Shadow of a Hero Page 12

‘I’ll find them. What happens next?’

  ‘At noon I have to go out onto the balcony and make a little speech. I won’t offer to take you with me . . .’

  ‘I’d much rather be down there.’

  ‘Me too,’ said Van. ‘Is that OK, Momma? Mollie? If I take Sis and Nigel down and keep an eye on them? You can find Grandad’s socks, uh?’

  ‘You may have trouble getting back in . . .’ Steff began.

  ‘No problem. I’ll find a way. Come on, kids.’

  He rushed ahead of them down the stairs, paused, surveyed the group in the entrance hall and plunged through. By the time Letta and Nigel caught up with him he was explaining his needs to the manager, who kept glancing aside, as if he was hoping for an escape-route to open up. Van was relentless. They were Restaur Vax’s grandchildren, so he must find a way of getting them out into the Square and then back in. Rescue! Some kind of minion passed with a cardboard box full of dead flowers. The manager grabbed it from him and gave instructions. The minion, happy to be relieved of his box, led them off into the maze of corridors, down into cellars, and along a stone passage which seemed to take them almost to the end of that side of the Square. Here he unlocked a creaking door and took them deeper down still, switching on lights as he went. This corridor led into a wider space. Along one side were several iron doors with small barred grilles. Their guide walked to one of them, bowed his head, crossed himself and muttered. He crossed himself again as he turned away.

  He pointed upwards.

  ‘That was the Communist police headquarters,’ he said. ‘Here my mother’s cousin died. First they tortured her. I am sorry. You are children. I should not tell you this. But those years are gone. Now it is time to honour the living.’

  He led the way up another stair, unlocked a door and led them into a bleak entrance hall with a reception desk and an ancient telephone exchange. A fence of heavy iron bars ran across the hall from floor to ceiling, just inside the door, with a kind of cage like a giant humane mouse-trap to keep visitors waiting till they had shown their passes or whatever and then let them through one at a time. As their guide showed them through a sort of turnstile in this barrier Letta, still shocked and chilly after what he’d said in the cellar, asked him, ‘Where did the Communists come from?’

  He stared at her, puzzled.

  ‘I mean, were they Romanians? Russians? Serbs?’

  ‘They came from here,’ he said. ‘I know which cell was Illa’s because another cousin told us. He was one of them. He would have liked to help her but he was afraid. We were all afraid. All of us.’

  He was a small, plump, worried man, about forty, she guessed. He hadn’t liked telling her what he did, but she could see he felt he had to. She was going to apologize when he smiled and shook his head.

  ‘Those years are gone,’ he said again. ‘This is a happier day.’

  He let the others through the trap and unbolted the door, holding his foot against the bottom so that the people crowding on the top step of the flight that led up to the doorway didn’t tumble through, but had time to stand clear. They looked over their shoulders, surprised, but didn’t stir or make room, so all Letta could see was the solid wall of their backs.

  ‘Wait,’ said their guide. ‘You come, mister.’

  He and Van went back through the trap and returned with four chairs, for Letta, Nigel and themselves. They climbed up with the chill, grim room behind them and the sunlit Square in front, and waited.

  They were now at the side of the Square, with the cathedral on their right and the hotel façade stretching away on their left. The cathedral clock stood at two minutes to noon. Many of the crowd had their backs to the hotel in order to watch the minute hand edge round. As it crept towards the mark they began to make shushing noises. The murmur of voices dwindled and died. Silence filled the Square, not mere absence of sound, but positive silence, a great pool of stillness which the Varinians had willed into being and which now lay brimming between the buildings in the sunlight. A baby cried. A far dove called and was answered. The first quarter donged out, followed by a shuffling of feet on stone as the crowd turned to watch the balcony. The central windows were now open. The second quarter donged, but no-one heard the third, or the fourth, or the solid boom of the noon bell, because Grandad was standing on the balcony and the cheering drowned them all. Sheets of flags waved above the close-packed heads, the noise went on and on, unstoppable. Letta half-fell, but their guide caught her and set her back on her chair. She realized that she had been jumping up and down, and her throat was hoarse with yelling. The cathedral clock said almost ten-past twelve, but it seemed to her that Grandad had come out barely a minute ago. She was dazed, drunk, drugged with the shared, immense emotion. A crowd like this could do anything, anything . . .

  It was shared too. It wasn’t just a lot of different people’s excitement all totalled up. It was one thing, like the silence had been, something they made between them all. And with it they shared a purpose and a will. Grandad had been making quiet-down gestures with his hands for some time, and they’d paid no attention, but now they had had enough and all together, in a very few seconds, they fell silent. Here and there a hoarse cry of greeting rose, but he waited a moment or two more, raised his head and began.

  ‘My friends, my countrymen . . .’

  Another burst of cheering crashed out, and another after the next few words. They never let him get through a whole sentence, but that didn’t matter. In fact it barely mattered what he said. He was there, officially, to open a festival of Varinian culture, and Letta thought he must have talked mainly about that, but to be honest, she wouldn’t afterwards have been able to tell you what it was about, if anything. All she could have said was that it was wonderful, and that it was in simple Field except for the last three words, and those nobody heard at all because of the crash of cheering that greeted the first Formal syllable. But everyone in the Square knew what he was saying.

  ‘Unaloxatu! Unaloxotu! Unaloxistu!’

  This was the motto embroidered on the battle-standard of the first Restaur Vax. You could see it in the cathedral again, after fifty years, because somebody had managed to hide it away when the Germans came, and kept it hidden all the time the Communists were in power. It was the real thing, Steff said. He’d told Nigel the words meant ‘One nation we were. One nation we are. One nation we will be’, and they did, but the English wasn’t the same, because the una bit meant ‘whole’ as well as ‘one’, and the ‘lox’ bit meant ‘country’ as well as ‘nation’, and in Formal it took only one whole word to say each part (which you couldn’t do even in Field) so that you felt you were making it true by the very way you said it.

  At length their guide decided it was time to go back, so he managed to get the door closed and bolted and let them in through the trap, then led them back the way they had come. Letta’s family didn’t go to church, but she remembered a bedtime prayer which Biddie’s mum had said with them when she was staying there last year, and whispered it now as they passed the place with the cells in it. When they got back into Grandad’s room he was still out on the balcony, and the cheering was roaring on, as loud as ever.

  LEGEND

  The Riddle

  NOW THAT THE five Pashas were slain, the Turks were afraid to face the Varinians in battle. But Selim was Pasha of Virnu, across the river, and he was subtlest of all the Turks.1 He said in his heart, ‘I will send spies against this Restaur Vax, Greeks and Bulgarians and Croats, who yet speak the language of these dogs and may pass themselves off as true Varinians, and so join his bands, and be trusted until they are permitted to stand by his side, and then they will strike him down. Moreover, to give them courage, I will put a price on his head of seventeen thousand kronin. Very likely these spies will be found out, but that too is good, for Restaur Vax will see that he cannot any longer know which volunteers he can trust.’

  Then one came to Restaur Vax saying that he was a Varinian from beyond the river, and talking good Field
. Restaur Vax questioned him closely, and he answered well, but in the middle of questioning him Restaur Vax cast his glance down by the man’s feet and cried ‘Phidi!’ which is the Greek word for a viper. At that the man leaped clear even before he cast his own glance to the ground, and by this he was seen to be a Greek. So they took him away and slew him.

  Restaur Vax said, ‘This is Selim’s doing.’

  His chieftains answered, ‘We must therefore trust no new recruits.’

  Restaur Vax took thought and said, ‘Not so. We will test all who come to us with a riddle. We will say to each man, “What were you? What are you? What will you be? Answer us now with the words that you learned in your mother’s arms.”’

  So it was agreed. Seventy-seven spies came, speaking good Field, pretending to be true Varinians, and saying they wished to fight the Turk. But not one of them could answer the riddle, nor did they return alive to their own pastures. But of all the many Varinians who came, none failed the test. Had they not learnt the answer in their mothers’ arms?2

  1 Selim Pasha (1712–1777) was not a contemporary of Restaur Vax. Pasha of the Western Province from the early age of twenty-six until his death, he earned a justifiable reputation for both efficiency and ferocity, and continues until the present day to be a general bogeyman of Varinian folklore.

  2 ‘The Lame Girl’s Lullaby’ has the refrain Tutunatu tunutotu tutunistu, which is popularly explained to be in Old Varinian and to mean ‘Asleep you were. Asleep you are. Asleep you will be.’ That is to say, before birth, in the cradle, and in the grave. The point of the story is that an impostor would be unlikely to know the nonsense refrain of a cradle song.

  Old Varinian was the literary language developed by the troubadours in the Middle Ages from the even older language of which modern Field is a simplification. Almost all traces of Old Varinian were effectively destroyed by the Phanariotes, Greek Orthodox officials of the Turkish Empire during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Modern Formal was developed in the period leading up to the War of Independence in an attempt to create a literary language to replace the lost Old Varinian. It is, however, unlikely that the refrain of the song was ever more than nonsense.

  AUGUST 1990

  LETTA WAS ESCAPING up a mountainside. Her companion was a bandit. Somebody had told her she mustn’t trust him. The Turks were spread out below, tiny with distance. They hadn’t seen her yet. Her heart was hammering. People were shouting, running around on the now dark hillside, calling for her . . .

  ‘Letta! Letta!’

  She jerked awake and sat up, her heart still hammering.

  ‘Letta! It’s Parvla!’

  It was still dark, but people really seemed to be running about, and shouting.

  ‘Oh, do shut up. What’s going on?’

  That was Janine, in English, groaningly, on the other side of the tent. It had been a hot night, so Letta had slept on her bag rather than in it. She crawled out through the flaps and stood up. Parvla was there in the folky cotton nightgown which Letta was going to try and find one like before she went home, only they didn’t sell them in shops – they were something you made for yourself. She’d met Parvla at a camp sing-song a couple of nights before. She lived near a village about twenty miles out of Potok. She was two years older than Letta and seemed older still in some ways but younger in others. In spite of that they’d got on at once, looked for each other next morning, spent time together, and agreed to meet again today. But not this early, with stars still out and only a faint grey line to the east, behind Mount Athur.

  ‘They’ve taken him away!’ gasped Parvla. ‘They came in the middle of the night, two long black cars, and rushed into the hotel and took him from his bed, wrapped in a blanket, and drove away.’

  ‘Grandad! Restaur Vax?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Letta was dopey, unable to think or feel. This seemed to be still part of her dream, with the dark hillside and the people moving around with angry cries, and her heart still uselessly hammering.

  ‘What’s everybody doing?’ she said.

  ‘We’re all going up to the Square, I think.’

  Letta pulled herself together.

  ‘Oh. Right. Thanks. I’d better find Nigel. You go and get dressed.’

  While she was groping for her clothes she told Janine what had happened, but Janine simply groaned and turned over. She pulled her jeans and shirt on over her pyjamas and started down the hill, but before she’d gone more than a few yards she heard Nigel’s voice, calling for her as he climbed.

  ‘Here!’ she shouted, and found him.

  ‘What’s happened?’ he said. ‘Something to do with Grandad, I gather. Is he all right?’

  ‘I don’t know. Somebody came and took him away. They’re all going up to the Square.’

  ‘Us too? We’d better check in with Mum and Dad. They’ll be worried sick.’

  Blundering among tents they made their way down to the main path. People were already streaming along it towards the town. Their voices were mostly low, but Letta could feel their anger like a thickening of the air. The crowd grew denser and slower, but then she and Nigel were able to branch off towards the University, where a lot of lights were on and yet more people were pouring away towards the town. Mollie was in her room with a knapsack packed and Donna ready and dressed but fast asleep, waiting for them.

  ‘Well done,’ she said. ‘Steff’s gone up to the hotel. He called the office here five minutes ago and said he’s arranged for us to be let in at that back entrance. Apparently you can’t get to the front at all. Ready?’

  Even by the back way they barely made it. All the streets in the centre of Potok were jammed with furious Varinians. At one place they passed there were crashings of glass and yells of rage from a courtyard. In the thin dawn light, Letta saw a man run forward and hurl something. Another crash, and more yells. She heard a bystander ask what was up and somebody tell him that Romanians lived there. The bystander immediately rushed into the courtyard, yelling and looking for a missile of his own.

  Letta and Nigel had paused to watch, and Mollie had gone ahead. In a moment of panic, Letta thought they’d lost her, but then she spotted her, craning back to see where they’d got to. When they caught up she said, ‘For God’s sake don’t get separated. Keep with me.’ There was a snap in her voice, which Letta had never heard before. As they struggled on, Letta realized that Mollie, too, was afraid.

  Steff was waiting for them at the kitchen doors. He was obviously extremely relieved to see them. He took Donna onto his shoulder, still totally sogged out with sleep, and as he led them towards the front of the hotel he talked over his shoulder to Mollie.

  ‘Not as bad as we thought. Kronin’s brother – you remember, the guy in the Ministry of Culture – says it’s all a mistake and he’s furious about it.’

  ‘Are they going to send him back?’ said Mollie.

  ‘If they’ve got any sense, but nobody’s in their office yet. We got Kronin’s brother out of bed.’

  ‘It’s really nasty out there, Steff. We saw a gang of people breaking windows. Does anyone know where they’ve taken him?’

  ‘Timisoara, I should think. Bucharest in the end. They may just shove him on a plane and send him home.’

  He led the way into the entrance hall, where groups of people were standing around talking in low voices. From beyond the doors rose a dull, deep roar, not much louder than the noise the crowd had made the opening day, but quite different. They didn’t wait but went straight upstairs to what had been Grandad’s room. Momma was coming out of the bathroom with a sponge-bag. She’d been crying.

  ‘Oh, darlings!’ she said in English. ‘Isn’t this too awful. I’m so relieved to see you. Has anyone seen Van?’

  At that moment the telephone in the little den rang, and stopped. Poppa appeared in the doorway with the receiver to his ear, beckoning them over.

  ‘Right,’ he was saying. ‘We’ll do that . . . Not a hope – it’ll never get near the h
otel. No, it’ll have to be somewhere right outside the town . . . All right, Min and Letta . . . They’ll have to have an escort – I’ll see if anyone here can fix anything. But listen. Do they realize what they’ve stirred up here? If they don’t let you come back . . . I’m sure you are . . . If they don’t see that, then they’re crazy . . . Kronin’s called his brother. He says it’s a mistake. So . . . Right, here she is.’

  He passed the telephone to Momma, who listened and murmured her answers, crying again now. Poppa moved the others aside so as not to interrupt.

  ‘He seems all right,’ he said in a low voice. ‘They’ve stopped at Paçel, just over the border. They’re giving him breakfast. They haven’t told him anything except that he is to ask for some clothes and two members of his family to escort him, so it looks pretty certain they’re going to put him on a plane . . .’

  He broke off and went over as Momma beckoned, but she seemed to change her mind and started talking in a language Letta didn’t know – Romanian, probably. She asked questions, but mostly listened. At last she gave a heavy sigh and just stood there, shaking her head. Poppa took the telephone out of her hand and put it back in the den.

  ‘I don’t understand,’ she said. ‘That was a Captain, army, I think, not police. As far as I can make out – it’s a terrible line and my Romanian’s rusty – he wasn’t in charge of the people who took Grandad away, but he’s somehow taken over. He says he’s got to wait for orders. They’re taking him to Timisoara. They want me and one other to go with him. Letta . . .’

  ‘I want to stay here,’ said Letta.

  It was all she knew. The nightmare from which she’d woken kept lurching back round her, swallowing her, drowning her, and then ebbing away. Had she really struggled along through the furious crowd, watched the men hurling stones in the courtyard, almost lost Mollie? Yes, of course, but still it all seemed full of the shapeless terror of dream. Even here, in the big, lit room, watching Momma stand shaking her head and saying she didn’t understand . . . All she was certain of was that she must stay and face whatever danger Varina faced. Parvla was out there, somewhere among the roaring crowd . . .