After Zenda

by John Spurling

  ‘Of course. I should have known. You are not such a simple fellow. Well, I will think about it.’

  We rounded the next bend and met a dead body in the middle of the path. It was Thomas the Swiss. He no longer had his shotguns with him and there was no sign whatever of Vladek.

  8 Our Lady of Chostok

  We didn’t have to carry the body back to the castle ourselves. As well as the pretty maid, Magda, and a female cook, Count von Wunklisch had two or three male retainers and they were told off to mark the place carefully and lay Thomas in the garage. However the phone in the local police-station was continuously engaged, so the Count decided to take the corpse in the back of the Range Rover it had so recently chauffeured and put it personally under the noses of the police; and, of course, report Vladek’s disappearance. I asked if I could go too and the Count reluctantly agreed when I said that otherwise I’d have to occupy myself searching the woods for traces of Vladek.

  The mountain-town of Chostok was about half an hour away along twisting roads and it was quite dark when we arrived and parked in the yard of the police-station on the outskirts. There was a light inside, but the door was locked and the Count had to argue passionately with a voice over the entry-phone before bolts and chains were undone and we were admitted. There were only two policemen in the building. The Count being well-known as one of the richest people in the country, we got deference rather than the usual hassle I associate with police, but it hardly signified since they were in a state of near-panic and, far from investigating any crimes, were just hoping they wouldn’t be the targets of the next one themselves.

  Thomas, they were sure, had been the victim of marauding Slav nationalists; Vladek was either their prisoner or already dead too; and their earnest advice to us was to get back in the car and try to reach Strelsau - or at least the nearest regular army unit in the foot-hills. Chostok itself was quiet, but only because there was some religious ceremony going on in the centre. The rest of the police, including the captain, were supposed to be there controlling the crowd, but it was more likely they were really lying low in their own homes or had actually joined the nationalists. As for the corpse, they would take a brief statement of the circumstances in which we’d found it, but the best thing for the present would be to drive it to the town hospital and lodge it in their morgue. If and when things returned to normal, it could then be examined.

  ‘This is not some local peasant you can push under the carpet,’ said the Count, ‘but a Swiss citizen. There will be international repercussions.’

  ‘Let the Swiss come and make an investigation!’ said the senior of the two policemen. ‘What can we do, when Karapata is at war with Strelsau?’

  Very unwillingly, before he typed our statements on an iron-age machine, one of them came out with us to see the body for himself.

  ‘You say he was carrying a shot-gun?’

  ‘Two,’ said the Count.

  ‘This wound was not made by a shot-gun.’

  ‘Of course it wasn’t. Do you think he shot himself?’

  ‘It would be simpler.’

  ‘I’m not looking for simplicity,’ said the Count very angrily, ‘I’m looking for justice. Is this a civilised country with criminal laws or is it the Wild West?’

  The policeman shrugged. The Count knew the answer to his own question.

  The hospital was on the other side of Chostok. The policeman, handing us a chit for Thomas’s admittance to cold storage, advised us to go through the back streets rather than the middle. But the Count didn’t usually drive his own car and couldn’t find the way. We were forced back to the centre by the hill-side into which the town was built.

  The main square was packed with people round a huge bonfire. Beyond was the church, an elaborate iced-cake with both an onion dome and a spire, as if it couldn’t make up its mind between East and West, and people were streaming in and out of its wide-open doors. The Count started to reverse when he saw there was no way of driving through the crowd, but the road behind was suddenly blocked by the arrival of an elderly lorry, which hooted and flashed its lights when the Count leaned out of his window to remonstrate. The open back of the lorry, we both saw at the same moment, was full of armed men in a motley collection of gear from some army-surplus store.

  ‘I am not a demon driver,’ said the Count, ‘so it would be foolish of me to try to race forward or back. If they are not completely drunk, they will probably take hard currency and let me go. But I am not sure about you, Karl Marx. It strikes me that foreigners are not finding a pleasant welcome here. I would suggest you mingle with the crowd and, whenever you can conveniently do so, make your way to the hospital, where I will wait for you if I can get there myself.’

  ‘Fair enough!’ I said, quite glad anyway to get clear of the company of Thomas for a while.

  I opened the door and jumped out, just as the men on the back of the lorry began to jump down too and run towards the car. One or two came on after me, but I was already into the edge of the crowd and hidden by the darkness away from the street-lights, made blacker by the contrast of the blazing fire in the middle of the square. The whole population of Chostok must have been round it, bar perhaps the police, but although everybody was excited there was no sense of danger or any sign of violence. It was more like Guy Fawkes Night on Highbury Fields, which Jennifer and Freddy and I attended one year. There were no fireworks, it’s true, but there didn’t need to be, with the fire as the principal source of attraction.

  They weren’t just burning a simple dummy but what looked like the whole contents of the church. As I pushed my way nearer I could see the flame-filled skeletons of several confession-boxes and, further up the pile, roughly sawn-up pieces of a carved wooden screen in some hard wood which were obviously going to stay alight a long time. The people coming out of the church were bringing new bits and pieces all the time - curtains, a carved lectern, prayer-books, more screen-work, crucifixes with writhing Christs on them, holy pictures and various statues of saints and mothers, most of them plaster, many damaged, some headless. Then there began to be articles of clothing - robes, little black hats with bobbles on top - the vandals had obviously just got into the priest’s dressing-room.

  A lot of the people were clearly shocked - there were audible gasps when the saints and mothers and especially the writhing Christs went on to the flames. But their shock was mixed with a sense of satisfaction at their own power over these things and their excitement was much more intense than the kind we got watching fireworks on Highbury Fields: these people were like children breaking up their own home or school - their elation was sharpened by their pain and anxiety. If I touched any of them too distinctly as I squeezed through to the inner circle round the fire, they jumped. There was a sort of collective electricity running through the whole crowd.

  I pressed on round the fire and was about to join the stream of people going into the church when I noticed on both sides of the entrance a lot of men with guns wearing the same assorted military gear as the ones in the lorry. They weren’t interfering with the people or taking part in dismantling the church, but were just hanging about in groups. Remembering my hairless head and that I was taller than most people, I got worried that I might be recognised by somebody from the lorry, so I edged my way back into the thicker crowd round the fire and there I had a bit of luck. Quite a lot of the older men in the crowd were wearing proletarian caps - not all that unlike the tweed variety worn by farmers and gardeners in England, but flatter, broader and made of some inferior material without any fuzz to it. Somebody had dropped his and I found myself kicking it. I picked it up and put it on and - hey presto! - if I hunched my shoulders a bit, I was any old soviet worker.

  Now I had no worry about going into the church past the army-surplus brigade. In fact, the work inside the church was more or less completed - the place was virtually bare and the main interest centred on demolishing what was left of the stained-glass. The windows were high up and a group of middle-aged men w
as ineffectually trying to reach beyond the bottom panes of one window with a curtain-rod, while a second group - mostly younger men -was flinging prayer-books at another window, equally ineffectually. I was quite involved in the general atmosphere myself by now and I thought this showed a sad lack of initiative. The windows - repellently funereal without any sun shining through them - reminded me of our chapel-windows at school; besides, if the people of Chostok wanted a change of church windows, that was their decision. Anyway, I went outside and asked the nearest military type if I could borrow his Kalashnikov. He objected abusively, but when I explained that it was only needed for a little job in the church, he went inside with me. Between us and several of his mates, who came in to see what was happening, we disposed of all the remaining stained-glass as well as a couple of chandeliers which the pyromaniacs had missed.

  I was now definitely one of the lads and, after we’d celebrated our success with some nips of local white spirit from a bottle one of them had inside his camouflage-jacket, we looked around for some other contribution we could make to the festivities. The altar, stripped of its coverings, was still standing in its usual place at the top of the church, but it was a huge slab of marble on four massive legs and would have taken a team with sledge-hammers or a bulldozer to dislodge; the same went for the pulpit. Then, in a dark railed-off corner near the altar I saw a real prize: a life-size wooden statue of some female saint - perhaps the Virgin Mary, since she looked quite like the stone statue of Our Lady of Wloczovar whose toe I had kissed in Strelsau Cathedral. The railings, with gilded spikes on top, were too high to climb over easily, but there was a gate secured by a heavy chain and padlock. No doubt that was what had deterred the rest of the iconoclasts up to now. I pointed out the problem to my companions and after a good many dangerous ricochets - it wasn’t as easy as they make it look on films - they shot open the padlock.

  Quite a crowd had collected to watch this feat of modern firepower and there was a scatter of applause at our success. We bowed ceremoniously to our audience and then I started to unwind the chain from the railings. Several of the lads were forming a firing-squad aimed at the wooden lady, but I stopped them. This was obviously the church’s prize exhibit and something everybody should enjoy. It was the guy for the top of the bonfire. I was still untying the chain when a small door in the side-wall opened and out bounded Fisher John.

  ‘Nein!’ he said, speaking German with a strong American twang. ‘This is reserved. Not for damage. Not for shooting.’

  He pushed me roughly aside and stood across the railing-door as if he meant to defend it with his life. I was afraid it might come to that, since my military friends were irritated as much by his accent as his intervention.

  ‘Why not? Who says? Get out of the light, goddam Americanski!’

  They crowded up on him, poking their weapons at him in a very menacing way, while the audience behind watched with huge interest and total neutrality. I was wondering whether I ought to risk taking his side against my own party or if it would be more sensible to melt immediately out of the limelight - Fisher John hadn’t recognised me - when he produced his ace:

  ‘Maria says so,’ he said in a loud resonant voice, the voice of a practised preacher. ‘Our Lady of Chostok says so.’

  The soldiers looked uncertain, but the audience gave a huge mob sigh and some of them even went down on their knees.

  ‘She will appear before you,’ continued Fisher John, ‘now that the church is cleansed of Satan’s furniture, but you must all leave the building and she has given strict orders that this image alone -because it is her own image - must be spared destruction.’

  The soldiers shuffled uncomfortably and the crowd remained completely silent and motionless while he spoke. He stepped firmly away from the railing, as if he had no further fear for the statue, and addressed the soldiers brusquely, sounding more like their commander than near-victim:

  ‘Clear the church now!’

  They did as he said, obviously glad to have their status once more clearly defined, and the people gave them no trouble, eagerly hurrying out ahead of them. I had missed my chance of mingling with the crowd and I obviously wasn’t a soldier, so I was left alone with Fisher John.

  ‘You too - out!’ he said fiercely, pointing at the far end of the church, still full of exiting people and shepherding soldiers, with his whole arm extended histrionically.

  ‘What was all that about?’ I said in English.

  He got such a shock that I thought it might turn into a seizure. Probably his confrontation with the men with guns had wound him up to the point where a mouse running out from behind the altar would have given him palpitations.

  ‘Ed Fenton,’ I said, ‘from the Hotel Astoria,’ and I raised my cap to show him my stubble. ‘And you’re Fisher John of First Instance, Oklahoma.’

  He pulled himself together, though he was still trembling.

  ‘This situation is dynamite, Ed,’ he said. ‘Much worse than the one you got Gerda out of - for which I congratulate and thank you. You’re a tough customer, Ed, but I wouldn’t underestimate what’s going on here.’

  ‘I don’t,’ I said. ‘A man I knew was murdered this afternoon.’

  ‘A lot more people are going to go the same way before this day’s commencement reaches its conclusion,’ he said portentously.

  ‘What’s this about Our Lady of Chostok?’ I asked. ‘Are you going to raise her? Or . . .’ indicating the wooden statue, ‘. . . bring her to life?’

  Except for us, the church was now completely empty. Through the open doors we could see the top of the fire and hear the noise of the crowd rising as they got the news from the people who had just emerged.

  ‘I very seriously advise you, Ed, to get the hell out, unless you want to be the kind of war correspondent who gets a posthumous citation but no marked grave.’

  ‘Is this an uprising and are you leading it?’

  ‘It’s war, boy. I am certainly not leading it and I had no intention of getting involved in it, but I mean to get out alive if I can and to take that with me.’

  He nodded at the statue, then the whites of his eyes showed above the pupils as I remembered they did before when he was agitated.

  ‘You don’t happen to know anywhere it could be hidden?’

  ‘I’m a stranger here myself,’ I said. ‘Why do you want to hide it?’

  ‘That figure of the Virgin,’ he said, ‘is the single most valuable thing in the whole of Ruritania.’

  ‘Do you mean spiritually?’

  ‘Maybe that too, but it’s a unique masterpiece of wood-carving -12th or 13th century in almost perfect condition - and it’s survived every bloody upheaval in Eastern Europe until now.’

  ‘I thought you were a churchman,’ I said, ‘not an art-historian.’

  ‘I am a churchman. Does that mean I’m a philistine?’

  ‘The philistines seem to have had a field-day here,’ I said, looking round the ruined church.

  ‘This was all kitsch - Papist rubbish,’ he said. ‘But that figure was made by a truly religious man and a great artist.’

  The little side-door began opening and he suddenly became tense again.

  ‘I have to go, Ed. Get the hell out now!’

  He turned towards the little door.

  ‘You could try Previce Castle,’ I suggested. ‘Count von Wunklisch’s place. That’s big enough to hide Nelson’s Column.’

  ‘O.K., thanks. Now, for the love of God, lose yourself!’

  He went to the little door, saying in his transatlantic German to whoever was behind it:

  ‘It’s clear. I think we should start.’

  There was nowhere left to conceal me in the church, so I made my way to the open doors and slid round one of them without attracting too much attention. They saw me, of course, because they were all concentrated on the church interior with their backs to the fire and were very quiet and expectant. The people in the front row asked me if ‘she’ was coming now. I shrug
ged to show I knew no more than they did and inserted myself inconspicuously into the third or fourth row back. It was probably time I went looking for the hospital and the Count, but I couldn’t miss whatever spectacle was promised next.

  It was surprisingly low-key. After about ten minutes the crowd stopped even whispering and went completely silent - so that only the crackling of the fire could be heard - as a group of about twenty people could be seen approaching down the inside of the church. Half of them were armed men in camouflage, more professional-looking and better kitted-out than the ones in the square; the other half were dressed in plain black cassocks - men and women. But the central figure was the one that drew everybody’s attention: a woman, taller than average, dressed in a white robe and small white soft shoes, with a simple white band round her head and long fair hair down to her shoulders. As the group reached the doors they fanned out on the top step, with the woman in white at the centre, the people in black cassocks either side of her and the soldiers on the wings. None of them was Fisher John - perhaps he was busy packing up the statue. The crowd went down on its knees. One or two of the armed men round the steps did so too - awkwardly and uncertainly - but most of them came to some sort of ragged attention. No one seemed to have given them any clear instructions.

  The woman in white started to speak. Her face was beautiful in a plain, scrubbed sort of way, very regular, longish oval, with distinct cheek-bones, large eyes and quite a small mouth. She wore no makeup. Her voice was high and very clear and strong, so that even the back of the crowd, beyond the fire, would have heard every word -and it was, quite frankly, thrilling. Whether she really was what she claimed to be and the meaning of what she said hardly mattered. Joan of Arc probably had the same sort of instinctual effect. Kneeling with the rest, I felt like her slave and ready to remain so for the rest of my life or at least until she stopped speaking. But she didn’t speak for long, even though her address came in two languages, each sentence first in Ruritanian and then German.