The Balkan Trilogy (43 page)

Darkness was falling. A bugle sounded in the palace yard. As though it were a call to arms, a man in the square started to sing the national anthem. Others took it up, but the voices were sparse, choked by uncertainty, and soon died away. Inside the palace the chandeliers sprang alight. Someone shouted for the King. The cry was taken up, but the King did not appear.

The moon rose, bland and big, and floated above the city. All the time there was a slamming of car doors as people came and went at the palace. One of the arrivals was a woman. Immediately the story went round that an attempt had been made on the life of Madame Lupescu, who had
fled from her villa in Alea Vulpache and had come to the King for protection.

There was a new stir at the arrival of Antonescu, a proud man, out of favour since he had supported the Iron Guard leader. It was said that, recognising the situation as desperate, the General had begged an audience with the King. The press in the square grew. Something would happen now. But nothing happened and soon the General drove away again.

The next time they approached the Athénée Palace Guy said: ‘Let’s go in and have a drink.’ If there were any real news it would immediately be brought there.

The area outside the hotel was packed with the Bessarabian cars, many of them still loaded with trunks and suitcases, rolled carpets and small, valuable pieces of furniture. Within the hall, beneath the brilliant lights, were heaped more trunks, cases, carpets and rich possessions. As the Pringles picked their way through them, they came face to face with Baron Steinfeld, one of the Bessarabians, more often in Bucharest than on his estate. The Pringles, who had met him only once, were surprised when he accosted them. They had thought him a charming man, but he was charming no longer. His square, russet-red face was distorted, his large teeth bared; he spoke with such anguished rage, his words seemed to be shaken from him: ‘I have lost everything. But everything! My estate, my house, my apple orchard, my silver, my Meissen ornaments, my Aubusson rugs. You cannot imagine, so much have I lost. You see here these things – they were all brought by the lucky ones. But I – I was in Bucharest, so I lose all. You English, what are you doing that you fight against the Germans? It is the Bolsheviks you must fight. You must join with the Germans, who are good men, and together you must fight these Russian swine who steal my everythings.’

Shocked by the change that had come over the baron, Guy did not know what to say. Harriet began: ‘Bessarabia isn’t lost yet …’ but paused, confused, as the baron broke down, saying through tears: ‘I have even lost my little dog.’

‘I am sorry,’ said Harriet, but the baron raised a hand,
rejecting pity. What he wanted was action: ‘It is necessary to fight. Together we must destroy the Russians. Do not be fools. Join with us before it is too late.’ On this dramatic note, he pushed out through the swing door and left the Pringles alone.

Hall and vestibule were deserted. Even the booking-clerk had gone out to watch events in the square, but a sound of English voices came from the next room.

Guy said: ‘The journalists are back in the bar.’

The bar – the famous English Bar – had been, until a month before, the preserve of the British and their associates. The enemy had been kept out. Then, on the day Calais fell, a vast crowd of German businessmen, journalists and legation officials had entered in a body and taken possession. The only Englishmen present – Galpin, and his friend Screwby – had retreated before this triumphant, buffeting mob and taken themselves to the hotel garden. Now they were back again.

Galpin was one of the few journalists permanently resident in Bucharest. An agency man, living at the Athénée Palace and seldom leaving it, he employed a Rumanian to scout for news, which was brought to him at the hotel. The other journalists in the bar had flown in from neighbouring capitals to cover the Bessarabian crisis.

As the Pringles entered, Galpin seized on them and began at once to describe how he had marched into the bar at the head of the new arrivals and called to the barman: ‘Vodka,
tovarish
.’

Whether this was true or not, he was now drinking whisky. He let Guy refill his glass, then, glancing towards the dispirited Germans who had been pushed into a corner, he toasted the ultimatum: ‘A slap in the eye for the bloody Boche,’ apparently seeing the Russian move as a British triumph.

Surely, Harriet thought, it was rather the Allies who were being flouted. They had condoned the Rumanian seizure of the Russian province in 1918 and now in 1940 it was their weakness that prompted the Russians to demand it back again.

When she started to say this, old Mortimer Tufton, staring aloofly over her head, cut her short with: ‘The Paris Peace Conference never recognised the annexation of Bessarabia.’

Tufton, after whom a street in Zagreb had been named, was a noted figure in the Balkans. He was said to be able to scent the coming of events and was always on the spot before they occurred. Informed, dry, consciously intimidating, he had the manner of a man accustomed to receiving deference, but Harriet would not let herself be put down. ‘You mean that Bessarabia was never really part of Greater Rumania?’

She gave a false impression of confidence and Tufton, snubbing her for her sex and impudence, answered casually: ‘One could say that,’ and turned away from her.

Disbelieving, but lacking knowledge with which to contend against him, she looked for support to Guy who said: ‘The Soviets never recognised Bessarabia as Rumanian. They’re perfectly justified in taking it,’ and, elated by the sudden, unusual popularity of the country which interpreted his faith, he added: ‘You wait and see. Russia will win this war for us yet.’

Tufton gave a laugh. ‘She may win the war,’ he said, ‘but not for us.’

This was too much for the journalists, who ridiculed the idea of Russia winning any war, let alone this one. A man who had been in Helsinki spoke at length of ‘the Finnish fiasco’. Galpin then said the reputed power of Soviet armour was one huge bluff and described how during the war in Spain a friend of his had run into a Soviet tank which had buckled up like cardboard.

Guy said: ‘That’s nonsense, an old story. Every hack journalist with nothing better to write up was putting it around.’ Now that his ideals were attacked, he was on the defensive, no longer mild but ready to argue with anyone. Harriet, though the ideals were too political and disinterested to appeal to her, was prepared to take his side; but Galpin shrugged, giving the impression he thought the whole thing unimportant.

Before Guy could speak again, Mortimer Tufton, who had no patience with the conjectures of inexperienced youth, broke in with a history of Russian-Rumanian relations, proving that only Allied influences had prevented Russia from devouring the Balkans long ago. Rumania, he said, had been invaded by
Russia on eight separate occasions and had suffered a number of ‘friendly occupations’, none of which had ever been forgotten or forgiven. ‘The fact is,’ he concluded, ‘the friendship of Russia has been more disastrous to Rumania than the enmity of the rest of the world.’

‘That was Czarist Russia,’ said Guy. ‘The Soviets are a different proposition.’

‘But not a different race – witness this latest piece of opportunism.’

Catching his small, vain, self-regarding eye fixed severely upon her, Harriet, deciding to win him, smiled and asked: ‘To whom would
you
award Bessarabia?’

‘Hmmm!’ said Tufton. He looked away, appearing to swallow something astringent in his throat, but, mollified by her appeal, he gave the question thought. ‘Russia, Turkey and Rumania have been squabbling over that particular province for five hundred years,’ he said. ‘The Russians finally got it in 1812 and held on to it until 1918. I imagine they kept it rather longer than anyone else managed to do, so, on reflection …’ he paused, hemmed again, then impressively announced: ‘I’d be inclined to let them have it.’

Harriet smiled at Guy, passing the award on to him, and Galpin nodded, confirming it.

Galpin’s dark, narrow face hung in folds above his rag of a collar. Elbow on bar, sourly elated by his return to his old position, he kept staring about him for an audience, his moving eyeballs as yellow as the whisky in his hand. As he drank, his yellow wrist, the wrist-bone like half an egg, stuck out rawly from his wrinkled, shrunken, ash-dusty dark suit. A wet cigarette stub clung, forgotten, to the bulging, purple softness of his lower lip and trembled when he spoke.

‘The Russkies are sticking their necks out demanding this territory just when Carol’s declared for the Axis.’

Guy said: ‘I imagine the declaration prompted them to do it. They’re staking their claim before the Germans get too strong here.’

‘Could be.’ Galpin looked vague. He preferred to be the
one to theorise, ‘Still, they’re sticking their necks out.’ He looked for Tufton’s agreement and when he got it grunted, agreeing with himself, then added: ‘If the Germans ever attacked them, I wouldn’t give the Russkies ten days.’

As they were discussing the Russian war potential, in which Guy alone had faith, a small man in dilapidated grey cotton, an old trilby pressed against his chest, sidled in and nudged Galpin. This was Galpin’s scout, a shadow who lived by nosing out news, taking one version of it to the German journalists at the Minerva, and another to the English in the Athénée Palace.

When Galpin bent down, the scout whispered in his ear. Galpin listened with intent interest. Everyone waited to hear what had been said, but he was in no hurry to tell them. With a sardonic, bemused expression, he took out a bundle of dirty paper money and handed over the equivalent of sixpence, which reward was received with reverent gratitude. Then he paused, smiling around the company.

‘The eagerly awaited message has arrived,’ he said at last.

‘Well, what is it?’ Tufton impatiently asked.

‘The Führer has asked Carol to cede Bessarabia without conflict.’

‘Hah!’ Tufton gave a laugh which said he had expected as much.

Galpin’s close companion, Screwby, asked: ‘This is a directive?’

‘Directive, nothing,’ said Galpin. ‘It’s a command.’

‘So it’s settled,’ said Screwby bleakly. ‘No chance of a scrap?’

Tufton scoffed at him: ‘Rumania take on Russia single-handed? Not a chance. Their one hope was Axis backing if they stood firm. But Hitler doesn’t intend going to war with Russia – anyway, not over Bessarabia.’

The journalists finished their drinks before making for the telephones in the hall. No one showed any inclination to hurry. The news was negative. Rumania would submit without a fight.

When they left the hotel, the Pringles were surprised at the quiet outside. The Führer’s command must be known to everyone now, but there was no hint of revolt. If there had been a show of anger, it was over now. The atmosphere was subdued. A few people stood outside the palace as though there might still be hope, but the majority were dispersing in silence, having recognised that there was nothing more to be done.

After the tense hours of uncertainty, acceptance of the ultimatum had probably brought as much relief as disappointment. Whatever else it might mean, it meant that life in Bucharest would go on much as before. No one would be called upon to die in a desperate cause.

Next day the papers were making the best of things. Rumania, they said, had agreed to cede Bessarabia and the northern Bukovina, but Germany had promised that after the war these provinces would be returned to her. Meanwhile, in obeying the Führer’s will, she was sacrificing herself to preserve the peace of Eastern Europe. It was a moral victory and the officers withdrawing their men from the ceded territory might do so with breasts expanded and heads held high.

Flags were at half-mast. The cinemas were ordered to shut for three days of public mourning. And the rumour went round that the Rumanian officers, now pelting down south, had abandoned their units, their military equipment and even their own families, in panic flight before the advancing Russians. By the end of June, Bessarabia and the northern Bukovina had become part of the Soviet Union.

When the Pringles next visited the English Bar, Galpin said: ‘Do you realise the Russian frontier is less than a hundred and twenty miles from here? The bastards could be on top of us before we’d even known they’d started.’

2

Harriet had imagined that when the term ended they would be free to go where they pleased. She longed to escape, if only for a few weeks, not only from the disquiet of the capital, but from their uncertain situation. She thought they might leave Rumania altogether. A boat went from Constanza to Istanbul, and thence to Greece. Excited by the prospect of such a journey, she appealed to Guy, who said: ‘I’m afraid I can’t go just now. Inchcape’s asked me to organise a summer school. In any case, he feels none of us should leave the country at the moment. It would create a bad impression.’

‘But no one spends the summer in Bucharest.’

‘They will this year. People are afraid to leave in case something happens and they can’t get back. As a matter of fact, I’ve already enrolled two hundred students.’

‘Rumanians?’

‘A few. The Jews are crowding in. They’re very loyal.’

‘I should say it’s not just loyalty. They want to get away to English-speaking countries.’

‘You can’t blame them for that.’

‘I don’t blame them,’ said Harriet but, disappointed, she was inclined to blame someone. Probably Guy himself.

Now she was coming to know Guy, she was beginning to judge him. When they had married ten months before, she had accepted him, uncritically, as a composite of virtues. She did not demur when Clarence described him as ‘a saint’. She still might not demur, but she knew now that one aspect of his saintliness was composed of human weaknesses.

She said: ‘I don’t believe Inchcape thought of this school. He’s
lost interest in the English Department. I believe it’s all your idea.’

‘I discussed it with Inchcape. He agreed that one can’t spend the summer lazing around while other men are fighting a war.’

‘And what is Inchcape going to do? I mean, apart from sitting in the Bureau reading Henry James.’