He had not known what had happened to his family. When in Bessarabia, he had written to his aunts but received no reply. When he reached Bucharest, he had looked up at the windows of the family flat and seeing the curtains changed, realised the Druckers were not there. In the streets he had caught sight of people he knew, but in his fear of re-arrest dared approach no one until he saw Guy.
While he talked, he glanced shyly aside at her, smiling, all the misery gone from his gaze.
She said: ‘You know that your family have left Rumania?’
‘Guy told me.’ If he knew they had taken flight immediately, without a backward glance for him or his father, he did not seem much concerned.
She decided the time had come to mention the possibility of his finding another shelter. She said: ‘Your stepmother is still here, of course. Don’t you think she could help you? She might be willing to let you live with her.’
He whispered: ‘Oh, no,’ startled and horrified by the suggestion.
‘She wouldn’t hurt you, would she? She wouldn’t give you away?’
‘Please don’t tell her anything about me.’
His tone was a complete rejection of his stepmother. So much for her. Then what about the possible friends? She said: ‘You must have known a lot of people in Bucharest. Isn’t there anyone who would give you a better hiding-place than this?’
He explained that, having been at an English public school, he had no friends of long standing here. She asked, what about his University acquaintances? He simply shook his head. He had known people, but not well. There seemed to be no one on whom he could impose himself now. Jews did not make friends easily. They were suspicious and cautious in this anti-Semitic society, and Sasha had been enclosed by a large family. The Druckers formed their own community, one which depended on Drucker’s power for its safety. His arrest had been the signal for flight. If they had hesitated, they might all have suffered.
Watching him, wondering what they were to do with him, Harriet caught Sasha’s glance and saw her questions had disturbed him. He had again the fearful, wary look of the hunted, and she knew she was no better than Guy at displacing the homeless. Indeed, she was worse for, unlike Guy, she had been resolved and had failed. When it came to a battle of human needs, her resolution did not count for much.
Glancing away from her, Sasha saw the dog, stick in mouth, patiently awaiting his attention. He put out his hand to it.
The extreme gentleness of his gesture moved her. She suddenly felt his claim on her and knew it was the claim of her lost red kitten, and of all the animals to whom she had given her love in childhood because there had been no one else who wanted it. She wondered why Yakimov had not moved her in this way. Was it because he lacked the quality of innocence?
She said to Sasha: ‘There’s someone living with us in the flat, a Prince Yakimov. We have to keep him for the moment, he has nowhere else to go, but I don’t trust him. You must be careful. Don’t let him see you.’ She slid down from the wall, saying as she left him: ‘This is a wretched hut. It’s the best we can do for the moment. If Yakimov leaves – and I hope he will – you can have his room.’
Sasha smiled after her, his fears forgotten, content like a stray animal that, having found a resting-place, has no complaint to make.
Next morning only Timpul mentioned the ‘trickle of riff-raff in green shirts that provoked laughter in the Calea Victoriei’. By evening this attitude had changed. Every paper reported the march with shocked disapproval, for the King had announced that were it repeated the military would be called out to fire on the marchers.
The Guardists went under cover again, but this, people said, was the result not of the King’s threat but an address made to the Guardists by their chief, Horia Sima, who was newly returned from exile in Germany. He advised them to leave off their green shirts and sing ‘Capitanul’ only in their hearts. The time for action was not yet come.
Their leading spirits again hung unoccupied about the streets, sombre, shabby, malevolent, awaiting the call. These men, whom it seemed only Harriet had noticed in the spring, suddenly became visible and significant to everyone, giving rise to fresh excitements and apprehensions, and renewed terror among the Jews.
PART TWO
The Captain
6
The next time Harriet went up to see Sasha she took with her a bowl of apricots and a copy of L’Indépendence Romaine. The paper contained the date on which Drucker’s trial would begin, an announcement overshadowed by the news that the Hungarian premier and his foreign minister had been granted an audience with the Führer. What were the Hungarians after?
Harriet, eating her supper alone, made her way through the leading article on Transylvania: ‘le berceau de la Nation, le coeur de la Patrie’. No mention was made of Hungary’s old claim to this territory, but at the end the article asked: Had the Rumanian people not suffered enough in their efforts to preserve Balkan peace? Was yet another sacrifice to be demanded of them? And answered: No, yet again no. If rumours of such a sacrifice were circulating they must be instantly suppressed.
The Pringles had been invited to dine that evening with a Jewish couple who, granted a visa to the United States, wanted to know how to conduct themselves in the English-speaking world. Invitations of this sort were frequent. Though Guy knew no more about the States than he had learnt from American films, he was always happy to give advice, but Harriet was becoming bored with listening to it. She said: ‘You go. They don’t really want me,’ for at the back of her mind was the intention to see Sasha again.
As she climbed up the iron ladder to roof-level, she was startled by the grandeur of the sky from which plumes of puce and crimson had been pulled downwards by the setting sun. The concrete glowed like marble, but for all the richness of the light the air was heavy, almost thunderous, though thunder was rare here.
Sasha was sitting on the parapet, an intent and solitary figure, scribbling on something. As she stepped up on to the roof, she saw him lift his head and stare towards the cathedral which, built on high ground, overlooked the city. Its golden domes were afire now and the whole building stood like an embossed enamel against the luminous darkness of the lower sky.
At the sound of her step, he jerked his head round and his face brightened at the sight of company, so she ceased to feel any need to account for her visit.
She asked where the dog was.
He said: ‘It didn’t live here. Despina was keeping it for someone. Now it has gone home.’
‘Do any of the servants sleep on the roof?’
‘No, there’s no one but me.’
As she had thought, these advertised ‘second servant rooms’ were merely an attempt to smarten the jerry-built, ill-planned block. No one needed or could afford the extra staff.
She felt sorry for the boy alone up here. She put the apricots on the parapet and said: ‘Those are for you,’ then she looked at his sketch of the cathedral done on the concrete with a lump of rough charcoal Despina had found for him somewhere. She said: ‘It’s quite good.’