Cafe Spinoza, Budapest

The Spinoza is in Dobb Utca, Zsido Negyed, the heart of the old Jewish community, and is literally right around the corner from where I’m staying. A sign outside says a klezmer band will be playing at some future date but inside there is nothing that identifies it as culturally Jewish - though naming a café after one of the fathers of enlightenment who was a Jewish heretic and called himself Benedict instead of Baruch says something about intent. This is more than a café and I can see why Agnes is meeting me here. It also serves as a cultural centre with a small theatre and gallery. (One of the past exhibitions I saw listed was ‘Jewish humour in graphics’; another was photos of old Jewish houses in the Zsido Negyed – so Jewish culture does seem to be a predominant theme.)

The café is in the front as you walk in; the restaurant and gallery are in the rear. It was easy to find her as only three people were inside – a couple at one table and a lone woman with a bag of books at another. She made a motion with her hand and her face – not exactly a wave, not exactly a smile but a universal language of recognition.

She’s a slight woman: slightly nervous, slightly intense, slight of size. Later I thought her to be energetic, tired, vital, dour, hopeful and depressed – rather like my image of Hungary. It’s what she, herself, said in the course of our conversation – Hungary is a land of contradictions: a great culture, a tragic history, innate brilliance and a pervasive inferiority complex (not her exact words, of course). The same could be said for most of Central Europe, I thought.

We chatted for a bit, trying to ferret out each other’s histories – me more than her. She asked few direct questions; I asked lots. Had she travelled much? Her English was impeccable – had she lived in either the US or England? I was amazed when she said she hadn’t. Like the woman on the train, she learned English where she was. I find that remarkable, to achieve such fluency without having actually lived in the English speaking world. But perhaps that says more about the changing nature of the world – English has become the primary language of both commerce and culture. Bright young people throughout Europe have found their own little English-speaking circles that include native speakers within that community. You don’t have to leave your geographical region any longer to learn English – it comes to you on a platter, along with all the cultural artefacts of film, TV, music, books and newspapers. It’s even more extensive than the days when academics throughout Europe conversed with each other in Latin from both necessity and preference. Nowadays it’s everyone who buys into the phantom of the new world order where English is the language by default just as (ironically) the euro will be the currency by default throughout Europe (except in England). And that provides for an interesting dichotomy – they know lots about us; we know little about them.

These thoughts stem from my conversation with Agnes. She asked what my interests were in translation. I prefaced my reply by saying that I am horrified at the literary provincialism in the English speaking world. In both Britain and America there is little interest in reading authors from non-English speaking countries except for the ones who manage to win Nobel prizes. I mention my experience in publishing the Armenian classic by Mahari – Burning Orchards – a brilliant novel that has been shamefully ignored. I also tell her of the Visions of the City project which might be a focal point for a range of European authors and my fascination with Budapest during the Grand Epoch, the days when along with Vienna and Prague it seemed to me the most diverse and exciting place to be – outside of Paris, of course. And what of her Budapest?

It’s clear from her response that her feelings are mixed. At one point she wanted very much to leave, to escape from the rigid bureaucracies that made everything more difficult during the communist period – especially travel. She wanted to study in America but that didn’t work out. When she did first go on a month-long trip it was like seeing the world for the first time in colour – she spoke of it almost like Dorothy in the land of Oz.

What was it that attracted her? What memories did she bring back? She said what struck her most (like the young German woman I met on the train to Stuttgart) was how friendly people were. But people are friendly here, too, I say. Not in the same way, she tells me. In America you can become best friends with someone on a bus and then never see them again for the rest of your life. But in that moment they’ll tell you everything about themselves and the connection is strong. And so is their positivity. In Hungary people complain, tell you their misery, might not see you for years but will remain friends for life.

People in East Germany, I reply, say they don’t miss communism but the sense of community that surrounded it. In America community is fluid by design. People come, people go – like on a train.

Her love of America fascinates me. It is something she’s retained all these years later – even after the collapse of the economies America promised to prop up in exchange for losing basic welfare rights like homes, jobs and health care.

And what of Budapest now? I ask her. It’s difficult, she says. And things are getting worse. The economy is in crisis. There are no jobs and people have little hope. For the first time since the fall of communism, the far right is gaining a voice in Parliament. But the socialists who were in power till now have betrayed the people while fattening their wallets. I don’t care if someone is a millionaire, she says, but if they are politicians and pretend to be working in the people’s interest and then become millionaires themselves - that I can’t abide.

Agnes has two sons, one twelve and the other a few years older. She’s clearly concerned about them – about their future in a country that has no hope – not that there is no hope for Hungary, it’s that hope for the future has dissipated. It hasn’t vanished entirely but young people aren’t filled with excitement as her generation was in the 90s when Budapest was in full flower and dreams became real.

But Eastern Europe has been through this all before – again and again – as armies, either martial or commercial, march in, colonise the place and then march out again. That is why fatalism is in their blood. It’s part of their historic survival mechanism.

April 2010