The Balkan Trilogy (15 page)

Doamna Hassolel broke in aggressively. ‘A banker,’ she said, ‘upholds the existing order. He is an important man. He has the country behind him.’

‘Supposing the order ceases to exist?’ said Harriet. ‘Supposing the Nazis come here?’

‘They would not interfere with us,’ Flöhr said with a swaggering air. ‘It would not be in their interests to do so. They do not want a financial
débâcle
. Already, if it were not for us, Rumania would be on her knees.’

Teitelbaum added sombrely: ‘We could a dozen times buy and sell this country.’

Drucker, the only member of the family who seemed aware that these remarks were not carrying Harriet where they felt she should go, lifted a hand to check them, but as he did so his youngest sister broke in excitedly to urge the pace:

‘We work, we save,’ she said, ‘we bring here prosperity, and yet they persecute us.’ She leant across the table to fix Harriet with her reddish-brown eyes. ‘In Germany my husband was a clever lawyer. He had a big office. He comes here – and he is forbidden to practise. Why? Because he is a Jew. He must work for my brother. Why do they hate us? Even the
tr
ǎ
sur
ǎ
driver when angry with his horse will shout: “Go on, you Jew.” Why is it? Why is it so?’

The last query was followed by silence, intent and alert, as though, after some introductory circling over the area, one of the family had at last darted down upon the carcase of grievance that was the common meat of them all.

Drucker bent to his daughters and whispered something about ‘
grand-mère et grand-père
’. They whispered back. He nodded. Each took an orange from the table, then, hand-in-hand, left the room.

The talk broke out again as the door closed after the children. Each member of the family gave some example of
persecution. Drucker’s long aquiline head drooped over his plate. He had heard it all before and knew it to be no more than truth. Guy, roused by the talk, listened to it with a crumpled look of distress. The only persons unaffected were Sasha and Doamna Drucker. Doamna Drucker looked profoundly bored. As for Sasha – the stories, it seemed, did not relate to him. His thoughts were elsewhere. He was the treasured fœtus in the womb that has no quarrel with the outside world.

‘Yet you are not in danger here,’ said Harriet.

‘It is not the danger,’ said Hassolel. ‘There is danger everywhere. It is the feeling, a very ancient feeling. In the Bukovina you will see the Jews wear fox-fur round their hats. So it was ordered hundreds of years ago to say they are as crafty like a fox. Today they laugh and wear it still. They are clever, it is true, but they live apart: they harm no one.’

‘Perhaps that is the trouble,’ said Harriet, ‘that they live apart. Your first loyalty is to your own race. And you all grow rich. The Rumanians may feel you take from the country and give nothing back.’

Harriet had offered this merely as a basis for discussion and was startled by the tumult to which it gave rise. In the midst of it, Doamna Flöhr, near hysteria, shouted: ‘No, no, we are not to blame. It is the Rumanians. They shut their doors on us. They are selfish people. This country has everything but they do not want to share. They are greedy. They are lazy. They take everything.’

Drucker, when he could be heard, said: ‘There is room for all here: there is food and work for all. The Rumanians are content to do nothing but eat, sleep and make love. Such is their nature. The Jews and the foreigners, they run the country. Those who do the work, make the money. Isn’t it so? One might rather say of the Rumanians that they take and give nothing back.’

This statement was greeted with nods and exclamations of agreement. Teitelbaum, his flat, depressed face looking newly awakened, said: ‘But we are generous, we Jews. We always give
when we are asked. When the Iron Guard was powerful in 1937, the green-shirt boys came to the offices collecting for party funds. The Jewish firms gave twice, even three times, more than the Rumanians, and what was the gratitude? The Iron Guard made laws against us. Only last year there was a pogrom.’

Hassolel was peeling an orange. Without looking up from this employment, he said heavily: ‘At the University our boy was thrown from a window. His spine was broken. Now he is in a sanatorium in Switzerland. Our daughter was medical student. In the laboratory the young men took off her clothing and beat her. She went to America. She is ashamed to come back. So, you see, we have lost both our children.’

In the silence that followed, Hassolel went on peeling his orange. Harriet looked helplessly across at Guy, who had grown pale. He said suddenly: ‘When the Russians come here, there will be no more persecution. The Jews will be free to follow any profession they choose.’

At these words, intended to comfort, the brothers-in-law turned on him faces so appalled that Harriet laughed in spite of herself. No one looked at her or spoke, then Doamna Hassolel began pressing people to take sweets and chocolates from the little trays round the table. Coffee was served. When he had drunk a cup, Teitelbaum declared slowly:

‘The Communists are bad people. Russia has done great harm. Russia steals from Europe her trade.’

At the appearance of this familiar argument, Guy recovered himself and laughed good-humouredly. ‘Nonsense,’ he said; ‘Europe suffers from an out-dated economy. Take this country where a million workers – that’s one twentieth of the population – contribute half of the total yearly value of production. That means each worker carries on his back four adults – four male non-workers. And these workers are not only scandalously underpaid, they pay more than they should for everything they buy, except food. For food, of course, they pay too little.’

‘
Too little!
’ The sisters were scandalised.

‘Yes, too little. There is no country in the world where food
is so cheap. At the same time, factory-made articles are priced out of all proportion to their value. So you get the wretched peasants labouring for a pittance and paying an absurd price for every article they buy.’

‘The peasants!’ Doamna Drucker hissed in contempt and turned her head aside to suggest that when the conversation touched so low a level, it was time for her to depart.

‘The peasants are primitive,’ said Guy, ‘and, under present conditions, they will remain primitive. For one thing, they receive almost no education: they cannot afford to buy agricultural machinery: they …’

Doamna Drucker, her face sullen with scorn, interrupted angrily: ‘They are beasts,’ she said. ‘What can one do for such creatures? They are hopeless.’

‘In one sense,’ Guy agreed, ‘they are hopeless. They have never been allowed to hope. Whatever has happened here, they have been the losers.’

She rose from the table. ‘It is time for my siesta.’ She left the room.

There was an embarrassed pause, then Hassolel asked Guy if he had been that week to see Shirley Temple at the Cinema. Guy said he had not.

Hassolel sighed. ‘Such a sweet little girl! Always I go to see Shirley Temple.’

‘I also.’ Drucker nodded. ‘Always she reminds me of my own little Hannah.’

When they returned to the sitting room, Sasha invited Guy to go with him into the small ante-room he used as a music-room. Drucker said to Harriet: ‘Excuse me a little moment,’ and went off, no doubt in search of his wife. Flöhr, muttering something about work, went too. From the music-room came the sound of a gramophone playing ‘Basin Street Blues’.

Harriet, left alone with the Hassolels, the Teitelbaums and Doamna Flöhr, hoped the party would soon be over. But it was not over yet. A maid brought in some cut Bohemian glasses, red, blue, green, violet and yellow, and Doamna Hassolel began pouring liqueurs.

Doamna Teitelbaum, feeling perhaps that there had been too much of complaint at the meal, smiled on Harriet and said: ‘Still, you will enjoy life here. It is pleasant. It is cheap. There is much food. It is, you understand,
comfortable
.’

Before she could say more the manservant entered to say Domnul Drucker’s car was waiting for him. He was sent to find Drucker, who, when he entered, said he would drop Guy and Sasha back at the University. Harriet rose, ready to go with them, but the women clamoured:

‘Not Doamna Pringle. Doamna Pringle must stay with us. She must stay for the “five-o’-clock”.’

‘Of course she will stay,’ said Guy. Harriet gave him an anguished look but he did not see it. ‘She has nothing else to do. She would enjoy it.’

Without more ado, he said his good-byes and was off with Drucker and Sasha, leaving her behind. There was a short pause, then Teitelbaum and Hassolel departed.

‘You see,’ said Doamna Hassolel, ‘it is not yet half past four and they return to work. What Rumanian would work before five o’clock?’

The elder of the two Drucker girls came in to join her aunts. The women drew their chairs close together and sat with their plump, be-ringed hands smoothing their skirts over their plump, silk knees. Meanwhile they watched Harriet, somehow suggesting that even if she were formidable, she was outnumbered. They watched, she thought, with the purposeful caution of trappers.

The Drucker girl said: ‘She is pretty, is she not? Like a film star.’

Now the men were all gone, Doamna Flöhr had taken a platinum lorgnette from her bag. She examined Harriet through it. ‘What age are you?’ she asked.

‘Thirty-five,’ said Harriet.

The women gasped. The girl tittered behind her hand. ‘We thought you were twenty,’ she said.

Harriet wondered when they had joined in coming to this conclusion. Doamna Flöhr looked puzzled and, pretending to
fidget with the back of her dress, leant forward to take a closer look at Harriet.

Doamna Teitelbaum said in an extenuating tone: ‘Leah Blum, you remember, did not marry till she was thirty. Such happens, I am told, with Career Women.’

The others laughed at the outlandishness of such women.

Doamna Hassolel said: ‘Here we say: at twenty, you marry yourself; at twenty-five, you must get the old woman to marry you; at thirty, the devil himself can’t do it.’

Harriet turned to Doamna Flöhr, because she was the youngest sister, and said: ‘What age are you?’

Doamna Flöhr started. ‘Here,’ she said, ‘women do not tell their ages.’

‘In England,’ said Harriet, ‘they are not asked to tell.’

Doamna Hassolel now said: ‘How many children do you wish to have?’

‘We shall probably wait until after the war.’

‘Then it will be too late.’

‘Surely not.’

‘But how many? Haven’t you considered?’

‘Oh, nine or ten.’

‘So many? Then you must start soon.’

Harriet laughed and Doamna Teitelbaum, whose manner was more kindly than that of the others, said: ‘You are surely joking? You cannot be so old.’

‘I am twenty-two,’ said Harriet. ‘A year younger than Guy.’

‘Ah!’ The others relaxed, disappointed.

Doamna Hassolel rang for the maid and gave an order. The maid brought in some jars of a sort of jam made of whole fruits.

Doamna Teitelbaum murmured her pleasure. ‘A little spoonful,’ she said, ‘I like so much gooseberry.’

Harriet said: ‘I really must go.’ She started to rise, but the circle of women sat firm about her.

‘No, no,’ said Doamna Hassolel, ‘you cannot go. Here already is the “five-o’clock”.’

A trolley was wheeled in laden with sandwiches, iced cakes,
cream buns and several large flans made of sliced apples, pears and plums.

Harriet looked from the window. Rain was falling again. The wind was blowing it in sheets from the soaked trees. Doamna Hassolel watched her calmly as she returned to her chair.

9

With late November came the
criva
ţ
, a frost-hard wind that blew from Siberia straight into the open mouth of the Moldavian plain. Later it would bring the snow, but for the moment it was merely a threat and a discomfort that each day grew a little sharper.

Fewer people appeared in the streets. Already there were those who faced the outdoor air only for as long as it took them to hurry between home and car. In the evening, in the early dark, there were only the workers hurrying to escape the cold. Taxis were much in demand. Run cheaply on cheap fuel from the oil-fields that were only thirty miles distant, they charged little more than the buses of other capitals.

At the end of November there came, too, a renewal of fear as Russia invaded Finland. Although his friends were inclined to hold him responsible for the Soviet defection, Guy’s faith did not waver. He and Harriet heard the news one night at the Athénée Palace, where Clarence had taken them to dine. They found as they left the dining-room that the main room had been prepared for a reception. The chandeliers were fully lit, the tables banked with flowers and a red carpet had been unrolled throughout the hall.

‘Germans,’ said Guy when he saw the first of the guests. The Germans and the British in Bucharest knew each other very well by sight. This was Harriet’s first real encounter with the enemy. Guy and Clarence pointed out to her several important members of the German Embassy, all in full evening dress, among them Gerda Hoffman, a stocky woman whose straw-coloured hair was bound like a scarf round her head. No one
knew what her true function was, but a whispering campaign had given her the reputation of being the cleverest agent to come out of Germany.

A group of these Germans stood in the hall. Seeing the three young English people advance on them, they closed together on the red carpet so that the three had to divide and skirt them. As this happened, the Germans laughed exultantly among themselves. Harriet was surprised that people of importance should behave so crassly. Guy and Clarence were not surprised. This behaviour seemed to them typical of the sort of Germans sent out under the New Order.

‘But they’re certainly crowing over something,’ said Clarence. ‘I wonder what’s happened. Let’s ask in the bar.’

In the bar they learnt of the invasion of Finland from Galpin, who said: ‘That’s the beginning. The next thing, Russia’ll declare war on us. Then the Huns and the Russkies will carve up Europe between them. What’s to stop them?’