Shadow of a Hero Page 17

  ‘Wow!’

  ‘Our people – the Varinians, I mean – were pretty well rioting about it when we left. Burning cars and smashing foreigners’ houses. And after we’d gone the Romanians sent the army along, and the Varinians went and stood in front of them and wouldn’t let them into the city.’

  ‘It sounds pretty scary.’

  ‘It is. And there’s a horrible man called—’

  ‘I mean real armies. That’s big guns and tanks and planes doing rocket attacks if things go wrong . . . What’s up?’

  Letta had felt the blood drain from her face. She closed her eyes and bowed her head. It was almost the same words Grandad had used, bringing this sudden lurch into horror, here in the snug, smug, coffee-scented tea-room in a town where there hadn’t been actual fighting – war, blood, bodies, cannon-shattered homes – since heaven knows when. Vivid as a nightmare she saw three war-planes screaming over the shoulder of Mount Athur. She saw St Joseph’s Square, the crowds racing for shelter. One of them was Parvla. She tripped and fell. The crowds milled over her.

  ‘Are you OK?’ said Biddie.

  ‘It mustn’t happen,’ whispered Letta. ‘Nothing’s worth that, nothing.’

  She shook her head violently, willing the nightmare away, and pulled herself together.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I’m OK.’

  ‘Of course it isn’t worth it,’ said Biddie. ‘I wish I knew why anyone thinks it is. We’re all the same underneath, aren’t we?’

  ‘I am more different than you think,’ said Letta, in Field.

  Biddie looked blank. Letta said it again in English.

  ‘But that’s just language,’ said Biddie.

  ‘No it isn’t, it’s . . . let me think . . . Yes, listen. Sometimes I dream in English, and sometimes I dream in Field, like I was talking just now. I’ve always done it, but since I came back from Potok – I don’t know – well, it isn’t quite the same me doing the dreaming. I’ve got a sort of overlap. You know, like a wonky TV signal, with a sort of shadow-line because you’re seeing two pictures . . . Anyway, we are different. It isn’t just language. It isn’t just having our own cheeses and legends and dogs and our own kind of Christianity and things like that. It’s something that’s kept us going on being Varinians for hundreds of years, when everyone else was trying to stop us. We aren’t like anyone else, and nobody can make us.’

  ‘Just now you said it wasn’t worth it. Now you’re sort of saying it is.’

  ‘I don’t know. I really don’t know!’

  Then the waitress came and they ordered their chocolate and to calm herself down Letta asked about Greece, and then they talked about Angel until it was time to go present-hunting. As they came out into the High Street Letta glanced up at the low, drab cloud-base and felt a vague sense of release, then realized that at the shadow-edge of her mind she had still been seeing that intense blue southern sky across which the war-planes had swept.

  When she got home she found a motor bike blocking the driveway, a huge, brand-new beast of a thing, glistening purple and white and black. There were black leathers draped on the banisters and a crash helmet striped with the Varinian colours on the hall table. Hell, she thought, I’d much rather have Grandad to myself, but at least it might mean there’s news from Potok. She made the tea, put an extra mug on the tray and carried it up.

  A man was talking as she climbed the last flight. She knew the voice. Steff. Steff on a bike like that? Grandad answered, called to her to come in when she knocked, and went on as she backed her way through the door.

  ‘. . . never been natural traders. We have relied on outsiders living among us to create wealth, and then of course have envied them. How many of the crowd in the Square last month were aware of standing in a place where there was a major massacre of Jews in 1852? They had come to the Prince-Bishop’s palace for protection but he had shut his doors against them.’

  ‘Was that horrible old Pango?’ said Letta, still with her back to the room as she nudged the tray onto the cluttered table. (It couldn’t be Steff – he’d have been on his feet, helping her.)

  ‘His successor,’ said Grandad. ‘Pango had encouraged the Jews to settle in Potok.’

  ‘Hi, Sis,’ said the other man.

  ‘Van!’

  ‘Didn’t want you to jump like that with the tray in your hands. How’s life treating you?’

  ‘That’s not your bike!’

  ‘It is, too.’

  ‘Bike?’ said Grandad.

  ‘A great glistening monster painted our colours,’ said Letta. ‘Where did you get it? How fast does it go?’

  ‘A hundred-and-forty, supposed to,’ said Van. ‘I haven’t been over the ton. It’s a BMW.’

  ‘A gift?’ said Grandad in his quietest voice.

  ‘Not half!’ said Van. ‘Otto made quite a splash of handing it over. He sprang a farewell party on me in Vienna, and handed the bike over when the champagne was flowing. There’s a few things he wants me to do for him over here, and I’ve got to have transport, but mainly it’s to make up for being booted out of Varina.’

  ‘Booted out!’ said Letta. ‘Like Grandad?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘In your pyjamas?’

  She’d asked that seriously, without thinking, just trying to imagine the scene, but laughed at herself when Van laughed. Even Grandad smiled.

  ‘We had a tip-off,’ said Van. ‘We’ve been getting pretty good intelligence, so we had a couple of hours to set something up. I talked it over with Otto. I wanted to go into hiding, but he said it was too soon for that sort of thing, so we made them come and get me. We let them think I was just drinking with a few pals in this torno, the one with the pink umbrellas in Jirin Road, and they came swooping up in three of those black stretch limos to grab me, but our people poured out from every house in the street and blocked them in, so they radioed the army for help and I got up on a table and did my young-hero bit and said I was going quietly to save bloodshed. Then I let them take me and put me on a plane to Vienna. It was supposed to be only a stop-over for me there, but Otto had fixed things up for us both to get off so that he could spring the party and the bike on me.’

  ‘You mean they threw him out too?’ said Letta, with a leap of the heart.

  ‘He’d got some business to see to. They can’t sling him out that easily – he’s a Romanian citizen.’

  ‘I thought he was an exile, like Grandad,’ said Letta.

  ‘The difference is that he chose to live in Austria,’ said Grandad, still in that quiet voice which Van appeared not to notice. ‘I, for my part, was forced to live in England.’

  Letta decided to change the subject.

  ‘Are you going back to Glasgow?’ she said.

  ‘No point,’ said Van. ‘I haven’t got a house, I haven’t got a girl-friend and I haven’t got a job.’

  ‘What!’

  ‘When I decided to stay on in Potok, I called them up and resigned. They’d have fired me anyway for overstaying my leave. Don’t worry, Sis. I shan’t be out begging in the High Street. Sue’s selling the house, so there’ll be a bit of money after the mortgage is paid off, and I’ve got a few things to do for Otto, so he’s paying me a retainer.’

  ‘Where are you going to live?’

  ‘Here, if Momma will let me. You’re in my old room, but Steff’s looks empty. Don’t look so baffled, Sis – it’s only a couple of months.’

  ‘I’m sorry. I was just surprised.’

  ‘Let us establish an island of calm in the hurricane of events,’ said Grandad. ‘Let’s have our tea and crumpets.’

  ‘God, you’re not going to light the fire,’ said Van. ‘It’s roasting in here already.’

  ‘Yes, of course,’ said Letta. ‘You can’t have crumpets without. If you don’t like it you can go and move your bike. You’ll have to, anyway, before Momma gets home. She comes swooping in there. You don’t want it scrunched, I imagine.’

  ‘Oh, all right,’ said
Van. ‘Do a couple for me. Plenty of butter, please. Drooling with it, OK?’

  He lounged out and clumped down the stairs.

  Letta heard Grandad sigh.

  ‘Is this all right?’ she whispered. ‘I don’t like it.’

  ‘It’s not entirely Van’s fault,’ said Grandad. ‘Popular enthusiasm is hard to resist. I had a visit from my policeman this morning.’

  ‘The tall thin one who met us at the airport?’

  ‘Yes. He is a good friend, in so far as he can afford to be. He has been putting together a file on Vasa. Some of this I knew already, but some I did not. After the war there was a penniless, parentless urchin who ran away from a camp for war orphans and fetched up in Vienna . . .’

  ‘Was he really a Varinian?’

  ‘He seems to have spoken Field as his first language.’

  ‘Bother. I suppose that pretty well proves it.’

  ‘I’m afraid so. Anyway, he ran errands for black-marketeers, and then worked for himself in the black market. There was a shortage of building materials. He found ways to supply them. He got to know the government officials who awarded the state building contracts, and became wealthy. All this I knew. But now my friend tells me that there is evidence that at some stage Vasa contacted the Ceauşescu regime and undertook various financial dealings for them when they were salting away their fortunes outside their country. Some of that money will have found its way into his pockets. So now he is genuinely enormously rich. He has several houses, a vast castle in Carpathia, a wife who is an Archduchess in her own right or some such nonsense. But he has no country. He is trying to buy himself one.’

  ‘He can’t do that!’

  ‘If we succeed in making Varina free, we will be citizens of the poorest country in Europe. And to the truly poor the rich are rich by magic. They have a secret. If you make a very rich man your president, he will use his magic to make your country as rich as he is.’

  ‘That’s nonsense.’

  ‘It is powerful nonsense. However, we think Vasa is not relying solely on his wealth. There are well-placed people in Bucharest who were once members of the Ceauşescu regime, with which Vasa had many contacts. Van himself has told us that Vasa is getting good intelligence. And does it not strike you that this motor cycle was bought and painted in our colours in a remarkably short time? Perhaps Vasa knew some time earlier that Van was about to be expelled.’

  ‘You mean he arranged it himself?’

  ‘Perhaps. Your friend Parvla has already told us that Van is a very popular figure, more popular with some than Vasa himself. Vasa would not tolerate that for long, I think.’

  ‘But it still doesn’t make sense. Why should the Romanians be helping Otto Vasa stir things up? Don’t they want it all to simmer down?’

  ‘Of course. That is what the Romanian government wants, officially. But the army itself contains many nationalist extremists, and there are local politicians who would be glad to gain popularity by whipping up anti-Varinian sentiment. I now think it may have been a combination of these which originally abducted me, and the central government then took over and decided to spirit me out of the country.’

  ‘So it wasn’t Otto Vasa’s idea after all?’

  ‘I don’t know. As I told you, he has many contacts with powerful officials who are still in place. He knows things which they would much rather keep secret, so he is in a strong position both to bribe and blackmail them.’

  ‘But what’s in it for him? He doesn’t want the Romanians to crack down on us either, does he? He wants Varina independent, just like we do, only he wants to be boss.’

  ‘He has the mentality of a bandit. He will believe that when the time comes he can ride the tiger.’

  ‘It sounds terrifying.’

  ‘It is.’

  ‘Why don’t you tell Van?’

  ‘He will have heard stories of this kind and dismissed them as lies to discredit Vasa. He will not believe them, even from me. I must . . .’

  ‘He’s coming back.’

  ‘. . . forty-three Jews died in the Square. Others were hunted down in their homes.’

  ‘We did this?’ said Letta, as Van came panting in. ‘Us Varinians?’

  ‘The great-great-grandparents of many of those whom you saw.’

  ‘Ancient history,’ said Van. ‘What can you expect if the price of bread goes up ten times in a month. Crumpets ready?’

  LEGEND

  Selim’s Return

  THERE WAS A girl of matchless beauty born in the valley of the Spol.1 When she was five years old the Turks took her and offered her for sale in Jirin market. There the slave-captain of the Pasha of Jirin saw her, and bought her for his master. Years passed and each year she became yet more beautiful.

  When she was almost a woman, Restaur Vax drove the Pashas from Varina, and they fled, taking their households with them to Byzantium. There they found the Sultan greatly vexed for the loss of Varina, and he cast them into his dungeons and ordered their goods to be taken from them and sold, but reserved for himself the best.

  Thus it was that the Warden of the Imperial Harem came to the Sultan and said, ‘A young woman of matchless beauty has been entered in the inventory.’ And the Sultan said, ‘Let us see her.’

  She was brought and stood before him and looked proudly at him, and without fear, so that he was amazed and said, ‘We are the Sultan of all the world. Are you not afraid?’

  She answered, ‘I am a Varinian. How should I be afraid?’

  He asked her, ‘Are you Varinians then afraid of nothing?’

  ‘None of us knows how to be afraid,’ she answered.

  ‘Not even the little children in the dark of the night?’ he demanded.

  At that she laughed and said, ‘When I was a little child, sometimes in the dark of the night I was afraid that Selim Pasha would come for me, but now he is in your dungeons, so I have nothing to fear.’

  Then the Sultan sent for his Chief Vizier and said, ‘We have a man called Selim Pasha in our dungeons. Let him be taken from the rack and set free, and restored to his household and his honour. Let gold and armies be given him, as much as he may ask, and say to him that he has a year and a day in which to restore to us, by what means he may, our lost province of Varina. And if he should fail, then his state shall be ten times worse than it is now.’

  So it was as the Sultan commanded, and before the ice had melted from the great river, Selim Pasha raised his standards outside the walls of Potok, and behind him stood an army of seventeen thousand bazouks.

  1 The women of Spol Valley are still proverbial for their beauty, as the men are for their stupidity.

  AUGUST 1990

  VAN RODE HIS new bike north to settle things with Sue and arrange for having his own gear moved to Winchester. A few days later he was back, in time to come and have tea with Grandad and Letta. It was a Saturday so Momma came too, not because she particularly wanted to see Grandad but because Van was there. Since he’d been home from Potok, Letta had realized for the first time how deeply Momma cared about Van, in a way she didn’t seem to about Steff or Letta herself. It was the sort of thing that happened in families, Letta knew – not that Momma made a parade of it, in fact she’d probably have denied it completely if you’d asked her, but all the same she was different when Van was around, brighter and less fussed with the business of keeping the household going.

  It was a lovely late summer afternoon and they had the window open, with the roofs and tree-tops of Winchester spreading away below them. They weren’t talking about anything much, just sitting there peacefully, when Van said, ‘Will Poppa be home in time for St Joseph’s?’

  Poppa was in Bolivia, advising about bridges.

  ‘When’s St Joseph’s?’ said Momma.

  ‘Oh, Momma!’ said Van.

  ‘Twenty-seventh,’ said Letta, ‘and he better had be, because it’s my birthday the day after.’

  ‘Of course it is,’ said Momma. ‘I don’t know why I said that. Yes, he�
�ll be home.’

  ‘Can we have kalani?’ said Van.

  ‘To welcome home our various prodigals it really ought to be trozhl,’ said Grandad.

  ‘You get me the goats’ udders and I’ll do you trozhl tomorrow,’ snapped Momma. ‘I could do kalani, I suppose, though the lamb’s nothing like the same here . . .’

  ‘Not tough and stringy enough,’ said Grandad.

  ‘As a matter of fact Poppa did bring a bottle of bitter sauce home from Potok,’ said Momma. ‘I was keeping it for the goose at Christmas. And I saw some figs at Sainsbury’s, so we could have dumbris for afters . . .’

  Letta was delighted it wasn’t going to be trozhl, which was a slithery sort of stew which she’d found disgusting. Kalani was just kebabs with green peppers, but you dipped them in this sauce which almost shrivelled your mouth first go, but made you want to try again. Dumbris were whole figs inside a jacket of spiced dough, deep-fried and coated with honey, intensely sweet and delectable. ‘Eat three and die in paradise’ was the saying about them. The point was that it was almost impossible to swallow more than one. However much your mouth wanted to, your throat refused.

  ‘No fields like Father’s. No food like Mother’s,’ said Van.

  They all laughed. It was another saying, much the same as ‘Home Sweet Home’. In fact Letta had seen it again and again on plates and plaques and even T-shirts on the souvenir stalls in Potok. She could almost hear Momma purring.

  ‘We’ll be all right for wine,’ said Van. ‘Hector brought some home from his uncle’s vineyard. He gave me a couple of bottles.’

  Grandad had been sitting back in his chair, looking benign and relaxed, but now he flashed a sharp glance at Van.

  ‘Old Paul Orestes has got the vineyard back?’ he said.

  ‘A couple of months ago,’ said Van.

  ‘They used to make really good wine,’ said Grandad. ‘It will be interesting to see whether the Communists managed to ruin that also. When did you see our Hector?’