The Balkan Trilogy

by Olivia Manning

  Dobson stopped the car and they went for a walk over the cinderous ground between the rocks. There was a little grass round the lakes where a few lean cows grazed. Pointing to one of them, Guy said: ‘Harriet says she loves these creatures.’

  Dobson gave his easy laugh. ‘She’s probably quite willing to eat them,’ he said, and Harriet stared at her feet, conscious of her human predicament. Putting an arm round her shoulder, Guy rallied her: ‘Come on, tell us, why do you love them?’

  Irritated that he questioned her in front of Dobson, she said defiantly: ‘Because they are innocent.’

  ‘And we are guilty?’

  She shrugged. ‘Aren’t we? We’re human animals that maintain ourselves at the cost of our humanity.’

  He squeezed her shoulder. ‘Guilt is a disease of the mind,’ he said. ‘It’s been imposed on us by those in power. The thing they want is to divide human nature against itself. That permits the minority to dominate the majority.’

  Dobson smiled blandly, apparently detached from the Pringles’ conversation, but Harriet, certain he was listening intently, did not encourage Guy to say anything more on this subject.

  They drove into Sinai as evening fell. Dobson said: ‘We’ll snatch a bite before trying our luck,’ taking it for granted that the Pringles anticipated with as much pleasure as he an evening of losing money at the casino.

  The casino attempted a grandeur that was thwarted by Balkan apathy and the harshness of the overhanging crags. A chill had entered the air after dark. The yellowish bulbs that lit the casino gardens, touching rocks and trees and the wavering fronds of the pampas grass, could not dispel the gloom of the failing year. The paths glistened with damp.

  The large entrance hall was deserted. Such life as there was about the place had taken itself to the main salon where only one table was in use. Lit by low-hung, green-shaded globes, the gamblers sat, absorbed and silent, in the penumbra around the table.

  Dobson found a seat. Guy stood behind him, watching the play, while Harriet tiptoed to the end of the table, where she paused and looked down its length at the faces intent upon the turning wheel. She thought: ‘What a collection of oddities!’ seeing them as though they grew like distorted mush-room growths from their chairs. One man, whose shoulders were abnormally wide but who rose barely eighteen inches above the table, had a vast, formless face, like a milk jelly, glistening with ill-health. Beside him was an ancient skeletal female her mouth agape and askew, as though she had died without succour. One male head was abnormally large like a case of giantism. Here and there were faces, not aged and yet not young, having the immaterial look of arrested decay.

  It seemed to Harriet that in this room without windows, artificially lit both by day and by night, these people, with their pallor of indoor life, existed in a self-contained world, beyond consciousness of war, change of government or threat of invasion, indeed unaware there was an outer world, like insects in a gall. They would scarcely know if the Day of Judgement were upon them. For them life’s prodigiousness was diminished down to a little ball spinning in a wooden bowl.

  The ball fell into a groove. A stir, almost a sigh, touched the players. It fell upon a stillness so complete she could almost feel, as they must, that did conflict exist anywhere at all, it was too remote to matter.

  The croupier’s rake came into the light, pushing the chips about. No one smiled, or showed concern or pleasure, but, as one player, in placing his stake, accidentally touched that of another, there broke out between them a quarrel, brief but vicious, like a quarrel between the insane.

  The ball was spun again. Harriet took a step forward to watch and at once the man seated before her glanced round, his face distorted with irritation at her nearness. She tiptoed on.

  When she reached the other side of the table, she looked across at Dobson and realised Guy was no longer there. He had found someone to talk to in the dim, empty regions beyond the table. When she reached him, she found his companions were Inchcape and Pinkrose. He was talking with his usual animation, but in an undertone, while Inchcape, hands in pockets, head bent, listened, tilting backwards and forwards on his heels. Pinkrose stood a step apart, watching Guy with an expression that told Harriet the Gieseking concert would not be forgotten in a hurry. Inchcape looked up.

  ‘Hah! So there you are!’ Inchcape said as she approached. ‘Let’s go and get a drink.’ Walking ahead, he glanced back for Harriet and as she caught up with him, said: ‘Have you enjoyed your break?’

  ‘Very much. And you?’

  ‘Don’t speak of it.’ He dropped his voice. ‘I never could abide that old so-and-so.’

  ‘Then why did you invite him to Rumania?’

  ‘Who else would have come at a time like this? How does he strike you?’

  ‘Well …’ Harriet evaded the question by asking: ‘Why, I wonder, is he so suspicious of poor Guy?’

  ‘Him!’ Inchcape snorted in amused contempt. ‘He’d be suspicious of the Lamb of God.’

  In the bar, that was large, bleak, bare and empty except for the barman, Inchcape told them he had lost chips to the value of five thousand lei. ‘That was my limit,’ he said. ‘As for Pinkrose here! Tight-fisted old curmudgeon, I couldn’t get him to risk a leu.’ He turned on Pinkrose. ‘You’re a tight-fisted old curmudgeon, eh?’ He gave Pinkrose’s shoulder a push. ‘Eh?’ he insisted, staring at him with quizzical disgust as though he were a wife of whom he was more than half ashamed.

  Pinkrose, sitting with his legs tightly together, his feet side by side, his little waxen hands folded on his stomach, smiled vaguely, apparently taking Inchcape’s chaff as a form of admiration, which perhaps it was.

  The bar was cold. The windows had been opened during the day and were still open, admitting shafts of damp, icy air. Pinkrose began to twitch. He pulled his scarfs about him, looking miserable, but before he could say anything the waiter came to them.

  ‘I know,’ said Inchcape indulgently. ‘We’ll have hot ţuică. We’ll celebrate the coming winter. I like to hibernate. I shall devote the next six months to Henry James.’

  The ţuică was served in small teapots. Heated with sugar and peppercorns, the spirit lost its rawness and gave the impression of being much milder than it was. Pinkrose drew back, frowning, as a pot was put before him, and said: ‘No, really, I think not.’

  ‘Oh, drink it up,’ Inchcape said, with such exasperation Pinkrose poured a little into his cup and sipped at it.

  ‘Umm!’ he said, and after a moment admitted: ‘Pleasantly warming.’

  Dobson came to look for them and, as he sat down, Guy asked him: ‘What luck?’

  ‘None,’ he cheerfully told them. ‘But, then, one doesn’t expect to win. One plays for the fun of it. Dear me!’ He stretched out his legs and rubbed a silk handkerchief over his baldness. ‘How one longs for the normal life! I’m not as young as I was, but I’d be overjoyed if I could close my eyes and open them to find myself enjoying a debs’ dance at the Dorchester or Claridge’s!’ He smiled round, never doubting but that the others would take equal pleasure in such a transportation. ‘As it is’ – he folded his handkerchief carefully and put it away – ‘tomorrow back to the plough.’ Turning to Pinkrose, he pleasantly asked: ‘Are you staying long?’

  Pinkrose flinched as though the question were inexcusably personal. ‘I really cannot say,’ he said.

  Inchcape said: ‘Oh, he’ll soon be taking himself off.’ He leered at Pinkrose, repeating as though his friend were deaf: ‘I was just saying, you’ll soon be taking yourself off.’

  ‘My goodness gracious! I’ve only just arrived,’ said Pinkrose. ‘A special passage had to be arranged for me; and I imagine the same will be done for my return.’

  ‘Who do you think’s going to arrange it?’ Inchcape asked.

  Ignoring this question, Pinkrose went on: ‘And what about my lecture, I’d like to know? Isn’t it time you fixed a date?’

  ‘We’ll have to abandon the lecture.’

 
; ‘Abandon the lecture? Are you serious, Inchcape? I plan to range over the development of our poetry from Chaucer to Tennyson. Central Office was of the opinion it would have considerable influence on Rumanian policy.’

  Inchcape laughed through his teeth. ‘My dear fellow, if Chaucer came here it would have no influence on Rumanian policy. If Byron came, if Oscar Wilde himself came, he could not get an audience for a public lecture on English literature.’

  ‘Are you suggesting I should return home without a word? A pretty fool I’d look! What would my colleagues say?’

  ‘Tell them you left it too late. You should have come six months ago.’

  ‘I was not invited six months ago.’ Pinkrose’s lips quivered. For a moment he looked as though he might burst into tears, then he suddenly smiled. ‘But you are, as they say, “having me on”. My leg is being pulled, isn’t it?’ He glanced about in an inquiry that no one attempted to answer.

  Harriet had her own inquiry: ‘If no one will come to the Cantecuzeno Lecture, who is going to turn up to hear Guy?’

  ‘That’s different. Students are young, loyal, uncommitted, eager to learn … But it’s the look of the thing that matters. We must open.’

  ‘Is Guy expected to run the Department alone?’

  ‘Well, if the students turn up in force, I might take a seminar for him.’

  There was a long silence. Harriet felt she could have said more, but the drink, warm and sweet, had begun to release her from care. If this were not the best of all possible worlds, what did it matter? Perhaps the best was yet still to come.

  Dobson yawned and said he was taking a short holiday in Sofia. ‘I want to hear some opera,’ he said.

  Guy turned to Harriet. ‘Why don’t you go with him?’ he suggested.

  Harriet’s fugitive happiness was gone. For some moments she was too embarrassed to speak, then she protested: ‘Darling, you are extraordinary! What makes you suppose that Dobbie would want me to go with him to Sofia?’

  Dobson sat up to assure her: ‘I should be delighted.’

  ‘Of course he would,’ said Guy, who had never doubted it. He looked at Dobson and explained: ‘The situation here is becoming too much for her.’

  ‘I should never have thought it.’ Dobson smiled as though Guy were being slightly ridiculous. ‘As indeed he is,’ Harriet thought. She felt particularly annoyed that after she had, as she imagined, demolished the question of her going, it should be brought up again.

  Pinkrose had finished his pot of ţuică and his eyelids were drooping. He nodded forward, then, rousing himself with a start, said: ‘I shall return to the hotel. I like an early night.’

  ‘Yes.’ Inchcape rose, saying briskly: ‘To bed. In this barbarous corner of Europe, where else is there to go?’

  Outside, a wintry wind blew among the trees. Dobson, finding that Inchcape and Pinkrose were also returning to Bucharest next morning, offered them a lift. Inchcape was inclined to accept, but when Pinkrose saw the De Dion he shook his head decisively. ‘Oh, no! Dear me, no! I never could travel in an open car.’

  ‘Oh, get on, you old stick-in-the-mud!’ Inchcape, irritated beyond endurance, gave Pinkrose a push that sent him teetering down the road towards the main hotel.

  The drive back to Predeal was very cold. Harriet was depressed, feeling that in some ways Guy was intolerable. When they reached their room, conscious of her withdrawal, he put his arm round her and said: ‘Don’t worry. We shall be all right.’

  ‘I’m not worrying,’ she replied coldly.

  ‘You aren’t sorry you came to Rumania with me?’

  She shook her head, but moved out of his hold.

  ‘Are you sorry you married me?’

  He evidently needed reassurance, for when she said: ‘Sometimes I am,’ he looked very grieved. He asked: ‘Do you feel you needed a different sort of person?’

  ‘Perhaps.’

  ‘Who? Clarence?’

  ‘Good heavens, no. No, no one I have met. Perhaps no one I shall ever meet.’

  He asked despondently: ‘You mean you no longer love me?’

  ‘I don’t mean that, but I’m not sure you want to be loved very much. You want room for a lot of other people and things.’

  ‘But I have to work,’ he expostulated. ‘I have to see people, to move around. You move around, too …’

  ‘Yes, there’s plenty of give and take. You are quite willing for me to spend any amount of time with other people: Clarence, for instance, or Sasha. It gives you freedom and you know there’s no risk. You’re too good to lose.’

  He stared at her, hurt, looking as though this were all too much for him and she realised they were arguing on different levels. He was being practical, she emotional. She wanted to accuse him of selfishness, to point out that his desire to embrace the outside world was an infidelity and a self-indulgence, but she realised he would never understand what she meant.

  ‘You’re never mentioned before that you are discontented.’

  ‘No?’ She laughed. ‘Truth is a luxury. We can only afford it now and then.’

  He laughed, too, his dejection gone in a moment. Humming to himself, happily and tunelessly, he prepared for bed.

  Dobson had left before the Pringles appeared for breakfast. The cold of the previous night had presaged a change in the weather. The sky was indigo with cloud. White mist unrolled like cotton-wool down between the mountain peaks. Everything outside looked bleak and wet.

  The hotel was desolating in this gloom. The central heating had been turned on that morning, but so far it had done no more than fill the air with the reek of oil and rust. In the main room the bare wooden chairs and bamboo tables were damp to the touch. A smell of dust came from the bulrushes that stood about in pots.

  A drizzle began to fall. No one in Bucharest thought of rain and the Pringles had not come prepared for it. Saying: ‘You won’t want to go for a walk today,’ Guy settled down to his books.

  Harriet wished they had gone back with Dobson. Although she thought of their return as something like a plunge into a boiling cauldron, she looked forward to the warmth and entertainment of the capital. Besides, she was anxious about Sasha.

  Watching Guy contentedly preparing a course for which there might be no students, Harriet wondered where for him reality began and ended. He could be misled by the plausible, deceived by the self-deceiving, impressed by the second-rate: all in the name of charity, of course. But was such charity truly charitable?

  At one time she had been indignant when others were critical of him. Now, she realised, she was criticising him herself. Even more surprising, she could feel bored in his company.

  And yet, watching him as he sat there, unsuspecting of criticism or boredom, an open-handed man of infinite good nature, her heart was touched. Reflecting on the process of involvement and disenchantment which was marriage, she thought that one entered it unsuspecting and, unsuspecting, found one was trapped in it.

  23

  Bucharest, when they reached it, was also wet and no longer warm. The streets were dismal. The block of flats, designed to reflect sunlight, were blotched and livid in the grey air. This was one of the days – like the day of Calinescu’s funeral – that broke like a threat into the fading glow of summer.

  As soon as they entered the flat, they heard the sound of Sasha playing ‘We’re Gonna Hang Out the Washing on the Siegfried Line’. Harriet realising they were back among all their old unresolved anxieties, was not only relieved but annoyed by the mouth-organ. It seemed a symbol of Sasha’s unquestioning acceptance of their protection. She went in, intending to chide him for wasting time, but he looked up with so much pleasure at her return, her annoyance was forgotten.

  Dear Boy [wrote Yakimov from the Pension de Seraglio],

  They think I am a spy or something and they’re trying to run me out on a rail. Where next? I ask myself. I’m told Bucharest is full of Nazis spending lei like apa. If one of them makes an offer for the Hispano, seize it.

&n
bsp; Don’t forget your poor old desperate Yaki.

  The telephone rang. Clarence said, urgently, that he was glad they were back, for he wanted to come and see them. ‘Yes, do come,’ said Harriet, thankful to be diverted from the cheerless anticlimax of return.

  Clarence, entering the flat, was clearly the bringer of important news. He frowned at the ceiling and as soon as he had accepted a drink said abruptly: ‘I’ve come to say goodbye.’

  Guy said, startled: ‘You’re going so soon?’

  ‘I’m taking the night train. I’m going on to Ankara.’

  Both Pringles were disconcerted by this news: Guy the more so for, whatever he might care to think, it was evident their circle was disintegrating.

  Harriet said: ‘Why to Ankara?’

  ‘I’ve to report to the British Council representative. There’s some talk of an appointment in Srinagar.’

  ‘How wonderful! You almost went to Kashmir once.’

  ‘This time, perhaps, I’ll get there. But I’m just as likely to end in Egypt.’

  ‘Where you would meet up with Brenda?’

  Clarence did not reply but, smirking slightly, he stretched himself out in his chair and said: ‘Poor old Brenda! Whatever did she see in me?’

  ‘She may have thought you needed her.’

  Clarence shrugged and drawled: ‘Who knows what I need?’

  He seemed aware that he was inviting Harriet’s ridicule and to be, for some reason, forearmed against it. Because of this, Harriet said cautiously: ‘Well, if you go to Kashmir, I envy you.’

  Lifting his eyelids slowly, Clarence gave her a long look, then glancing down again, said in remote, measured tones: ‘Sophie is coming with me.’

  Harriet was startled into saying: ‘Good heavens!’ and Clarence smiled his satisfaction.

  ‘Why, this is splendid!’ cried Guy and, leaping up, he refilled the glasses for a toast. ‘You’re getting married, of course?’

  Clarence, his smile fading, shrugged again. ‘I suppose so. It’s what she wants,’ and he gave Harriet a quick glance full of reproach. She thought: ‘He is doing this to punish himself,’ but Guy was full of congratulations and encouragement.