Author: Gábor T. Szántó
Original title: Európa szimfónia
Title in English: Europa Symphony
Publisher: Scolar
Year of publication: 2019
Number of pages: 320
The plot of Europa Symphony spans the years between 1945 and 1976. The author conjures up the Romanian Communist dictatorship and the Transylvanian micro-world. Transylvania is a province of Romania with a sizeable Hungarian speaking minority that was part of Hungary before 1918 and, again briefly during WWII; this ethnic mix causes tensions even today. The main character, a boy growing up in a Romanian-Hungarian mixed marriage, is searching for his identity, he lives with the ethnic tensions and in the atmosphere of fear because of the Romanian Secret Police, the Securitate. When the boy becomes a young man, the story passes to West Berlin in the midst of the Cold War where many of the young choose to live in communes and others are drawn to far-left terrorism. The two parts of the story are intertwined by a family history never spoken about.
András, from the Transylvanian capital, Cluj, takes private German lessons at the insistence of his mother Enikő, a senior nurse. It was she who instills in him a love of classical music that his Romanian father, the city Deputy Party Secretary, Gheorghe, disapproves of but tolerates, as he tolerates that the boy and his mother speak Hungarian with each other. In 1954, at the age of eight, the boy realizes that he has a love for the violin and the talent to play it well. András’s childhood is blighted by the tensions caused by family secrets about his origins. He suffers humiliation at school and, later, in the military because of his Hungarian intellectual background on the one hand and for being the son of a Party cadre on the other. He senses that there is something not right in his life. His father and mother often fight and drink to excess.
In the fall of 1956, after the brief uprising against the Communist regime in Hungary, that he and his mother follow attentively on the radio, András rebels against his father: one day he plays the Egmont Overture by Beethoven in his presence, the signature music of the uprising.
András attends a conservatoire He falls in love with Maia, also Hungarian speaking. She is a half orphan who lives with her Jewish mother. Her father, an ethnic German Transylvanian, had perished in a Communist labour camp. András considers her his soul-mate but in 1968 she and her mother emigrate to West Germany. The boy does not have a passport; they keep in touch by letter and phone, but the boy finds other lovers as an attempt at revenge for her departure, yet can neither forget his love nor give it up.
András gets involved in distributing anti-regime pamphlets and when his father confronts him about it, András says he will stop only if his father gets him a passport so that he can visit Maia in the West. By 1971, András is employed as the new concertmaster of the Cluj Philharmonic when the orchestra is invited to West Berlin to play Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony and a modern response to it, the Europa Symphony, composed by the music director of the Berlin Philharmonic, Wilhelm Kerr. András has his father to thank for being allowed to travel. However, he cannot reach Maia by phone and his letter is returned from Germany with the stamp “Addressee Unknown”.
Not much later, the Securitate contacts András. They know about the pamphlets, they threaten him with prison unless he is willing to inform on his fellow musicians during the trip. András gets into a fight with his father who had reported him but his father claims that he was only trying to shield him from criminal prosecution. András goes to see his mother, a nurse, who is on night duty. She finds excuses for his father but encourages András to cooperate with the Securitate, make it out to Berlin and ask the music director for help. András does not understand why this man would help. His mother asks him to accompany her to a cemetery before he leaves; there she recounts a story, described in flashbacks, how in 1945 she was raped by Russians soldiers, her father was shot and she was taken to a labour camp in Transnistria, east of Romania, and learns on her release that her mother had committed suicide. This is the first time András has heard about the labour camp and how his grandparents died.
András signs the agreement to cooperate with the Securitate. At the farewell dinner he does not talk to his father, his mother repeats in a whisper: he must talk to the German music director. Enikő threatens Gheorghe that if he mentions anything about Transnistria or Maia to anyone, she will leave him or do something even worse.
In Berlin, Wilhelm Kerr is preparing for the concert with the visiting orchestra watched by Romanian security agents. His son Peter, who is active in a far left commune, is entrusted with the task of planting a bomb at the premiere, to be attended by the political and business elite of Berlin, as well as Romanian diplomats, targeted because Romania followed a separate policy from the other countries in the Warsaw Pact. Peter takes orders from Klaus, a member of the extremist Red Army Faction, a man idolized by the younger man.
During the dinner following a rehearsal, we learn from the conversation between Wilhelm and András that the former was a prisoner of war in Transnistria in 1945 but he pretends not to know Enikő’s name.
Late that evening András tries to call Maia but she does not pick up the phone. Wilhelm visits András in the hotel and tells him about his experiences in the prisoners’ camp that are presented in a flashback. He fell in love with a nurse whom he got pregnant. He proposed to her using his silver lighter in place of a ring before they were separated from each other. András is shocked to realize that Wilhelm is his father. That is why his mother wanted him to talk to Wilhelm and why she had given her son the silver lighter as a keepsake. András feels sick and cannot continue the conversation.
That night Wilhelm tells his wife Martha that he has another son. She tells him that he must help the son but first he has to talk to Peter, their own son to prepare him for the news.
In his confusion over finding out that his father is not the man he has known since childhood, András climbs to the roof of the hotel with the intention of committing suicide but at the last minute chooses to live.
The next day at rehearsal Wilhelm and András get into a fight about music in front of the whole orchestra. During a short tête-à-tête conversation, András reprimands his father for never having looked for him. Wilhelm tells him that after he was released, he tried to get in touch with Enikő for years but his letters were returned from Cluj with the stamp “Addressee Unknown”. It was this void in him that gave birth to the Europa Symphony. András reveals to him that he was recruited by the Securitate and he was even supposed to report on Wilhelm. Wilhelm asks for a minute to think things over. In a flashback, András remembers whispered half words that he did not understand and his father’s anger over music and German lessons. When one of the secret agents enters the room they end their conversation but András lights up using the lighter his mother had given him. Wilhelm notices the lighter and points out the monogram WK at its bottom. Enikő has united the two of them with this token of love.
That evening Peter heads off to the concert carrying the time bomb that Klaus had given him. He is ground down by conflict and in the end is not able to complete the assignment, he cannot be responsible for a slaughter and so defuses the device and notifies the police. Both he and his mother are present at the concert but his father has not had a chance to let Peter know about his other son.
During the evening concert András seems to spot a pregnant Maia in the audience. After the concert Wilhelm helps András to escape and the security agents fail to stop him.
In Wilhelm’s home the wife and the still ignorant son Peter receive András in a kind of stupefaction. Wilhelm returns home and the secret is out. Peter is shocked to learn that his father has another son. Wilhelm and Martha talk to him. András calls information to find Maia when the counter-terrorism police ring the bell and take Peter away.
In the Epilogue we see András and Maia five years later; she is pregnant with his child. András is taking Maia’s five year old son to the kindergarten; the boy wants to call András his daddy. On the way home András buys a newspaper and that is how he learns that the police had shot some terrorists who were planning a kidnapping and that his half brother was among the dead.
The novel uses the structure of a symphony in four movements with recurrent themes and with a coda/epilogue.
Full English translation available