William Blacker

Les gens du village essayaient toujours de nous séparer, seulement ils utilisaient maintenant des moyens différents, plus subtils. Ils prenaient Marishka à part et lui chuchotaient à l'oreille. Je me souvenais des vers de Byron dans « Don Juan » :
Il avait un amant, on disait deux
Mais pour les scènes, un c'est presque mieux

[People in the village were still trying to separate us, only they were now using different, more subtle means. They would take Marishka aside and whisper into her ear. I remembered Byron's lines from « Don Juan » :
They whispered he had a lover, some said two ;
But for domestic quarrels one will do. (p. 287)]

Pendant que des amis en Angleterre s'efforçaient de maîtriser les dernières technologies informatiques, j'apprenais à faucher. « Ça », comme je l'écrivis à un ami, « c'est ce que moi, j'appelle le progrès. »

[While friends in England were mastering the latest computer technology, I was learning how to mow. 'This', as I wrote to a friend, 'is what I call progress.'] (p. 51)

It was from him that I learnt of the modern-day Fagins of Italy, and how the more innocent Gypsies fell into their nets. (…)
Instead of Germany, after a long journey in a van, they found themselves in the city of Salerno in southern Italy. There they were brought by their 'Boss' to the empty shell of an unfinished apartment block. Inside there were hundreds of Romanian beggars sleeping on rags and mattresses which had been salvaged from rubbish dumps. There were rats everywhere. (…)
The next morning they were pushed out on to the streets to beg. Romi was in tears. But in his tearful state he earned good money, especially outside the churches. He pocketed over a hundred euros on the first day and in the evening he tried to conceal some of it from the 'Boss'.He was told to strip. They found the money and beat him. They beat Dumitru as well because he had earned only ten euros. (p. 286)

In Transylvania the keeping of sheep involves constant vigilance and a pack of large and well-trained dogs. The dogs are not for herding but for protection against wild animals. In the British Isles bears were wiped out by the sixteenth century, and the last wolf was said to have been shot by Sir Ewen Cameron of Lochiel in 1686. But here wolves still carry off sheep by the scruff of their necks and bears tear pigs in half like loaves of bread. As Gregor Von Rezzori wrote in one of his beautiful memoirs of Romania, 'The poetic gentleness of the flowery slopes was all too deceptive in obscuring the wildness of the deep forests.' (p. 221)

Owing to the hardships experienced both during and after the war, many Saxons had lost the will to continue living in Transylvania. So when in 1960s and 70s President Ceaușescu had begun selling exit permits to Saxons for a few thousand Deutschmarks many people took the offer, and the idea of emigration as an option was lodged in Saxon minds. Following the 1989 Revolution, when the borders became easier to cross, and, as I had first heard from Gerhilde's family, Germany was willing to give citizenship to all Saxons, the floodgates were opened and within a couple of years the Saxon population had dwindled. Only a few thousand now remained and a unique 850-year-old culture was on the point of extinction. (p. 65)

« L'herbe est haute maintenant, mais si tu y vas, tu verras les tombes, bien que la plupart soient tombées. Il n'y a plus de Juifs pour les entretenir. » Pour Breb, la « Solution » avait en effet été « Finale ».

['It is overgrown now, but if you go there you will see the stones, though most of them have fallen over. There are no Jews left to look after it.' For Breb the 'Solution' had indeed been 'Final'. (p. 54)]