Trouble in Transylvania by Barbara Wilson Page A

particularly appropriate. Señor Martínez was a salesman for a large Spanish bathroom fixture factory and he was here to sell well-designed toilets, bidets, sinks and tubs to the Hungarians. He happened to have his portfolio with him and was not at all shy about immediately showing me glossy color photographs. I felt almost as if we were looking at pornography, particularly the way his stubby, ringed hand lingered over the curved porcelain smoothness of the bidets.
    “And you’re the one who will be my translator?” he said to me in Spanish. “Then please tell Señora Eva that her eyes are as blue as the Mediterranean.”
    “Señor Martínez says he’s dying to try some paprika chicken,” I said. “But I suggested the stuffed carp.”
    Eva handed him her menu. “Please.”
    “I speak of love, not food.” He pushed it away and fixed her with a tender look.
    “I can’t persuade him,” I said. “It’s gotta be the chicken.”
    The Gypsy musicians had appeared and, without preliminaries, launched into a wild csárdás, startling a party of elderly British tourists who had been quietly whingeing about the prices on the menu (“I thought you said Eastern Europe was a bargain, Colin.”). There were four musicians, dressed in blousy white embroidered shirts and tight black trousers. It was impossible to tell what they were thinking, but on the surface they were as shiny as copper pennies. The lead violinist had spotted Eva as both Hungarian and gorgeous, and our soup had hardly been set in front of us before he and his violin were leaning over her shoulder. His bowing was so intense it was more like archery.
    Eva toasted the violinist with her wine and asked for a special song, not another wild tune, but something haunting and strange.
    “Tell Señor Martínez this is a real Gypsy tune, not for tourists.”
    I translated and Señor Martínez sighed eloquently, his hand at his heart, “The Spanish and the Hungarians are very much alike. We have the wildness and also the sadness, what we call duende. We have both been conquered peoples, we have the souls of Gypsies and the heads for business. That is why I think I can sell our beautiful bathroom fixtures here. I believe they will be understood. And now you have democracy. Hungary, I salute you!” He raised his glass. “Down with fascism!”
    “What’s he saying?” asked Eva.
    “He says he wishes that paprika chicken would hurry up. He’s starving!”
    But Señor Martínez was a single-minded man when it came to the similarities between Hungary and Spain, and the possibility of a spectacular union, plumbing and otherwise, between them.
    While the Gypsies made wild music over our shoulders, Señor Martínez outlined a theory of history. “Both Christian Spain and Christian Hungary fought against the infidel Arabs,” he said. “We stopped the Mohammedans from overrunning Europe.”
    “But surely you must admit, Señor Martínez,” I corrected him, “that the Moors in Spain created a brilliant civilization of poetry, philosophy, gardens. Not only did they have the first lighted, paved streets in Europe, they had the first sewage system in the world. Plumbing, Señor, they had plumbing.”
    “The Reconquista was Spain’s finest moment,” he disagreed.
    “What’s he saying?” Eva demanded.
    “He thinks the Turks have gotten a bad rap,” I said. “He says, Really, what’s so bad about a culture that drinks coffee and sits around in bathtubs all day?”
    “The Turkish infidels?” said Eva, shocked.
    “What does Eva say?” he asked.
    “She says she wishes these Gypsy musicians would take a hike. They’re starting to remind her of a Luftwaffe raid, except there are no bomb shelters.”
    Señor Martínez stared at me a moment and then spoke in laborious English, with a pleading glance at Eva, “I am think Señora Reilly is have fun with me.”
    “Oh no, Señor Martínez, you’re wrong about that. Believe me, I’m not having much fun at