They pulled into a roadside tavern. Inside, two men sat at a long, copper bar, peering into their Dreher pilsners. Their garb was rustic: tattered, muddy-hued cotton shirts and blue dickeys, or some old Soviet version thereof. Neither man looked up as the Americans arrived. The barkeep followed them with his eyes wordlessly. He wore a white apron and busied himself drying beer steins with a gray-looking towel. His receding hairline and the dark indentations beneath his eyes contributed to an impression of age.

Janson smiled. “Speak English?” he called to the man.

The man nodded.

“See, my wife and I, we’ve been sight-seeing hereabouts. But it’s also kind of an explore-your-roots thing. You follow?”

“Your family is Hungarian?” The barkeep’s English was accented but unhalting.

“My wife’s,” Janson said.

Jessie smiled and nodded. “Straight up,” she added.

“Is that so?”

“According to family lore, her grandparents were born in a village called Molnár.”

“It no longer exists,” the barkeep said. He was, Janson saw now, younger than he had first seemed. “And the family’s name?”

“Family name was Kis,” Janson said.

“Kis is like Jones in Hungary. I’m afraid that does not narrow your search very much.” His voice was cool, formal, reserved. Not a typical rural tavernkeeper, Janson decided. As he took a step back from the bar, a blackish horizontal stripe was visible on his apron where his big belly rubbed against the ledge of the bar.

“I wonder whether anybody else might have any memories of the old days,” Jessie said.

“Who else is here?” The question was a polite challenge.

“Maybe … one of these gentlemen?”

The barkeep gestured toward one with his chin. “He’s not even Magyar, really, he’s Palóc,” he said. “A very old dialect. I can hardly understand him. He understands our word for money, and I understand his for beer. So we get along. Beyond that, I would not press.” He shot a glance toward the other man. “And he’s a Ruthenian.” He shrugged. “I say no more. His forints are as good as any other’s.” It was a statement of democratic sentiment that conveyed the opposite.

“I see,” Janson said, wondering whether he was being let in on things by being told of the local tensions, or deliberately frozen out. “And there wouldn’t be anybody who lives around here and might remember the old days?”

The man behind the bar ran his gray cloth along the inside of another stein, leaving behind a faint beard of lint. “The old days? Before 1988? Before 1956? Before 1944? Before 1920? I think these are the old days. They speak of a new era, but I think it is not so new.”

“I hear you,” Janson said folksily.