The Balkan Trilogy (19 page)

Beyond the station the roads were unmade. The horse stumbled in pot-holes, the carriage shook. Puddles, thinly sheeted over with ice, cracked beneath the wheels. Here the houses were mostly wooden shacks, but among them were blocks of flats, recently built but already turning into slums. The paint was scratched from the doors; washing hung on the balconies and women bawled down into the streets.

It was in one of these flats that Yakimov had found a room. The room had been advertised on a notice-board as ‘
lux nebun
’ – insane luxury. Insane luxury at a low rent seemed just the answer to his problem.

He had come upon the block after searching the back streets for an hour or more. The servant, who opened the door an inch, gabbled something about ‘siesta’. He pretended not to understand. The stone staircase, ventilated with open spaces, seemed colder than the street. He pushed open the door and edged his way into the oily heat of the flat’s interior. He would not be moved out. Defeated, the servant tapped with extreme trepidation on a door, entered and was met with uproar. At last a man and a woman, both in dressing-gowns, peered out at Yakimov with angry hauteur. The man said: ‘What does this person here in our house?’

The woman replied: ‘Tell him at once to go.’

It was some moments before Yakimov realised that, beneath the clotted disguise of accent, the two were speaking English
to each other. He bowed and smiled: ‘You speak English? As an Englishman, I am flattered. I have called to see the room you advertised.’

‘An Englishman!’ The wife stepped forward with an expression of such avidity that Yakimov quickly amended his status.

‘Of White Russian origin,’ he said. ‘A refugee, I fear, from the war zone.’

‘A refugee!’ She turned to her husband with an expression that said: ‘That’s just the sort of Englishman we
would
get.’

‘The name is Yakimov. Prince Yakimov.’

‘Ah, a Prince!’

The room offered was small, cluttered up with Rumanian carved furniture and embroidered hangings, but warm and comfortable enough. He agreed to take it.

‘The rent a month is four thousand
lei
,’ said the woman, whose name was Doamna Protopopescu. When Yakimov did not haggle, she added: ‘In advance.’

‘Tomorrow, dear girl.’ He touched her fat, grimy little hand with his lips. ‘Tomorrow a large remittance arrives for me at the British Legation.’

Doamna Protopopescu looked at her husband, who said: ‘The Prince is an English Prince,’ and so the matter was left for the moment.

Doamna Protopopescu had advised Yakimov the correct
tr
ǎ
sur
ǎ
fare from the city’s centre. Now, his bags safely on the pavement, he handed up the fare and a ten
lei
tip. The driver looked dumbfounded, then gave an anguished howl. He demanded more. Firmly Yakimov shook his head and started to gather up his bags. The driver flung the coins upon the pavement. Ignoring this gesture, Yakimov began to climb the stairs.

Swinging his whip above his head and haranguing the passers-by right and left, the driver leapt down and followed. Bounding and bawling, he caught up with his fare at the first landing.

Yakimov did not know what the man was saying, but he was shaken by the fury with which it was being said. He tried
to run. He stumbled, dropped a case, then shrank in fear against the wall. The man did not attack him, but instead, as Yakimov crept on, kept beside him, banging his jackboots on the stairs, slashing his whip and causing so much noise that people came to their doors to see what was happening. Doamna Protopopescu and her servant peered over the third landing.

‘How much did you give him?’ she asked.

Yakimov told her.

‘That was more than enough.’ At once her face became a mask of fury. She threw up her fists and, rushing at the driver, she screamed out a virulent stream of Rumanian. The man stopped in his tracks. She waved him away, very slowly, turning every few moments to fix Yakimov with a stare of sullen loathing. At this show of defiance, the servant ran after him, echoing her mistress’s rage, while the mistress herself conducted Yakimov indoors.

‘Dear girl, you were magnificent,’ said Yakimov as he sat panting on his bed.

‘I said “How dare you molest a nobleman” and he was afraid. So to deal with a filthy peasant.’ She flicked a hand, dismissing the matter, then said sharply: ‘And now, the money!’

‘This evening,’ he promised her, ‘when the diplomatic post arrives, I’ll stroll back to the Legation and pick up m’remittance.’

Doamna Protopopescu’s small black eyes bulged with suspicion. To greet her lodger, she had fitted herself into a short black dress that clung to the folds and wrinkles of her fat like a second skin. Her heavily whitened face sagged with annoyance like a flabby magnolia. She shouted through the door for her husband.

Protopopescu appeared, dressed in the uniform of an army officer of the lowest rank. He was a thin, drooping man with corseted waist, rouged cheeks and a moustache like that of a ring-master, but he had nothing of his wife’s fire. He said with a poor attempt at command: ‘Go this instant and get the money.’

‘Not now, dear boy.’ Yakimov settled down among the embroidered cushions. ‘Must have a bit of kip. Worn out with all this fuss.’ He closed his eyes.

‘No, no!’ cried Doamna Protopopescu and, pushing past her husband, she caught Yakimov by the arm and dragged him off the bed. ‘Go now. At once.’ She was extremely strong. She gave Yakimov a push that sent him headlong into the passage, then, closing the room door, she locked it and put the key in her handbag. ‘So! When you bring the money, I give the key.’

Yakimov returned to the gnawing cold of the street. Where on earth could he find the money? He dared not approach Dobson who yesterday had lent him a last four thousand for the rent. Having no idea that Doamna Protopopescu could be so resolute, he had spent the money on a couple of excellent meals.

The pavements were freezing. He could feel the frost sticking to the broken soles of his shoes. He could not face the walk back to the main square and, realising he would have to learn to use public transport, he stood among the crowd waiting for a tramcar. When the tram came, there was an hysterical stampede in which Yakimov and an old woman were flung violently to the ground. The woman picked herself up and returned to the fray. Only Yakimov was left behind. When the next tram came along, he was prepared to fight. He was carried for a few
lei
to the city’s centre. One could live here very cheaply, he realised, but who wanted to live cheaply? Not Yakimov.

He went straight to the English Bar and found it empty. Forced to search elsewhere, he crossed the square to Dragomir’s food store, a refuge where a gentleman might sample cheese unchallenged and steal a biscuit or two.

The shop was decorated for Christmas. All about it peasants were selling fir trees from the Carpathians. Some trees were propped against the windows, some stood in barrels, some lay on the pavement among heaps of holly, bay and laurel. Great swags of snow-grizzled fir were tacked like
mufflers about the shop front. It was a large shop; one of the largest in Bucharest. Now it stood like a little castle embowered in Christmas greenery, its windows bright but burred with frost ferns.

A boar, on its feet, stood at the main entrance, its hide cured to a glossy blackness, its tusks yellow, snow feathers caught in its tough bristles. On either side of the door hung a deer, upside-down with antlers resting on the ground.

Yakimov sighed. These signs of festivity sent his thoughts back to Christmases at the Crillon, the Ritz, the Adlon and Geneva’s Beau-Rivage. Where would be spend this Christmas? Not, alas, at the Athénée Palace.

As he entered the shop he found, crouched behind the boar, a heap of beggars, who set up such a clamour at the sight of him that an assistant rushed out and kicked one, slapped another and attacked the rest with a wet towel. Yakimov slipped inside.

A little department at the door sold imports from England: Quaker Oats, tinned fruits, corned beef, Oxford marmalade – expensive luxuries eximious among luxury. These did not interest Yakimov, who made for the main hall, where turkeys, geese, ducks, chickens, pheasant, partridge, grouse, snipe, pigeons, hares and rabbits were thrown unsorted together in a vast pyramid beneath a central light. He joined the fringe of male shoppers who went round with intent, serious faces examining these small corpses. This was not a shopping place for servants, nor even for wives. The men came here, as Yakimov did, to look at food, and to experience, as he might not, an ecstasy of anticipation.

He watched a stout man, galoshed, close-buttoned, Persian lamb on his collar, a cap in his hand, choose and order the preparation of a turkey still in its splendour of feathers. He swallowed hungrily as he watched.

This was not a good season for an onlooker. The counters that displayed shellfish, caviare and every sort of sausage were so hemmed in with customers he could see nothing of them. He wandered round with no more reward than the scent of
honey-cured hams or the high citron fume of Greek oranges.

An assistant was sheering off the legs of live frogs, throwing the still palpitating trunks into a dustbin. Yakimov was upset by the sight, but forgot it at once as he peered into a basket of button mushrooms flown that morning from Paris. He put out a finger and brought it back tinged with the red dust of France.

In the cheese department, the sampling knife was in use. A little man in yellow peccary gloves, keeping an assistant at his heels, was darting about, nicking this cheese and that. As he waited, Yakimov eyed cheeses packed in pigs’-bladders, sheepskins, bark, plaited twigs, straw mats, grape pips, wooden bowls and barrels of brine. When he could bear it no longer, he broke off a piece of roquefort and would have put it into his mouth, but he realised he had been observed.

The observer was Guy Pringle.

‘Hello, dear boy,’ said Yakimov, letting the cheese fall from his fingers into a bowl of soured cooking cream. ‘Difficult place to get served.’

Guy, he saw, was not alone. Harriet Pringle had captured the assistant from the man in the peccary gloves. She seemed about to give an order, but at once the man, indignant at being deserted, began to demand attention. The assistant pushed past Harriet, almost bowling her over in his eagerness to assert his servility. ‘
Cochon
,’ said Harriet. The assistant looked back, pained.

Ever since the incident in the Athénée Palace garden, Yakimov had felt nervous of Harriet. Now, leaning towards Guy and whispering hurriedly, he said: ‘Your poor old Yaki’s in a bit of a jam. If I can’t lay m’hands on four thou, I’ll have to spend the night on the streets.’

Seeing Guy glance at Harriet, he added quickly: ‘Haven’t forgotten. Owe the dear girl a thou. She’ll get it soon’s m’remittance turns up.’

Guy took out the old note book in which he kept banknotes and, leafing through it, found two thousand
lei
, which he handed to Yakimov. He said: ‘It’s a pity you aren’t a Polish
refugee. I know the man who’s administering relief.’

‘M’not exactly a Polish refugee, dear boy, but I’m a refugee from Poland. Got here through Yugoslavia, y’know.’

Guy thought this fact might serve and gave him the address of the Polish Relief Centre, then mentioned that Yakimov had promised to visit them. Was he by any chance free on Christmas night?

‘Curiously enough, I
am
, dear boy.’

‘then come to dinner,’ Guy said.

Yakimov found the Relief Centre in a street of red, angular, half-built houses on which work had been abandoned for the winter. Builder’s materials still lay about. Snow patched the yellow clay and the hillocks of sand and lime. Outside the one house that was nearly completed, a row of civilian Poles, in breeches and monkey-jackets, stood stamping their feet in the cold. Yakimov swept past them, wrapped in the Czar’s greatcoat.

To the old peasant who opened the door, he said: ‘Prince Yakimov to see Mr Lawson.’ He was shown straight into a room that smelt of damp plaster.

Clarence, seated behind a table, with an oil-stove at his feet and an army blanket round his shoulders, appeared to have a bad cold. When Yakimov introduced himself as a friend of Guy Pringle, Clarence looked shy, impressed apparently by the distinction of his visitor. Given confidence, Yakimov told how he had come down from Poland, where he had been staying on the estate of a relative. He had for a few weeks acted as McCann’s deputy. When McCann left for Poland, Yakimov remained behind to collect a remittance which was being sent to him. The dislocations of war caused the delay of the remittance and so, he said: ‘Here I am on m’uppers, dear boy. Don’t know where to look for a crust.’

Strangely enough, Clarence did not respond as Yakimov had hoped to his story. He sat for some time looking at his fingernails, then said with sudden, startling firmness: ‘I cannot help you. You are not a Pole. You must apply to the British Legation.’

Yakimov’s face fell. ‘But, dear boy, I’m just as much in need as those blokes outside. Fact is, if I can’t raise four thousand today, I’ll have to sleep in the street.’

Clarence said coldly: ‘The men outside are queuing for a living allowance of a hundred
lei
a day.’

‘You surely mean a thousand?’

‘I mean a hundred.’

Yakimov began to rise, then sank down again. ‘Never had to beg before,’ he said. ‘Good family. Not what I’m used to. Fact is, I’m desperate. The Legation won’t help. They’ll only send me to Cairo. ’S’no good to poor old Yaki. Delicate health. Been starving for days. Don’t know where m’next meal’s coming from.’ His voice broke, tears crowded into his eyes and Clarence, shaken by this emotion, put his hand into his pocket. He brought out a single note, but it was a note for ten thousand
lei
.

‘Dear boy,’ said Yakimov, restored by the sight of it.

‘Just a minute!’ Clarence seemed rather agitated by what he was doing. His cheeks reddened, he fumbled about looking for paper in a drawer. He took out a sheet and wrote an IOU. ‘I am lending you this,’ he said impressively, ‘because you are a friend of Guy Pringle. The money is from funds and must be paid back when your remittance arrives.’