‘Ah!’ said David, rising, ‘here’s Klein.’ Klein seized on both his hands and, talking rapidly in German, displayed an ecstatic pleasure in their reunion.
When introduced to the Pringles, Klein bowed from the waist, saying: ‘How nice … how pleased to meet you!’ but he looked unsure of them until David said: ‘It’s all right. They’re friends.’
The word ‘friends’ had, apparently, a special connotation. ‘Ah, so!’ said Klein, relaxing into the chair that Guy had brought to the table for him. He had the fresh, snub, pink and white face of a child. Had it not been for the fact he was bald and what hair he had was grey, he might have passed for a very plump schoolboy – but a super-subtle boy who, despite his smile of good humour, was assessing everyone and everything about him. He accepted wine, which he poured into a tumbler and mixed with mineral water, but he would not eat. He had come, he said, from the first meeting of a newly formed committee.
‘An important committee, you understand. It exists to discuss the big demand Germany now makes on Rumania for food. And what did we do on the committee? We ate, drank and made funny remarks. There was such a buffet – from here to here,’ he indicated some twenty foot of the wall, ‘with roasts and turkeys, lobsters and caviare. Such food! I can tell you, in Germany today they have forgotten such food ever existed.’
He laughed aloud while David, watching him, curled his lip in appreciation of this picture of the Rumanians in committee.
Klein gave Guy a smile, confiding and affectionate, and said: ‘I am, you understand, economic adviser to the Cabinet. I am called to this committee because each day Germany asks for more – more meat, more coffee, more maize, more cooking oil. Where can it all come from? And now she says: “Plant soya beans.” “What are soya beans?” we ask one another. We do not know, but Germany must have them. Every day come these requests – and each time they are more like demands. The Cabinet is nervous. They say: “Send for Klein, Klein must advise us.” I am a Jew. I am without status. But I understand economics.’
‘Klein was one of the best economists in Germany,’ said David.
Klein smiled and twitched a shoulder, but did not repudiate this claim. ‘Here it is very funny,’ he said. ‘They call me in to advise. I say: “Produce more: spend less.” What do they reply? They laugh at me. “Ach, Klein,” they say, “you are only a Jew. What can you know of the soul of our great country? God has given us everything. We are rich. Our land all the time produces for us. It cannot be exhausted. You are a silly little Jew.”’
As Klein laughed, his face flushed with mischievous glee, Guy laughed with him, delighted by this new acquaintance. And no one, Harriet was beginning to realise, enjoyed a new acquaintance more than Guy did. Aglow with interest in Klein, he neglected his food and, leaning forward, questioned him about his unofficial position in the Cabinet, then about his departure from Germany and arrival in Rumania two years before.
Klein’s story was much like that of other refugee Jews in Bucharest except that his reputation as an economist had enabled him to stay in Germany longer than most. He had been warned in the end by a German friend that his arrest was imminent. He had walked empty-handed out of his Berlin flat, taken a train to the Rumanian frontier and, having had no time to buy the usual entrance permit, had crossed the frontier on foot after dark. He had been caught and spent six months in the notorious Bistriţa prison, where Drucker was now held. Friends had bought his release.
‘But still,’ he said, ‘I have no permit to work. Still I am illegal. If I am not useful, then back I go to Bistriţa.’ He laughed happily at the prospect.
David, watching Guy’s eager questioning of Klein, twisted his mouth with a quizzical amusement, pleased that he had brought them so successfully together. Harriet felt less pleased. She had heard a great deal about David Boyd, whom Guy regarded as an especial friend, one whose knowledge and conversation offered considerably more than the limited, personal concerns of Inchcape and Clarence. Now here was David, whose interests were, like his own, impersonal, social, economic and historical. She sighed at the thought of so much talk. It was not, she told herself, that she was unappreciative, but the impersonal quickly tired her. She felt a little out of it, a little jealous.
Perhaps sensing this, Klein turned smiling to her to include her. He said: ‘So here we all are Left-side men, eh? And Doamna Preen-gel? She, too, is Left-side?’
‘No,’ said Harriet, ‘I am fighting the solitary battle of the reactionary.’
Guy laughed to prevent Klein taking this seriously, and squeezed her hand.
Klein said: ‘You like Rumania, Doamna Preen-gel? It is interesting here, is it not?’
‘Yes, but …’
‘But it is interesting,’ Klein insisted. ‘And wait! It will become more interesting. Do you think the Allies can safeguard this country? I think not. It will be necessary to buy off the Germans with more and more food – with so much food, there will be a famine. If you stay, you will see the break-up of a country. You will see revolution, ruin, occupation by the enemy …’
‘I don’t want to stay so long.’
‘But you will see so much,’ Klein reasoned with her, ‘and all so interesting.’ He looked round the table as though offering them all a joyous future. ‘I say to this committee: “Listen! In this country it is necessary that we have 200,000 wagon-loads of wheat in one year. This year, with the land workers mobilised, we shall have perhaps 20,000, perhaps less. It is necessary,” I say, “that you demobilise those peasants and at once send them back to the land. If you do not, the people will starve.” And they laugh at me and say: “We know you, Klein, you are of the Left. You do not look to the glory of Greater Rumania, you look to the welfare of the stupid, dirty peasants. Rumania is rich. Rumania cannot starve. Here, one day you throw seed on the ground, the next day it is bread. If we are short of wheat, merely it is necessary to stop exports.” “If you do that,” I say, “how will you make up the money?” “All that is necessary,” they say, “is a new tax.” I say: “What can we tax? What is not already taxed?” And they laugh at me: “Ha, Klein, it is for you to answer! You are economist.”’
Shaking with laughter at the thought of the trouble ahead, Klein put a hand to Harriet’s shoulder. ‘Listen, Doamna Preen-geclass="underline" Rumania is like a foolish person who has inherited a great fortune. It is all dissipated in vulgar nonsense. You know the story the Rumanians tell about themselves: that God, when He had given gifts to the nations, found He had given to Rumania everything – forests, rivers, mountains, minerals, oil and a fertile soil that yielded many crops. “Hah,” said God. “This is too much,” and so, to strike a balance, he put here the worst people he could find. The Rumanians laugh at this. It is a true, sad joke!’ said Klein, but he told it without any sign of sadness.
The meal was finished. Most of the other diners had left the restaurant; David, Guy and Klein however seemed prepared to stay all afternoon. After a while, Klein passed to stories of his life in prison. He gave the impression it had all been uproariously funny.
‘And it was so interesting,’ he said, ‘so interesting! With such a lot of people crowded in a common cell, there was such a life, such stories, such feuds, such scandals. Always something happening. I remember one day the warders came in to beat a prisoner who was a little mad – in prison many get a little mad – and as they beat him, he screamed and screamed. This the warders did not like, so they put over his head a pillow of feathers. It stopped the screaming but when they took it off – what a surprise! The man was dead. Smothered! The warders stood like this …’ Klein’s mouth fell open and his eyes protruded, then he laughed: ‘And the prisoners – oh, they laughed so much!’