In contrast to Germany, people in Hungary had never believed in Communism, so to them the regime was straight-up fact, Peter had pitched during his presentation. Exactly — pitched. With a broad stance, his frail shoulders thrown back, always flipping his dark hair. With an easy smile on his face. Sometimes you want to slap such unshakably ironic people, just to see if they can feel anything.
Shows in six of Germany’s biggest theaters. His first piece translated into fifteen languages. Multimedia performances with his participation in over twenty countries. A monthly column in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. He knew how to play his cards right. The kid had scored a ten on his first shot. And he even looked the part. What’s more — he looked like a loner who couldn’t be really surprised by anything in the world anymore. Often full of a slight disdain. That’s what happens to public entertainers. Just like professional party planners hate partygoers.
But Ieva knew that Peter’s disdain was purely symbolic. He was used to looking at the world cynically, he shrunk from anything forced on him. Such imposed, positive emotions are usually just for connecting a writer to his audience. Like Paulo Coelho, who went out in front of hundreds of readers at book fairs — and both sides came together in a convulsive overflow of love. Just yesterday Ieva had overheard some students at the café laughing about Coelho — about his habit of drinking freshly squeezed carrot juice with freshly made warm cream. About housewives who, upon meeting him, jump at the chance to tell him about their troubles with their husbands while the author would listen and offer love-filled advice in a fatherly manner.
But Peter’s stare was a warning.
Be careful — his eyes seemed to say as they moved over the audience. But not for my sake. I grew up with the dangers of Hungary. So I warn you — be careful for your sake. The audience sat silently and tried to decode this mysterious message called Peter.
In closing Peter read a fragment from his play in English, but the audience sat in icy silence. Then he asked a translator to read the same fragment in German, saying, “Usually I’m used to seeing more smiling faces!” But the people decided he was trying to work them. There were a few older men in the audience who were more directly caught up by the young Hungarian’s overt provocation. One person stood up indignantly and shouted—“Stop translating, all Germans understand English!”
Peter answered that understanding and hearing a text are not the same thing. This led to a lengthy discussion. Ieva saw that Peter was growing helpless in the face of aggression.
Ieva asked:
“Peter, irony is meant to create distance, isn’t it?”
Peter turned his attention to her. He looked at her warily.
“In order to talk amongst themselves, Hungarians were forced to use subtexts — to read between the lines and beyond the jokes. By the 80s irony had become the official language in Hungary. If someone spoke seriously, it meant he sided with the regime — meaning he was lying… It’s hard to joke around. If I tell a Russian a dirty Transylvanian joke, he’d laugh for an hour. A Hungarian would laugh for half an hour. A German — for five minutes. It’s just that the joke would be foreign to someone born in the Carpathian forest, where everything smells of blood and death.”
“And now, when you travel the world? Do you maintain your cynical view of things?”
Peter shrugged.
“No choice. I grew up with irony. It’s my second skin.”
“And distance as well?”
He nodded.
Barbara pushed her way through the crowd with a CD in hand. She looked at Ieva, and Ieva smiled encouragingly and waved.
Barbara studied at the Konrad Wolf Academy for Film and Television under director Hans Foses, and Hans practically put the girl on a pedestal. Every time she’d met Ieva, Barbara tried to speak Russian. She gushed about Russia and her dream of traveling to Moscow. Ieva was too lazy to keep reminding her that the Baltics and Russia were two different places.
Once they had talked about Latvia.
“What’s Germany to you!” Barbara had cried out. “Compared to the massive area of your country!”
When she saw Ieva’s surprised face, she explained:
“I mean the steppes!”
Ieva had laughed, but said nothing. In the eyes of the international community Russia was irrational, but the romanticized idea Germans had of Russia was sometimes even more so.
Small and lithe with short-cropped hair, Barbara reminded Ieva of a teenager. Hans said she had style. And her film was amazing, Ieva would see for herself. That’s how a director was supposed to act, Ieva thought — like a jackrabbit. White against the pale winter snow and brown against yellow summer reeds. So the world is never closed off to them. So they can get inside a foreign world and observe.
Meanwhile Barbara was presenting her movie:
“Last summer the cameraman and I filmed in Romania — in Bucharest. It was really tough, not so much physically, but spiritually. You’ll see… Some scenes were staged — the ones filmed in the youth center — but the rest are documentary. We made friends with the Bucharest street kids. They live in heating ducts. We gave them a video camera and had them film themselves, in their world. For them it was a game, entertainment. For us — it was valuable footage. You’ll see… What else can I say? Roll film!”
Peter sat down next to Ieva with a glass of wine and whispered into her ear:
“Thanks for the support!”
His shaggy hair fell forward onto her shoulder and tickled her neck. She drew back and laughed:
“Don’t mention it! Have you been to Romania?”
Peter simply nodded his head in response.
“Japan?”
“No! Japan is the exception. And I never lie.”
They were both overcome by fits of laughter as the rest of the hall grew silent and suddenly very serious.
The movie started.
It was powerful. Even for the students who had learned to emotionally distance themselves from the material used and evaluate a film’s professional qualities.
Shaky scenes filmed with a miniature camcorder moved in time with the observer’s breathing and heartbeat. Barbara was like a meticulous follower of Dogme 95, the so-called final film manifesto of the 20th century presented in Paris in 1995 by Danish director Lars von Trier and his peers. This manifesto, or “Vow of Chastity,” envisaged the creation of works that went against the manufactured glamor of Hollywood by:
— filming only in a natural setting;
— never recording the sound separately from the video, or vice-versa, and without using music unless it was actually in the scene being filmed;
— using a camcorder;
— making the movie colorful and prohibiting special lighting effects;
— forbidding the use of optical tools and filters;
— not having any actions in the movie that were impossible to realistically show (such as murder);
— prohibiting the alienation of time and geographic setting — the movie had to take place in the here and now;
— prohibiting genre movies;