The Lives and Times of Bernardo Brown

by Geoffrey Household

  ‘I also had dysentery,’ old Bernardo said. ‘Nothing like that for the final destruction of a respectable shipping clerk! Continuous wiping of my arse with leaves and wandering nowhere looking for something more solid than blackberries.’

  Sheer misery was its own cure. He could stand no more of it and padded off through the forest, sometimes in circles, until he came out into the open not knowing or caring where he was. The midday sun, before it was swallowed by towers of cumulus, showed him that he was walking east not west. It didn’t matter.

  He was out on bare, rolling swells of ground when the storm caught him—a thunderstorm of the hot steppe rejoicing the earth and itself by a display of Old Testament ferocity. The only shelter was an unharvested patch of maize where he was instantly as wet as if he had fallen in a river but the stalks were useful to hide his nakedness—Romanians presumably had a law against it—while his clothes were spread out to dry. The storm returned as he was about to put them on. When that happened a second time he gave up and flapped through the rain regardless. His feet began to give trouble again in spite of the rubber shoes. It occurred to him that peasants wore some kind of foot-cloth wrapped around their feet, not the silk socks of the Hungarian aristocracy.

  In the last of the sunset he came to the banks of the River Moldova. His aimless, obstinate plodding to the east stopped there—a final destruction of his will to keep moving, leaving such a blank that he could only concentrate on trying not to faint from exhaustion. He must have done so, for he found himself lying on the path with the light fading. Ahead of him a large town on a hill fortified the sky; beneath it he could make out a peculiarly compact and isolated waterside village, close to the town but entirely separated from it without any connecting suburb. He dragged himself towards the dimly lit windows, perhaps towards a fire. At least in a Christian country he would be fed and given some kind of roof over his head. They could send for the police in the morning if they liked.

  He collapsed on a bench under the shelter of a walnut tree. Villagers gathered round him at a safe distance. Another lot of grotesque Romanians. Some were dressed more or less as peasants; some had beards, whiskers in ringlets, black hats and frock coats. He could not imagine what he had landed in this time—presumably an odd sect of the Orthodox Church. The men seemed to treat him as something unclean, which indeed he was. They questioned him in Romanian and what sounded like German. On top of his weakness the mental effort of trying to understand was the last straw. He rolled off the bench.

  When he came round he was cradled in the arms of a big man who was speaking with all the authority of his grey beard to the dubious villagers. With only the stem voice to go on, Bernardo expected to meet the uncompromising stare of a hard-boiled village headman who would do no more than open the parish lock-up for him, but the face when he looked up to it was more like that of a kindly headmaster in the flower of his age with very gentle eyes and a generous twinkle in the corners of them. He had at last a feeling that language was unnecessary.

  The headman took him home, helped him to wash his feet, undressed him and put him to bed. After feeling his forehead and taking his pulse he assured Bernardo with smiles and a gesture that there was nothing wrong which food and rest would not put right. Bernardo thanked him in Spanish which his saviour obviously recognised but could not speak. Two motherly women came in with porridge and wine and a pot of broth with a wing of chicken in it. He thankfully resigned himself to this confident charity and slept.

  In the morning his host and doctor allowed him to sit in a chair but not to move around. It still seemed remarkably easy to talk to him without words. There would be breakfast shortly, he said, and after that an interpreter. He was to put his trust in God that all would be well.

  The interpreter arrived in the course of the morning. He had much the same fine-drawn face as Toledano. Evidently anyone who spoke Spanish in Romania was a Jew. Bernardo, bursting with gratitude, got in first with his questions: where was he? Whom was he to thank for such kindness?

  ‘In this village all are Jews,’ the man replied. ‘And this is our beloved leader, Rabbi Kaplan.’

  Bernardo had no idea that there were whole villages of Jews, and to his dazed eyes the night before they had not been at all recognisable. Fair hair was as common as dark, and there were as many squashed, broad noses as prominent beaks.

  ‘I don’t wonder your people were alarmed,’ he said. ‘I must have looked like a drowned dog.’

  ‘They are very simple,’ the interpreter explained, implying that he himself was a townsman. ‘They did not know what they should do until Rabbi Kaplan told them.’

  ‘So that was it! I thought he sounded annoyed. What did he tell them?’

  ‘When a beggar stands at your door, the Holy One, Blessed be He, stands at his right hand.’

  Bernardo was still very weak and emotional. His eyes were inclined to swim at the sudden beauty of the phrase. It must sound even better in Hebrew and whatever dialect of German they spoke. He tried to remember some scrap of Hebrew in which to answer. Nothing came to mind except the First Commandment and a bit of some Jewish family prayer which his Jesuit teacher much admired. He always showed the other side at its best before shooting it down. And, by God, the phrase fitted!

  ‘We lean back on our chairs in comfort and are no longer...’

  ‘Servants’ was the word he wanted but he could not recall it. He substituted ‘wanderers’.

  The interpreter’s expression completely changed. Kaplan’s could not fairly be said to change, but it was more joyful.

  ‘What else do you know?’

  Bernardo fired off the First Commandment to which the Rabbi replied with a blessing, though unintelligible.

  There was a slight discussion between the two. The interpreter said that the Rabbi would like to be sure that Bernardo was circumcised.

  ‘Since he undressed me ...’

  ‘He covered you with a blanket.’

  ‘What delicacy! But why should I mind? Here you are, friends!’

  Mr. Brown explained that they were not really so credulous as they appeared. In the countries of eastern Europe, where a Christian took pride in distinguishing himself from Moslem and Jew, the foreskin was a trademark. Even in Spain circumcision had been pretty rare. A Moldavian Jew, limited to his own space and time and ignorant of Gentile customs outside of it, could not be expected to know that among the British, due to obsession with the Old Testament and venereal disease, circumcision was common. His English father, familiar with germs and funguses of seamen, insisted that it should be done regardless of the tearful reproaches of his Spanish mother.

  He had felt a twinge of conscience. But, after all, he had never claimed to be a Jew; they jumped to the conclusion that he was. And since that splendid fellow, Kaplan, was prepared to treat a Christian with the same generosity there was some excuse for leaving matters alone.

  ‘But the real clincher,’ he remembered, ‘was my Jesuitical Hebrew. I was thinking only of Kaplan’s comfortable chair, and damned if I hadn’t come out with the only bit of Hebrew which every Jew must know! I had not got it quite right, but near enough. Near enough.’

  Now the questions followed fast. He gave his name as David Mitrani—the only Sephardic surname he was sure of besides Toledano—and said truthfully that he had come from Hungary. He realised in the same breath that he should never have mentioned it in case someone spoke Hungarian. Fortunately nobody did.

  Was he Hungarian then? David Mitrani pulled himself together and did some quick and instinctive thinking. Whatever was going to come of all this, he must do his best to ride his luck. Better not be English. Surely no English Jew would leave his own comfortable chair to wander round Romania wet and starving until he fetched up in Rabbi Kaplan’s. He thought of Greece or Turkey, but they were too close. The interpreter was sure to ask what other Sephardic families he knew.

  ‘From Africa,’ he said.

  That seemed to go down well without any sophisticat
ed enquiries as to whether he had French or British or Egyptian nationality. Details of Gentile government were considered trivial.

  ‘And what happened to you?’

  ‘I was robbed.’

  He had an uneasy feeling that he had lied again. But it was the literal truth though he had never quite pictured it as that. The late Bobo had robbed him of his identity and the gipsies of his money.

  ‘And where were you going? We will help you on your journey.’

  ‘America,’ Bernardo said, vaguely remembering stories of shiploads of Jews decanted on to the quays of New York.

  ‘Impossible! There is a quota. You cannot go from these countries any more.’

  ‘Well, I might go to Palestine.’

  To Eretz Israel! His suggestion aroused instant enthusiasm. He gathered that emigration to the homeland was so new that even Kaplan had little idea whether it was easy or not. But certainly young men had left Moldavia for Palestime. In Bucarest they would know how it must be done, and that was where he must go first.

  Bernardo remained in the village by the banks of the Moldova for a week. It was the ghetto of the provincial capital, Roman, which stood above it on the hill. By observing his fellows and doing whatever the next man did half a second later he had no great trouble in conforming to religious and social customs. Only the ultra-pious students of the Torah remained aloof up some back alley of mysticism though he could read Hebrew quite as well as they. The workers in the fields who supported the lot were much the same as peasants anywhere else, and in talking with them he began to get on terms with Romanian. Rabbi Kaplan he loved. When a man was plainly a saint and followed all the Christian precepts, one could take it as mere matter of words—a sort of donnish eccentricity—that he should still await the coming of the Messiah.

  Whether Romanian authorities could not be bothered with despised Jews or whether quiet bribes continually sweetened hungry and insignificant clerks he did not know; but an identity card in the name of David Mitrani appeared from nowhere—proof of Romanian birth so long as no one ever questioned it. With that safely in his pocket he was given a third-class ticket to Bucarest, some introductions to co-religionists, a few lei for the journey and a pair of shoes to go with Mircea Niculescu’s black suit—shrunk but still good enough for a poor jidan. Conscience worried him. He privately considered all this as a loan to be repaid whenever chance allowed.

  He was accustomed to the uncleanliness of poverty in the open air, but hard to endure was the concentration of smells—mostly old frieze trousers, sweat and pickled cucumber—from the crowd of peasants crammed into a closed carriage for seven hours. He climbed down to the platform of the North Station of Bucarest and washed and shaved as best he could in a trickle of cold water. Morale improved. The bustling station of a capital city was a familiar, comforting environment. East European spaces had at last contracted to something he understood.

  He set out for the British Consulate with growing confidence. Kalmody and Pozharski could have invented all this nonsense of extradition just to keep him quiet. Among his own people his appearance and story would only arouse pity; and, so far as the Romanians were concerned, his only offence was to have crossed the frontier illegally. There was no need to mention the horse or the dubious identity card supplied by Rabbi Kaplan.

  It was a city of contrasts. Down by the station were low, white houses which seemed to have escaped from the country carrying a few chickens and pigs along with them; in the centre was an air of Russian opulence with cupolas, heavy porches and over-decorated stone and plaster. He asked for the British Consulate and was directed by mistake to the Legation—a squarish town house of dignity with a noble iron gate. He hesitated in front of it. The Consulate would be more business-like with competent clerks and an uncomfortable waiting-room occupied by messengers with brief-cases who would get what they came for and shabbier citizens who probably would not.

  On second thoughts he considered that the Legation, pursuing its leisurely course beneath a Union Jack of gentlemanly size, might be the better choice. Someone would have time to listen to his complex story and might have heard of Count Kalmody and Zita.

  A uniformed porter contemptuously asked him his business in Romanian. So that was what he looked like, did he? Bernardo slightly raised his eyebrows and answered in English, explaining that he had called on an affair of international interest and would like to see one of the secretaries. The porter suggested that the Military Attaché’s clerk might be the chap for him. Bernardo denied having any military interests whatever and filled up a form.

  Either his good accent or confident manner got him received, though he never knew whether it was the First, Second or Third Secretary whom he saw. At any rate he was ushered into a very formal room on the ground floor. There was a desk with a large leather chair behind it and a similar chair, but without arms, in front of it. Around the wall was a number of third-class chairs, presumably for the reception of deputations. However the Secretary himself was standing up—an indication that he did not judge this Mr. Brown to be of enough interest to justify a chat across the desk. He was wearing a black coat and striped trousers. His dark hair with a slightly grey streak in it was immaculate. He had the strong, manly, virtuous face, the wide, thin-lipped mouth of the pre-war Establishment and could have been a distinguished barrister or an aspiring young bishop.

  Faced by this Pillar of State, who was regarding the too short trousers and sleeves of Niculescu’s suit with extreme distaste, Bernardo did not know how to begin. The Consul, he now felt, would have been more used to objects deposited on his carpet by the cat.

  ‘You are a British subject?’ the Secretary enquired.

  ‘Yes, but I can’t prove it here and now. My passport is in Bilbao in Spain. I was kidnapped.’

  ‘Kidnapped?’

  The perfectly modulated voice suggested that such things really did not happen to holders of British passports.

  ‘It was none of my doing.’

  ‘One would indeed imagine not.’

  ‘I was walking along the beach, sir, in Lequeitio. That’s not far from Bilbao and the ex-Empress Zita lives there. A chap called Kalmody—Count Kalmody—was staying with her.’

  ‘I have had the honour of shooting with him.’

  ‘Oh, that’s good! That will help to get things straightened out.’

  ‘What things, Mr. Brown?’

  ‘Well, I don’t know exactly. That’s the worst of it. But there was a man who tried to burgle the Empress and another man called Bobo who....’

  ‘Bobo?’

  ‘That was what Count Kalmody called him. He said he was a Russian refugee or something.’

  ‘And you yourself have just arrived from Spain?’

  ‘Well, with a bit of a gap, yes.’

  ‘I see. I should tell you at once, Brown, that this is not a matter in which His Majesty’s representatives wish to be involved.’

  ‘You mean, you know about it?’

  ‘I take it you are able to read. Really one can hardly be concerned in the violent death of a Russian Grand Duke without arousing some comment in the sensational papers.’

  ‘I haven’t seen any papers and I’m innocent,’ Bernardo protested, desperately aware that his agitation must look like guilt. ‘And Count Kalmody knows all about it.’

  ‘It is very conceivable that he does. But Hungarians, I need hardly say, are not in very good odour at the moment.’

  ‘I don’t see why. I think they have had a dirty deal.’

  ‘No doubt you will have opportunities later to give your opinion on foreign policy, Brown. But the game, as you people would call it, is up. You are wanted by the Spanish Government on a charge of murder. The French also wish to talk to you about the shooting of another of your accomplices. You will stay within these four walls while I telephone the police.’

  It had simply never occurred to the man, old Bernardo said, that his perfection was vulnerable. Mere consuls might sometimes have an inkpot thrown at
them, but a diplomatist within his own sacrosanct enclosure—unthinkable in those days. Unthinkable!

  ‘But all changed now—both those exquisite dummies and our respect for them. They have become too human. That’s the trouble. Oh dear and damn, I’m ashamed to admit what I did! But I hadn’t got a knock-out punch. In spite of the movies, I doubt if any amateur has with the bare fist. So if I hit him, he’d only spit out a tooth and yell for help, or perhaps ring a bell if that was more in accordance with protocol. He was still standing up, with his legs apart and his hands behind his back, looking down on me in every sense though I was only a yard away. I’ve never done such a thing before or since. I kicked him in the balls, if he had any, and walked out while he was doubled up gasping. The porter saluted, but no lordly tip from me! As soon as I was through those iron gates and round the corner I ran like hell and resumed the identity of David Mitrani.’

  He kept going, now walking fast, and arrived in the Calea Victoriei, the main street of Bucarest, where he was lost among the crowded, bobbing heads on the narrow pavement. Crossing a boulevard into what was apparently the business district, he saw the name of Strada Lipscani which Toledano had mentioned and thought of calling on the unknown cousin whose name was now his, but decided it was far too dangerous. The only chance of safety was to find some obscurer Spanish-speaking Jews and disappear among them. It looked as if he might be fated to remain David Mitrani for the rest of his life, and he relieved that depressing thought by a moment of optimistic day-dream. He could become an international banker with a white slip to his waistcoat and offices in Bucarest and London. Hell! How did one eat meanwhile?

  Till dusk fell Bernardo wandered about in short streets which had neither the rich-peasant quality of the inner suburbs nor the solidity of the centre. The houses had an air of being closed to the street rather than opening on to it, and this Levantine effect was enhanced by a few small antique shops, poorly lit but glowing all the more mysteriously with Persian and Romanian rugs, ikons and silverwork. Hanging about the entrance to a café—for he had too little money to risk going in—he heard plenty of Yiddish and what was probably modern Greek, but none of the hoped-for Spanish.