Galpin, on his way to the bar, gawped, and Yakimov said: ‘Striking figure, that! Who can he be?’
‘Arrived last night,’ said Galpin. ‘Probably secret service. Nothing so conspicuous as your old-time member of the British Secret Service.’ Noticing Yakimov’s luggage, he added: ‘Not leaving us?’
Yakimov nodded sadly. ‘Found a nice little place of m’own,’ he said and went out to his trǎsurǎ.
That morning the early snow hung like swansdown in the air. It was forming a gauze over the tarmac. The cold was intense.
The trǎsurǎ took Yakimov in the direction of the station. The coachman was a lean and fierce-looking fellow, no Skopitz. The horse was a skeleton roughly patched over with hide. As it was spurred by the whip, its bones, stretching and heaving, seemed about to fall apart. Blood trickled down its flanks from several open sores.
As he watched the skittish jig of its pelvis, a tear came into Yakimov’s eyes, but he was not weeping for the horse. He was weeping for himself. He was retreating, most unwillingly, from the heart of Bucharest life to its seedy, unprofitable purlieus. He felt injured by circumstances. The world had turned against him since Dollie died. Now he had not even the last relic of their life together, his Hispano-Suiza. He found himself longing for it as for a mother.
The appearance of the station reminded him of the evening of his penniless arrival. How short his period of fortune had been! His tears fell.
Hearing a gulp and a sniff, the coachman turned and gave Yakimov a stare of crude curiosity. Yakimov brushed his sleeve across his eyes.
Beyond the station the roads were unmade. The horse stumbled in pot-holes, the carriage shook. Puddles, thinly sheeted over with ice, cracked beneath the wheels. Here the houses were mostly wooden shacks, but among them were blocks of flats, recently built but already turning into slums. The paint was scratched from the doors; washing hung on the balconies and women bawled down into the streets.
It was in one of these flats that Yakimov had found a room. The room had been advertised on a notice-board as ‘lux nebun’ – insane luxury. Insane luxury at a low rent seemed just the answer to his problem.
He had come upon the block after searching the back streets for an hour or more. The servant, who opened the door an inch, gabbled something about ‘siesta’. He pretended not to understand. The stone staircase, ventilated with open spaces, seemed colder than the street. He pushed open the door and edged his way into the oily heat of the flat’s interior. He would not be moved out. Defeated, the servant tapped with extreme trepidation on a door, entered and was met with uproar. At last a man and a woman, both in dressing-gowns, peered out at Yakimov with angry hauteur. The man said: ‘What does this person here in our house?’
The woman replied: ‘Tell him at once to go.’
It was some moments before Yakimov realised that, beneath the clotted disguise of accent, the two were speaking English to each other. He bowed and smiled: ‘You speak English? As an Englishman, I am flattered. I have called to see the room you advertised.’
‘An Englishman!’ The wife stepped forward with an expression of such avidity that Yakimov quickly amended his status.
‘Of White Russian origin,’ he said. ‘A refugee, I fear, from the war zone.’
‘A refugee!’ She turned to her husband with an expression that said: ‘That’s just the sort of Englishman we would get.’
‘The name is Yakimov. Prince Yakimov.’
‘Ah, a Prince!’
The room offered was small, cluttered up with Rumanian carved furniture and embroidered hangings, but warm and comfortable enough. He agreed to take it.
‘The rent a month is four thousand lei,’ said the woman, whose name was Doamna Protopopescu. When Yakimov did not haggle, she added: ‘In advance.’
‘Tomorrow, dear girl.’ He touched her fat, grimy little hand with his lips. ‘Tomorrow a large remittance arrives for me at the British Legation.’
Doamna Protopopescu looked at her husband, who said: ‘The Prince is an English Prince,’ and so the matter was left for the moment.
Doamna Protopopescu had advised Yakimov the correct trǎsurǎ fare from the city’s centre. Now, his bags safely on the pavement, he handed up the fare and a ten lei tip. The driver looked dumbfounded, then gave an anguished howl. He demanded more. Firmly Yakimov shook his head and started to gather up his bags. The driver flung the coins upon the pavement. Ignoring this gesture, Yakimov began to climb the stairs.
Swinging his whip above his head and haranguing the passers-by right and left, the driver leapt down and followed. Bounding and bawling, he caught up with his fare at the first landing.
Yakimov did not know what the man was saying, but he was shaken by the fury with which it was being said. He tried to run. He stumbled, dropped a case, then shrank in fear against the wall. The man did not attack him, but instead, as Yakimov crept on, kept beside him, banging his jackboots on the stairs, slashing his whip and causing so much noise that people came to their doors to see what was happening. Doamna Protopopescu and her servant peered over the third landing.
‘How much did you give him?’ she asked.
Yakimov told her.
‘That was more than enough.’ At once her face became a mask of fury. She threw up her fists and, rushing at the driver, she screamed out a virulent stream of Rumanian. The man stopped in his tracks. She waved him away, very slowly, turning every few moments to fix Yakimov with a stare of sullen loathing. At this show of defiance, the servant ran after him, echoing her mistress’s rage, while the mistress herself conducted Yakimov indoors.
‘Dear girl, you were magnificent,’ said Yakimov as he sat panting on his bed.
‘I said “How dare you molest a nobleman” and he was afraid. So to deal with a filthy peasant.’ She flicked a hand, dismissing the matter, then said sharply: ‘And now, the money!’
‘This evening,’ he promised her, ‘when the diplomatic post arrives, I’ll stroll back to the Legation and pick up m’remittance.’
Doamna Protopopescu’s small black eyes bulged with suspicion. To greet her lodger, she had fitted herself into a short black dress that clung to the folds and wrinkles of her fat like a second skin. Her heavily whitened face sagged with annoyance like a flabby magnolia. She shouted through the door for her husband.
Protopopescu appeared, dressed in the uniform of an army officer of the lowest rank. He was a thin, drooping man with corseted waist, rouged cheeks and a moustache like that of a ring-master, but he had nothing of his wife’s fire. He said with a poor attempt at command: ‘Go this instant and get the money.’
‘Not now, dear boy.’ Yakimov settled down among the embroidered cushions. ‘Must have a bit of kip. Worn out with all this fuss.’ He closed his eyes.
‘No, no!’ cried Doamna Protopopescu and, pushing past her husband, she caught Yakimov by the arm and dragged him off the bed. ‘Go now. At once.’ She was extremely strong. She gave Yakimov a push that sent him headlong into the passage, then, closing the room door, she locked it and put the key in her handbag. ‘So! When you bring the money, I give the key.’
Yakimov returned to the gnawing cold of the street. Where on earth could he find the money? He dared not approach Dobson who yesterday had lent him a last four thousand for the rent. Having no idea that Doamna Protopopescu could be so resolute, he had spent the money on a couple of excellent meals.
The pavements were freezing. He could feel the frost sticking to the broken soles of his shoes. He could not face the walk back to the main square and, realising he would have to learn to use public transport, he stood among the crowd waiting for a tramcar. When the tram came, there was an hysterical stampede in which Yakimov and an old woman were flung violently to the ground. The woman picked herself up and returned to the fray. Only Yakimov was left behind. When the next tram came along, he was prepared to fight. He was carried for a few lei to the city’s centre. One could live here very cheaply, he realised, but who wanted to live cheaply? Not Yakimov.