The Balkan Trilogy

by Olivia Manning

  In contrast, the German Bureau window was brilliant with white neon, and still drew its audience. They saw, as they passed, the red arrows, open-jawed like pincers, almost encircling the site of Paris.

  When they entered the theatre, they entered an atmosphere so removed from the outside tension that it might have been that of another planet. Every light was lit in the foyer. People were hurrying about, all, it seemed, so hypnotised by Guy and his production that reality had lost substance for them. They were possessed by a creative excitement, anticipating fulfilment, not defeat.

  Even Clarence was caught, as he entered, into this atmosphere. He said: ‘I must leave you. Guy wants us dressed and ready by eleven o’clock,’ and he hurried off into a maze of passages to find the dressing room assigned to him.

  Harriet, after standing uncertainly awhile, went in search of a familiar face, but the people she met brushed past her, too wrapped up in their players’ world to recognise her. Only Yakimov, on his way to the stage in pink tights and a cloak of rose coloured velvet, stopped and said: ‘What’s the matter, dear girl? You look worried.’

  ‘Everyone’s worried,’ she said. ‘The Germans have almost reached Paris.’

  ‘Really!’ He looked concerned a moment, then someone called him, his face cleared, and he left her for more important matters.

  She hoped she might be needed to advise on the wearing of the costumes, but she was only the designer. The wardrobe mistress, a student, pins in her mouth, needle and cotton in hand, was surrounded by enquiries and complaints. Harriet stood beside her a while, hoping to be consulted, but the girl, with a brief shy smile, indicated that she could cope very well on her own.

  Harriet had never encouraged the students. She had, indeed, resented their possessiveness and their demands on Guy’s time, so now she knew she had only herself to blame if they received her with respect rather than cordiality.

  She came at length on Bella, who was sharing a dressing room with Andromache and Cassandra. The girls were dressing unobtrusively in the background while Bella, already dressed, sat before the glass, critically yet complacently examining her face, that was richly coloured in creams, buffs, pinks and browns. Her hair, that had grown more golden since Harriet last saw it, was caught into a golden tube and hung in a tail down her back.

  Harriet said: ‘I’ve brought the chiffons.’

  ‘Oh, darling!’ Without taking her eyes from the glass, Bella stretched a hand in Harriet’s direction and wriggled her fingers. ‘How sweet of you!’ She threw her voice back to the girls: ‘Atenţiune! Doamna Pringle has brought us some gorgeous chiffons.’ Bella, it seemed, had taken on with her status of actress the elevated camaraderie of the green-room.

  When Harriet had distributed the chiffons, she made her way back to the immense auditorium, with its gilt and claret-coloured plush, that was lit only by the light from the stage. She took a seat in the row behind Fitzsimon, Dobson and Foxy Leverett, who were dressed ready for the rehearsal. Dobson and Foxy were advising Fitzsimon that he must ensure his success in the leading rôle by padding out the front of his tights.

  ‘– certainly stuffing in some cotton-wool,’ said Foxy, gleeful at the thought. ‘The girls here like to see a teapot.’

  On the stage Guy, dressed as Nestor, but not made up, was haranguing a line of peasants who blinked bashfully into the glare from the footlights.

  Harriet whispered to Dobson: ‘What is going on?’

  ‘They’re the stage-hands,’ said Dobson. ‘Guy spent the afternoon explaining what was required of them and putting them through it, but just now, when he started the rehearsal, they were hopeless. They’re just indifferent, of course. They think anything will do for a pack of foreigners.’

  Driven into one of his rare fits of anger, Guy had lined the men up before him. Some were in dark, shabby suits like indigent clerks, others in a mixture of city and peasant dress; one man, so thin that he had an appearance of fantastic height, wore on the point of his head a conical peasant cap. Some stood grinning in a sort of foggy wonder at being addressed, and forcibly addressed, by a foreigner in their own language. One or two looked dignified and pained: the rest stood in a stupor, any language, even their own, being barely comprehensible to them.

  From what she could catch of his words, Harriet gathered that Guy was impressing on the men that tomorrow evening a great company of Rumanian Princes, aristocrats and statesmen, foreign diplomats and distinguished personages of every nationality and kind, was to be present. This was to be a tremendous occasion when every man must do not only his best, but more than his best. He must achieve a triumph that would stun the world with admiration. The honour of this great national theatre was at stake; the honour of Bucharest was at stake – nay, the honour of the whole of Rumania was in their hands.

  As Guy’s voice rose, the three Legation men stopped talking among themselves and listened.

  The stage-hands shuffled and coughed a bit as the force of their responsibility was revealed to them. One, a short, stout, ragged peasant with a look of congenital idiocy, grinned, unable to take Guy seriously. Guy pointed at him. ‘You!’ he cried. ‘What do you do?’

  The man was a scene-shifter.

  A job of supreme importance, said Guy. A job on which depended the success or failure of the whole production. Guy looked to him for his full support. The peasant grinned from side to side, but, meeting no response from his fellows, his grin faded.

  ‘And now,’ said Guy, stern but satisfied that by the force of his personality he had made them attend to him: ‘Now …’ and towering with his height and bulk over even the tallest of them, he began to go again through the drill of scene and lighting changes which he had worked out.

  Harriet stared up at Guy, her heart melting painfully in her breast, and asked herself what it was for – this expense of energy and creative spirit. To produce an amateur play that would fill the theatre for one afternoon and one evening and be forgotten in a week. She knew she could never give herself to such an ephemeral thing. If she had her way, she would seize on Guy and canalise his zeal to make a mark on eternity. But he was a man born to expend himself like a whirlwind – and, indeed, what could one do but love him?

  At midnight, while the stage-hands were still being put through their duties, Harriet went home to bed. She heard Guy and Yakimov return some time in the middle of the night. They were gone again before breakfast. That morning there was to be a final rehearsal in the theatre.

  When she left the house, people seemed to be in a state of subdued confusion. They were wandering about asking each other what was happening. The red arrows had come to a stop in the window of the German Bureau. Were the German forces at a standstill? Some thought there was a lull for strategic reasons. Others said the French had pulled themselves together and were holding the line round Paris. Whatever the news might be, the Rumanian authorities, ‘to avert panic’, were withholding information and had cut the international lines.

  Harriet went to the Athénée Palace garden. No one there had much to say. Even Galpin was silenced by the sense that they were approaching an end.

  ‘What’s going to happen to us all?’ Miss Truslove asked out of the great nothingness of their thoughts.

  ‘That,’ said Galpin, ‘is anybody’s guess.’

  After an interval, during which the fountain’s trickle was as monotonous as silence, Mrs Ramsden said: ‘Well, there’s the play tonight. That’s something to look forward to.’

  ‘Do you think anyone will come?’ asked Harriet, fearful now that there would be no audience at all.

  ‘Of course they will,’ said Mrs Ramsden. ‘Sir Montagu will be there. The Woolleys are going. Oh, everyone’s turning up. It’s the thing, I can tell you.’

  Miss Truslove said: ‘It’s nice to have something to distract us.’

  The others nodded agreement. Even Galpin and Screwby had booked seats.

  ‘Haven’t been inside a theatre for months,’ said Galpin.

  Scr
ewby said: ‘Haven’t been in one for years.’

  ‘An English play,’ said Mrs Ramsden. ‘For us here, that’s quite an intellectual treat.’ She sighed and said: ‘I do like an evening at the theatre.’

  The morning was hot and growing hotter. The sun rose until it was poised directly over the lime trees. The English group at the table, meshed in a shifting, glimmering pattern of light and shade, was bemused with heat and half-sleep.

  Harriet, lolling in her chair beside the fountain, lost sense of the garden altogether and seemed to pass into an English landscape of fields, some fallow, some furrowed, all colourless through mist. A few elms rose out of the hedges into a milky sky. The scene was so vivid, she shivered slightly in the English air, then a lime-flower dropped on to the table before her and she was returned, startled, to the sunlight. She picked up the flower and stared at it to cover the pricking in her eyes.

  She remembered her arrival in Rumania, and her first long days of sunlight. That had been a difficult time, yet she thought of it nostalgically because the war had barely begun. She saw herself as she had been, nervous, suspicious and isolated among strangers; jealous of Guy’s friends and of his belief that he owed his chief allegiance to the outside world. Unmarried, she had been a personality in her own right. Married, she saw herself coming in, if at all, somewhere in Guy’s wake.

  It occurred to her that it was only during these last weeks she had become reconciled to the place. She had faced uncertainty without Guy. Those who faced it with her had become, through the exalted concord of their common fears, old friends.

  She stayed with them until early evening, then went back to her flat to dress for the evening performance.

  27

  Only students had been admitted to the matinée performance of Troilus and Cressida: the seats were cheap. For the evening performance the price of seats was such that wonder had been aroused, bringing in a great many rich Rumanians and Jews who could not afford not to be seen in the audience. The profits were to be contributed towards a scheme devised by Guy and Dubedat for the housing of poor students. The fact roused more wonder than the price of the seats, for few Rumanians could believe that a group of people, even English people, would work so hard and so long at no profit to themselves.

  Nikko, having formally asked Guy’s permission to escort Harriet to the play, called for her at half-past seven. In his waisted dinner-jacket, with his beautifully tied bow, he looked like a dark, angry little male cat. He seemed ready to hiss. Instead he smiled brilliantly and kissed her hand.

  ‘Harry-ott, a token of esteem!’ He presented her with a rose from the King’s flower-shop. ‘I do not often go there. I would not myself encourage a King who is not only a gangster but a common shopkeeper, but tonight, when I passed the window, I saw the rose and thought of Harry-ott.’

  He went on smiling, but he was on edge and, as Harriet poured him a drink, he burst out: ‘I am not one to speak of money. Like the English, I think it not chic to speak of money, but …’ he drew up his shoulders and spread his hands like fins. ‘For weeks I am grass widow. I have no wife – and now what do they say? “Domnul Niculescu, please pay five thousand lei to see Doamna Niculescu walk upon a stage.”’ He gave a gulp of disgusted laughter and tried to look amused. ‘It is funny, is it not?’

  Harriet said: ‘There were no free seats. The proceeds are for charity.’

  ‘The poor students, you mean? Ah, Harry-ott, cast half an eye around. There are too many poor students. Every son of a peasant-born priest or schoolmaster must go to the University. All seek to be lawyers. Believe me, there are already too many lawyers. There is not the work for them. What we need are artisans.’ Here he interrupted himself: ‘But this is no time for solemn talk. I take a beautiful lady to a great occasion. It is rather a time for levity. Come, the taxi awaits.’

  In the taxi, he asked: ‘You have heard the news?’

  ‘No. Is there news?’

  ‘Madame has demanded a speed-up of the Drucker trial. She is afraid the German influence may squash it. A trial could be embarrassing to Germany.’

  ‘So the German influence may save Drucker?’

  ‘Indeed not. Nothing can save Drucker. For him, if it is not Bistriţa, then it will be Dachau. He is no use now to Germany or anyone else.’

  ‘Then I do not understand – what is Madame afraid of?’

  ‘Without a trial, his oil holdings cannot be seized by the State. They would remain the property of Doamna Drucker.’

  Harriet was thankful to see the theatre foyer full. ‘A brilliant audience,’ said Nikko as they took their seats. He rose frequently to bow from the waist in this direction and that, his bared teeth white beneath the black bar of his moustache. Between bows, he indicated to Harriet the titles about them. Among these were a great many princes and princesses. ‘Of great family,’ whispered Nikko, ‘but almost all on their uppers. I wonder who paid for their seats!’ Among them was Princess Teodorescu with her Baron.

  ‘Ah, Harry-ott,’ said Nikko, ‘you can be proud. And reflect also, Harry-ott, we are even now the ally of England. We come to show sympathy.’

  Every seat was taken before the curtain rose. Harriet smiled about her in relief at the sight. She even smiled at Woolley, who, sitting with his arms folded high on his chest, turned his chin on to his shoulder and accorded her a brief nod.

  Sir Montagu and his party appeared in the royal box. The audience rose while ‘God Save the King’ was played as a dirge. This was followed by the Rumanian national anthem, after which the orchestra slid into a waltz that faded with the fading of the lights. The crimson curtains glowed. Between them appeared a student, wrapped to the chin in a black cloak, who spoke the Prologue. He had been well rehearsed. As he backed out of sight, members of the audience whispered congratulations to the parents. The father half-rose to bow his acknowledgments. Harriet watched this interruption anxiously. Fortunately the rise of the curtain brought it to a stop – and there, standing languidly, hand on hip, was Fitzsimon in white and gold, padded out as Foxy Leverett had advised, his looks enhanced with a golden wig.

  The audience gasped. Heads went together. A twitter of excitement passed like a breeze over the stalls. The impression was such that some of the women began to applaud before they realised what they were applauding. Fitzsimon stood with a fine air of disconsolate virility, waiting for silence. His eyes moved slowly over the women in the front rows. When satisfied by the expectant hush, he fixed his gaze on Princess Teodorescu, sighed and said:

  ‘Call here my varlet; I’ll unarm again;

  Why should I war without the walls of Troy,

  That find such cruel battle here within?’

  No one noticed Yakimov until he asked: ‘Will this gear ne’er be mended?’ conveying in his light, epicene voice a world of bawdy insinuation while moving towards the footlights with a gentle confidingness that was bewilderingly innocent.

  The audience stirred, not knowing how to take it until Sir Montagu gave a guff of appreciation and the Rumanians relaxed. Once reassured, they took wholeheartedly to Yakimov.

  He, for his part, had given himself at once, never for a moment doubting their response. In little more than a moment, they loved him. After his first speeches, they were scarcely breathing for fear of missing a nuance of impropriety. The women enjoyed themselves under cover of darkness while the male laughter burst out repeatedly without restraint.

  Harriet watched him intently, drawn in in spite of herself. This was ‘your poor old Yaki’ – the same that had entranced the dinner-table that first night in Bucharest. ‘Your poor old Yaki,’ she thought. ‘My poor old Yaki. Anyone’s poor old Yaki, providing they’re doing the paying,’ yet that was not wholly just, for now it was Yakimov who was making repayment. Guy had befriended him and Guy was being rewarded. Yakimov had learnt his part; he was giving himself without stint. He was helping to make Guy’s production, and Harriet was thankful to him.

  His exit led to a tumult of applause and comme
nt that held up the action for several moments. Harriet remained tense, watching Fitzsimon, who accepted the delay good-humouredly. When at last he held up a hand and, smiling, said: ‘Peace, you ungracious clamours! peace, rude sounds!’ the laugh accorded him left no doubt but that the audience was on the side of the players. Harriet felt about her the willingness to be pleased. Unless something went badly wrong there was nothing to fear.

  She relaxed gradually as the scenes passed, not only without mishap, but with gathering pace. The show was succeeding with its own success and she was warmed to all those who were doing so well: Dubedat, Inchcape, David – and the men from the Legation whom she had supposed would treat the whole thing as a joke.

  As for Sophie! Sophie’s performance was beyond expectations. As she sauntered and swayed with little meaningful looks and gestures, letting her pink chiffon drift, like a symbol of her own sexual fragrance, about Troilus or her manservant or, indeed, any male who happened to be near, Harriet realised the girl was a born Cressida, a ‘daughter of the game’. Even in her scenes with Pandarus she was not overshadowed. The two enhanced and complemented each other, a scheming partnership of niece and uncle set to devour the guileless and romantic Troilus.

  Nikko turned excitedly in his seat, trying to read her name on the programme. ‘Who is she?’ he asked. ‘Is it Sophie Oresanu?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘But she is charming!’

  The interval came after Pandarus had conducted the lovers to ‘a chamber with a bed’.

  In the bar, where Nikko had to struggle for drinks, Harriet, wedged into the crowd, listened to the comment about her. She heard mention of Clarence (‘You would not think, to see him in the street, that Mr. Lawson could be so comic’) and Dubedat, who, with his snivel schooled to virulence, was declared to be ‘très fort’.

  ‘And that young Dimancescu!’ exclaimed a woman. ‘Such a beautiful English! And in manner the English aristocrat, no?’ recalling Dimancescu’s throw-away indifference and the wearily drooping eyelids that had been lifted once, in rapid rage, when Patroclus had missed his cue.