The Balkan Trilogy

by Olivia Manning

  Yakimov, trembling in painful anxiety, waited for the local train to draw out, but it did not draw out, then came a cry that the express was leaving. People ran in either direction alongside the train that blocked the way and Yakimov ran with the rest. Stumbling over slag-heaps and rails, he rounded the hot, fire-breathing engine of the local train and reached the express. Its engine had been shunted off: the carriages remained. He found the wagon-lit and climbed up, but the door was locked. He thumped on the glass, shouting ‘Lassen Sie mich herein’ to people standing in the corridor. They watched him, but no one moved. Suddenly the wagon-lit began to move. Clinging to the door-handle, his suitcase between his legs, Yakimov was swept into darkness. Then the wagon-lit stopped with a jerk that almost threw him off the steps. They were out in the bare and windy countryside. Knowing if he climbed down he would be lost, he hung sobbing with fear on the step while the carriage started back, as though galvanised by an electric shock. He was thankful to see the station again. The wagon-lit stopped: he climbed down between the two trains. At once the local train drew out. The foot-plate grazed him; the engine, at the back, passed him in a shower of sparks, and he screamed in panic. The express had reassembled itself. He ran to the rear where he could see the light of an open door. He reached it, threw his bag in and climbed after it. He was in terror lest someone should prevent him from entering, but there was no one to prevent him. This was the back way into the dining-car. He looked into the kitchen. The cook, a little gollywog of a man, was cutting up meat. Stunned and humbled, like one who has come into peace out of a raging storm, Yakimov stood and smiled on him. The meat looked dark, stringy and tough, but the cook was working at it with the absorption of an artist. Gently, affectionately, Yakimov asked if he might pass through. The man waved him on without a glance.

  The blinds were pulled down inside the car. There were a number of vacant seats. The diners, again all men, sat talking, indifferent to the shrieks outside. When he was safely seated, Yakimov pulled aside his blind and glanced out at the crowds running helplessly up and down the line. Someone spoke to a waiter, who explained that the train was locked, inviolate, because the morning express had been besieged by peasants who had not had the money to pay the fare. They had refused to get off and had to be carried to Braşov. That must not happen again.

  Someone on the line, seeing Yakimov looking out, thumped the window and cried piteously to be allowed in. He felt now as disassociated as the other diners. Anyway what could he do?

  There were more shots and cries and a heavy pelting of feet. Faces seemed to press against the glass and stay there a moment, like wet leaves, before disappearing. Then the train began to move. People ran beside it, gesticulating, their mouths opening and shutting, but there was no hope for them. Something – a stone, probably – struck the window beside Yakimov. He let the blind drop and gave his order to the waiter. When he had eaten, he rose to find his berth and found that the door into the rest of the train was locked. He appealed to the waiter, but no one was empowered to open it. At last, weary of argument, he returned to his seat, put his head down on the table and slept.

  The return journey took even longer than the outgoing one. The express had been due into Bucharest next morning. It actually reached the capital as darkness fell. Yakimov had had to spend the whole time in the dining-car, again taking meal after meal, paid for with Freddi’s money.

  At Bucharest station, there were no porters. No one collected tickets. The place was deserted except for the newly arrived passengers who remained at the entrance, whispering together, reluctant to emerge. Yakimov looked out. The street, usually swarming at this hour and adazzle with flares, was deserted, but he could see nothing to fear. The worst of it was there were no taxis or trăsurăs. Another long walk! He hung around awhile, hoping someone would explain their apprehensions, but no one spoke to him and nothing happened. He decided to set out. He went alone.

  The stalls of the Calea Grivitei were shut and abandoned. The pavements were empty. Occasionally he saw figures in doorways, but they slid back out of sight before he reached them. The town was unnaturally silent. He had never before seen the streets so empty.

  At last, at the junction of the Calea Victoriei, he came on a group of military police with revolvers at the ready. One of them ordered Yakimov to stop. He dropped his bag in alarm and put up his hands. An officer came forward and sternly asked what he was doing out of doors. The question frightened him; he realised that his fellow-passengers had known something he had not known. He started to explain in German – the safest language these days – how he had arrived on the Orient Express and was walking home. What was wrong? What had happened? He received no reply to his questions but was ordered to produce his permis de séjour. He handed it over with his passport. Both were taken under a lamp-post and examined and discussed, while a soldier kept him covered. The discussion went on for a long time. At intervals one or other of the men turned to stare at him, so he feared he would be arrested or shot out of hand. In the end his papers were restored to him. The officer saluted. Yakimov might proceed, but must make a detour to avoid crossing the main square.

  Obediently he went down a side street into the Boulevard Breteanu and, adding about half a mile to his walk, reached the Pringles’ block, still very agitated. The hall was in darkness. The porter had been conscripted some time before and not replaced. As Yakimov made his way up in the lift, he was suddenly convinced that the invasion had begun. The city not only seemed empty, it was empty. People had fled. He would find the Pringles had gone with the rest.

  At the thought he might find himself deserted in a German-occupied country, he almost collapsed. To think he could have stayed on the express and been carried right away to safety! His self-pity was acute.

  He was shaking so he could scarcely get his key into the lock. The flat, when he entered it, was in darkness, but there were voices inside. Reassured at once, he switched on the sitting-room light.

  ‘Put that light off, you damned fool,’ someone whispered from the balcony.

  He switched the light off, but the moment’s illumination had shown him Harriet standing against the jamb of the balcony door and Guy and David Boyd lying on the balcony floor, peering out through the stonework of the balustrade. It was David who had spoken.

  Yakimov tiptoed in. ‘Whatever is going on, dear boy?’ he asked.

  In reply, David said: ‘Shut up. Do you want them to take a pot at us?’

  Yakimov crouched against the doorway opposite Harriet, and looked out into the square. At first he could see nothing. The square, like the streets, was deserted, the lights shining on cobbles and stretches of tarmac bare of everything but the marks of tyres. The palace was in darkness.

  After a long interval of silence, Yakimov whispered to Harriet: ‘Dear girl, do tell Yaki what is happening!’

  She said: ‘The army has been called out. They’re expecting an attack on the palace. If you look over there’ – she pointed to the entrance to the Calea Victoriei – ‘you can see the tip of a machine-gun. There are soldiers all over the place.’

  Peering out, he began to see a movement of shadows among shadow. The first shop in the Calea Victoriei was visible and from its doorway heads were stretched. There were other movements among the scaffolding and half-demolished buildings in the square. These movements were all made cautiously, in silence. He heard a distant sound of singing.

  ‘Who is going to attack the palace?’

  Yakimov spoke piteously, feeling that no one wanted to tell him anything.

  ‘We don’t know,’ Harriet answered. ‘We think it must be the Iron Guard, but there’ve only been the usual rumours and confusion.’

  ‘It couldn’t be the revolution, could it?’

  ‘It could be anything. There was a lot of shouting for the King to abdicate, then the police went round clearing the streets and the military came out. David came in and said there was this rumour of an attack on the palace. That’s all we know.’

&nb
sp; ‘The King won’t abdicate, will he?’

  Overhearing this question, David snuffled gleefully. ‘You wait and see,’ he said.

  Yakimov picked up his bag and went into his bedroom. He sank down on to his bed, weary yet unable to contemplate rest. His consternation came not only from Hadjimoscos’ predictions of anarchy and the guillotine, but from the fact that the word ‘revolution’ had always fluttered him. Revolution had destroyed his family fortunes and sent his poor old dad into exile. He had grown up with his father’s stories of the downfall of the Russian monarchy and the appalling end of the Russian royal family. Yakimov imagined that in a short time now, perhaps in an hour or two, the workers would abandon trains, planes and ships. The military would requisition petrol. They would all be stuck.

  Freddi had warned him not to linger in Bucharest and Freddi had said that Rumania was next on the list.

  Everyone had always said that the Germans could not afford trouble here. A rising would be the signal for an immediate German occupation. It occurred to Yakimov that in casting suspicion on Guy – rather meanly, he realised, but he had no time for compunction now – he could have brought trouble on himself, for here he was, one of a discredited household, and he might not get time to prove he had not been implicated.

  His thoughts went to the Orient Express which he had just left, and which always stood at least an hour in the Bucharest station. Why not hurry back to it? He had walked safely here, and could as safely return. And, for once, with Freddi’s money on him, he was ‘well heeled’.

  Saying: ‘Now or never, dear boy,’ he jumped up and began pulling out the oddments of clothing that were left in the drawers. He stuffed his bag full.

  He did everything quietly. He felt a need to keep his departure secret, not from any fear of being detained, but from a nervous sense of shame that, having given old Guy away, he was now himself doing a bolt. Were he to try and explain his going, he might somehow betray his betrayal.

  His window opened on to the balcony. As he crept about, he could hear David Boyd whisper: ‘Here they come. Now we’ll see something.’ There was a noise outside. He moved across to the window and looked into the square. A line of soldiers stood blocking each end of the road which ran from it. Their rifles were poised to fire.

  The noise was growing. Evidently a mob of some sort was making for the palace. Yakimov could only hope that the fracas here would draw attention from the side streets by which he would reach the station.

  Before he left he took down his sable-lined greatcoat which hung behind his door. With coat, suitcase and what was left of Freddi’s twenty-five ‘thou’, he tiptoed from the flat. Down in the street he heard the rifles fire, and he ran towards the Boulevard Breteanu.

  He reached the station unaccosted and unharmed. The Orient Express, ignorant of the events that Yakimov had left behind, was still awaiting the passengers that, strangely, did not arrive. Having acquired Yakimov, it seemed content, and almost immediately set out for Bulgaria. At the frontier there was a slight altercation because he had no Rumanian exit visas, but a thousand lei put that right.

  He obtained a berth in the almost empty sleeping-car and next morning awoke to the safety of Istanbul.

  PART THREE

  The Revolution

  15

  During the first days of September the murmur of the crowded square had become for Harriet as familiar as the murmur of traffic. Shortly after Yakimov had set out for Cluj, it suddenly became a hubbub, there were new shouts of ‘Abdică’ and a sound of breaking glass. Here, she thought, was uprising at last. When she went out to look, the crowd was in a ferment and the police were getting their hoses ready for action. The threat was enough. The uproar died down, but people did not disperse. This time they were not to be moved. If they might not speak, they could remain, a reproach to the despoilers within the palace.

  Harriet remembered, when they took the flat, she had said to Guy: ‘We are at the centre of things.’ Now it seemed they were at the centre of trouble.

  A little later, when the office workers had been added to the mob, there was a sudden burst of cheering. Guy had just come in and he joined Harriet on the balcony. With her long sight she could see a man in army uniform standing, hand raised, on the palace steps. Guy could see nothing of this but heard the crowd yelling in a frenzy of jubilation.

  ‘Can it be the King?’ said Harriet. ‘Has he done something to please them at last?’

  Guy thought it unlikely. Despina came running into the room, waving her arms and shouting that something wonderful had happened. Antonescu had been brought a third time from prison and a third time offered the premiership – on his own terms. He had accepted, and at once demanded the resignation of Urdureanu.

  Now, cried Despina, striking her fist into her palm, the country would be set right.

  That, apparently, was everyone’s opinion. Antonescu was being treated as a hero. His car could scarcely get out of the palace gate for the press of admirers. When it disappeared into the Boulevard Elisabeta, everyone began to move off as though there were nothing left to wait for.

  By early evening, the resignation of Urdureanu was announced. Guy and Harriet, going out to meet David, felt a change in the air. The sense of mutinous anger had gone and near-elation had taken its place. And this, they felt, was merely a beginning. As Despina had said, the country would now be set right. One man, parting from a friend shouted: ‘En nu abdic,’ raising laughter among all who heard him. The friend answered that Antonescu would make him change his mind.

  David had invited the Pringles to eat with him and was waiting for them in the English Bar. He suggested they go to Cina’s on the square. They could seldom afford this restaurant, but the evening was a special one.

  ‘Anything may happen,’ he said, ‘and if it does, we shall have a ring-side seat.’

  The day had been very hot and the evening was as warm as mid-summer. The garden tables were all taken by people who seemed to be awaiting an event.

  ‘Would it be the abdication?’ Guy asked.

  David sniggered and said: ‘It seems to be expected.’

  They were given a table by the hedge. Sitting in wicker chairs beneath the ancient lime trees, they watched the passers-by strolling in an amiable way about the square. Two or three dozen people, the remnants of the morning crowd, stood round the statue of Carol I. Suddenly everyone was on the alert. People began running towards the palace. The diners in the garden became excited and began shifting about in their seats and demanding information from the waiters. When the waiters could tell them nothing, they complained as though the news were being unjustly withheld from them. Several people called for the head waiter, an old man who knew everyone. Entering the garden he held up a hand and said in gentle, smiling reproof: ‘A decree, merely a decree,’ then quietly gave details to the waiters who went round from table to table repeating them.

  The decree had cancelled the royal dictatorship, leaving the King with nothing but the right to wear decorations and present them to others. When required to sign it, he had raged like a madman and accused Antonescu of high treason, but he had been forced to sign in the end.

  ‘Alas, the poor old Great and Good!’ said David. ‘He’s become a mere figurehead. And now what will the General do? He can’t rule alone. He’ll have to call on the Iron Guard or the army, and I imagine he knows the army too well to trust it.’

  Guy said: ‘You think we’re in for an Iron Guard dictatorship?’

  David shrugged: ‘I can’t see any alternative.’

  So their position, Harriet thought, was more precarious than ever.

  As the foliage clotted above their heads, strings of coloured lamps were lit among the branches. Within the palace, where the King had been stripped of everything but his decorations, appeared the galaxies of the chandeliers. Above the palace, a single star, embedded in the cerulean satin of the sky, shone with great brilliance. The roofs were lustrous with the last radiance from the west.

 
Suddenly, in the middle of the garden, the orchestra stand sprang alight and the musicians, in white blouses and velvet knee breeches, filed between the tables, bowing to right and left. They climbed into the stand: there was a howl from the violin, a pause and then a frenzy of music was released upon the diners.

  Harriet thought of the last time they had eaten here. It had been mid-winter and, sitting beside the double window, their table had been lit by the sheen from the garden which, fleeced with snow, had looked small and intimate. Two broken-down cane chairs were outside on the terrace, their seats cushioned with snow. Snow picked out the delicate traceries of the chair backs and limned every curve and indentation of the roofing of trees. Beneath the trees, caged in the complex of branches, was the snow-capped orchestra-stand, a piece of chinoiserie, lacquered in gold and yellow. Who, seeing it now, hung with lights and leaves and flowers, could think that in a little while it would be left forlorn.

  Last autumn Inchcape had told Harriet that an enemy never invaded in the winter. He had said: ‘The snow will come soon and here we shall be, tucked away safe and sound.’

  She felt a nostalgia for the snow which recalled for her some enchantment of childhood, a security she had known before her childhood changed. But the times had changed. Last autumn the Germans had been two frontiers away. This autumn, when the snow blocked the passes, it would enclose a host of Germans and the whole of the Iron Guard.

  The Pringles awoke next morning to quiet. The Guardists had already taken up their position by the palace-rail but they stood there alone. The other inhabitants of the city were content to leave matters to Antonescu.

  Despina, coming in with the breakfast things, talked excitedly about this champion who had risen to right everyone’s wrongs. He had been the only one who dared oppose the King and he had suffered for his opposition. Now he had triumphed. He was the ruler. As for the King – she made a gesture as though she would jerk her hand off her wrist. The King was ‘nobody’.