<<  -- 3 --  Elica Lupus-Popescu    MYSTIC CHANTING

My search took me first to a different place, entirely, and, accompanied by a constant travelling companion, my English friend Rachel, I set out one early April day for Sighisoara in Mures, Transilvania, birthplace of the infamous Vlad Tepes, to meet one of the modern witnesses to a performance of the ancient pipers of Iasi ...

This simple meeting and interview proved more difficult than I had initially imagined. The man I was to meet, Andrei Sorin Nicolescu, was not at home, and mysteriously unavailable. People in the town seemed to mistrust me on mentioning his name, and, to be brief, our searches led nowhere. Four youths with a very hairy dog seemed to be hanging around -- and they looked distinctly un-Romanian.

I had Nicolescu's address -- an apartment high above the old cobbled town square -- and we made many visits to the door, but as our day of exhaustive questioning and frustration faded to darkness, we climbed the stone steps to Andrei's apartment one final time, hoping he might have returned from whatever mission had taken him away. This time, arriving under cover of darkness, the door to his apartment was ajar ...

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