they eventually arrived at a village, where Igor, without a word, parked the vehicle and went into the post office for a few minutes. Schmitz took advantage of this pause to study his surroundings: not that the village appeared to offer much in the way of sights. Merely a few crooked streets of cobblestone, an inn, a smallish Gothic church, and a few passersby in sheepskins and woolen hats.

The passersby all looked at Schmitz curiously. One seemed amused by his hat – he pointed to his own head and laughed. Others looked sympathetically at him, and one old woman ran impulsively to him, pressing into his hands a rosary with a crucifix at the end. She muttered something about strigoi. Schmitz knew what this meant – a kind of night-roaming monster – but, as he was not superstitious, this did not make him afraid. He was a good Catholic, though, so he thanked the old woman with a smile and decided to hold the crucifix in his hand for the rest of the journey. Which recommenced when Igor came out of the post office with a surprisingly large sack of mail. Igor glanced at the rosary, shrugged, and said, 'Das nichts nutzen,' or something similar, before clucking to the horse and continuing down (up) the rough road to….where?

The countryside, while steep, was not unimpressive, even in the winter snow. Rocky crags overhung their path, and the Beamter started to worry that, if they didn't slide down the mountain, the mountain might slide down on them. Schmitz, basically a town man, wasn't entirely comfortable so far from civilisation. That was an understatement: let's face it, he was miserable so far from a railway or steamship or even a good Gaststätte with a pint of lager. This was too much reality for him. Igor and the horse seemed to be doing fine, however, so he let them get on with it and went back to worrying about Kapitänstöchter. Would he find the missing girls at the end of this mysterious journey? And when he did, would they be, er, intact? Or had some awful fate befallen them at the hands of an unscrupulous – and, let's face this while we're facing things – possibly uncanny Hungarian nobleman? Schmitz wasn't relishing the report he'd have to write.

In spite of his anxiety, Schmitz must have dozed off, because as the sun began to sink over the mountains, he woke with a start to a vision from architectural hell. Looming before them in the late sunlight was a castle out of a nightmare by Goya: turrets and round towers leaned crazily everywhere in that maddening way Balkan castles have of somehow holding together. The whole mess sat atop a craggy mountain as if it were a three-dimensional puzzle piece carved to fit just there, between the jagged rocks. Schmitz sighed. He missed the Baroque Ordnung of the k-u-k capital. The horse, though, seemed to welcome the sight. It trotted cheerfully towards the open gate, which signified home and oats.

The rainbow banner over the gate read, 'Welcome to Castle Rákoczy! Enter freely and of your own will! Literary discussion groups and musical evenings nightly!'

For the second time in this adventure, Schmitz uttered the cry of the baffled steamship detective: 'Was zum Teufel? The horse passed under the curious banner, and Schmitz's journey with the Goulash Underground had reached its terminus.

To be continued…

Dmitri Gheorgheni

10.09.18 Front Page

Back Issue Page