The second stage of her journey had also gone off without as much as a single hitch. There was a stagecoach which ran from Bucharest to Turnu-Megurele. She had been obliged to swallow a little dust as she bounced and jolted along, but it had brought her within arm's reach of her goal; for rumour had it that the general headquarters of the Army of the Danube were located on the far side of the river, in Tsarevitsy.
This was the point at which she had to put into effect the final and most crucial part of The Plan which she had worked out back in St Petersburg (that was what
Varya called it to herself: The Plan, with capital letters). Yesterday evening, under cover of darkness, she had crossed the Danube in a boat a little above Zimnitsa, where two weeks previously the heroic Fourteenth Division under General Dragomirov had completed a forced crossing of that formidable watery barrier. This was the beginning of Turkish territory, the zone of military operations, and it would certainly be only too easy to slip up here. There were Cossack patrols roaming the roads, and if she once let her guard down she was as good as done for - she would be packed off back to Bucharest in the winking of an eye. But Varya was a resourceful girl, so she had anticipated this and taken appropriate measures.
The discovery of a coaching inn in the Bulgarian village on the south bank of the Danube had been a really great stroke of luck, and after that things had gone from good to better; the landlord understood Russian and had promised to give her a reliable vodach - a guide - for only five roubles. Varya had bought wide trousers much like Turkish chalvars, a shirt, boots, a sleeveless jacket and an idiotic cloth cap, and a change of clothes had instantly transformed her from a European lady into a skinny Bulgarian youth who would not arouse the slightest suspicion in any patrol. She had deliberately commissioned a roundabout route, avoiding the columns of march, in order to enter Tsarevitsy not from the north but from the south; and there, in the general army headquarters, was Pyotr Yablokov, Varya's . . . Well, actually, it is not quite clear just who he is. Her fiance? Her comrade? Her husband? Let us call him her former husband and future fiance. And also -naturally - her comrade.
They had set out while it was still dark on a creaky, ramshackle carutza, a Roumanian-style cart. Her vodach Mitko, tight-lipped, with grey moustaches, chewed tobacco all the while, constantly ejecting long streams of brown spittle on to the road (Varya winced every time he did it). At first he had crooned some exotic Balkan melody, then he had fallen silent and sunk into a reverie. It was clear enough now what thoughts he had been pondering.
He could have killed me, Varya thought with a shudder.Or even worse. And without the slightest problem - who would bother investigating in these partsl They would just blame those what's-their-names - Bashi-Bazouks.
But though things may have stopped short of murder, they had turned out quite badly enough. That traitor Mitko had led his female travelling companion to a tavern which resembled more than anything a bandit's den, seated her at a table and ordered some cheese and a jug of wine to be brought, while he himself turned back towards the door, gesturing as much as to say: I'll be back in a moment. Varya had dashed after him, not wishing to be abandoned in this dim, dirty and distinctly malodorous sink of iniquity, but Mitko had said he needed to step outside - not to put too fine a point on it - in order to satisfy a call of nature. When Varya did not understand, he had explained his meaning with a gesture and she had returned to her seat covered in confusion.
The duration of the call of nature had exceeded all conceivable limits. Varya ate a little of the salty, unappetising cheese, took a sip of the sour wine and then, unable any longer to endure the curiosity that the fearsome denizens of the public house had begun to evince in her person, she went out into the yard.
Outside the door she froze in horror.
There was not a trace of the carutza or of the trunk with all her things which it contained. Her travelling medicine chest was in the trunk, and in the medicine chest, between the lint and the bandages, lay her passport and absolutely all her money.
Varya was just about to run out on to the road when the landlord, with a bright crimson nose and warts on his cheek, came darting out of the koxchma in his red shirt. He shouted angrily and gestured: pay up first, and then you can leave. Varya went back inside, because the landlord had frightened her and she had nothing with which she could pay him. She sat down quietly in the corner and tried to think of what had happened as an adventure. But she failed miserably.
There was not a single woman in the tavern. The dirty, loud-mouthed yokels behaved quite unlike Russian peasants, who are quiet and inoffensive and talk amongst themselves in low voices until they get drunk, while these louts were bawling raucously as they downed red wine by the tankard, constantly erupting into loud and rapacious (or so it seemed to Varya) laughter. At a long table on the far side of the room they were playing dice, breaking into uproarious dispute following every throw. On one occasion, when they fell to quarrelling more loudly than usual, a small man who was extremely drunk was struck over the head with a clay tankard. He lay there sprawled under the table and nobody paid the slightest attention to him.
The landlord nodded in Varya's direction and passed some savoury remark, at which the men sitting at nearby tables turned in her direction and roared in malevolent laughter. Varya squirmed and tugged her cap down over her eyes. Nobody else sitting in the tavern was wearing a cap, but she couldn't take it off or her hair would come tumbling down. Not that it was really long - Varya wore her hair short, as befitted a modern woman - but even so it would betray her membership of the weaker sex. That disgusting designation invented by men: 'the weaker sex'. But, alas, it was only too true.
Now their eyes were boring into Varya from every side, and their glances were viscous and disgusting. The only ones who seemed to have no time for her were the dice-players and some dejected type sitting two tables away with his back to her, his nose buried in a tankard of wine. All she could see of him was a head of short-trimmed black hair greying at the temples.
Varya began to feel really terrified. Stop snivelling, she said to herself. You're a strong, grown-up woman, not some prim young lady. You have to tell them you're Russian and you're travelling to join your fiance in the army. We are the liberators of Bulgaria-, everyone here is glad to see us. And then, speaking Bulgarian is so easy: you just have to add 'ta' to everything. Russian armyta. Fianceta. Fianceta of Russian soldierta. Or something of the sort.
She turned towards the window - maybe Mitko would suddenly turn up? Maybe he had taken the horses to the watering place and now he was on his way back? But alas, there was no sign of Mitko or any carutza out on the dusty street. Varya did, however, notice something that had failed to catch her attention earlier: protruding above the houses was a low minaret covered in chipped and peeling paint. Oh! Could the village possibly be Moslem? But the Bulgarians were Christians, Orthodox, everybody knew that. What's more, they were drinking wine, and that was forbidden to Moslems by the Koran. But if the village was Christian, then what on earth did the minaret mean? And if it was Moslem, then whose side were they on, ours or the Turks? Hardly ours. It looked as though the 'armyta' might not be much help after all. O, Lord, what was she to do?