The Balkan Trilogy (76 page)

Abruptly changing from the subject of the slaughtered Calinescu, Dobson said: ‘This convent was started by a Russian princess, an abbess who came here after the revolution with a following of nuns. Queen Marie gave them the land. They collected a crowd of refugees; a lot of them are still living. Some dark tales of intrigue and murder are told about this community. What a novel they would make!’

The Pringles had known Dobson as an agreeable man who treated them and their orders to leave the country with a
vague serenity. Now that he felt more was expected of him, they were experiencing the active charm of his attention and they found it delightful.

Watching him as he walked before her with his plump, incurved back, his softly drooping shoulders, his rounded backside rising and falling with each tripping step, Harriet wondered why she had once decided he would not be easy to know. Who would be easier? And here, it occurred to her, was opportunity to intercede for Sasha! Yet, she hesitated – she scarcely knew why.

She had felt an instinctive trust of Foxy Leverett. Reckless and casual though he had been, he seemed a natural liberal. Dobson, for all his geniality, was something apart. Supposing the diplomatic code required him to betray the boy? Feeling no certainty he would not do it, she kept silent and was fearful Guy might speak. Guy, however, made no mention of Sasha and probably did not give the boy a thought.

They were descending into the hollow where the atmosphere was humid and warm and the tall feathery grasses were still soaked with dew. Dobson led them into the shade of a vast apple orchard where there was no sound but a ziss of wasps and the creak of boughs bending beneath their weight of fruit. They walked through a compost of rotted fruit.

Beyond the orchard was a flat field and a river running level with flat banks. The church stood amid silver birch trees, the leaves of which were yellow as satinwood. To Harriet it seemed that not only the church, but the river reflecting the light among birch trees, and the trees massed around the buildings in a mist of reddish gold, all had a look of Russia. The place was not unfriendly, but it was strange. ‘A distant land,’ she thought, though distant from what she could not have said. In this country, wherever they were, they were far from home.

They crossed the bridge and took the path to the convent. The church and main buildings, of stone, were surrounded by dismal wooden hutments, the living-quarters of the lay community. Four women in black, heads tightly bound up in black handkerchiefs, were approaching the church along a
path, each keeping her distance from the others. As the first of them, a very thin, old lady, stared with interest at the visitors, her dark, wrinkled, toothless face, eaten into by suffering, took an expression ingratiating and cunning. She gave a half-bob at them before turning into the church.

Guy came to a stop, frowning his discomfort, but Dobson went on without glancing round and entered through the heavy, wooden doors.

Harriet said: ‘Come on, darling, let us look inside,’ and led him after Dobson. She received, however, no more than a glimpse of the candle-lit interior where a priest, hands raised, was making gestures over two nuns who lay on the ground before him like little, black-clad, fallen dolls. Guy gave a gasp, then bolted, letting the door crash behind him. The old women of the congregation started round, the priest looked up, even the nuns stirred.

Much shocked, Harriet hurried out after him. Before she could remonstrate, he turned on her: ‘How could you go into that vile place where that mumbo-jumbo was going on?’

A few minutes later, Dobson came out, sauntering, his face bland, giving the impression that nothing could surprise him – but he had less to say on the way home.

Harriet walked in complete silence, knowing that Guy might, by his action, have antagonised the whole powerful world of the Legation. Guy, too, was silent, probably in reaction from the scene that had so revolted him inside the church.

They returned through a shabby area of untidy, uneven grass where flimsy châlets declared themselves to be
pensions
and private sanatoria. The road crossed a stream of clear, shallow water that purled over rusted cans and old mattresses. Harriet paused to look down and Dobson, perhaps conscious of her discomfort, leaned beside her on the parapet and said: ‘If you were some great lady of the eighteenth century, Lady Hester Stanhope for instance, you would be standing on the boundary line between the Austrian and Turkish empires,’ and as Harriet grew slightly pink at this analogy, Dobson smiled in reassuring admiration.

He joined them at their table for luncheon and tea. After tea he invited them to drive with him to Sinai.

When he brought his car out of the hotel garage, it proved to be Foxy Leverett’s De Dion-Bouton. Claret-coloured, picked out in gold, with a small, square bonnet, its large body opened out like a tulip to display claret-coloured upholstery of close-buttoned leather. The brass headlamps and large tuba-like horn were beautifully polished. Dobson eyed the car with a smile of satisfaction. ‘I think she’ll get there,’ he said. ‘She’s in spanking shape.’

On the road to Sinai, he was as talkative as ever. Pointing across the plateau towards some bald, ashen hills, he said: ‘Did you ever see such mean hills? They look as though they had something to hide, don’t they? They’ve a bad reputation among the peasants here. I remember when Foxy and I came here to ski last winter, we thought we’d try out those hills. When we told our cook, Ileana, where we were going, she flopped down on her knees and gave an absolute howl: “No, no, domnuli, no one ever goes there. They’re bad lands.” Foxy said: “Get up and stop being an ass.” All the time she was cutting our sandwiches, she was snivelling away. She kissed our hands as though certain she’d never see us again.

‘Anyway, we drove over there and had a long climb up – they’re higher than they look. The snow was magnificent. When we got to the top, Foxy said: “It’s ridiculous to say no one ever comes here. Look at all these dogs’ footprints.” Then it struck us. We strapped on our skis and got down that hill-side faster than we’d ever got down anything in our lives before. When we arrived back Ileana had all the cooks in the neighbourhood holding a wake for us. They screamed their heads off when they saw us. They thought we were ghosts.’ Dobson had been increasing speed as he talked and he now pointed with pride to the indicator. ‘Doing forty,’ he said. The car trembled with the effort.

The conversation now was all about Foxy: Foxy killing bear in the Western Carpathians, Foxy shooting duck at the Delta, Foxy taking ‘a record bag of ptarmigan’.

Harriet burst out: ‘I hate all this shooting.’

‘So do I,’ Dobson cheerfully agreed, ‘but it’s nice to keep a bit of bird in the larder. Something to peck at when you come in late.’

They passed a cart-load of peasants who pointed at the De Dion, the men bawling with laughter, the women giggling behind their hands.

Laughing with them, Dobson said: ‘How Foxy would have loved that,’ and he continued a threnody on his friend – sports-man, playboy and Legation jester: ‘The best fellow in the world! We shared a flat in the Boulevard Carol.’ He went on to tell how Foxy practised revolver-shooting, using a Louis XIV clock as a target. One night he shot at the ceiling and sent a bullet into the bed of the landlord, who said: ‘Anyone else but you, Domnul Leverett, and I would have told him: “This is too much.”’

The road was lined with garden restaurants. It was all very urban, but as soon as the car turned off the main road they came into a wild region of stone peaks where the rock was patched over with alpine moss and there was no vegetation but a few dwarf juniper bushes. In every hollow among the hills a small lake lay dark and motionless.

Dobson stopped the car and they went for a walk over the cinderous ground between the rocks. There was a little grass round the lakes where a few lean cows grazed. Pointing to one of them, Guy said: ‘Harriet says she loves these creatures.’

Dobson gave his easy laugh. ‘She’s probably quite willing to eat them,’ he said, and Harriet stared at her feet, conscious of her human predicament. Putting an arm round her shoulder, Guy rallied her: ‘Come on, tell us, why do you love them?’

Irritated that he questioned her in front of Dobson, she said defiantly: ‘Because they are innocent.’

‘And we are guilty?’

She shrugged. ‘Aren’t we? We’re human animals that maintain ourselves at the cost of our humanity.’

He squeezed her shoulder. ‘Guilt is a disease of the mind,’ he said. ‘It’s been imposed on us by those in power. The thing
they want is to divide human nature against itself. That permits the minority to dominate the majority.’

Dobson smiled blandly, apparently detached from the Pringles’ conversation, but Harriet, certain he was listening intently, did not encourage Guy to say anything more on this subject.

They drove into Sinai as evening fell. Dobson said: ‘We’ll snatch a bite before trying our luck,’ taking it for granted that the Pringles anticipated with as much pleasure as he an evening of losing money at the casino.

The casino attempted a grandeur that was thwarted by Balkan apathy and the harshness of the overhanging crags. A chill had entered the air after dark. The yellowish bulbs that lit the casino gardens, touching rocks and trees and the wavering fronds of the pampas grass, could not dispel the gloom of the failing year. The paths glistened with damp.

The large entrance hall was deserted. Such life as there was about the place had taken itself to the main salon where only one table was in use. Lit by low-hung, green-shaded globes, the gamblers sat, absorbed and silent, in the penumbra around the table.

Dobson found a seat. Guy stood behind him, watching the play, while Harriet tiptoed to the end of the table, where she paused and looked down its length at the faces intent upon the turning wheel. She thought: ‘What a collection of oddities!’ seeing them as though they grew like distorted mush-room growths from their chairs. One man, whose shoulders were abnormally wide but who rose barely eighteen inches above the table, had a vast, formless face, like a milk jelly, glistening with ill-health. Beside him was an ancient skeletal female her mouth agape and askew, as though she had died without succour. One male head was abnormally large like a case of giantism. Here and there were faces, not aged and yet not young, having the immaterial look of arrested decay.

It seemed to Harriet that in this room without windows, artificially lit both by day and by night, these people, with their pallor of indoor life, existed in a self-contained world,
beyond consciousness of war, change of government or threat of invasion, indeed unaware there was an outer world, like insects in a gall. They would scarcely know if the Day of Judgement were upon them. For them life’s prodigiousness was diminished down to a little ball spinning in a wooden bowl.

The ball fell into a groove. A stir, almost a sigh, touched the players. It fell upon a stillness so complete she could almost feel, as they must, that did conflict exist anywhere at all, it was too remote to matter.

The croupier’s rake came into the light, pushing the chips about. No one smiled, or showed concern or pleasure, but, as one player, in placing his stake, accidentally touched that of another, there broke out between them a quarrel, brief but vicious, like a quarrel between the insane.

The ball was spun again. Harriet took a step forward to watch and at once the man seated before her glanced round, his face distorted with irritation at her nearness. She tiptoed on.

When she reached the other side of the table, she looked across at Dobson and realised Guy was no longer there. He had found someone to talk to in the dim, empty regions beyond the table. When she reached him, she found his companions were Inchcape and Pinkrose. He was talking with his usual animation, but in an undertone, while Inchcape, hands in pockets, head bent, listened, tilting backwards and forwards on his heels. Pinkrose stood a step apart, watching Guy with an expression that told Harriet the Gieseking concert would not be forgotten in a hurry. Inchcape looked up.

‘Hah! So there you are!’ Inchcape said as she approached. ‘Let’s go and get a drink.’ Walking ahead, he glanced back for Harriet and as she caught up with him, said: ‘Have you enjoyed your break?’

‘Very much. And you?’

‘Don’t speak of it.’ He dropped his voice. ‘I never could abide that old so-and-so.’

‘Then why did you invite him to Rumania?’

‘Who else would have come at a time like this? How does he strike you?’

‘Well …’ Harriet evaded the question by asking: ‘Why, I wonder, is he so suspicious of poor Guy?’

‘Him!’ Inchcape snorted in amused contempt. ‘He’d be suspicious of the Lamb of God.’

In the bar, that was large, bleak, bare and empty except for the barman, Inchcape told them he had lost chips to the value of five thousand
lei
. ‘That was my limit,’ he said. ‘As for Pinkrose here! Tight-fisted old curmudgeon, I couldn’t get him to risk a
leu
.’ He turned on Pinkrose. ‘You’re a tight-fisted old curmudgeon, eh?’ He gave Pinkrose’s shoulder a push. ‘Eh?’ he insisted, staring at him with quizzical disgust as though he were a wife of whom he was more than half ashamed.

Pinkrose, sitting with his legs tightly together, his feet side by side, his little waxen hands folded on his stomach, smiled vaguely, apparently taking Inchcape’s chaff as a form of admiration, which perhaps it was.

The bar was cold. The windows had been opened during the day and were still open, admitting shafts of damp, icy air. Pinkrose began to twitch. He pulled his scarfs about him, looking miserable, but before he could say anything the waiter came to them.

‘I know,’ said Inchcape indulgently. ‘We’ll have hot
ţ
uic
ǎ
. We’ll celebrate the coming winter. I like to hibernate. I shall devote the next six months to Henry James.’

The
ţ
uic
ǎ
was served in small teapots. Heated with sugar and peppercorns, the spirit lost its rawness and gave the impression of being much milder than it was. Pinkrose drew back, frowning, as a pot was put before him, and said: ‘No, really, I think not.’