A Good Samaritan

My mind focused on what I might have for tea – an omelette? some minced beef? – I put my key in the lock. It refused to turn. I took the key out and examined it, then tried again. Still nothing.

“Am I on the right floor?” I wondered. I was. I rang the doorbell. No response. I knew my friend was in – he had messaged me to say he was going to sleep early – but surely he could not sleep through this barrage of rung bells.

It appeared he could. Next, I began thumping on the door, like in a cop movie but omitting the ‘NYPD! Open up!’ bit. Still nothing.

I made my way outside and began wailing on the streets. ‘Bence! Wake up! Open the door! Bence! Bence!’ Again, to no effect. I didn’t dare continue yelling his name, fearing I would start re-enacting the ‘Dan!’ scene in Alan Partridge or give the impression of being a rowdy British tourist.

Options were quickly running out. I went back indoors and rang the doorbell another 75 times to no avail.

Eventually, a neighbour opened his door. He asked something in Hungarian, to which I could only respond with my stock response: Elnézést, nem beszélek magyarul (Sorry, I don’t speak Hungarian). Thankfully his grasp of English was far superior to mine of Hungarian, in which I can say only the key words: ‘beer’, ‘airport’ and ‘train station’. 

I explained my dilemma and he endeavoured to help. Nevertheless, our combined brain power could not think of a solution to the conundrum. Before long, he suggested having a drink instead: my kind of Good Samaritan.

In his flat – as I wondered mometarily whether I was about to be murdered – and suddenly all manner of bottles began to appear: some beer, but mostly pálinka. Pálinka, for those not in the know, is Hungarian schapps. There was pálinka made from apples, from pears, from apricots, from peaches and probably some I have forgotten.

These were, he told me, distilled ‘back in the village’. It is one of the treats of eastern Europe* when people talk mysteriously of ‘the village’: a place far removed from urban modernity and where people carry on the traditions of yesteryear. It is from such places that you will be supplied all kinds of delicacies made by an industrious grandmother or grandfather.

The booze was not bad, even if I’m not usually one for spirits. ‘They’re weak,’ he apologised, ‘only about 50% alcohol.’ In the past, the stuff edged towards 60%. As the night wore and the collection was slowly sampled, more experimental pálinkas made their way out of the recesses of various cupboards throughout the flat. An elderflower one smelled suitably floral but tasted like unalleviated acetone. ‘Not the best one,’ I confessed. ‘The women like it,’ he replied.

Soon, more products from ‘the village’ started to appear. King among them was the homemade sausage: every year the neighbour and his father spend a few days making sausages together, flavouring and smoking them to taste. Perversely, images of a quasi-medieval rustic setting with spring to mind.

Not having eaten for most of the day, I devoured one rapidly. Seeing my famished state, he supplied a second along with bread. ‘Have as much as you want, we always make too much anyway.’

As the night wears on, the neighbour – actual name Josef – reveals more about himself. Working for BT, he used to travel across the world as an engineer. There’s scarcely a part of the world he’s not been to. With children now, his international movements have lessened, staying in Budapest and occasionally running back to the village for more meat and booze.

Talking, it became clear that the problems facing Hungarians are in many parts the same as ours in the UK. Inflation has been hovering at around 25% for the last few months. With average salaries among the lowest in Europe, the rises can be felt keenly. It is noticeably less cheap than when I was here last year.

But still, at least Hungary is more or less Hungarian and promises to be so for the foreseeable future. In maintaining its Hungarianness, it has not lost much of the social glue that inevitably dissipates when societies become less cohesive amid rapid demographic change. I find it hard to believe, for example, that any neighbour in a block of flats in London would let some unknown Hungarian into their home, feed them and give them somewhere to sleep. Where society is a merely a mass of strangers, there is not enough social trust to engender such acts of altruism.

People, I would argue, are most generous and prone to charity when acting with their in-group: having a shared culture and morality they intrinsically comprehend the basis upon which they operate in relation to one another. It’s the same principle that allows more homogenous societies to have more generous welfare states, and more fractured to have higher levels of distrust amid such arrangements.

Maybe, of course, I met an outlier among Hungarians too. I don’t for one minute suggest that any Magyar will let you camp out on their sofa willy-nilly. Luckily for me, this one did, saving me a night sleeping in the corridor, deprived of the delicacies of the Hungarian hinterlands.

Either way: thanks, Josef. 

*Please no ‘Hungary is central Europe’ - you know what I mean!