He went straight to the English Bar and found it empty. Forced to search elsewhere, he crossed the square to Dragomir’s food store, a refuge where a gentleman might sample cheese unchallenged and steal a biscuit or two.
The shop was decorated for Christmas. All about it peasants were selling fir trees from the Carpathians. Some trees were propped against the windows, some stood in barrels, some lay on the pavement among heaps of holly, bay and laurel. Great swags of snow-grizzled fir were tacked like mufflers about the shop front. It was a large shop; one of the largest in Bucharest. Now it stood like a little castle embowered in Christmas greenery, its windows bright but burred with frost ferns.
A boar, on its feet, stood at the main entrance, its hide cured to a glossy blackness, its tusks yellow, snow feathers caught in its tough bristles. On either side of the door hung a deer, upside-down with antlers resting on the ground.
Yakimov sighed. These signs of festivity sent his thoughts back to Christmases at the Crillon, the Ritz, the Adlon and Geneva’s Beau-Rivage. Where would be spend this Christmas? Not, alas, at the Athénée Palace.
As he entered the shop he found, crouched behind the boar, a heap of beggars, who set up such a clamour at the sight of him that an assistant rushed out and kicked one, slapped another and attacked the rest with a wet towel. Yakimov slipped inside.
A little department at the door sold imports from England: Quaker Oats, tinned fruits, corned beef, Oxford marmalade – expensive luxuries eximious among luxury. These did not interest Yakimov, who made for the main hall, where turkeys, geese, ducks, chickens, pheasant, partridge, grouse, snipe, pigeons, hares and rabbits were thrown unsorted together in a vast pyramid beneath a central light. He joined the fringe of male shoppers who went round with intent, serious faces examining these small corpses. This was not a shopping place for servants, nor even for wives. The men came here, as Yakimov did, to look at food, and to experience, as he might not, an ecstasy of anticipation.
He watched a stout man, galoshed, close-buttoned, Persian lamb on his collar, a cap in his hand, choose and order the preparation of a turkey still in its splendour of feathers. He swallowed hungrily as he watched.
This was not a good season for an onlooker. The counters that displayed shellfish, caviare and every sort of sausage were so hemmed in with customers he could see nothing of them. He wandered round with no more reward than the scent of honey-cured hams or the high citron fume of Greek oranges.
An assistant was sheering off the legs of live frogs, throwing the still palpitating trunks into a dustbin. Yakimov was upset by the sight, but forgot it at once as he peered into a basket of button mushrooms flown that morning from Paris. He put out a finger and brought it back tinged with the red dust of France.
In the cheese department, the sampling knife was in use. A little man in yellow peccary gloves, keeping an assistant at his heels, was darting about, nicking this cheese and that. As he waited, Yakimov eyed cheeses packed in pigs’-bladders, sheepskins, bark, plaited twigs, straw mats, grape pips, wooden bowls and barrels of brine. When he could bear it no longer, he broke off a piece of roquefort and would have put it into his mouth, but he realised he had been observed.
The observer was Guy Pringle.
‘Hello, dear boy,’ said Yakimov, letting the cheese fall from his fingers into a bowl of soured cooking cream. ‘Difficult place to get served.’
Guy, he saw, was not alone. Harriet Pringle had captured the assistant from the man in the peccary gloves. She seemed about to give an order, but at once the man, indignant at being deserted, began to demand attention. The assistant pushed past Harriet, almost bowling her over in his eagerness to assert his servility. ‘Cochon,’ said Harriet. The assistant looked back, pained.
Ever since the incident in the Athénée Palace garden, Yakimov had felt nervous of Harriet. Now, leaning towards Guy and whispering hurriedly, he said: ‘Your poor old Yaki’s in a bit of a jam. If I can’t lay m’hands on four thou, I’ll have to spend the night on the streets.’
Seeing Guy glance at Harriet, he added quickly: ‘Haven’t forgotten. Owe the dear girl a thou. She’ll get it soon’s m’remittance turns up.’
Guy took out the old note book in which he kept banknotes and, leafing through it, found two thousand lei, which he handed to Yakimov. He said: ‘It’s a pity you aren’t a Polish refugee. I know the man who’s administering relief.’
‘M’not exactly a Polish refugee, dear boy, but I’m a refugee from Poland. Got here through Yugoslavia, y’know.’
Guy thought this fact might serve and gave him the address of the Polish Relief Centre, then mentioned that Yakimov had promised to visit them. Was he by any chance free on Christmas night?
‘Curiously enough, I am, dear boy.’
‘then come to dinner,’ Guy said.
Yakimov found the Relief Centre in a street of red, angular, half-built houses on which work had been abandoned for the winter. Builder’s materials still lay about. Snow patched the yellow clay and the hillocks of sand and lime. Outside the one house that was nearly completed, a row of civilian Poles, in breeches and monkey-jackets, stood stamping their feet in the cold. Yakimov swept past them, wrapped in the Czar’s greatcoat.
To the old peasant who opened the door, he said: ‘Prince Yakimov to see Mr Lawson.’ He was shown straight into a room that smelt of damp plaster.
Clarence, seated behind a table, with an oil-stove at his feet and an army blanket round his shoulders, appeared to have a bad cold. When Yakimov introduced himself as a friend of Guy Pringle, Clarence looked shy, impressed apparently by the distinction of his visitor. Given confidence, Yakimov told how he had come down from Poland, where he had been staying on the estate of a relative. He had for a few weeks acted as McCann’s deputy. When McCann left for Poland, Yakimov remained behind to collect a remittance which was being sent to him. The dislocations of war caused the delay of the remittance and so, he said: ‘Here I am on m’uppers, dear boy. Don’t know where to look for a crust.’
Strangely enough, Clarence did not respond as Yakimov had hoped to his story. He sat for some time looking at his fingernails, then said with sudden, startling firmness: ‘I cannot help you. You are not a Pole. You must apply to the British Legation.’
Yakimov’s face fell. ‘But, dear boy, I’m just as much in need as those blokes outside. Fact is, if I can’t raise four thousand today, I’ll have to sleep in the street.’
Clarence said coldly: ‘The men outside are queuing for a living allowance of a hundred lei a day.’
‘You surely mean a thousand?’
‘I mean a hundred.’
Yakimov began to rise, then sank down again. ‘Never had to beg before,’ he said. ‘Good family. Not what I’m used to. Fact is, I’m desperate. The Legation won’t help. They’ll only send me to Cairo. ’S’no good to poor old Yaki. Delicate health. Been starving for days. Don’t know where m’next meal’s coming from.’ His voice broke, tears crowded into his eyes and Clarence, shaken by this emotion, put his hand into his pocket. He brought out a single note, but it was a note for ten thousand lei.