The Longest Winter (11 page)

‘I always think that in this part of Bosnia there must be brigands,’ said Anne.

‘Oh, Dragovich and his kind grow corn and keep goats now,’ said Sophie.

James wished he had a bold, imaginative talent with oils. It was colour, rasping and brazen, which these vistas demanded. The village, built on the
hillside above the river, was a dream vantage point for any artist. Here, by the tavern, one might sit and commit the primitive grandeur to memory, while sketching outlines.

As he stood in absorbed contemplation of light and shade, Anne and Sophie delicately inspected the chairs around one of the tables. James put his sketchbook on the table, took out his handkerchief and dusted the chairs.

‘James, that is so nice of you,’ said Sophie, ‘and although there’s a certain masculine superiority about some men which I fail to understand, considering the invaluable contribution women make to the continuation of life, I do enjoy the little courtesies which most men accord us. I confess—’

‘Won’t you sit down?’ said James gravely.

‘Thank you, James,’ she smiled. She and Anne seated themselves. James joined them. The baronesses awaited the next move in sun-mellowed graciousness. The village seemed even quieter, as if the advent of strangers had made all life retreat behind curtains. No one came out of the café to serve the arrivals. James got up to see who was dead and who was only sleeping, and the proprietor emerged. He was white-aproned, bushily moustached and fatly amiable.

James asked for coffee in German. Croatian or Serbian was beyond him, but German was the second language in this Austrian province of Bosnia. The proprietor smiled, showing gleaming white teeth, and polished the tabletop
with the hem of his apron. He beamed at the summery baronesses.

‘Beautiful,’ he said in German.

‘Yes, quite the loveliest day,’ smiled Anne.

He chuckled and waddled back into the tavern.

‘I don’t think he meant the day,’ said James.

‘Well, everything is beautiful,’ said Anne, ‘or at least impressive.’

‘Striking,’ said James.

‘What is?’ asked Sophie, willing to simply sit for the moment and wonder about the world in summer, and why her nerves were becoming so sensitively on edge at times.

‘Both of you,’ said James.

‘James, this is very sudden,’ said Anne and laughed. Sophie thought how the summer always made her sister look radiant.

‘Oh, after this last month or so,’ said James, ‘I count myself an old friend of the family. Or at least of the Benz.’

‘You are our very good friend,’ said Sophie, ‘and I should hope you will always be.’

If Anne was the kind the sun made radiant, Sophie in summer looked exquisitely impervious to its heat. Except that now, as James smiled at her, a faint flush invaded her coolness. Anne saw the flush. She smiled. She got up and wandered across the dusty street to stand on the dry grassy verge that dipped a little way beyond her to merge with the bracken-strewn slope leading down to the river. She stood there in the sun, the skirt of her dress fluttering.

At the table James said, ‘Another thing. Your poetry, Sophie. Loved it, I assure you. Well, as much as I could in German. You’re far better with words than I am with paints.’

‘You are serious? You really liked it?’ said Sophie.

‘Really,’ said James.

‘You are very kind,’ said Sophie. ‘Of course, people are kind to one about such things and sometimes they are too kind. Sometimes it’s better not to be kind at all but frank, so that one knows, as everybody else does, that there is always room for improvement. It does not do to be flattered into thinking that everything one does is perfect. I am very imperfect—’

‘The proprietor thinks you are beautiful,’ said James.

‘There, you see, he is the kind of flatterer who will make me think I am,’ said Sophie.

The proprietor re-emerged, bringing the coffee on a tray, the earthenware pot full, the cups rattling. He bowed the tray on to the table. He beamed at Sophie.

‘Beautiful,’ he said again, at which Sophie laughed and shook her head and James smiled. The proprietor chuckled happily as he disappeared. Anne returned to her chair. Sophie busied herself pouring coffee. James turned and eyed the view again as he stirred his coffee. The range of mountain heights was sharp under the light of the clarifying sun.

‘If you want to sketch,’ said Sophie, ‘we don’t mind.’

‘He’s dying to, aren’t you, James?’ said Anne. ‘So please do.’

He opened up his sketchbook. With his pencil he began to put down soft, sweeping impressions. The sisters watched him, Anne with interest, Sophie with a sensitive awareness that images were changing for her. He was still sketching when they had finished the coffee.

Anne said, ‘Do you think the proprietor will give us lunch? If not, we can drive up to Jajce and have it there. James?’

James allowed himself to be interrupted. He rattled his cup in the saucer. It brought the proprietor out after a moment or so. He blinked sleepy but amiable eyes.

‘Lunch?’ said James. ‘In an hour, perhaps?’

The proprietor reached for the coffee pot.

‘Good, yes?’ he said.

‘No, not more coffee,’ said James in his now not quite so erratic German, ‘food.’

‘Ah, so. I do you good food.’

‘In an hour,’ said James.

‘Good,’ said the genial fat one. He looked at Sophie and Anne, his beam plumply happy for them. ‘Beautiful,’ he said yet again, then returned to his chair in the shady comfort of his café.

‘Anne,’ said Sophie, ‘we have made a hit. Which is rather nice these days when it’s only motor cars that make a hit with most men. Perhaps our good proprietor will treat us to an excellent lunch. We shall pay for it, you and I, because we would like to treat James for once, wouldn’t we?
Isn’t it intriguing to notice how people of rather stout proportions are nearly always much more affable than everyone else? Do you remember the story about the fat man of Salzburg? His smile was wider than his front door, and he was always smiling, and when he laughed the church bells shook, and the only thing that worried him were his extraordinarily large feet. He grew fatter each year and when at last he was so fat that he could no longer see his feet he laughed so much that the church bells chimed.’

James, for all his concentration, said, ‘Oh, good God, Sophie.’

Anne said, ‘But, Sophie, if he was always smiling and his smile was wider than his front door, how did he get through it?’

‘Oh, he took a deep breath,’ said Sophie coolly, ‘and edged out sideways.’

James laughed.

‘It’s difficult for a fat man to hold a deep breath,’ said Anne.

‘Naturally,’ said Sophie, ‘there were times when he got stuck.’

‘Then what happened?’

‘He laughed,’ said Sophie.

‘And brought the house down,’ said James.

Inside the café the sleepy proprietor chuckled. It was good to hear people laughing. They were all laughing, those three. They were nice people.

‘I think we’re interrupting James,’ said Anne.

‘Oh, I’m sorry, James,’ said Sophie. ‘Anne, let us leave him to it for a while. We can walk up to
the top of the village and look around. There may be a shop. They sell braid and lace in some of these places.’

‘Watch out for the fleas,’ said James as the girls rose.

‘Fleas?’ said Anne a little uncertainly.

‘They don’t sell them, not in these places,’ said James, ‘they give them away.’

‘Well, whatever they give us we’ll share with you,’ said Sophie generously. She and Anne walked up through the village. People began to materialize in doorways. The women in embroidered blouses and braided skirts were silent but curious. Here and there a shy smile peeped.

James sketched on for a while, then sat back. The mountains which were so clear in this light cried out for colour. He mused on them. It was very quiet without Sophie and Anne. One missed their infectious animation. He got up. The small church of whitewashed stone and red tiles stood back from the street. It was a simple, four-cornered building with a small open belfry. He walked from the tavern and turned to meander along the church path. The grass on either side already looked parched. There was a wooden bench. He sat down and sketched an outline. He looked up, at the belfry and the red roof, studied his outline and began again on a new sheet. He heard the sudden murmur of voices. The tavern had new customers. He finished his drawing, it did not displease him. But he would never make money at it. Not the
kind of money he was beginning to think about. He would have to go back home some time and talk to the guv’nor about things. Things would have to embrace car designing. He returned to the tavern. He heard men talking but did not understand the language. There were many different tongues in the Balkans. But as he came round to the little patio, sheltered by faded awning, he heard someone say in German, ‘Ah, so, an archduke is just as much an archduke in Ilidze as in Sarajevo.’

It startled him. He stopped. The voices stopped. In blank silence four men at a table looked at him. They were in dark suits, black hats and tieless shirts. They were swarthy, their faces impassive but their eyes flickering with suspicion. They knew him for a man who did not belong here.

‘Good day to you,’ said James. He moved and sat down. He had spoken in English, instinctively rejecting German. Three of the men were uncomprehending. The fourth responded.

‘Good day,’ he said gutturally.

James smiled and nodded. The proprietor came out and gabbled to the men. Then he turned to James and said in German, ‘Soon, food. Good.’

‘Good,’ said James in English. There was not much difference. He began to sketch again. After a while the four men resumed their conversation, arms on the table, heads leaning in. The man who had responded to James had a fine, expressive face and eyes of brilliant brown.
His chin was dark with stubble and he had a pallor to his skin as if he had been too long out of the sun. James lit a cigarette and went on with his sketching, glancing occasionally at the pale man.

A shadow fell across the veined marble table and a hand placed itself on his sketch. He looked up. It was the pale man.

‘What is this you do?’ asked the man in German.

‘You are saying?’ said James in English.

‘What’s that? Come, you understand me. What is this drawing?’

James turned the pad and showed him. It was a likeness of the man himself.

‘Perhaps not very good,’ said James, resigning himself to German.

‘Why have you done this?’ The man was studying the drawing intently.

‘Oh, the impulse of my kind.’

‘What kind is that?’ The man was curt, suspicious.

‘I’m an artist of sorts.’

‘Where are you from?’

‘England. Oh, and Scotland.’ James smiled. ‘And where are you from?’

‘Here,’ said the man and waved an arm to expansively embrace all Bosnia, but his eyes were still on the sketch. ‘Have you done this to show to someone?’

‘Sometimes I show my work to friends. Would you like to have this?’

‘I will have it.’ The man ripped the stiff sheet
from the pad, folded it and stuffed it into his pocket. He went into the tavern. Rickety chairs stood around wooden tables, the tables scrubbed and clean. Behind the polished black marble counter was an array of earthenware coffee pots and china, bottles and glasses. The man called, ‘Joja!’ The proprietor emerged from the kitchen. ‘Joja, who’s that stranger?’

The proprietor shrugged. ‘He came with two young women and asked for coffee and food. That’s all I know.’

‘So. The two women are up in the village, looking. What are they looking for?’

‘Who is a magician? I am not. So how should I know? Listen, Dobrovic,’ said Joja, ‘sometimes people come in the summer to look and to buy braid. Then they go away. No one ever comes to stay.’

‘He’s not here to buy braid,’ said the man Dobrovic. ‘He heard Lazar say something, then he made a drawing. Of me. Look at it.’ He took the sketch out and showed it to Joja.

‘Ah, it is good,’ said Joja with placating good humour. Dobrovic was a touchy fellow at times. ‘You see? He’s an artist. Sometimes artists come here too.’

Dobrovic spat on the floor.

‘Artist the devil, he’s a police agent more like. They come nosing too sometimes. This drawing, it’s me, isn’t it? A man with half an eye could see that. He’ll show it to the police if I give it back to him and the police will ask me what I was doing at Kontic when I’m not supposed to leave Mostar.
Well, our number one comrade will be here soon and we’ll see what he has to say about artists and prying women.’

‘There’s to be no trouble,’ said Joja, ‘Avriarches won’t like it.’

‘Is that roaring thief still running this district?’ scowled Dobrovic.

‘What can we do?’ Joja spread his hands. ‘The police at Jajce are in his pocket as much as we are.’

‘You are, we aren’t,’ said Dobrovic, ‘but he has his uses sometimes.’

Sophie and Anne returned. They arrived like the bright graces of summer. They made the four men stare. James was relieved to have them back. There was an atmosphere he did not like. He felt the men had been carefully watching him, scrutinizing him. Now they turned their eyes on the girls. Joja brought the food out. Anne and Sophie were delighted. There were trout, swimming in sauce, and salad containing something of everything, green with lettuce, red with tomatoes, rich with juicy cucumber and laced with sliced beans and peppers.

‘Good?’ said Joja with a confident beam.

‘Lovely,’ said Anne.

‘Thank you,’ said Sophie.

‘Beautiful,’ said Joja and smiled happily under his bushy black moustache. It was as well Avriarches was high in the hills. He might have been tempted by these two. They looked aristocratic. Avriarches liked high-born women.
‘Ah, well, good appetite,’ he said and went away.

He returned with a bottle of wine from a southern vineyard, and persuaded them to have it. It was just right, light dry and delicate. They enjoyed their lunch.

‘Who’d have thought it?’ said Anne. ‘So out of the way, so small, yet such a good meal.’

‘I don’t think civilization stops beyond Vienna or is anything to do with the size of a place,’ said Sophie. She wondered why the four men sat so silently at their table near the café door. ‘I expect one could sit on the top of a hill and be just as cultured and civilized as a million people in a large city.’