The Balkan Trilogy (62 page)

Through the thinning crowd Yakimov could see the reason for the dispersal. The police were preparing to turn hoses on the demonstrators. As the jets of water were raised, he tried to run with the rest, but now the priest to whom he had clung, clung to him, seizing and gripping his hand to hold him upright as men pelted past them, bouncing against them like boulders in an avalanche. Yakimov, thrown in every direction by these blows, felt as though his arm was being wrenched from its socket. He cried to be released, but the priest held to him, all the while grinning reassuringly at him with gigantic, grey-brown teeth.

The square cleared. No one remained by Yakimov and the protector from whom he was still struggling to escape. Both of them were soaked. At last the priest thought it safe to let go his hold. Smiling the smile of a benefactor, he brushed Yakimov down, patted him on the back and sent him on his way.

Yakimov made straight for cover. Stumbling, trembling,
dripping with water, he fell into the English Bar, which at that time of day was packed with journalists. Galpin and Screwby were there together with old Mortimer Tufton and the visitors from neighbouring capitals who always turned up when trouble was in the air.

Yakimov did not wait to see if anyone would offer him a drink. He went to the bar and bought one for himself. He longed to talk of his experience, but those around were too busy discussing what had occurred to notice someone who had been in the midst of it. He swallowed his
ţ
uic
ǎ
, then, trembling and sweating and seeking comfort, he stood as near as he dared to Galpin.

When Galpin bought a round of drinks, a glass came accidentally to Yakimov, who gulped it down before anyone could take it from him. Short of a drink, Galpin looked round to account for it and, noticing Yakimov, shot out an arm and seized him. ‘I’ve been looking for you,’ he said.

Terror following on terror, Yakimov cried: ‘I didn’t mean to. I thought it was meant for me.’

‘Pipe down. I’m not going to eat you.’ Still holding to him, Galpin led him out of the bar into the lobby. ‘I want you to do a little job for me.’

‘A
job
, dear boy?’

‘You did a job for McCann once, remember? Well, I want you to give me a hand. I suppose you’ve heard that the Hungarians march into Transylvania on the fifth. I ought to get to Cluj to see the takeover, but I’ve got to stay here in case the balloon goes up. So I want you to go to Cluj for me.’

Yakimov’s immediate thought was of Freddi, but all the spirit had been shaken out of him. ‘I don’t know, dear boy,’ he said, hesitant. ‘It’s a long journey, and with the country in revolt …’

‘You’d be a lot safer there than here,’ Galpin assured him. ‘
This
is where the trouble will be. It’s all centred round the palace. Cluj is unaffected. Good food, charming place, nice people. Restful journey. All expenses paid. Could you ask for more?’

‘What would I have to do?’

‘Oh, just keep your eyes and ears open. Get the atmosphere of the place. Look around, tell me what’s going on.’ When Yakimov still showed no enthusiasm, Galpin added: ‘I helped you when you needed help. You want to help me, don’t you?’

‘Naturally, dear boy.’

‘Well, then … You’d only be away a couple of nights. I must have the news hot.’

Yakimov, recovering as the attraction of the trip took hold of him, said: ‘Delighted to go, of course. Delighted to help. And, I may say, you’ve come to the right man. I’ve a friend there in a very important post. Count Freddi von Flügel.’

‘Good God! The bloody Gauleiter?’ Galpin’s yellow eyeballs started out at Yakimov. ‘You can’t go and see
him
.’ Then as Yakimov’s face fell, he added quickly: ‘It’s up to you, of course. After all, he’s a friend of yours. That makes a difference. Go and see him if you want to, but leave me out of it.’ Galpin drew out a note-case. ‘I’ll advance you five thousand for expenses. If that doesn’t cover things, we’ll settle up when you get back.’

Yakimov held out a hand, but Galpin, on reflection, put the case back again. ‘I’ll give it to you when you leave. That’ll be Wednesday. Give them time to get steamed up. You’d better take the midday train. I’ll call for you eleven-thirty, take you to the station myself. Come along.’ He gripped Yakimov as though intending to keep him in custody until he went: ‘I’ll buy you another drink.’

14

Awakened by excitement on Wednesday morning, Yakimov was up and dressed before ten o’clock. The idea of Cluj now possessed him. His one thought was to get to safety, Freddi and good food; his one fear that transport might stop before he could set out.

The disturbances during the last days had been an agony to him. There had been constant uproar in the square. Shots had been fired at the palace. Rumours of every sort had gone round. Antonescu had been summoned to the palace and ordered to form a government. He had said he would not serve under a non-constitutional monarchy. At this, he had been sent back to prison again.

Yakimov had scarcely hoped to reach Wednesday alive. And now at last it was Wednesday. The square was quiet. The King was still in his palace and so far as Yakimov was concerned, all was right with the world.

Harriet was still at the breakfast table when he made his early appearance. She had just heard on the radio that the Drucker trial had ended late the previous evening. Drucker had been found guilty and sentenced to three terms of imprisonment for different currency offences: seven years, fifteen years and twenty-five years to run consecutively. She added these up on the margin of a newspaper and discovered that the banker was to be imprisoned for forty-seven years. And nobody cared, nobody was interested. The court had been almost empty when sentence was pronounced. The trial which was to be ‘the major social occasion of the summer’, had become a hurried, paltry affair, precipitated by crisis and fear of invasion.

Harriet was astonished when Yakimov told her he was leaving for Cluj. It had never entered her head that he might take himself off, even for a couple of nights.

She said: ‘Do you think it’s a good idea leaving Bucharest at a time like this?’

‘Yaki will be all right. Going on important business, as a matter of fact. Could call it a mission.’

‘What sort of mission?’

‘’Fraid I can’t divulge, dear girl. Hush-hush, you understand? But between you and me and the gate-post, I’ve been told to keep m’eyes and ears open.’

‘Well, I hope you don’t end up in Bistri
ţ
a.’

He gave a nervous laugh. ‘Don’t frighten your poor old Yaki.’

When he had finished breakfast – one of those wretched skinflint meals that made him impatient for Freddi’s hospitality – he went back to his room to pack. Most of his clothing was now beyond repair. He picked out the best of it and filled his crocodile case. When he took his passport from a drawer, he found, folded inside it, the plan of the oil-well which he had taken from Guy’s desk. Not knowing what else to do with it, he put it into his pocket. He was forced, for fear of rousing Galpin’s suspicions, to leave behind his sable-lined greatcoat; but, if need be, his old friend Dobbie could send it on to him through the diplomatic bag.

Yakimov travelled in the dining-car. Even had he wished to sit anywhere else, there would have been no room for him. He had arrived to find every carriage of the midday train crowded and the corridors made impassable by peasants packed together, their feet entangled in their gear. The dining-car was locked. At either entrance affluent-looking men, carrying brief-cases, stood awaiting admission. A few minutes before twelve the doors were unlocked. The men elbowed one another in and Yakimov went in with them. ‘There you are,’ said Galpin, ‘You’ll do the trip in style.’ Yakimov found a seat and was well satisfied.

Luncheon was served at once; a wretched luncheon. A
Hungarian complained and the head waiter shouted at him: ‘You’ll get nothing at all when your German friends follow you into Transylvania.’

Some deplorable coffee followed: there was no sugar. Now that beet was being exported to Germany, sugar was becoming scarce in Rumania. When the meal ended, the stifling heat of the car became weighted by cigarette smoke. It was past three o’clock. The train still stood in Bucharest station. There was no explanation of the delay and no one seemed perturbed by it. It was enough for the passengers that they were on a train that must move some time, while outside there were vast and agitated numbers of those who were not on any train at all.

The meal was paid for, the tables cleared. Conversation failed in the oppressive heat and one by one the men – Yakimov among them – folded their arms on the wine-stained, rumpled cloths, dropped down their heads and slept among the crumbs. Most of them did not know when the train started.

Somehow or other it crawled up into the mountain. Yakimov was awakened when the waiters brought round coffee and cakes. Anyone refusing these refreshments was told he must give up his seat.

Munching the dry, soya-flour cakes and sipping the grey coffee, Yakimov gazed out at the crags and pines of the Transylvanian Alps. The train stopped at every small station. People on the platform were wearing heavy clothing, but the air, unchanged inside the carriage, remained warm, flat and clouded like stale beer. Depressed by the magnificence of the scenery, Yakimov hid his face in the dusty rep window curtain and went to sleep again.

The afternoon faded slowly into evening. Every half an hour or so, coffee was served, each cup weaker than the last. Yakimov began to worry as his money dwindled. He knew he should leave the car but, seeing at either end of the carriage the doorways packed with men only too ready to displace him, he stayed where he was.

At Bra
ş
ov a seat became vacant and the first of those
waiting hurried into it. He slapped down a brief-case and a large weighty bag, took off his silver-coloured Homburg and sat down, an important-looking Jew. Despite his importance, he could not refrain from nervously opening and shutting the brief-case, taking out papers, glancing at them, putting them back and so bringing Yakimov to full wakefulness. Yakimov sat up, yawning and blinking, and the Jew, looking critically at him, said: ‘
Sie fahren die ganze Strecke, ja?
’

When he discovered that Yakimov was English, his manner changed, becoming confiding though overweening. He took out a Rumanian passport and waved it at Yakimov. ‘You see that?’ he said. ‘It is mine since two years. For it I pay a million
lei
. Now’ – he struck it contemptuously with the back of his fingers – ‘what is it now? A ticket to a concentration camp.’

‘Surely not as bad as that?’ Yakimov said.

The Jew sniffed his contempt. ‘You English are so simple. You cannot believe the things that happen to others. Have you not seen those madmen of the Iron Guard? In 1937 what did they do? They took the Jews to the slaughter-house and hung them on meat-hooks.’

‘But you’re going to Cluj,’ said Yakimov. ‘When the Hungarians come in, you can get a Hungarian passport.’

‘What!’ The Jew now looked at him with anger as well as contempt. ‘You think I go there to live? Certainly not. I go to close my branch office, then I come away double-quick. The Hungarians are terrible people – they are ravening beasts. Now it is very dangerous in Cluj.’

‘Dangerous?’ Yakimov was startled.

‘What do you think?’ the Jew scoffed at him: ‘You think the Rumanians hand over like gentlemen. Naturally, it is dangerous. There are shootings in the streets. The shops are boarded up. No one has food …’

‘Do you mean the restaurants are closed?’

The Jew laughed. He slapped his bag and said: ‘Here I bring my meat and bread.’

Noting Yakimov’s glum expression, he spoke with relish of raping, pillage, slaughter and starvation. The Rumanians had
introduced land reform. Under the Hungarians the peasants would have to give up their small plots.

‘So,’ said the Jew, ‘they are running wild in the streets. Already people have been killed and the doctors are packing their hospitals and leaving. They will attend no one. It is a terrible time. Did you not ask why the train came so late from Bucharest? It was because there was so much rioting. They feared the train would be wrecked.’

‘Dear me!’ said Yakimov to whom it was now clear that Galpin had chosen the safer part.

‘You go perhaps on business?’

‘No, I am a journalist.’

‘And you do not know how are things in Cluj?’ The Jew laughed and looked pityingly at Yakimov, while outside a gloomy twilight fell on a landscape in which there was no sign of life. Dinner was served, the worst Yakimov had ever eaten. He grudged the cost of it, especially as he was left with barely enough to pay for a night’s lodging.

In the grimy ceiling of the car a few weak bulbs appeared. The landscape faded away, and now there was nothing to look at but the weary faces of other passengers.

About midnight they began rousing themselves, hoping for the journey’s end. No coffee had been served since dinner. The kitchen had closed down, yet the train dragged on for another two hours.

When they reached Cluj, Yakimov rose to bid his companion goodbye, but the Jew, having collected his possessions some time before, was already up and fighting his way off the train. Most of the other dining-car passengers were doing the same thing, so that in a few minutes Yakimov found himself alone. The platform, when he reached it, was dark and empty of officials or porters. The offices were shut and padlocked. A soldier with a rifle at the station entrance re-roused Yakimov’s apprehensions.

Outside the station he saw the reason why the others had left in such a hurry. There were no taxis, but there had been half a dozen ancient
tr
ǎ
sur
ǎ
s
which had been commandeered
and were moving off. Those who had failed to snatch one had to walk. It was surprising how few people there were. The train must have emptied at stations along the line and Yakimov set out with only a handful of other persons towards the town. These dispersed in different directions, so that soon he knew from the silence that he was alone.