The Lives and Times of Bernardo Brown (11 page)

So that was it! Bernardo had never before met a Sephardic Jew. He only knew the history of their expulsion from Spain and that they had settled in the East.

‘Are there many of you here?’

‘Very few. Here in Moldavia they are all Ashkenazim, speaking their own German. I was glad to hear my language. You are not a Jew, I think, but tell me what I can do for you.’

‘After five minutes, Don Mihai?’

‘You remind me of my son.’

‘I’d like to meet him.’

‘You cannot. God’s will be done!’

‘I am so sorry. The war?’

Toledano nodded. Bernardo impulsively decided to trust him. He cut his story short, leaving out the privacies of Magda, and answered a few acute questions. Across the desk grave eyes seemed to accept his adventures as believable.

‘This Perico—he has no chance at all. He is sure to be arrested.’

‘He won’t talk.’

‘That may be. But they can trace all his movements. And what questions will they ask you then?’

‘Nepamuk?’

‘He doesn’t count. You will hear no more of him if you do not mention him. But to the police you are bound to appear a Russian or a Hungarian agent. What did Count Kalmody intend to do with you?’

‘I don’t know. Keep me till it all blew over, I suppose.’

‘It will not blow over easily. Much depends on that cliff. If it was as terrible as you describe, no one will believe you climbed it. So in Spain there must be a warrant out for your arrest. Even Kalmody will now be thinking you only told half the truth.’

‘Can you help me?’

‘No, for the sake of my family. All I know of you is that I was asked to change your money and did so.’

‘Well, what’s your advice?’

‘You cannot be more than an hour or two ahead of the police. Go to your consul at once, but try to find out how much he knows without giving anything away. It’s a pity that you do not speak Romanian. If you did, you could disappear until, as you say, it all blows over.’

‘The trouble is I’m too innocent for anything like that.’

‘Don Bernardo, you have lost your virginity and now you will learn only too quickly. Go with God! If you remain at liberty in Bucarest and need a job, go to my cousin Mitrani, a banker in the Strada Lipscani. I cannot give you a note to him in case you are searched, but I will tell him about you. With your languages he could use you.’

Bernardo returned to his hotel, lunched and paid his surprisingly small bill. He was indeed learning quickly. His old self would have confidently taken the night train to Bucarest with a sense of relief; his new self realised that it was on the run and unlikely to reach Bucarest openly. He took a long and careful look at the countryside. As seen from his bedroom window as well as from Toledano’s garden it was bare and poor with little cover for a fugitive. He could not simply stroll out of the village for a walk; his lonely figure would be far too conspicuous.

When the policeman dropped into the hotel, partly for a free drink, partly to keep an eye on his customer, Bernardo—using gestures and experimental scraps from Latin languages—asked if there were any news of his baggage and passport. No, there was not, but he had already telephoned to Czernowitz without waiting for filthy Jews who could never be trusted. That clinched it. Perico would by now be picked up for questioning in the frontier town itself or caught behaving suspiciously on his way to the banks of the Dniester. The description of the pair of them as men wearing boots and
breeches who spoke no Romanian was conclusive.

Waiting till night was a crazy risk. He was certain to be detained—courteously if Perico had invented a credible story, forcibly if he had not. He must get clear by the next afternoon train and hope to disappear somewhere along the line. And it would be wise to look a little smarter. He bought shaving kit and a hairbrush and cleaned himself up.

Bernardo was escorted to the station, shook a number of hands and settled down in a second-class compartment. There was only one other passenger who smiled at him with irrepressible admiration as if he had been a startlingly pretty girl. Bernardo said good-afternoon in Romanian—he had got that far—and the coldest possible voice. Life in this complicated east end of Europe was already difficult enough.

His companion was immediately talkative in sound international French. He was a classic Mediterranean type with a triangular, dark face, gleaming teeth, four of them gold, and an anxious, lost-dog friendliness.

‘One sees that you are not going very far, monsieur. For my part I regret it.’

Bernardo made noises of politeness. He realised exactly what women meant when they complained of being undressed by a stare.

‘Village to village—you have no doubt your duties?’

Something had to be invented to satisfy this impertinent curiosity. Evidently he was being taken for a sort of foreign Nepamuk.

‘I am returning after delivering a horse.’

‘Of course! And without doubt you are English.’

He fondled Bernardo’s arm with affection. The intention of the embarrassing fingers was at last clear. It was the cloth rather than the flesh below which was causing the excitement.

‘That coat, those boots, those breeches! And still as fresh as from the fitting rooms of Savile Row! Ah, monsieur, before the war I could import such quality but now nobody can pay for it.’

He lectured Bernardo on the poverty of the country. The great landlords had all been expropriated and their property distributed to the peasants. It hadn’t worked—no, it hadn’t worked. The ignorant peasants were as poor as ever, and the compensation paid to the landlords had been reduced to nothing by inflation.

Sighing and shaking his head, he handed Bernardo his business card, printed in French and of excellent, simple taste:

MIRCEA NICULESCU

Tailleur. Fournisseur d’Équipements.
Étoffes de Luxe.

One would not have guessed at any luxury stuffs. Mr. Niculescu was himself dressed in wretched cloth—though, on a second glance, admirably cut.

‘While you are in Bucarest, do me the honour to come and call on me. My shop is on the corner opposite the royal palace.’

Bernardo was stuck. Since he had to leave the train at the first opportunity he could not say he was going to Bucarest nor could he say he wasn’t because he did not know the name of any other station on the line. He thanked Niculescu for his invitation and added vaguely that he was going straight through to the sea.

‘Ah, to Galatz! You are a seaman? You brought the horse by sea?’

‘A naval officer,’ Bernardo said, thinking that he might as well have a social position worthy of the Kalmody clothes.

‘Now I understand! No doubt you delivered it to Prince Ghika?’

‘How did you guess?’

‘Who else in Moldavia could have a horse sent by a British warship?’

Bernardo reproached himself for entering into the spirit of things too impulsively. On the other hand he had established an identity for himself which seemed to be convincing to this eager Mr. Niculescu.

‘Prince Ghika is a customer of yours?’ he asked.

‘Alas, no more! I cannot compete with Paris and London. But one never knows. He has formed himself into a Company and may again become as rich as he was. If only I could put a dummy in my window with such clothes as yours. Tone—it would add tone!’

Lord only knew whether the idea had entered Mr. Niculescu’s head, but it was worth trying.

‘Well, if you think it might bring in Prince Ghika & Co., I shall not want this outfit till my ship is back in Portsmouth.’

‘You would sell it?’

‘At a price—and if you have anything else I can wear as far as Galatz. We are much the same size.’

‘But I have no other suit in my bag. I have only been away from home one night.’

‘We might exchange now before anyone else gets in. I can’t very well stand in the corridor outside the lavatory and hand my breeches through the door.’

Haggling was fierce but went as fast as a hand of poker since the next station was not far away and one was as keen to buy as the other to sell. They arrived at a price of six thousand lei which Bernardo discovered was about seven and a half pounds and at last had an accurate valuation of the unknown currency. He regarded Mr. Niculescu with admiration. By a tug at the lapels and half a dozen pins from his bag the tailor had succeeded in looking like a very shady racehorse trainer compensating for his morals by his clothes. As for himself, he was a middle-class Romanian in a dark suit of cheap Czech cloth, with coat too tight and trousers too short. The shoes were much too small, considering that
feet were going to be important. But presumably he could buy another pair somewhere.

The train stopped at Pascani. It was the junction for Lasi the chief town in Moldavia, and Mr. Niculescu could not resist showing himself off to a public of some standing. He climbed down to the platform on the pretence of buying a paper and strolled up and down clicking imaginary spurs. It was a good chance to disappear. Mr. Niculescu would assume he had gone to the restaurant car.

Bernardo hurried down the corridor, got off at the rear of the train and crossed to the opposite platform. No trouble there. Just enough people idling or watching trains to prevent his being conspicuous. The ticket collector, if any, was occupied elsewhere. He strolled out of the station and took cover behind an ox cart as the Bucarest train pulled out and revealed Mr. Niculescu being led away between two brown uniforms with a superior blue one following behind.

By God, that had been a close thing! Provided he left the town at once speaking to no one he had a chance of vanishing into—well, wherever in Romania one could vanish to. He hoped that he could count on a good hour before the unfortunate Civil and Military Tailor managed to prove his identity and the hunt for the real boots-and-breeches was on. It might start in the wrong direction. Mr. Niculescu had jumped at the port of Galatz as soon as the sea was mentioned. A railway map in the corridor had shown that it was a natural assumption; one changed for Galatz further down the line. The police might well accept that bit of Niculescu’s story while rejecting the naval officer. That the wanted man could be a seaman on the run without baggage or papers was possible.

Bernardo had no plan at all except to put so much distance between himself and the town of Pascani that he could safely buy food and drink. He started out more or less south-west with the intention of returning to the forests and valleys of the Carpathians and then taking a train to Bucarest. Once in
the mountains he hoped to pass as a casual hiker whose baggage and passport were at his inn; and the language difficulty, insuperable on the Moldavian plain, must surely be easier where tourists were less rare. So far as Bernardo remembered, it would mean a tramp of about eighty miles. Perico had retained the map since at the time his need appeared the greater.

He made a rule of speaking to no one. It was hard to follow and of doubtful value. He was aware that he was leaving behind him a trail of curiosity about this self-centred man, dressed as if he ought to have money for travel, who shuffled through the dust of country roads responding to greetings with only a mumbled good-day. He was also limping. After a few miles he slit open the uppers of Niculescu’s shoes and moved more easily.

Marching at night for as long as he could see what he was doing and lying up by day seemed the best way to avoid the stares of the curious. It didn’t work. Since there were no walls or hedges it was easy enough to circle round the villages but difficult to regain the right road or any road in the dark. When he came across a wattle shack roofed with rushes and floored with hard mud he decided to give up this random wandering and sleep there till dawn.

He woke up on fire with itching and dashed out into the open. Even the half light was enough to show that he was crawling with fleas, hungrier and more active than the occasional Spanish flea. Those had been a mere annoyance; this swarm was a humiliation, driving home the fact that he was a helpless outcast in the chill of dawn at the wrong end of Europe. He shook out his clothes as best he could and hobbled off. The slits in his shoes had freed his toes but badly blistered them.

No one in the dreary fields was near enough to bother him. Evidently there was little to do once the maize had been harvested. He followed an earth track across country to a hazy line of willows in the distance and came at mid
morning to the banks of a considerable river where the water was low, swirling gently between sand banks. He took off his clothes and waded across with a sense of freedom as if the river were an obstacle cutting off the immediate past as well as telephone lines between police stations. A mile upstream was the bridge he would have crossed if he had stuck to the road; downstream was a pool in which was a small herd of water buffaloes—wicked-looking creatures with back-swept black horns, but plainly as tame as cows in a meadow.

After a swim he lay and sunned himself on the hot sands with his feet in the water, trying to forget hunger in the meticulous job of catching and drowning fleas. He did not dare dip Niculescu’s suit in the river in case it shrank to something unwearable. The desolate feeling that he belonged nowhere fell away as he remembered the kindly estuaries of the Basque coast. There too his feet had often ached and been cooled.

But there the countryside flowed with food and wine. In this poverty-stricken province of Romania it certainly did not. After recovering the road he stopped hopefully at a lonely cottage with a bottle of
tsuica
in the window, an iron table outside in the dust and no other customer. Nothing to eat, however much he pointed to his mouth! He gathered there was not even enough for the peasant proprietor. He took a stiff glass of very bad
tsuica
to disinfect the river water he had been drinking and tramped on.

The next place on the road was more than a mere village. A church and a public building showed above the low, white houses and guaranteed that there would be police. Hungry though he was, he stuck to his rule of avoiding the public. It was not so much from fear of being asked questions—whether kindly or suspicious—as that he had had enough of continual stares at his clerk-out-of-work, Chaplinesque figure with the broken shoes. He might, he thought, have done better in boots and breeches after all; at least they would
allow him to wave a lordly hand as if the groom and the horses were just around the corner.