The Balkan Trilogy (3 page)

Who could they be? Where had they come from? Aching, famished, racked by the light of this unfamiliar hour, Yakimov
did not try to answer his questions. But the destination of the cars? Looking where they were heading, he saw tall, concrete buildings evolving pearly out of the pinks and blues of dawn. Beacons of civilisation. He followed the road towards them.

After walking a couple of miles, he reached the main square as the sun, rising above the roof-tops, flecked the cobblestones. A statue, heavily planted on a horse too big for it, saluted the long, grey front of what must be the royal palace. At either end of the palace workmen had started screwing pieces of pre-fabricated classical fa
ç
ade on to scaffolding. The rest of the square was, apparently, being demolished. He crossed to the sunlit side where a white, modern building proclaimed itself the Athénée Palace Hotel. Here the leading cars had come to rest. Only a few of the occupants had roused themselves. The rest slept on, their faces ashen and grim. Some of them had roughly bandaged wounds. In one car, Yakimov noticed, the grey upholstery was soaked with blood.

He pushed through the hotel’s revolving door into a marble hall lit brilliantly with glass chandeliers. As he entered, his name was called aloud: ‘
Yakimov!
’

He started back. He had not received this sort of welcome for many a day. He was the more suspicious when he saw it came from a journalist called McCann, who when they met in the bars of Budapest had usually turned his back. McCann was propped up on a long sofa just inside the vestibule, while a man in a black suit was cutting away the blood-soaked shirt-sleeve which stuck to his right arm. Yakimov felt enough concern to approach the sofa and ask: ‘What has happened, dear boy? Can I do anything to help?’

‘You certainly can. For the last half-hour I’ve been telling these dumb clucks to find me a bloke who can speak English.’

Yakimov would have been glad to sink down beside McCann, feeling himself as weak as any wounded man, but the other end of the sofa was occupied by a girl, a dark beauty, haggard and very dirty, who sprawled there asleep.

Leaning forward in an attitude of sympathetic enquiry, he hoped McCann would not want much of him.

‘It’s this!’ McCann’s left hand dug clumsily about in the jacket that lay behind him. ‘Here!’ – he produced some sheets torn from a notebook – ‘Get this out for me. It’s the whole story.’

‘Really, dear boy! What story?’

‘Why, the break-up of Poland; surrender of Gdynia; flight of the Government; the German advance on Warsaw; the refugees streaming out, me with them. Cars machine-gunned from the air; men, women and children wounded and killed; the dead buried by the roadside. Magnificent stuff; first hand; must get it out while it’s hot. Here, take it.’

‘But how do I get it out?’ Yakimov was almost put to flight by the prospect of such an arduous employment.

‘Ring our agency in Geneva, dictate it over the line. A child could do it.’

‘Impossible, dear boy. Haven’t a bean.’

‘Reverse the charges.’

‘Oh, they’d never let me’ – Yakimov backed away – ‘I’m not known here. I don’t speak the language. I’m a refugee like yourself.’

‘Where from?’

Before Yakimov had time to answer his question, a man thrust in through the doors, moving all his limbs with the unnatural fervour of exhaustion. He rushed at McCann. ‘Where, please,’ he asked, ‘is the man with red hairs in your car?’

‘Dead,’ said McCann.

‘Where, please, then, is the scarf I lent to him? The big, blue scarf?’

‘God knows. I’d guess it’s underground. We buried him the other side of Lublin, if you want to go back and look.’

‘You buried the scarf? Are you mad that you buried the scarf?’

‘Oh, go away!’ shouted McCann, at which the man ran to the wall opposite and beat on it with his fists.

Taking advantage of this diversion, Yakimov began to move off. McCann seized a fold of his coat and gave a howl of
rage: ‘For God’s sake! Come back, you bastard. Here I am with this arm gone, a bullet in my ribs, not allowed to move – and here’s this story! You’ve got to send it, d’you hear me? You’ve got to.’

Yakimov moaned: ‘Haven’t had a bite for three days. Your poor old Yaki’s faint. His feet are killing him.’

‘Wait!’ Pushing impatiently about in his coat again, McCann brought out his journalist’s card. ‘Take this. You can eat here. Get yourself a drink. Get yourself a bed. Get what you damned well like – but first, ’phone this stuff through.’

Taking the card and seeing on it the picture of McCann’s lined and crumpled face, Yakimov was slowly revivified by the possibilities of the situation. ‘You mean they’ll give me credit?’

‘Infinite credit. The paper says. Work for me, you dopey duck, and you can booze and stuff to your heart’s content.’

‘Dear boy!’ breathed Yakimov; he smiled with docile sweetness. ‘Explain again,
rather
slowly, just what you want poor Yaki to do.’

3

The Pringles settled into a small hotel in the square, on the side opposite the Athénée Palace. Their window looked out on to ruins. That day, the day after their arrival, they had been awakened at sunrise by the fall of masonry. At evening, as Harriet watched for Guy’s return, she saw the figures of workmen, black and imp-small in the dusk, carrying flares about the broken buildings.

These buildings had been almost the last of the Biedermeier prettiness bestowed on Bucharest by Austria. The King, who planned a square where, dared he ever venture out so openly, he might review a regiment, had ordered that the demolitions be completed before winter.

Harriet had spent most of her day watching from the window. Though the university term had not started, Guy had set out that morning to see if there were any students in the common-room. He had promised to take Harriet out after luncheon but had returned late, his face aglow, and said he must eat quickly and hurry back. The students had been crowding in all morning eager for news of their English teachers and the term’s work.

‘But, darling’ – Harriet, still filled with the faith and forbearance of the newly married, spoke only with regret – ‘couldn’t you wait until Professor Inchcape arrives?’

‘One must never discourage students,’ said Guy and he hurried off, promising to take her that evening to dine ‘up the Chaussée’.

During the afternoon the receptionist rang through three times to say a lady wished to speak to Domnul Pringle. ‘The
same lady?’ Harriet asked the third time. Yes, the same lady.

When, at sunset, Guy’s figure appeared in the square, Harriet’s forbearance was not what it had been. She watched him emerge out of a blur of dust – a large, untidy man clutching an armful of books and papers with the awkwardness of a bear. A piece of pediment crashed before him. He paused, blinded; peered about through his glasses and started off in the wrong direction. She felt an appalled compassion for him. Where he had been a moment before, a wall came down. Its fall revealed the interior of a vast white room, fretted with baroque scrolls and set with a mirror that glimmered like a lake. Nearby could be seen the red wallpaper of a café – the famous Café Napoleon that had been the meeting-place of artists, musicians, poets and other natural non-conformists. Guy had said that all this destruction had been planned simply to wipe out this one centre of revolt.

Entering the hotel room, Guy threw down his armful of papers. With a casualness that denoted drama, he announced: ‘The Russians have occupied Vilna.’ He set about changing his shirt.

‘You mean, they’re inside Poland?’ asked Harriet.

‘A good move.’ Her tone had set him on the defensive. ‘A move to protect Poland.’

‘A good excuse, anyway.’

The telephone rang and Guy jumped at it before anything more could be said: ‘Inchcape!’ he called delightedly and without consulting Harriet added: ‘We’re dining up the Chaussée. Pavel’s. Come and join us.’ He put down the receiver and, pulling a shirt over his head without undoing the buttons, he said: ‘You’ll like Inchcape. All you need do with him is encourage him to talk.’

Harriet, who never believed she would like anyone she did not know, said: ‘Someone rang you three times this afternoon. A woman.’

‘Really!’ The information did not disconcert him. He merely said: ‘People here are crazy about the telephone. It hasn’t been installed long. Women with nothing better to do ring up
complete strangers and say: “’Allo! Who are you? Let us have a nice little flirt.” I’m always getting them.’

‘I don’t think a stranger would ring three times.’

‘Perhaps not. Whoever it was, she’ll ring again.’

As they left the room, the telephone did ring again. Guy hurried back to it. Harriet, on the stairs, heard him say: ‘Why, Sophie!’ and she went down. Turning a corner, she saw the hall below crowded with people. All the hotel guests and servants were gathered there, moving about talking excitedly. Behind the reception desk the wireless, like a mechanical bird, was whirring in the persistent, nerve-racking music of the Rumanian
hora
. Harriet came to a stop, feeling in the air the twang of anxiety. When Guy caught her up, she said: ‘I think something has happened.’

Guy went to the manager, who attended him with deference. The English were important in Bucharest. England had guaranteed Rumanian safety. Guy was told that foreign troops were massing on the frontier.

‘What part of the frontier?’ he asked.

That was not known: nor was it known whether the troops were German or Russian. The King was about to broadcast from his apartments and it was believed that at any moment general mobilisation would be ordered.

Moved by the stress of the occasion, the Pringles waited to hear the King. The mechanical bird stopped. In the abrupt silence, voices that had been bawling to be heard above the din now trickled self-consciously away. The wireless announced that the King would address his subjects in Rumanian.

At that a man in a cape, too stout to turn only his head, turned his whole body and surveyed the gathering with an air of enquiring innocence. ‘
Sans doute l’émission est en retard parce que sa Majesté s’instruit dans la langue
.’

There was a laugh, but a brief one, an instant extracted from fear, then the faces were taut again. The group waited; a collection of drawn yellow-skinned men and heavily powdered women with dark eyes fixed on the wireless set, from which the King’s voice came suddenly out of long silence.
The audience bent expectantly forward, then began shifting and complaining that it could not understand his broken Rumanian. Guy did his best to translate the speech for Harriet:

‘If we are attacked, we will defend our country to the last man. We will defend it to the last foot of soil. We have learned from Poland’s mistakes. Rumania will never suffer defeat. Her strength will be formidable.’

A few people nodded their heads and one repeated: ‘
Formidabil, eh! Formidabil!
’, but several of the others looked furtively about fearing an enemy might mistake these words for provocation. The man in the cape turned again, screwing up his large, flexible, putty-coloured face and spreading his hands as though to say ‘And now you know!’ but the others were not so responsive. This was no time for humour. Giving Guy the smile of a fellow conspirator he strode away and Guy, flushed like a schoolboy, whispered that that had been an actor from the National Theatre.

The Pringles left by a side door that opened on to the Calea Victoriei, the main shopping street, where the blocks of flats rose to such a height they caught the last rose-violet glow of the sun. A glimmer of this, reflected down into the dusty valley of the street, lit with violet-grey the crowds that clotted either pavement.

This was the time of the evening promenade. Guy suggested they should walk a little way; but first, they had to pass through the purgatory of the hotel’s attendant beggars. These were professional beggars, blinded or maimed by beggar parents in infancy. Guy, during his apprentice year, had grown accustomed, if not inured, to the sight of white eyeballs and running sores, to have stumps and withered arms and the breasts of nursing mothers thrust into his face. The Rumanians accepted all this as part of life and donated coins so small that a beggar might spend his day collecting the price of a meal.

However, when Guy tried to do the same thing, a howl went up. Foreigners were not let off so lightly. All the beggars set upon the Pringles together. One hid half a loaf behind his
back to join in the age old cry of: ‘
Mi-e foame, foame, foame
.’ They were hemmed in by a stench of sweat, garlic and putrid wounds. The beggars took what Guy distributed among them, then whined for more. Harriet, looking at a child that trembled violently at her elbow, thought she saw in its face glee at its own persistence. A man on the ground, attempting to bar their way, stretched out a naked leg bone-thin, on which the skin was mottled purple and rosetted with yellow scabs. As she stepped over it, the leg slapped the ground in rage that she should escape it.

‘Do they want to annoy one?’ she asked, and realised there might be revenge for all this abasement in provoking some stranger like herself to the break-down of pure hatred.

At last they were free to join the promenade. The crowd was a sombre crowd, comprising more men than women. Women of the older generation did not walk abroad alone. There were a few groups of girls, their eyes only for each other, seeming unaware of the savage stares of solitary men. Mostly there were couples; tailored, padded, close-buttoned, self-consciously correct: for this, Guy explained, was an hour when only the employing class was free to walk abroad, Harriet might now observe the new bourgeoisie, risen from the peasantry and pretty pleased with itself for having done so.

Because the peasants themselves were given to holiday colours of great brilliance, their male descendants dressed in grey, the women in Parisian black with such pearls, diamonds and silver fox furs as they could afford.

Harriet, meeting glances that became critical, even slightly derisive, of the fact the Pringles were hatless and rather oddly dressed, became censorious herself. ‘They have,’ she said, ‘the uniformity of their insecurity.’