The Dance at Mociu [Paperback]

'The Dance at Mociu' is a collection of some thirty short, poetic prose pieces concerning Transylvania, the area of Romania that Peter Riley and his wife visit every year. Part travel report, part story, part epiphany, these luminous pieces cast light onto a mysterious area of 'Old Europe' where clashing empires and ever-changing borders ensured that nothing remained stable but the old traditions and wonderful music.

Most of them I call "factual stories". That is to say, things did happen more-or-less as described (or failed to, or appeared to, both of which I accept), and personal and place names are unaltered, but they remain constructed things. Those I don’t call factual stories I call prose-poems, which means that rather less than nothing happened but there was a certain something in the air. We went there in search of music; everything else was glimpsed out of the corner of the eye, and hung on the frailty of singular instances. But instances which clearly could not occur anywhere else.

Peter Riley, from the Preface to the book.

Peter Riley was born in 1942 and lives in Cambridge where he has a bookselling business. His collections of verse include 'Passing Measures' and 'Alstonefield' (both Carcanet), and 'Snow Has Fallen [...] Bury Me Here' (Shearsman Books).

'Goodbye for Another Year'

In the evening we go over to the parents’ farm, to say goodbye. After the cake and horinca in the summer kitchen we find ourselves, as you so easily and surprisingly do, wandering freely and unaccompanied around the establishment, walking round the kitchen garden, leaning over the pig sty... It’s a warm evening, the sun now getting quite low and its light deepening and seeming to settle on the wooden buildings among the orchard trees, "bathing" them, getting under the porch roof, "peering" as a poet might once have said, or "descending like a benediction" and why not? Why not say such words, in a place like this?

The big old Mama is busy with her preparations, the little old Papa has disappeared again into one of the sheds to attend to something. Voichitsa, the unmarried daughter, is sitting sewing in the front porch, the sunlight "peering" at her from the side. She is in a framework of carved wooden posts and beams. Beryl leans on the rail and talks to her, in English because Voichitsa needs practice in it, she wants to become a teacher, though it will be extremely difficult to get the qualification and land a job, especially around here, where she wants to stay. She wears a white and blue cloth wrapped round her hair, and bends over her work, smiling and speaking softly.

In front of the porch is a pot-tree. That is, a small tree stem stripped of bark, its branches trimmed to a foot or so, with a collection of pots and pans hung on it, inverted over the branch stubs. At one time this would have been Voichitsa’s tree – these pot-trees are meant as a sign to the passer-by that there is a marriageable daughter in the house. Voichitsa has always been a prime exemplar round here, in her youth, of someone who can bear all the serenity and dignity of a "peasant" family into a modern elegance, the calm of contin-uity and the sparkle of sophistication. The idea of her being on offer via a pot-tree is absurd. But it’s there, as, I suppose, a gesture of belonging, emblem of solidarity, one of the devices by which a glow of native certainty descends on the house, or a beacon in the navigation between science and song. It puts you in a landscape.

Before we go we say to her, "We shall be coming again next year. What is there we could bring with us, what can you best use that you can’t get here?" And she looks at us, as at two nice children who don’t quite get the picture, and says in a perfect English which is rare for her, "Really, there is nothing we need. There is nothing at all." And she means it.