The Balkan Trilogy (30 page)

Doamna Protopopescu’s immediate reaction was to display the blankness with which Rumanian middle-class women outfaced impropriety, then her peasant blood got the better
of her. She spluttered, and as she handed back the coin she made an ‘away with you’ gesture that encouraged him to relax at the hips until he was sitting, or nearly sitting, on the bed-edge. When he did reach the point of sitting down, she gave him a swift, calculating glance and said: ‘Tell me now some sinks about Inklant. Do I say it right: Inklant?’

A sort of friendship grew up despite the fact Yakimov was very nervous of his landlady. A few days after his arrival in the flat, he had been awakened by an uproar outside his door. Protopopescu’s batman, sent to the house to do some chores, had been caught stealing a cigarette. Doamna Protopopescu was beating him with her fists while he, doubled up and shielding his head with his arms, howled like a maniac: ‘Don’t beat me,
co
ǎ
nit
ǎ
, don’t beat me.’ Ergie the maid, standing by, caught Yakimov’s startled eye and laughed. The scene was a common-place to her.

Though, after that, he often heard the howls of the batman or Ergie or Ergie’s consumptive daughter, who slept in the kitchen with her, Yakimov could not get used to these rows. While closeted with Doamna Protopopescu, Yakimov would often look at her little beringed paw and reflect upon its strength.

At first, he saw the bedroom as something of a refuge from the English Bar, where he spent so many hours standing about, hungry, thirsty and often tired. In Doamna Protopopescu’s room he could sit down; and, by sitting long enough, by gazing with the concentration of a hungry dog at everything that went into her mouth, Yakimov could obtain from her a piece of Turkish delight, a cup of coffee, a glass of
ţ
uic
ǎ
, or even, but rarely, a meal. Doamna Protopopescu was not generous. Whatever Yakimov received, he had to earn by an hour or more of what she called ‘English conversation’.

He did not object to chatting to her. What he found intolerably tedious was the fact that he was expected to pick up her errors of grammar and pronunciation, and wrestle for their correction. If these corrections were not frequent, she became suspicious. She would let him talk on indefinitely without reward.

Her pronunciation he found beyond mending. She had no ear. When she repeated a word after him, he would hear for an instant an echo of his own cultivated drawl, then, at once, she would relapse. Like many members of the Rumanian middle classes, her second language was German. Yakimov complained in the bar: ‘Bloke I know says English is a low German dialect. Since I’ve met Doamna P. I’ve come to believe it.’

The ruthlessness with which she kept him to his task soon deprived the occasions of charm. Yakimov was driven to reflect how cruelly he was required to labour for the sustenance that was, surely, a human right.

Fortunately no more than tuition was required of him.

Doamna Protopopescu’s kimono was of black artificial silk printed over with flame-coloured chrysanthemums. It was a decayed and greasy-looking garment, smelling of the body beneath. Sometimes one of her big breasts would fall out and she would bundle it back with the indifference of habit. Clearly – thank God! – she did not see Yakimov as a man at all. His comment at the bar was: ‘That dear girl exists only for the relaxation of the warrior.’

When she talked, it was usually about herself or her husband, who was, she said, impotent. ‘But here,’ she explained, ‘all men are impotent at thirty. In youth, they know no restraint.’ She never spoke more openly of the fact that she had acquired a second bed-fellow, but frequently said: ‘Here it is not nice to have more than one lover at a time.’

Occasionally she complained, in the usual Rumanian fashion, of the country’s two despised components – the peasants and the Jews.

‘Ah, these peasants!’ she said one day, after a particularly furious fracas with the batman, ‘they are but beasts.’

‘So little is done for them,’ said Yakimov in the approved English style.

‘True.’ Doamna Protopopescu sighed at the magnanimity of her agreement. ‘The priest, who should do all – he does nothing. He is the village bull. The women dare not refuse him. But were he other, would they learn? I doubt. It is the nature everywhere
of the workers that they are the dregs, the sediments.’

‘Oh, I don’t know,’ said Yakimov. ‘Some of them are rather sweet.’

‘
Sweet!
’ Aghast at the word, she looked at him so that he feared she was about to strike him.

As for the Jews, they were, according to Doamna Protopopescu, to blame for all the ills of the world. They were particularly to blame for the war, that was causing the rise in prices, the shortage of artisans and the stagnation in French fashions.

Attempting to lighten the tone of the talk, Yakimov said: ‘Ah, dear girl, you should have met my dear old friend, Count Horvath. He had the finest Jew-shoot in Hungary.’

She nodded. ‘So, in Hungary they shoot Jews! They have wisdom. Here they do not shoot them. In Rumania it is always so – the nature is too soft.’ As she spoke her whole face drooped with greed, inertia and discontent.

Yakimov, disconcerted, said: ‘They do not really shoot Jews. It was only a joke.’

‘A joke, heh?’ In her disgust, she thrust into her mouth a piece of Turkish delight so large it left round her mouth a fur of sugar.

He had been in the house some weeks before he dared venture into the kitchen. Then, returning supperless one night to a silent flat, he opened the door and switched on the light. All about him the walls heaved as cockroaches, blackbeetles and other indigenous insects sped out of sight. He was tip-toeing towards a cupboard, when a movement startled him. He saw that Ergie and her daughter were lying on a pallet wedged between gas-stove and sink. Ergie had raised her head.

‘A glass of water, dear girl,’ he whispered and, drawing a glass, was forced to drink the wretched stuff before going hungry to bed.

18

A few days after Harriet had told Inchcape of Sheppy’s sabotage plans, the Pringles quarrelled for the first time. Guy’s safe return had put all thought of Sheppy from her head. She was as surprised as Guy when one morning Inchcape entered their flat with a swagger and, stripping off his gloves and smacking them across his palm, laughed at Guy in triumph.

‘Well, I’ve just left your friend: the mysterious Commander Sheppy.’ Inchcape rapped the words out in Sheppy’s own style: ‘I think I’ve put him straight on a few points. I’ve informed him that, whosoever he may be, he has no jurisdiction over my men.’

Guy said nothing, but looked at Harriet. Harriet looked out of the window.

Inchcape, enjoying himself, swung half a circle on his heel and stretched his lips in an angry smile. ‘Our permits to live and work here,’ he said, ‘are issued on the undertaking we do not get mixed up in any funny business. I can well understand your wanting to do something more dramatic than lecturing, but the situation does not permit. It
simply
does not permit. Whether you like it or not, you’re in a reserved occupation. You’re here to obey orders.
My
orders.’

Guy still said nothing, but took down the
ţ
uic
ǎ
bottle and started to look for glasses. Inchcape held up his hand: ‘Not for me.’ Guy put the bottle back.

Inchcape began fitting his gloves on again: ‘If you want to help out at the Legation with a bit of decoding or clerical work, no one will object. Clarence has his Poles. No objection. No objection whatsoever.’ His gloves on, he stood for
some moments gazing in at the pleated white silk lining of his bowler hat, then added: ‘H.M. Government decided that our job is here. It’s our duty to do it, and to stay here, doing it, as long as humanly possible. I’m willing to bet that Sheppy’s outfit will be kicked out of Rumania before it’s had time to turn round. Well!’ He jerked his head up and his smile relaxed. ‘No need for you to see Sheppy again. I’ve dealt with him. You’ll get no more notices of his meetings. And I can tell you one thing – you’re well out of it.’ He put on his hat, tapped it, and, swinging round with grace, took himself off.

Guy gave Harriet another look. ‘Yes,’ she agreed, ‘I did tell him. It was that night you were out with Dubedat. I thought Sheppy had got hold of you. I was frightened.’

Guy, without speaking, went to the hallway for his coat. As she began to move towards him, he opened the door. ‘I must hurry,’ he said.

Harriet was hurt by his coldness: ‘But aren’t we going to walk in the park?’

‘I won’t have time. I have a students’ meeting. David will be in the Doi Trandafiri at one. You can come there if you like.’

When he had gone, Harriet, more desolate than at any time before her marriage, picked up a red kitten that was now her companion in the flat, and held it for comfort to her throat.

The kitten had been a stray, found wandering one night in the snow. Guy thought it might be one of the wild cats that lived in the half demolished buildings in the square, but it had been a long way from the buildings. The Pringles took it home. It became at once Harriet’s cat, her baby, her totem, her
alter ego
. When anyone else picked it up, it turned into a mad little bundle of pins. Guy was frightened of it, and the kitten, sensing that it had the upper hand with him, would bite him savagely. When he was seated, forgetful of it, it would fly up the back of his chair and land, all teeth and claws, in the thickness of his hair. He would cry for Harriet to remove it.

Guy applauded Harriet, who, picking up the kitten with all the confidence in the world, was never bitten or scratched.
‘The thing,’ she said, ‘is not to be nervous.’ To the kitten she said: ‘You may bite other people, but I’m different. You don’t bite me,’ and the kitten, fixing her with its curious stare, seemed to realise they met on equal terms.

Guy, though he remained nervous of it, was proud of the little creature that changed into a fury in his hands. He admired its red-gold colour and the way it would hurtle like a flying cat from one end of the flat to the other. Despina, always eager to echo admiration, said it was a most exceptional cat in every way. If the Pringles had to leave Rumania, she would take it and care for it herself.

Harriet, standing now gazing through the French-windows at the snow-crowned palace, imagining herself abandoned by Guy, felt for the kitten a passion of tenderness as though it were the only love left to her. She said to it: ‘I love you. I love you with all my heart.’ The kitten seemed to take on a look of serious enquiry. ‘Because you are wild,’ she added, ‘because you are warm; because you are living.’ And, of course, because Guy had turned against her.

She reflected that he had asked Klein to try and discover what had happened to Sasha Drucker and because of this was meeting him with David at the Doi Trandafiri. He had never, as she felt inclined to do, let the matter drop. He was faithful to his friends, but (she told herself) indifferent to her. All these people – David, Klein, the Druckers, Dubedat and a host of others – were his faction: he bound them to himself. She had no one but her little red cat.

Almost at once, she revolted against the situation. Putting the cat down, she dialled Clarence’s number at the Propaganda Bureau and said to him: ‘Guy was taking me for a walk in the park, but he has had to go to a meeting. Won’t you take me?’

‘Why, yes of course I will.’ Clarence sounded only too glad of an excuse to leave his office. He came round at once for her and drove her to the park.

It was the beginning of March. The wind was relaxing a little. More and more people were walking abroad, and once
again nurses were bringing children to play in the open air. No new snow had fallen for two weeks, but the old snow, blackened and glacial, lingered on. It was lingering too long. People were tired of it.

As Harriet walked with Clarence along the path that lay under Inchcape’s balcony, they looked up and saw the summer chairs and flower-baskets heaped with snow. Icicles hung firm as a fringe of swords from every edge. Yet there was a smell in the air of coming spring. Any day now rain would fall instead of snow, and the thaw would begin.

When they reached the dove-cotes, they stopped to watch the apricot-coloured doves that were already perking up their bedraggled tail-feathers, dipping their heads and languishing their soft, gold-glinting necks from side to side. The air was full of their cooing. Behind them the snow was sliding from the branches of a weeping willow. A false acacia, buried all winter, was appearing again, hung over with pods that looked like old banana skins.

Under the chestnut trees by the lake some children were feeding the pigeons. A solitary salesman, with nuts and sesame cakes, stood with his hands under the arms of his short frieze jacket, and slowly raised one knee at a time in a standstill march, his feet so bound with rags he seemed to have gout in both of them. The children were bundles of fur. The little girls wore ear-rings; they had necklaces and brooches over the white fur of their coats and bracelets over the cuffs of their fleecy gloves. A little boy with a gold-topped cane struck the ground authoritatively, agitating the pigeons that fluttered up and, after flying a half-circle of protest, settled down quickly before the food could disappear. Between bites, they moaned and did a little love-making.

Suddenly excited by the coming spring, Harriet felt her quarrel with Guy was of no importance at all. As they crossed the bridge, from which they could see the dusty ice of the waterfall, she paused and leant on the rail and said: ‘Everything is wonderful. I want … I want to be …’

Clarence concluded smugly: ‘What you are not?’

‘No. What I am. The “I” that is obscured by my own feminine silliness. In some ways, I suppose I am just as absurd as Sophie or Bella.’

Clarence laughed. ‘I suppose you are. Women are like that, and one likes them like that.’

‘No doubt you do. But I don’t imagine I exist to enhance your sense of superiority. I exist to satisfy my own demands on myself, and they are higher than yours are likely to be. If you don’t like me as I am, I don’t care.’