The Balkan Trilogy

by Olivia Manning

  Yakimov placed his chair beside Harriet. To Sophie, on the other side of the table, the arrival of these newcomers was, apparently, an imposition scarcely to be borne.

  Harriet said to Yakimov: ‘I saw you on the train at the frontier.’

  ‘Did you indeed!’ Yakimov gave Harriet a wary look. ‘Not to tell a lie, dear girl, I was having a spot of bother. Over m’Hispano-Suiza. Papers not in order. Something to do with a permit. ’Fraid they impounded the poor old girl. Was just explaining to Dobbie here, that little frontier incident cleared me right out of the Ready.’

  ‘Where were you coming from?’

  ‘Oh, here and there. Been touring around. Too far from base when trouble started, so came in to the nearest port. Times like these after all, a bloke can be useful anywhere. ’S’matter of fact, m’chance came this morning. Ra-ther an amusing story,’ he looked about him to gather in a larger audience and, seeing that Guy was ordering coffee for the party, he said: ‘How about a drop of brandy, dear boy?’

  The waiter placed out some small brandy glasses. ‘Tell him to leave the bottle.’ Then, wriggling in his chair, trying to mould the seat more comfortably to his shape, he lifted his glass to Harriet, drained it and smacked his lips in an exaggerated play of appreciation. ‘Nourishment!’ he said.

  For a moment Harriet thought she saw in him an avidity, as though he would, if he could, absorb into his own person the substance of the earth; then he glanced at her. His eyes were guileless. Large, light green, drooping at the outer corners, they were flat-looking, seeming to have no more thickness than a lens and set, not in cavities, but on a flat area between brow and cheek.

  He refilled his glass, obviously preparing to entertain the company. As Guy gazed expectantly at him, Sophie gazed at Guy. She plucked at his sleeve and whispered intimately: ‘There is so much I must tell you. I have many worries.’

  Guy, with a gesture, cut short these confidences, and Yakimov, unaware of the interruption, began: ‘This morning, coming down early, who should I see in the hall of the Athénée Palace but …’

  Yakimov’s normal voice was thin, sad and unvarying, the voice of a cultured Punchinello, but when he came to report McCann, it changed dramatically. As he reproduced McCann’s gritty, demanding tones, he somehow imposed on his own delicate features the shield-shaped, monkey mug that must be McCann.

  He told the whole story of his meeting with McCann, of the plight of the Poles outside the hotel, of the sleeping girl, the scarf that had been buried with the dead. Although he mentioned, apologetically, that he did not speak Polish, he produced the accent of the angry Pole.

  Guy, in appreciation of this piece of theatre, murmured ‘Marvellous’ and Yakimov gave him a pleased smile.

  The others, though entertained, were disconcerted that such a story should be told like a funny anecdote, but when he opened his arms and said: ‘Think of it! Think of your poor old Yaki become an accredited war correspondent,’ his face expressed such comic humility at so unlikely a happening that they were suddenly won to him. Even Sophie’s sullen mouth relaxed. He united them in the warmth of amusement and, at least for the time, they accepted him like a gift – their Yaki, their poor old Yaki. His height, his curious face, his thin body, his large, mild eyes, his voice and, above all, his humility – these were his components and they loved them.

  Dobson had clearly heard the story before. Glancing up from the bill, he smiled at its effect. When the laughter had died down, Sophie, who had not laughed, took the floor with impressive seriousness: ‘It is not so difficult to be journalist, I think. I have been journalist. My paper was anti-fascist, so now things will be difficult for me. Perhaps the Nazis will come here. You understand?’ As Yakimov blinked, appearing to understand nothing, she gave an aggravated little laugh: ‘You have heard of the Nazis, I suppose?’

  ‘The Nasties, dear girl, that’s what I call ’em,’ he giggled. ‘Don’t know what went wrong with them. They seemed to start out all right, but they overdid it somehow. Nobody likes them now.’

  At this Inchcape gave a hoot of laughter. ‘The situation in a nut-shell,’ he said.

  Sophie leant forward and gazed earnestly at Yakimov. ‘The Nazis are very bad men,’ she said. ‘Once I was in Berlin on holiday – you understand? – and a Nazi officer comes with big steps along the pavement. I think: ‘I am a young lady, he will step aside for me’, but no. Pouf! He brushes me as if I were not there and I am flung into the road with the traffic.’

  ‘Dear me!’ said Yakimov.

  As Sophie opened her mouth to talk on, Harriet broke in to ask Yakimov: ‘Are you the man who painted the windows black?’

  ‘Why, yes, dear girl, that was poor Yaki.’

  ‘Won’t you tell us the story?’

  ‘Another time, perhaps. It’s a trifle outré and happened long ago. Soon after m’schooldays, in fact.’

  Sophie, who had been watching Harriet sulkily, now smiled in triumph. Harriet realised, with surprise, that she saw this refusal as a point to her.

  Harriet had failed to consider the possibility of a Sophie. Foolishly. There was always someone. There was also the fact that, whether Sophie had received encouragement or not, Guy’s natural warmth towards everyone could easily be misinterpreted. She had herself taken it for granted that it was for her alone. (She had a sudden vivid memory of one of their early meetings when Guy had taken her claw of a hand and said: ‘You don’t eat enough. You must come to Bucharest and let us feed you up.’) They had slipped into marriage as though there could be no other possible resolution of such an encounter. Yet – supposing she had known him better? Supposing she had known him for a year and during that time observed him in all his other relationships? She would have hesitated, thinking the net of his affections too widely spread to hold the weighty accompaniment of marriage.

  As it was, she had, in all innocence, been prepared to possess him and be possessed, to envelop and be enveloped, in a relationship that excluded the enemy world. She soon discovered that Guy was not playing his part. Through him, the world was not only admitted, it was welcomed; and, somehow, when he approached it, the enmity was no longer there.

  ‘I imagine’ – Inchcape was speaking to Yakimov, his ironical smile giving a grudging credit – ‘I imagine you were at Eton?’

  ‘Alas, dear boy, no,’ said Yakimov. ‘M’poor old dad could not cough up. I went to one of those horrid schools where Marshall is beastly to Snelgrove, and Debenham much too fond of Freebody. But while we’re on the subject, there’s rather an amusing story about a croquet match played by the headmistress of a famous girls’ school against the headmaster – an excessively corpulent man – of a very famous boys’ school. Well …’

  The story, vapid in itself, was made outrageously funny for his audience by the inflections of Yakimov’s frail voice. Pausing on a word, speaking it slowly and with an accent of a slightly breathless disapproval, he started everyone, except Sophie, first into titters, then to a gradual crescendo of laughter. Sophie, her face glum, stared in turn at the reactions of the three male listeners – Guy saying ‘Oh dear!’ and wiping his eyes, Inchcape with his head thrown back, and Dobson rocking in quiet enjoyment.

  ‘But what sort of balls?’ she asked when the story was over.

  ‘Croquet balls,’ said Inchcape.

  ‘Then I do not understand. Why is it funny?’

  ‘Why,’ Inchcape blandly asked, ‘is anything funny?’

  The answer did not satisfy Sophie. She said with some asperity: ‘That is an English joke, eh? Here in Rumania we have jokes, too. We ask “What is the difference between a kitten and a bar of soap?” I think they are silly, such jokes.’

  ‘Well, what is the difference?’ Guy asked.

  Sophie gave him an irritated look and would not answer. He set about persuading her until at last she whispered in a petulant little voice: ‘If you put a kitten to the foot of a tree, it will climb up.’

  Her success surprised her. She looked around, suspiciou
s at first, then, growing complacent, said: ‘I know many such jokes. We told them at school.’

  ‘Tell us some more,’ said Guy.

  ‘Oh, they are so silly.’

  ‘No, they are very interesting.’ And after he had coaxed her to tell several more, all much alike, he began a dissertation on basic peasant humour, to which he related the riddles to be found in fairy-tales. He called on Yakimov to confirm his belief that Russian peasant tales were similar to all other peasant tales.

  ‘I’m sure they are, dear boy,’ Yakimov murmured, his eyes vacant, his body inert, life extinct now, it seemed, except in the hand with which, every few minutes, he lifted the brandy bottle and topped up his glass.

  Dobson, almost asleep, slid forward in his chair, then, half-waking, slid back again. Inchcape was listening to Guy, his smile fixed. It was late, but no one showed any inclination to move. The restaurant was still crowded, the orchestra played on, Florica was expected to sing again. Harriet, suddenly exhausted, wished she were in bed. Guy had told her that on hot summer nights the diners in these garden restaurants might linger on under the trees until dawn. This, however, was not a hot summer night. Gusts of autumnal chill came at intervals from outer darkness and hardened the summer air. Someone, earlier in the evening, had mentioned that the first snow had fallen on the peaks that rose north of the city. She hoped that discomfort, if nothing else, would soon set people moving.

  She watched Yakimov drain the last of the bottle into the glass. He then began glancing about, his eyes regaining the luminous gleam of life. When a waiter approached, he made a minimal movement and closed his eyes at the bottle. It was whipped away and replaced at such speed, Harriet could only suppose Yakimov had over waiters the sort of magnetic power some people have over beast and birds. His glass newly filled, he sank back, prepared, Harriet feared, to stay here all night.

  As for Guy, the evening’s drinking had not touched on his energy. It had merely brought him to a garrulous euphoria in which discoveries were being made and flights taken into metaphysics and the moral sciences. Every few minutes, Sophie – happy and vivacious now – interrupted him possessively to explain what he was saying. Was it possible, Harriet wondered, that this talk was as fatuous as it seemed to her?

  ‘One might say,’ Guy was saying, ‘that riddles are the most primitive form of humour: so primitive, they’re scarcely humour at all, but a sort of magic.’

  Sophie burst in: ‘He means, like the sphinx and like the oracle. Oracles always spoke in riddles.’

  ‘Not the oracle at Delos,’ said Inchcape.

  Sophie gave him a look of contempt. ‘The oracle was at Delphi,’ she said.

  Inchcape shrugged and let it pass.

  At midnight Florica came out to sing again. This time Guy was too absorbed in his own talk to notice her. Harriet looked towards Ionescu’s table, but there was no one there. Florica, applauded with less vigour than before, departed and the orchestra strummed on.

  Harriet yawned. Imagining she was accepting the situation indulgently, she watched Sophie and wondered: ‘Is Guy really taken in by this feminine silliness? If I made all those grimaces and gestures as I talked, and interrupted and insisted on attention would he find it all attractive?’ Almost in spite of herself, she said ‘I think we should go now.’

  Shocked by the suggestion, Guy said: ‘I’m sure no one wants to go yet.’

  ‘No, no,’ Sophie joined with him at once. ‘We do not go so soon.’

  Harriet said: ‘I’m tired.’

  ‘Tomorrow,’ said Sophie, ‘you have all day to sleep.’

  Inchcape stubbed his cigarette. ‘I would like an early night. I did not sleep much on the train.’

  ‘Well, let me finish this.’ Holding up his glass, which was full, Guy spoke in the tone of a child that begs to sit up ten minutes more.

  Refilling his own glass, Yakimov said: ‘It’s still very early, dear girl.’

  They sat another half-an-hour, Guy eking out his drink and trying to regain the rhythm of talk, but something was lost. An end-of-the-evening lameness was in the air. When, at last, they were agreed to go, there was still the business of finding the waiter.

  Inchcape threw down a thousand-lei note and said: ‘That ought to cover me.’ Guy settled the rest.

  They picked up a taxi in the Chaussée and started back. Sophie, whose flat was in the centre of the town, was dropped first. Guy descended with her and took her to her door where she talked at him urgently, holding to his arm. Leaving her, he called back to her: ‘We’ll meet tomorrow.’

  Next Yakimov was taken to the Athénée Palace. Outside the hotel, he said: ‘Dear me, I’d almost forgotten. I’m bidden to a party in Princess Teodorescu’s suite.’

  ‘Rather a late party,’ murmured Inchcape.

  ‘An all-night party,’ Yakimov said.

  Guy said: ‘When we find a flat, you must come to dinner with us.’

  ‘Delighted, dear boy,’ said Yakimov, who, as he struggled out of the taxi, was almost sitting on the step. Somehow he got down to the pavement and crossed it unsteadily. Pressing against the revolving doors, he waved back baby-fashion.

  ‘I shall be interested,’ said Inchcape dryly, ‘to see what return you get for all this hospitality.’

  Reprovingly, Dobson spoke from his corner: ‘Yaki used to be famous for his parties.’

  ‘Oh, well,’ said Inchcape, ‘we’ll see. Meanwhile, if you don’t mind, I’d like to be dropped next.’

  The Pringles reached their room in silence, Harriet fearing complaint that she had broken up the party. A justified complaint. It was true she could sleep all day – and what did an hour or two matter in the face of eternity?

  While she got into bed, Guy studied his face in the glass. He broke the silence to ask her: ‘Do you think I look like Oscar Wilde?’

  ‘You do, a little.’

  He remained in front of the glass, distorting his face into the likeness of one famous film-star and another.

  Harriet wondered if this was the moment to ask him about Sophie, and decided it was not. She said, instead:

  ‘You’re an incurable adolescent. Come to bed.’

  As he turned from the glass, he said with inebriated satisfaction: ‘Old Pringle’s all right. Old Pringle’s not a bad chap. Old Pringle’s not a bad chap at all.’

  4

  Yakimov found his dress clothes sponged, pressed and laid ready for him on his bed. When he changed, he put on one black shoe and one brown.

  At the party someone would be sure to mention the fact that he was wearing odd shoes. He would then gaze down at his feet in surprise and say: ‘And do you know, dear boy, I have another pair at home exactly like these.’

  He believed this to be his most subtle party prank. He had not played it since dear old Dollie died, reserving it for those times when he was in the highest spirits. Now, so changed were his fortunes, he was ready for anything.

  After he had dressed, he sat for a while re-reading a letter on which he was working. It was to his mother. In it he had already told her where he was to be found and had begged her to send his quarterly remittance as soon as possible. He was, he said, engaged on important voluntary war work, giving no details for fear she should be misled as to his need.

  After a long reflective pause, he picked up his stub of pencil and added to please her: ‘Going tonight to Princess Teodorescu’s bun-fight.’ Ordinarily the effort of one sentence would have brought him to a stop, but in his present mood his hand drove on. With some words written very large, some small, but all legible like the carefully written words of a child, he concluded: ‘All the best then, dear old girl, and keep your pecker up. Your Yaki is in the big times once again.’

  Filled with a sense of a task well done and pleasure ahead, he went down to meet Prince Hadjimoscos.

  It had been for Yakimov a very satisfactory day. He was content, with a contentment he had ceased to experience since thrown penniless upon the world at Dollie’s death. That aft
ernoon, newly risen from his siesta, he had gone down to the hotel bar, the famous English Bar, where he had seen, as he hoped he might, someone he knew. This was an English journalist called Galpin.

  Galpin, seeing Yakimov, had looked elsewhere. Unruffled, Yakimov had placed himself in view and said: ‘Why, hello, dear boy! We met last in Belgrade,’ then, before Galpin could reply, he added: ‘What are you drinking?’ Whatever it was Galpin had been about to say, he now merely grunted and said: ‘Scotch.’

  Galpin was not alone. When Yakimov smiled around to ask what the others were drinking, they closed about him as an oyster closes about a pearl. He told the story of his encounter with McCann and received polite attention. ‘Think of it, dear boys,’ he said. ‘Your poor old Yaki become an accredited war correspondent!’

  Galpin asked: ‘And did you get McCann’s stuff out?’

  ‘Naturally. Every word.’

  ‘Lucky for McCann,’ Galpin gazed glumly into his glass. It was empty.

  Yakimov insisted on ordering a second round. The journalists accepted their drinks, then broke up to talk among themselves. They had been discussing the arrival in Bucharest of Mortimer Tufton, and now returned to the subject. Tufton, they said, had an instinct for coming events. When he arrived anywhere, the place became news. Yakimov was forgotten. He did not mind. He was happy that he could once again be a dispenser of hospitality. Having introduced himself as such, he might hope that in future no one would be actively rude to him.

  Disgorged by the group, he came face to face with the local hangers-on of the bar that had been attracted over by the scent of Yakimov’s largesse. They stared admiringly at him. He let them introduce themselves: Cici Palu, Count Ignotus Horvath and Prince Hadjimoscos. If there was in the smile with which he received them a trifle of condescension, it was very modest condescension. These, he knew, were his natural associates. He did not suppose they had any illusions about him, but it flattered him to be their patron. He ordered drinks for them. They all, as fashion required, took whisky, the most expensive drink in the bar. ‘After this,’ said Yakimov, ‘I must be on my way. I’m dining with my dear old friend Dobbie Dobson of the Legation.’