Shadow of a Hero (23 page)

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?’

(
That
was what he really wanted to know.)

‘Last night. I stayed with him on the way down.’

‘Why didn’t you stay with Steff and Mollie?’ said Momma, refusing, as always, to notice the fact that her sons didn’t get on with each other. ‘It’s only a few miles different.’

‘I took a cup of tea off Mollie,’ said Van. ‘Don’t you want the wine, Momma?’

She shrugged and spread her hands with a twisting motion, as if she were wringing out an invisible cloth, a gesture she never used to make but which Letta had seen again and again on the streets of Potok. It meant almost anything you wanted it to mean.

Grandad was still watching Van.

‘Wasn’t I given some almond brandy?’ he said. ‘Did that find its way home? We will need it after the
dumbris
.’

‘In any case,’ said Van, ‘Mollie’s spare room is pretty well chock-a-block with paperwork for next year’s festival.’

‘Next year’s festival?’ said Momma.

There was a silence.

‘They aren’t seriously going to try and have another festival next year?’ she said.

‘It has been suggested,’ said Grandad, ‘but I, for one, was not aware that the project was sufficiently far advanced to fill a whole bedroom with paperwork.’

He spoke drily, but Letta could hear he was both surprised and angry.

‘It isn’t like that,’ she said. ‘At least according to Nigel. He says they were hardly back before people were ringing up wanting to book places. Mollie kept telling them how iffy it was, but they still insisted on putting their names down and some of them are sending money. She’s just keeping track.’

‘It’s not at all iffy,’ said Van. ‘It’s going to be in Listru.’

‘Oh, for God’s sake! Listru’s in Bulgaria!’ said Momma.

‘Listru is in the Southern Province of Varina and we have a perfect right to hold a festival there,’ said Van.

‘What do you mean “we”?’ snapped Momma. ‘This is childish. You can’t do anything. It isn’t your business any more. I’m not talking about you, Poppa, but . . . Oh, Van! Letta! You’ve got British passports. This is where your life is going to be! This is where you belong! Varina’s over!’

‘You wouldn’t have said that a month ago,’ said Van, teasing, not seeming to notice how upset Momma was becoming. ‘Half Potok saw you dancing the
sundilla
in the Square.’

‘Yes, I know. Yes, I had a good time . . .’

‘Tears streaming down your face,’ said Van.

‘Listen. I was saying goodbye. I was happy once in Potok, long ago, when Steff and you were born.
And
now I was saying goodbye, because I knew I could never go back. It wasn’t real any more.’

She banged her fist onto the table so that the teapot rattled on the tray.

‘I think it was the reallest thing I’ve ever known,’ said Letta.

She couldn’t help it. She had to say it. It was true, and it mattered to her not to pretend, in spite of understanding why Momma felt the way she did. Momma drew a breath to yell at her, held it, and let it out.

‘Of course it was lovely, darling,’ she said carefully. ‘Especially lovely for you, with everything so happy, and no memories from before.’

‘Until they came for Grandad,’ said Letta.

‘Exactly,’ said Momma. ‘And that was when it stopped being a lovely dream and started being real.’

‘I don’t buy that,’ said Van. ‘That happened because our country is occupied by foreign powers. It’s got nothing to do with being real. In a real Varina it wouldn’t have happened.’

‘In a real world it did,’ said Momma. ‘And trying to hold a festival in Listru will only make it happen again, worse. The Bulgarians can be just as nasty as the Romanians – nastier, if anything. And anyone who tries to get there from outside will be just wasting their money. All they’ll do is sit in a coach for four days and then get turned back at the frontier.’

‘There are ways past frontiers, if you know how,’ said Van.

‘Van, please!’ said Momma. ‘Can’t you see what dangerous nonsense you’re talking? Poppa, do say something.’

‘It need not be dangerous, or nonsense,’ said
Grandad
. ‘For myself, I think we should attempt to hold a second festival.’

‘We’re going to hold one,’ interrupted Van. ‘We’re not talking about a few coaches being stopped at the frontiers, we’re talking about a hundred thousand native Varinians from the Northern Province all crossing the Danube together.’

‘This isn’t the Thames,’ said Momma. ‘Have you
seen
the Danube?’

‘Course I have,’ said Van. ‘There’s quite a few boats. We can build rafts and tow them. How are they going to stop us? Are they going to turn their guns on raft-loads of women and children?’

‘If they thought no-one was looking, they might well,’ said Grandad. ‘If we were to reach such a confrontation, I would not take the risk. I would prefer to negotiate with the Bulgarian regime. We could for instance offer to postpone the proposed referendum, which they certainly see as provocative . . .’

‘Not on your life!’ said Van, cutting in again. ‘That’s going to happen. It’s not negotiable.’

‘Oh, Van!’ said Momma. ‘You’re talking as if you could
make
the Bulgarians do what you want. And the Serbs and Romanians. You can’t. Do you imagine you can fight them? They’ve got armies, with tanks and guns and war-planes. It won’t be like old Restaur Vax fighting the Turks any more. It will be hell.’

‘It’s not going to be like that,’ said Van. ‘In any case Restaur Vax didn’t win that war – not by himself. What he did was make enough of a nuisance of himself for long enough for the British and the French and the Austrians to get tired of having this mess on their doorsteps and tell the
Turks
they’d got to lay off. That’s what we’ve got to do now. The trick is to stir things up and keep them stirred until everyone, even the Americans, realizes we’re not going to go away and they make the occupying powers give us what we want. If we can’t stir things up one way, we’ll stir them another.’

‘What do you mean?’ snapped Momma.

Van just looked at her, saying nothing. He wasn’t simply teasing. There was something else, some meaning in the tense silence, which Letta didn’t understand.

‘As Van says, that is the trick,’ said Grandad quietly. ‘I think there is very little difference among any of us over that. The argument is about how the trick is to be performed. Ideally we should persuade the outside powers that our cause is just, which it is, that we are prepared to be obstinate about it, which we are, but also reasonable, which we are not. To attempt to hold a cultural festival in the old capital of one of our three provinces fills the bill as neatly as can be expected. I think we shall be prevented, but I will certainly act as if I intended to go, and if I am allowed to I shall do so.’

‘So will I,’ said Letta.

Momma rose, grabbed everyone’s mugs and banged them onto the tray.

‘I think you’re all mad,’ she said in English. ‘I see I shall have to talk to Steff. Open the door for me, please, Letta.’

She marched out, catching a pleat of her skirt on a loose screw on the door-plate. She ripped it free and tramped on down the stairs. As Letta was closing the door she turned and caught Grandad’s eye. He made a minute gesture with his hand for
her
to push off, so she took the pack of crumpets and left. As she went down the first flight she heard Grandad’s voice asking a question, and Van’s answering, cautious but obstinate. Then they were out of earshot.

Momma was already on the phone, saying ‘Hello, darling. Is your father there? Can I have a word with him?’

Letta patted her shoulder comfortingly, but got no response, so she went into the sitting-room and started flicking through the TV channels. There seemed to be nothing but dreary cricket and ancient Westerns. Van used to be good at cricket, she remembered. When she was small Momma had once taken her to watch him having a trial for the Hampshire Second XI. Cricket was like the
sundilla
, she thought. Probably all countries have something like that, meaningless and boring to anyone outside, but really important to people inside. Look at baseball, for heaven’s sake! Momma thought cricket was meaningless and boring – she’d only gone to watch because Van had been playing. But she’d cried while she’d danced the
sundilla
. Despite what had happened at Lapiri, she wasn’t really free, and she never would be.

She wanted to keep Varina as a kind of frill, a flavour, an old book you don’t read any more. It was cooking
kalani
and dancing at midnight in St Joseph’s Square. If Potok fell to ruins, if nobody remembered the dances, or knew how to cook
kalani
and
trozhl
and
dumbris
, if nobody dreamed in Field, if no-one could ever be pierced to the heart again by the single word
anastrondaitu
, Momma would say it was a pity, but that was all. She would say that she and her family had their own lives to
live
, here, now, in England. That was what really mattered. She would mean it, too, but still she would be lying.

Letta shook her head. I’m not going to tell myself that lie, she thought. Even if something like what happened at Lapiri happens to me, I will never tell myself that lie.

I hope.

LEGEND

The Daughter of Olla

MEN CAME TO
Restaur Vax while he was shearing his sheep by the bridge of Avar, and told him that Selim Pasha was besieging Potok with seventeen thousand
bazouks
. He said nothing until he had lifted the fleece cleanly from the ewe between his knees. Then he laid his shears aside and stood.

To each of the men in turn he said, ‘Go now to such-and-such a chieftain and tell him what you have told me. Bid him come to the Old Stones of Falje on the eve of the next new moon.’

But to the last man of all he said, ‘Go west and south, beyond the furthest border. Ask those whom you meet for the place where the mountains are wildest and the law is least. There you will find Lash the Golden. Give him this half-piece of silver, and say no other word.’

So the men departed. Then Restaur Vax said to his wife, ‘You are my treasure and my joy, but Selim Pasha is besieging Potok with seventeen thousand
bazouks
, and I alone can hold the chieftains together, to drive him out once more. So give me your blessing and your leave, and when it is done I will return.’

She said, ‘If you must go, you must go. I give you my leave and my blessing.’

He said, ‘Men will seek you here to use you, because I am who I am. Take your daughters and
our
son
¹
to the cave where we were betrothed, and you will be safe.’

So they loaded three mules with all that they could carry, food and gear and guns, and Restaur Vax with his son in his arms led his family to the cave below the ridge of Avar, and saw them well-housed, and journeyed on to the Old Stones of Falje.

Now in Potok there were certain Greek merchants who feared for their lives and their goods should the city fall. They said among themselves, ‘Restaur Vax is no help. He is no more than a mountain brigand. Let us open the gates to Selim Pasha and he will protect us.’

So two of them went secretly to Selim in his camp and stood before him and said, ‘We will open the gates to you, if you will protect us and ours when you sack the city.’

But Selim smiled in his beard and shook his head. He took a peach and crushed it in his hand so that the juices ran between his fingers and said to them, ‘I hold Potok in the palm of my hand. My
bazouks
could take it in a morning, were I to give the order.’