terrific compared to what they could get in Romania. They liked peanut butter, but not Marmite.
‘It’s funny,’ said someone as she delicately spread her bread. ‘You have to be English to like Marmite. I know I couldn’t live without it.’
‘So you English now?’ said the soldier who was standing by, wolfing his third peanut-butter sandwich. ‘You say before you Varinish.’
‘We’re both,’ they all said.
‘What you want here?’ said the soldier, pointing towards the horizon. ‘Nothing is for you in these mountains, no motor car for all people, no oil-well, no swim-pool. What you do here?’
Several voices answered. ‘We’re going home.’ ‘That’s where we belong.’ ‘We want to see what Varina is like.’
‘Varina no place,’ he said patronizingly, and drew a map with his finger in the air. ‘Romania here . Yugoslavia here. Hungaria here. Where now Varina?’
‘There!’ they shouted, flinging out their arms towards the mountains.
He shrugged and held out his mug for more coffee.
They had tidied up the campsite as best they could and it was already getting too hot for comfort when permission came through for them to move on. The officer who brought it didn’t bother to hide the fact that he thought they shouldn’t be there at all, and insisted on escorting them the whole way to Potok. Two hours after they set off there was another delay at a proper check-point manned by soldiers, where for a few horrible minutes it looked as if their escort and the check-point commander were going to agree to turn them back. Mollie gave a sigh of relief as she settled into her seat and the coach moved on.
‘They were trying to tell us Potok was full up,’ she said, ‘and there wasn’t any more room.’
‘Was that the border, do you think?’ said Nigel. ‘Will there be an actual sign saying Varina?’
‘If there’s a sign it will say Cerna-Potok,’ said Steff. ‘There is no such place as Varina on Romanian maps.’
‘Look, there’s a flag!’ said Mollie.
It hung at an upstairs window, and they all cheered it, and the next, and the next, but soon they gave up because there were too many to cheer. By then they’d begun to see another sign that they must truly be in Varina now. Letta had more uncertain feelings about this one. Almost every blank surface – the walls of barns, the buttresses of bridges, crags by the wayside as the road snaked up into the mountains – carried the same three letters, as huge as the space would allow, sometimes carefully lettered, sometimes daubed fiercely on in seven slashes of paint:
VAX
‘I hope they know which one they mean,’ said Nigel.
‘They mean both,’ said Minna, twisting round from the seat in front of them. ‘They are the same. For us he has never died.’
Like Momma, about a third of the women in the coach were called Minna. This one was forty at least. Her hair had a lot of grey in it and her clothes were as shapeless as her body, and Letta had decided she was rather sad, but now her eyes were wet and glittered behind the tears, so that she looked almost a little crazy. Her expression crystallized Letta’s feelings of unease. Letta knew and loved Grandad and admired him no end. She was sure there wasn’t anyone else in the whole world quite like him. She was glad that other people could feel that, too. But she also knew that he was an old man, who even when he was feeling fully well got tired quite soon. That he was coming to open the festival was lovely, happy-making for everyone. They would see and hear him, and he would be in his own country again after all these years, and they’d all be glad for each other’s sake as well as their own, and so on.
But really there wasn’t anything much he could
do
.
One old man can’t change everything, but here was Minna looking as if she expected Grandad to take hold of Varina, to pick up the three pieces of it between his hands and mould them gently into a single piece and put them
‘It’s funny,’ said someone as she delicately spread her bread. ‘You have to be English to like Marmite. I know I couldn’t live without it.’
‘So you English now?’ said the soldier who was standing by, wolfing his third peanut-butter sandwich. ‘You say before you Varinish.’
‘We’re both,’ they all said.
‘What you want here?’ said the soldier, pointing towards the horizon. ‘Nothing is for you in these mountains, no motor car for all people, no oil-well, no swim-pool. What you do here?’
Several voices answered. ‘We’re going home.’ ‘That’s where we belong.’ ‘We want to see what Varina is like.’
‘Varina no place,’ he said patronizingly, and drew a map with his finger in the air. ‘Romania here . Yugoslavia here. Hungaria here. Where now Varina?’
‘There!’ they shouted, flinging out their arms towards the mountains.
He shrugged and held out his mug for more coffee.
They had tidied up the campsite as best they could and it was already getting too hot for comfort when permission came through for them to move on. The officer who brought it didn’t bother to hide the fact that he thought they shouldn’t be there at all, and insisted on escorting them the whole way to Potok. Two hours after they set off there was another delay at a proper check-point manned by soldiers, where for a few horrible minutes it looked as if their escort and the check-point commander were going to agree to turn them back. Mollie gave a sigh of relief as she settled into her seat and the coach moved on.
‘They were trying to tell us Potok was full up,’ she said, ‘and there wasn’t any more room.’
‘Was that the border, do you think?’ said Nigel. ‘Will there be an actual sign saying Varina?’
‘If there’s a sign it will say Cerna-Potok,’ said Steff. ‘There is no such place as Varina on Romanian maps.’
‘Look, there’s a flag!’ said Mollie.
It hung at an upstairs window, and they all cheered it, and the next, and the next, but soon they gave up because there were too many to cheer. By then they’d begun to see another sign that they must truly be in Varina now. Letta had more uncertain feelings about this one. Almost every blank surface – the walls of barns, the buttresses of bridges, crags by the wayside as the road snaked up into the mountains – carried the same three letters, as huge as the space would allow, sometimes carefully lettered, sometimes daubed fiercely on in seven slashes of paint:
VAX
‘I hope they know which one they mean,’ said Nigel.
‘They mean both,’ said Minna, twisting round from the seat in front of them. ‘They are the same. For us he has never died.’
Like Momma, about a third of the women in the coach were called Minna. This one was forty at least. Her hair had a lot of grey in it and her clothes were as shapeless as her body, and Letta had decided she was rather sad, but now her eyes were wet and glittered behind the tears, so that she looked almost a little crazy. Her expression crystallized Letta’s feelings of unease. Letta knew and loved Grandad and admired him no end. She was sure there wasn’t anyone else in the whole world quite like him. She was glad that other people could feel that, too. But she also knew that he was an old man, who even when he was feeling fully well got tired quite soon. That he was coming to open the festival was lovely, happy-making for everyone. They would see and hear him, and he would be in his own country again after all these years, and they’d all be glad for each other’s sake as well as their own, and so on.
But really there wasn’t anything much he could
do
.
One old man can’t change everything, but here was Minna looking as if she expected Grandad to take hold of Varina, to pick up the three pieces of it between his hands and mould them gently into a single piece and put them
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