Judgment on Deltchev

by Eric Ambler

  The breeze stirred the leaves of the cherry tree and there were other footsteps inside the house. A moment or two later the front door opened and a girl came out. At the top of the steps she paused.

  ‘Herr Foster?’

  ‘Yes.’

  She came down the steps with the preoccupied frown of a busy person whose time is being wasted. She was in the early twenties, dark and very pale, with high Slavik cheekbones. It was an intelligent face, too, but had an expression of bland self-assurance too determined to be real.

  ‘I am Katerina Deltchev,’ she said.

  ‘I’m glad to meet you.’ She had only a remote facial resemblance to her father.

  ‘What is it you wish, Herr Foster?’

  ‘To see your mother. Perhaps Petlarov’s letter did not explain that.’ I knew that it did.

  ‘At the moment I am afraid that is quite impossible. She is very upset, you understand.’

  ‘Naturally. Is she specially upset today?’

  ‘Please?’

  ‘I am sure that these are all terrible days for her. I merely wondered if the proceedings today had specially affected her.’

  ‘I don’t think so.’

  ‘Then perhaps you would ask her when I may see her, Fraulein.’

  ‘I can tell you anything you wish to know, Herr Foster.’ She smiled, but not very warmly. ‘Would you like a drink?’

  ‘No, thank you. Are you quite sure that your mother wishes to be protected from someone who may be of help to her?’

  ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘If you will take Petlarov’s letter to her, I’m sure she will explain to you.’

  She stopped smiling. ‘My mother does not see journalists.’

  ‘So I believe. That is why Petlarov gave me the letter to her.’

  She hesitated, then pressed her lips together. ‘Very well. Please wait.’

  She turned on her heel and went into the house again. She was wearing neat white shorts, a maillot and sandals. I felt a little sorry for her. It is difficult, even for an attractive young woman, to make a dignified exit in shorts.

  I waited a few more minutes. The light was going. Then the front door opened again and this time the old woman came out. She beckoned to me and I followed her.

  Inside, there was a large hallway, with curtained doorways on either side and a slippery hardwood floor. There was a radiator against the wall between two of the doors. It was all very clean and smelt of polish. Motioning me to follow her, the old woman climbed up the stairs. On the landing there was a shuttered window, and by the half-light filtering through the slits in the metal I could see a passage running along the width of the house. The old woman turned to the right along it and, going to a door at the end, scratched on the panel. There was a voice from within. She opened the door.

  Red light from the setting sun streamed into the passage through tall unshuttered windows in the room beyond, and as I came to the doorway I could see the bare khaki hills outside the city.

  The windows gave onto a wooden terrace with an awning and vines growing over trellises at the sides. There was an iron table there with books on it and some cane chairs.

  The room was large and filled with massive red plush drawing-room furniture of the kind made for the wealthy tradesmen of pre-Sarajevo Vienna. On the walls there were heavy gilt mirrors and girandoles, and coloured prints in polished wood and ormolu frames. Overhead there was a large gilt electric chandelier. The upholstery was red cut velvet. In winter the room would be quite cheerless, but now with the windows opened on the terrace and with the gilt touched by the glow of the sunset it had a certain richness and warmth.

  As I came into the room, a woman sitting just out of the sun by the far window put a book down and rose to her feet.

  I had a slight shock.

  She was someone who had once been a provincial schoolteacher. Petlarov had said, ‘Perhaps if she had married me instead of Yordan, I should have become a Minister.’ There was the diabetic husband under sentence of death. There was my pilgrimage to this house to see her and my interview with the attractive young woman whose mother did not see journalists. There was the quiet shuttered house, the smell of furniture polish. Out of all these things an image of the Madame Deltchev I would find had been composed in my mind’s eye. She had been an old woman with white hair, in a wheelchair perhaps or even bedridden; a wiry matriarch with the evidence of her youthful beauty still discernible in her face, and the vitality, which had served the young lawyer and then driven the ambitious politician, still there in the brightness of her glance and the impatient directness of her speech. How this irascible crone had borne a daughter twenty years ago or what disease now immobilized her my untidy imagination had not troubled to enquire. What I was prepared for in Madame Deltchev was the female counterpart of the grey, shaking man I had seen in court that day and with whose mystery and fate I was preoccupied; and I had visualized no other.

  What I saw was a slim, erect woman of about fifty in a striped silk blouse and well-cut skirt, and with sleek, black hair only slightly touched with grey. Her forehead was broad and high and she had gentle, very intelligent eyes. The bold regular features, which her daughter had inherited, were in her more masculine, but her complexion was perfect.

  She smiled politely as she greeted me. ‘Herr Foster, I’m so sorry that you were kept waiting outside.’

  ‘It’s very kind of you to see me.’

  ‘Please sit down.’ She sat down again herself. She had a small lace fan that she fluttered unobtrusively by the side of her face farthest from me. ‘My daughter had the best of intentions, but she did not understand Petlarov’s motives.’

  The girl stood behind the chair. She did not look at me.

  ‘With Petlarov,’ she said angrily, ‘there is only one motive. He does only what he is paid for.’

  Her mother said quietly, ‘Please get us some tea, Katerina.’

  Katerina laughed shortly. ‘English journalists drink only whisky and soda, Mother. It is traditional.’ She went over to the samovar. ‘Isn’t that right, Herr Foster?’

  Madame Deltchev frowned and said something quickly in their own language. The girl made a sharp retort. Madame Deltchev smoothed her hair.

  ‘I think that Herr Foster will excuse you, Katerina, if you wish to leave us to talk,’ she said calmly.

  The girl stood still looking at her for a moment, her face dark with anger. Then with a bang she put down the tea glass she had been holding and walked out of the room.

  Her mother rose and, going over to the samovar, began to pour the tea herself.

  ‘All nerves in this house,’ she said, ‘are greatly strained, Herr Foster.’

  ‘Yes, I can imagine.’

  ‘For my daughter it is perhaps most difficult.’ She went on, ‘Unfortunately she is in political disagreement with my husband. She sympathizes with that section of the Agrarian Socialists which blames Yordan for the present situation. So her love for her father is in conflict with her feelings toward the man who betrayed his party. It is difficult for her and I cannot help much.’ She handed me some tea. ‘You see, Herr Foster, it is not without reason that I avoid speaking to journalists. I do not guard my tongue. The regime would be glad to use the fact that Yordan’s own children oppose him politically. But Petlarov says that you are friendly and to be trusted.’

  ‘I was wondering, madame, what there was about Petlarov’s motives to be understood.’

  She took her tea back to her chair. ‘Petlarov is a good friend,’ she said. ‘Even after his disagreement with Yordan he remained a friend. When he was released from prison I was able to see him for a short while and I asked his advice about the press. We were already an object of interest, you see. He told me that I should see no one until he sent somebody who could be trusted.’

  ‘That is very flattering, but, frankly, I do not see the reason for his choice.’

  ‘Did you not read his letter?’ She held it up.

  ‘I’m afrai
d I couldn’t.’

  ‘Oh yes, the language.’ She looked at the letter. ‘He says that you are going to write a series of articles about the trial and sentence which will be published in America and England. He says that your articles will be well written and acceptable and that although they will be politically naive-’ She broke off and looked at me apologetically. ‘He means, of course, that he does not regard you as primarily a political person.’

  ‘He’s right.’

  She smiled. ‘So many of our circle would be offended.’ She returned to the letter. ‘… although they will be politically naive, their simplification of obvious issues and the evident sincerity of their indignation will be admirably suited to the campaign against the outcome of the trial.’ She folded the letter. ‘Petlarov is interesting, is he not?’

  ‘Very.’

  ‘So very wise, and yet not a whole man.’ She picked up her tea reflectively. ‘His nerves were never strong enough for power.’

  ‘Unlike your husband’s.’

  She looked up, a little sharply, as if I had interrupted a train of thought. ‘Yes, let us talk about Yordan,’ she said, ‘and about the trial. That is why you are here.’

  ‘I don’t wish to distress you, but I should like you to know about something that happened today.’

  She nodded. ‘Yordan made one of his demonstrations. I already know about it.’

  ‘It wasn’t in the official bulletin.’

  ‘No. Every evening since we have been under house arrest an old friend of our family has come to see us. Every evening he is searched by the sentries and every evening the sentries find some money in his handkerchief. They let him pass.’

  ‘I see. The demonstration was moving.’

  ‘Yes, I was told that. It is a great relief. After this they will not dare to withhold his insulin injections.’

  There was a curious lack of emotion in the way she said it. We might have been discussing a mutual acquaintance.

  ‘Do you think that was all he hoped to gain from it?’

  ‘What else is there, Herr Foster? Please do not think that you must spare my feelings. Yordan will be condemned.’

  ‘Petlarov had another explanation. He said that your husband seized the chance of discrediting the evidence of the prosecution.’

  ‘Yordan is a good lawyer.’

  ‘From the way your husband used his opportunity Petlarov deduced that there might be some evidence against him that can only be dealt with by discrediting it.’

  She looked slightly puzzled. ‘Evidence that can only be dealt with by discrediting it?’ she repeated.

  ‘Yes.’

  She shrugged. ‘There will no doubt be many things too absurd even for denial.’

  ‘There is no true evidence that can be brought to support any of the charges?’

  She looked surprised. ‘Of course not.’

  ‘No facts at all that could be twisted into evidence of corrupt negotiations in 1944?’

  ‘Most facts can be twisted, Herr Foster.’

  ‘But in this case not credibly?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘That would be true also of the alleged association with the Officer Corps Brotherhood?’

  ‘Doubly so. The idea is absurd. My husband was the man primarily responsible for the destruction of the Brotherhood.’

  ‘You think that false evidence will be brought?’

  ‘They have no alternative,’ she said with a touch of impatience.

  ‘Then it will be easy for your husband to disprove the evidence?’

  ‘If he is allowed to do so, yes. But I do not follow the trend of your questions, Herr Foster. The charges are obviously absurd.’

  ‘That is what troubles me, madame. If there is no vestige of a case to support them, they are too absurd. As Petlarov points out, if they had to fake evidence, there were less fantastic charges available.’

  ‘Petlarov is sometimes too clever. It is perfectly simple. Association with the Brotherhood is a capital offence and today also a disgrace.’

  ‘You do not expect to be surprised by any of the evidence?’

  ‘Nothing that the People’s Party can contrive would surprise me.’

  For a moment or two I sipped my tea. There was something difficult I wanted to say. She was sitting attentively waiting for me to go on. The sun was dying and in the faint after-light her face was astonishingly youthful. I might have been looking at the young schoolteacher whom the lawyer Deltchev had married, the young woman of Greek family whose lips may have had even then the same gentle, inflexible determination that I saw now.

  ‘Madame Deltchev,’ I said, ‘when you were speaking of your daughter you referred to your husband as the man who betrayed his party.’

  ‘I was representing him as my daughter sees him.’

  ‘But you do not see him that way?’

  ‘I understand him better than that, Herr Foster.’

  ‘That might not be a reply to the question, madame.’

  ‘Is the question important for your understanding of the trial?’

  ‘I do not know your husband. It seems to me important that I should.’

  She sat back in her chair. She had just put her tea down on the table beside her, and her hands rested lightly on the chair arms. There they could reveal nothing.

  ‘You saw my husband in court today. You could see the evidence of most of the qualities you wish to know about — his courage, his cleverness, his sense of timing, his determination. One thing the circumstances would not let you see — his absolute integrity, and I, who know his heart, will vouch for that.’

  The light was very dim now, and in the shadow of the chair her face was difficult to see. Then she leaned forward and I saw her smile.

  ‘And in case you wish to ask me about his weaknesses, Herr Foster, I will tell you. He cannot accept people as they are, but only as his reason dictates they should be. Feeling he suspects, reason never, and the idea that in him the two may be connected he rejects completely. Therefore he is often mistaken about people and just as often about himself.’

  I was silent for a moment. Then I got up to go.

  ‘May I come and see you again, madame?’

  ‘Of course, Herr Foster, please do.’ Then she paused. ‘I shall in any case be here,’ she added.

  ‘Afterwards, if you are allowed to do so, will you leave the country?’

  ‘When Yordan is dead, do you mean?’

  ‘When there is no more to be done here.’

  ‘Then I shall go on living behind our wall,’ she said. ‘Did you not notice our wall?’

  ‘It’s very fine.’

  ‘You will see such walls round most of our old houses. In Bulgaria and in Greece, in Yugoslavia, in all the countries of Europe which have lived under Turkish rule it is the same. To put a wall round your house then was not only to put up a barrier against the casual violence of foreign soldiers, it was in a way to deny their existence. Then our people lived behind their walls in small worlds of illusion that did not include an Ottoman Empire. Sometimes, as if to make the illusion more complete, they painted the walls with scenes of national life; but only on the inside, for that was where life was lived. Now that we are again inside our walls, the habits of our parents and our childhood return quietly like long lost pets. I surprise them in myself. This room for instance. Since Yordan’s arrest it has been the only room on this floor of the house that has had the shutters open in the daytime. My feelings tell me it is better so. But why? No reason except that from all the other windows on this floor one can see the street.’

  ‘Isn’t it dangerous to deny the street?’

  ‘For my children, yes. For me, no, for I shall not try to impose my private world upon the real. My son Philip is a student in Geneva. He will be a lawyer like his father. Already he promises to be brilliant, and Switzerland is a better place for study than here. I hope to make it possible for Katerina to join him there.’ She paused. ‘Yes, by all means come again, Herr Foster. Wh
en you wish.’ She pressed a bell-push. ‘Rana will unbolt the doors and show you out. I will tell her also to admit you if you come again.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  We shook hands and said goodnight. As I went to the door I heard the old woman’s sandals flapping along the passage outside.

  ‘Herr Foster.’

  ‘Yes, madame?’

  ‘It might be misleading to pay too much attention to Petlarov’s views.’

  ‘I will remember what you say. Good night.’

  ‘Good night.’

  The door opened and a shaft of electric light from the passage struck across the darkened room. I glanced back; I wanted to see her face again in the light; but she had turned away.

  I went past the old woman into the passage and waited while she was given her instructions. Then she shut the door of the room and led the way downstairs.

  The girl was standing in the hall. She was waiting for me. She had changed into a blouse and skirt.

  ‘Herr Foster, may I speak to you a moment?’

  ‘Of course.’ I stopped.

  She said something to the old woman, who shrugged and went away.

  ‘I will show you out myself,’ the girl said, ‘but I wanted to speak to you first. I wanted to apologize to you for my behaviour.’

  ‘That’s all right.’

  ‘It was unforgivable.’

  She looked so solemn that I smiled.

  Her pale cheeks coloured slightly. ‘I have something to ask of you, Herr Foster.’

  ‘Yes, Fraulein?’

  She dropped her voice. ‘Tell me, please. Were you searched by the guards when you came in?’

  ‘No. One of them pushed me in the back with his rifle and they looked at my press permit, but that’s all.’

  ‘A foreign-press permit. Ah, yes.’ Her eyes became intent. ‘Herr Foster, I have a favour to ask of you.’ She paused, watching to see how I took it.