From Bálványos to Bălvăniș, Pineapple as the Answer Too

Countless little games are underway, each played with wild fervor, with AUR and the RMDSZ sometimes chasing each other and sometimes waiting for the other to catch up, and by now only the ones actually playing the parts know which is the sidecar and which sits in the saddle.

Today, too, our nerves were frayed in the Romanian parliament, and Dan Tanasă showed up in his usual nation-saving costume. I wouldn't accuse him of democratic fervor, and I certainly wouldn't dwell on his love for Hungarians, but this time he put on such a semantic show that Voșlobeni–Vasláb rose to academic rank by comparison. Even "rece sustaiat" blushed and stepped aside: next to this stunt, it offered the more elegant translation.

Almost the entire RMDSZ caucus pounced on the topic, each responding to Tanasă's stunt in their own voice. First a representative - whose name I didn't catch - shot back, then Ödön Szabó also shouted that this chauvinism should stop already, people, after which, I imagine, he checked his Revolut app to see whether the metaphorical thirty pieces of silver for betraying the Premonstratensians had arrived yet. Botond Csoma closed the line, in Romanian, so no one would feel left out, and an alleged Transylvanian saying surfaced too, so that folk wisdom wouldn't go to waste either: "foaie verde ananas, papagal ai fost, papagal ai rămas" - that was the text with which he delivered a verbal punch to Tanasă. Roughly translated: green leaf and pineapple, a parrot you were, a parrot you'll remain - if we can't get anywhere in substance, at least you can flap your beak.

In Romanian this would even rhyme, only the syllable count trips over the poet's meter, and I keep wondering when exactly this saying entered Transylvanian oral tradition. Because I myself am Transylvanian, my dear, thoroughly so, and street slang doesn't give me the shivers either, but there are as many "foaie verde" texts as there are stars in the sky, and that doesn't turn every single one into a proverb just because someone tacks a parrot onto the end. What I'd really like to know is where Csoma found the Transylvanian pineapple plantation, in what region he went looking for the ethnographic experience to go with it. North of the macaque reserve, beyond the banana fields, where the Transylvanian banana falls alongside the Hungarian orange? Equally sour, equally a letdown, but at least it's ours - that's practically a constitutional creed around here.

The whole wordy uproar broke out because, according to Tanasă, Bálványos must also be blessed with a Romanian name. Hold on tight, dear frightened reader: this omission hasn't been remedied since Trianon either, and Romania somehow survived all these decades with Bálványos remaining Bálványos in both languages, because for all this time no one had properly rechristened it - how could anyone have slept soundly on these Mioritic lands? True, in this region people were still praying to the ancient Hungarian gods when the body parts of Koppány, sent off to the four corners, had long since turned to dust, while meanwhile our kinfolk across the border beyond Ciucea were busily converting to Christianity, and the poor Bogomils in the end got their share of the fallout too - and from here the digression could lead all the way to the Bosnian national holiday, but I sense that would turn into a trek through hell rather than reporting.

So back to the linguistic misery we're fated to live in, because meanwhile Tanasă has already coined a new name. In fact, he claims he didn't even invent it himself, but the Academy did - heaven forbid a mere representative should have to fabricate a Romanian name all on his own. So let it be Bălvăniș, since apparently Bálványos isn't Romanian enough - I told you there was a rung below Voșlobeni on the semantic ladder. Why nobody grabs this man by the collar - a man trampling the laws and democratic norms underfoot - I simply cannot figure out, no matter how much I rack my brain and scratch the back of my neck, because even by Romanian standards it's a strange stunt for someone to simply assign a new name to a settlement's facade. Why does he do it? Because Romanian is the state language - and with that, apparently, everything is explained, everything is settled.

I have a feeling the Bălvăniș sign will go up right before the elections, just as the one attacking our nation and the one defending us both climb onto the same stage. One will rename it, the other will protest, each proving to its own camp how fiercely it fights, then the election will pass, the show will quiet down, the many warriors will go back to their own business, and the Bălvăniș sign will stay right where it is - and you get to choose which punchline comes at the end.

and the Bălvăniș sign will stay right where it is:

• and we get to see what they actually protected for us in the end

• and we get to spell out the new name in the old place

• and we get to curse in Hungarian by the roadside

• and we close the story once again on the losing side of history

• and we get to search for Bálványos in the cold ashes of nation-defense

• and we get to read in Romanian that we won in the end

Anna Karczag