The Balkan Trilogy (70 page)

The windows rattled as across the square, at sixty miles an hour, a fleet of Iron Guard motor-cyclists sped on their way to the Boulevard Carol where the richest men in Rumania lay under house arrest, awaiting the results of Horia Sima’s inquiry into the origins of all private fortunes. Nothing might be moved from their houses. An armed guard stood at every gate.

Suicides were occurring daily. One of the first was of the Youth Movement leader, decorated last June by Hitler. Unable to account for a missing twelve million
lei
, he had shot himself. The police had gone on strike. Their work, they said, was too dangerous. Those who were in power one day, were in prison the next; those who had been in prison, were now in power. The Guardists had taken over and patrolled the streets with revolvers in their holsters.

As the motor-cyclists roared past, the salesman raised one eyebrow and one shoulder. Who these days would buy such a symbol of private wealth as this Hispano?

Bella, when she telephoned that morning, had said: ‘These Guardist police are worse than no police at all. All they do is go round the offices collecting for party funds. And not only the Jewish offices, either. They don’t care whose money they take. They call it cleaning up public life, but even if you find a burglar in your house, you can’t get a Guardist to come and arrest him. I hope you’re staying indoors. Things’ll settle down, of course, but, if I were you, I wouldn’t go out yet awhile.’

Had Harriet taken Bella’s advice she would, like Carol’s financiers and Chief of Police and Chief of Secret Police, have been a prisoner in her own home. As it was, made restless by insecurity, she wandered about the streets and went each day to meet Guy as he left his classes. She imagined he would be less liable to attack if he were with a woman.

Stories were going round that thousands of people had been arrested and thousands executed.

People caught leaving the country were sometimes arrested, sometimes merely stripped of their valuable possessions and allowed to proceed.

‘That Ionescu’s gone,’ said Bella. ‘Him that used to be Minister of Information. He overbalanced trying to face all ways at once. He became a Guardist but he knew he was for it. His children were carrying little fur muffs. Muffs! – at this time of the year, I ask you! Naturally they roused suspicion. The customs men tore them to pieces and found them stuffed
with jewellery and gold. I always thought him too clever by half.’

Another who went was Ionescu’s mistress, the singer Florica. She reached Trieste and then turned round and came back again. She was reported as having said: ‘I thought of my country and knew that at such a time I could not leave it.’

But, as Bella pointed out, she was a gipsy and no true Rumanian, so her behaviour was, as one might expect, peculiar.

Harriet, as she walked about in the sticky autumnal heat, saw no open signs of persecution, not even of the Dâmbovi
ţ
a Jews. What she did see, daily, were processions of Cabinet ministers, civil servants, officers of the armed services, priests, nuns and schoolchildren following the most impressive funerals. For the Guardist leaders were busy disinterring their Martyrs. Raised in batches to which were given heroic names like the Decemvirü and the Nicadorii, the bodies were paraded in giant coffins all over the city and reburied with ceremonies that must be attended by any who hoped to maintain any sort of position in public life.

Down in the Chicken Market Harriet found a memorial service being held over the spot where Calinescu’s murderers had lain. The trembling old peasant who sold her a cabbage said that among the mourners were ‘the greatest men in the world’.

Who were they? she asked and was told: ‘Hitler, Mussolini, Count Ciano and the Emperor of Japan.’

After the ceremony the site was roped off and spread each day with fresh flowers, to the inconvenience of the market traffic.

‘The great day, of course,’ said Bella, ‘will be when they dig up His Nibs at Fort Jilawa. They’ll wait till November, the anniversary of his death. Then, Nikko says, trouble will really begin.’

The papers announced that the demand for admission to the Iron Guard was so great, the list had to be closed.

Among those who appeared in Guardist uniform was the
Pringles’ landlord, who was also their next-door neighbour. In the past, when he had met Harriet on the landing, he had greeted her courteously: now, in his green shirt and breeches, his moustache sternly waxed, he stared over her head and she began to fear him. He might have – almost certainly did have – a key to their flat. She remembered the mysterious disappearance of the oil-well plan. He had been one of her suspects. If he came in while they were out, he would almost certainly discover Sasha.

Once or twice, when she left the flat, she saw a man dodge out of sight on the lower flight. She spoke of this to Guy, who thought it would be some agent of the landlord. Embarrassed at having English tenants, he might be seeking an excuse to break their agreement.

She said to Despina: ‘Keep the front door bolted. If the landlord wants to come in, do not let him.’

‘No, no,
corni
ţ
a
,’ Despina assured her, appearing to understand the whole situation. ‘If anyone comes, I do like this …’ She opened the sitting-room door a crack and put her nose to it. ‘If it is the landlord – pouf! I do like this.’ She slammed the door shut. ‘He is a bad man,’ she added in explanation. ‘He beats his cook.’

There were now four meatless days in a week, but even on the other days meat was hard to find. Despina would be away for two or three hours queueing at market stalls and often, on returning, would hold out, with a dramatic gesture, her empty basket. ‘In the market today, no sugar, no coffee, no meat, no fish, no eggs. Nothing, nothing.’

Watching the processions, the daily pageantry amid utter confusion, it seemed to Harriet that the whole country had succumbed, without any sort of resistance, to a lunatic autocracy.

She said to Guy: ‘Everyone in Bucharest is trailing round after these Guardist turn-outs. Why is there no opposition to it all?’

‘There’s no chance of any
active
opposition,’ he said. ‘The only people with the moral fibre to oppose anything are in
prison. The Communists – but not only the Communists: the Liberal Democrats, everyone and anyone likely to show a spark of revolt: they’re all in prison.’

‘What about Maniu?’

‘What can he do? Anyway, from what I’ve seen of him, I should not think he’s much more than a showpiece: Rumania’s “Good Man”. He was the leader of the Transylvanian peasants, and Transylvania is lost. You must realise that this new dictatorship is much tougher than the old. There are not only prisons now, there are concentration camps: and there are these young men trained at Dachau, all waiting for a chance to beat someone up. Yet,’ Guy added, ‘there is opposition of a sort. A typical Rumanian opposition. Satire. It’s the most difficult sort to repress.’ He told her how in the Doi Trandifiri, the meeting place of intellectuals, there was proof that the liberal sanity of the past survived. Deathly fearful though people were, there they were still able to laugh. They had nicknamed the Iron Guard ‘
le régime des pompes funèbres
’ and a great many funny stories went round about Horia Sima and his visions. Sima was in conflict with Codreanu’s father who declared that his son’s spirit disapproved of the present leader and had appointed his father as his vicar-on-earth. The old man had to be put under house-arrest and, knowing he was in danger of assassination, he said he preferred to stay indoors as fewer accidents happened there.

‘There’s opposition, too,’ said Guy, ‘from a much more influential source – the German minister. He’s tired of all this marching and singing “
Capitanul
”. He wants the country back at work. Several big industrial firms have had to close down because the directors are in prison and the workers are all in the Iron Guard. The financial situation is chaotic, Carol banked all the national wealth abroad in his own name. Now it’s frozen. On top of that, the Guardists want to start a full-scale persecution of the Jews.’

‘Wouldn’t the Germans encourage that?’

‘No. What do they care about Rumanian racial purity. This is merely a raw material zone. Fabricius said to Sima:
“Persecutions are all very well in Germany where there are ten efficient Germans to one efficient Jew, but here there isn’t one efficient Rumanian to ten efficient Jews. If we do get law and order here, we’ll probably have the Germans to thank for it.”’

19

Now that he saw him every day, Sasha had become for Guy a more evident responsibility. Finding that he could not borrow or hire a gramophone, Guy brought in a mouth-organ which Sasha accepted with more excitement than he had shown over the room. ‘But this is spiffing,’ he said, gazing delightedly at the mouth-organ. ‘Really spiffing,’ and he took it at once to his room.

He kept the room tidy and made his own bed. He had pinned his drawings to the walls. The books he had borrowed from the sitting-room stood in a row on the bedside table. His possessions – a brush and comb, some pencils, paper and water-paints – were neatly set out before them. Whatever disorder might prevail in the outside world, he lived in order and was happy.

Sitting on the edge of the bed, he began to pick out a tune he had heard on the radio and which seemed to Harriet painfully applicable to their case:

‘Run rabbit, run rabbit, run, run, run,
Don’t give the farmer his fun, fun, fun …’

When they were alone Guy said to Harriet: ‘I’ve been speaking to David. He thinks Foxy Leverett might help us about Sasha.’

‘What could Foxy Leverett do?’

‘Apparently he’s an adept at smuggling people over frontiers. But the whole problem may be settled in a different way. Supposing, things being as they are, the Soviets decided
to invade? They could get here before the Germans.’

‘You think the Russians would protect the son of a banker who worked for Germany and piled up a fortune in Switzerland?’

‘No, but he’d be no worse off than anyone else. He could lose himself in a crowd.’

Harriet was beginning to fear that the hope of losing himself in the crowd was the most they could offer Sasha.

Next morning, Bella, telephoning as was her habit, asked: ‘I suppose you didn’t listen last night to the German Propaganda broadcast?’

‘We never listen to German broadcasts.’

‘Neither do we.’ Bella paused, evidently edging her way, with tact and consciousness of tact, into revelation unwelcome to Harriet. ‘I don’t want to worry you,’ she said. ‘But …’

Harriet asked, on edge: ‘What is it?’

‘I feel I must tell you. I was rung up last night by a friend, Doamna Pavlovici – the Pavlovicis listen sometimes, just to get some real news.’

‘Yes?’

‘The Germans read out a list of Englishmen in Bucharest who they think are up to something. It was a warning. In fact, they said: “These men will be answerable to the Gestapo.”’

‘Did you know any of them?’

‘Well, yes, I did. There was Foxy Leverett and David Boyd – but they’re all right. They must have diplomatic protection.’

‘Who else?’

‘Inchcape and Clarence Lawson.’

‘And Guy?’

‘Doamna Pavlovici said she heard the name Guy Pringle – that’s why she rang me. But she’s a bit of a feather-brain. She could have made a mistake.’

Harriet, her throat constricted, did not try to reply. Bella, conscious of having shocked her listener into silence, hurried on to say: ‘I couldn’t keep you in ignorance. You were sure to hear, anyway. I thought you could have a word with Guy.
He’s a bit foolhardy, you know. He goes to that Doi Trandifiri – a dangerous place, full of reds and artists. It’ll be raided very soon, you’ll see. And that summer school with all those Jews! I don’t need to tell you …’

‘There aren’t many students left, now.’

‘No, I imagine not.’ Bella spoke as though the fact were grimly significant. There was a pause in which Harriet felt too depleted to speak. It was broken by Bella who said she had bought Nikko’s release again and they had decided to spend the last weeks of summer in Sinai: ‘We’re sick of “
Capitanul
” and all the rest of it. We need a break. So I’ll say “Goodbye”, my dear, just in case you’re not here when we get back.’

As soon as Bella had put down her receiver, Harriet telephoned Inchcape at his office. It was part of his work to listen to the German broadcasts and he had, he admitted, heard his name, and the names of Guy and Clarence, mentioned the previous night.

‘Among a lot of others,’ he said. ‘They gave a list of the engineers who were kept on in key positions on the oil fields. Yes, they did say something about the Gestapo. A lot of empty threats. Anyway, the Gestapo isn’t here and I doubt if it ever will be.’

‘But the Guardists are,’ said Harriet. ‘And they’d be only too glad to do the Gestapo’s work for it. Surely the summer school could be closed now! There aren’t half a dozen students left. Guy is there every day. Almost alone. An obvious target. And it’s all for nothing.’

‘Not for nothing. The school’s a good thing. It’s showing the flag. It’s cocking a snook. If we closed down, it’d please them no end. They’re trying to scare us. It’s the old war of nerves, but I’m not playing their game. They want us to take to our heels – so that’s exactly what we won’t do.’

Checked by this bravado, Harriet still held to the telephone, seeking in her mind some plea that would move Inchcape to reason, but Inchcape was not waiting for it. ‘I must go,’ he said. ‘I’ve other things to worry about. I’ve just heard Pinkrose
will be landing on top of us any day now.’ He spoke as though the professor’s arrival was an intolerable impertinence.

‘But aren’t you expecting him?’ Harriet asked.

Inchcape gave an exasperated laugh. ‘To tell you the truth, what with one thing and another, I’d forgotten about the old buffer.’

‘He couldn’t be coming at a worse time,’ Harriet said, intending sympathy, but Inchcape would have none of it.

‘Nonsense,’ he said. ‘These internecine squabbles need not concern us. You’re getting jittery, my child. Would King Michael bring his mother here if there were cause for alarm?’