The Amazing Mrs. Pollifax

by Dorothy Gilman

  In the rubble that spilled down from the cliff like lava she could make out the shapes of crumbling houses; the hill running up to the cliff was honeycombed with caves, holes and the ruins of abandoned buildings. The wagons ahead had already begun to turn and head up the hill through the debris in a circling, ascending line. "What a wonderful hiding place!" said Mrs. Pollifax. "Unless—" She paused doubtfully. "Unless it's so good that it becomes the first place Dr. Belleaux looks for us."

  Colin shook his head. "Not the first. I've driven through this part of the country with Uncle Hu, and it's even more dramatic further along. The rocks fairly jump out of the earth like weird stalactites. At Gôreme they're called fairy tale chimneys—the early Christians hid in those rock chimneys centuries ago, hollowing them out inside and carving air holes and windows. They left behind fantastic Byzantine frescoes on their interior walls. The whole valley is full of surprises."

  "Really? I wish I'd pinned the guidebook to my trousers."

  "You ran out of pins," Colin reminded her.

  The first wagon had reached the summit, and Goru had climbed out, looking small and doll-like against the great height of the wall behind him, and separated from the rest of them by the mountain of rubble. Their own wagon was lurching and slipping now as it followed the narrow rock-strewn path upward toward the top. Mrs. Pollifax clung to the sides of the wagon and prayed. Each time she looked ahead, a wagon in the line ahead had disappeared and she could only hope that it had safely reached Goru and been directed out of sight, and had not instead plunged into a hole or rolled back down the hill. They climbed higher and higher until Goru came into sight, suddenly his own size again. They had reached the top of the rubble, with the cliff above them.

  By a curious freak of nature there was no rubble close to the cliff wall, and a kind of primitive, washed-out road curved up and down behind the houses that had once been built into the hill and inhabited. But as the wall had eroded over the decades—perhaps even centuries—the rocks and silt it sent down had fallen upon the houses, missing the small avenue directly under the wall, but leaving holes in the roofs that it did not completely demolish, and piling debris around the sinking homes. Along this primitive avenue the wagons had stopped, each in front of a ruin that still boasted a roof or half-roof while the men dug out rocks to allow their wagons inside. One by one Mrs. Pollifax saw the wagons backed out of view.

  Their driver was Yule, who leaped down and began shouldering aside rocks—they were now the only wagon exposed. Colin jumped down to help, and behind her Mrs. Pollifax heard a startled voice say, "Wotthehell!"

  "Sandor," she murmured, smiling, and turned.

  Sandor was sitting erect rubbing his head but his eyes were on Magda and Ramsey. Mrs. Pollifax saw that these two were both awake and staring at each other with interest and astonishment; she had the impression that they must have been mutely observing one another for some time.

  Colin's uncle said abruptly, "You're thinner. You never did care sufficiently about meals—no schedule at all. If you'd married me I should have insisted upon your eating. Why didn't you?"

  "Why didn't I which—marry you, or eat?"

  "You should have done both, you know. I've felt damnably juvenile not marrying all these years, but there's simply been no one to equal you. Why didn't you marry me?"

  "I had a daughter in Russia."

  "You could have told me, couldn't you?"

  "Never," she said fondly. "You know you would have charged the Kremlin, Hugh, demanding she be brought to England—you would have gotten your head chopped off."

  "It's France that has the guillotine, in Moscow I think it would be a firing squad," he reminded her.

  Sandor was grinning broadly. He climbed past them to Mrs. Pollifax. "She knows him too!" he said.

  At that moment someone shouted, and Goru came running toward them looking visibly alarmed. Ramsey spoke to him in Turkish and looked appalled. "It's the plane!" he shouted. "Get the wagon hidden! There's a plane on the horizon heading this way!"

  17

  Two Men Appeared from nowhere and took away the horse. Five more men raced from a hole in the rocks and actually lifted the wagon over a wall of tumbling stone and into the cellar of a house. The wagon sustained only one casualty—a wheel fell off—but the miracle was that it had not happened sooner.

  Their hiding place was not unpleasant. The brilliant morning sun fell through the half-ruined floor in lattice-work squares and stripes. There were stone walls on three sides of them, and half a roof over their heads but the front of the house had long since vanished, and from the shadows Mrs. Pollifax had a breathtaking panoramic view across the valley. It was like hiding under a porch that had been swept to the top of a mountain.

  From here Mrs. Pollifax could see the helicopter move slowly across the valley in the tilting, gliding, oddly tipsy fashion that to Mrs. Pollifax confounded all laws of air flight. It drew nearer, disappeared behind the cliff and then suddenly roared down over their heads. For a full moment it hung suspended over them, a giant eye searching for one tell-tale slip, one unexplained shadow, one sign of careless movement. It was frightening. When it lifted and began to beat its way slowly down to the other end of the cliff Mrs. Pollifax realized that she had been holding her breath. She expelled it slowly, realizing that this could happen again and again during the day. It was not a happy thought.

  Magda said suddenly, angrily, "I cannot take a plane tomorrow morning and leave Dmitri to this. Never."

  Mrs. Pollifax turned and looked into her face. The helicopter had affected her in the same way, delivering them all into a nightmare inhabited by birds of prey that swept down

  from the sky to look for them. "Yes, it's time to make plans," she said firmly. "Let's go and find Anyeta. The plane is gone?"

  Colin nodded. "It disappeared southward."

  "Good, we'll talk."

  They formed a circle inside the cave in which Anyeta had taken refuge. "We move at dark," Anyeta said. "Goru says that will be about nine-thirty tonight. It will be necessary to move slowly in order to be careful, and because the way is not familiar. Goru does not know where the aerodrome is at Kayseri."

  "I do," said Hu Ramsey. "Fortunately it's to the west of the town—on this side of it—so that there's no need to go through Kayseri. Look here, if I went back and got the van—"

  "I used up nearly all of the spare gas last night," said Colin. "I'd calculate about ten more miles of gas are left in the tank. Twelve at most."

  "Damn," said Uncle Hu mildly. "Colin, you know how far away the van is. Where would the nearest petrol station be?"

  "Nearest to the van, you mean? Kirsehir definitely. But if you're thinking of retrieving it to get Magda to the aerodrome then you've got to remember that the search for the van may not have been called off yet. The license may still be on their lists. Someone's bound to stop you again, as they did at Yozgat, and that's perfectly all right if you're alone but if you ever had Magda and Mrs. Pollifax with you—" Colin shook his head. "Kaput. Finis!"

  Mrs. Pollifax nodded. "He's quite right. I think Magda must get to the aerodrome by wagon, the van's too conspicuous."

  Magda looked pensive. "I've no reservation for the eight o'clock flight, or even for the London flight. What if there is no room for me?"

  Mrs. Pollifax nodded. "We must organize this very very carefully. Like generals plotting a battle."

  "Gung ho and all that," suggested Colin, grinning.

  "Exactly. Goru, you say you don't know where the aerodrome is. I think someone must go and find it—now, while it's daylight."

  Anyeta translated this to Goru, who replied. "He will go himself," she said. "Alone. He will take a horse and find the best route for the wagons, also."

  "There's another possibility," went on Mrs. Pollifax "Magda wants to know that Dmitri will not become involved in this. She also needs a reservation for the flight—it would certainly be reassuring to have one for Alice Dexter White clear through to London—and
Mr. Ramsey has his van to retrieve, which has in it roughly enough gas to get to Kirsehir." She lifted her gaze. "Mr. Ramsey, if you could take Dmitri with you and reach that van sometime today, then you could drive it to Kirsehir for gas, and telephone the airport in Kayseri for Magda's flight reservations. You could also provide a—well, a diversion. Kirsehir looks quite removed from Kayseri on this map. If the police should stop the van you'd have with you only a small boy picked up on the road. You've already been checked out at Yozgat—it's possible you wouldn't be taken to jail again. You could then drive on to Ankara."

  Ramsey shot her a quick glance. "Quite right, of course." He looked distinctly unhappy but it was to his credit, thought Mrs. Pollifax, that he did not protest leaving Magda. He was a man who could accept necessity.

  "You would do that?" Magda said hopefully. "Hugh, I cannot tell you how grateful I would be."

  "Of course I can do it," he said crisply. "Dmitri, you'll try me out next as a companion?"

  "Must?" he said in a dispirited voice to Magda.

  She spoke to him gently in Russian and he listened gravely, then with growing brightness. "Da," he told Ramsey, nodding. "I go. I am—how you say—gung ho?"

  "Good boy," Ramsey said, ruffling his hair.

  "You will need a horse and a guide," Anyeta told him. "Yule will go—he knows where the van is hidden, and he can bring the horse back before night. Anything else?"

  They all leaned over the map to pinpoint their present location, the best route to Kirsehir for Ramsey, and the precise area of the Kayseri aerodrome. "Don't head south," Uncle Hu warned Goru. "The police have a station here"— he pointed—"at Inescu. As you can see, that's a little too near for comfort."

  Goru nodded and stood up. "Allaha ismarladik," he said.

  "Guie, guie," said Uncle Hu, shaking his hand.

  Mrs. Pollifax was busy thinking. "Magda will need sleep and food today," she told Anyeta. "Near the end of the day I'll fit her into my American clothes, which she can wear under her Turkish ones." Was there anything else, she wondered, mentally ticking off the plans. Magda would still be very weak. If they could reach the airport while it was still dark a wagon could deposit Magda very near to the air terminal without such unconventional arrival being noticed; she could peel off her Turkish clothes, leave them behind in the wagon and walk into the terminal as Alice Dexter White, American tourist. If her reservation had already been made by telephone then she need only pay for it—automatically Mrs. Pollifax felt for the wad of money pinned to her baggy pants and nodded—and then walk through Customs to the lounge.

  "A suitcase," said Mrs. Pollifax. "She ought to have a suitcase like everyone else."

  "Good thinking," said Colin, "but we've only that horrible cardboard thing Madrali fetched us. An American tourist carrying that would be frighteningly conspicuous."

  Uncle Hu said, "Wait a minute, I can contribute one from the van—Yule can bring it back with him tonight. It's old and battered, I've kept film in it for years but it's definitely Bond Street

  and very British."

  'Then that's it, isn't it?" announced Colin.

  Anyeta produced a pair of crutches and joined them as they walked outside to see the horses saddled. Goru was just leaving, and she called out to him; he nodded and waved. "I told him to make his way to the end of the cliff, following the shade, so that if the plane should come back and see him there would be no sign of where he came from. You must do the same, Mr. Ramsey."

  He nodded absently and turned to Magda. "You will be careful," he said flatly.

  "I will be careful."

  "It's not easy to leave you when Tve just found you. You'll wait for me and Dmitri in Scotland?"

  She nodded.

  He leaned over and held her for a moment silently, and then he turned to Dmitri, smiled and said, "Well, Dmitri? We begin a long journey, you and I."

  For a moment Dmitri and Magda clung to each other, and then he carefully removed the Evil Eye from around his neck and passed it over his grandmother's head. "Now is yours to guard," he said.

  One of the men stationed above them on the cliffside shouted words down to Anyeta. "He says there is no sign of the plane, it is time you go quickly."

  Lifting Dmitri to the saddle of his horse Ramsey said firmly, "We mustn’t keep Yule waiting. Off we go, Dmitri. Gung ho, what?"

  When they had disappeared along the cliff Mrs. Pollifax and Colin lingered outside to look out over the bright, sunlit, dusty valley. "Tomorrow at this time," began Mrs. Pollifax, seating herself on a crumbling wall.

  "Yes?" said Colin, joining her.

  She shook her head. "It's what makes sleep so impossible —the waiting," Mrs. Pollifax explained. "The not-knowing." She stared across the valley, her eyes narrowed against the brilliance of sun on whitened rock. "I love this part of the country," she said suddenly. "I've never seen anything quite like it. I had thought Turkey so dark—"

  "Its history is dark."

  "But look at it—everything sun-baked, the color of cream and old lace and ripe wheat and bleached rock and yellow grass, and then this brilliant blue sky and every now and then clumps of green the color of jade. I do wish I were an artist. What on earth are you scribbling?"

  Colin grinned. "I intend to spend this endless day of ours shooting film, and I'm jotting down your adjectives. Uncle Hu could use them. He does his own narrations, you know."

  "Would I get residuals?" asked Mrs. Pollifax with interest.

  "Would you insist on it?"

  "No."

  "Good," said Colin briskly, "because I'm sure Uncle Hu doesn't even know what the word means, and the most you could expect would be a thank-you note."

  He added firmly, with a confidence she'd not heard before, "I've decided there's something I can do to pay Uncle Hu back for his kindnesses, and that's to film the gypsies. You may not realize it, but in all his years in this country he's never been able to catch more than a passing shot of them from his car." He added dryly, "You can perhaps understand the difficulties in approaching them now. It's bothered him excessively. Now at last he has the opportunity to spend a day with them, film them, make friends with them, and damned if he's not off on an errand of mercy. The chance of a lifetime and he's missing it! I'm going to ask Anyeta if I can poke around filming her gypsies today."

  "I'll come with you," said Mrs. Pollifax.

  The hours of the day were long but not unpleasant. In midmorning they ate warmed-over domatesli pilaf heated by Anyeta on a small, almost smokeless charcoal brazier. The horses were fed. Sandor took over the mending of the damaged wagon wheel and Colin roamed ubiquitously over the cliff with his camera, popping in and out of caves and cellars, following Magda and Mrs. Pollifax to the well when they drew water for Anyeta, filming the gypsy children at their play and the women at work.

  The helicopter did not return but twice a small plane flew over, sending everyone into hiding until it was gone. "Police, I think," said Colin, squinting up at it through holes in the roof, and Anyeta sent out orders to double the lookouts posted on the cliff.

  "She is a queen, you know—literally," Magda said during a moment when Anyeta ventured out on crutches to oversee the wagon's mending. "It is she who holds all the people together. Not only these, but many more."

  "Queen of gypsies!" mused Mrs. Pollifax. "And now I have met one personally . . . She comes from Bulgaria?"

  "Oh no," Magda said firmly. "No, I am not the only person she smuggled out. The gypsies in Bulgaria—it is a country very close to Russia ideologically—are being absorbed into Bulgarian life. They allow no nonsense, the Bulgare, and the gypsy children are made to go to school, to conform, to put aside their heritage and become good workers in the Bulgarian Communist life. It troubles the older ones. No, Anyeta and Goru also smuggled out illegally some of the Rom who wished to leave. Not many but a few."

  "Not all of the eastern European countries are so rigid then?" asked Mrs. Pollifax.

  "Oh no! Anyeta's roots are in Ruman
ia, and from Rumania the gypsies wander freely into Yugoslavia over the mountains, and from there into Italy or western Germany."

  "How did she lose the use of her legs—polio?" asked Mrs. Pollifax.

  Magda laughed. "That is something not even I can discover. But it is said by the Rom that her gift for clairvoyance tripled when she lost the power to walk—as if all her strength went to this gift for the psychic." She shook her head admiringly. "She is an astonishing woman. When I first met her—"

  "Where?" asked Mrs. Pollifax eagerly.

  "It was in Budapest many years ago, in a cafe, and she was wearing pearls and diamonds, i was stunned 10 learn she was an Inglescu." Magda looked at Mrs. Pollifax and nodded. "Is this not amazing? Can you sec her in diamonds? It is the wonder of life, such things. Perhaps you have

  heard of ?" She mentioned the name of a European

  concert violinist.

  "Indeed I have," said Mrs. Pollifax. "I heard him play years ago in Carnegie Hall on one of his few American tours."

  Magda nodded. "He was half-gypsy, you know. That was Anyeta's husband. But she is all gypsy, and grew sick from the gorgio's life. I hear that she became very thin, very pale, very sad, and nearly died. She had to come back to her people."

  'To this," said Mrs. Pollifax reflectively, looking out at the sun and the white rocks. "I can only barely understand. Two days ago I wouldn't have understood at all."

  Magda said softly, "The gypsies have a song—the words go like this:

  Worldly goods that possess,

  Own and destroy you.

  Love must be like the blowing wind.

  Capture the wind between walls

  and it becomes stale.

  Open tents.

  Open hearts.

  Let the wind blow . .."

  They were silent and then Mrs. Pollifax nodded. "Yes," she said quietly.

  Magda slept, and seeing Anyeta watch her Mrs. Pollifax said curiously, "Does your gift for clairvoyance tell you anything?"