The Balkan Trilogy

by Olivia Manning

  The balcony was in the shade, overlooking open fields from which came a hint of breeze. Swallowing back a derisive comment, Harriet mildly said: ‘I’m sorry if I disturbed you.’

  He gave her a suspicious glance. Seeing she was serious, he said: ‘I suppose you’ve heard? The blitz on London has begun.’

  She had not heard the news that morning. Looking down at the German paper, she asked: ‘What does it say?’

  ‘According to this rag the whole city’s aflame. They say the fire service could not cope. They claim tremendous damage done, thousands of casualties and so on. Probably a lot of lies – but who knows?’

  ‘If we get back, there may be nothing to get back to.’

  He shrugged and dragged himself out of his chair. ‘How about a drink?’

  While he went into the room and called to the servant for glasses, Harriet remained on the balcony, shocked by what she had heard. On the other side of the road there was a cornfield. The corn, a second or third crop, not more than a foot high, was still grey-green. Its freckling of poppies gave the vista a look of spring, but the mountains were visible in the distance – a sign that the summer haze was lifting and autumn had begun. There was even a glint of snow on the highest peak.

  Clarence called her. She went into the room and looked about at the dark, carved furniture, the painted plates and the cloths and cushions embroidered in blue and red cross-stitch.

  ‘Peasant stuff,’ said Clarence: ‘I bought it from the previous owner for a few thousand. I got the cook as well. She sleeps with her husband and three children in the kitchen. Not an ideal arrangement but if I’d got rid of them, they’d have nowhere to sleep at all.’

  ‘Do peasants have furniture as good as this?’

  ‘Some do, but even the most prosperous have a miserable diet.’

  He handed her a glass of ţuică. She looked about her thinking that in this small room, which was exposed and overlighted like a birdcage on a wall, she would suffer from both claustrophobia and agoraphobia. Clarence, however, seemed content.

  He said: ‘The flat suits me. I live, eat and sleep in one room, but I don’t mind. I like to have all my needs within reach. But I’m getting rid of it. I haven’t told anyone yet: I’m leaving.’

  ‘Leaving Rumania?’

  ‘Yep.’

  ‘Oh!’ Harriet, who on the long drive up the Chaussée had thought of Clarence gratefully as one who stood with them in peril, now felt a drop in spirits. She said: ‘You think it’s time to go? That something is going to happen here?’

  ‘I’m not worrying about that. It’s simply that I’ve nothing to do here.’

  ‘What about your job at the Propaganda Bureau?’

  ‘You know as well as I do, the Bureau is a farce.’

  ‘When will you go?’

  ‘Oh, no hurry.’

  That was a relief, anyway. She asked: ‘And where will you go?’

  ‘Egypt, perhaps. Brenda cabled me last week.’

  Brenda, Clarence’s fiancée, was in England. When Harriet first saw her photograph, she had said: ‘A nice, good face,’ but Clarence showed no enthusiasm. He said now: ‘She’s joined some sort of women’s naval service and is going to Alexandria. She wants me to meet her there and get married.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Why not, indeed?’

  ‘You now have Sophie to think about, of course.’

  ‘To hell with Sophie. Would you condemn me to that? Brenda at least would respect me.’

  Harriet smiled. ‘For what?’

  Satisfied that he had provoked her raillery, he lay back in his chair and sombrely echoed her: ‘For what?’ He thrust out his lower lip then, after some moments, said: ‘The gall of frustration has poured for years into my system. I’ll die of it in the end.’ He gave her a long, brooding look, intended to be darkly significant, so she had difficulty in not laughing outright.

  She decided to ask his help before things deteriorated further. Changing her tone, appealing to his generosity, she said: ‘I’ve come to ask your help. Before you go, there’s something you must do for us.’

  ‘Ah!’ Clarence looked down into his glass. He did not move but his attitude had become wary. After a long pause, he asked: ‘What?’

  ‘We have to try and get someone out of the country.’

  ‘Not Yakimov?’

  ‘Yakimov’s gone.’

  ‘Indeed? He never paid back that ten thousand he got from the Polish fund.’

  ‘He never paid back anything. We’re worried about Sasha Drucker. If we have to go, what will happen to him?’

  ‘You were a couple of fools to keep him in the first place.’

  ‘Well, we did keep him and now we have to look after him.’

  ‘Why? He’s not a child. Surely he can look after himself? He belongs here: he must have friends …’

  ‘He hasn’t. Anyway, his friends would be Jews. They couldn’t help him.’

  Her urgent advocacy made Clarence sit up, sobered and vexed. He said sharply: ‘I can imagine Guy busy-bodying himself about this fellow. But why are you involved?’

  Harriet reflected on the complex of instincts that caused her to protect such dependent innocents as Sasha and the red kitten but did not suppose Clarence would be satisfied by any attempt to explain them. After some moments, she said: ‘We can’t just abandon him here. You must see that. We thought, if we could get him a passport of some sort, he could come with us.’

  Clarence stared blankly at her.

  ‘Guy says you had someone who forged passports for the Poles.’

  Seeing where this was leading, Clarence smiled to himself. ‘They were made by Poles for Poles.’ He shifted in his chair, throwing one leg over the arm, and explained with superior patience: ‘The whole set-up was organised inside the Polish army: the Rumanian government connived at it. In those days, Rumania was our ally and the Poles were escaping to join the allied forces in France. The Rumanians did quite well out of it. They were paid so much per escape. It ran into thousands. This fellow of yours is a different matter. He’s a deserter from the army and all the frontier officials would be on the look-out for him.’

  ‘Is there anyone left of the people you had working for the Poles?’

  Clarence made a movement suggesting that even if there were, he personally was taking no risks.

  ‘You might help, Clarence. Please. If you could get him a passport and drive him over the frontier into Bulgaria …’

  Clarence interrupted her with an angry laugh. ‘My dear child, do you realise what you’re asking? If I were caught with this fellow in my car, I’d stand a fair chance of ending my days in a Rumanian prison.’

  She said with persuasive sweetness: ‘At least, get me the passport.’

  Clarence stared from the window, his expression sullen, his glass forgotten in his hand. He had once said to her: ‘If you treated me properly, you could get anything you wanted from me,’ but she had, of course, to reckon with Clarence’s ideas of proper treatment. They changed with his moods. He now said coldly:

  ‘You can be very charming when you want something.’

  ‘Well, I don’t want something for myself. I want to help this poor boy.’

  ‘Why? What do you care about Sasha Drucker?’ He turned on her a stare of black resentment that made clear to her the fact that he might do something for her but would do nothing for Sasha. He would do even less when it was she who pleaded for him. It would have been better had Guy made the appeal.

  She stood up. ‘We’ve taken him in,’ she said. ‘We feel for him as for a child who has a right to the elements of a reasonable life. That’s all.’

  Clarence got slowly to his feet. She waited, but he remained silent, embarrassed, but sustained by his obstinate jealousy.

  She took out Sasha’s photograph and put it on the table, making a last plea: ‘Will you think about it?’

  In acute exasperation, he burst out: ‘Think about what? You’re asking the impossible. I can do n
othing.’

  She left the photograph, feeling it might speak for itself, and went, saying nothing more.

  She walked the two miles back to the centre of the town. For most of the way she felt empty with disappointment, then her old anxiety began seeping back again. What had seemed so simple a solution of the problem had proved no solution at all. When, after luncheon, she had Guy to herself, she told him of Clarence’s refusal to obtain the passport. Giving an explanation not too painful to her own vanity, she said: ‘You might suppose he was jealous of the boy.’

  Guy laughed. ‘He probably is. He has always been very devoted to me, investing me with the qualities he lacks himself.’

  ‘You mean, he’s probably jealous of your befriending Sasha?’

  ‘What else?’

  Leaving it at that, Harriet said: ‘Perhaps you’re right. But what are we to do now?’

  ‘We’re not dependent on Clarence. God help us if we were. We’ll try someone else.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘I don’t know. I’ll speak to David. Leave it to me and don’t worry.’

  Towards the end of the week, the Pringles, about to enter the Athénée Palace, met Princess Teodorescu and Baron Steinfeld emerging. The baron was ordering a string of hotel servants who were carrying luggage out to his Mercedes. The princess stared furiously at the Pringles, making them feel that their appearance at that moment was the final outrage of an outrageous day. The baron, however, greeted them as though feeling some need to explain his departure. ‘We go to the mountains,’ he said. ‘We go late, we go in fear, but we escape the heat. If we stay, we melt away.’

  ‘Hör doch auf,’ said the princess, pushing him towards the car.

  The Pringles, surprised not so much by this belated departure as the fluster attending it, mentioned it to Galpin when they went into the bar.

  ‘They’re escaping the heat, are they?’ Galpin twisted his lips down in an ironical smile. ‘I bet they’re not the only ones,’ and he went on to explain that the Guardists, having broken into Lupescu’s house, had that morning found a box of letters which incriminated some of the most famous names in the country.

  ‘They’ve been pretending, the whole lot of them, that they’ve been Guardist all along. They now refer to Lupescu as “the dirty Jewess”, but she’s got the laugh on them, all right. She left this box of letters, open, bang in the middle of her bedroom floor. They’re from people like Teodorescu all addressing her as “ma souveraine” and “your majesty” and saying they couldn’t wait for the day when she would be crowned queen. It’s damned funny, but the Iron Guard isn’t amused. Humour isn’t in fashion these days. I bet there’ll be quite a few of the upper crust moving out of Bucharest to escape the heat.’

  The papers announced that the city’s atonement would end on Sunday, the day Queen Helen, the Queen Mother, was returning from exile to reside with her son in Bucharest.

  Sunday’s pageantry began with the clatter of horses. The Queen’s own regiment, out of favour since her departure, was galloping across the square in frogged uniforms and busbies, pennants flying, to meet her at the station. The whole city was in the streets to cheer them. Antonescu had promised new order, new hope, renewed greatness, and all, it was believed, would return with the wronged Queen who was the very symbol of the country’s exiled morality. Here was the resolution for which everyone was waiting.

  The noise brought Despina from the kitchen. She ran through the room to join Guy, Harriet and Sasha on the balcony, shrieking with delight at the hussars and the flags and the ferment of the square. Here was a new beginning indeed! But even while the dust of the horsemen still hung in the air, the sound of ‘Capitanul’ could be heard swelling from the Calea Victoriei.

  The Iron Guard had been silent during the week of atonement. There was a general belief that they were being discouraged while Antonescu was seeking some other agent to police his regime. Whether this was true or not, here they were and something in their bearing had changed. There had always been a touch of defiance about all their marching and singing in the past, but now it was exultant. When they finished ‘Capitanul’, they started on the National Anthem, linking the tunes as though they had a peculiar warranty for both.

  Harriet said: ‘I’ve never heard them sing that before.’

  The leading Guardists were cheered, automatically, accepted as part of the day’s entertainment, but as the ranks passed stern-faced and contemptuous of the audience, the applause dwindled. People were uncertain what response was required of them, and gradually silence came down.

  Guy said: ‘I don’t like the look of this,’ and after a moment, he turned and went into the room.

  The Guardists were still passing when a new interest revivified the crowds. The old Metropolitan, bejewelled like an Indian prince, had appeared walking beneath a golden canopy. His followers, who had spent the week trailing round the streets as penitents, in black, were now exultant in cloth of gold. As this dazzling procession appeared in the square, the crowd surged towards it, leaving the Guardists to jackboot their way unheeded.

  Sasha, excited by everything he saw, leaned out over the ledge while Despina clapped her hands, jumping up and down and crying: ‘Frumosa, frumosa, frumosa.’

  Long after they had circled the square, the priests could be seen, agleam in the sunlight, climbing the rising road to the cathedral. A sound of gunfire announced the Queen’s arrival. At once all the bells of the city rang out and cheers, relayed from the station, were redoubled by cheers from the crowd below. The clangour and chorus of bells cheering drowned the Guardists who lifted their heads, bawling in an effort to be heard.

  Harriet looked into the room to say: ‘The Queen is coming,’ and Guy, who had been talking on the telephone, put down the receiver. ‘I’ve just rung the Legation,’ he said. ‘The Iron Guard is in power.’

  ‘You mean the whole of the Cabinet is now Guardist?’

  ‘Yes, except for one or two military men and experts. Guardists have been appointed to all the important ministries.’

  ‘What will happen now?’

  ‘Chaos, I imagine.’

  She took advantage of his disturbed expression to say: ‘You must close the summer school.’

  He was about to speak when the cheers started up in the square again and they returned to the balcony to see the hussars escorting the Queen and her son, who were in a gilded coach covered with roses. The coach passed through the square, then went on its way to the cathedral. There was sudden silence, then came the sibilant murmur of the mass relayed through the loudspeakers and as though a wind had passed over it, the crowd sank to its knees. Harriet could see the women pulling out handkerchiefs and weeping in an excess of emotion.

  From somewhere in the remote distance there still came on the air the monotonous throb of ‘Capitanul’.

  18

  Hotel Splendide Suleiman Bay, Istanbul.

  Dear Boy [wrote Yakimov]:

  Is the old girl sold? If so, get Dobbie to remit cash through bag. Your Yaki is in low water. Food here poorish. Kebabs and so on. The English Colony a funny lot. When I tell them I’m a refugee from the oil fields, no one seems to believe me.

  Don’t delay

  With the lei,

  Your poor old needy Yaki.

  Crossing to the corner of the Boulevard Brateanu, Harriet saw the Hispano still in the window, looking immovable, like a museum exhibit. She went in to inquire whether anyone was showing interest in the car. The salesman glumly shook his head.

  Each of the showroom windows displayed a portrait of Codreanu. The same portrait stared out from the windows opposite, the empty windows of Dragomir’s, the largest grocery shop in Europe. Queues waited for such food as there was.

  The windows rattled as across the square, at sixty miles an hour, a fleet of Iron Guard motor-cyclists sped on their way to the Boulevard Carol where the richest men in Rumania lay under house arrest, awaiting the results of Horia Sima’s inquiry into the origins of all privat
e fortunes. Nothing might be moved from their houses. An armed guard stood at every gate.

  Suicides were occurring daily. One of the first was of the Youth Movement leader, decorated last June by Hitler. Unable to account for a missing twelve million lei, he had shot himself. The police had gone on strike. Their work, they said, was too dangerous. Those who were in power one day, were in prison the next; those who had been in prison, were now in power. The Guardists had taken over and patrolled the streets with revolvers in their holsters.

  As the motor-cyclists roared past, the salesman raised one eyebrow and one shoulder. Who these days would buy such a symbol of private wealth as this Hispano?

  Bella, when she telephoned that morning, had said: ‘These Guardist police are worse than no police at all. All they do is go round the offices collecting for party funds. And not only the Jewish offices, either. They don’t care whose money they take. They call it cleaning up public life, but even if you find a burglar in your house, you can’t get a Guardist to come and arrest him. I hope you’re staying indoors. Things’ll settle down, of course, but, if I were you, I wouldn’t go out yet awhile.’

  Had Harriet taken Bella’s advice she would, like Carol’s financiers and Chief of Police and Chief of Secret Police, have been a prisoner in her own home. As it was, made restless by insecurity, she wandered about the streets and went each day to meet Guy as he left his classes. She imagined he would be less liable to attack if he were with a woman.

  Stories were going round that thousands of people had been arrested and thousands executed.