The best Chinese restaurant

The best Chinese restaurant in town is in Kőbányai street, in front of that gate of the Four Tigers Chinese Market which is the nearest to Orczy tér, one door to the left of the café to the left of the casino, in that enormous block of building of the former Ganz Machine Factory stretching from Fiumei street to Hungária boulevard whose innumerable internal passages, labyrinths and wormholes (how much I wished to saunter through these as a child!) are now inhabited by an infinity of tiny Chinese, Vietnamese, Turkish, Syrian, Georgian and who knows which other stores, warehouses and offices in the spirit of the best bazaar traditions. For a better orientation as well as for a better mood, it would be good to include here a photo of the gate of the market, but I have unfortunately forgot to take a picture of it. Within a few days I’ll be back there, and then I’ll make up for it. Until then I leave room here for a picture.


I’m often questioned about where are some really good Chinese restaurants in the city. It is difficult to tell, because the majority of Chinese restaurants within a short time mold themselves to the predominant tastes of the given country, and then it’s all up. In Italy they pour tomato juice over everything, in Germany some strange brownish Generalsoß, in Hungary cabbage pickled in starch. My friend, the master cook and gourmand Zhen, who carefully scans the Chinese restaurants of the city, jealously takes note of those few places where they still do it properly, where they do not forget to sprinkle the golden top of the sheep soup with fresh coriander leaves, where the cook roasts the hand-cleaned membrane of chicken gizzard on real Sichuan ginger, and where they go out to the early dawn Chinese flight for that special crab which is so necessary in the Mongolian hot pot and whose name I always forget. According to our common experiences good restaurants are the little Lanzhou in Luther street and the big Lanzhou in Fő street, the Mimóza on Hungária boulevard, the Taiwan in Nádor street (but this has closed now) and the Hongkong in Béke street. At least in case one goes there in the company of Chinese people, although they say they are the same good if the Hungarian guest explicitly orders ‘what the Chinese eat’, even if it will cost somewhat more because of the original materials. But the best restaurant is in Kőbányai street, in front of the gate of the Four Tigers Chinese Market.


The family running the restaurant and the chef who is usually also the head of the family change from time to time, thus the recurrent guests can get acquainted with a number of Chinese regional kitchens. Now for a year and a half it has been in the hands of a family from the Fujian region. When they took over the shop, they only spoke their own dialect, but the boy at the counter has by now learned a fair Chinese from the guests. He even knows the name of some basic materials in Hungarian. Nevertheless, to be on the safe side, before venturing to order you’d better study the following version of the Chinese-Vietnamese menu where you can also read the names of the dishes in English and see their pictures catched together from various Chinese cooking sites (which are not necessarily identical with their local equivalents) by moving the mouse above the Chinese names. The script displaying the inscriptions, just like every other script used on our site, do not work in Google Reader, so the users of Reader are invited to come over directly to the blog.


You should better go around noon or not much later, when the kitchen already works, but there are only a few guests yet. At this time there are even free seats, namely two to the left of the door. Latecomers eat standing. Soon the market sellers arrive. They are the target public of the restaurant who are looking for really good Chinese kitchen instead of a Magyarized one. This is why the dishes are so tasty here and this is why they have the same genuinely Chinese taste like in any small restaurant in Beijing or Shenzhen. This makes it the best Chinese restaurant in town.

If you managed to take the seat at the door, then while you are waiting for your dish you should observe how the serious clients order. They care nothing of the menu, but only shout the ingredients they wish, like “soup with noodles, beef, two eggs, vegetables”. Kata immediately pounced on this possibility, and by now she also composes the dishes for herself, at the great delight of the staff. And for an individual taste everyone orders some addition from under the counter.



In the right (above) and left (below) sections of the meat counter there is a plethora of raw or prepared meats, mostly those sinewy or cartilaginous parts and giblets that the Chinese estimate the most: feet, neck and head of poultry, tongue of pork, bowels, ears and so on: the mouse here too helps to identify the current offer. The guests pick out one or two of these to cook in the soup or roast with the noodles or rice for a really authentic homely taste. Because – attention! – in this restaurant there are no ready-to-eat foods. Everything is prepared right on the spot, like in the best Hongkong spectacle kitchens.

You should dedicate special attention to the freshly steamed baozi, Chinese dumpling with meat on the top of the right counter, of which you should indispensably have two or three warmed up with the soup. You can also take home of it (just like from the meats, people take them like hot cakes), we usually have ourselves packed sixty or eighty at one time. For drinking the well-informed ask soya milk which is of course not indicated anywhere. It is very tasty, a bit like that of the oeufs à la neige. And it is extremely healthy.

Apart from the really tasty food, you should also come here because in this neighborhood you can encounter a small piece of real China. Above the restaurant there is a Chinese food shop with a relatively good supply. Here you should by all means buy a little glass of Hongkong 海鲜酱 hăixiānjiàng that is hoisin sauce to eat with the baozi. And in front of the entrance of the restaurant, in the car park some Chinese farmers from Hungary – they say from the region of Baja – sell fresh Chinese vegetable every day from around noon from the plateau of a lorry. Most of them have no Hungarian names, but if you want to play safe, take a packet of large-leaved youcai now only for an euro. It is good to roast in the wok with chopped meat or tofu, and good to cook in the soup. We will give recipes on request.

A footnote

to emptyness.

无名，天地之始
The nameless is the beginning of the sky and earth.
Dao de jing 1.

A Japanese painter was commissioned by an American to paint him a picture. The picture has been made. In its lower corner a little bird sat on the branch of a cherry tree. The whole upper part of the painting was empty. The American examined the image with an unhappy face, and he asked the painter to paint something else on it as well, for it looks so empty. The Japanese refused to do so. When he was called to account, he explained that if he painted all the surface, the bird would have no room to fly.

Huang Shen (1687-1771), ink drawing. Shanghai Museum.

Lai Da (late 16th century), ink drawing. Shanghai Museum

Yuan Shangtong (1570-1661), Jackdaws, ink drawing. Nanjing Museum

He also would like to fly.
Chang Si (active between 1156 and 1161), roll painting. Beijing Palace Museum

Hossein Alizadeh: Horizon, setar solo from the CD Birds (پرنده ها),c2006

Ars poetica

Xu Futong: 月 (Luna), caligrafía

我爱亨利摩爾的雕塑，尤其沉迷於雕塑中的孔。
Amo las estatuas de Henry Moore, especialmente el vacío que hay en medio de ellas.
(Gu Gan: 現代書法三步 (Los tres grados de la caligrafía moderna), Beijing 1990)

Repasando otra vez la traducción húngara del libro de Lin Yutang dimos con un poema de Xin Qiji que nos gusta mucho y del que no puede decirse que haya sido nunca traducido al húngaro. En todo caso, esta versión suena así (añadimos una traducción española literal):

Ifjú napjaimban Csak vidámságban volt részem, De szerettem fölmenni a padlásra, De szerettem fölmenni a padlásra, Hogy bánatot színlelő dalt írjak. Azóta volt részem A bánat keserű ízében, És szót nem találok, És szót nem találok, Csak ezt: „Mily aranyos őszi óra.”

En los días de mi juventud Yo solo era partidario de la felicidad. Cuánto me gustaba subir al ático Cuánto me gustaba subir al ático Así escribiría una canción afectando pena. Desde entonces he participado Del amargo sabor de la pena Y no encuentro palabras Y no encuentro palabras Solo esto: «Qué hora dorada del otoño»

Esta traducción, con su falta de precisión y errores de lectura, y especialmente con sus injustificadas adherencias sentimentales demuestra claramente por qué toda la tradición de traducciones poéticas del chino al húngaro (y podría añadir algunas a otras lenguas), deudoras del fin-de-siècle, son un completo error.

Gu Gan: 绕 (rizo)

El poema chino es como un cuchillo. Preciso y agudo. Sus palabras son simples y encajadas casi a la fuerza. Son como los marcos del vacío en que consiste la esencia del poema y de la imagen chinos.

En consecuencia, en la Casa de la Poesía China optamos por traducir, primero, en una pequeña ventana emergente, una por una, cada palabra del verso para que cualquier lector comprenda claramente estos marcos; a continuación incluimos una transcripción romanizada que permite percibir el ritmo; y luego una traducción explícitamente cruda y literal. Al final, el lector podrá ensamblar el poema por sí mismo.

Invitamos a comprobar nuestro método aquí, con este poema de Xing Qiji traducido carácter a carácter y con su transcripción. Abajo damos solo la precisa versión al español.

De joven no sabía el gusto de la pena, subía a la torre. Subía a la torre, a cantar una pena fingida.

Mas hoy sé bien el gusto de la pena, y ya no quiero contarlo. Ya no quiero contarlo, solo decir qué hermoso, el frío otoño.

Gu Gan: 露 (rocío)

Xing Qiji en este poema utiliza un juego de palabras –más bien un «juego de caracteres»– tan fino que no lo podemos traducir, apenas explicarlo. Sin embargo, este juego es la clave no solo del poema sino de la poesía china en general.

Las dos partes acaban con dos palabras similares, chóu y qiū (chjou y chyou). La final qiū 秋 de la segunda parte, formada con las imágenes de la oreja 禾 y el fuego 火 significa ‘otoño’, la estación en que se quema el rastrojo. En el último 愁 chóu de la primera parte encontramos el mismo 秋 ‘otoño’, pero sobre el signo del corazón y de los sentimientos 心 con lo que significa ‘pena’, «otoño en el corazón».

La poesía clásica de la dinastía Tang se esforzó en evitar esta palabra demasiado «lírica». El gran diccionario de la poesía Tang solo incluye dos apariciones. Sin embargo, el ci, el género poético popular del período Song que imitaba las canciones tradicionales, explotaba con frecuencia el sonido y la similaridad «etimológica» de las dos palabras, como vemos en Li Yu entre los poemas que hemos traducido.

Esta obra, muy conocida en su momento, está incorporada en las palabras de Xin Qiji cuando dice que en su juventud quería escribir sobre el «otoño de su corazón» –pero ¡cuán lejos estaba entonces de tener realmente el otoño en su corazón, y ahora sí que lo tenía!– ; ya hemos apuntado la razón en una nota previa – había alcanzado el punto en que ya no quería describir «el otoño del corazón» sino exclusivamente «el otoño» contemplado con toda la claridad de su frío y belleza pero omitiendo cualquier intervención sentimental 心.

Y si el poeta –junto con lo mejor de la poesía china– ha alcanzado y defiende esta restricción, por qué el traductor vuelve atrás y tiene que colarnos de contrabando e impunemente sus propias efusiones.

Wang Xuezhong: 白花齊放 (que se abran cien flores)

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Ars poetica

Xu Futong: 月 (Moon), calligraphy

我爱亨利摩爾的雕塑，尤其沉迷於雕塑中的孔。
I love the statues of Henry Moore, especially the emptyness in the middle of them.
(Gu Gan: 現代書法三步 (The three steps of modern calligraphy), Beijing 1990)

While skimming through again the book of Lin Yutang, I found a poem by Xin Qiji which I love so much and about which I did not know that it had been translated into Hungarian. The Hungarian version sounds like this, in the original and in a verbatim English translation:

Ifjú napjaimban Csak vidámságban volt részem, De szerettem fölmenni a padlásra, De szerettem fölmenni a padlásra, Hogy bánatot színlelő dalt írjak. Azóta volt részem A bánat keserű ízében, És szót nem találok, És szót nem találok, Csak ezt: „Mily aranyos őszi óra.”

In my young days I only partook in happiness. How much I loved to go up the attic How much I loved to go up the attic So that I would write a song affecting sorrow. Since then I have partaken In the bitter taste of sorrow And I can find no words And I can find no words Only this: “What a golden autumn hour!”

This translation with its lack of precision and misunderstandings, and especially with its unjustified sentimental additions displays well why the whole Hungarian (but I could also substitute it with some other languages as well) tradition of Chinese poetic translation, rooted in the fin-de-siècle, is an absolute mistake.

Gu Gan: 绕 (Coiling)

The Chinese poem is like a knife. Sharp and precise. The words of the Chinese poem are simple and detached almost by force. They are only frames for that vast emptiness which is the very essence of the Chinese poem in the same way as it is of the Chinese image.

This is why we also proceed in the Casa de la Poesía China by translating first in a small popup window one by one each word of the verse, so that every reader would clearly understand these frames; then including a Romanized transcription so that everyone would also feel the rhythm; and then offering an explicitly verbatim, almost raw translation. Then everyone has to assemble the poem for him- or herself.

You are recommended to check there this poem of Xing Qiji by character and in transcription. Here I copy from there only the precise Spanish translation (then retranslating it into English).

De joven no sabía el gusto de la pena, subía a la torre. Subía a la torre, a cantar una pena fingida. Mas hoy sé bien el gusto de la pena, y ya no quiero contarlo. Ya no quiero contarlo, solo decir qué hermoso, el frío otoño.

When young, I did not know the taste of sorrow. I went up the tower. I went up the tower to write a poem on pretended sorrow. By now I’ve completely tasted sorrow, but already I do not want to speak about it. I do not want to speak about it, I only say: what a beautiful, cold autumn.

Gu Gan: 露 (Dew)

Xing Qiji in this poem uses such a fine play of words – or rather “play of characters” – that we can not translate, only explain. However, this play is the key not only to this poem, but to the Chinese poem in general.

The two parts end in two similar words, chóu and qiū (ch’ou and chou). The final qiū 秋 of the second part, composed of the images of an ear 禾 and of the fire 火 means ‘autumn’, the season of the stubble-field burning. In the final 愁 chóu of the first part we find this same 秋 ‘autumn’, but standing above the sign of the heart and of the feelings 心 and thus meaning ‘sorrow’, “autumn in the heart”.

The classical poetry of the Tang period made an effort to avoid this too “lyrical” word. The great dictionary of the Tang poetry only includes two occurrences of it. However, the popular poetic genre of the Song period, the ci that imited folk songs, often exploited the sounding and “etymologic” similarity of the two words, as we also find it in Li Yu among the poems translated by us.

This play, well known in his age, is reversed by Xin Qiji when he says that in the years of his youth he wanted to write about “the autumn in his heart” – but how far he was at that time from really having autum in his heart! And by the time he had it – we have already hinted at the reason in our previous note – he already reached the point where he did not want to describe “the autumn in the heart”, but only “the autumn” which he already saw clearly with all its beauty and coldness, and with the omission of all the frills of sentiments 心.

And if he – and the best of the Chinese poetry – reached the point of omitting them, then why does the translator want to smuggle back, intrusively and at any cost, his own ones?

Wang Xuezhong: 白花齊放 (Let a hundred flowers bloom)

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Cabras, lagartos, conejos y la Historia de la Humanidad

El día en que Wang Wei, después de dos veranos, decide volver a Cabrera, el cielo de agosto, siempre deslumbrante, amanece con una tenue gasa de nubes. Durante todo el año, Cabrera aparece y se vela, se muestra un día y se oculta otro. Para quien la contempla desde el campanario de Ses Salines, las arenas de S’Avall o el puertecito de S’Estanyol, en la proa del sur de Mallorca, es una silueta definida y clara o, alternativamente, un manchón de bruma que se diluyera en el aire. Ni demasiado cerca como para una visita facilona, ni tan lejos que exija la reverencia de una expedición. Esta madrugada Wang Wei la ve nítida pero entre un cielo y un mar con veladuras grises.


A media mañana, llegando a Cabrera, ha vuelto la luz dura y calcárea. Wang Wei sosiega los ojos en el mar y, como siempre al acercarse allí, no puede evitar pensar no tanto en la naturaleza, a la que está consagrada hoy la isla y sus aguas, sino en la historia (id a este catálogo de los yacimientos arqueológicos; solo en noviembre pasado se sacaron a luz los restos del monasterio bizantino y de las cabañas de los atormentados prisioneros franceses). Wang Wei tiene ahora ante los ojos un trozo de tierra que la historia ha cruzado con toda su fuerza –y a veces con la violencia más cruda– y, sin embargo, no se ve apenas nada más que la tierra misma, los pinos, las sabinas, las rocas, el polvo, la soledad de un mar azul y de un cielo rabiosamente puro. Wang Wei nota el sabor de la sal en los labios.


Wang Wei ha leído este verano varios libros de gente vinculada a Cabrera. Parece que desde hace poco algunos han decidido hablar de su vida allá. Primero leyó la biografía de Francisca Sunyer, que Wang Wei recomienda vivamente, Viure a Cabrera: una illa feta a mida (Palma: Editorial Moll, 1993); y la semana pasada el último libro que acaba de aparecer, políticamente mucho más beligerante y con testimonios que aún hoy pueden resultar dolorosos: Joan Rigo, Els de Cabrera (1936-1946): el testimoni de Jeroni Bonet "De Cabrera" (Palma: Documenta Balear, 2008).

Batiendo habas en 1968

Pero en la abundante bibliografía anterior sobre la isla había alguna cosa divertida. Por ejemplo, Joaquín M. Bover escribió: Cabrera. Sucesos de su historia que tienen relación con la de Francia (Palma: Felipe Guasp, 1847). Este Joaquín María Bover y Rosselló (Caballero de la Ínclita Orden de Jerusalén en la Veneranda lengua de Aragón, entre los Arcades de Roma Cleandro Lirceo, Individuo de la Real Academia de la Historia... y un montón de cosas más con las que gustaba adornar su nombre) seguramente quiso con este libro dar cauce a una sensación similar a la que atenaza a Wang Wei cuando se acerca al subarchipiélago. Pero se le fue la mano. Leyendo el opúsculo, casi emociona ver al bueno de Bover descubriendo el Mediterráneo; es decir, su Mediterráneo particular e insólito. Con los poquísimos datos históricos que manejaba (y no se preocupó en buscar demasiado) puso en pie un estudio fabuloso describiendo la isla poco menos que como la cuna de la civilización occidental.

—¡Pobre Cabrera!, exclama Wang Wei. Menos mal que al poco de publicarse esta obra un grupo de amigos de buen humor decidieron poner las cosas en su sitio con una obra de contraataque que es una lástima que casi nadie conozca. José María Quadrado (en la foto), junto con sus amigos Guillermo Forteza, José Rocaberti de Dameto, Tomás Aguiló y Antonio Montis, Marqués de la Bastida, que se reunían cada martes en casa de don José Quint Zaforteza y Togores en maledicente tertulia, se animaron a superar a Bover en su propio terreno y escribieron el agudo librito: Historia de la Dragonera en sus relaciones con la civilización europea (Palma: Imprenta de don Esteban Trías, 1848). Todo un despliegue de erudición bombástica e ingenio desatado, así como de uso masivo de aquella inconfundible verbosidad decimonónica, campanuda, sometida aquí a doble hervor. Si Cabrera es la cuna de la civilización, Dragonera, menor y menos favorecida en la realidad, es en la pluma de estos amigos la cifra misma del Universo entero. Wang Wei piensa que esta obra merece algo más de atención. Sobre todo porque contiene buenas dosis de antídoto contra los abusos del historicismo nacionalista. Y las pullas contra Bover, todo hay que decirlo, a veces costaban caras. Por ejemplo, el editor de la publicación antiboveriana El tío Tararira fue condenado en 1849 «a 24 meses de destierro de la Ciudad de Palma y radio de 5 leguas de la misma, a la multa de 100 duros, a la suspensión de todo cargo o derecho político durante el tiempo de la condena, y a las costas procesales y gastos ocasionados por el juicio» (lo dice, muy contento, el propio Bover en su Diccionario bibliográfico de las publicaciones periódicas de las Baleares, Palma: Imp. de V. de Villalonga, 1862).

Muchos han tenido esta sensación inquietante en Cabrera. Vedlo en el reportaje que, por estas mismas fechas del año pasado hizo el escritor Juan Cruz visitando Cabrera de la mano del historiador Carlos Garrido. Ved como no se trata de aquel «el horror» pronunciado por Kurtz en El corazón de las tinieblas, sino de «el yuyu», quizá más doméstico pero igualmente difícil de definir.

Y no consiguió ahuyentar este «yuyu» (Wang Wei piensa que, al contrario, lo aumentó) el proyecto jamás realizado de urbanizar la isla en los años 40 del siglo pasado. Este sorprendente texto, un gran documento de civilización, está en el celler hoy rehabilitado como pequeño museo desde donde está tomada la foto de más abajo (nunca se llegó tampoco a explotar la viña en serio):

Terrenos en venta a plazos para edificar chalets, los hay construidos desde 10.000 pesetas- con 300 metros de terreno.
No hay policía, ni guardia civil [no puedo leer esto, pero debe ser una adversativa del tipo «aunque»] ¡Ay del delincuente! Es transportado por una bala de cañón a la Isla de Mallorca, donde sus despojos palpitantes son enterrados sin dilación. Tampoco hay pompas fúnebres, ni nada que entristezca nuestro ánimo – Un cementerio alegre y coquetón bien orientado permite asegurarse un reposo eterno con vistas al mar con la más sobria placidez. R.I.P.
El intelectual, el filósofo, el científico, el artista en todas sus manifestaciones, son [serán] junto con el hastiado del mundo y sus boatos, los futuros habitantes de esta isla sin igual.

Para completar el recorrido por la densa historia de las islas que rodean a Mallorca, Wang Wei guarda en la retina las imágenes de esta otra: es la Conejera, en la cadena de islotes que jalonan el canal entre Mallorca y Cabrera. Como todo el mundo sabe, a mediados del siglo III a. de C. nació en ella nada menos que Aníbal, el cartaginés, hijo de Amílcar y de una mujer íbera. En la isla había algo de agua dulce y para una nave en tránsito siempre era mejor aprovisionarse allí que arriesgarse a recibir la pedrada de un hondero en las costas mallorquinas. Wang Wei piensa proponer a Pei Di escribir juntos la Historia Universal de Conejera para acabar de aclarar este y otros puntos que no pueden permanecer más tiempo ignorados.

Library opening

A while ago we discovered in the figure of King David, lifting his goblet for blessing in the 14th-century Catalan Haggadah, the owner of the codex Dávid Kaufmann, who expressed in an apocryphal “Psalm of David” his joy of the acquisition of the most ancient – 10th century Palestinian – manuscript of the Mishnah. This is why we chose that image as the emblem of the electronic library of the Kaufmann Codices. But we prefer to see the great collector of ancient Hebrew books also in another symbol of King David, in the lion of Judah who is just stowing away in safety a recent gorgeous finding from the competition in the marginal decoration of a 13th-century Mishneh Torah.

On – very rare – occasions, however, even Dávid Kaufmann was let down by his good luck. It was a close shave that one of the most important Jewish manuscript findings, the one hundred and forty thousand fragments that had been accumulated for a thousand years in the genizah of the synagogue of Cairo, did not get to him – and then, through him, to the Hungarian Academy of Sciences – but to the University of Cambridge. Through his network of agents covering all the Mediterraneum, Kaufmann had learned about this material, even more important than the scrolls of the Dead Sea, much earlier than the fantastic Scottish twin sisters, Agnes and Margaret Smith, scholars of many Biblical languages and discoverers of several manuscripts, who in 1896 discovered the collection following the traces of some fragments found on the Cairo market, and then bought it in its entirety. However, at this time Kaufmann was already bargaining over the material, and in 1894 he even received a sample of five hundred pieces of it. Today only this much is in the possession of the Academy. Nevertheless, he bore the news of the Cambridge purchase like a man, and later he even remarked that the manuscripts are in a better place there. What’s more, he also participated in their scholarly description. Incidentally, it is interesting that the family of Salomon Dov Goitein who published the complete material in six volumes, came from the same Moravian town of Kojetein like that of Kaufmann. This aroused our curiosity in this town, whose subsisting Medieval Jewish quartier we will soon visit and report about it.

The Kaufmann Collection, including six hundred codices and more than a thousand printed books besides the genizah fragments, is even so among the most important ones in the world, and we in Studiolum are proud to be the first to publish it on the internet, on behalf of the Oriental Collection of the Hungarian Academy. We have just completed the first version of the electronic library – or rather bookshelf yet – containing the five most important codices of the collection: the above mentioned 10th-century Palestinian Mishnah, the starting point of all Mishnah editions, the French Mishneh Torah of 1296, the summary of Jewish law in four volumes, two Southern Germanian Mahzor from the age of Dante with all the prayers of the year, and the most beautiful piece of the collection, the lavishly illustrated 14th-century Catalonian Haggadah, the ritual of the Passover night. But, scanned from a black and white microfilm, we will also include one of the most painful losses of the collection, the 15th-century Renaissance codex of the Siddur of Pesaro, stolen in the ’80s together with some other books on an Israelian order. Since the Academy managed to claim back in court one of the stolen books from an auction of Israel, this codex is latent somewhere together with the rest.

Until the official presentation in November the library will receive some final touches, we will include a bibliography and an iconographic index, some additions and corrections, or maybe even more codices. However, the readers of our blog can enter already now by presenting a copy of this entry. Go ahead, go ahead, come in, look around, and make your bettering comments.

Muska

Muska is a Russian cat to the core. Even in her happiest moments she can sit with such a contemptuously offended face like Russian students do in their first semester at a Western university, and in the dawn of the outbreak of the South Ossetian war she, contrary to her habit, tangled up the blanket to such extent that no Georgian tank could break through it.

Each time Lena visited Budapest, she fed Kata with promises of procuring her a Russian cat. “Russian cats are not like these here. Russian cats are tigers.” She showed us the photo of Jóshka whose name she had composed with a Russian diminutive suffix from the Hungarian word “jó” (‘good’) learned at her first visit, and only later she learned that at us this is a human name, Kata’s father is also called like this, and then she felt guilty. Jóshka was a tiger, with a lynx’s build and with a tail like a banner. From that time on Kata kept dreaming with Russian cats.


We arrived to Veliki Rostov on the North in the period of the white nights in order to introduce the computer catalog in the Kremlin. After the destruction of Kiev in the Middle Ages, this little town was the capital of Russia for a while, and in its fortress – at that time, at the beginning of the ’90s made inaccessible by refuse dumps and deep puddles – there are seven brilliant cathedrals standing, all of them museums now. We worked on the computers in a vaulted room of the former bishop’s castle for a week each day until nine or ten o’clock in the night, then we climbed up to the knights’ hall, where the table was already laid with mushroom, zakuski, cranberry, vodka. Enchanting and ingenious toasts went around, and the favorite soldier’s song of my grandfather from WWI, “There come the Russians with a hundred thousand people” made an absolute hit. Around two o’clock we set out to visit the ruined abbey along the river, and Sergey explained the Finno-Ugric origin of the place-names of the region all the way long.

On the Yaroslavl market there was no cat in that week. Finally Grisha and Zhena offered the one they had left only so that there would be someone to suck the milk of the mother cat. She did not even fulfill her first month. To the veterinarian one had to cross the upper stream of the Volga, the river washed the end of his garden. “Put her in your pocket”, he said. “Until I get the passport for her, she will kitten herself.”

“What names do they usually give to cats here?” Lena did not know that the habitual cat’s name “Muska” means “Russian” in old Hungarian. The rest of our Russian friends do not know it either, and when they hear the name, they immediately begin to call her by diminutives like “Musa” and “Musyusa”. But Muska knew what this name obliged her to, and she bore up heroically the six hours long travel by bus to Moscow, through spoiled countrysides and ruined villages, where we did not see one single cultivated garden along three hundred kilometers. She came out every hour, and I fed her from a German nurser bought in a first class pet shop in Yaroslavl, supported by the experiences of my teenager years made with hedgehog kids, young fawns and recently hatched grass snakes. By the time we reached Moscow she adopted me as her matyushka, and I have remained that up to the present day.


We missed the plane. We were out there in early dawn, two hours before the departure, but the multi-step security control was so long that we were already refused to go to check-in. “I was here already four hours earlier”, the uniformed woman said with full conscience of her importance. “Stay here for a thousand years more”, I said. “Gdye vash nachalnik?” (Where is your boss?)

Russian bureaucracy is human-faced. German bureaucrats hide behind rules to reject you, while the remnants of their human being is filled with a good feeling on having got their everyday human sacrifice again. In Italy, probably due to the Roman law that had pervaded their blood, you can squeeze out of them any rational request with reference to the rights due to every person, of course only if you speak Italian, for this is what makes you a person in the sense of the same Roman law. I have already convinced with irrefutable arguments the director of the head post office in Rome to go to the office on Easter Monday and to give me out my money that had arrived on Good Friday. In Russia, however, you speak with them as a Christian with a Christian, like someone who came to beg for a little salt, and if you ask it decently then they will certainly give you, even if they have to borrow it from someone else. Russian bureaucrats, to my experience, always borrow from someone else, but the permanent overstepping of their authority absolutely does not bother either them or their clients, or even their superiors to whom it is worth to have recourse in dubious cases.

So, along the pearl string of gdye vash nachalnik, (“where’s your boss?”) we finally arrived to the chief commander of the airport who was touched by the complaint of a Westerner in Russian language – at the beginning of the ’90s this was still a cure for many wounds –, and while he was scribbling something on our ticket, he told that we can leave with the afternoon charter flight.

That flight was not displayed anywhere, but everyone nodded eagerly at the sight of the ticket. However, at the gate several brawny chaps blocked the way with hand detectors. We circulated nervously up and down the airport, in devout prayers. We knew that if they found Musa, they made short work of her. Finally we were called by name, so that we could not but go. However, at the gate, in the place of the mountains of muscle there was only the stewardess waiting for us, wringing her hands. “Hurry on, we are late.”


The front part of the tiny little plane was filled with silent Chinese businessmen, while the back part with drunken Russian businessmen, and we were put in the puffer zone between both. The latter – I’m sorry for the stereotyped image, but it was like this in fact – brought several cases of excellent vodka on the border, and the whole staff of the plane made frequent raids on them, perhaps except for the pilot, but it is also possible that he was taken of it in his cabin. In the meantime Muska came out as well, perhaps to say farewell to matyushka Rossiya. The Chinese greeted her in an ecstasy of delight. Only later we saw in the Chinese TV that at that time it was still so unusual to keep pets in China that in the second half of the ’90s the CCTV4 broadcasted daily educational films for rich Chinese on how to caress cats.

By the time we got to the airport of Budapest, the back section reached such a volume that even the Hungarian passport controllers came out from their cabins. “Ah, are you that?” they relaxed. “Go, go.” – and they entered the country by skipping the passport control. My red-skinned passport was controlled in spite of my Russian face, perhaps because I was suspiciously sober. The controllers were also a bit surprised what we had been doing in that plane, but nevertheless they let us in to our homeland without much fuss.

In this moment Muska was seized with disquiet. Until then she slept under the pullover of Kata, so she was politely let through everywhere as a pregnant mother. Now, however, she crept from her belly to her back, and then she started to climb up, and by when we arrived to the customs, she almost came forward by meowing her own death warrant. Perhaps the customs officer even noticed her sticking out the head from the neck of Kata, but he probably considered impossible what he saw, and kept sitting with poker face as we passed by. Then Musa abruptly plopped back, gathering strength to jump in the taxi driver’s neck from the back seat later.

When at home we let her out in the garden for the first time, she hesitated for a moment, and then all of a sudden run up on the forty meters high poplar tree.

Los molinos de Dios

Ha pasado algún tiempo desde que la edición húngara de GEO Magazine, en aras de una altruista difusión popular de la sabiduría –ya saben: lo que importa no es quién escribe, «basta con que la narración no se aparte un punto de la verdad»– ofreció un ejemplar ejercicio de corta-y-pega en su artículo sobre Aurel Stein, el gran explorador húngaro de la Ruta de la Seda, a partir de las imágenes y textos del web que preparamos en Studiolum sobre el fondo que el propio Stein legó a la Colección Oriental de la Academia Húngara de Ciencias. Omitieron cuidadosamente el nombre de Studiolum y el de la Academia, quizá para evitarnos cargar con los errores de bulto que cometieron en su artículo.

En el transcurso de dos meses, dos cartas del Jefe de la Colección (de tono muy educado) y luego otras dos del Director de la Biblioteca (un poco más encendidas) se enviaron infructuosamente al registro de entrada de la versión húngara de la revista, seguramente algo similar a la imagen de arriba. Las cartas solo pedían al equivalente de la señora de la foto que en el siguiente número de GEO fueran tan amables de publicar el nombre de la Biblioteca donde se guarda el único archivo gráfico relevante de Stein.

Pero todos tenemos un jefe. Y fue desde la sede principal de GEO en Hamburgo donde, tras un breve silencio estupefacto al oír la historia, acabaron tomando cartas en el asunto. A la mañana siguiente, llegó la respuesta del editor jefe de la edición húngara.

La causa de esta incómoda situación no puede explicarse apelando al inminente cierre de la publicación de la revista, por tanto no puedo ni excusarlo.

No, por Dios. La revista ha tenido dos cierres de redacción desde la primera carta. Qué desastre de acto de contrición.

La edición de agosto de la revista acaba de llegar a los quioscos. Una nota al final de las cartas dice:

Para reparar nuestra falta, corregimos ahora esta información: Colección Oriental de la Biblioteca de la Academia Húngara de Ciencias. La web de esta institución es: http://dunhuang.mtak.hu

La página principal de la institución es, en realidad, http://www.mtak.hu, mientras que la dirección de arriba es justamente la de las páginas de Stein. Esto remata definitivamente lo innecesario de leer el artículo de GEO: mucho mejor es ir en su lugar a las páginas originales (en inglés y español), ya que GEO ha sido tan gentil de publicar su dirección de internet. Pronto aparecerá, además, una edición ampliada con el material completo de la exposición fotográfica de Hong-Kong que abarca toda la vida de Aurel Stein.

La fuente de la ilustración que encabeza esta entrada es la edición de agosto de 2008 de la versión húngara de GEO Magazine.