‘Yet you are not in danger here,’ said Harriet.
‘It is not the danger,’ said Hassolel. ‘There is danger everywhere. It is the feeling, a very ancient feeling. In the Bukovina you will see the Jews wear fox-fur round their hats. So it was ordered hundreds of years ago to say they are as crafty like a fox. Today they laugh and wear it still. They are clever, it is true, but they live apart: they harm no one.’
‘Perhaps that is the trouble,’ said Harriet, ‘that they live apart. Your first loyalty is to your own race. And you all grow rich. The Rumanians may feel you take from the country and give nothing back.’
Harriet had offered this merely as a basis for discussion and was startled by the tumult to which it gave rise. In the midst of it, Doamna Flöhr, near hysteria, shouted: ‘No, no, we are not to blame. It is the Rumanians. They shut their doors on us. They are selfish people. This country has everything but they do not want to share. They are greedy. They are lazy. They take everything.’
Drucker, when he could be heard, said: ‘There is room for all here: there is food and work for all. The Rumanians are content to do nothing but eat, sleep and make love. Such is their nature. The Jews and the foreigners, they run the country. Those who do the work, make the money. Isn’t it so? One might rather say of the Rumanians that they take and give nothing back.’
This statement was greeted with nods and exclamations of agreement. Teitelbaum, his flat, depressed face looking newly awakened, said: ‘But we are generous, we Jews. We always give when we are asked. When the Iron Guard was powerful in 1937, the green-shirt boys came to the offices collecting for party funds. The Jewish firms gave twice, even three times, more than the Rumanians, and what was the gratitude? The Iron Guard made laws against us. Only last year there was a pogrom.’
Hassolel was peeling an orange. Without looking up from this employment, he said heavily: ‘At the University our boy was thrown from a window. His spine was broken. Now he is in a sanatorium in Switzerland. Our daughter was medical student. In the laboratory the young men took off her clothing and beat her. She went to America. She is ashamed to come back. So, you see, we have lost both our children.’
In the silence that followed, Hassolel went on peeling his orange. Harriet looked helplessly across at Guy, who had grown pale. He said suddenly: ‘When the Russians come here, there will be no more persecution. The Jews will be free to follow any profession they choose.’
At these words, intended to comfort, the brothers-in-law turned on him faces so appalled that Harriet laughed in spite of herself. No one looked at her or spoke, then Doamna Hassolel began pressing people to take sweets and chocolates from the little trays round the table. Coffee was served. When he had drunk a cup, Teitelbaum declared slowly:
‘The Communists are bad people. Russia has done great harm. Russia steals from Europe her trade.’
At the appearance of this familiar argument, Guy recovered himself and laughed good-humouredly. ‘Nonsense,’ he said; ‘Europe suffers from an out-dated economy. Take this country where a million workers – that’s one twentieth of the population – contribute half of the total yearly value of production. That means each worker carries on his back four adults – four male non-workers. And these workers are not only scandalously underpaid, they pay more than they should for everything they buy, except food. For food, of course, they pay too little.’
‘Too little!’ The sisters were scandalised.
‘Yes, too little. There is no country in the world where food is so cheap. At the same time, factory-made articles are priced out of all proportion to their value. So you get the wretched peasants labouring for a pittance and paying an absurd price for every article they buy.’
‘The peasants!’ Doamna Drucker hissed in contempt and turned her head aside to suggest that when the conversation touched so low a level, it was time for her to depart.
‘The peasants are primitive,’ said Guy, ‘and, under present conditions, they will remain primitive. For one thing, they receive almost no education: they cannot afford to buy agricultural machinery: they …’
Doamna Drucker, her face sullen with scorn, interrupted angrily: ‘They are beasts,’ she said. ‘What can one do for such creatures? They are hopeless.’
‘In one sense,’ Guy agreed, ‘they are hopeless. They have never been allowed to hope. Whatever has happened here, they have been the losers.’
She rose from the table. ‘It is time for my siesta.’ She left the room.
There was an embarrassed pause, then Hassolel asked Guy if he had been that week to see Shirley Temple at the Cinema. Guy said he had not.
Hassolel sighed. ‘Such a sweet little girl! Always I go to see Shirley Temple.’
‘I also.’ Drucker nodded. ‘Always she reminds me of my own little Hannah.’
When they returned to the sitting room, Sasha invited Guy to go with him into the small ante-room he used as a music-room. Drucker said to Harriet: ‘Excuse me a little moment,’ and went off, no doubt in search of his wife. Flöhr, muttering something about work, went too. From the music-room came the sound of a gramophone playing ‘Basin Street Blues’.
Harriet, left alone with the Hassolels, the Teitelbaums and Doamna Flöhr, hoped the party would soon be over. But it was not over yet. A maid brought in some cut Bohemian glasses, red, blue, green, violet and yellow, and Doamna Hassolel began pouring liqueurs.
Doamna Teitelbaum, feeling perhaps that there had been too much of complaint at the meal, smiled on Harriet and said: ‘Still, you will enjoy life here. It is pleasant. It is cheap. There is much food. It is, you understand, comfortable.’
Before she could say more the manservant entered to say Domnul Drucker’s car was waiting for him. He was sent to find Drucker, who, when he entered, said he would drop Guy and Sasha back at the University. Harriet rose, ready to go with them, but the women clamoured:
‘Not Doamna Pringle. Doamna Pringle must stay with us. She must stay for the “five-o’-clock”.’
‘Of course she will stay,’ said Guy. Harriet gave him an anguished look but he did not see it. ‘She has nothing else to do. She would enjoy it.’
Without more ado, he said his good-byes and was off with Drucker and Sasha, leaving her behind. There was a short pause, then Teitelbaum and Hassolel departed.
‘You see,’ said Doamna Hassolel, ‘it is not yet half past four and they return to work. What Rumanian would work before five o’clock?’
The elder of the two Drucker girls came in to join her aunts. The women drew their chairs close together and sat with their plump, be-ringed hands smoothing their skirts over their plump, silk knees. Meanwhile they watched Harriet, somehow suggesting that even if she were formidable, she was outnumbered. They watched, she thought, with the purposeful caution of trappers.
The Drucker girl said: ‘She is pretty, is she not? Like a film star.’
Now the men were all gone, Doamna Flöhr had taken a platinum lorgnette from her bag. She examined Harriet through it. ‘What age are you?’ she asked.
‘Thirty-five,’ said Harriet.
The women gasped. The girl tittered behind her hand. ‘We thought you were twenty,’ she said.
Harriet wondered when they had joined in coming to this conclusion. Doamna Flöhr looked puzzled and, pretending to fidget with the back of her dress, leant forward to take a closer look at Harriet.