The Balkan Trilogy

by Olivia Manning

  ‘Neither do I.’

  She put her arms round him and he lay down beside her. Too tired to undress, they slept, each holding the other secure upon the narrow bed.

  Next morning, all the inmates of the hotel were sitting round the breakfast table, subdued, but scarcely more subdued than usual. Guy said: ‘Someone told us last night that the Germans were only six hours from Athens. He seemed to think they’d be here by morning.’

  ‘They’re not here yet,’ Tennant said. He smiled and, knowing things were too far gone for rebuttal, said slowly: ‘But your informant was partly right. We heard that German parachute troops had dropped on Larissa, but that didn’t mean they were coming straight here. They’ve still got to negotiate the pass at Thermopylae, the old invaders’ bottleneck. Of course, it’s not as narrow as it was. When the Spartans held it against Xerxes it was only twenty-five feet at the narrowest point. Now … how wide is it, would you say?’ Tennant turned to consult his colleagues.

  ‘Still, they are at Larissa?’ Harriet asked.

  ‘They may well be.’ Tennant bent towards Harriet, giving her a smile of surprising sweetness: ‘Please do not think I am withholding the truth from you. No one really knows anything. The train lines are cut in Macedonia. Telephone communication with the front has broken down. We are as much in the dark as you are.’

  The mourners had arranged to meet in Alan’s office. At the bottom of Vasilissis Sofias the Pringles were passed by Toby Lush and Dubedat in the Major’s Delahaye. Toby gave them a cheerful wave and Harriet said: ‘Don’t you think that those two are putting a surprisingly brave face on things?’

  ‘What else can they do?’ Guy said.

  ‘Well, Pinkrose wanted us to bolt last night. Why didn’t they bolt?’

  ‘I don’t know, but they evidently didn’t. Perhaps they felt as we did about it.’

  ‘Perhaps.’

  ‘They aren’t such bad fellows, really.’

  Harriet did not argue. She saw that having grown up without faith, in an inauspicious era, Guy had to believe in something and so, against all reason, maintained a faith in friendship. If he chose to forget his betrayal, then let him forget it.

  Ben Phipps was already in the News Room. He sat in Yakimov’s old corner while Alan, behind his desk, talked into the telephone. He was saying as though he had said it a hundred times before: ‘Don’t worry. You’ll be rung up just as soon as transport is available. Yes, yes, something is being done all right,’ and putting down the receiver, said: ‘Can they take horses, dogs, cats, fishes? I don’t know! What does one do when one has to give up one’s home and all the dependent creatures in it?’ He rubbed his hands over his face and, eyes watering from lack of sleep, looked about him as though he scarcely knew where he was.

  ‘So nothing’s been arranged yet?’ Guy said.

  ‘No. Not yet.’

  Ben got to his feet: ‘What about the poor old bastard in the bathroom.’

  ‘Yes, let’s get that over,’ Alan agreed. He edged himself out of his chair and waited while Diocletian came from under the desk with a scratch and a snuffle. As they left the office, the Pringles told the story of Pinkrose’s panic order the previous night. Had Pinkrose gone himself?

  Alan said: ‘No, he rang this morning. He didn’t seem unduly alarmed.’

  ‘It’s odd,’ said Harriet, ‘that he’s not more alarmed. And it’s even more odd that Lush and Dubedat are taking things so calmly.’

  Guy and Alan said nothing, but Ben Phipps stopped on the pavement, screwing up his face against the sunlight, and stared at his car, then swung round and blinked at Harriet: ‘It is odd,’ he said. ‘If you ask me, it’s damned odd,’ and, crossing to the car, he got in and drove away.

  Alan looked after him in astonishment. ‘Where’s he off to?’

  Guy said: ‘To his office, most likely. He’ll be back.’

  ‘He’ll have to hurry. Dobson has ordered the hearse for ten o’clock.’

  They strolled to the Corinthian that was in ferment with the departing Poles and Yugoslavs. Though the ships were not due to sail before noon, the voyagers were shouting at porters, harrying taxi-drivers and generally urging their own deliverance with a great deal more flurry than was shown by the English who might not be delivered at all.

  Six Yugoslav officers, their gold aflash, came at a run down the front steps, threw their greatcoats into a taxi and crying: ‘Hurry, hurry,’ threw themselves in after and were gone.

  Some Greeks stood on the pavement, watching, silent, their black eyes fixed in an intent dejection.

  Tandy, who usually took his breakfast out of doors, was not among those sitting round the café tables. Guy offered to find him, and Alan said: ‘Tell him to hurry. It’s nearly ten o’clock.’

  Alan and Harriet felt it was scarcely worth sitting down and were still standing among the café tables when Guy returned. He was alone.

  ‘Well, is he coming?’ Alan asked.

  Guy motioned to the nearest table. Harriet and Alan sat down, puzzled by Guy’s expression. It was some moments before he could bring himself to tell them what he knew. He said at last: ‘Tandy’s gone.’

  ‘Gone where?’

  ‘To the Piraeus. He left early. Apparently he came down about seven a.m., asked for his bill and told them to fetch down his luggage and call a taxi. He mentioned to one of the porters that he was going on the Varsavia.’

  Harriet looked at Alan: ‘Would he be allowed on?’

  ‘He might: one man alone. And he took the precaution of going early, did he?’ Alan laughed: ‘Didn’t want to be saddled with the rest of us.’

  ‘He forgot this.’ Guy opened his hand and showing the bill for Tandy’s valedictory dinner, said apologetically: ‘I’m afraid I hadn’t enough to settle it all, so I gave them half and thought …’

  Alan nodded and took the bill: ‘I’ll pay the rest.’

  Tandy’s flight silenced them. They not only missed his company, but were absurdly downcast by a superstitious fear that without him they were lost. They waited without speaking for the hearse to arrive and Ben Phipps to return.

  An hour passed without a sign from either and Harriet said: ‘Perhaps Ben Phipps has got on the Varsavia.’

  Guy and Alan were shocked by her distrust of a friend. When Guy said: ‘I’m perfectly sure he hasn’t,’ Alan grunted agreement and Harriet kept quiet for a long time afterwards.

  They were joined by persons known to them who, stopping as they passed, gave different opinions: one that the Germans would be held at Thermopylae; another that they could not be held, but would drive straight through to Athens. As usual, no one knew anything.

  Vourakis, with a shopping basket in his hand, stopped and said: ‘Of allied resistance there is nothing but a little line from Thermopylae to Amphissia.’

  ‘An important line, nevertheless,’ Alan said. ‘We could hold on there for weeks.’

  ‘You could, but you will not. They will say to you: “Withdraw. Save yourselves, if you can. We want you here no more.” That is all we can say to our allies now.’ Vourakis spread his hands and contracted his shoulders in a gesture of despair. ‘This is the end,’ he said.

  The others kept silent, not knowing what to reply.

  ‘I have heard – I do not know how true – that some members of the Government want an immediate capitulation. Only that, they say, can save our city from the fate of Belgrade.’

  ‘Royalists, I suppose?’ said Guy.

  ‘No. Not at all. The King himself is against capitulation and he has refused to leave Athens, though many say to him: “Fly, fly.” Believe me, Kyrios Pringle, there are brave men in all parties.’

  Guy was quick to agree, and Vourakis stood up, saying his wife had sent him out to buy anything he could find. The Germans, people knew, would take not only the food but medicines, clothing, household goods, anything and everything. So they were all out buying what they could find.

  He passed on. It was now midday and still no hears
e and no Ben Phipps.

  Alan went to telephone the undertaker’s office. He was told the hearse had gone to the funeral of an air-raid victim. The need these days was great, the servitors few. He returned to say: ‘The hearse, like death, will come when it will come.’

  ‘An apt simile,’ said Guy, and Harriet, growing restless, decided to go and buy some flowers.

  In case they came to look for her, she said she would go to the flower shop beside the Old Palace, but when she reached the corner she hurried into the gardens through the side entrance and went to the Judas grove. As Alan had promised, the trees had blossomed for Easter. She stood for a full minute taking in the rosettes of wine-mauve flowers that covered the leafless wood, devouring them in mind like someone who gazes into a lighted window at a feast, then she hurried to the shop and bought carnations for Yakimov.

  With nothing else to do in a city where life was ebbing to a stop, the three sat on and watched the sun move off the square. It was late in the afternoon when the hearse and carriage drew up before the hotel.

  ‘They’ve done him proud,’ Guy said.

  Four black horses, with silver trappings and tails to the ground, drew a black hearse of ornamental wood and engraved glass, surmounted by woeful black cherubs who held aloft black candles and black ostrich plumes. These splendours pleased the mourners but they did not please the hotel management. As soon as sighted, a porter came pelting down the steps to order them round to the back entrance.

  While Alan and the Pringles stood in the kitchen doorway Dobson arrived in a taxi and joined them. The undertakers had taken the flimsy coffin up to the bathroom and the living listened to the arguments and the scraping of wood as it was manoeuvred down the grey and grimy cement stairway.

  Dobson, sniffing the smell of cooking-fat, rubbed his head-fluff ruefully and said: ‘This is really too bad!’

  ‘It could be worse,’ Guy said. ‘Chekhov died in an hotel and they smuggled him out in a laundry basket.’

  The coffin edged round into view and reached the hall where the bearers, placing it on the ground, lifted the lid so all might see that Yakimov and his possessions were intact.

  ‘We forgot to close his eyes,’ Harriet said in distress and, looking into them for the last time, saw they had lost their lustre. Despite his greed, his ingratitude, his long history of unpaid debts, he had a blameless look and she found herself moved by his corpse, wrapped there in the Czar’s old coat, as she had never been moved by him in life. He had died demurring, but it had been a gentle demur and the gaze that met hers was mild, a little bewildered but resigned to the mischance that had finished him off. Her own eyes filled with tears. She turned away to hide them; the coffin lid was replaced, the carnations placed upon it, and the cortège set out.

  Dobson had asked the English popa Father Harvey to conduct the service: ‘After all,’ he said, ‘Yaki must have been Orthodox.’

  ‘But Russian Orthodox, surely?’ said Alan.

  ‘His mother was Irish,’ Harriet said. ‘So he may have been a Catholic.’

  ‘Oh, well,’ said Dobson. ‘Harvey’s a dear fellow and won’t hold it against him.’

  They drove at a solemn pace past the Zappion and the Temple of Zeus and came to a district that no one except Alan had visited before. Above the cemetery wall, tall cypresses rose into the evening blue of the sky. Father Harvey had already arrived. In his popa’s robes, with his blond beard, his blond hair knotted behind the veil that fell from his popa’s hat, he led the funeral procession through the gate into the graveyard quiet.

  There had been no one to buy a plot for Yakimov. The Legation was paying for the funeral, but the coffin would have only temporary lodging in the ground. Alan mentioned that he had had to identify the remains of a friend who had died while on holiday in Athens.

  ‘What was there to identify?’ Dobson asked.

  ‘Precious little. Bodies disintegrate quickly in the dry summer heat; soon there’s nothing but dust and a few powdery bones and bits of cloth. They put it all into a box and place it in the ossuary. I prefer that. I don’t want to lie mouldering for years. And think of the saving of space!’

  ‘There’ll be no one to identify Yakimov,’ Harriet said.

  Alan sadly agreed.

  There would be no one left who had known him in life or remembered that the scraps of cloth lying among his long, fragile bones, had been a sable-lined greatcoat, once worn by the doomed, unhappy Czar of all the Russias.

  Passing among the trees and shrubs, they came on small communities of graves that seemed like gatherings of friends, silent a moment till the intruders went by. When the ceremony was over, Harriet fell behind the party of mourners and, walking soundlessly on the grass verges, lingered to look at the statues and photographs of the dead. She did not want to leave this sequestered safety, where the ochre-golden light of the late sun rayed through the cypresses and gilded the leaves.

  The richness of the enclosing greenery secluded her and gave her a sense of safety. When the men’s voices passed out of hearing, a velvet quiet came down so she could imagine herself dead and immaterial in a region where the alarms of the present could affect her no more than those of the past. She wandered away from the direction of the gate, unwilling to leave.

  Guy called her. She came to a stop beside a stone boy seated on a chair. Guy called again, breaking the air’s intimate peace, and she felt her awareness contract and concentrate upon the destructive and futile hazards outside.

  Guy came through the trees, reproving her: ‘Darling, do come along. Dobson has to get back to the Legation. There’s a lot to be done there.’

  On the return journey, Harriet asked what they were doing up at the Legation.

  ‘Oh!’ Dobson gave a gasp of amusement at the ridiculous ploys of life. ‘We’re burning papers. We’re sorting out the accumulation of centuries. All the important, top-secret documents written by all the important top-secret characters in history are being dumped on a bonfire in the Legation garden.’

  Alan was returning with him to help in this task so the Pringles, dropped in the centre of Athens, found themselves alone.

  Guy was certain that Ben Phipps would be waiting for them at the Corinthian, but there was no sign of him.

  ‘Let’s try Zonar’s.’

  They walked quickly in the outlandish hope that Tandy might, after all, be there. But he was not there. And Ben Phipps was not there. The table was unoccupied. Disconcerted, disconsolate, they stood and looked at it. What they missed most was Tandy’s welcome. He had liked them; but he had liked everyone, in a general way, as some people like dogs, and might have excused himself by saying: ‘They are company.’ He had been in Athens only ten days and in that time had become a habit. Now he had gone, it was as though a familiar tree had been cut down, a landmark lost.

  They felt no impulse to sit down without him. While they stood on the corner of University Street, some English soldiers came and began to set up a machine-gun.

  ‘What on earth’s happening?’ Guy asked.

  ‘Martial law,’ said the sergeant. ‘I’d go in if I were you. There’s a report that the fifth column mean to bump off all the British.’

  ‘I don’t believe it.’

  The sergeant laughed: ‘Tell you the truth, I don’t, neither.’

  The Greeks seated in the café chairs watched apathetic, as the gun was placed in position, resigned to anything that might happen in a city passing out of control.

  Standing there with nothing to do, nowhere to go, Harriet could see from his ruminative expression that Guy was trying to think of some duty or obligation that might protect him from the desolation in the air. Fearful of being left alone, she caught his arm and said: ‘Please don’t leave me.’

  ‘I ought to go to the School,’ he said. ‘I’ve left some books there; and the students might come to say good-bye.’

  ‘All right. We’ll go together.’

  The sun had dropped behind the houses and long, azure shadows l
ay over the roads. With time to waste, the Pringles strolled back to Stadium Street where other machine-guns stood on corners. Soldiers were patrolling the pavements with rifles at the ready. Most of the shops had shut and some were boarded and battened as a precaution against riots or street-fighting. Yet, apart from the guns, the soldiers and the boarded shops, there was no visible derangement of life. There was no violence; there were no demonstrations; simply, the everyday world was running down.

  A sense of dream pervaded the town. Even at this time, human beings were entering the world, or leaving it. Yakimov had died and had to be buried, but his death had been an event in another dimension of time. Now, it was amazing to see the tram-cars running. When one of them clanked past, people stared, bewildered by men who had still the heart to go on working. The rest of them seemed to be without occupation, employment or interest. They had nothing to do. There was nothing to be done. They had wandered out of doors and now stood about, blank and silent in the nullity of grief.

  Before they reached Omonia Square, Harriet was stopped by the sight of a shoe standing in an empty window: a single shoe of emerald silk with a high, brilliant-studded heel. Peering into the gloom of the shop, she saw there was nothing else. Cupboards stood open; drawers had been pulled out; paper and cardboard boxes had been kicked into corners. The only thing that remained was the shoe with its glittering heel.

  In the square they saw Vourakis again, still carrying his shopping-basket, though there was nothing left to buy. A few shops had remained open but the owners gazed out vacantly, knowing the routine of buying and selling had come to an end like everything else.

  Vourakis was tired. His eyelids were red and his dark, narrow face had sunk in as though in the last few hours old age had overtaken him. He had spoken to Guy only once or twice but caught his arm and held to him, saying: ‘You should go, you know. You should save yourselves while there is time.’

  ‘They can’t find a ship for us,’ Guy said.

  Vourakis shook his head in compassion. ‘Let us sit down a while,’ he said, and led them to a café that smelt strongly of aniseed. The only thing kept there was ouzo and while they drank a couple of glasses, Vourakis told them stories of heroism and defiance that he had heard from the wounded who were now coming in in thousands from the field hospitals. Even now, he said, when all was lost, there were Greeks resisting and determined to resist to the death.