I became aware of a rattling rhythm sounding from somewhere above – at first I thought it was a woodpecker – a complicated paradiddle punctuated at intervals by the clang of a bell. A black-robed priest was drumming on a suspended plank with a pair of wooden sticks; this was the toacă, played every day from now until Easter. We sat and listened, sipping the sweet, achingly cold spring water, as the rhythm grew in speed and complexity, culminating in a frenzy of tapping before rather bathetically fading away. That
