Yakimov nodded. He had, indeed, been put off his guard – and who better able to do that than Guy Pringle? He began to feel justified in giving the game away to Freddi. Freddi was a friend, a dear old friend, and Yaki had done no more than warn him. ‘When I saw that plan, I felt I ought to show it to you,’ and Yakimov ran happily on about the suspicious character of everyone he had seen there, the suspicious nature of everything that had ever occurred.
Von Flügel, still distant and severe, listened without much comment, but at the end he said: ‘One thing I would say to you: remove yourself from that flat at the earliest date. More, I would say remove yourself from Bucharest. I say it for your own good.’
Yakimov nodded meekly. He had no wish to do anything else. He felt, now that he had re-established himself in Freddi’s favour he might settle in here very comfortably. He lay back and closed his eyes. Exhausted, physically and emotionally, he felt himself sifting like a feather down through the softness of the earth. He heard von Flügel say: ‘Come. I will show you to your room,’ but had no time to reply before he was lost in sleep.
The next morning confirmed his belief that life with Freddi would comply with his needs. After he had taken his bath, he and Freddi, in dressing-gowns, lay in long chairs to take breakfast on the balcony. The coffee was pre-war coffee, the food was excellent. Freddi was his old charming self. There were, unfortunately, a number of those horrid young men about, but Axel was the only one whom Freddi treated indulgently. With the others he was the stern commandant of das Braune Haus.
His memory of the previous night left him with an uneasy sense that he had been a trifle unfair to poor old Guy, but lying in his valetudinarian languor he could not worry unduly. After all, Guy had been unfair to him.
Breakfast over, the two men remained in the early sunlight, looking down at an ancient Citroën piled with furniture and bedding, that was being dragged to the station by a mule. All the petrol, Freddi explained, had been plundered by the outgoing Rumanians, who now refused to send in fresh supplies. ‘A hopeless people!’ said Freddi. In a side street a queue of people could be seen outside a shuttered bakery. From somewhere in the distance came a sound of shooting. Yakimov made movements as though he were thinking of getting up. ‘I should dress,’ he said. ‘I’m supposed to be getting the tempo of the town.’
‘So you really are a journalist?’ said Freddi.
‘In a manner of speaking. Not an aristocrat’s occupation, I’m afraid.’
‘This is not an aristocrat’s war.’
Yakimov struggled to a sitting position.
‘Is this activity really necessary?’ Freddi asked. ‘The streets are unsafe. I would not recommend that you wander about. Such news as there is we can get from the boys.’ He rang a bell and a young man entered at once. ‘Ah, here is Filip. Filip, what is the news?’
Filip recited the latest incidents. A man resembling the Hungarian Consul had been set upon by Rumanian peasants and been left unconscious with an eye kicked out. Some people who had queued all day before a grocery store, finding the shop empty and the grocer gone to Braşov, had set fire to the shop, and the family living above had been burnt to death. There had been trouble at the hospital where Hungarian doctors had accused Rumanian doctors of removing equipment which had originally been Hungarian. One doctor, pushed over a balcony, had broken his neck.
As this recital of disorders went on, Yakimov nervously twitched his toes and murmured: ‘Dear me!’
‘Don’t be alarmed,’ said von Flügeclass="underline" ‘These are the little inconveniences of change. No food, no petrol, no telephone, no public transport. The cafés are closed. Soon the lights will go out, the water will be cut off, the gas will cease to come through the pipes – but here all is well. We are well stocked with food and drink. There is a great range in the kitchen that burns wood. There is a well in the courtyard. We could withstand a siege.’ He glanced at Yakimov. ‘Perhaps you would care to make some notes.’
‘I forgot m’little notebook.’
Von Flügel ordered Filip to bring pen and paper. When these were in Yakimov’s hands, von Flügel explained how necessary it was to take Transylvania out of the control of the feckless, incompetent Rumanians and hand it over to the shrewd, hardworking Hungarians. At the end of an hour Yakimov had written, in his uneven hand, at the top of the sheet of paper: ‘The Takeover – A Good Thing.’
This done, von Flügel said: ‘Surely it is not too early for an aperitif?’
Yakimov fervently agreed it was not.
His future still unsettled, he now mentioned the tiresome fact that he was supposed to be returning to Bucharest on the Orient Express that very night. ‘Not to tell a lie, dear boy,’ he added confidingly, ‘I don’t really want to go back there. The food is atrocious and there’s always some sort of rumpus going on. You advised me to leave Rumania, so I’ve decided I’d like to stay here.’
‘Here? In Cluj?’ Von Flügel stared at him. ‘It’s out of the question. When the Rumanians withdraw, this will be virtually Axis territory.’
Yakimov smiled persuasively. ‘You could take care of old Yaki.’
For a moment von Flügel looked aghast at this suggestion, then he said in a decided tone: ‘I could do nothing of the sort. As a member of the old regime I have to go very carefully myself. I could not possibly protect an enemy alien.’ He turned with a stern expression but, seeing Yakimov’s gloomy face, relaxed. ‘No, no, mein Lieber,’ he said more kindly, ‘you cannot stay here. Return as you have arranged to Bucharest tonight. I will send Axel to obtain for you a wagon-lit. As soon as you arrive, put your affairs in order and take yourself to safety without delay.’
‘But where can I go?’ Yakimov asked, near tears.
‘That, I fear, you must decide for yourself. Europe is finished for you, of course. North Africa will go next. Perhaps to India. It will be some time before we get there.’
For the rest of the day, Yakimov ate and drank with a mourning sense of farewell to the might-have-been. Towards evening, von Flügel, indicating that his friend must prepare for departure, said that Axel would give him sandwiches for the journey. Von Flügel himself had been invited that evening to a dinner given in his honour by the Hungarian community, so could not see Yakimov to the station.
‘One thing, mein Lieber,’ he said as Yakimov got sadly to his feet: ‘you know the carpet-shop opposite Mavrodaphne’s? When I was last in Bucharest, I saw there a very fine Oltenian rug. Thinking it a little expensive, I unwisely delayed its purchase, now I wish I had taken it. I wonder, would you buy it for me and have it delivered to the German Embassy?’
‘Why, certainly, dear boy.’
‘You cannot mistake it: a black rug with a pattern of cherries and roses. Mention my name and they will produce it. It was about twenty-five thousand. Should I give you the money now?’
‘It would be as well, dear boy.’
Von Flügel opened a drawer that was filled with decks of new five-thousand-lei notes. He carefully peeled off five of these and held them just out of Yakimov’s reach. He said: ‘I had better take your address in Bucharest, just in case …’
Yakimov gave it readily and the notes were handed over. ‘By the way,’ he said, ‘you still have that plan I showed you last night.’
‘I’ll post it to you tomorrow. Now don’t forget the rug. A black rug with cherries and roses, a delightful piece. And don’t linger in Bucharest. I can tell you, in strictest confidence, Rumania’s next on the list.’