‘Those must be the Carpathians,’ said Steff, pointing at the distant mountains. ‘If all goes well we should be in Potok by sunset.’
But all did not go well. Late in the afternoon, a few miles after Timisoara, there was a hold-up. Letta’s coach was the last of the line, so that Mollie could keep an eye on the rest of the convoy, and there was an intercom link to the leading coach. When they’d been waiting a few minutes the driver turned and waved to the coach-captains. They went and listened to the intercom and then Anne, the thin and worried one, came bustling back. Mollie met her half-way down the aisle, discussed something briefly and went forward to the intercom. After another discussion she turned and held up a hand for silence.
‘There’s a road-block,’ she said. ‘They don’t seem to be police or army. They’re calling themselves a miners’ committee. You probably know that the miners supported Ceauşescu, but Hector says these people are more like bandits. The trouble is they’re armed, and they look as if they want to hijack our trucks. But we think if we all get up there and surround them and let them see how many of us there are, they won’t have the nerve to try anything. It’s up to you, of course. Who’s coming?’
The whole coach-load were already on their feet. They crowded towards the doors, Steff carrying Donna on his hip. Ahead of them the other coaches were already emptying and everybody was streaming towards the front of the convoy. By the time Letta reached the trucks, which were between the first and second coaches, the whole Varinian expedition had gathered round, shouting, booing and cat-calling. Both trucks were solid-sided vans, and she could see their tops above the scrum, but not much else.
A ripping clatter broke through the clamour, followed by complete silence. It was a noise Letta had heard time and again on TV, but it didn’t belong in her real world, and it took her a moment to realize that it was a burst of fire from an automatic rifle. A man started to shout angry orders in what she thought must be Romanian. He was answered almost at once by a woman in the crowd starting to sing. Within half a bar they had all taken the anthem up, drowning the man’s voice out. Letta sang automatically but with all her energies, not thinking about words or tune, which they all knew well by now, having sung them again and again on the long road south. Grandad had called the tune funereal, but with several hundred voices singing it by the roadside, and meaning it, they made it into a steady, unstoppable march, the march of a nation.
As they drew breath at the end of the verse the man began shouting again. At once they drowned him out with the anthem. More shots clattered out, but their song didn’t falter or thin. When they reached the end and stopped the man didn’t try shouting, but Letta could hear the mutter of ordinary, angry voices.
‘Stand-off,’ said Steff, craning. ‘They’ve got a gun to somebody’s head. Can’t see who.’
‘They’re not going to . . .’ Letta began, but her voice trailed off in horror at the thought.
‘If they do they won’t get away alive,’ he said. ‘They’ve let us get too close.’
Her heart clenched. He couldn’t mean it. But he did, and it was true. Then he seemed to realize that he shouldn’t have said what he had.
‘You’d better get clear, kid,’ he said in English. ‘You too, Nidge. Take Donna and go back and wait at the coach.’
‘But . . .’ said Letta and Nigel together.
‘Do what you’re told, kids. Right?’
Letta would have liked to argue, but there’s a limit to how far a thirteen-year-old can stand up to an adult, even when he’s only a brother. Nigel would have to do what his father said, anyway, so she’d better, but it didn’t stop her being angry about it.
Nigel took Donna and they wriggled clear and then walked down the line of coaches, craning back over their shoulders as they went. They weren’t the only ones. Other children were coming away too, looking, Letta thought, just the way she felt, shocked and frightened, but hurt too at not being allowed to be part of something very important, something almost that would mark them like a brand or a tattoo, and prove that they were truly Varinians.
When the anthem started again behind them they joined in and marched to its beat, but in the middle of a verse Nigel broke off and-pointed ahead.
‘Someone’s getting impatient,’ he said.
There’d been almost no traffic on the road, but by now there was a bit of tail-back behind the coaches, a few battered pick-ups and the odd car. Beside them, on the wrong side of the road, a larger truck was churning forward. As it neared it slowed, and Letta saw that it was full of men, some armed with guns. More miners, she thought with a sinking heart, but then saw that the khaki they were wearing was actually uniform. Soldiers.
The truck halted beside them. A man leaned out of the cab window.
‘English?’ he said cheerfully He must have seen the coach company’s address on the backs of the coaches.
‘Yes,’ said Nigel and Letta together.
‘Why stopping? Accident, eh?’
‘It’s a road-block, miners,’ said Letta.
‘They’re trying to steal our stores,’ said Nigel. ‘Can you sort them out?’
‘OK, OK,’ said the man, grinning and raising a thumb.
The truck roared on. The soldiers in the back waved as if they were going to a party.
‘US Cavalry,’ said Nigel. ‘They’re early. They aren’t supposed to show up till the last reel. What’s the betting they’ll want the stores themselves?’
They moved into the shadow of a coach and waited, drained by heat and tension. Male voices, furious, broke the afternoon calm. The argument ended and the Varinians started to come back down the road, talking and laughing excitedly among themselves and punching triumphant fists into the air. The first to reach Letta were a pair of newly-weds called Milj and Tara. Milj was Varinian but Tara was dark-skinned, from Madagascar.
‘The army showed up and saw them off,’ crowed Milj. ‘Took their guns away and all. Were they pissed off about that!’
‘Can we go on now?’
‘No reason why not.’
But there was. The officer in charge of the soldiers decided that they must stay where they were until he got permission from Timisoara for them to move on. The coaches pulled off onto the verge to let the other traffic through, and then the soldiers searched the entire convoy. They unloaded the trucks and checked everything, and went through the baggage compartments in all the coaches, and then crawled about under the chassis, banging on bits of metal with the handles of their bayonets. When they opened anything, they insisted on the owners being by to see they weren’t stealing. They were delighted with things like video cameras and Walkmans and handed them round among themselves, and wanted to be shown how they worked, but that was more like excited kids with toys, and they always gave them back with smiles and thanks.
‘It can’t be drugs they’re looking for,’ Letta heard a woman say.
‘Something bigger than that,’ said a man. ‘They didn’t bother to open Vicki’s vanity-case.’
‘No, it’s guns,’ said another man.
‘Guns at a culture festival?’ said the woman.
‘We’re going to Potok, honey,’ said the second man, as if that explained everything.
Later, Letta asked Steff about it and he shook his head.
‘Doubt it,’ he said. ‘More likely they were just going through the motions, as a way of keeping us here till they got some sense out of Timisoara. My guess is the Romanians never did their sums and really worked out how many of us were coming, not just from the UK, and now they’re getting anxious.’
‘But could it actually be guns?’ said Nigel.
‘I suppose it’s possible. All these countries are pretty jumpy about their minorities, and there are a lot of hotheads around. No doubt some idiots are trying to smuggle weapons in. But I think they’re just being bureaucrats. When a bureaucrat’s bothered, he invariably presses the hold-everything button. Anyway, it looks as if we’re going to have to camp here for the nig
ht, so let’s start sorting ourselves out.’
Mollie had a contingency plan for just this kind of crisis, so it all went smoothly enough. A lot of the travellers had emergency rations with them, and there was plenty to spare in the stores truck. An old man came by in the evening, and some of the travellers who could talk Romanian chatted with him, and he shook hands and left, but came back a little later leading two mules laden with immense bundles of firewood, which he sold for several cans of stewed steak. They lit fires, whose smoke drifted up into the dusky air, and ate together, and sang as they’d sung all the way south. The sun had set in scarlet bands and night rose visibly up the eastern sky, the way it never does in England. Steff pointed at the distance.
Their road must have swung a long way back because the hills, nearer now, were over on their right, a hard-edged ragged line, black against the afterglow of day.
‘See that?’ he said. ‘That’s Varina.’
Well, at least I’ve seen it, thought Letta as she fidgeted in her sleeping-bag, trying to find a place where the iron ground was kinder to her hip. Even if we never get there, at least I’ve seen it.
LEGEND
Father Stephan
NEWS WAS BROUGHT to Falje that the Pasha of Potok, with all his bazouks, was slain by Restaur Vax and the Varinians at Riqui. Then the Pasha of Falje, though he had little love for the Pasha of Potok, was both angry and afraid, and sent letters to the other Pashas, at Slot, and Aloxha, and Jirin, saying, ‘Our brother must now be avenged with many lives, or the Varinians will feel strong in their hearts and know they are indeed a people. Then they will rise against us and slay us all. Moreover it is we who must take vengeance, for if we do less the Sultan will send armies from Byzantium, with Viziers and Generals to oversee the vengeance, and we shall ourselves be called to account. Therefore write each of you to the Sultan, as I have done, saying that we have the matter of vengeance well in hand. That done, come with all your bazouks to Potok and we will begin the work.’
So the Pashas gathered at Potok. Then the Pasha of Slot said, ‘Let these Christian swine understand the full measure of our vengeance. Let us take their bishop, Bishop Pango, and crucify him on the walls of Potok, where all Varina may see him.’
The Pasha of Falje said, ‘I have word that he has fled to the Monastery of St Valia, where there are many secret ways and places of hiding.’
The Pasha of Aloxha said, ‘My Captain of Bazouks is a man who does not know pity or fear. Let him take command, and he will find this infidel.’
So the Captain gave orders and the bazouks surrounded the great monastery, and seized all who fled. They broke down the doors and found the Fathers at prayer, but with blows and insults they herded them into the courtyard. The Captain of Bazouks looked silently at them.
Then he said, ‘Where is your bishop? My masters, the Pashas, would speak with him, but not one hair of his beard will they harm.’
But the Fathers saw that he lied and did not answer.
Then the Captain stood the Fathers in line before him and said, ‘Very well, since you are foolish old men, I must show you that I will have my way. Let every fifth old fool stand forward.’
He walked along the line of Fathers, beckoning each fifth one forward. And a certain Father Stephan, counting swiftly to his right, changed places with the Father on his left, pushing him roughly aside, and when the Captain of Bazouks stood before him this Father shook and trembled as if with fear, and seemed to wish to change his place again. And the Captain of Bazouks, having seen what he did, smiled in his beard and said, ‘You have missed your count, old man, for it is now you who are the fifth one. Stand forward.’
When he had passed in this manner all down the line, the Captain made the Fathers he had chosen kneel down, with necks outstretched, and he posted a bazouk beside each one, with his scimitar drawn and ready to smite, and said, ‘Now which of you will tell me where Bishop Pango is hidden? If none will, then all that I have chosen will die on my signal. Moreover they will die in vain, for I will then burn this monastery with fire, and leave no stone standing on its fellow, and your bishop will die among the ruins.’
Still not one Father spoke, so he gave the signal and they died. Of the rest, some he whipped and some he tortured, but still all held their silence. Then with blows and insults he drove them from the monastery, and his bazouks brought fire, and burned it. Levers too they brought and heaved the stones apart. And many secret ways and places of hiding they uncovered, but Bishop Pango they did not find.
But the Fathers took the road from Potok towards the Danube, those who were less hurt helping those who were more hurt. At the river they sent word to a certain man who had a boat, which he brought secretly to them by night. And Bishop Pango stood before them at the water’s edge and said, ‘I leave you, and I leave this beloved land so that I may journey through Christendom, where I will tell the Princes of the Church and the Princes of the Peoples of the sufferings of our nation under the oppression of the Turks. Be brave, and trust in God, and in a little while I will return.’
Now the Fathers urged him to go quickly, before the Turks took thought where he might be and pursued and found him, but he said, ‘I must stay another hour, so that in this place, on the sacred soil of Varina, we may sing a full Mass together for our dead brothers, and especially for the soul of Father Stephan, who knowingly moved into my fifth place in the line, and died so that I might live.’
So on the shore of the Danube, above Slot, where the Chapel of the Blessed Stephan1 now stands, they sang the full Mass for the Dead. None heard, and none came by. Then Bishop Pango boarded the boat and left them.
1 The Chapel has recently been demolished by the Communist regime, on the pretext that the site was needed for a navigation light.
AUGUST 1990
THEY WOKE IN the dewy dawn, tried to stretch away their aches and stiffness, and took their turns at the improvised latrines, leaving the coach-loos for the elderly. When they started to cook their breakfasts from the store-truck the soldiers who had been left to keep an eye on them gathered hungrily round. Some of them wanted to try out their English, but mostly they were interested in Western food. They thought the instant coffee was terrific compared to what they could get in Romania. They liked peanut butter, but not Marmite.
‘It’s funny,’ said someone as she delicately spread her bread. ‘You have to be English to like Marmite. I know I couldn’t live without it.’
‘So you English now?’ said the soldier who was standing by, wolfing his third peanut-butter sandwich. ‘You say before you Varinish.’
‘We’re both,’ they all said.
‘What you want here?’ said the soldier, pointing towards the horizon. ‘Nothing is for you in these mountains, no motor car for all people, no oil-well, no swim-pool. What you do here?’
Several voices answered. ‘We’re going home.’ ‘That’s where we belong.’ ‘We want to see what Varina is like.’
‘Varina no place,’ he said patronizingly, and drew a map with his finger in the air. ‘Romania here. Yugoslavia here. Hungaria here. Where now Varina?’
‘There!’ they shouted, flinging out their arms towards the mountains.
He shrugged and held out his mug for more coffee.
They had tidied up the campsite as best they could and it was already getting too hot for comfort when permission came through for them to move on. The officer who brought it didn’t bother to hide the fact that he thought they shouldn’t be there at all, and insisted on escorting them the whole way to Potok. Two hours after they set off there was another delay at a proper check-point manned by soldiers, where for a few horrible minutes it looked as if their escort and the check-point commander were going to agree to turn them back. Mollie gave a sigh of relief as she settled into her seat and the coach moved on.
‘They were trying to tell us Potok was full up,’ she said, ‘and there wasn’t any more room.’
‘Was that the border, do you think?’ said Nigel. ‘Will there
be an actual sign saying Varina?’
‘If there’s a sign it will say Cerna-Potok,’ said Steff. ‘There is no such place as Varina on Romanian maps.’
‘Look, there’s a flag!’ said Mollie.
It hung at an upstairs window, and they all cheered it, and the next, and the next, but soon they gave up because there were too many to cheer. By then they’d begun to see another sign that they must truly be in Varina now. Letta had more uncertain feelings about this one. Almost every blank surface – the walls of barns, the buttresses of bridges, crags by the wayside as the road snaked up into the mountains – carried the same three letters, as huge as the space would allow, sometimes carefully lettered, sometimes daubed fiercely on in seven slashes of paint:
VAX
‘I hope they know which one they mean,’ said Nigel.
‘They mean both,’ said Minna, twisting round from the seat in front of them. ‘They are the same. For us he has never died.’
Like Momma, about a third of the women in the coach were called Minna. This one was forty at least. Her hair had a lot of grey in it and her clothes were as shapeless as her body, and Letta had decided she was rather sad, but now her eyes were wet and glittered behind the tears, so that she looked almost a little crazy. Her expression crystallized Letta’s feelings of unease. Letta knew and loved Grandad and admired him no end. She was sure there wasn’t anyone else in the whole world quite like him. She was glad that other people could feel that, too. But she also knew that he was an old man, who even when he was feeling fully well got tired quite soon. That he was coming to open the festival was lovely, happy-making for everyone. They would see and hear him, and he would be in his own country again after all these years, and they’d all be glad for each other’s sake as well as their own, and so on.
But really there wasn’t anything much he could do.
One old man can’t change everything, but here was Minna looking as if she expected Grandad to take hold of Varina, to pick up the three pieces of it between his hands and mould them gently into a single piece and put them down again in their place, one country now, never to be taken apart again. And Minna herself would happily die if that would help him do it. No, Letta thought. I’m thirteen and you’re forty, but I know it’s a fairy story and you don’t.
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