After Zenda

by John Spurling

  She delivered this arrant cant with complete conviction, sitting on the arm of the chair with one leg crossed neatly over the other and her weight on one arm resting on the chair’s back, as if she was coaching me in the answer to an exam question. Her determined, intense face was that of the engineers’ daughter from Kiev and she had no doubt once recited her Marxist/Leninist lessons with the same earnestness. I transferred my attention to her breasts, a little more evident now under her jersey than they had been in the train. Silence fell. I continued to stare in a relaxed, unfocussed way at her softer parts.

  ‘I see that you are really not a serious person,’ she said, in a mild, kind voice, implying that she didn’t blame me personally, ‘and I begin to wonder if there is any use we can make of you.’

  I raised my eyes and looked steadily into hers.

  ‘Where does Fisher John fit into all this?’ I asked innocently.

  ‘Why do you ask?’

  ‘Does he call you Maria or Yelena?’

  ‘I’ve told you, it makes no difference. You, of all people, should be able to understand that Edwin Fenton can be Karl Rassendyll and Karl Rassendyll can be King Karl - or King Karel, as I would prefer it in its Slav form - according to circumstances.’

  ‘But if he understands that Maria inhabits Yelena - if that’s the right way to put it - what about the folk back in Tulsa? Do they know what their money is being used for?’

  She jumped up off the chair as if I’d hit her.

  ‘What do you mean? You think this is some kind of cheat? Some kind of mafia corruption? You think we just want something for ourselves?’

  I was fairly sure Fisher John did, but also sure this wasn’t the moment to say so. Yelena stood over me, rather as she had in the square at Bilavice, but this time she looked as if she regretted not having her machine-gun with her.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘What I meant was that your motives are perfectly clear, but I still find Fisher John’s fuzzy . . .’

  She was still furious and I held up both my hands, palm outwards, to show my harmless intentions and keep her at bay.

  ‘And also how I fit in. If you’re leading this religious movement, if you’re Joan of Arc ... as it were,’ I added hastily, seeing this was only pouring paraffin on an already blazing fire, ‘. . . you don’t seem to need yet another outsider, a person with what you quite rightly term a primitive biological pedigree. Fisher John may be contributing something you do need - I make no allegations - but what do you think I can contribute?’

  She stood there for a while swallowing her anger - it really was a physical thing which made her whole body shiver, her nose sniff and her hand go up to rub the back of her neck; then she turned and walked rapidly right round the room before stopping in front of the fire to warm her hands.

  ‘There are four elements,’ she said, resuming her calm, tutorial tone. ‘The True Faith itself - that is my responsibility. The Ruritanian Army of the True Faith - that is Michael’s. The support of well-wishers outside our country - that is Fisher’s. And, lastly, the political system which we would have to establish in our country to consolidate and protect our spiritual achievements. The True Faith itself has no political structure, of course, and the country’s political structure as it exists - the President and the Republic - probably could not be reconciled with it. This has been a problem for us all along and when I learnt of the possibility of a restored monarchy, it seemed to me perhaps a providential solution. But I was thinking only in the abstract, forgetting that a monarchy depends on a particular monarch and that the authentic blood-line is no guarantee of quality.’

  ‘I’m not what you hoped for?’ I said, joining her beside the fire.

  ‘You are a very dubious asset.’

  ‘The story of my life,’ I said.

  ‘We shall discuss it with Michael and hope to resolve the whole question.’

  ‘Shall I have any say in the discussion?’

  ‘Of course. But if you can only be provocative, it will be a foregone conclusion. Michael does not take a light view of anything.’

  ‘But you do?’

  ‘No, I don’t either.’

  She moved away towards the door into the kitchen.

  ‘But I can make some small allowance for a man with certain good points among so many inadequacies. Michael will make no such allowance.’

  She went into the kitchen before I could ask her what she thought my good points were; and a moment or two later Anna emerged and began clearing the breakfast things.

  18 Footwork

  I located my anorak, got Anna to unlock the windows and walked down the slope of snow in front of the house to the jetty. I could see between the planks of the boathouse that there was a boat in there and, since the lake was free of ice, thought about borrowing it. But the boathouse was padlocked and in good repair. I walked to the end of the jetty and from here I could see that further round this side of the lake, beyond the wood that grew down the hill and enclosed the chalet, was a settlement of one-storey wooden huts. Smoke was rising from several chimneys and a row of lorries was parked to one side. Among them was Colonel Maggerling’s 4x4 and, recalling my journey to Sebrikov and the events that led up to it, I also recalled the dream I’d had in my cell of waterskiing on a lake with two people who might have been Yelena and Michael. Or was it on that occasion I’d had the dream? The mind is full of double bluffs: maybe it was last night, after I’d seen the lake and Yelena had told me Michael was going to join us here.

  I returned to the chalet and walked round the back, where the track continued through the trees to the camp I’d just seen. The surface had been pressed down by the passage of vehicles, though it was mushy on top. That didn’t bother me too much - my canvas trainers were already sodden - and I picked my way along towards the camp without much difficulty. There was a small hut and a barrier at the entrance and as soon as I appeared a man in a military greatcoat came out to stop me.

  ‘Just taking a walk,’ I said defensively. ‘I’m staying at the house.’ We recognised each other at the same moment. He was Petra, one of the boys from my section - he’d been just visible to one side of me in the aerial photo of the mountain-stream episode and he’d been with me in Bilavice too. I went forward to embrace him Slav-style, but he stepped back and stood to attention, with his rifle, which he’d been pointing vaguely at me, held in parade position against his side.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ I said. ‘I’m Karl Berg. Don’t you recognise me?’

  ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘but now we know who you really are.’

  Apparently the two regular soldiers who brought me to Sebrikov had told everyone about my rescue and the reason for it. When Petra had explained this and we’d embraced anyway, he went inside his guard-hut and spoke on the telephone. The effect was extraordinary. As I stood by the barrier waiting for him to come out again, a door opened in one of the nearer huts and two or three guerrilla soldiers emerged, then other doors opened and more appeared, then more and more, all moving towards us. Suddenly the whole camp was full of men in motley military coats with guns slung over their shoulders, swarming in my direction. They seemed more curious than threatening - like a herd of cows in a field on a country-walk. Within a few minutes there must have been a hundred and fifty to two hundred men coalescing into a kind of phalanx between me and the huts and more still emerging in the distance.

  ‘What’s happening?’ I said to Petra, as he came out of his guard-hut. ‘What do they want?’

  The cohort had stopped now about twenty yards away and the men at the back were coming round the sides, so that I was facing a long line two or three deep. Did there need to be quite so many to investigate one unarmed interloper? Or was this something to do with me personally? I began to think hastily back over my past conduct to see if I’d committed some unpardonable offence - adultery with Susha? taking the train to Kapitsa instead of the coach to Chostok? - did they know about these things, would it matter so much if they did? Petra looked surpr
ised, but not alarmed. In answer to my question he only shrugged. Then among the vanguard I recognised Corporal Radichev, with his black armband and Stalin moustache. I started forward immediately to greet him:

  ‘Corporal! Corporal Radichev! You remember me?’

  He came forward too, smiling.

  ‘Berg!’ he said, ‘Karl Marx Berg!’ and then in his stilted English ‘Mee-ster Fen-ton!’

  Then he raised both arms in the air with clenched fists and, half-turning towards the crowd behind him, bellowed in his parade-ground voice:

  ‘King Karel!’

  I shook my head, partly in embarrassment, partly because I didn’t feel I was entitled yet to this fresh change of persona, and we embraced enthusiastically. As we did so, the whole mass of them raised their arms with clenched fists and shouted:

  ‘King Karel!’

  It was an enormous sound that echoed off the rocks and seemed to hang in the cold air with the cloud of steam that rose from so many open mouths. Still holding the Corporal by the shoulders and peering round his ear at the ranks of shouting, gesticulating men -among whom I now recognised several of my old friends as well as the driver who’d brought me from Kapitsa - I was wondering how to acknowledge such a reception, when I heard the sound of a car’s engine behind me. I turned to see a muddy Range Rover pulling up in front of the barrier. Petra went to raise the barrier for it, but the car doors were already opening and Michael and Sergeant Vakisch were getting out. My first reaction was to wonder why they’d exchanged the Count’s brand-new car for something that looked as if it had been written off after a pile-up, but then my attention was caught by Michael’s face. He was beside himself with fury.

  ‘What are you doing here? What have you been saying to them?’

  He spoke in quite a low voice which sounded all the more vicious for being contained, like a dog reserving most of its energy for biting not barking, and he was crunching feverishly towards me through the snow with his hands pushed out in front of him. I let go of the Corporal and took a step towards Michael. If this was going to be bare-hand stuff I had the advantage of height and the very sight and sound of him made me feel nearly as angry as he looked. I didn’t bother to answer his question, but just smiled contemptuously down at him and measured by eye the distance from my right fist to his jaw. It was a real disappointment when Sergeant Vakisch, following closely behind, took the immediate heat out of the situation by laying his hand on Michael’s shoulder.

  ‘It’s done anyway, Captain. Why not make the best of it?’

  Michael paused, glanced at the Corporal behind me and the crowd further back, punched his left palm with his right fist as though it was too late to stop it punching something, and held it out to me.

  ‘Mr Fenton!’ he said with a gruesome sneer.

  I took his hand and held it just long enough to show I was doing him as much of a favour as he was doing me.

  ‘Good to see you, Captain!’ I said insincerely.

  He patted me on the arm and I was wondering how long we’d have to keep up this exchange of false pleasantries for the benefit of our audience, when Sergeant Vakisch came to the rescue again and ordered the men to form up for inspection.

  The programme originally planned had been for Michael to inspect his troops and their living-quarters before attending the conference at the house and they’d been waiting to turn out for him when Petra’s phone-call had made them turn out for me instead. So Michael was left with no alternative but to take me round on the inspection with him and the pleasure I got from performing this first royal duty was at least doubled by the pleasure he didn’t get from it. All three of us - Michael, Vakisch and I - then returned to the house in the Count’s ruined car in a silence icier than the landscape. The car, Vakisch told me as we went into the house, had skidded into a rock during the retreat from Kapitsa.

  Yelena was waiting for us in the main room of the chalet. Michael, having entered first, while I was talking to Vakisch, had evidently given her the gist of the disaster - from his point of view - in the camp and was now ready to relieve himself of his pent-up rage. Yelena forestalled him:

  ‘Why did you do this, Karl?’

  ‘I just went for a walk,’ I said. ‘You told me nothing about this barracks full of my old comrades and I had no idea they were going to make the sort of demonstration they did.’

  ‘I heard it even from here,’ she said, ‘though I couldn’t make out the words.’

  ‘This man is a liability,’ said Michael. ‘He cannot be trusted, nothing he says can be taken at face value, nothing he does is for anyone’s advantage but his own.’

  I opened my mouth to say he shouldn’t judge others by himself, but instead sat down - a neat demonstration of how our relative positions had changed since our first encounter in the farmhouse near Chostok - and took off my shoes and socks. Then I held out my legs and toasted my wet feet in front of the fire, while Michael turned his wrath on Yelena:

  ‘You asked us here to talk about strategy - to consider using this man as a political figurehead. I say no. Absolutely no, from the beginning. As far as I’m concerned, there’s nothing to talk about.’

  Yelena didn’t seem much put out. She looked at me briefly, neither smiling nor frowning, seeming to suggest that sitting there quietly and attending to my feet was just what she wanted me to do, then smiled at Vakisch, who was still near the door.

  ‘Is that your opinion too, Vatslav?’

  ‘I understand Michael’s anger, of course,’ said Vakisch. ‘It would have been better for us to introduce Mr Berg to the men as a claimant to the throne than have him introduce himself, but this was surely not his fault and, as it’s turned out, not such a disadvantage. On the contrary. If we’d come to a decision here and they’d received it with doubt or indifference, we should have been in a hole. As it is, if we do take such a decision, we know we can count on their spontaneous enthusiasm.’

  Yelena looked at Michael. I had the feeling that there’d been many scenes of this sort in the past, with Michael neighing and stamping, Vakisch making soothing noises and Yelena bringing the horse’s head round in the direction she wanted to go.

  ‘But if we don’t want to decide that way?’ said Michael. ‘What then? We’re being forced into something that could turn out very badly.’

  ‘Shall we discuss it, at least?’ said Yelena.

  She pointed with a charming, almost shy gesture at the chair just behind Michael and he sat down. Her other hand remained at her side, but one finger flickered momentarily at Vakisch and he too found a chair. She walked to the window and looked out as if to make sure no one was spying on us, then circled back past my chair and, as she passed me, very lightly brushed the top of my ear, without either Michael or Vakisch noticing. Then she sat down near Michael. I don’t know whether it would have made any difference to my attitude if I’d been better educated and known what the Count told me much later, that ear-pulling was a favourite ploy of Napoleon’s; as it was, I wriggled my toes, basked in the warmth of the fire and left most of the discussion to them.

  It didn’t in any case require much input from me. I was, as it were, the flag of convenience which they might or might not sail under and it was taken for granted that the flag itself would make no objection to being sailed under. I kept my main reservation - was it sensible to be associated exclusively with the Slav nationalists? - to myself, since the whole question of whether I actually became king still seemed very abstract and I was, after all, as much the prisoner - though a better treated one - of these people as I had been of the Ruritanian Army in Kapitsa. Michael, of course, had no wish to see me king - he’d much rather see me dead. On the other hand it was clear he couldn’t be king himself or hope on his own to control all the nationalist forces. If more of the regular army followed the Second Regiment over to our side they certainly wouldn’t accept the warlord of Karapata as overall commander; but, if the response of the Second Regiment was anything to go by, it did look as if the Slav elements
of the army might be willing to unite with the guerrillas under my flag.

  So it soon became a question of what was the maximum reward Michael could extract in exchange for putting up with me, rather than whether he would have me at all. And I saw now that the original roles played by Michael and Yelena on the steps of Chostok church faithfully reflected the reality: she was the driving force behind the nationalist rebellion and he only the instrument, ‘my servant Michael’ as she’d actually referred to him. The purpose of this conference was not to discuss strategy but simply to bring a second instrument - ‘my servant Karel’ as she might, but never did call me - into action without upsetting the first.

  The real surprise came after we’d settled that the nationalists would aim to restore the monarchy and Yelena asked me very casually what form I thought the monarchy might take. I was stretched out almost horizontally in my chair by now and wondering if I could edge another log on to the fire with my foot or would have to get up and do it by hand.

  ‘Mainly ceremonial, I suppose,’ I said and, thinking of the British version which seemed mainly to consist of handing out medals, supporting good causes and shaking hands, added ‘but I’d be glad of a few minimal powers, so that it wouldn’t get completely boring.’

  There was a pause. Feeling I might have said the wrong thing, I heaved myself out of the chair and tossed a couple of logs on the fire.

  ‘That isn’t how I see it,’ said Yelena.

  ‘How, then?’ I said, watching the flames catch the bark of the new logs.