The Balkan Trilogy (123 page)

Harriet was to meet Charles at tea-time. During the morning she held to this fact as a sleep-walker might hold to a banister. She would not go out into the troubled streets. She sent the boy to buy her a sandwich and remained in the News Room until four o’clock. She arrived early at the Corinthian, not expecting to find Charles. He was already there.

She said: ‘I’m early.’

‘I thought you might come early.’

She sat down and asked: ‘What is the news?’

‘I don’t need to tell you about the explosion.’

‘I’ve heard the whole story. What else? Any rumours?’

‘Nothing good.’

He was holding a book. She put out her hand to take it from him, but he shut it and placed it on the sofa out of her reach. He was frowning slightly as though trying to recall something, examining her face as though whatever it was, was there.

Gazing at each other, they seemed on the brink of revelation but there was nothing to be said. If they began to converse now, it would take a life-time, and they had no time in which to begin.

Suddenly, like someone forced to confess under duress, he said: ‘I love you.’

When she did not reply, he said: ‘I suppose you knew that?’ He insisted against her silence: ‘Didn’t you? … Didn’t you?’

Unable to speak, she nodded and his face cleared. Now, his expression implied, he had given her everything; there were no grounds for any sort of excuses or delays.

He took her hand and, gently pulling her, brought her to her feet and led her towards the stair.

There may have been people watching them, but she had no consciousness of other people in the foyer and later, when she tried to remember how they had reached the floor above, it seemed to her she had been levitated, as though in a dream. They went down a passage with numbered doors. There was no noise. She thought there was no one else in the hotel – at least, no one who mattered: yet when a door opened in the passage, she had an immediate prevision of encounter. She stopped, alarmed. Charles, with no such feelings, tried to pull her on.

The door, opening at the end of the passage, showed a lighted window. When, for a moment, a tall young man was outlined against it, Harriet recognized him at once. She jerked her hand from Charles’s hold. The young man, closing the door behind him, moved towards them with an apologetic smile and, reaching them, stood aside.

Harriet said: ‘Sasha.’

The young man, slight, with drooping shoulders, his smile unchanged, lowered his head and tried to sidle past her.

‘It’s Harriet,’ she said.

He said: ‘I know.’

‘You seem to have forgotten me.’

‘No.’

‘Then what’s the matter?’

Still smiling, he shook his head. Nothing; nothing was the matter. He only wanted to pass and get away. Puzzled and hurt, she said: ‘They must have done something to you.’

‘No. They didn’t do anything. I’m all right.’

He certainly looked well enough. He was wearing a suit of fine English cloth – an expensive suit in this part of the world. His face, with its prominent nose and dark, close-set eyes, showed no sign of ill-treatment or spiritual damage, yet it had changed. It was no longer the face of a gentle domestic animal, unconscious of its enemies, but an aware face, cautious and evasive. The meeting, that should have been a delight for both of them, had merely embarrassed him.

At a loss, she looked at Charles and said: ‘This is Sasha.’

‘Is it?’ Charles smiled, a slight, sardonic smile. At one time she might have thought he was amused by the incident; now she knew better. He could hide his anger, but not his pallor. Cheated and humiliated, or so he imagined, his desire had changed to rage. He was, she realized, transported by rage and she thought how quickly she had come to know him. If she had lived with him half a century, she could not know him better.

She did not try to speak to him but turned to Sasha and asked where he was going. Sheepish and miserable, the boy replied: ‘Just downstairs. I’m here with my uncle. He’ll be back soon.’

‘Let’s all go and have tea.’ She gave Charles an appealing look that said: Let me solve this mystery, then we can talk.

He laughed and moved down the passage. ‘Not me, I’m afraid. I have too much to do.’ He entered his room and shut the door sharply and firmly. And that, she was made to understand, was that. She went downstairs and Sasha followed, meekly enough. She talked about the explosion. He said it
had broken windows at the top of the hotel but he spoke as though it meant nothing. It was not his concern.

She led him to the sofa where Charles’s book still lay. As soon as they sat down, she began to interrogate him with a vigour that resulted from her own painful confusion.

He said he had come from Belgrade with an uncle, his mother’s brother. How did he get to Belgrade? The Rumanian authorities had given him a ticket and put him on to the train. He was more interested in the future than in the past and, as soon as he could break in on her questions, he told her that his uncle was trying to arrange their departure from Greece. They did not care how they got away: all they wanted was to leave Europe and as soon as possible. His uncle kept going to the Yugoslav legation. He had been there that afternoon. The official said the British would arrange for the evacuation of the Yugoslavs who were either here or on their way here. He supposed they would be sent to Egypt, but his uncle was in touch with Sasha’s sisters and aunts who were now in South Africa. His uncle had said: ‘It’ll be a long time before the Germans get to Cape Town,’ so that was where they would go. They intended to fly there at the first opportunity.

This finished, Harriet said: ‘Guy went once or twice to meet the Belgrade train. I suppose you didn’t see him?’

‘Yes, I did. He didn’t see me. He was talking to a man.’

‘And you made no attempt to speak to him?’

Sasha did not reply.

‘Why? I don’t understand, really I don’t. What is it all about? Why didn’t you speak to Guy?’

He looked blank, having, apparently, no explanation to offer. When their tea had been set out, she pinned him down in a more decided manner. ‘Now! That night our flat was raided – the night you disappeared – what happened? The men who came in were Guardists, weren’t they?’

‘Yes.’

‘Did they do anything to you? Were they brutal? Did they try to bully you?’

‘No. They knew who I was. They had my picture at headquarters: they said they’d been looking for me. They made me sign a paper … It was for the Swiss Bank. They said if I signed, they’d let me go.’

‘So you signed your money away?’

He gave a shrug, slight, expressive, his head hanging down in a shamefaced way. Something about his manner suggested that he was reassuring her. He had not been physically ill-treated, so she need not reproach herself.

‘And did they let you go?’

‘Not then. When I’d signed the paper they locked me up. I said: “When can I go?” and they said: “This has to be arranged.” They kept me so long I thought they wouldn’t let me go. I thought, “Now, they’ll put me in prison, like my father”, but one night they took me in a car to Jimbolia. My uncle was waiting on the other side. One of the men had a permit to cross and my uncle gave him a lot of money – three million
lei
, I think it was: so I was allowed to go. They gave me papers. Everything was in order and I was able to walk across the frontier. It was terribly exciting. And the Guardists were quite decent, really. As soon as the man came back with the money, they were all jolly and laughing and we all shook hands. Then I found my uncle at the Rakek Customs and he took me to Belgrade.’

‘I didn’t know you had an uncle in Belgrade.’

‘I didn’t know where he was, but they knew. They knew where all my relatives were.’

‘So they held you to ransom! I never thought of that. And what of your father? Did you learn anything about him?’

Sasha, his voice more defined, said: ‘They said he was dead.’

‘I’m afraid that could be true.’

‘I hope it’s true.’

She paused in her interrogation while she poured the tea. After she had handed him a cup, she asked: ‘When the Guardists took you to headquarters, what did they tell you?’

He gave her a sudden side glance but did not reply.

‘Did they say anything about Guy and me?’

He shrugged, head hanging again.

‘You didn’t think it was our fault that they came to the flat and found you?’

‘How could I tell?’

‘You thought we’d informed on you?’

His head jerked up and he gave her a swift smile, placatory, suspicious and wretched.

‘What did they tell you?’

‘They said: “See what your English friends have done to you.”’

‘Meaning, we’d given you away?’

‘Yes, they did mean that.’

‘But you didn’t believe them?’

‘I didn’t know. How could I know.’

She saw he had not only believed them: it had never entered his head not to believe them. She was shocked into silence. In any case, there was nothing to be said.

When he had lived with them, a sort of domestic pet, he had seemed too innocent and unsuspecting to be allowed out into the world alone. He had been brought up in the shelter of a wealthy and powerful family, and though he must have heard the family stories of persecution, he had been insulated against mistrust by his own artlessness. Yet one lie – less than a lie, a hint that he had been betrayed by friends – had precipitated the settled doubts of his race. She was certain that however she argued, she would never convince him that they had had no hand in his arrest. One lesson had been enough. He now accepted the perfidy of the world and acceptance was born in him, an inheritance not to be changed.

She said: ‘If you thought we informed on you, weren’t you surprised when they broke up our flat?’

‘Did they break up your flat?’

‘Surely you saw it happen?’

‘No. Despina opened the door. They came straight in and put on all the lights. I was in bed and they said: “Get up and get dressed”, and they took me away.’

‘So you didn’t see them turning out the drawers and pulling down the books?’

‘No, I didn’t. They did nothing like that while I was there.’

‘They did it after you went. When we came back, the flat was in chaos. We didn’t sleep there. We went to the Athenée Palace.’

He gave an ‘Oh!’ of polite concern, and she knew he would never be convinced. Although his manner was still gentle, his attitude still meek, he saw the truth as he saw it, and no one would change him now.

Looking at his face, the same face she had known in Bucharest and yet a different face, she could see him turning into a wily young financier like the Jewish financiers of Chernowitz who still proudly wore on their hats the red fox fur that had been imposed on them long ago, as a symbol of cunning. No doubt he would remake the fortune that he had signed away. That would be his answer to life. She did not blame herself, but she felt someone was to blame.

She had mourned Sasha – and with reason. She had lost him indeed and the person she had now found was not only a stranger, but a stranger whom she could not like.

She said: ‘Guy will want to see you.’

When he did not reply, she asked: ‘You do want to see him? Don’t you?’

‘We’re leaving here.’

‘Yes, but not at once. There are no regular services …’

‘I mean, we’re leaving the hotel.’ There was an anxious impatience in his interruption: ‘We’re going to stay with some people … friends of my uncle.’

‘I suppose Guy could visit you there?’

‘I don’t know where they live.’

‘If I gave you our address, you could get into touch with Guy yourself?’

He answered: ‘Yes,’ dutifully, and took the address which she wrote down for him. She watched him put it into his breast pocket and thought: now it rests with him.

People were coming and going through the hotel door and Sasha was watching for his uncle’s return. She felt his eagerness to be gone and she knew he did not want to see Guy.
Even if she could convince him that they were guiltless, he had left them and did not want to be drawn back to them. And she had no wish to draw him back. Why, after all, should they draw him back? He was not the person they had known.

A man entered the hotel.

‘There’s my uncle,’ Sasha said, his voice rising in relief. ‘I must go.’

‘Of course.’

He leapt away, forgetting to say good-bye. She watched the men meet. The uncle, his shoulders hunched, his head shrunken into the astrakhan collar of his coat, was half a century older than the nephew, yet, seen together, the two looked alike. Their likeness was increased by the sense of understanding that united them. They belonged not to a country but to an international sodality, the members of which had more in common with each other than they had with the inhabitants of any country in which they chanced to be born.

‘Jews are always strangers,’ Harriet thought, yet when Sasha followed his uncle upstairs, she felt a sense of loss.

While taking tea, she had seen Charles leave the hotel. He had run down the stairs, not looking to right or left. He was still pale, still angry. She knew the situation might never be redeemed – and it had all been for nothing. Sasha, knowing she and Guy were in Athens, had made no attempt to contact them. He could have come and gone without their knowing he had even been here. Yet, out of all the seconds in a day, he had chosen that second to appear and estrange her from her friend.

She picked up the book which Charles had left on the sofa and saw it was in Greek. The fact he read this language not as an exercise but as a pleasure seemed to emphasize their division.

An acute sadness of parting and finality came down on her. Her friends were dispersing and she felt that life was reaching towards an end. She thought of Guy and knew that whatever his faults, he possessed the virtue of permanence.

She decided she would not tell him about her meeting with
Sasha. She could imagine him trying to override Sasha’s recoil and forcing an understanding; or an appearance of understanding, a pretence that all was well. She could not bear that. Now it would rest with Sasha and if he made no effort to see them, Guy, knowing nothing, would not be hurt.