Englishman William Blacker was extremely enterprising, driving across Europe as soon as the Berlin Wall came down in 1989 and only stopping when he reached Romania. Liking the place, he made his home there between 1996 and 2004, firstly in Maramureș, in the far north near the Ukrainian border, and then further south in Transylvania. Along the Enchanted Way: A Romanian Story, published in 2009, is his account of those years. It is a tender and affectionate portrait of his adopted home, focusing on the country people in remote areas far from Bucharest.
He found a place where the way of life had
been much the same for centuries, despite changes of regime and ideology, and
which was hanging on when it had to a large extent disappeared everywhere
else. In Maramureș he became the lodger
of Mihai and Maria, who treated him as the son they had never had and whose
affection he reciprocated. Mihai even
encouraged him to meet a local girl and settle down, but William wasn’t keen,
and his participation in the strict courting rituals was diffident and gauche.
Patterns of living were dictated by the
seasons, bucolic summers, harsh winters, self-reliant and using traditional
materials, and generally uninfluenced by the outside world. Cars were almost unknown, instead the horse
ruled, with little time for mechanisation (as the Communist regime found out
when it tried to replace horses with tractors).
In a society where social bonds were strong the people were hospitable
and took him in as one of their own. He
fell in with the local routines, working in the fields and sharing fully the
life of the people (which included imbibing considerable quantities of horincă,
a plum brandy).
In Maramureș he lived among Romanians and
Gypsies, and in Transylvania among Romanians, Hungarians, Gypsies and Saxons
(established there since the 12th century, initially as a bulwark by the
Hungarian monarchs against Islamic invasion but stranded as the tide of history
receded). However, most of the Saxon
community – the older members of which had been deported to the Soviet Union
after the war as forced labour – had gone to Germany after 1990 in search of a
better life, abandoning their Romanian houses to be stuck in urban flats. Some of these buildings were occupied by
Gypsies, others had been left to decay.
To his credit Blacker began a campaign to help restore the finely-built houses
and beautiful historic fortified churches, employing local people. He felt a great sadness at the mass
emigration by Romanian citizens of all types, and notes that moving away from
one’s roots entails a loss, even if it brings economic benefits, not
guaranteed, to the migrant and the community left behind.
He shows the discrimination the Gypsies
endure at the hands of the wider society, and the unfair way they are treated
by the local authorities, but also how they often deserve their dubious
reputation, and are more devoted to carousing (in which Blacker is happy to
join), than horticulture, with little thought for the morrow. So it is awkward when he starts to live with
one and finds his Romanian neighbours are not happy, doing what they can to
sabotage the relationship. When he keeps
sheep, which one would consider a respectable occupation, it is oddly a cause
of friction with his Romanian neighbours because he is encouraging the Gypsies,
who are seen as feckless. Having
corrupt, racist and often nakedly brutal local police only exacerbates the
situation, and Blacker draws a portrait of harsh treatment towards the Gypsies,
and his exhausting, but largely successful, efforts to use the courts for
justice. Eventually he and his dark-eyed
companion split up, but then she has a son, Constantin whom Blacker
acknowledges as his, and so finds he has parental responsibilities that draw
him back.*
Despite the apparent centuries-old
stability of the region he arrived on the cusp of change, but there is little
here about the wider political and economic situation. He was there at the right time, in the
interval between the fall of Communism and Romania’s accession into the EU in
2007, to track the changes – not all for the better in his estimation – as modernity
began to catch up with this sleepy corner of Europe. However, this is rather a depiction of the
life in which Blacker immersed himself, and the emphasis is very much on
personalities, though he does describe how these lands have been contested over
the centuries, forming a singular regional character. He is more interested in tracking the rhythms
of the seasons and in local customs, about which he writes with an
anthropologist's eye. There are strong
folk and pre-Christian elements mixed with the Orthodox faith, and superstition
is still a strong presence. The effort
to see symbolism in acts can occasionally lead to humour: at a funeral Blacker
asks Mihai why a candle in a jar is standing in wheat, suspecting some profound
significance, to be told it is to stop the candle falling over.
He is reticent about his personal
circumstances but you sense his lifestyle was only possible with a private
income. He writes an article for the Telegraph, but such incidental
journalistic activities would not support him even in such a poor area. He is accepted by the people he lives
amongst, even if they do consider him a member of an exotic species at times,
and he is willing to put his head over the parapet on behalf of the Gypsies
even when it costs a great deal, but there is always a sense he can leave any
time he wishes. It’s easy idealising the
peasant way of life if you do it on a voluntary basis rather than through
necessity.
The existence Blacker depicts may be hard,
but the work, the landscape, family and social ties, combine to form a unity
the modern world has lost, with negative consequences in his view. The tone is elegiac, but it is easy to romanticise
in such circumstances. Blacker documents
the changes occurring in the area, bemoaning the passing of a simpler age, with
the village now reached by a tarmac road rather than the old track, encouraging
motorised transport, but why should the people there remain isolated? When Mihai fell ill Blacker had to obtain
drugs from the vet because there was no local doctor, so there are advantages
in having improved communications.
On the other hand it is hard not to be
sympathetic when Blacker talks about the advent of plastic packaging with no
municipal waste removal arrangements (what need when everything is organic and
recycled) so the stream clogs up with rubbish.
He shows the villages emptying as young people go westward in search of
work, a process which has only accelerated because of the EU’s freedom of
movement principle. It seems ironic that
a lifestyle which had survived fascism and communism, the massive upheavals of
the twentieth century, should be destroyed by the free market. The book’s ending is touching, recounting the
funeral of Mihai in 2008, with whom Blacker had originally lodged. His death symbolised, for better or worse,
the passing of an era.
*An article in the Telegraph in March 2017 noted that Constantin’s real name is
actually Valentin, and that he is held in affectionate regard by Prince
Charles, a friend of Blacker’s. Prince
Charles owns property in Romania, where he is a regular visitor. Along
the Enchanted Way is dedicated to ‘Constantin’.
(This was first published on The
Joy of Mere Words, 21 February 2018)
Update 10 July 2021:
Along the Enchanted Way was selected
by Prince Charles in June 2021 as one of his five favourite books to share with
followers of the ‘Duchess of Cornwall’s
Reading Room’, the Instagram
book club run by his wife. On the one
hand, it is good to see Romania getting the extra exposure such a high-profile
exercise can bring, and doubtless the Transylvanian tourist board will be pleased. On the other, as Blacker’s depiction helps to
perpetuate the image of Romania as a rural backwater populated largely by
gap-toothed peasants, this is probably not the best place for those unfamiliar
with Romania to start, especially as for most of the general readers drawn by
Prince Charles’s recommendation, this will be the only book on the country they
will ever pick up.
