The Budapest Protocol (18 page)

“Welcome to Kosice,” said Svetlana, looking at Natasha in the drivers’ mirror.

“
Dakujem
, thank you,” she replied in Slovak, to Svetlana’s delight. The two women immediately switched to Slovak, chatting like old friends. Svetlana slowed down as she drove through Kosice’s pleasant, spacious old town. A Habsburg spirit and the remnants of empire lingered – an imposing cathedral, an opera house and public gardens. The Art Nouveau main street was dotted with terrace cafés.

“It looks nice, doesn’t it” asked Svetlana, not waiting for an answer. “It’s not. No Roma are allowed to live here. They cannot even go to any of those pretty cafés or they will get arrested, beaten up or both. The Roma have all been moved to Lunik IX, a ghetto on the edge of the city. It was built in the communist era as housing for police and soldiers but now the local municipality uses it as a dumping ground. We think at least 10,000 people are crammed into housing built for 2,500. There is 100 per cent unemployment, and the authorities have cut off electricity and gas, so everyone lives off pirated supplies.”

Svetlana speeded up and drove over a concrete flyover, out of town. Road signs showed the way east, towards the Ukrainian border. They passed through a wasteland of abandoned factories and half demolished industrial buildings until she pulled over, in front of rows of concrete tower blocks. “And now you can see for yourself. Welcome to Lunik IX.”

Romany men stood on street corners, smoking and watching suspiciously as they got out of the car. Dismembered vehicles rusted away, engine parts scattered across the walkways. Children chased each other around piles of smoking rubbish. The outside of the tower blocks were spotted with black scorch marks. Empty window frames gaped. Lunik IX looked like Sarajevo without the shell damage, Alex thought.

“The police won’t come to Lunik IX so you are quite safe here. And if they did, they wouldn’t get very far. Especially not with Maria around,” said Svetlana, as she parked the car and stepped out. Half a dozen children immediately ran up to her, shouting her name. She picked up two young girls, and walked towards the entrance, the other children chattering excitedly behind her. A plump, dark-skinned matriarch dressed in a brightly patterned floral skirt and thin acrylic jumper emerged from the housing block. She hugged Svetlana tightly, and ushered her, Alex and Natasha into a ground floor flat. The chairs and sofa had clearly been rescued from a rubbish dump, and a broken television stood in the corner, but despite the overwhelming poverty, it was warm and spotless inside. The children followed them in, yelping with excitement as Svetlana handed over sweets and chocolate bars.

A boy of six or seven walked over to Natasha and stroked her hair. His thin frame showed under his oversized t-shirt as he jumped on her lap. Maria moved to sweep him off, but Natasha protested that he should stay. He whispered in her ear and she answered him in a language Alex did not recognise. The boy giggled delightedly.

“What language are you speaking?” Alex asked Natasha as Maria put a tray of coffee on the table in front of them.

“Lovari. It’s a Romany dialect,” said Svetlana, a look of surprise on her face. She looked at Alex. “You picked the right one.”

* * *

Vince Szatmari stood outside the
Budapest News
office building, watching the hordes of commuters descending into Nyugati underpass. It was now six o’clock and he had decided to try once more. He reached for the buzzer when the door suddenly opened, and two secretaries came out, absorbed in their gossip. He held it open for them, wishing them a good day, and stepped inside and took the lift to the fifth floor. A bored-looking young woman with dyed black hair sat behind the reception desk, chatting on her mobile telephone. She looked at him, turned away and carried on talking. He waited for a couple of minutes, his doubts rapidly growing.

“Excuse me,” he said, leaning forward, momentarily distracted by her impressive cleavage.

“One moment, I am occupied,” said the receptionist.

“Miss, my time is also valuable. I have some valuable information for the editor. I think he will be very interested indeed in what I have to say.”

She sighed and put down her mobile phone. “Who shall I say wants him?”

“I don’t want to say at this stage.”

“How can I tell him who wants him if you won’t say who you are?”

“Look, why can’t I just talk to him?” he said, exasperated.

“We are closed,” she snapped. “There is nobody here. Come back tomorrow.”

Well, he had tried. How did these newspapers ever find out anything, if you couldn’t get past the receptionist? He turned on his heel to leave, when a deep voice boomed across the room.

“Young man, are you looking for me?”

Szatmari turned to see an enormous English gentleman strolling towards him.

“Ronald Worthington. Why don’t you come through to my office.”

* * *

Slope-shouldered, with large brown eyes and a hooked, crooked nose and almost bald apart from a monk’s fringe of hair, Mike Jakub drove as fast as he talked. Romany himself, the director of the Roma Rights Action Group was one of the tiny minority who managed to get a university education, which had led to international scholarships, bursaries and grants. A regular guest on Slovak television and radio shows, Mike was now a celebrity in Kosice, profoundly unpopular with the police and Slovak nationalists. Fame, he argued, was his best protection against police or other harassment, and he made sure to keep his name in the papers. Married, with a one year old son, Mike had been offered a seat on the Social Democrats’ candidate list for the European Parliament, an offer he was still considering.

Alex leaned forward as they spend down the motorway through the night. It was 10.00pm and the four of them were finally headed to Novy Marek. He sat in the back next to Natasha. They had spent the afternoon at Lunik IX, waiting for Mike, playing with the children and sharing the family’s meagre supper of bread and jam. Maria’s husband Jozi was in prison, but she had refused all offers of money. Alex had surreptitiously left 100 euros on the table when they left. The road was almost deserted. A few lights flickered in the tiny hamlets that dotted the surrounding hills. “How are we going to get in, if the village is now a closed zone?” Alex asked.

“Stop worrying. Have you been to one of the Romany settlements?” Mike replied. “
Un-believ-able
, in Europe in the twenty-first century. It’s like India. Not that there’s anything wrong with India, after all that’s kind of our homeland. The neo-Nazis keep telling us we should go back there. We got firebombed the other day,” he continued, overtaking an ancient East German Wartburg. “Idiots, they didn’t know that we have a metal door. One of them threw a petrol bomb and it bounced back and blew up on him. Set his trousers on fire. He’s only twelve, so the judge said he’s below the age of criminal responsibility. No punishment at all. He’s back at home, convalescing. I saw him yesterday in the main square. He gave me a Nazi salute, so he must be getting better.”

A torch flashed in the night. A policeman stood at the side of the road, waving them down. Mike pulled over to the hard shoulder. Alex’s stomach lurched. There would definitely be an alert out for them after the incident at Kosice station.

“It’s nothing,” said Mike. “They are just checking that we have paid for a motorway permit.”

“And have you?” asked Alex.

“Yes. For 2006.”

The policeman was a policewoman, a chubby brunette, bundled into a padded jacket, gloves and boots. She checked the permit stuck on the windscreen and shined a torch into the car, lingering on their faces. Her breath hung white in the cold night air. A lone car swished by on the other side of the motorway.

“You do know that this is long past its expiry date,” she said, pointing at the motorway permit. “It is illegal to drive on the highway without a proper permit. Please show me the car papers and your identification documents.”

They handed their passports to Mike, who passed them to the policewoman. The police radio crackled and a voice spoke. Alex thought he heard their names in the burst of Slovak. He looked at Natasha, who shrugged. Svetlana bit her nails. Mike looked unconcerned.

The policewoman looked through their documents, checking their photographs against their faces. Alex’s heart began thumping.

“Alexander Farkas, Natasha Hatvani, Svetlana Todorova and Mikhail Jakub. Two Slovaks, an Englishman with a Hungarian name and a Hungarian woman with a Russian name. Perhaps I should check in with headquarters. We have been told to watch out for suspicious foreigners in this area. Where are you going at this time of night?”

“For a drive,” said Mike. “I am showing my friends Slovakia.”

“Is that so?” said the policewoman. “It’s good of you to be such a diligent guide. Slovakia is a beautiful country. There is a lot to see, although it’s hard to appreciate in the dark. I have seen you on television Mr Jakub. You are not very popular among my colleagues.”

“I regret to hear that, Madame,” said Mike, his voice conciliatory. “Perhaps you have heard the old Turkish proverb.”

“I think I am about to,” said the policewoman.

“He who told the truth was chased from nine villages.”

The policewoman guffawed. “Even from Novy Marek. There are lots of police checkpoints on the motorway, especially approaching the main turn-off. But we don’t have enough manpower to watch every tiny side-road.”

“Thank you, Madame,” said Mike.

“I do not agree with everything you say, Mr Jakub,” said the policewoman, shaking her head as she handed the documents back through the car window. “But someone has to speak out.”

Taking the policewoman’s advice, they turned off the motorway, and drove down a narrow tarmac road that turned into a dirt track for several kilometres, narrowly avoiding two peasants driving a horse and cart. The only signs of habitation were lights glowing a kilometre or so away.

“The Roma at Novy Marek live on an island. The village is split into two,” explained Svetlana, showing a crudely-drawn map. “The Slovaks live on the hill. That part looks like a normal place anywhere. Nice big houses, gardens. The river, a stream really, runs around the bottom of the hill, and it splits around this bit of land. That’s where the Romany settlement is. Apartheid here is very simple. The local government refuses to allow the Roma to register as official residents in the village. So they cannot buy land to build a proper house, they cannot apply for electricity, running water or sewage to be installed in their houses, because they shouldn’t be there in the first place. So they stay on the island, build their own houses and dig their own toilets. You will see for yourself, we cannot drive any further. We have to walk now, through the woods, to the top end of the island.”

“What about the police in the village?” asked Alex.

Mike looked at his watch. “It’s almost midnight. The Roma know you are coming. The cops on the night shift are all local boys. My people have been filling them full of home-brewed brandy for the last two hours. “

She was a Romany Madonna, painted by Titian and illuminated by candlelight, thought Alex. The dingy surroundings only highlighted her iridescent beauty. Waist-length black hair framed an almond shaped face. Her black eyes shone in the candlelight, while her son Mario lay fast asleep on her shoulder. Her name was Teresa Sandori and she was seventeen.

Alex and the others had arrived after a twenty minute walk through the woods. Just as Mike had predicted, the two policemen were fast asleep, and they had strolled right past their car. Teresa’s house was a one-room shack barely larger than a prison cell. When Alex stood up his head brushed the ceiling. Teresa and her husband Virgil had built their home from mud and wattle, held together with the odd splash of concrete. The wind whistled through the gaps. There was no running water, and no heating. There was one chair, and two home-made beds, mattresses on warehouse pallets. The toilet was an outhouse, dug in the earth a few yards away, sheltered by some scraps of wood. They drew their water from the stream which ran around the island.

Alex remembered reading a report by the European Union on the situation of the Roma in Slovakia. “The country has made considerable progress in integrating its Romany minority, although some work remains to be done.” Whoever wrote that had clearly never been to Novy Marek. He caught Mike’s eye in the dim light, sitting on the bed, next to Teresa and Virgil. A picture of Jesus was tacked on the wall, together with a photograph of Nicole Kidman, torn from a magazine. Jakub looked weary and depressed, his earlier ebullience now gone.

Teresa began to tell the story of what happened to her after she gave birth. “I don’t read Slovak very well. So I didn’t really understand what was happening to me in the hospital. I had just given birth to Mario, and the nurse pushed this paper at me, yelling at me to sign it. I can’t write, so I just put my cross there.”

“What do you think the paper said?” asked Natasha.

“I don’t know. All I know is that I cannot have any more children.”

Teresa was the third woman they had spoken to. All the stories were similar. A coerced signature, soon after giving birth, a series of injections and a course of pills. The doctors, said Teresa, had been most insistent that she take the pills. As she finished speaking, Teresa blinked and wiped away a tear.

Virgil brought out a bottle of Johnny Walker Red Label whisky, which he placed on the table, with several chipped china cups. He put his arm around Teresa. Virgil was short and wiry with slanting cheekbones and curly black hair. Pride, hurt and anger competed in his eyes. “You know the white people say we do not want to work. That we are lazy and we steal. I have stolen, sometimes, it is true. I stole food for my wife and my child. Bread, and a bottle of milk. I am not proud to be a man, a father who cannot provide for his family, who has to take, who cannot pay for what he needs.”

Virgil’s hands twisted as he spoke. He looked at his wife. She nodded encouragingly. “Do you think that we like to live this? And what shall I do with my darling, my little dove now? Who will look after us when we are old? We have one son, our Mario. For us it is important to have many children. I have four brothers and three sisters. But there will be no more sons, no more daughters. Because I will stay with my little dove,” he said, running his hands through his wife’s hair. She smiled at his touch.