The Balkan Trilogy

by Olivia Manning

  The winter was setting in. There were still bright days, but mostly the sky was white with cold and a wind, high, sharp and gritty, swept the dust along the pavements. The night before it had poured with rain. When Harriet went to the gardens she saw the palm fronds blown from side to side like shocks of hair. The paths, that a week before had been warm and quiet, were now draughty channels, so cold that she realized if she did not get a coat, she would soon have to stay indoors.

  Having left Guy with his books, contemplating a lecture on Ben Jonson, she hurried back to get him out to the shops and found him gone. He had left no message. She knew he had gone to Aleko’s.

  Guy had taken her there once but the visit had depressed her. She liked the Greek boys but was shy with them – being so constituted she could cope with only one or two people at a time; but Guy, she saw, was having the time of his life. He was an adolescent among adolescents, and they were all elevated by the belief that, together, they would reform the world. She was made uneasy by their faith in certain political leaders, their condemnation of others, the atmosphere of conspiracy and her own guilty self-doubt. She was an individual and as such had no hope of reforming the world. The stories that inspired them – stories of injustice and misery – merely roused in her a sense of personal failure.

  ‘But you must sacrifice your individuality,’ Guy told her. ‘It’s nothing but egoism. You must unite with other right-thinking, self-abnegating people – then you can achieve anything.’

  The idea filled her with gloom.

  Guy, who was learning demotic Greek, could already discuss abstract ideas with the students in their own language. He amazed them.

  One of the boys said to Harriet: ‘He is wonderful – so warm, cordial and un-English! We have elected him an honorary Greek.’ As an honorary Greek, admired and made much of, Guy was at Aleko’s all the time.

  Harriet, out of it and a little jealous, refused to go to the café again. Guy told her she was ‘a-political’. Alan Frewen had been similarly condemned. He was, Guy said, the sort of man who thinks the best government is the one that causes him least inconvenience. So much for Alan; but Alan, unaware that his epitaph had been spoken, continued to invite them as though he saw himself the friend of both.

  When the telephone rang in the bedroom, it was Alan, calling from his office: ‘I’ve heard that Athens is en fête. No night for cold mutton at the Academy. How about coming to Babayannis’? If there’s anything to celebrate, that’s where everyone goes.’

  ‘I’m worried about Guy,’ Harriet said. ‘I think he must be at Aleko’s.’

  ‘I’ll call with a taxi. We’ll roust out the old bolshie on the way.’

  When she joined Alan in the taxi, he told the driver to go through the Plaka. ‘I want you to see something,’ he said to Harriet. They turned into the square where the loudspeaker was singing out: ‘Anathema, anathema …’ The curse, of course, was on those who said that love is sweet: ‘I’ve tried it,’ said the song. ‘And found it poison.’ But the curse was also on those who had imagined Greece was there for the taking. The Italians had tried it and they, too, had found it poison.

  As they went through the narrow Plaka streets, the Parthenon appeared. It was flood-lit, a temple of white fire hanging upon the blackness of the sky.

  Harriet, catching her breath, said: ‘I’ve never seen anything more beautiful.’

  ‘Is there anything more beautiful to be seen?’ Alan asked.

  In the Plaka Square, where they had sat during the raid, the café had pulled aside its black-out curtains. The light, streaming greenish pale through the bleared window, lit the men dancing in the road.

  ‘It’s the Zebeikiko,’ Harriet cried, wildly exhilarated by all the rejoicings.

  Alan, amused that she had remembered the name, told the taximan to stop and they watched the dancers, arms about one another’s shoulders, moving through the light, beneath the pepper trees. The music changed. A man standing on a chair against the window took a leap into the middle of the road. He shouted. The others shouted back. Someone threw him a handkerchief and he stood poised, holding the handkerchief by one corner at arm’s length. Another man ran out to take the opposite corner. Both men were grey-haired, with the dark, lined faces of out-door labourers, but they danced like youths.

  The city was intoxicated. In the narrow streets the taxi crawled through a mass of moving shadows. There were mouth-organs and accordions; and between great outbursts of laughter people sang popular songs to which they fitted new words about the behaviour of Mussolini and his ridiculous army.

  When they reached Aleko’s, Harriet sent Alan in, saying: ‘If we both go, Guy will only persuade us to stay.’

  Alan stayed inside for several minutes, then came out and said with a shrug: ‘He says he’ll join us at Babayannis’.’

  Bitterly disappointed, Harriet said: ‘But I want him to come with us. I want him to see everything. I want him to enjoy it, too.’

  Alan climbed with a sigh back into the taxi. ‘You must accept him as he is,’ he said. ‘After all, his virtues far outweigh his faults.’

  At the taverna called Babayannis’, the curtains had been looped back and the smell of cooking came out like a welcome. The entrance light had been dimmed but there was enough to show the big stone-flagged hallway where there was a range on which the food was displayed in copper pots. The chef in attendance knew Alan. He spoke in English and said he had once worked in Soho. He was sad there was so little to offer the English guests but, as was fitting, the best of the meat went to the fighting-men and restaurants had to take what they could get.

  Looking down into the brown cream of the moussaka, the red-brown stews with pimentos, tomatoes, aubergines and little white onions, Harriet said: ‘Don’t worry. This is good enough for me.’

  The inner room was crowded. The lights were not very bright but the whole taverna seemed a-dazzle with vivacious life. Almost as soon as Alan and Harriet were seated, Costa, the singer, came out to sing. He was laughing as he appeared and went on laughing as though he could not repress his high spirits. At once, responding to his gaiety, the audience began a frantic clapping and shouting, demanding songs they had not heard since the invasion began. In the past, the songs had been sad, telling of the need to fight and die, of lovers separated and loved ones who would not return. But all that, they seemed to think, was over and done with. Now they need do nothing but rejoice.

  In the midst of this uproar, Costa stood laughing, turning from side to side, his teeth brilliant in his long, dark, folded face; then he held up a hand and the noise died out. People sat intently silent, scarcely breathing for fear of missing a word.

  He said: ‘The invaders have fled. But there are still Italians on our soil; a great many Italians, several thousand. However, they are all prisoners.’

  In the furore that followed, people wept with joy and leapt up, laughing while the tears streamed down their cheeks. Costa asked: ‘What shall I sing?’ and sang ‘Yalo, yalo’ and ‘Down by the seaside’ and every other song for which they asked. There could be no doubt of it: the mourning days were over and people were free to live again.

  Harriet murmured several times: ‘If only Guy were here!’

  Alan’s face crumpled into its tragic smile: ‘Don’t worry,’ he said. ‘Costa will sing again later.’

  When the singer retired, people who had waited at the entrance began to move in to their tables. Among them Harriet saw Dobson who had been Cultural Attaché in Bucharest and was now in Athens. She did not share Guy’s faith in Dobson’s essential good-nature but as soon as he caught sight of her, he captivated her at once.

  He seized her shoulder with affectionate familiarity: ‘What fun!’ he said. ‘We’re all here together. How naughty, you two, choosing Greece instead of the heat, dirt, flies, disease and all the other delights of the Middle East! But who cares? Not the London office, I’m sure.’ He rubbed his hand happily over his baby-soft puffs of hair and rocked his soft, plump body to
and fro. ‘You’re well out of Bucharest. Not much “Paris-of-the-East” these days. And what do you think has happened on top of everything else? The most terrible earthquake. You know that block you lived in, the Blocul Cazacul? It collapsed in a heap. Went down like a dropped towel with all the tenants buried beneath it.’

  Harriet stared at him, shocked by this resolution of their year in Bucharest, then said: ‘I hope our landlord went down with it.’

  Dobson opened his blue baby eyes and laughed as though she had been extremely witty. ‘I expect he did. I expect he did,’ he said in delight as he moved off.

  Harriet laughed too. Bucharest had become a shadow and its devastation had little reality for her, but as she put the past back where it belonged, she suddenly saw Sasha dead among the ruins. For a second she caught his exact image, then it was gone. Sasha, too, had become a shadow. As she searched for his face in her mind, she found herself looking into another face. A young man was watching her. When their eyes met, he turned his head away. His action was self-conscious. He looked young enough to be a schoolboy but he was wearing the uniform of an English second-lieutenant. She noticed that the men with whom he sat were Cookson, Archie Callard and Ben Phipps.

  ‘Who is the English officer at Cookson’s table?’ she whispered to Alan.

  ‘English officer? Oh yes, Charles Warden. He’s just come here from Crete.’

  ‘But I thought the Greeks wouldn’t have British troops on the mainland?’

  ‘He’s in the Military Attaché’s office. You know we’re going to have a Military Mission? Well, I think he’s being groomed to act as liaison officer.’

  Harriet observed the young officer for a moment and said: ‘He’s very good-looking.’

  ‘Is he?’ Alan gave him a wry, dismissive glance and said: ‘Yes, I suppose he is.’

  Sasha had not been good-looking, but he had had a gentle face like that of a tamed and sensitive animal. There was nothing gentle about Charles Warden. He had been caught looking at her once and would not be caught again. He looked away from her and his profile, raised with something like arrogance, suggested a difficult and dangerous nature. Alan had shown that he did not like Warden, and he was probably right.

  ‘Not a pleasant young man,’ she thought.

  When they were served with wine, Harriet caught Dobson’s smiling eye and said to Alan: ‘Do you think we might move to the Academy? Perhaps Dobson could put in a word for us.’

  ‘You’d hate the place,’ Alan said. ‘It’s like a dreadful girls’ school. That bossy red-headed virgin Dunne won’t even let poor old Diocletian sleep on the chairs.’

  Sitting among the hilarious Greeks, Harriet did not want to hear about Miss Dunne, but Alan had started a long story about Miss Dunne’s taking all the hot water for a bath then blaming him when he used what remained because she wanted to wash her stockings.

  Harriet laughed but Alan did not laugh. She could see how intolerable it was for him, after his year of solitary freedom, to live a sort of conventional life beneath a female tyrant, but his complaints did not discourage her. She remembered Gracey’s spacious, shabby room and could imagine their days there, planned, coherent and beautiful. She had had enough of disorder and had seen that in war there was anxiety instead of expectation, exhaustion instead of profit, and one burnt one’s emotions to extract from life nothing but the waste products: insecurity and fear.

  She said: ‘For a while, I’d love to live in an ordered community. You can have too much of confusion. In no time, you begin to think that war is real and life is not.’

  ‘Or that war is life?’

  She nodded. ‘I couldn’t believe in the peace-time society here. It was almost a relief when the air-raid siren sounded. I felt at once that I knew my way around.’

  Alan laughed and some minutes later asked her: ‘Would you take a job, if there was one?’

  ‘I certainly would.’

  ‘We’ll have to expand when the Mission arrives. Nothing definite yet, but I may be able to offer you something. We’ll see. Ah!’ On a rising note of satisfaction Alan added: ‘Here’s our man at last.’

  Guy, making his way round the restaurant, was not alone. He was talking boisterously and his voice told Harriet that he had had more than enough to drink. He was followed by a train of young men in air-force uniform, among them the bearded pilot whom they had seen carried shoulder high past Zonar’s.

  The procession arrested the whole room. Even Cookson’s party paused to gaze. Guy, leading his prize in, waved to Dobson and Dobson, not over-sober himself, stood up and embraced Guy fervently.

  ‘Welcome,’ said Alan. ‘Welcome.’

  Guy’s introductions were wordy but vague, for he had found the airmen wandering aimlessly through the narrow lane of the Plaka and did not know what they were called.

  The waiter, flustered and important because the British aircrew had come to his table, seized chairs wherever he could find them and seated the men down with a proprietary firmness. He insisted that the pilot sit on one side of Harriet and the rear-gunner on the other. As this was being arranged, she glanced over at Charles Warden and found him watching her. He gave her a smile of quizzical inquiry, but now it was her turn to look away, and with an expression that told him she had enough young men and could manage very well without him.

  She wanted to know what the pilot was called.

  ‘Surprise,’ he said. Surprise what? Nothing – just Surprise. But he must have another name? He shook his head, smiling. If he had, he had forgotten it.

  ‘Why are you called Surprise?’

  He laughed, not telling. Sprawled in his chair, his eyes half-closed in sleepy amusement, he treated her questions as a joke. He seemed not to know the answer to anything. He simply laughed.

  Harriet turned to the rear-gunner, an older man, who said he was called Zipper Cohen. She asked: ‘Tell me why he’s called Surprise.’

  Cohen said: ‘When the Group Captain saw him, he was so surprised he fell off his chair.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because he was wearing a beard.’

  ‘They’re not worn in the air force, are they? How can he get away with it?’

  ‘He can get away with anything.’

  The navigator, Chew Buckle, was a small, thin, sharp-nosed boy who, in normal times, would probably be morose and unsociable. He still had nothing to say, but he laughed without ceasing.

  Guy was drunk enough but the airmen were more drunk and evaded any sort of serious topic as a blind man evades obstacles. Only Zipper Cohen was ready to talk. He took out a cigarette-case, opened it and, showing Harriet a photograph tucked into the lid, watched her keenly as she looked at the face of a young woman holding a child.

  ‘My wife and little girl,’ he said. He seemed the only one whose feet were on earth and when Harriet handed back the cigarette-case, he sat staring at the picture which attached him to the real world. But this incident did not last long. In a moment he shut the case, put it away and began asking what was wrong with the girls in this place. Harriet was the only girl who had given him a smile since he got here.

  ‘The Greek girls won’t look at us,’ he complained.

  ‘It’s their way of being loyal to their men at the front.’

  Zipper gave a howl of laughter. ‘I hope my old woman’s being as loyal as that.’

  Alan, drawn into the rantipole merriment of the young men, tried to talk to Chew Buckle who sat beside him. Why were they stationed so far behind the lines? he asked.

  Chew Buckle giggled. He was a man used by events but not involved with them. When asked a direct question, he knew something was expected of him, but could scarcely tell what.

  The war had plucked him out of his own nature but given him nothing to take its place. He giggled and shook his head and giggled.

  Zipper explained that the Greeks, fearful of provoking the Axis, kept them well behind the lines with some idea that the Germans would not notice them. ‘We just about managed to get to A
lbania and back. When we landed last night, there wasn’t a pint in the tank.’

  ‘Suppose you’re forced down?’ asked Alan.

  Zipper laughed. ‘It’s a friendly country. Not like Hellfire Pass.’

  The mention of Hellfire renewed the laughter and Chew Buckle, speaking in a deep, harsh voice, said: ‘They cut y’r bollocks off there.’ The others collapsed.

  It was some time before the three civilians could discover that, if the Arabs of Hellfire Pass caught a pilot, they held him to ransom and, as proof of his existence, sent his expendable parts to Bomber Command.

  When Costa came out to sing again, the enjoyment had a second focal point, and Costa, acknowledging applause, waved at the aircrew to show they were as much part of the entertainment as he was. Glasses of wine were sent over to the young men and, as a special honour, apples were sliced and put into the glasses. More bottles were ordered by Guy and Alan so these compliments could be repaid, and glasses passed to and fro, and were sent to Costa, then to the proprietor and the waiters, and soon the tables all around were covered with glasses, some empty, some half full and some waiting to be drunk. The restaurant swayed with drink, and the air quivered with admiration, affection and the triumph of the day.

  Suddenly one of the waiters, a middle-aged man as thin as a whippet, ran into the middle of the floor, and began to dance, and the audience clapped in time for him. Cookson and his friends watched, not clapping but indulgently approving.

  Guy was in a jubilant state. He suffered from his own frustrated energy and the challenge of other men’s activity, but now it seemed nothing could daunt him. A sort of electricity went out from him and infected the neighbouring tables, and even the airmen began to talk. They told, in terms of riotous humour, how they were sent out every morning over Valona at exactly the same time. It was intended as a double bluff. The Italians were expected to think such tactics impossible and so be unprepared.