The Balkan Trilogy

by Olivia Manning

  They stayed on in the garden until the evening, when the scent of lime was strongest. Galpin had his portable wireless-set and repeatedly tried to get the promised report of Churchill’s speech. The bats were darting about overhead. Mrs Ramsden bent down, frightened for her hat.

  ‘They have to be cut out if they get in,’ she said, adding: ‘But it’s not just them: it’s what they leave behind.’

  The trees grew dark beneath a sky sheened like a silver plate. Unlike most other café gardens, the hotel garden was not illuminated. The only light came from the hotel windows. The possibilities of the garden had never been exploited. Grass grew in tufts from the pebbled floor. No one bothered to brush from the tables the withering lime-flowers. Except for a few clandestine Rumanian couples who sat where they would be least observed, the English usually had the place to themselves.

  At last the speech began. The Rumanian couples rose out of the shadows and moved silently forward to hear Churchill promise that England would never surrender. ‘We shall fight on the beaches,’ he said. ‘We shall fight in the fields.’

  Mrs Ramsden bowed her face down into her hands. Her hat fell off and rolled unnoticed under the table.

  Each day the crowd round the German Bureau window saw the broad arrows of the German advance stretch farther into France. One crossed the Somme and veered south towards Paris. The spectators said that surely, some time soon, there must be a stop. No one could contemplate the loss of Paris.

  Harriet passed the window on her way to Bella’s flat. She need not have gone up the Calea Victoriei or, going that way, she could have kept to the other pavement. Instead she brushed through the crowd, giving the arrows a glance which was meant to be indifferent, and went on with her head in the air.

  Bella, as Harriet entered her drawing-room, cried: ‘What do you think?’ giving Harriet, for a second, a pang of hope, but Bella’s excitement was merely a state of mind produced by her success as Helen. All she had to say was: ‘They’ve still got that portrait of Chamberlain hanging up at the club. Him and his flower Safety. I called in the servants and ordered them to take it down at once. I made them put it face to the wall in the toilet.’

  The dressmaker was delivering the women’s costumes, and Bella had insisted that Harriet come to see the final fitting.

  The dress, made from cheap white voile from which peasant women made their blouses, was of classical simplicity. Bella had been displeased to find all the female characters were to dress alike. She wanted to have her own costume made, contemplating something rather fine in slipper satin. Now, having to put on the voile dress, she thrust out her lower lip and walked to and fro before the glass of her gigantic wardrobe, giving petulant little tugs at the bodice and skirt.

  The dressmaker, on her knees, sat back on her heels and watched. She had been the cheapest Harriet could find – a tiny creature, very thin, smelling of mouldy bread. Her face, which had one cheek full and one caught-in like a deformed apple, was dark yellow and heavily moustached. She twitched nervously when Bella paused near her and, raising her hands appealingly, began to talk. Ignoring her, Bella said: ‘Well, all I can say is, we’re going to look like a lot of vestal virgins. Of course, I’ve got plenty of jewellery – but the others! I don’t know, I’m sure.’

  ‘Must you wear jewellery?’

  ‘My dear, I am Helen of Troy. I am a queen.’ She turned sideways, drew back her head and, with a stately and reflective air, observed the line of her fine bosom and her bare, round, white arm. The dress had an elegance and perfection scarcely to be found among the best English work: ‘I think we need a little colour – a square of chiffon. A big hankie, perhaps. A nice blue for me, or perhaps a gold. Other colours for the other girls.’

  Bella’s face had softened, but Harriet felt depressed. She saw her designs now as stark and insipid. She felt she had spoilt the play. The dressmaker tried to speak again. Harriet asked:

  ‘What does she want?’

  ‘She wants to be paid.’

  Harriet began getting out the money. Bella said: ‘She’s asking a thousand lei. Give her eight hundred.’

  ‘But a thousand is nothing. It’s barely ten shillings.’

  ‘She doesn’t know that. She’ll take eight hundred. A Rumanian would give her half that.’

  Harriet had nothing smaller than a thousand-lei note. The woman accepted it with a show of bashful reluctance, but as soon as it was in her hand she bolted to the door. Bella, near the door, shut it before she could reach it, then sternly demanded the two hundred lei change. The woman, her face drawn, whined like a professional beggar, then began to weep. Bella held out her hand, unrelenting.

  Harriet said: ‘Bella! She’s earned her money. We don’t want a row over a couple of bob. Let her go.’

  Bella, startled by this appeal, moved from the door and the woman fled. They could hear her scrabbling with a lock, then, as she went, leaving the front door open, the click of her heels as she sped down the marble staircase.

  ‘Really!’ Bella grumbled in self-excuse. ‘You can’t trust them an inch. They always take advantage of foreigners. If you’d had as much to do with them as I have, you’d be just as sick of them.’

  Before Harriet went, they found the dressmaker had abandoned the parcel of costumes which she was supposed to deliver to the other female players.

  ‘There, look at that!’ said Bella. ‘We’ll have to get a man to take it to the University.’

  ‘I’ll take it,’ said Harriet.

  ‘No, no.’ Bella held it firmly. ‘I’ll take it,’ she said, ‘I’m not ashamed to be seen carrying a parcel.’

  When Clarence drove her back to the knitting factory, Harriet found the tights completed and exactly as she had ordered. On the way back he called again at the Polish store and came out with an armful of shirts and underwear. He put these on her lap. ‘For Guy,’ he said.

  ‘Why wouldn’t you give me these before?’

  ‘Because you were being so bloody-minded. Don’t you realise – if you treated me properly, you could get anything in the world you wanted from me?’

  That afternoon, when Harriet sat with the others in the Athénée Palace garden, the news of the Italian declaration of war on the Allies was brought out by an Italian waiter who sometimes served them. He beamed over the English faction at the table, saying several times: ‘You are surprise, eh? You are surprise?’

  Galpin replied: ‘We are not surprised. We’re only surprised there aren’t more of you hungry hyenas trying to get in on someone else’s kill.’

  The waiter did not understand or, if he did, he was unaffected. He merely said: ‘Now it is we, the Italians, who will go abroad to look at picture galleries.’ He gave a flick of his cloth at the lime-flowers on the table and went off singing a snatch, laughing on a high note of triumph.

  26

  The dress rehearsal of Troilus and Cressida was to take place after the theatre closed on the night of Thursday, the 13th of June. From then until midnight on Friday the theatre and its staff were hired by the English players. Harriet was invited to this final rehearsal, which was called for eleven p.m.

  Clarence, who was taking her out to supper, called for her in the early evening. He said: ‘There’s some sort of scare on. The police are stopping people and examining their papers.’

  ‘What are they looking for?’

  ‘Spies, I suppose.’

  The crowds were out walking as usual in the streets. Police were moving among them in sky-blue knots of three or four. Police vans stood at the kerbs. No one seemed much alarmed. The situation was too desolating to cause excitement.

  For Bucharest, the fall of France was the fall of civilisation. France was an ideal for all of those who struggled against their peasant origin. All culture, art and fashion, liberal opinion and concepts of freedom were believed to come from France. With France lost, there would be no stay or force against savagery. Except for a handful of natural fascists, no one really believed in the New Order. The tr
uth was evident even to those who had invested in Germany: the victory of Nazi Germany would be the victory of darkness. Cut off from Western Europe, Rumania would be open to persecution, bigotry, cruelty, superstition and tyranny. There was no one to save her now.

  An atmosphere of acute sadness overhung the city, something near despair. Indeed, it was despair. Harriet and Clarence drove up to the Chaussée in what seemed the last sunset of the world.

  The grădinăs, that all winter had been a waste of snow, were alive now with lights and music. Here there was an attempt to believe that life was going on as usual. People were strolling beneath the chestnuts and limes that, in full leaf, were still unblemished by the summer heat. Harriet and Clarence left the car and joined the crowd, walking as far as the Arc de Triomphe. Around them they could hear, in several languages, expression of the bewilderment they felt themselves. People were asking one another what had happened inside France. What confusion among the French forces, what failure of spirit, had enabled an enemy to make this rapid advance? ‘It is the new Germany,’ said a woman. ‘No one can withstand it.’

  Clarence laughed shortly and said: ‘Steffaneski’s gloating a bit. He said he had to hear enough about the three weeks’ war in Poland. Now we can reflect on the fact that Holland and Belgium have capitulated and the English been forced out of Europe all within eighteen days. He doesn’t give France another week.’

  ‘What do you think?’ Harriet asked.

  ‘I don’t know.’ Clarence spoke slowly, putting up a show of reflective calm. ‘The Germans reached the Marne in the last war. The French fought like madmen to save Paris. They went to the front in taxis; every man in Paris turned out; and the line held. It could happen again.’

  As they approached the Arc de Triomphe, the crowds thinned. Three little peasant girls, not yet in their teens, wearing embroidered dresses and flowers in their hair, suddenly appeared in front of them, and, dancing backwards, began chanting something at Clarence. Harriet thought they were begging, but they were not using the beggar’s whine, and they occasionally gave Harriet mischievous side-glances of great liveliness.

  ‘What do they want?’ she asked.

  ‘Why,’ said Clarence, ‘they’re offering themselves, of course. They’re whores.’

  ‘They can’t be. They’re children.’

  Clarence shrugged. With his chin down, his lower lip thrust out, he looked from under his brows at the girls who were dancing before him, sometimes scattering apart and sometimes bunching together and giggling at whatever they were suggesting.

  ‘They’re a lot more cheerful than most peasants,’ Harriet said, laughing.

  Clarence grunted. ‘They haven’t yet learnt what life is like.’

  ‘It’s odd they should approach you when I’m here.’

  ‘They’re inexperienced. They know no better.’

  Aware they were being discussed, the girls shrieked with laughter, but they had begun to look about them for more promising material. Seeing a group of men together in the distance, they suddenly ran off, squeaking among themselves like a flock of starlings.

  Harriet, her mind elsewhere, said: ‘That was rather amusing.’

  ‘You think so!’ Clarence sombrely asked.

  They went to one of the smaller garden restaurants, where the dusk was clotting in the trees. It was the time of the year when the evenings were most delightful – as warm as summer but still scented and moist with vegetation. Out here, beyond the houses, the whole sweep of the sky was visible from the iris-blue of the horizon up to the zenith, that was the rich, bloomed purple of a grape. There were a few stars of great size and brilliance.

  A small orchestra was playing in the garden. When it came to a stop, neighbouring orchestras could be heard wailing and sobbing in response like birds. Somewhere in the distance Florica rose to her top note. But the music soothed no one. The diners glanced from table to table, aware of themselves and those about them, all gathered helplessly here in a time of disaster. Only the lovers at secluded tables remained untouched in their private worlds outside the flow of time.

  Clarence sighed and said: ‘I wonder what will become of us. We may never get home again. I imagine your parents are pretty worried.’

  ‘I haven’t any parents,’ said Harriet. ‘At least, none to speak of. They divorced when I was very small. They both remarried and neither found it convenient to have me. My Aunt Penny brought me up. I was a nuisance to her, too, and when I was naughty she used to say: “No wonder your mummy and daddy don’t love you.” In fact, all I have is here.’

  She wondered what it was she had. Looking up through the leaves at the rich and lustrous sky, she felt resentment of Guy because he was not here. She told herself he was a man who could never be present when needed. This was a time they should be together. Looking at the budding canna lilies and breathing in the scent of the box, she thought she should be sharing with Guy these enchantments that gave so keen an edge to suspense.

  They had ordered their food. When the wine waiter came, Clarence said: ‘Well, if we die tomorrow, we can at least drink well.’ He chose an expensive Tokay.

  Harriet thought that, after all, she was not alone. She had someone. It was a pity she could feel no more for Clarence than that. It was, she thought, a charade of a relationship, given an added dimension by the uncertainty in which they existed. It had to serve for what she missed with Guy. And did Guy realise she missed anything at all?

  She wondered if he had any true awareness of the realities of life. That morning Dobson had rung the flat to say that British subjects must get transit visas for all neighbouring countries against a possible sudden evacuation. Guy said: ‘You’ll have to get them. I’m much too busy with the play.’ She felt his escape from reality the less excusable because it was he who, in their few pre-war days together, had been the advocate of an anti-fascist war, a war that would, he knew, come down like a knife between him and his friends in England. He had often quoted: ‘So I drink your health before the gun-butt raps upon the door.’ Well, here was the gun-butt – and where was Guy? He would be dragged off to Belsen protesting that he could not go because he was too busy.

  Clarence, watching her, asked her what she was smiling at. She said: ‘I was thinking of Guy.’ After a pause, she asked him: ‘Did you know that Guy once thought of marrying Sophie to give her a British passport?’

  ‘Surely not?’

  ‘He thought of it. But I doubt if he would ever have done it. He might be a natural teacher but he’s not taking on, on a permanent basis, the teacher-pupil relationship. No, when it came to marriage, he chose someone he thought would not make too many demands. Perhaps the trouble is, I make too few.’

  Clarence looked at her keenly but his only comment was to say in a tone of high complaint: ‘Guy picks up with the most extraordinary people. Take Yakimov, for instance. Now, there’s a mollusc on the hull of life, a no-man’s-land of the soul. I doubt if Guy will ever shake him off. You’ve got him for life now.’

  Harriet, refusing to be upset, said: ‘I think Guy saw him as a subject for improvement. He could turn him into something, even if it were only an actor. You know what Guy is like. I’ve heard you say he is a saint.’

  ‘He may be a sort of saint but he’s also a sort of fool. You don’t believe me? You’ll find I’m right. He can’t see through people as you can. Don’t be misled by him.’

  Harriet said: ‘He’s not a fool, but it’s true, he can suffer fools. That’s his strength. Because of that, he’ll never have a shortage of friends.’

  ‘There’s a streak of the exhibitionist in Guy,’ said Clarence. ‘He likes to feel himself at the centre. He likes to have a following.’

  ‘Well, he certainly has got a following.’

  ‘A following of fools.’

  ‘That’s the only sort anyone can hope to have. The discriminating are lonely. Look at me. When Guy is occupied, I have no one but you.’

  Clarence smiled, taking this as a compliment.
r />   The fiddler from the orchestra was wandering round playing at each table in turn. When he reached Clarence and Harriet, he bowed with significant smiles, certain they were lovers. He struck his bow across the strings and, working himself into an immediate frenzy, produced poignant howls from his instrument. It was all over in a moment, a rapid orgasm, then he bowed again, and Clarence gave him a glass of wine. He held up the glass first to Clarence, then to Harriet, congratulating them – on what? Probably on their non-existent passion.

  Clarence’s beautiful, gentle mouth sank sadly as he gazed into his glass. When he had drunk enough, Harriet noted, forbearance took the place of self-criticism. He now felt love and pity for his own sufferings.

  She said: ‘You should get married.’

  ‘One can’t just marry for marrying’s sake.’

  ‘There’s always Brenda.’

  ‘Brenda is twelve hundred miles away,’ he said. ‘I don’t know when I’ll see her again, and I don’t know that I want to. She isn’t what I need.’

  Harriet did not ask him what he needed, but he was now drunk enough to tell her: ‘I need someone strong, fierce, intolerant and noble.’ He added: ‘Someone like you.’

  She laughed, rather uneasy at so direct an approach. ‘I don’t recognise myself. I’m not strong. I suppose I’m intolerant – a bad fault. I have no patience with people. Sophie told Guy he had married a monster.’

  ‘Oh, Sophie!’ Clarence spoke the name with contempt.

  Harriet said: ‘I sometimes think I shall end up a lonely, ragged, mad old woman trailing along the gutter.’

  ‘Why should you?’ Clarence tartly asked. ‘You’ve got Guy. I suppose you’ll always have Guy.’

  ‘And he’ll always have the rest of the world.’

  When they drove up the Calea Victoriei, they saw that the illuminations had been switched off in the Cişmigiu. The park, where people walked in summer until all hours, was now silent and deserted, a map of darkness in the heart of the subdued city.

  Clarence said: ‘“The Paris of the East” mourning her opposite number.’