Despite the heat of the night, all the shutters of the house were closed. Its massive iron-studded door made it look like a fortress. Yakimov hammered on this door for five minutes or more before a grille opened and the porter inside, speaking German, ordered him to be off and return, if he must return, in the morning. Yakimov, putting his hand in the grille to prevent its being closed on him, said: ‘Ich bin ein Freund des Gauleiters, ein sehr geschätzter Freund. Er wird entzückt sein, mich zu begrüssen.’ He repeated these statements several times, becoming tearful as he did so, and they slowly took effect. The door was opened.
The porter motioned him to sit on a stone seat in a stone hall that was as cold as a cellar. He sat there for twenty minutes. Having come from the summer night, wearing his silk suit, he began to shiver and sneeze. There was nothing to distract him but some giant photographs of Hitler, Goering, Goebbels and Himmler, which he contemplated with indifference. To him they were nothing but the stock-in-trade of someone else’s way of life. If Freddi were ‘in with that lot’, then all the better for both of them.
At last, at last, a figure appeared at the top of the stone staircase. Yakimov jumped up crying: ‘Freddi.’
The Count, doubtful, frowning, descended slowly, then, recognising Yakimov, he threw open his arms and sailed down with rapid steps, his yellow brocade dressing-gown floating out about him. ‘It is possible?’ he asked. ‘Yaki, mein Lieber!’
Tears of relief filled Yakimov’s eyes. He tottered forward and fell into Freddi’s arms. ‘Dear boy’ – he spoke on a sob – ‘so many bridges gone under the water since we last met!’ He held to his old friend fervently, breathing in the strong smell of gardenia that came from his person. ‘Fredi,’ he murmured, ‘Fredi!’
The emotional moment of reunion past, von Flügel stepped back and contemplated Yakimov with misgiving. ‘But is this wise, mein Lieber? We are now, you know, in opposite camps.’
Yakimov, with a gesture, swept such considerations aside.
‘Desperate situation, dear boy. Just arrived from Bucharest to find the hotels full. Not a bed to be got in Cluj. Couldn’t sleep in the street, y’know.’
‘Certainly not,’ von Flügel agreed: ‘I am only hoping for your sake you were not followed here. Have you eaten?’
‘Not a bite, dear boy. Not a morsel all day. Poor old Yaki’s famished and dropping on his poor old feet.’
The Count led the way upstairs and, opening a door, snapped on switch after switch. Chandeliers of venetian glass sprang into light throughout an immense room.
‘What do you think of my lounge?’ He spoke the word as though it had an exotic chic. Yakimov, not much interested in such things, looked round at the purple and yellow room with its vast gilded chimney-piece flanked by life-size plaster negroes naked except for the chiffon loin-cloths playfully placed about their immense pudenda.
‘Delightful!’ Yakimov limped to a sofa and sank down among the cushions. ‘Crippled,’ he said: ‘Crippled with fatigue.’
‘I designed it all myself.’
‘And hungry as a hunter,’ Yakimov reminded him.
As his host moved about, admiring and touching his own possessions, Yakimov, impatient for a drink, looked at Freddi more critically. How changed he was! His hair, that had once fallen like silk into his eyes, was now cut en brosse. His features, never distinctive, were lost in wastes of mauve-pink flesh – and he had grown a shocking little moustache that stood out like a yellow scab on his upper lip. His famous blue eyes were no longer blue: they were pink. Yet Freddi had been recognisable at once from his movements, that were, as they always had been, curiously fluid.
Meeting Yakimov’s eye, von Flügel giggled. Yakimov recognised the giggle, too. That and the features were all that remained of the golden boy of 1931.
‘How well you are looking!’ said Yakimov.
‘You, too, mein Lieber. Not a day older.’
Well satisfied, Yakimov unlaced his shoes saying: ‘They’re killing me.’ He shook them off, then, looking down at his feet, saw his socks were tattered and dark with sweat, and shuffled his shoes on again. ‘Trifle peckish,’ he said when Freddi had made no move.
Freddi tugged an embroidered bell-pull. While they waited, Yakimov’s roving eye noted a tray of bottles. ‘How about a little drinkie?’ he said.
‘So remiss of me!’ Von Flügel poured out a large brandy. Yakimov took it as his due. Freddi had done very well out of old Dollie when her fortunes were high and his were low.
‘And what brings you to Cluj?’ von Flügel asked.
‘Ah!’ said Yakimov, his attention on his glass.
‘I suppose I should not ask?’
Yakimov’s smile confirmed this supposition.
There was a sharp rap on the door. Von Flügel sat up and straightened his shoulders before commanding: ‘Herein.’
A young man marched in, uniformed, muscular, conveying, without any hint of expression, a virulent annoyance. Yakimov did not like his face, but von Flügel leapt up, fluid and giggling once more, and saying: ‘Axel, mein Schatz!’ went close to the young man and talked at him in a persuasive whisper until something was agreed. When Axel slammed his way out, von Flügel explained: ‘The poor boy’s a little put out. We brought him from his bed. The cook is a local man. He goes home after dinner and I am then dependent on the boys.’
When Axel returned, he brought a plate of sandwiches, which he put down with the abruptness of the unwilling and went off slamming the door again.
Yakimov, deliciously infused with brandy, settled down to the sandwiches, which were rough but contained some sizeable chunks of turkey. He silenced Freddi’s apologies, saying: ‘Poor Yaki’s used to living rough.’
When he had eaten, the Count, who had been watching him with a waggish expression, went over to a corner that was cut off by a Recamier couch. ‘I have some amusing curiosities I really must show you,’ he said.
Yakimov lifted himself wearily out of the cushions. Von Flügel, having drawn aside the couch, beckoned his friend into the corner and handed him a magnifying glass. On either wall hung a Persian miniature. Yakimov examined them, tittering and saying: ‘Dear boy! Dear boy!’ but he had no interest in that sort of thing and hoped he was not in for a night of it.
‘Over here, over here,’ said von Flügel, leading him across the room to a tall cabinet set with shallow drawers. ‘You must see my Japanese prints.’
‘Oh, dear!’ said Yakimov, taking the prints handed to him: ‘One must sit down to enjoy such things.’
He tried to return to the sofa, but von Flügel held to him, pulling him here and there between the purple and yellow armchairs, and opening Chinese lacquer cabinets to display his collection of what he called ‘delectable objets’.
As the effect of the brandy wore off, Yakimov became not only bored but cross. He had forgotten that Freddi was such a silly.
‘Being in an official position,’ said von Flügel, ‘discretion is forced upon me, but one day I hope to have all my things out and displayed about the lounge.’
‘Lounge!’ Yakimov said: ‘Where did you pick up that awful house agent’s jargon?’
‘Am I being vulgar?’ asked von Flügel, too excited to care. ‘I must show you my Mexican pottery.’
When Yakimov had been shown everything, von Flügel seemed to imagine he was the one who had earned a reward. He said in a tone of humorous complaint: ‘You still haven’t told me what you are doing in Cluj.’