The Balkan Trilogy (64 page)

‘Oh, Freddi,’ Yakimov whimpered, ‘don’t be unkind. It was only a joke between friends.’

‘That plan wasn’t a joke.’

‘I told you it didn’t belong to me. I pinched it. Just to amuse you, dear boy.’

‘You said you belonged to British Intelligence.’

‘No, dear boy, not in so many words. Can you see poor Yaki as a secret agent?
I ask you!
’ Crouching in the sofa corner, watching with the perception of terror, Yakimov saw uncertainty on von Flügel’s face, but not conviction. If he, von Flügel, could change into a Nazi official, then what might Yakimov not become in these strange times? Gradually von Flügel’s face softened with contempt. He sat down. Speaking in the tone of one who will brook no further nonsense, he asked: ‘Where did you get that plan?’

Yakimov in his relief was not only willing to answer, but to answer more than he was asked. He was, he explained, a lodger in the flat of Guy Pringle, an Englishman who lectured at the University. He had found the plan in the flat and had borrowed it, just for fun. ‘Meant no harm,’ he said: ‘Didn’t really know what it was, but I had m’suspicions. Queer
comings and goings in that flat, I must say …’ As he went on for some time about his suspicions and the ‘queer types’ whom the Pringles entertained, he reminded himself of how he had worked to make Guy’s production, but when it was over Guy had abandoned him. He said: ‘If you ask me, Pringle’s a Bolshie.’

Von Flügel nodded calmly and asked: ‘What sort of “queer types”?’

‘There’s that fellow David Boyd. Now
he
works with Leverett and no one knows what he does. And there’s a very strange chap hangs around the kitchen. He pretends he’s related to the servant but he speaks English like a gent. The Pringles have kept him under cover. He was in a blue funk when I walked in on him.’

Von Flügel set his teeth on his lower lip and appeared to reflect on this. He asked at last: ‘What are you doing in the apartment of such people?’

‘Went there in all innocence, dear boy. Thought them very nice at first.’

Von Flügel nodded and spoke portentously: ‘Charm is the stock-in-trade of such persons. It is intended to put you off your guard.’

Yakimov nodded. He had, indeed, been put off his guard – and who better able to do that than Guy Pringle? He began to feel justified in giving the game away to Freddi. Freddi was a friend, a dear old friend, and Yaki had done no more than warn him. ‘When I saw that plan, I felt I ought to show it to you,’ and Yakimov ran happily on about the suspicious character of everyone he had seen there, the suspicious nature of everything that had ever occurred.

Von Flügel, still distant and severe, listened without much comment, but at the end he said: ‘One thing I would say to you: remove yourself from that flat at the earliest date. More, I would say remove yourself from Bucharest. I say it for your own good.’

Yakimov nodded meekly. He had no wish to do anything else. He felt, now that he had re-established himself in Freddi’s
favour he might settle in here very comfortably. He lay back and closed his eyes. Exhausted, physically and emotionally, he felt himself sifting like a feather down through the softness of the earth. He heard von Flügel say: ‘Come. I will show you to your room,’ but had no time to reply before he was lost in sleep.

The next morning confirmed his belief that life with Freddi would comply with his needs. After he had taken his bath, he and Freddi, in dressing-gowns, lay in long chairs to take breakfast on the balcony. The coffee was pre-war coffee, the food was excellent. Freddi was his old charming self. There were, unfortunately, a number of those horrid young men about, but Axel was the only one whom Freddi treated indulgently. With the others he was the stern commandant of
das Braune Haus
.

His memory of the previous night left him with an uneasy sense that he had been a trifle unfair to poor old Guy, but lying in his valetudinarian languor he could not worry unduly. After all, Guy
had
been unfair to him.

Breakfast over, the two men remained in the early sunlight, looking down at an ancient Citroën piled with furniture and bedding, that was being dragged to the station by a mule. All the petrol, Freddi explained, had been plundered by the outgoing Rumanians, who now refused to send in fresh supplies. ‘A hopeless people!’ said Freddi. In a side street a queue of people could be seen outside a shuttered bakery. From somewhere in the distance came a sound of shooting. Yakimov made movements as though he were thinking of getting up. ‘I should dress,’ he said. ‘I’m supposed to be getting the tempo of the town.’

‘So you really are a journalist?’ said Freddi.

‘In a manner of speaking. Not an aristocrat’s occupation, I’m afraid.’

‘This is not an aristocrat’s war.’

Yakimov struggled to a sitting position.

‘Is this activity really necessary?’ Freddi asked. ‘The streets are unsafe. I would not recommend that you wander about.
Such news as there is we can get from the boys.’ He rang a bell and a young man entered at once. ‘Ah, here is Filip. Filip, what is the news?’

Filip recited the latest incidents. A man resembling the Hungarian Consul had been set upon by Rumanian peasants and been left unconscious with an eye kicked out. Some people who had queued all day before a grocery store, finding the shop empty and the grocer gone to Bra
ş
ov, had set fire to the shop, and the family living above had been burnt to death. There had been trouble at the hospital where Hungarian doctors had accused Rumanian doctors of removing equipment which had originally been Hungarian. One doctor, pushed over a balcony, had broken his neck.

As this recital of disorders went on, Yakimov nervously twitched his toes and murmured: ‘Dear me!’

‘Don’t be alarmed,’ said von Flügel: ‘These are the little inconveniences of change. No food, no petrol, no telephone, no public transport. The cafés are closed. Soon the lights will go out, the water will be cut off, the gas will cease to come through the pipes – but here all is well. We are well stocked with food and drink. There is a great range in the kitchen that burns wood. There is a well in the courtyard. We could withstand a siege.’ He glanced at Yakimov. ‘Perhaps you would care to make some notes.’

‘I forgot m’little notebook.’

Von Flügel ordered Filip to bring pen and paper. When these were in Yakimov’s hands, von Flügel explained how necessary it was to take Transylvania out of the control of the feckless, incompetent Rumanians and hand it over to the shrewd, hardworking Hungarians. At the end of an hour Yakimov had written, in his uneven hand, at the top of the sheet of paper: ‘The Takeover – A Good Thing.’

This done, von Flügel said: ‘Surely it is not too early for an aperitif?’

Yakimov fervently agreed it was not.

His future still unsettled, he now mentioned the tiresome fact that he was supposed to be returning to Bucharest on the
Orient Express that very night. ‘Not to tell a lie, dear boy,’ he added confidingly, ‘I don’t really want to go back there. The food is atrocious and there’s always some sort of rumpus going on. You advised me to leave Rumania, so I’ve decided I’d like to stay here.’

‘Here? In Cluj?’ Von Flügel stared at him. ‘It’s out of the question. When the Rumanians withdraw, this will be virtually Axis territory.’

Yakimov smiled persuasively. ‘You could take care of old Yaki.’

For a moment von Flügel looked aghast at this suggestion, then he said in a decided tone: ‘I could do nothing of the sort. As a member of the old regime I have to go very carefully myself. I could not possibly protect an enemy alien.’ He turned with a stern expression but, seeing Yakimov’s gloomy face, relaxed. ‘No, no,
mein Lieber
,’ he said more kindly, ‘you cannot stay here. Return as you have arranged to Bucharest tonight. I will send Axel to obtain for you a
wagon-lit
. As soon as you arrive, put your affairs in order and take yourself to safety without delay.’

‘But where can I go?’ Yakimov asked, near tears.

‘That, I fear, you must decide for yourself. Europe is finished for you, of course. North Africa will go next. Perhaps to India. It will be some time before we get there.’

For the rest of the day, Yakimov ate and drank with a mourning sense of farewell to the might-have-been. Towards evening, von Flügel, indicating that his friend must prepare for departure, said that Axel would give him sandwiches for the journey. Von Flügel himself had been invited that evening to a dinner given in his honour by the Hungarian community, so could not see Yakimov to the station.

‘One thing,
mein Lieber
,’ he said as Yakimov got sadly to his feet: ‘you know the carpet-shop opposite Mavrodaphne’s? When I was last in Bucharest, I saw there a very fine Oltenian rug. Thinking it a little expensive, I unwisely delayed its purchase, now I wish I had taken it. I wonder, would you buy it for me and have it delivered to the German Embassy?’

‘Why, certainly, dear boy.’

‘You cannot mistake it: a black rug with a pattern of cherries and roses. Mention my name and they will produce it. It was about twenty-five thousand. Should I give you the money now?’

‘It would be as well, dear boy.’

Von Flügel opened a drawer that was filled with decks of new five-thousand-
lei
notes. He carefully peeled off five of these and held them just out of Yakimov’s reach. He said: ‘I had better take your address in Bucharest, just in case …’

Yakimov gave it readily and the notes were handed over. ‘By the way,’ he said, ‘you still have that plan I showed you last night.’

‘I’ll post it to you tomorrow. Now don’t forget the rug. A
black
rug with cherries and roses, a delightful piece. And don’t linger in Bucharest. I can tell you, in strictest confidence, Rumania’s next on the list.’

The friends parted amicably, Yakimov with regrets, von Flügel with a slightly offhand urbanity. In a hurry to dress, he told the chauffeur to drive Yakimov to the station and return without delay.

As the car crossed the square in the evening light, the black wing of a plane, bearing the words ‘
România Mare
’ dipped over the cathedral spire. Crowds of peasants were gathering at the street corners, running in groups this way and that, ready to make a stand but lacking leadership. They shouted at the sight of von Flügel’s Mercedes and shook their fists.

The chauffeur, a Saxon, laughed at these gestures. He told Yakimov that the peasants had believed that Maniu was arriving to incite a revolt against the Vienna award. A deputation had waited all day at the station, then learnt that Maniu was at his house outside Cluj, having come by road. They rushed to see him and found him packing up his belongings. Saying he could do nothing, he advised them to return peacefully to their houses and accept the situation.

‘So they are disappointed,’ said the chauffeur complacently, ‘and Domnul Maniu no doubt is sad.’

‘No doubt he is,’ said Yakimov, who was sad himself.

The long road to the station was crowded with townspeople and peasants making their way to the trains. They swarmed in front of the car with their belongings on carts and barrows, ignoring the hooting of the Mercedes that had slowed to a crawl.

‘Hah, these Rumanians!’ said the chauffeur with contempt. ‘In 1918 they drove out the Hungarians with much brutality, now they fear revenge.’

The Orient Express, on which Yakimov had his sleeper, was due in soon after eight o’clock. The chauffeur congratulated Yakimov on being in good time, handed him his bag and left him to push his way in through the crowd that heaved and struggled about the station entrance.

When he at last reached the platform, he could scarcely get on to it. It was piled with furniture, among which the peasants were making themselves at home. Several had set up spirit-stoves on tables and commodes, and were cooking maize or beans. Others had gone to sleep among rolls of carpet. Most of them looked as though they had been there for hours. There was a constant traffic over gilt chairs and sofas, the valued possessions of displaced officials. Now that the train was due, dramatic scenes were taking place. Hungarian girls had married Rumanians and, as the couples waited to depart, parents were lamenting as though at a death. Yakimov stepped over two women who, howling into each other’s faces, were lying in an embrace at the very edge of the line. He made his way through the
mêlée
until it began to thin at the platform’s end, and there he waited.

Time passed. The express did not come. After an hour or more, he tried to inquire when it was expected, but whichever language he spoke seemed to be the wrong one. His Rumanian was answered with ‘
Beszélj magyarul
,’ and his Hungarian with ‘
Vorbe
ş
te române
ş
te
,’ and his German with silence. Wandering about, he came on the Jew whose acquaintance he had made in the dining-car, and learnt that the train was signalled two hours late. It might arrive about ten o’clock. At this
Yakimov took himself back to the end of the platform where he found a vacant armchair, an imitation Louis XIV piece, not comfortable but better than nothing, and ate his sandwiches.

Darkness fell. Two or three lights came on, leaving shadowy areas lit only by the blue flames of the spirit stoves. Suddenly, amazingly, a train came in – a local train of the poorest class. A fierce energy at once swept through the peasants. Gathering up their possessions, they flung themselves at the doors only to find they were locked. Without pause they set to smashing the windows. Once inside, the men hauled up their women, children and baggage with roars that threatened death to any official who should restrain them. The air was filled with screams of anger and fear and the cracking of flimsy woodwork.

Yakimov watched in dismay. He knew this could not be the express but he suffered acute trepidation, realising what would happen when the express did come in.

The local train filled up in a minute, then the peasants began clambering to the carriage roofs, pulling their families after them. The uproar drowned the warning whistle. The train moved off with women and children hanging by arms and legs, unable to make the muscular effort to mount farther. Their shrieks rose even above the clamour of those left behind, who ran down the line, howling despair and threats until brought to a stop by rifle-fire from a bridge. When the train had gone, there were plaints and groans, but no one, it seemed, was seriously hurt, and everyone climbed back to the platform and settled down to wait again.