The Balkan Trilogy (20 page)

When the IOU was signed and the note had changed hands, Clarence, seemingly relieved by the generosity of his own action, smiled and said he was just going out to luncheon. Would Yakimov care to join him?

‘Delighted, dear boy,’ said Yakimov. ‘
Delighted
.’

As they drove to Capsa’s in the car which had been allotted to him, Clarence said: ‘I wonder if you know a Commander Sheppy? He’s just invited me to a party. I don’t know him from Adam.’

‘Oh yes, dear boy,’ said Yakimov. ‘Know him well. One eye, one arm – but keen as mustard.’

‘What is he doing here?’

‘I’m told,’ Yakimov’s voice dropped – ‘of course it’s not the sort of thing one should pass round – but I’m
told
, he’s an important member of the British Secret Service.’

Clarence laughed his unbelief. ‘Who would tell you that?’ he asked.

‘Not in a position to say.’

Cap
ş
a’s was Yakimov’s favourite among the Bucharest restaurants. As they passed from the knife-edge of the
crivat
into a lusciousness of rose-red carpeting, plush, crystal and gilt, he felt himself home again.

A table had been booked for Clarence beside the double windows that overlooked the snow-patched garden. To exclude any hint of draught, red silk cushions were placed between the two panes of glass. Clarence’s guest, a thick-set man with an air of self-conscious pride, rose without smiling, and frowned when he saw Yakimov. Clarence introduced them: Count Steffaneski, Prince Yakimov.

‘A Russian?’ asked Steffaneski.

‘White Russian, dear boy. British subject.’

Steffaneski’s grunt seemed to say ‘A Russian is a Russian’, and, sitting down heavily he stared at the table-cloth.

Defensively, Clarence said: ‘Prince Yakimov is a refugee from Poland.’

‘Indeed?’ Steffaneski raised his head and fixed Yakimov distrustfully. ‘From where in Poland does he come?’

Yakimov, putting his face into the menu card, said: ‘I strongly recommend the crayfish cooked in paprika. And there is really a delicious pilaff of quails.’

Steffaneski obstinately repeated his question. Clarence said: ‘Prince Yakimov tells me he stayed with relatives who have an estate there.’

‘Ah, I would be interested to learn their name. I am related to many landowners. Many others are my friends.’

Seeing Steffaneski set in his deadly persistence, Yakimov attempted explanation: ‘Fact is, dear boy, there’s been a bit of a misunderstanding. Left Poland before things started. Doing undercover work: saw trouble coming: was ordered to get away. White Russian, y’know. So, not to put too fine a point on it, your poor old Yaki had to take to his heels.’

Watching him closely, Steffaneski was waiting for something
to come of all this. When Yakimov paused, hoping he had given explanation enough, the Count said: ‘Yes?’

Yakimov said: ‘Got lost on the way down. Ended up in Hungary. Friend there, most generous fellow – Count Ignotus – invited me to stay on his estate. So, the fact was, the estate I spoke of was in Hungary.’

‘So you did not come down through Lvov and Jassy?’ Steffaneski asked with apparent courtesy.

‘No, just dropped straight down to Hungary.’

‘Through Czechoslovakia?’

‘Naturally, dear boy.’

‘How then did you penetrate the German forces?’

‘What German forces?’

‘Can it be you did not encounter them?’

‘Well.’ Yakimov looked appealingly at Clarence, who appeared embarrassed by these questions and answers. As Steffaneski began to harass Yakimov again, Clarence broke in to say: ‘He may have come through Ruthenia.’

‘Ruthenia?’ Steffaneski jerked round to face Clarence. ‘Is Ruthenia not occupied, then?’

‘I think not,’ said Clarence.

For some moments Clarence and the Count discussed, without reference to Yakimov, the possibility of his having passed unmolested through Ruthenia. Suddenly Steffaneski had another thought: ‘If he went through Ruthenia, he must have crossed the Carpathians.’ He returned to Yakimov. ‘You crossed the Carpathians?’ he asked.

‘How do I know?’ Yakimov wailed. ‘It was terrible. You can have no idea what it was like.’

‘I can have no idea? I drive with refugees from Warsaw to Bucharest! I am machine-gunned and I am bombed! I see my friends die: I help bury them! And you tell me I can have no idea!’ With a gesture that implied life was real but Yakimov was not, he turned to Clarence and began to question him about Polish Relief.

Thankful to be left in peace, Yakimov gave his thoughts to the pilaff of quails which was being served.

Despite Yakimov’s recommendation of the Moselle ’34 and ’37 Burgundy, Clarence had ordered a single bottle of Rumanian red wine. The waiter arrived with three bottles which he put down beside Yakimov, who gave him a look of complete understanding.

Steffaneski was describing a visit he had paid the day before to a Polish internment camp in the mountains. When he arrived at the barbed-wire enclosure he had seen the wooden huts of the camp half buried in snow. A Rumanian sentry at the gate had refused to admit him without sanction of the officer on duty. The officer could not be disturbed because it was ‘the time of the siesta’. Steffaneski had demanded that the sentry ring the officer and the sentry had replied: ‘But that is impossible. The officer does not sleep alone.’

‘And so outside the camp I sit for two hours while the officer on duty sleeps, not alone. Ah, how I despise this country! One and all, the Poles despise this country. Sometimes I say to myself: “Better had we stayed in Poland and all died together.”’

‘I couldn’t agree more, dear boy,’ said Yakimov, eating and drinking heartily.

Steffaneski gave him a look of disgust. ‘I was under the impression,’ he said to Clarence, ‘that our talk was to be private.’

A second course of spit-roasted beef arrived and with it the second bottle of wine was emptied. Clarence spent some time explaining to Steffaneski how he was arranging with a junior Minister for the Poles to be shipped over the frontier into Yugoslavia, whence they could travel to join the Allied armies in France. For permitting these escapes, the Rumanian authorities were demanding a fee of one thousand
lei
a head.

The beef was excellent. Yakimov ate with gusto and was examining the tray of French cheese, when Clarence noticed that the waiter was serving them wine from a new bottle.

‘I ordered only one bottle,’ he said. ‘Why have you brought a second?’

‘This,
domnule
,’ said the waiter, giving the bottle an insolent flourish, ‘is the third.’

‘The
third
!’ Clarence looked bewildered. ‘I did not ask for three bottles.’

‘Then why did you drink them?’ the waiter asked as he made off.

Consolingly, Yakimov said: ‘All these Rumanian waiters are the same. Can’t trust them, dear boy …’

‘But did we drink three bottles? Is it possible?’

‘The empties are here, dear boy.’

Clarence looked at the bottles beside Yakimov, then looked at Yakimov as though he alone were responsible for their emptiness.

When the coffee was brought, Yakimov murmured to the waiter: ‘Cognac.’ Immediately a bottle and glasses were put upon the table.

‘What is this?’ Clarence demanded.

‘Seems to be brandy, dear boy,’ said Yakimov.

Clarence called the waiter back: ‘Take it away. Bring me my bill.’

The cheese tray still stood beside the table. With furtive haste, Yakimov cut himself a long slice of brie and folded it into his mouth. Clarence and Steffaneski watching with astonished distaste, he said in apology: ‘Trifle peckish, dear boy.’

Neither made any comment.

When the bill was paid, Clarence took out a notebook and noted down his expenses. Yakimov, whose sight was long, read as it was written:

Luncheon to Count S. and Prince Y.:
Lei
5,500

Advance to Prince Y., British refugee from Poland: 10,000

For a moment Yakimov was discomforted at seeing his fantasy so baldly recorded, then he forgot the matter. As they left the restaurant, his well-fed glow was like an extra wrap against the cold. He said to Clarence: ‘Delightful meal! Delightful company!’ He carried his smile over to Steffaneski, who was standing apart.

Clarence barely responded.

Yakimov had expected the offer of a lift, but no offer was made. As Clarence and Steffaneski drove off without him, the
glow began to seep from him. Then he remembered he had twelve thousand
lei
. He went into the
confiserie
attached to the restaurant and bought himself a little silver box full of raspberry pastilles. Holding this happily, he called a taxi and set out for his new lodgings, where he would sleep the afternoon away.

12

A few days before Christmas, Bella Niculescu, meeting Harriet in the street, invited her to tea. Guy’s only comment on this incipient friendship was: ‘She’ll bore the arse off you.’

Harriet said: ‘You scarcely know her.’

‘She’s just a typical bourgeois reactionary.’

‘You mean, her prejudices are different from yours.’

‘You’ll see for yourself,’ said Guy and, reminding her that they had been invited that evening to the Athénée Palace by a Commander Sheppy, he went to give a student private coaching. Harriet was left with doubts about her coming tea-party.

Bella’s flat was in a new block on the Boulevard Br
ǎ
tianu. Walking there, Harriet felt the wind blow shrill across the desolate lots. Through the vents in the peasants’ huts could be seen the flicker of lamps. The only crowds now were on the tramcars that clanked their way out of darkness into darkness. When she passed the vast black skeleton of the Ministry building, she saw a fire burning in a ground-floor corner. Beside it sat a huddle of workmen too old for the army and no use for anything else.

The blocks of flats rose out of the gloom like lighted towers. Their hallways, visible through glass doors, indicated the grandeur to which the designers of the boulevard had first aspired.

Harriet was shown into Bella’s sitting-room. Low-ceilinged and very warm, it was carpeted in sky-blue and set about with walnut tables and blue upholstered arm-chairs. In the midst of this Bella, in a cashmere jersey and pearls, was seated before a silver tea-service.

Sinking into one of the chairs, Harriet said: ‘How comfortable!’

Bella replied: ‘It’s cosy,’ as though Harriet had meant the reverse.

‘This looks like English furniture.’

‘It
is
English furniture. Our wedding-present from daddy. He bought it for us from Maples. Everything came from Maples.’

‘And you brought it all this way? That must have been a business.’

‘It certainly was.’ Bella laughed, relaxing a little. ‘The amount it cost us in bribes, we might just as well have paid duty and have done with it.’

While they were waiting for the tea to be brought in, Bella offered to show Harriet over the flat. They went first to Bella’s bedroom, that contained a large double bed with highly polished walnut headboard and a pink counterpane braided, ruched, embroidered and embossed with satin tulips. Bella, touching out the collection of silver-backed brushes, silver-boxes and cut glass on her dressing table, said: ‘These peasant servants have no sense of anything.’

She opened a door and disclosed a bathroom, as hot as a hot-house and closely packed with pink accoutrements.

‘Delicious,’ said Harriet and Bella looked pleased.

‘Now the dining-room!’ she said and Harriet wished she had courage to tell her that she did not need to be impressed. She wanted to find herself in sympathy with Bella, who was, in a way, her own discovery – anyway, not a ready-made acquaintance imposed on her by Guy.

After luncheon with the Drucker family, she had said to Guy: ‘Your friends are disappointed in me. They expected you to marry someone exactly like yourself,’ but she had, she suspected, exceeded Bella’s expectations.

In the dining-room, where Bella paused expectantly before a sideboard coruscant with silver and cut-glass, Harriet asked: ‘Do you use this stuff?’

‘My dear, yes. Rumanians expect it. They look down on
you if you can’t make as big a show as they do.’ Bella smiled at the pretensions demanded of her, but her voice betrayed respect for them.

‘The Pringle flat can provide nothing like this,’ said Harriet.

‘Didn’t you bring your wedding-presents?’

‘We married in haste. We only got a cheque or two.’

They had returned to the sitting-room, where tea awaited them. ‘Oh, I had a very big wedding,’ said Bella. ‘We came here with ten large packing-cases –
full
. Even the Rumanians were impressed. Still, you won’t have to entertain them. The real Rumanians never mix with foreigners.’

Harriet admitted they had been invited only to Jewish house-holds and Bella, gratified, was about to say more when she noticed something amiss among the silver on the tray before her. She stopped and her lips tightened. With a purposeful movement, she pressed a bell in the wall and waited. Her silence was intent. When the servant appeared, Bella spoke two words. The girl gasped and fled, to return with a tea-strainer.

‘These servants!’ Bella shook her head with disgust. Becoming suddenly animated, she talked at length about the sort of servants to be found in Rumania. She placed them in two categories: the honest imbeciles and the intelligent delinquents, the words ‘honest’ and ‘intelligent’ being, of course, merely relative.

‘Which have you got?’ Bella asked Harriet.

Inchcape’s man, Pauli, had acquired for Harriet his cousin Despina. ‘She seems to me,’ said Harriet, ‘not only intelligent and honest, but very good-natured.’

Bella grudgingly agreed that Hungarians were ‘a cut above the others’ but she had no doubt Despina ‘made a bit’ on everything she was sent out to buy. Harriet described how Despina, on being shown the cupboard that passed for a servant’s bedroom in the Pringles’ flat, had sunk to her knees and, kissing Harriet’s hand, had said that at last she would be able to have her husband to live with her.

Bella saw nothing astonishing in this story. ‘She’s very fortunate to have a room of any sort,’ she said, and almost at once
returned to the subject of the real Rumanians whom Harriet was never likely to meet. ‘They’re terribly snobby,’ she kept saying as she gave examples of their exclusiveness.