Agnesa Horváthová

“About two years of the ensemble’s existence we met Mrs Hübschmann. She was a kind of personality that you’ll never meet again. A great person. You could talk to her just about anything. I started telling her about what happened home in Slovakia. She pressed on me, ‘Write it. Put it down to paper.’ I told her, ‘I’ll write it in Czech or Slovak.’ She replied, ‘No, you must write it in Romany.’ We didn’t speak Romany at home, I only learned Romany in my husband’s family, since his family spoke this language. I told her, ‘Mrs Hübschmannová, but I can’t write in that language. It’s spoken and written differently.’ She said, ‘Well, you’ll take lessons from me.’ So I went to her. She taught me to write in the Romany language. I asked, ‘What now?’ She replied, ‘Write. Don’t be afraid, we’ll do everything the way it should be.’ So I wrote stories, poems, into newspapers. They were about to compile a Romany text book, I don’t know whether it was published. It was compiled by Dr Ščuka. We contributed to that. Then I started writing, Mrs Hübschmannová helped me and the book Pal e bari Rama was published. It contained all the stuff I used to listen to. I put something of my own, but most of it came from the narration“.

“We performed more abroad than here. And they knew us better abroad. I don’t know why. They did not take us seriously here, they said, ‘Well, Romany people, they just dance and sing.’ But it was not just singing and dancing. We also did christenings. There was a christening party and we wished something good for the child. ‘Be as beautiful as this flower’ or ‘Be as tall as the tree’. These were things that you wished in the Romany language. Then there was the wedding. We also showed our customs. The bride did not have a veil, only a wreath in her costume and headdress. This was compulsory then. She was given a scarf on her head. I still use a scarf whenever I go cooking. No woman then would have dared to cook with her hair loose or bound in a tail. Mainly when dealing with flour. This is paying honours to cooking, flour. Bread, it is a miracle, a gift from God. And in the ceremony we showed this. And then we did a funeral. It was in three parts and then there was just the normal performance with dancing and singing. So it had four parts. We performed the funeral so that they knew the way we, Romany people, did funerals. That showing respect is maximum for us. You say good-bye to a deceased person, but he or she is still with us. Whether it’s a wedding, christening or we just gather as a family, we never forget anybody. They are dead but still with us.”

“We met for a long time, on the daily basis we were in touch. I told her everything that happened, this and that. And she asked me, ‘Why don’t you write it, why don’t you write it?’ I say, ‘I don’t know.’ I learned Romany only here, we didn’t speak the language in Slovakia. We didn’t speak formal Slovak either, rather the Hutorat, that is the Eastern Slovakian dialect. We spoke formal Slovak only at school, at home we used the dialect. ‘So you will come to me and I’ll teach you to write in Romany.’ Romany is spoken and written differently. I went to her and she showed me how it was written. I started with small poems, stories into newspapers, journals, etc. And then she told me, ‘Now, it’s good, you can start writing.’”

“After the Revolution we thought, ‘We’ll go into politics’. So we did. We even took part in demonstration. I still regret it and so does my husband. He always said, ‘We did the worst thing we could do.’ What do we get from it? We harmed ourselves. You go to the TV, newspapers and eventually your son gets stabbed by skinheads and there is nothing you can do about it. Phone calls and threats followed. We met every day so I told (to L. Rusenko): ‘So you see what you got us into? Look, I could have lost my son.’ So we had a meeting and agreed that we would go abroad. We went to Belgium. But it was not it abroad, home is home. My husband had parents and siblings here. Not me, I had all my siblings with me. I was sorry but not so much as my husband. We parted ways there. I am sorry because Rusenkos stayed there and I and my siblings returned to Czechia. It was because of my husband.”

“Then in Slovakia we already had electricity, when I was about thirteen or fourteen there was electricity, but not before. We had oil lamps, we sat around them, or in summers there was a fire in the centre of the village and we sat round it. People told stories. You learned a lot, perhaps too much. And who listened carefully, remembered everything. And this was where the tall stories were told. Grandmas and grandpas told them and I listened.”