The Balkan Trilogy

by Olivia Manning

  ‘Well, I hope you don’t end up in Bistriţa.’

  He gave a nervous laugh. ‘Don’t frighten your poor old Yaki.’

  When he had finished breakfast – one of those wretched skinflint meals that made him impatient for Freddi’s hospitality – he went back to his room to pack. Most of his clothing was now beyond repair. He picked out the best of it and filled his crocodile case. When he took his passport from a drawer, he found, folded inside it, the plan of the oil-well which he had taken from Guy’s desk. Not knowing what else to do with it, he put it into his pocket. He was forced, for fear of rousing Galpin’s suspicions, to leave behind his sable-lined greatcoat; but, if need be, his old friend Dobbie could send it on to him through the diplomatic bag.

  Yakimov travelled in the dining-car. Even had he wished to sit anywhere else, there would have been no room for him. He had arrived to find every carriage of the midday train crowded and the corridors made impassable by peasants packed together, their feet entangled in their gear. The dining-car was locked. At either entrance affluent-looking men, carrying brief-cases, stood awaiting admission. A few minutes before twelve the doors were unlocked. The men elbowed one another in and Yakimov went in with them. ‘There you are,’ said Galpin, ‘You’ll do the trip in style.’ Yakimov found a seat and was well satisfied.

  Luncheon was served at once; a wretched luncheon. A Hungarian complained and the head waiter shouted at him: ‘You’ll get nothing at all when your German friends follow you into Transylvania.’

  Some deplorable coffee followed: there was no sugar. Now that beet was being exported to Germany, sugar was becoming scarce in Rumania. When the meal ended, the stifling heat of the car became weighted by cigarette smoke. It was past three o’clock. The train still stood in Bucharest station. There was no explanation of the delay and no one seemed perturbed by it. It was enough for the passengers that they were on a train that must move some time, while outside there were vast and agitated numbers of those who were not on any train at all.

  The meal was paid for, the tables cleared. Conversation failed in the oppressive heat and one by one the men – Yakimov among them – folded their arms on the wine-stained, rumpled cloths, dropped down their heads and slept among the crumbs. Most of them did not know when the train started.

  Somehow or other it crawled up into the mountain. Yakimov was awakened when the waiters brought round coffee and cakes. Anyone refusing these refreshments was told he must give up his seat.

  Munching the dry, soya-flour cakes and sipping the grey coffee, Yakimov gazed out at the crags and pines of the Transylvanian Alps. The train stopped at every small station. People on the platform were wearing heavy clothing, but the air, unchanged inside the carriage, remained warm, flat and clouded like stale beer. Depressed by the magnificence of the scenery, Yakimov hid his face in the dusty rep window curtain and went to sleep again.

  The afternoon faded slowly into evening. Every half an hour or so, coffee was served, each cup weaker than the last. Yakimov began to worry as his money dwindled. He knew he should leave the car but, seeing at either end of the carriage the doorways packed with men only too ready to displace him, he stayed where he was.

  At Braşov a seat became vacant and the first of those waiting hurried into it. He slapped down a brief-case and a large weighty bag, took off his silver-coloured Homburg and sat down, an important-looking Jew. Despite his importance, he could not refrain from nervously opening and shutting the brief-case, taking out papers, glancing at them, putting them back and so bringing Yakimov to full wakefulness. Yakimov sat up, yawning and blinking, and the Jew, looking critically at him, said: ‘Sie fahren die ganze Strecke, ja?’

  When he discovered that Yakimov was English, his manner changed, becoming confiding though overweening. He took out a Rumanian passport and waved it at Yakimov. ‘You see that?’ he said. ‘It is mine since two years. For it I pay a million lei. Now’ – he struck it contemptuously with the back of his fingers – ‘what is it now? A ticket to a concentration camp.’

  ‘Surely not as bad as that?’ Yakimov said.

  The Jew sniffed his contempt. ‘You English are so simple. You cannot believe the things that happen to others. Have you not seen those madmen of the Iron Guard? In 1937 what did they do? They took the Jews to the slaughter-house and hung them on meat-hooks.’

  ‘But you’re going to Cluj,’ said Yakimov. ‘When the Hungarians come in, you can get a Hungarian passport.’

  ‘What!’ The Jew now looked at him with anger as well as contempt. ‘You think I go there to live? Certainly not. I go to close my branch office, then I come away double-quick. The Hungarians are terrible people – they are ravening beasts. Now it is very dangerous in Cluj.’

  ‘Dangerous?’ Yakimov was startled.

  ‘What do you think?’ the Jew scoffed at him: ‘You think the Rumanians hand over like gentlemen. Naturally, it is dangerous. There are shootings in the streets. The shops are boarded up. No one has food …’

  ‘Do you mean the restaurants are closed?’

  The Jew laughed. He slapped his bag and said: ‘Here I bring my meat and bread.’

  Noting Yakimov’s glum expression, he spoke with relish of raping, pillage, slaughter and starvation. The Rumanians had introduced land reform. Under the Hungarians the peasants would have to give up their small plots.

  ‘So,’ said the Jew, ‘they are running wild in the streets. Already people have been killed and the doctors are packing their hospitals and leaving. They will attend no one. It is a terrible time. Did you not ask why the train came so late from Bucharest? It was because there was so much rioting. They feared the train would be wrecked.’

  ‘Dear me!’ said Yakimov to whom it was now clear that Galpin had chosen the safer part.

  ‘You go perhaps on business?’

  ‘No, I am a journalist.’

  ‘And you do not know how are things in Cluj?’ The Jew laughed and looked pityingly at Yakimov, while outside a gloomy twilight fell on a landscape in which there was no sign of life. Dinner was served, the worst Yakimov had ever eaten. He grudged the cost of it, especially as he was left with barely enough to pay for a night’s lodging.

  In the grimy ceiling of the car a few weak bulbs appeared. The landscape faded away, and now there was nothing to look at but the weary faces of other passengers.

  About midnight they began rousing themselves, hoping for the journey’s end. No coffee had been served since dinner. The kitchen had closed down, yet the train dragged on for another two hours.

  When they reached Cluj, Yakimov rose to bid his companion goodbye, but the Jew, having collected his possessions some time before, was already up and fighting his way off the train. Most of the other dining-car passengers were doing the same thing, so that in a few minutes Yakimov found himself alone. The platform, when he reached it, was dark and empty of officials or porters. The offices were shut and padlocked. A soldier with a rifle at the station entrance re-roused Yakimov’s apprehensions.

  Outside the station he saw the reason why the others had left in such a hurry. There were no taxis, but there had been half a dozen ancient trăsurăs which had been commandeered and were moving off. Those who had failed to snatch one had to walk. It was surprising how few people there were. The train must have emptied at stations along the line and Yakimov set out with only a handful of other persons towards the town. These dispersed in different directions, so that soon he knew from the silence that he was alone.

  He had expected mobs and riots, but now he feared the road’s emptiness. It was a long road hung down the centre with white globes of light that were reflected in the glossy tarmac. The pavements were dark. Anything might lurk in the hedges. He was relieved when he reached the first houses. Almost at once he found himself in the cathedral square which, Galpin had told him, was the centre of the town. The main hotel was here. Galpin had promised to telephone and book him a room. Seeing its vestibule lighted, he told himself thankfully that they had waited up
for him.

  When he entered and gave his name the young German clerk made a gesture of hopelessness. No one could have telephoned because the telephone equipment was being dismantled; not that a call would have made any difference. The hotel had been full for days. Every hotel in Cluj was full. Rumanians were coming here to settle up their Transylvanian affairs. Hungarians were crowding in to seize the business being relinquished by others. ‘Such is the takeover,’ said the young man. ‘There is not a bed to be found in the whole town.’ Looking sorry for Yakimov, who looked sorry for himself, he added: ‘At the station you could sleep on a bench.’

  Yakimov had another idea. He asked the way to the house of Count Freddi von Flügel. Seeming pleased that Yakimov had this refuge, the young German came to the hotel entrance with him and showed him a white eighteenth-century Hungarian house that stood four-square not a hundred yards away.

  Despite the heat of the night, all the shutters of the house were closed. Its massive iron-studded door made it look like a fortress. Yakimov hammered on this door for five minutes or more before a grille opened and the porter inside, speaking German, ordered him to be off and return, if he must return, in the morning. Yakimov, putting his hand in the grille to prevent its being closed on him, said: ‘Ich bin ein Freund des Gauleiters, ein sehr geschätzter Freund. Er wird entzückt sein, mich zu begrüssen.’ He repeated these statements several times, becoming tearful as he did so, and they slowly took effect. The door was opened.

  The porter motioned him to sit on a stone seat in a stone hall that was as cold as a cellar. He sat there for twenty minutes. Having come from the summer night, wearing his silk suit, he began to shiver and sneeze. There was nothing to distract him but some giant photographs of Hitler, Goering, Goebbels and Himmler, which he contemplated with indifference. To him they were nothing but the stock-in-trade of someone else’s way of life. If Freddi were ‘in with that lot’, then all the better for both of them.

  At last, at last, a figure appeared at the top of the stone staircase. Yakimov jumped up crying: ‘Freddi.’

  The Count, doubtful, frowning, descended slowly, then, recognising Yakimov, he threw open his arms and sailed down with rapid steps, his yellow brocade dressing-gown floating out about him. ‘It is possible?’ he asked. ‘Yaki, mein Lieber!’

  Tears of relief filled Yakimov’s eyes. He tottered forward and fell into Freddi’s arms. ‘Dear boy’ – he spoke on a sob – ‘so many bridges gone under the water since we last met!’ He held to his old friend fervently, breathing in the strong smell of gardenia that came from his person. ‘Fredi,’ he murmured, ‘Fredi!’

  The emotional moment of reunion past, von Flügel stepped back and contemplated Yakimov with misgiving. ‘But is this wise, mein Lieber? We are now, you know, in opposite camps.’

  Yakimov, with a gesture, swept such considerations aside.

  ‘Desperate situation, dear boy. Just arrived from Bucharest to find the hotels full. Not a bed to be got in Cluj. Couldn’t sleep in the street, y’know.’

  ‘Certainly not,’ von Flügel agreed: ‘I am only hoping for your sake you were not followed here. Have you eaten?’

  ‘Not a bite, dear boy. Not a morsel all day. Poor old Yaki’s famished and dropping on his poor old feet.’

  The Count led the way upstairs and, opening a door, snapped on switch after switch. Chandeliers of venetian glass sprang into light throughout an immense room.

  ‘What do you think of my lounge?’ He spoke the word as though it had an exotic chic. Yakimov, not much interested in such things, looked round at the purple and yellow room with its vast gilded chimney-piece flanked by life-size plaster negroes naked except for the chiffon loin-cloths playfully placed about their immense pudenda.

  ‘Delightful!’ Yakimov limped to a sofa and sank down among the cushions. ‘Crippled,’ he said: ‘Crippled with fatigue.’

  ‘I designed it all myself.’

  ‘And hungry as a hunter,’ Yakimov reminded him.

  As his host moved about, admiring and touching his own possessions, Yakimov, impatient for a drink, looked at Freddi more critically. How changed he was! His hair, that had once fallen like silk into his eyes, was now cut en brosse. His features, never distinctive, were lost in wastes of mauve-pink flesh – and he had grown a shocking little moustache that stood out like a yellow scab on his upper lip. His famous blue eyes were no longer blue: they were pink. Yet Freddi had been recognisable at once from his movements, that were, as they always had been, curiously fluid.

  Meeting Yakimov’s eye, von Flügel giggled. Yakimov recognised the giggle, too. That and the features were all that remained of the golden boy of 1931.

  ‘How well you are looking!’ said Yakimov.

  ‘You, too, mein Lieber. Not a day older.’

  Well satisfied, Yakimov unlaced his shoes saying: ‘They’re killing me.’ He shook them off, then, looking down at his feet, saw his socks were tattered and dark with sweat, and shuffled his shoes on again. ‘Trifle peckish,’ he said when Freddi had made no move.

  Freddi tugged an embroidered bell-pull. While they waited, Yakimov’s roving eye noted a tray of bottles. ‘How about a little drinkie?’ he said.

  ‘So remiss of me!’ Von Flügel poured out a large brandy. Yakimov took it as his due. Freddi had done very well out of old Dollie when her fortunes were high and his were low.

  ‘And what brings you to Cluj?’ von Flügel asked.

  ‘Ah!’ said Yakimov, his attention on his glass.

  ‘I suppose I should not ask?’

  Yakimov’s smile confirmed this supposition.

  There was a sharp rap on the door. Von Flügel sat up and straightened his shoulders before commanding: ‘Herein.’

  A young man marched in, uniformed, muscular, conveying, without any hint of expression, a virulent annoyance. Yakimov did not like his face, but von Flügel leapt up, fluid and giggling once more, and saying: ‘Axel, mein Schatz!’ went close to the young man and talked at him in a persuasive whisper until something was agreed. When Axel slammed his way out, von Flügel explained: ‘The poor boy’s a little put out. We brought him from his bed. The cook is a local man. He goes home after dinner and I am then dependent on the boys.’

  When Axel returned, he brought a plate of sandwiches, which he put down with the abruptness of the unwilling and went off slamming the door again.

  Yakimov, deliciously infused with brandy, settled down to the sandwiches, which were rough but contained some sizeable chunks of turkey. He silenced Freddi’s apologies, saying: ‘Poor Yaki’s used to living rough.’

  When he had eaten, the Count, who had been watching him with a waggish expression, went over to a corner that was cut off by a Recamier couch. ‘I have some amusing curiosities I really must show you,’ he said.

  Yakimov lifted himself wearily out of the cushions. Von Flügel, having drawn aside the couch, beckoned his friend into the corner and handed him a magnifying glass. On either wall hung a Persian miniature. Yakimov examined them, tittering and saying: ‘Dear boy! Dear boy!’ but he had no interest in that sort of thing and hoped he was not in for a night of it.

  ‘Over here, over here,’ said von Flügel, leading him across the room to a tall cabinet set with shallow drawers. ‘You must see my Japanese prints.’

  ‘Oh, dear!’ said Yakimov, taking the prints handed to him: ‘One must sit down to enjoy such things.’

  He tried to return to the sofa, but von Flügel held to him, pulling him here and there between the purple and yellow armchairs, and opening Chinese lacquer cabinets to display his collection of what he called ‘delectable objets’.

  As the effect of the brandy wore off, Yakimov became not only bored but cross. He had forgotten that Freddi was such a silly.

  ‘Being in an official position,’ said von Flügel, ‘discretion is forced upon me, but one day I hope to have all my things out and displayed about the lounge.’

  ‘Lounge!’ Yakimov said: ‘Where did you pick up that awful h
ouse agent’s jargon?’

  ‘Am I being vulgar?’ asked von Flügel, too excited to care. ‘I must show you my Mexican pottery.’

  When Yakimov had been shown everything, von Flügel seemed to imagine he was the one who had earned a reward. He said in a tone of humorous complaint: ‘You still haven’t told me what you are doing in Cluj.’

  Yakimov, sinking into his seat, said: ‘First I must have a drink, dear boy.’ His glass full, he sipped at it in better humour. ‘If I told you I was a war correspondent,’ he said, ‘you wouldn’t believe me.’

  Freddi looked surprised. ‘A war correspondent! In which zone?’

  ‘Why, in Bucharest, dear boy.’

  ‘But Rumania is not at war.’

  Yakimov thought this a quibble. ‘Anyway,’ he said, ‘I was a newspaper man.’

  ‘Indeed!’ Von Flügel smiled encouragement.

  Sitting with hands folded in his lap, he looked, thought Yakimov, like a benign old auntie, and his heart warmed to his friend. He giggled: ‘You and Dollie used to think that Yaki wasn’t too bright. Well, I reported that Calinescu business for an important paper.’

  Von Flügel lifted a hand in astonished admiration. ‘And you come here to report the return of the Hungarians to their territory?’

  Yakimov smiled. Delighted by the impression he was making, he felt a need to improve on it. He said: ‘I might as well tell you, this assignment is just a cover. My real reason for being here is … Well, it’s pretty hush-hush.’

  Von Flügel watched him intently and, when he did not add to this revelation, said: ‘You are evidently a person of consequence these days. But tell me, mein Lieber, what exactly do you do?’

  Not knowing the answer to this question, Yakimov backed down an old retreat route: ‘Not at liberty to say, dear boy.’

  ‘May I hazard a guess?’ von Flügel archly inquired. ‘Then I would say you are attached to the British Legation.’

  Yakimov raised his eyes in astonishment at the accuracy of von Flügel’s guess. ‘Between ourselves,’ he said, ‘speaking as one old friend to another, I’m on the inside. I know a thing or two. As a matter of fact, there’s very little I don’t know.’