Friday 29th April 2022

Budapest was our early Eastern bloc exposure from 1987. Anthony Mottram was installed in a flat and had more expenses than the Hungarian Prime Minister. A Nibelung hoard of money in a cupboard could be dipped into at will.

That was 35 years ago or more. In 2022, we arrived from Vienna at the new suburban station. First sight – a bus full of free people. No requirements. They were permitted their own faces. Irony: the Germanic people of Austria, no faces, not allowed. In the old Block, once ruled with iron, complete liberation of the face.

We were conveyed to a booming restaurant for a robust meat dinner. The next morning, though, Budapest in the light of day was revealed. A scruffy, rough feeling now, not unattractive, but uneven progress. Some streets as run-down as ever, not come on much since the War or 1956.

Harry Rollo and Mercury Mr Kitten arrived in the afternoon. We took a luxury full-meat restaurant but Harry had to see Bartok, Kodaly and the 21 Hungarian Dances first. The next day was his performance for which the entire troupe had been bus-ed from Vienna – hundreds and hundreds of persons, all to perform. The new performance hall in Budapest gave a tremendous spaciousness to the performance and was superbly received, with Bartok, Kodaly, Kandinski and Ligeti in the audience, as well as the 21 Hungarian Dances, all enraptured  – or as much as the pared-down ones ever can be. Harry performed some performances by others, I should mention. One was a massive work constantly eluding one’s grasp and the other was about the Waltz, so perfect for Vienna, although what is done to the Waltz is terrifying.

Afterwards, we saw some of the performers without trousers backstage as they rushed to change for the bus back to Vienna. Then we took a restaurant which Anthony Mottram said he hadn’t been to since the 1980s, when it was turistico. Not now. It stayed open just for us and the Roma players came to the table. Any requests? I had a brainwave: ‘What about the Hungarian Shadash Kiraly?’ It’s their Gilbert and Sullivan but sentimental. Unbelievable – the famous lady singer of the company for whom world-composers had composed – she began to sing, accompanied by the Roma band of course. The old stirring melodies of the Great Hungarian Plains, known to all Hungarians, poured forth, melancholy, but with hope in togetherness. The other important performer present suddenly had a pile of rather unattractive orange food in front of her. ‘Has she spilled or has she vom-ed?’ Mercury Mr Kitten enquired. Mercifully she had only spilled her Hungarian goulash soup. The waiters were the picture of disapproval in clearing. Their hair was so important.

Anthony Mottram and I sought out his old housekeeper. I said, ‘We’ll either visit her in person or her grave.’ Fortunately, she’s still in person – just. Still in the blocki where AM had his really significant Budapest phase in the 1990s and began to re-build the Bloc. She was found to be a neighbour who assumed right of entrance and employment and of menu-ing, such as when she arrived one morning in 1993 with about 100 eggs scrambled with paprika.

In that street the bullet-holes from the War or ’56 or both have been removed.

In the portal of the blocki, we encountered a former neighbour who remembered Anthony Mottram. ‘Vorouska will say she’s 94 but she’s not. She’s 88,’ this woman said. Sure enough, the first thing Vorouska did was announce herself as 94. All in Hungarian, of course. Not a word of English. AM had to translate for me. Val, when he used to visit in the 90s, held long conversations with her in German. Afterwards he would say he had no idea what language it was but it certainly wasn’t German. Her cleaning was questionable. Once she dampened the floor mop directly from the lavvie. But there was no arguing with these methods. Indeed as staff she dominated completely. Her main interest was gossip, especially any unexpected nocturnal arrivals.

I had to sit while Anthony and Vorouska jabbered in Hungarian, which isn’t a language where you can pick up the gist. It wasn’t exactly a joyous re-union. It came back to me that Vorouska never did have any expression on her face. I don’t know what happened to it. Afterwards Anthony briefed that her son had died, she wasn’t having anything to do with vaccinations and she believed Hungary is for the Hungarians. Her decor suggested a subsistence life. There’s still a dog whom she claimed to walk in the street. But how? She’s so grey and swollen and breathless – how could she get down the stairs?

Later we wandered the streets lined with massive palaces of apartments, which have not achieved universal renovation. What to do with this huge stony city, built for empire 160 years ago or so? How can the dwindling population of a small country support it? What’s it for now? Immigration would be a benefit, but that’s now allowed.

But the Opera House has been renovated. Obviously a huge priority. What a glory it is revealed to be, with exotic, jewel-encrustations on the underside of the arcades, carefully lit to best effect at night.

The Budapest Opera Renovated. So Exotic now. Before Black with Grime

The New Performance Hall in Budapest. Otherwise the city rots rather