A Guided Tour Through the Museum of Communism (16 page)

As any reader of this introduction will surely understand by now, the most important ingredient of any goulash—as well as goulash communism—is tolerance. Even though this particular ingredient is never mentioned in any Hungarian cookbook. And this is why my cookbook, in the end, is inevitably political. This is why it stands for the freedom to interpret basic recipes while still preserving the identity, the Magyarness, of the dishes, of Tokay wine, of PIK salami, and all what we call Hungarica.

I like to think of my cookbook as promoting a Hungarian nouvelle cuisine of a sort. I also like to think—perhaps this reveals my vanity!—that understanding the difference between a goulash and a gulag could contribute to understanding why it is so hard, and why it takes such a long time, to change the mentality of people who for decades were haunted by this difference.

At the end, dear patient reader, I am aware that I started this long but necessary introduction in a light tone and ended up embroiled in politics, history, and identity—just like a typical East European intellectual—and I don't apologize for that.

As for the recipes that follow, I can only wish you enjoy them regardless of how original they are!
Jó étvádyat!

S
o, my dear friend, you've come all the way from Vienna to ask why there are so many dogs on the streets of Bucharest, even in the very center? You tell me that “there are an estimated three hundred thousand stray dogs in Bucharest, a city of more than two million people, and there are up to fifty incidents of biting per day”—figures you found in the news.

Striking statistics, and true, indeed.

Forgive me for saying so, but you must be a foreigner who is here for the first time to ask about dogs. I wouldn't say that you're naive, just that this is what foreign visitors like you notice first: the impossible traffic situation and the stray dogs. At this time of day I bet it took you two hours to get from the airport to my home, although it shouldn't have taken more than thirty minutes? Am I right? Of course, but Romanians are used to it. They prefer to drive their cars, even if they have to drive at the pace of a snail. Our local humans don't notice us dogs any longer—and if they do, unlike you they seem not to consider us a problem. You see, one gets used to everything with time, even thousands of dogs in the streets of, shall we say, one of the European Union's capitals.

I agree when you say that we
cani
are cohabitants with humans as long as we don't bite them. I also agree when you say that one doesn't see thousands of dogs roaming the streets of, say, Berlin, Paris, or, God forbid, Vienna. By the way, I hear that Vienna is a kind of paradise for dogs. Not only are its citizens not bothered by dog—forgive my expression—droppings being spread all over the pavements of that beautiful city, but ladies take them along to fine coffeehouses, and waiters bring them water. Moreover, dogs are seen sitting in ladies' laps and eating cakes from small plates of their own—if one can believe
that
kind of rumor. But you're nodding! You've seen it yourself? Oh, it warms my heart that such a place exists in this cruel world! However, not even there do packs of dogs roam free.

I want to say that I understand your curiosity about this subject, my dear friend. It seems that canine freedom to move in this city somehow indicates primitivism in the local humans. Seriously, though, my opinion is that the dog question does not have a simple answer. Maybe I'm too old; maybe you should ask another dog. We dogs are just like you: Some of us don't remember; some simply don't care; and, most certainly, we have different opinions among ourselves. You happen to be interviewing a very old dog (that is me, Karl, called Charlie) who remembers that the beginning of the whole dog story in Bucharest started during the ancien régime, and who happens to think that the displacement of dogs was the consequence of a political decision. In former times, what you habitually call Communism (although there was communism and Communism), politics used to rule our lives in a more obvious way. I mean, both our and our human cohabitants' lives, since our destinies are intertwined.

Without wanting to be pathetic, I could say that we dogs were also victims of the totalitarian regime. I'll tell you how.

But I am running ahead of myself. I am prone to digressions, you know. It's my age. On the other hand, I was recommended to you precisely because of my age or, rather, for my memory, eh? How old am I, you ask? I was born during historic times, in 1990, just before the “revolution,” which makes me extremely old in dog years. Or roughly 120 in human years. No wonder my mind wanders sometimes . . .

Where was I? Oh yes, that we dogs in Romania were victims of Communism. I am afraid that we are no less victims of the postrevolutionary period as well—as you can witness yourself today. My people—or should I say my kind, for the sake of what is nowadays called political correctness?—tell me that life on the streets is getting bloody tough. As if I don't see that myself, just because I don't go out for long walks anymore. Ah, my rheumatic legs! But I see, believe you me. Just yesterday I accompanied my friend (you understand, I can't call him “master”)—Martin is his name—to the nearby grocery. Mind you, not one of these fancy chains sporting Dutch tomatoes that don't smell or taste of anything, like Billa or Spar, that we have everywhere now. It's a small state-owned
Alimentari
that hasn't changed for some reason. Yet. It is selling locally grown cabbage heads and half-rotten onions. And there she was, lying in front of the store, an example of our misery for all to see: a beautiful Labrador bitch waiting for someone to take pity on her and give her a piece of bread. Waiting, I say, not begging, because you could tell that she was too fine to lower herself to that level. She had sad velvet eyes that reminded me of my motherʹs . . . Anyway, there was another dog on a leash, tied to a fence. Although just an ugly creature of a mix breed (and I'm not being racist here, merely expressing my indignation), he looked down upon the Labrador bitch as if proud of the status indicated by the presence of his leash. A dog on a leash is in possession of something very precious nowadays: a master. For any dog in Bucharest this is no small matter, since it means he's fed regularly, which most can't claim. So he looked at the bitch, at her hungry expression, at the infected wound on her ear, and at her dirty golden coat, and I saw his look. It was full not of empathy but of malice. I was disgusted at his behavior. “Wait here,” I told her, and she looked at me with gratitude. Of course my friend Martin gave her a few morsels; he's that kind of person. But that's not a solution for stray dogs; charity never is a solution for social problems.

You see, there we are, I'm calling for a systematic solution, and that, of course, is to slip into politics! Yes, politics about dogs. They, too, are intelligent creatures; they need rules.

You tell me that you recently visited New English College and that you met a dog there who was mildly curious and decidedly not aggressive. I know him; he was adopted there, lucky sod! But at least he was pleasant. There are many cases of self-adoption or semiadoption. That's when people feed the dogs in their neighborhood and in that way domesticate them. As you can imagine, one must adapt or perish. Just think, dogs were the very first animals to be domesticated by humans thousands of years ago. Isn't it a paradox that today humans are doing the same again? However, this isn't the solution either, because, as you know, my lot tends to multiply rather quickly, which is an issue I'll take up a bit later. Suddenly there are too many dogs on the streets, and nobody can feed them. And then, as a result, we become hungry—and angry. In other words, by behaving carelessly we make our own lives more difficult.

Do you see how this issue is getting more and more complicated?

You've most certainly met the kind of dog who passes you by, looking indifferent or very busy, although I can't think with what. You know, the kind who deliberately avoids even eye contact with you humans. Those wretched creatures are making an effort to maintain their pride, even if—regrettably—they know they live off humans and always have done. Nowadays, I'm sorry to say, most dogs you meet in the streets of Bucharest bark at you, and even try to bite you. As I already told you, the statistics you quoted at the beginning are true. What was that? One of your friends here had such an experience? She told you that one afternoon she was walking home in her rather posh part of town when all of a sudden a dog jumped out from under a car and bit her on the leg? And that she considers herself lucky that it wasn't a big dog, and that the wound wasn't serious. Hmm . . . your friend was indeed fortunate that a solitary dog attacked her, I'd say. Stray dogs usually operate in packs. Your friend was surely aware of that, and therefore did nothing about it, didn't report the incident to, say, the police. What would police have done? Probably just have laughed at her and told her that they are sometimes attacked themselves. Even today Romanians rarely report such incidents to the police—or any incidents, for that matter. Who trusts the police?

I'm aware that such attacks—such stray dogs—would raise alarm in any other city. A mayor would have to come up with some solution. Not here, not in Bucharest. Not even if children are attacked, which happens more than you might believe. Let me just tell you that besides organized crime and corruption, organized dog attacks are next! Alright, alright, dogs perhaps represent a different kind of danger, but again, it all depends on how you look at it.

You now ask me, How come the same people who got rid of a dictator like Nicolai Ceausescu seem not to be able to deal with dogs? A legitimate question, indeed, and one that I expected. What didn't occur to you is that perhaps people here don't
want
to deal with dogs. In a way, you see, this whole thing is Ceausescu's legacy, one of many, I might add. How did it all happen? How did he, of all people, let dogs free? Because, as you say, to imagine that he would let anyone free, even dogs, is quite difficult.

See, the street dogs of today are the great-great-grandchildren of the dogs set free in the mideighties, when the old part of central Bucharest was erased from the face of the earth. This is how it all began. And you must be wondering, on the other hand, why a totalitarian regime capable of such destruction, of uprooting tens of thousands of humans, couldn't have taken radical care of dogs? I suggest that you think about something else, about people who obediently abandoned these noble creatures, their best friends (because we're talking here about house pets) to life on the street, to the cruel struggle of survival. Doesn't that tell you something about those who didn't have the courage to defend their own homes?

Ah, blessed times, when you could blame Ceausescu for everything, I say in retrospect. At least we dogs weren't responsible for our situation.

You can tell that I'm still bitter about the whole thing. Why? Because of my mother. Mimi was a great lady. We are black poodles, with a fine pedigree. However, after that event it was unimportant who was who; class differences were forsaken because street life imposed another kind of hierarchy. The strongest, not the cleverest, ruled the rest.
Homo homini lupus
, you say to describe such a situation. But I would rather say:
canus cani homo
!

I hadn't been born when the big eviction happened—it's called resettlement nowadays. But my mother was, and she told me about it. I had the great fortune of living with her in the same household at a tender age (until Martin came along and picked me up) and so I learned my history, which today, regrettably, has been forgotten among my lot—as well yours, I'd say. These young idiots think that it's always been this way, that dogs are born and die in the streets and not, say, in a sixth-floor apartment. They'd have a heart attack if they went in an elevator. Funny, when you think about it; I've lived almost all my life in such a place. And imagine them, if you can, in the back of the car going for an excursion at the seaside! Not that many Romanians have a car, but some do. No, these poor souls think that cars are there so that they can hide from people and rain. Simple technology such as radios or TVs are unknown to them. I'd like to know what they'd think of an airplane. I flew in one once; those were the days! I still can recall the taste of a biscuit my companion got with a cup of tea and gave to me, naturally. There's something about flying ten thousand meters above the earth looking through a window at white clouds and chewing a biscuit.

Sorry, I got carried away again.

At that time, before everything went to the dogs, as they say, we dogs were still mostly living with humans, as is the case in every normal country. In their homes and gardens, even in apartment buildings in tiny apartments. Not all of us were in equal situations, because, to paraphrase George Orwell, a writer whom I admire, “we are all equal, but some are more equal.” But all of us had a minimum, a roof over our heads and a piece of bread, a bite of . . . well, at least
mamaliga
, a kind of polenta, you know. In my long life I've learned that security is what matters most, both to dogs and to humans. One can witness that now, in this period of total insecurity.

And let me tell you something else—and I'm aware that I run the risk of being judged as pro-Communist, which is foolish—we all worked! It might sound strange with all these unemployed youths on the streets to whom “work” has no meaning. What do they do? Do they hunt? Do they guard homes and defend them from burglars? Do they announce visitors? Are they employed by the police to chase criminals and sniff out smuggled drugs? Do they perhaps lead blind people through the streets of Bucharest? Or do they provide love and comfort to their cohabitants? Comparatively very few do that today. No, they live in gangs, catch rats, eat rubbish, bite children, and beg. Some end up in laboratories as well. The good news for us is that there aren't many scientific experiments going on today in Romania!