The Balkan Trilogy (54 page)

Harriet, as she watched, could hear Toby gasping nervously at his pipe. ‘Never seen the like,’ he said. The English party, much sobered, entered the hotel hall as the Guardists went striding into the main salon.

David was in the hall. Guy asked him: ‘Was that Horia Sima?’

David nodded. ‘He’s joining the Cabinet. That’s the excuse for the reception, of course, but it’s really a gesture of defiance. I wonder how His Majesty’s going to take it.’ David gave Dubedat an unenthusiastic ‘Hello’, then looked blankly at Toby whom he had never seen before.

Guy introduced them, saying: ‘Toby comes from Cluj. I thought you might be interested to hear what’s going on there.’

‘Oh!’ said David, and he said nothing more.

They went into the bar, where Guy bought a round of drinks.

Toby had evidently heard of David, for he kept close to him, and with eyes bulging excitedly asked: ‘Is it true they’re starting concentration camps in the Carpathians?’

‘I’ve never seen them myself,’ David said, keeping his gaze on his glass.

Toby continued to ask questions about the country’s situation and its dangers, receiving answers that were brief and discouraging, while Dubedat stood on one side, obviously annoyed by Toby’s eagerness and David’s lack of it.

As soon as Guy entered the conversation, Dubedat took the opportunity to pluck at his friend’s arm, at which Toby turned with a jerk and, seeing Dubedat’s frown, asked in a fluster: ‘What is it, old soul? What’s the matter?’ Hissing through his teeth so he looked like an angry rat, Dubedat made a movement of the head that directed Toby to step aside with him. Puffing and spluttering in apprehension, Toby let himself be led off.

‘Where did you pick up that impossible ass?’ David asked Guy.

Guy looked surprised. ‘He’s working for me. He’s not a bad chap.’

David lowered his voice. ‘I’ve something to tell you. Klein has gone.’

‘He’s left the country?’

‘No one knows. He might have been arrested, but I don’t think so. I think he’s crossed the frontier into Bessarabia. There’s a secret route over the Pruth: thousands are going, I’m told. Anyway, I doubt whether we’ll ever see him again.’

Guy nodded in a sad approval of this escape and Harriet thought of how Klein had several times advised her to wait and see the break-up of a country – ‘revolution, ruin, occupation by the enemy – all so interesting’; but he had not waited himself. She felt disconsolate at this flight, as though an ally had abandoned them.

While the others talked, she glanced around the bar, seeing, but avoiding seeing, Yakimov, who was with his Rumanian friends. Clarence was sitting alone at one of the tables. She had heard nothing from him since their evening in the park and now when she looked at him he avoided meeting her eye.

Something in the odd turn of his head made her think of those boys described by Klein who, violently raped during their first days in prison, had acquired a taste for the indignity and afterwards offered themselves to all comers. Clarence, too, had been raped. His spirit had been broken by physical violence. As Harriet made a move towards him his eyes slid sideways, his expression became furtively defensive as though at a threat of chastisement both feared and desired.

Galpin entered briskly, his girl-friend Wanda at his heels. He wore an air of waggish self-congratulation that meant news. Harriet returned to hear what he had to say.

The heat of the day hung clotted in the bar. Although Rumanian convention did not permit men to appear in any sort of undress, they might, in mid-summer, wear their jackets cape-fashion. In Hadjimoscos’ group, only Yakimov was lax enough to do this. His tussore coat, hanging limp and frayed from his shoulder-bones, permitted his neighbours to note that the silk of his shirt had rotted away under the armpits. The shirt was a deep Indian yellow, and he wore with it not a tie but a neckcloth of maroon velvet. The neckcloth seemed to Hadjimoscos excessively daring and he had been brought to tolerate it only by the assurance that it came from the most expensive outfitters in Monte Carlo.

Hadjimoscos merely changed for the summer from a suit of dark wool to one of dark alpaca. He said he had never before spent a summer in Bucharest and he frequently described the heat as
incroyable
. That evening he was in low spirits, as were Palu and Horvatz. No one had indicated to them that their presence was desired at the reception. Yakimov had spent most of his thousand
lei
on drinks for his companions, but their
gloom persisted. ‘It looked a pretty dull party to me,’ he said.

Ignoring Yakimov, Hadjimoscos moaned to Palu and Horvatz: ‘We may take it that we members of the old aristocracy are not in favour.’

‘Oh, I wouldn’t say that,’ said Yakimov. ‘The Princess was invited.’

For some reason this remark, intended to console, merely angered Hadjimoscos who turned on Yakimov, saying: ‘The Princess, I can assure you, was invited merely as the companion of Baron Steinfeld. Since his losses in Bessarabia the Baron has thrown himself heart and soul into the Nazi cause, with the result that, unlike us members of the old aristocracy, he is
très bien vu
with the Guard.’

‘Really, dear boy,’ Yakimov protested out of his bewilderment: ‘I don’t know what you’re all so worried about. Apparently these Guardists were put down by the King – a lot of them were shot or something. How could they suddenly become so important? What do you care whether they invite you to their junketings or not?’

‘Believe me,’ Hadjimoscos said, ‘the day is fast coming when those they do not recognise may as well be dead.’

Impressed by the solemnity of Hadjimoscos’ statement, Yakimov began for the first time to think seriously about the Iron Guard. He remembered how, during his brief period as a journalist, he had, on Galpin’s advice, written dispatches condemning in violent language the murderers of Calinescu. The chief villain had been someone called Horia Sima. The dispatches had not been allowed to leave the country. What had become of them? A chill pang struck the pit of his stomach, and as he stood like the others with an empty glass in his hand he began to feel as gloomy as they did.

‘Well, well,’ Galpin said throwing his thumb back over his shoulder, ‘if that lot knew what I know, there’d be no reception tonight.’

Everyone looked expectantly at him.

David asked, smiling: ‘What’s happened now?’

‘The Rumanian ministers have been summoned to Salzburg – the Hunks and Bulgars, too. Herr Hitler is ordering them to settle their frontier problems.’

‘Is that all?’ said Harriet.

‘It’s enough,’ said Galpin sharply: ‘What are Rumania’s frontier problems? Simply other people’s demands. All she wants is to hang on to what she’s got. Now, you wait and see! There’s going to be trouble here.’

David’s smile had changed to a look of startled interest. ‘When did you hear this?’ he asked.

‘A moment ago. The Cabinet’s been summoned. I met my scout in the square. He’s got a contact in the palace. It’s hot news, but I needn’t try to send it. The authorities are trying to keep it secret. Look at them,’ he said, and they all looked through the open door of the bar at the guests passing on their way to the main salon. ‘The poor bastards! They think they’ve got on to the band-wagon. They’re calling it the New Dawn. And here’s their Führer once again demanding a sacrifice in the interests of Balkan peace.’

David sniggered into his glass. ‘Perhaps the Führer is not finding world dictatorship so easy after all. I imagine, if he could he’d shelve all these problems until the war was over, then settle them his own way. But Hungary and Bulgaria are not having that. They are demanding immediate payment for their support.’

‘What about Rumania?’ Harriet asked.

‘She’s not in a position to demand anything.’

Clarence had joined them to ask what the excitement was all about. When she told him that the Rumanians had been summoned to a conference at Salzburg, he shrugged slightly, having expected worse. She, too, felt that in a world so full of dangers those that did not immediately affect them could be put on one side.

He remained on the fringe of the group and Harriet, realising he was more dispirited than usual, said: ‘What’s the matter?’

He looked up, responding at once to her sympathy:
‘Steffaneski left this morning. He’s going to try to join Weygand. That’s the last of my Poles.’

‘We’ll all have to go sooner or later.’

‘He was my friend.’ Clarence hung his head, repudiating consolation.

Harriet said: ‘You have other friends.’ He did not reply but after a moment, nodding at Guy and David, he said: ‘They’ll go on talking all night. Why don’t you come and have supper with me?’

She recognised this as a peace offering and refused it regretfully: ‘David has invited us out, so I’m afraid …’

‘Oh, don’t apologise.’ Clarence turned his face away. ‘If you don’t want to come, someone else will.’

Harriet laughed. ‘Who for instance?’ she asked.

Clarence sniffed and smirked, so she realised, not without a touch of pique, that he really had some substitute up his sleeve. She could see he was waiting for her to ask who it was. Instead she moved away from him, giving her attention elsewhere, and found herself listening to Dubedat, who had by now had several drinks handed to him.

Taciturn when sober, garrulous when drunk, he was keeping Toby away from the others with a stream of talk. His subject at the moment was poverty, his own poverty, a condition which he had once flaunted as a virtue.

Before the war he had climbed arduously into a scholarship worth £150 a year. He had become an elementary school-teacher. Remembering his description of the Dâmbovi
ţ
a Jews as ‘the poorest of the poor and the only decent folk in this dirty, depraved, God-forsaken capital’, Harriet realised that his attitude, like his dress, was changing. Now he was saying: ‘God, how I hate poverty. It’s not only an evil, it’s a disease and if you don’t get rid of it, it becomes an incurable disease. It rots your guts. You become gutless. You crawl. You don’t give a damn for yourself. Any way of escaping it is excusable. When you’re poor you can only afford to mix with people as poor as yourself. If they’re stupid, they bore you. If they’re intelligent, they’re discontented and depress you. So you never
escape. Your nose is kept firmly down in the dirty water of reality. It’s the greatest destructive force in the world, poverty. Half the world’s intellect has been blunted or destroyed by it. None of us escape from it whole. Even the elephant hides are marked by it.’

All this was spoken rapidly, in a hectoring tone that Harriet recognised as the tone in which he had played Thersites in Guy’s production of
Troilus
. He had excelled in the part, and something of it seemed to have entered into him. Here, she thought, was a transformed Dubedat, a Dubedat who had found eloquence.

The main salon must have overflowed, for the guests could now be seen standing about in the hall. Soon the hall was also crowded. Suddenly the occupants of the bar were startled to hear a chorus of singing from both salon and hall. Community singing at an Athénée Palace reception!

People looked at one another as they recognised the song which the members of the Iron Guard had been advised to sing ‘only in their hearts’.

‘
Capitan-ul, Capitan-ul
,’ came from the resplendent guests outside.

Before any of the English could say anything the man whom Galpin called his scout appeared struggling in through the press at the bar door. Once through, he paused to straighten out his wrinkled cotton jacket, then sidled over to Galpin. Galpin bent down to receive the news, his eyes roving about with intent attentiveness.

‘Well,’ he said when all had been told, ‘this is really something! Didn’t I tell you there’d be trouble? A voice has been raised, a solitary but significant voice – and it has called on the King to abdicate.’

His listeners gazed at him, too startled to comment. He went on to explain that, seeing the Cabinet ministers arriving, people had collected outside the palace. ‘Then the news began leaking out. People realised the next question was going to be Transylvania – and suddenly someone bawled out “
Abdicati
”.’

David said: ‘Good God!’

‘What happened then?’ Guy asked.

‘Nothing – that’s the extraordinary thing. Everyone bolted, of course. They probably expected the guards to shoot, but they did nothing. There wasn’t a murmur from the palace …’

Wanda broke in anxiously: ‘But the King would not abdicate? No?’ She spoke so seldom that everyone stared at her and she turned her eyes from one to the other with an expression of dramatic agony.

Accredited to an English Sunday paper that did not inquire too closely into the truth of what it printed, she had recently lost her job because the news she was sending bore no relation of any kind to the news being sent by other journalists. The result was that she had turned to Galpin for help and their relationship, once broken, had been renewed.

She was wearing a black Schiaparelli suit like a man’s dinner suit, lightened by a tie of very bright pink. The heels of her shoes were also pink, and so overrun that her feet slipped sideways. She had tilted a miniature top-hat over one eye and from under it her hair streamed to her waist like pitch. She was as grimy as ever and dramatically beautiful, and as she looked at Clarence he looked back with bleak and lustful gloom murmuring: ‘I don’t know,’ which meant, Harriet knew: ‘How is it other men can get women and I can’t?’

When she looked at David, he sniggered and answered her: ‘Who knows? I hear he keeps a plane ready in the back-yard just in case. You can’t really blame these Balkan kings if they’re a bit light-fingered. They never know from one day to the next what’s going to happen.’

Wanda gave a gasp of disgust at David’s levity and turned her tragic, inquiring gaze on Galpin, who said: ‘No need to worry about Carol. He and his girl-friend have got vast sums salted away abroad. Anyway the Germans will keep him here. It takes a crook to hold this country together.’

David’s mouth dipped in contempt of Galpin’s predictions and he contradicted them authoritatively: ‘The Germans will not keep him here. They’re not taken in by his conversion to totalitarianism. They know it’s mere expediency. The new men
in Germany are, in their way, idealists. They’re not like the old-fashioned diplomats who don’t care how dishonest a man is so long as he’s playing their game. They’re dedicated men who’d hand Carol over to the firing-squad without a blink.’