The Balkan Trilogy

by Olivia Manning

  ‘Don’t tell anyone,’ Inchcape said. ‘I’ll be back before they even know I’ve left the country.’

  It was clear to Guy, as he returned home, that in sending for him Inchcape had merely sent for a persuader. Guy could not flatter himself that he had done much, but he felt pride, even a mild exultation, that by making the right gesture he had persuaded the poor old chap to take himself to safety. The resolute, he saw, were weaker than they seemed.

  It occurred to him that Harriet, tackled in some such oblique manner, might be just as easily overthrown. Not that the conditions were exactly similar. Inchcape had collapsed at a first blow from reality. Harriet had never let reality out of her sight. When she said she would not leave, she saw as clearly as Guy did the dangers of staying – probably more clearly. Still, he was not discouraged. He had his own obstinacy. Once assured in his purpose, he could be as wily as the next man.

  There were two weaknesses through which she might be assailed: himself and Sasha. Supposing he persuaded her to go to Athens on his behalf! Better, perhaps, persuade her to make the journey as friend and protector to Sasha.

  He had long recognised her attachment to the boy without resenting it. He was glad that each could enjoy the companionship of the other. And he had no illusions about himself. He was over-gregarious, busy, disinclined to suffer constraint. Were he to accuse her of neglecting him, she had more than enough fuel for counter-accusation. If she felt the need for a friend and companion, better an innocent relationship than one that might prove less innocent. And something had to be done about Sasha. Even if he were not in danger, his life as he lived it now was hopelessly unprofitable. He had never been a brilliant pupil, but he had been a willing one. Now, in captivity, he had become idle and would not put his mind to the tasks which Guy set for him. He did not even want to read. The most he would do was play games with Harriet or cover with childish drawings the large sheets of cheap cartridge paper which she bought for him. Sometimes, at his most active, he amused himself by helping Despina in the kitchen, but that amounted chiefly to gossiping and giggling.

  When Harriet had shown him the faked passport, he had looked at it blankly. When she explained: ‘This means you can leave Rumania,’ his only reaction had been dismay: ‘But I don’t have to go, do I?’

  ‘Not now, of course. But if we go – and we may have to – you can come with us.’

  Sasha’s expression had revealed his fear of change, or of any sort of move even made in their company. He wanted to spend the rest of his life like a pet in a cage.

  When Guy reached the sitting-room he found Sasha and Despina putting the knives and forks on the table. The two were laughing together at something.

  Despina, who was familiar with Harriet and motherly with Sasha, kept up the Eastern tradition that the man of the house was a minor despot. At the sight of Guy, she took herself off.

  Sasha said: ‘Despina is so funny. She was imitating the cook from downstairs who sneaks into our kitchen and pinches our sugar. If anyone catches her at it, she whines: “Please, please, I came only to borrow the carving knife!”’

  Guy smiled, but thought that Sasha, though he spoke like a schoolboy, was, in fact, a young man. At his age many Rumanian men were married. The only hope for the boy was to be forced into an independent existence. If he and Harriet travelled together, he must be made to see himself not as the protected but the protector.

  As soon as he had Harriet alone, Guy told her of Inchcape’s collapse. ‘He’s going on Sunday to Beirut.’

  She jerked up her head, her face brilliant with excitement. ‘He’s going for good?’

  ‘In theory, no: but I doubt whether he’ll come back.’

  ‘So there’s really nothing to keep us here, either. We can go. We can go to Athens, and Sasha can come with us. We can all go together.’

  Guy had to break in on her frantic delight: ‘No, I can’t go. Not yet. I’ve had to promise Inchcape that I would stay. He wouldn’t go otherwise. He felt he had to be represented here. And then there’s Pinkrose. But look’ – he seized her hands as her face dropped – ‘look,’ he coaxed her, ‘do something for me.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Go to Sofia with Dobson.’

  She pulled her hands from him, vexed, saying: ‘No, I wouldn’t go to Sofia, anyway. The only place I want to go to is Greece, but I’m not going without you.’

  ‘All right, better still, go to Athens. Take Sasha with you. And I can join you there. Listen, darling. Be sensible. There are two reasons why you should go. I think Sasha should be got out of here in good time. If he travels on the plane with you and Dobson, he’ll have your protection. They probably won’t even question why he’s going. He’ll be treated as a privileged passenger. If there should be trouble, we can rely on Dobson to exert his influence.’

  ‘What makes you think that?’

  ‘I do think it. I’m sure Dobson will look after you both. He’ll be like a mother to you.’

  Neither agreeing nor disagreeing, she asked in a noncommittal tone: ‘And the other reason?’

  ‘If I go to Turkey, I’ll probably be sent to the Middle East. I hate those hot, sandy countries. I want to go to Greece, just as you do, and if you’re there already I have the excuse of joining you.’

  Before she turned her face aside, he could see the idea of a mission was working on her. She bit her lip in doubt.

  ‘And,’ he said, ‘if things settle down here, you can come back.’

  But she was still resistant. ‘This uncertainty could drag on for months. We simply haven’t the money …’

  He interrupted, urging her: ‘Go for a few weeks, anyway. See the head of the organisation in Athens. Tell him I want to work there. You know you can do it. If he likes you, he’ll want to employ me: so when I leave here, there’ll be somewhere for me to go.’

  It all seemed odd to Harriet, like a conversation outside reality, yet it was breaking down her resistance. Bewildered, half persuaded, she said: ‘If I want to come back here, they may not let me in. People are being expelled all the time.’

  ‘If you get a return visa before you go, they must let you back.’

  Reluctant, even at this point, to give way, she kept the argument dragging on, but in the end she found she had agreed to get a return visa. Having secured this, she could take Sasha to Athens and return alone if Guy did not join her there.

  Despite something like near-intoxication from the prospect of escape, Harriet resented the fact that Guy had persuaded her to go.

  Men like Woolley saw women as a ‘drag’ in times of danger. Mrs Woolley had been sent to England at the outbreak of war and had recently been sent somewhere else. Harriet, of a different generation, saw herself as an equal and a comrade. She was not to be packed off like that – and, yet, against her will, she had let herself be talked into going.

  For Guy the day was one of modest triumph. In sending ahead Harriet, Sasha and that old self-deceiver Inchcape, he was not only safeguarding them, but clearing the decks for action in a war he had chosen to wage, the war against despotism. He believed the ultimate engagement was at hand. He could now face it alone.

  26

  Harriet would make no preparations for her journey. She would not even mention their plans to Sasha. She would do nothing until she had obtained the visa that was an earnest of her return. She got a bleak and sparkless satisfaction when it seemed she probably would not obtain it at all.

  She had had to queue for the exit visa, but it was given without question. For the return visa, she was directed to a compartment which contained no clerk. No one was waiting before it. She stood for some time, then inquired and was told the clerk was not in the building. He might reappear at five o’clock.

  In the late afternoon she returned to the prefectura, but the compartment was still unattended. She demanded to see the official in charge. When he eventually came, he took her passport away and left her waiting twenty minutes before he brought it back. She could be granted a retu
rn visa only if she supplied a letter of recommendation from her Legation.

  She set out for the Legation, disheartened by fatigue and indecision, and heard from a side street the barrel-organ that played the old Rumanian tune, the name of which no one could tell her. Haunting and mysteriously simple, it reminded her of the day she had gone for a sleigh-ride up the Chaussée with Guy and Clarence. She thought of the shop-lights gilding the snow and felt an acute nostalgia for winter. She told herself she would not go. She could not leave Guy. She did not even want to leave Bucharest.

  She wandered on and, crossing the square, saw Bella walking towards the Athénée Palace. The two women came face to face under the Nazi flag.

  It had been a day of mild autumnal sunlight and Bella was in a new woollen suit with mink skins strung from elbow to elbow. This was their first sight of each other since her return to Bucharest. Seeing Harriet, she called out: ‘I was going to ring you! What do you think I got on the black market today? Just over six thousand to the pound. And it’s rising. My dear, we’re rich! I’ve been buying everything I could lay my hands on. After all, you never know, do you? I’ve just ordered a new coat – Persian lamb, of course. I picked out my own skins. Tiny little things! I wrote my name on the back of each so there’d be no hanky-panky. I’m getting half a dozen new suits for Nikko – best English tweed. The thing to do is to buy up what’s left. And shoes – a dozen pairs each. Why not, I ask you? We’ve money to burn.’ Elated by her rise in fortune, she looked up and smiled at the flag and the clear pale sky beyond it. ‘I love this time of the year,’ she said. ‘So delicious after the fug of summer. It makes one feel so alive.’ She seemed aglitter with life, almost dancing in her new green lizard-skin shoes. Not finding Harriet very responsive, she looked at her more closely and thought to ask: ‘But how are you and Guy? What do you think of things?’

  Harriet glanced up at the swastika. ‘Doesn’t that disturb you?’

  Bella looked up again and gave an uncertain laugh. ‘Does it?’ she asked. ‘I don’t know. In a way, it makes me feel safe. It’s nice to be protected, even by Germans. And, you know,’ she gazed seriously at Harriet, a rather petulant gleam in her eye, ‘Rumania has been very unfairly treated. The Allies guaranteed her, then did nothing. Nothing. There was that plot to blow up the oil-wells, and there’ve always been those outside interests controlling Ploesti. Foreign engineers everywhere. No wonder we’ve been in an awkward position. You can’t blame the Rumanians for wanting the foreigners to go.’

  ‘When they go, what will the Rumanians do?’

  ‘Get in German experts, I suppose.’

  ‘So there will still be outside interests controlling Ploesti! Or don’t Germans count as outsiders any more?’

  Bella, looking sulky, tilted up her chin as though sniffing out injury. She made a movement, seemed about to go, but, held by some memory of their earlier friendship, gave Harriet a look at once annoyed and compassionate. ‘But what about you? Aren’t you nervous, being here? I mean, it’s different for little me. I’ve a Rumanian passport.’ Suddenly the thought of something restored her humour. She gave a laugh: ‘People think I’m a German, you know. I can get anything I want.’

  Harriet, fearing to enhance Bella’s isolation here, had not mentioned her possible departure, but now she realised that Bella’s high spirits were not a result of hysteria. She had found a means of managing her situation: she was shuffling off her own identity and taking on an aspect of the enemy.

  Harriet said: ‘Guy wants me to go to Athens for a few weeks, but I’m having difficulty in getting a return visa.’

  Hooting with laughter, Bella gripped Harriet’s arm. ‘My dear, you can get one in the twinkling of an eye. It’s just a matter of going about it the right way. Put a thousand-lei note inside your passport. But why get a return visa? If you’ve any sense you’ll stay there once you get there.’

  ‘I have to come back. Guy isn’t supposed to leave without orders.’

  ‘Oh, I’ll keep an eye on him. I’ll see he doesn’t get into mischief.’

  Bella was enjoying herself. Here she was, secure and snug, while others must take themselves into exile. She could advise from a position of vantage. ‘You might like me to look after some of your things,’ she said. ‘Those nice Hungarian plates, for instance. I wouldn’t mind giving them a home.’

  ‘If we finally go, you can take what you like.’

  ‘Well, I must be on my way.’ Bella gathered her minks about her. ‘I’ve got several fittings this evening. I want to buy gloves. Look, give me a ring and tell me how you manage about the visa. I’ll call and see you before you go.’ She hurried away with a happy ‘Cheerio!’ and Harriet returned to the prefectura where she again asked to see the official in charge. When he came upon the thousand-lei note in her passport, he whipped it out so quickly Harriet scarcely saw it go. He stamped in the return visa.

  ‘Doamna is intrepid,’ he said in English. ‘These times, the British who go do not wish to come back.’ Smirking, he handed her the passport with a little bow.

  Harriet wondered how Sasha would accept the news of their going. He accepted it impassively. After all, she thought, he merely lived as his family had lived for generations: in seclusion, dreading flight, but prepared for it.

  ‘What about Guy?’ he asked.

  ‘He’ll come when he can.’

  She and Guy had planned to support Sasha until he could find work. He surprised her now by his immediate appraisal of what his position would be abroad. He pointed out that, once he was beyond Rumanian jurisdiction, he could draw on the fortune banked in his name in Switzerland.

  ‘I shall be very rich,’ he said. ‘If you need money, I can give it to you.’

  ‘You would have to establish your identity.’

  ‘Surely my relations would do that?’

  Harriet smiled and agreed, but wondered where his relations might be.

  As nothing important cropped up, Inchcape’s departure was fixed for Sunday. He had only four days in which to make his arrangements, but he made them wholeheartedly. He decided to give up his flat.

  On his return, he explained to Guy, he would go to a pension. ‘No good shutting one’s eyes to the fact,’ he said. ‘Sooner or later, we’ll have to take ourselves off, probably at a moment’s notice. Better be prepared for it. Besides, one’s safer in a pension than living on one’s own.’

  When the Pringles called for him on Sunday evening, Pauli, opening the door, blinked at them with red-rimmed eyes. He led them through the hall filled with packing-cases and in the disordered sitting-room, where all the gold-shaded lights were lit, began to lament his quandary.

  The great wish of his life, he said, was to follow the professor wherever he might go. Alas, Pauli had a wife and three children. He had been prepared to leave them but the professor, the most clement of masters, had insisted that Pauli’s duty was here.

  Pauli made no pretence of believing that Inchcape would return. There was too much evidence against the possibility. At the thought of their eternal separation, Pauli’s eyes overflowed, his shoulders shook. He pulled out a ball of wet handkerchief and scrubbed at his face while Guy patted his shoulder, saying: ‘When the war is over, we shall all meet again.’

  ‘Dupa răsboiul,’ Pauli repeated and, as though for the first time struck by the thought that the war might end, he brightened at once. Nodding, blowing his nose, saying again and again ‘Dupa răsboiul’, he hurried off to tell Inchcape that they had arrived.

  Harriet said: ‘Dupa răsboiul!’ thinking of the war that divided them like a sea from progress and profit in the world. The total effort of their lives might go down in the crossing of it. ‘And afterwards,’ she said, ‘what will be left? We may no longer be young, or even ambitious. And it may never end. We may never have a home.’

  Wandering about among the packing-cases, she paused at the tables and examined Inchcape’s bowl of artificial fruit. There was a fig made of malachite, a purple plum, a flame-colo
ured persimmon. She held a pear to the light and, seeing the spangling within, said: ‘Do you think, if I asked him, he would give me these?’

  ‘Of course he wouldn’t.’ Guy was shocked at the idea and, hearing Inchcape’s footsteps, he added warningly: ‘Put them down.’

  Inchcape’s bruises were changing to green and violet. He looked scarcely better than he had done on the morning after the attack, but he had regained all his own sardonic swagger. He crossed over to a Chinese cabinet and took out three bottles, in each of which a little liquid remained.

  ‘Might as well finish this,’ he said. ‘What’ll you have? Brandy, gin, ţuică?’

  He had put on his overcoat and Pauli could be heard heaping up luggage in the hall, but Inchcape seemed in no hurry to go. Having poured out the drinks, he went round adjusting the shades of the lights and observing their effect. One of the ivory chessmen had toppled over. He restored it. Glancing about with satisfaction at his possessions, he said: ‘Pauli will pack everything beautifully. He’ll put the stuff into store and keep an eye on it for me.’ He showed no great regret at leaving his possessions, but he was not a poor man. He could replace them.

  Pauli came in to say he had found a taxi and taken the luggage down. When they left the room, he was standing by the open front door, sniffing. At the sight of Pauli’s grief, Inchcape’s jaunty air failed and his face grew strained. He put his hands on Pauli’s shoulders, seemed about to speak but moments passed before he said: ‘Goodbye, dear Pauli.’

  This was too much for Pauli, who collapsed to his knees with an agonised cry and, seizing Inchcape’s hand, kissed it wildly.

  Inchcape smiled again. He began edging towards the door, but Pauli shuffled after him, keeping a hold on him until they were in the outer passage. With a quick but gentle movement, Inchcape disengaged himself and sped down the stairs. Guy and Harriet followed, pursued by Pauli’s heart-broken sobs.

  On the long journey through the dark back-streets to the station, the three sat silent. Inchcape’s head dropped, his face was sombre: then, suddenly, he looked up to say: ‘You haven’t breathed a word to Pinkrose?’