The Balkan Trilogy (68 page)

‘Dear me!’ said David. ‘We seem to be getting a new dawn every day. But that,’ he snuffled, ‘is, after all, in the nature of things.’

A rocket went up: a very small one that petered out on a level with the balcony. David snuffled again. ‘Do you realise,’ he said, ‘that in less than two months, Rumania has lost forty thousand square miles of territory? And with it, six million of her population? The drop in national income will be in the region of five hundred million sterling. Not a self-evident cause for rejoicing, would you say?’

Behind the palace the sky was aflame. Soon drifts of cloud, fine as smoke, dampened the autumnal fire and lights came on in the royal apartments. The sunset grew bleary. The bugle sounded from the palace yard. Harriet felt comforted by its familiarity. Kings came and went, and the nations fell, but men and horses must have rest.

17

Next morning the gaiety was gone and only a few peasants wandered about the square.

Bella, as she had promised, rang Harriet and described how the previous night the Guardists, grown drunk on the day’s adulation, had marched through the ghetto area shouting threats to the Jews.

‘We don’t want all that again,’ she said.

This surprised Harriet who had never discovered in Bella much concern for the Jews. Bella explained that she was worried on her own behalf. In this country of dark-haired Latins, the Jews, contrary as ever, were notably blond or red-haired. As a result, Bella had always been suspect. So apparently, was Guy, the more so as he was reputed to favour his Jewish students.

Bella said: ‘It’s no good telling people that in England it’s the other way round. They don’t want to believe you. They hate the thought of Jews having dark hair. It’s different, of course, with educated Rumanians: the sort we mix with. They’ve travelled and seen for themselves. But these Guardists are riff-raff. They know nothing. They’re ignorant as dirt.’

‘What about Antonescu? Isn’t he red-haired?’

‘Yes, he’s got Tartar blood, but they all know who he is. No one’s likely to make a mistake about him. It’s different for me. Last time they caused trouble, I never went out alone. You’d better be careful.’

‘But I am dark,’ said Harriet.

‘Well, you’d better keep Guy indoors.’

Before Bella rang off, Harriet suggested they might meet
for coffee somewhere. Bella said: ‘Not today. Not just yet. Better let things settle a bit.’ She was willing to visit Harriet, but it was another thing to be seen in her company.

Harriet, when she went out shopping, sensed misgiving in the streets. The meat shops were empty. All the stocks for the coming week had been sold to mark yesterday’s rejoicings – and now the rejoicings were over. When would there be more meat? Who could tell? What were people to eat this week-end? No one knew. People were asking what had, in fact, happened? They had exchanged one dictator for another: the known for an unknown who might bring the Iron Guard in his wake.

As though to enhance the anticlimax, Sunday was declared a Day of Atonement. Bucharest must atone for its slaughter of Codreanu and his comrades; for its pro-British past; and its frivolity. The church bells tolled from dawn till late at night. Cinemas, cafés, restaurants, even the English Bar, were closed. Every Rumanian, wherever he might be, was required to kneel down at eleven in the morning and pray to the Guardist martyrs for forgiveness. Processions of black-clad priests, heads bowed, trailed around all day in the glutinous heat.

The gloom was enlivened for the Pringles by a telephone call from Galpin. He wanted Yakimov. Yakimov was not in his room.

‘Where’s he got to?’ Galpin angrily demanded.

Harriet did not know. For the first time, it occurred to her that she had seen nothing of him since Thursday evening. ‘Wasn’t he in the bar yesterday?’ she asked.

‘No. Look here!’ Galpin’s tone was severely accusing. ‘He’s got five thousand of mine.
And
I paid his fare to Cluj.’

‘He won’t get far on five thousand.’

‘He’d better not try,’ Galpin said and his receiver was violently replaced.

Harriet went to ask Despina when she had last seen Yakimov. Despina, having been on the roof when he returned from Cluj, had seen nothing of him since the morning of his departure. She said his bed had not been slept in.

Harriet, puzzled, began to wonder whether indeed Yakimov had returned; or whether his brief appearance in the shadowy room had been but a conjuration of the evening’s drama.

When she spoke to Guy he said confidently: ‘Yaki wouldn’t go without telling us.’

‘Then where is he?’

Before Guy had found an answer to this question, Galpin came thumping on the door of the flat. He pushed his way in, apparently imagining the Pringles were hiding Yakimov. ‘He’s had my money,’ shouted Galpin, ‘and I want my news.’

In Yakimov’s room, Galpin threw open the cupboards and pulled open the drawers so Harriet saw that, apart from some scraps of cast-off clothing, all Yakimov’s possessions had gone. Even his sable-lined greatcoat was missing from its hook. ‘He wouldn’t take that if he were coming back,’ she said.

‘The bastard!’ Galpin shouted. ‘He’s vamoosed. If I ever see him again, I’ll scrag him.’

When Galpin had gone, Guy said consolingly: ‘He’ll be back.’

‘Well, he won’t be back here,’ said Harriet with decision. ‘I want this room for Sasha.’

Guy, torn between the claims of his two protégés, looked disconcerted.

Harriet said: ‘It is much safer for all of us to have Sasha inside the flat.’

Guy agreed. Suddenly enthusiastic, throwing all doubts aside, he said: ‘But of course the boy must have the room. He can’t spend the winter on the roof. What does he do all day? I haven’t had time to see him lately. Is he still studying?’

‘He reads and draws, but he’s lazy. Down here you can keep an eye on him and he can have the wireless. He’s fond of music.’

Guy nodded. ‘He used to play the saxophone. We must do something for him. I wish we could borrow a gramophone.’ Suddenly beset by the urgency of Sasha’s case, he said: ‘Let’s bring him down straightaway,’ and sped off as he spoke. When he came back with Sasha, he was more elated by the move than the boy himself.

Despina had tidied the room. ‘It’s super,’ Sasha said, then added as he sat down on the edge of the bed: ‘Jolly nice to have a real bed,’ but Harriet felt he scarcely cared where he was as long as someone stood between him and the discomforting world outside.

As he was arranging papers and pencils on the bedside table, she noticed he had brought down among his other things, his military uniform.

She said: ‘Did you have any sort of papers? I mean, a passport or
permis de séjour
?’

‘I have this.’ He searched the uniform jacket and produced the
carte d’identité
issued to conscripts.

She saw it contained what she wanted, Sasha’s photograph and said: ‘This is evidence against you. I had better destroy it.’ She took it to the kitchen where she unpeeled the photograph and put it into her handbag. The card she tore into fragments and burnt in an ash-tray.

That evening Sasha sat down to supper with them. While they ate, they listened to the news, or what served for news these days. It consisted, on this occasion, of an indictment of Carol, who was described as the Pandora’s Box from which all Rumania’s evils had sprung. But, listeners were reminded, Hope had been imprisoned at the bottom of the box, and Hope, in the shape of General Antonescu, was in the studio. He would address the country.

Antonescu came at once to the microphone. Speaking in simple biblical language, he promised that once the country had expiated its sins, it would be restored to greatness. No one need fear. The new regime would bring neither bloodshed nor recriminations. For every useful member of Society, regardless of race or creed, there would be an ordered and protected life.

‘Do you think we can count on that?’ Harriet asked.

‘Why not?’ said Guy. ‘We haven’t lost the war yet; and we may not lose it. The British are known to have great powers of survival. Antonescu doesn’t want to antagonise us, and while our Legation is here, we’re a recognised community.’

Harriet asked Sasha what his family had thought of Antonescu. Sasha shook his head vaguely, apparently never having heard of him. ‘Despina says he’s quite decent,’ he said.

Sasha had watched the revolution from the roof. What had he made of it all? He certainly had not been disturbed. It probably never entered his head that events could jeopardise his protected position. As for the fate of Rumania, why should that mean anything to him? Although he had been born here, he was no more emotionally involved with the place than were the Pringles themselves. Reflecting on his English schoolboy slang that at once placed and displaced him, she thought wherever he was, he would belong nowhere.

Guy’s students, reassured by the general’s speech, turned up in force at the University on Monday morning, but Sunday’s gloom still hung in the air. Cinemas and theatres were to remain shut for the rest of the week. Although they had been ordered to return to work, thousands of people still kept half-hearted holiday, wandering the streets as though waiting for a sign that their disorganised world would become normal once again.

Bella had telephoned Harriet that morning, excited because she had been right in suspecting that Carol had not left immediately after his abdication. He had, in fact, remained in the palace another twenty-four hours, then gone by rail, taking a train-load of valuables.

‘And all the El Grecos,’ Bella said, scandalised.

‘But weren’t they bought by his father?’

‘Yes, with public money. Of course, Lupescu and Urdureanu went with him. One of the waiters on the train is putting it round that the three of them squabbled all the way, blaming each other for what had happened. At the frontier, the Iron Guard machine-gunned them and they had to lie on the floor. Just think of it!’ said Bella, giggling as she thought of it herself.

Harriet expressed some concern that the ex-King and his followers should have been all day in the palace listening to the rejoicings over their downfall.

‘Oh,’ said Bella, ‘don’t you fret your fat over that lot. They’ll
live in luxury with the cash they’ve salted away. Nikko says it was a mistake, letting them go. They should have been arrested and tried and forced to disgorge. The Iron Guard needs some diversion. There’s no knowing what they’ll get up to now.’

Bella seemed less confident that the Iron Guard could be kept from power. ‘After all,’ she said, ‘who else is there? Maniu’s pro-British and Bratianu’s anti-German. I can’t see Hitler standing for either of them. And,’ she glumly added, ‘we’ve got these wretched refugees pouring into the town, filling up the hotels and cafés, and putting up prices again.’

‘What will happen to them?’

‘God knows,’ said Bella.

The trains had stopped for two days when the news of the revolution reached Transylvania and most of the refugees were only now reaching the city. Those that filled the hotels and cafés were the fortunate few. The majority, the dispossessed peasants, had had to shelter beneath the trees of the park and up the Chaussée. Arriving during an interregnum, they received less consideration than the Poles had done. No one was empowered to deal with them. They spent their days standing dumbly before any large building where power might reside. Imagining that justice must eventually be brought out to them, they were prepared to wait days and weeks: and they probably would have to wait, for the Cabinet had not yet been appointed. The
prefectura
and ministries were empty of important people. The senior civil servants were spending their days with the processions of penitents that followed the priests and nuns about the streets.

Harriet, when she went out, took a
tr
ă
sur
ă
up the Chaussée as far as the fountain that marked the edge of the town. She was on her way to visit Clarence who lived in a new block on an unfinished boulevard. Never having been there before, she had difficulty in finding it. She might have telephoned him and arranged to meet him in the English Bar, but felt an unexpected call would be more likely to impress him with the urgency of her request.

When Harriet asked for Domnul Lawson his cook, a grimy woman with a sly manner, pointed, grinning, at the balcony as though to say: ‘He’s there, where he always is.’ Harriet found him lying on a long chair, a copy of the
Bukarester Tageblatt
on the floor beside him. He wore a heavy white sweater across the chest of which was embroidered the word ‘Leander’. His eyes were shut. He did not open them until she said: ‘Hello, Clarence,’ then he started up, confused by the sight of her, and was immediately on the defensive. In a complaining tone, he explained: ‘I’m supposed to rest. The mornings are getting chilly. With my weak chest, I have to be careful.’

The balcony was in the shade, overlooking open fields from which came a hint of breeze. Swallowing back a derisive comment, Harriet mildly said: ‘I’m sorry if I disturbed you.’

He gave her a suspicious glance. Seeing she was serious, he said: ‘I suppose you’ve heard? The blitz on London has begun.’

She had not heard the news that morning. Looking down at the German paper, she asked: ‘What does it say?’

‘According to this rag the whole city’s aflame. They say the fire service could not cope. They claim tremendous damage done, thousands of casualties and so on. Probably a lot of lies – but who knows?’

‘If we get back, there may be nothing to get back to.’

He shrugged and dragged himself out of his chair. ‘How about a drink?’

While he went into the room and called to the servant for glasses, Harriet remained on the balcony, shocked by what she had heard. On the other side of the road there was a cornfield. The corn, a second or third crop, not more than a foot high, was still grey-green. Its freckling of poppies gave the vista a look of spring, but the mountains were visible in the distance – a sign that the summer haze was lifting and autumn had begun. There was even a glint of snow on the highest peak.

Clarence called her. She went into the room and looked about at the dark, carved furniture, the painted plates and
the cloths and cushions embroidered in blue and red cross-stitch.