‘What is it you want me to do?’
‘To deliver a letter for me.’
‘What letter?’
She took a letter from her blouse pocket.
‘Can’t you post it?’
‘I am not permitted. Besides-’ She hesitated.
‘You just want me to post it for you?’
‘To deliver it, Herr Foster.’
‘Why can’t I post it?’
‘There is internal censorship.’
‘Where is it to be delivered?’
‘Inside the city, Herr Foster,’ she said eagerly. ‘Near the station.’
‘Who is it to?’
She hesitated again. ‘A young man,’ she said.
‘Supposing I’m caught with it?’
‘You will not be, Herr Foster. Rana said that when she opened the door the guards were friendly to you. Please, Herr Foster.’
I thought for a moment of the guards and of their friendliness. The muscles in my shoulder had stiffened slightly.
‘All right, Fraulein. A pleasure.’
‘Thank you, Herr Foster.’
I took the letter and glanced at the envelope. The address was in block letters and quite clear. I put it in my pocket.
Her smile was replaced suddenly by a look of anxiety. ‘When will you deliver it?’
‘Tomorrow sometime. When I can.’
She would have liked to ask me to deliver it that night, but I was not going to do that. I made as if to go.
‘Thank you,’ she said again. ‘I will show you out now if you wish.’
She had a small hand-lamp. We went out and across the dark courtyard to the door in the wall. She undid the bolts.
‘Good night, Herr Foster,’ she whispered, and then, standing behind the door so that she could not be seen from outside, she opened it.
The beam of a powerful flash shone in my face, blinding me. I stepped through the wall, and the door closed behind my back. I stood still.
‘Papieren,’ said a remembered voice.
I got out my wallet and opened it with the press permit showing. The Private was holding the flashlight. The Corporal came into the beam of it. He glanced at the permit without touching it and then, smiling at me grimly, he nodded and with his thumb motioned me on my way. He said something and the Private laughed. They were pleased that I had so quickly learned my lesson.
It was only as I walked away up the street and the beating of my heart began to return to normal that I realized that, for a moment or two, while the light had been shining on my face and while I had wondered if they might be going to search me after all, I had been very frightened. I fingered the pocket with the letter. It crackled faintly. I smiled to myself. I was childishly pleased. I did not know that I had just performed one of the most foolish actions of my life.
CHAPTER EIGHT
As usual now, I had breakfast with Pashik. ‘Last night, Mr Foster,’ he said, ‘I telephoned your hotel.’
‘I was out.’
‘Yes. It does not matter.’ In his brown eyes was the faint hostility of the lover determined not to be possessive. ‘It was to tell you that Monsieur Brankovitch, the Minister of Propaganda, has called a foreign-press conference for this evening. We, of course, have been invited.’
‘Oh?’ What Petlarov had said about the tactics of the Propaganda Ministry came into my mind.
‘Monsieur Brankovitch will speak and also answer questions,’ said Pashik solemnly. ‘It will be very interesting. The food and drink will be excellent.’
‘And there will be a collection taken for the poor of the Parish.’
‘I beg pardon.’
‘Nothing. A bad joke.’
‘The conference will be in the state rooms of the Ministry at six o’clock.’
‘Good.’
He dabbed his bread in his coffee. ‘Have you seen Petlarov again, Mr Foster?’
‘Yes. I thought you’d rather not know about it.’ For a moment I wondered if I should also tell him that I had been to see Madame Deltchev, and then decided not to.
‘As long as there is no indiscretion, Mr Foster.’
‘He comes privately to my hotel room. The reception clerk does not know him.’
He sighed unhappily. ‘No doubt he will be discreet for his own sake. Is he still of interest to you?’
‘Yes. He is an intelligent man, don’t you think?’
‘If he had used his intelligence, Mr Foster, I should be more sympathetic towards him.’
‘You mean if he had played ball with the regime?’
‘Of course. That is the realistic attitude.’
We went off to the trial.
That day, the third, six witnesses were heard. All of them had been members of the Committee of National Unity, and all, except one, were members of the People’s Party. The exception was a man named Lipka, and he was a member of the anti-Deltchev section of the Agrarian Socialists.
For the most part, the evidence consisted of repetitions of the assertions made by Vukashin the day before. A mass of documents, including the minutes of the Committee meetings for the critical period, was produced, and there was a great deal of pseudo-legal fuss about which documents could and which could not be admitted as exhibits. The minutes were naturally well to the fore. As minutes they were quite often worse than useless, but as ammunition for the Prosecutor they were just the thing. I remember one typical item: ‘After some discussion the Committee agreed that Y. Deltchev should meet again with the Anglo-American representatives and urge them to delay the final decision on the proposals previously made.’ The prosecutor’s witnesses declared that the ‘discussion’ in question had been an effort by Deltchev and his henchmen to stampede the Committee into accepting a set of Anglo-American proposals it had not even seen and that the Committee’s decision had made Deltchev ‘grind his teeth with rage’. The judges had a word or two to say and even the defendant’s counsel, Stanoiev, felt it safe to join in this sort of argument. At one point, indeed, there was a fair simulation of a legal battle between the two advocates — a battle between two clowns with rubber swords — and, in the approved fashion, high words were exchanged.
The only effective witness was Lipka. He was one of those angry, embittered men who bear the news of their defeat in their faces; prepared always for hostility, they succeed in provoking no more than weary impatience. A talentless but ambitious man, he had been an Agrarian Socialist deputy for many years without achieving office, and his membership on the Committee had seemed to him the long-awaited recognition of his worth and the beginning of his period of fulfilment. In fact, his value to the unconstitutional Committee had resided simply in his status as an elected deputy, and when posts in the Provisional Government were being allotted he had been passed over without a thought. From that moment he had nursed an almost pathological hatred of Deltchev. At one time that hatred had been something over which people smiled and shrugged. Now, at last, the People’s Party had turned it to account. His mode of attack was stupid but damaging.
Most of those whose work is directly related to the moods and behaviour of the public are inclined to refer to it on occasion in disparaging, even insulting terms. But, while a gibe at popular stupidity from a harassed bus conductor may be amusing, the same gibe from the mouth of a leading politician has, for many, an uglier sound. What Lipka did was to quote Deltchev’s private comments on various matters and contrast them with public utterances made by him at the same time.
‘Papa’ Deltchev had made a speech officially regretting an incident in which some peasants, misunderstanding or ignoring a Red Army order to keep out of a certain area, had been shot down by Russian sentries. In private he had said, ‘It might not be a bad thing if a few more of the damn fools were shot.’ After a speech congratulating the farmers on their public-spirited efforts to send more food to the towns ‘Papa’ Deltchev had said privately, ‘Thank God, they’ve had sense enough at last to find the black market.’ On his own proposals for dealing with the fuel shortage ‘Papa’ Deltchev had remarked, ‘And if they’re still cold we can always print a few more copies of the regulations for them to burn.’