The Balkan Trilogy

by Olivia Manning

  ‘Oh, what?’

  ‘Just round the corner. Come and see. I’d like to take another look.’

  Though her curiosity was roused by his unusual fervour, Harriet did not move until Guy said: ‘Go and see. You can tell us about it when you get back.’

  Yakimov led her into Stadium Street and came to a stop at Kolokotroni where a man sat on his heels in the gutter with some objects arranged on the kerb before him.

  ‘What are they? Beans?’

  ‘Bananas,’ Yakimov said eagerly.

  The bananas, very green and marked with black, were about two inches in length – but they were bananas. Harriet wondered how the vendor came to have a banana palm and how far he had walked to bring his rare and valuable fruit into Athens for the feast-day. Seeing the two foreigners, he shifted on his hunkers and prepared to speak, but was afraid of speaking too soon.

  ‘Haven’t tasted one for years,’ Yakimov said. ‘Never seemed to see them in the Balkans. They’re a luxury here. Was wondering if you’d care to possess yourself of them.’

  When living with the Pringles in Bucharest, Yakimov often suggested that Harriet should buy something he had seen and envied in the shops. His penury there had been an established fact, but now she said: ‘Why don’t you buy them yourself?’

  Nonplussed, Yakimov murmured: ‘I suppose I could. Don’t think I want to.’ He bent closer and peered at the bananas in an agony of greed and caution, then came to a decision. ‘Rather have an ouzo.’ He turned away.

  The vendor sighed and sank back on his heels and Harriet, pitying him, offered him a small coin. The man, surprised, jerked up his chin in refusal. He was not a beggar.

  When they returned to the square, Charles had joined the group. He swung round as he heard Harriet’s voice, and seeing him, she joyfully asked: ‘Well, are you coming with us?’

  ‘I’m afraid not. I’ll have to stand by.’

  ‘Let’s get going, then,’ Ben Phipps jumped up cheerfully, saying: ‘We’ve wasted enough time.’ When the others made no move, he began urging them to their feet.

  Charles watched disconsolately. He had been up to the Military Attaché’s office and Alan, tugging Diocletian out from under the table, asked: ‘What do they think? Have we a chance?’

  ‘Of course.’ Charles assumed his air of professional optimism. ‘The Greeks are determined to fight it out. This isn’t easy country for armour. It defeated the Italians; it may defeat the Germans.’

  ‘It may; but the Greeks have had a hard winter.’

  ‘They survived it. That counts for a lot.’

  ‘I agree.’

  Guy and Ben strolled on. Harriet, waiting while Alan put the dog on to a lead, glanced at Charles and found his gaze fixed on her; he raised his brows as though to ask: ‘Must you go?’ What else could she do?

  ‘Come on, then,’ Alan said, moving off.

  Charles made a gesture of appeal and when Harriet lingered, whispered: ‘Tomorrow. Tea-time.’

  She nodded and went. Following Alan into the null and pointless day ahead, she felt she was leaving her consciousness behind her.

  At Kolonaki, she was jolted out of her dejection by the sound of spoliation ahead. Diocletian growled. Alan gripped him by the collar. They turned a corner and found the enraged Greeks breaking up the German Propaganda Bureau. The bureau was a small shop and already almost wrecked. A young man dangling a portrait of Hitler from an upper window had roused an uproar and as the portrait crashed down, the Greek rushed forward to dig their heels into the hated face. The road and pavements were a litter of broken glass and woodwork. Books had been ripped up and heaped for a bonfire. ‘A bonfire of anti-culture,’ said Ben Phipps. Almost the only spectators were some New Zealanders who watched with unsmiling detachment.

  One of the books, its covers gone, fell at Harriet’s feet. She picked it up and at once a young Greek, afire and abristle like a battling dog, held her as though he had the enemy in his hands. She appealed to the New Zealanders who said: ‘Let her go. She’s English.’ ‘English?’ the Greek shouted in disgust, but he let her go and Harriet was left with a book she could not read and did not want.

  ‘Let me see!’ Alan looked at it and laughed: ‘“Herrenmoral und Sklavenmoral.” Poor old Nietzsche! I wonder if he knew which was which?’ He put the book into his hip pocket: ‘A souvenir,’ he said.

  ‘Of what?’

  ‘Man’s hatred of himself.’

  The bus took them to the lower slopes of Pendeli and they climbed up among the umbrella pines, following a path fringed with wild cyclamen. Guy and Ben Phipps, stimulated by some lately uncovered piece of political chicanery, kept well ahead of the other two.

  Alan began to limp on the rough ground but would not slacken his pace. Here, in the bright mountain air, away from other claims on her attention, Harriet could see how greatly he had changed. He had been a heavy man. The hungry months of winter had caused his muscles to shrink. He had belted in the waist of his trousers but the slack hung ludicrously over his hind-quarters and his coat slipped from his shoulders. His shoes had become too big for him but by balancing on his better foot and persuading the other after it, he kept going as though the walk were a challenge he felt bound to meet.

  Diocletian, darting about under the pines, was a phantom dog. He was worried by the tortoises that crawled in hundreds over the dry, stony, sun-freckled earth. Tortoises were the only creatures that thrived these days and Harriet wondered if anyone had ever tried to eat them. Diocletian, sniffing, wagging his tail, was turning to Alan in inquiry, seemed to have the same idea. It was painful to watch his bones slide against his skin as he trotted to and fro, possessed by his inquisitive energy, and hungry, too. He kept coming back to the path with a tortoise in his mouth – but what could he do but drop it? When it felt safe, it crawled away, unharmed and unconcerned.

  Diocletian, perplexed, looked at Alan, then looked down at the tortoise. What had they here? A moving stone?

  Alan, his face crumpled with love, waved his stick at the dog. ‘Beaten by a tortoise! Go on, you ridiculous dog!’

  They paused to rest at a hut that sold retsina. Sitting on the outdoor bench, they saw the whole of Athens at their feet, with the Parthenon set against the distant rust-pink haze like a little cage of pearly bone. There had been no raid. Ben Phipps, expecting a spectacle of fire and devastation, had brought a pair of field-glasses which he offered to Guy, and the two short-sighted men passed the binoculars back and forth until the retsina came.

  Diocletian lay belly up, the pennant of his tongue lolling red between his teeth. Alan asked the proprietor for a pan and filled it with retsina.

  ‘Good heavens, will he drink that?’ the others asked.

  ‘You wait and see.’

  They watched, delighted, as Diocletian emptied the pan.

  Ben Phipps, the binoculars up, shouted excitedly: ‘Look, look!’ Half a dozen aircraft were coming in from the south, but there was no warning, no gunfire, no bombs, and the aircraft, turning over the city, began to play like dolphins in the sea of air.

  They were unlike anything Alan or Phipps had seen before. Drowsy with wine, the four sat for a long time, backs to the warm wall of the hut, breathing the scent of pines, hearing a twittering of cicadas so constant it was like silence, and watching the planes dip and circle and loop in the hyacinth sky. At this distance, the display was silent; if the aircraft were a part of conflict, it seemed a conflict too distant to have meaning.

  Harriet said: ‘Perhaps they belong to the future. Without knowing it, we may have been here a hundred years and the war is over and forgotten.’

  Alan grunted and sat up. Diocletian, who had his eye on his master, was on his feet at once. The walk now took them above the pines where the shale began and the going was difficult. Guy offered Alan an arm but he insisted on making his way alone, balancing and sliding on the grey, sharp, treacherous stone until they reached the top where the wind struck them violently and they knew it was time to go
home.

  Athens, in the light of evening had passed out of shock. It had been a resplendent day. There was no doubt now that the winter was over and the freedom of summer was at hand. Everyone was out in the rose-violet glow, crowding the pavements, their faces washed over with the sunset, carrying flowers and flags; Greek flags and English flags.

  The four from Pendeli, as though they had been in some elysium outside the range of war, wandered about together, seeing the city anew. The Athenians had taken heart again. When Alan stopped a friend and asked about the strange aircraft, he was told they were British fighter planes flown from Egypt for the protection of Athens. There had been no raid but now, if the Luftwaffe came, it would not get far. The people seemed almost to be rejoicing that the worst had happened. They had a new and stronger enemy, but he would be vanquished like the other.

  In University Street, where people swept to and fro across the road, an English sailor was hoisted up and with his cap on the back of his head, a carnation behind his ear, he sat on the shoulders of two men and waved happily to everyone around him. He was handed a bottle. As he tilted back his head to drink, his cap fell off and the audience applauded and shouted with joy.

  Guy said: ‘Where has Surprise gone?’ but no one knew. Surprise had gone without a word to anyone. Now another man, bearded like Ajax or Achilles, was being held aloft and, swinging the bottle round his head, he was swept away just as Surprise had been swept away. Heroes came and went these days. When they were gone, it seemed they were gone for ever.

  Ben Phipps went off to his office and the others decided that Babayannis’ would be the place that night; all the fun would be there. But there was no fun. A terrible sobriety had come down with the rumour that there had been a raid, just such a raid as the German radio had described. It was Belgrade that had suffered. Now the word was: ‘Belgrade today; Athens tomorrow.’ At Babayannis’ there was no dancing; the songs again were sad. When Ben Phipps arrived, he said: ‘Those were Spitfires we saw today; a new kind of fighter aircraft. They only came to cheer us up. When it was dark, they flew back home again.’

  The sirens sounded. People said from table to table: ‘Here it comes!’ but the raid was the usual raid on the Piraeus. It lasted a long time. When Guy and Harriet reached home, a rosy smoke was welling up out of the harbour. A little crowd of local people were gathered, dark and coagulate, on the hill behind the villa. Dazed after the long day of sun and air, too tired to feel curiosity about anything, the Pringles went unsuspecting to bed. In the small hours, an explosion flung them out of bed.

  Guy felt his way up from the floor but Harriet lay under the repeated roaring reverberations, imagining herself flattened beneath the water of a broken dam. Guy tried to pull her up but she clung to the floor, the only security in a disintegrating world. The house quivered. A second explosion overlay the echoes of the first and, as the stupendous clamour rose to a climax, there came from some other dimensions of time the clear, fine tinkle of breaking glass.

  Guy managed to lift Harriet and seat her on the edge of the bed. Her chief emotion was indignation. ‘This really is too much,’ she said and Guy laughed helplessly. She dropped back on the bed, hearing above the final sibilations of sound, the howls of dogs; and then, when quiet eventually came, a scandalized chattering.

  There were still people watching on the hill. Guy said he would go out and see what had happened. ‘Do you want to come?’ he asked.

  ‘Too tired,’ she whispered and, putting her face into a pillow, went at once to sleep.

  Anastea arrived at breakfast-time garrulous with the horrors she had seen. Guy had been told that a ship, set on fire during the raid, had exploded. Anastea said the explosion had wiped out the Piraeus. The harbour was in ruins. Everyone was dead. Yes, everyone; everyone. Not a soul moved in the town. If she and her husband had not gone last year to Tavros, they would be dead, too. But they had gone. They had had to go because their house was pulled down over their heads They had been martyred by the authorities, but now they knew that God was planning to preserve them. It was a great miracle and Anastea, crossing herself, declared that her faith had been renewed. Then she went all over the story again.

  Guy could make nothing of it. What sort of ship was it that, exploding, convulsed the city like the explosion of a planet?

  Harriet shook her head, feeling detached from the problem. She said: ‘I think the blast blew me out of my body; I haven’t come back yet.’

  On the Piraeus road the homeless were wandering along, carrying bundles or pushing anything that could be pushed. Those that had given up were seated round the bus stop and Guy tried to question them but, too dazed to answer, they merely shook their heads. The Pringles joined the refugees walking through the glass from street lights, windows and motor cars. It was an opalescent day that seemed, like the people about them, tremulous with shock.

  At Monastiraki, they parted. Harriet went on to the office while Guy turned off to the School. Each learnt something about the events of the night.

  The exploded ship had been carrying a cargo of TNT. It was to be unloaded on Sunday but, for no known reason, the unloading had been delayed. Left by the dockside, it had been set on fire during the raid and a British destroyer tried to tow it out to sea. The tow rope broke.

  The two ships were still in the harbour when the explosions came. The destroyer and all aboard her had been annihilated.

  ‘It was sabotage,’ shouted Ben Phipps when he came into the News Room.

  Alan shook his head unhappily but did not deny it.

  Harriet thought of the sailor they had seen seated on high with a bottle in his hand and a carnation behind his ear. Likely enough, he had been one of the crew of the lost destroyer. ‘A doomed man,’ she thought, a man upon the brink of death. And Surprise, too. She remembered them as valiant but insubstantial, as though already retreated a degree or two from life. But they were all upon the brink of death. In her shocked state, she felt she had gone too far and might never return to reality.

  ‘The rope broke three times,’ said Phipps. ‘Three times! Think of it. A rope intended for just such an emergency. It broke three times.’

  Yakimov, exhausted by fear and lack of sleep, asked in a faint voice: ‘But who would do it, dear boy?’

  ‘Who do you think? Pro-Germans, of course. Fifth columnists. The town’s full of them. Just now they’re ringing round all the offices to say more explosions are coming. Worse explosions. They say: “You wait until tonight.” People are so unnerved they’ll believe anything. Work’s at a standstill. There’s a real danger of panic.’

  Yakimov was amazed at what he heard. ‘But where do they come from, these pro-Germans?’

  ‘They’ve been here all the time.’

  ‘All the time,’ murmured Yakimov and the others, abashed, felt that Greece was a stranger country than they knew. Living here among allies, smiled on, they had imagined themselves loved. But not all the friends were friends; nor the allies, allies. Some who had smiled just as warmly as the rest had been following a different banner and applauding, in secret, the exploits of the other side.

  ‘How about the Phaleron do?’ Ben asked. ‘Was it cancelled?’

  ‘On the contrary,’ Alan told him. ‘It was a great success. And why not? I imagine quite a few of the Major’s guests are hoping to shake Hitler by the hand.’

  ‘And how did the lecture go?’

  ‘I only know that Miss Gladys looks as though she’s passed through a mystical experience. She did not mention the explosion. It was nothing compared with Pinkrose’s performance. I said: “What was the lecture like?” She replied in a muted voice: “Awe-inspiring.” Anyway, it’s flattened Pinkrose. She came in to tell me that he’d be staying for a few days at Phaleron to recoup.’

  Harriet was to meet Charles at tea-time. During the morning she held to this fact as a sleep-walker might hold to a banister. She would not go out into the troubled streets. She sent the boy to buy her a sandwich and remained in the News
Room until four o’clock. She arrived early at the Corinthian, not expecting to find Charles. He was already there.

  She said: ‘I’m early.’

  ‘I thought you might come early.’

  She sat down and asked: ‘What is the news?’

  ‘I don’t need to tell you about the explosion.’

  ‘I’ve heard the whole story. What else? Any rumours?’

  ‘Nothing good.’

  He was holding a book. She put out her hand to take it from him, but he shut it and placed it on the sofa out of her reach. He was frowning slightly as though trying to recall something, examining her face as though whatever it was, was there.

  Gazing at each other, they seemed on the brink of revelation but there was nothing to be said. If they began to converse now, it would take a life-time, and they had no time in which to begin.

  Suddenly, like someone forced to confess under duress, he said: ‘I love you.’

  When she did not reply, he said: ‘I suppose you knew that?’ He insisted against her silence: ‘Didn’t you? … Didn’t you?’

  Unable to speak, she nodded and his face cleared. Now, his expression implied, he had given her everything; there were no grounds for any sort of excuses or delays.

  He took her hand and, gently pulling her, brought her to her feet and led her towards the stair.

  There may have been people watching them, but she had no consciousness of other people in the foyer and later, when she tried to remember how they had reached the floor above, it seemed to her she had been levitated, as though in a dream. They went down a passage with numbered doors. There was no noise. She thought there was no one else in the hotel – at least, no one who mattered: yet when a door opened in the passage, she had an immediate prevision of encounter. She stopped, alarmed. Charles, with no such feelings, tried to pull her on.

  The door, opening at the end of the passage, showed a lighted window. When, for a moment, a tall young man was outlined against it, Harriet recognized him at once. She jerked her hand from Charles’s hold. The young man, closing the door behind him, moved towards them with an apologetic smile and, reaching them, stood aside.