‘She’s very good-looking,’ said Harriet, thinking that Bella’s over-stylish hat looked like a comic hat placed askew on the Venus de Milo. Behind her trotted a dark, moustached, little Rumanian Adonis. ‘Is that her husband?’
‘Nikko? Yes. But surely you’ve met them?’
‘No. She disapproves of Guy.’
‘Oh, nonsense,’ Dobson laughed, contradicting her with good-humoured confidence. ‘No one disapproves of Guy.’ He stood up to give his hand to Bella.
Bella’s chief interest was in Harriet. When introduced, she said: ‘Someone told me that Guy had brought back a wife.’ Her tone and her use of Guy’s Christian name seemed to Harriet an offer of friendship – one that Harriet felt inclined to accept.
Dobson, his admiring smiles now all for Bella, asked if the Niculescus would join him. But Bella refused. ‘We are meeting some Rumanian friends,’ she said, with a slight emphasis on the word Rumanian.
Dobson detained her with flattering interest: ‘Before you leave us, do tell us what lies behind Drucker’s arrest. I’m sure you know.’
‘Well,’ – Bella straightened her shoulders, not displeased that the Legation came to her for information – ‘a certain lady – you can guess who! – discovered that Baron Steinfeld’s holdings in Astro-Romano were in fact owned by Drucker. You know, of course, that all these rich Jews have foreign nominees so that they can avoid taxation. No need to tell you what those shares are worth at the moment! Well, the lady invited Drucker to supper and suggested he might care to make the holdings over to her as a Christmas present. He treated the suggestion as a joke. He had no holdings – in any case, Jews did not give each other Christmas presents, etcetera, etcetera. Then she tried other tactics. (I must say, I would have liked to have been a little mouse in the room, wouldn’t you?) But Drucker, having a new young wife, was not susceptible. Then she became angry and said if he were not willing to hand over the shares, she would see they were confiscated. He thought, with his German connections, no one dared touch him – so he simply laughed at her. Twenty-four hours later he was arrested.’
‘I suppose,’ said Dobson, ‘the arrest could be something of an anti-German gesture.’
‘Oh, do you think so?’ Bella’s voice rose excitedly. ‘I must tell Nikko that. He’ll be delighted. He’s so pro-British.’ She waved to where Nikko had now joined his friends and said: ‘I must leave you.’ She gave her hand to Harriet. ‘I could never persuade Guy to come to my parties. Now you must bring him.’
Harriet glanced after her as she went manoeuvring her broad and vigorous backside between the tables, and asked: ‘What does Nikko do?’
‘Why nothing. He’s married to Bella.’
‘You mean, she’s rich?’
‘Quite comfortably off.’
Dobson had to return to the Legation. When he called the waiter, Harriet, knowing convention did not permit her to remain here alone, asked for her bill, which Dobson insisted on paying.
He had his car outside and offered her a lift, but she said she wanted to do some shopping.
As he was about to drive off, he said: ‘We don’t get a moment to breathe these days, and now H.E. wants us to help with the decoding.’ He exploded with laughter at the thought of this humble employment.
Harriet remembered she had, when she first met him, decided he was difficult to know. She now thought she had been wrong. He was, she believed, as simply pleasant as he seemed.
She crossed over to a shop window in which she had seen an Italian tea-set of fine sang-de-boeuf china. She had suggested to Guy they might buy it with money given them as a wedding-present. Guy, who had no interest in possession, said: ‘Why waste money? When we leave here, we’ll probably have to go empty handed.’ Now, in a mood to compensate herself, she looked defiantly at the tea-set, but, reflecting that she had been abandoned for the best possible motives by a husband made unreliable only by his abysmal kindness, she went instead to the Calea Victoriei and ordered an electric fire.
The wind had grown harder and there were occasional flurries of snow. The sky, black and unrelenting as iron, hung like a weight over the roof-tops. Not wishing to return to the empty flat, she took a taxi down to the Dâmboviţa. The market area around the river had a flavour more of the East than of the West. Guy had brought her here and shown her the houses, built in the style of Louis XIII, once the mansions of Turkish and Phanariot officials, now doss-houses where the poor slept twenty and thirty to a room. The windows were still barred against thieves and rebels. The Dâmboviţa River, that ran between them, had no beauty. Once navigable and the heart of the city, it was now dwindling from some failure at source, leaving high banks of clay. It was unused and in places covered to make a road.
When she left the taxi, she walked through the Calea Lipscani, searching for a stall that sold decorated Hungarian plates. The area was primitive, bug-ridden and brutal. Its streets, unlike the fashionable streets, were as crowded in winter as in summer. The gas-lit windows threw out a greenish glow. The stalls dripped with gas flares. Harriet pushed her way between men and women who, wrapped to the eyes in woollen scarves, were bulky with frieze, sheep-skin and greasy astrakhan. The beggars, on home ground, rummaging for food under the stalls, did not usually trouble to beg here, but the sight of Harriet was too much for them.
When she stopped at a meat stall to buy veal, she became conscious of a sickening smell of decay beside her. Turning, she saw an ancient female dwarf who was thrusting the stump of an arm up to her face. She searched hurriedly for a coin and could find nothing smaller than a hundred-lei note. She knew it was too much but handed it over. It led, as she feared, to trouble. The woman gave a shrill cry calling to her a troupe of children, who at once set upon Harriet, waving their deformities and begging with professional and remorseless piteousness.
She took the meat she had bought and tried to escape into the crowd. The children clung like lice. They caught hold of her arms, their faces screwed into the classical mask of misery while they whined and whimpered in chorus.
Guy had told her she must try and get used to the beggars. They could be discouraged by a show of amiable indifference. She had not yet learned the trick and perhaps never would. Their persistence roused her to fury.
She reached the stall where the Hungarian plates were displayed and paused. At once the children surrounded her, their eyes gleaming at her annoyance, seeming to be dancing in triumph. She made off again, almost running, only wanting now to get away from them. At the end of the road she saw a trǎsurǎ and shouted to it. It stopped. She jumped on board and the children followed her. They clung to the steps, wailing at her, until the driver struck them off with his whip. As they dropped down, one by one, her anger subsided. She looked back at them and saw them still staring after the dispenser of hundred-lei notes – a collection of wretched, ragged waifs with limbs as thin as sticks.
Heavens above, how did one settle down to life in this society that Doamna Teitelbaum had recommended for its comfort? The day before, she had seen a peasant slashing his horse across the eyes for some slip of the foot. Though she was so shaken she could have murdered the man, she had to recognise what deprivation lay behind his behaviour.
Before she left England, she had read books written by travellers in Rumania who had given a picture of a rollicking, open-hearted, happy, healthy peasantry, full of music and generous hospitality. They were, it was true, mad about music. Music was their only outlet. They made themselves drunk on it. As for the rest, she had seen nothing of it. The peasants in this city were starved, frightened figures, scrawny with pellagra, wandering about in a search for work or making a half-hearted attempt to beg.