swell sign you got there but tell me, how old are you?’ ‘Me?’ Rabinovich says. ‘I’m seventy-five.’ ‘Well then,’ the policeman says, ‘I have to point out to you that when you had the happy childhood, Comrade Stalin wasn’t even born.’ ‘Sure,’ Rabinovich says, ‘I know that. That’s what I’m thanking him for.’”
It went on. Russian jokes, Polish jokes, Hungarian jokes. Maniu had another scotch. A police car went by in the street, its high-low siren wailing, and Mottel Motkevich paused for a moment. Then, as the routine neared its end, he looked: offstage, gaped in mock horror, and held his hands to the sides of his face- if you could see what I see!
“Now the fun begins,” the colonel said.
“Thank you, Prague!” Mottel called out, and waddled off to the elephant theme as Momo Tsipler clapped and said, “Let’s hear it for Mottel Mot-ke-vich!”
As the applause died away, Colonel Maniu said, “Well, what’s going on here is not so funny.”
Serebin ordered another Amalfi.
“My advice to you,” the colonel said, “is, stay out of the way.”
“Oh,” Serebin said, “we just want to talk to people, people who’ve helped in the past.”
“Surely not the same thing, not now. That was just, business. Commercial information, a little money in the right hands. I don’t think anybody really cared-it’s a way of life here.”
“What’s so different?”
“Everything.”
The old cellist lit a cigarette, holding it with thumb and forefinger, and smoked blissfully, leaning back in his chair, off in some other world. Serebin thought about what to say next. Do the best you can, Marie-Galante had told him on the train. Y ou’ll just have to get your sea legs.
“We are realists,” Serebin said. “And we know it’s not the same, we know that some of the sources are no good now. And you’re right, colonel, this isn’t commerce, it’s politics, and that’s always been dangerous. But we do have money, and we will take good care of the people who help us. As you know, in times like these, money can mean, everything. So, if it used to be, say, five thousand Swiss francs, now it’s fifteen, or twenty.”
Momo Tsipler hit a dramatic chord on the piano and the Companions swung into the Offenbach theme, the Mitteleuropa version, clarinet leading the way, but emphatically the cancan. “Animierdamen!” Momo sang out- nightclub girls. “Die Zebras!”
A dozen women came prancing and neighing onto the stage, then out into the audience. They were naked, except for papier-mache zebra heads and little black and white shoes made to look like hooves. They went jiggling among the tables, playing with the patrons-a pat with a hoof, a nudge with a muzzle-whinnying from time to time, then galloping away.
The colonel’s voice rose above the hilarity. “Yes,” he said, “for some, perhaps, that would be sufficient.”
Madame Maniu leaned toward the colonel and spoke briefly in Roumanian.
Maniu nodded, then said, “I trust you understand our position in this. We will, of course, do whatever needs to be done.” His tone had stiffened, as though he were defending his honor.
“Well, yes, of course,” Serebin said.
One of the zebras came bounding to their table and, as she bent over the colonel and began to unknot his tie, Serebin found himself staring at an excessively powdered behind, which waggled violently and threatened to upset his Amalfi. Maniu smiled patiently, being a good sport his only option, while Serebin whipped the glass away and held it safely in the air. He was unaware of the expression on his face, but Marie-Galante watched him for a moment, then burst into helpless laughter. The zebra finally got the tie off and went cantering away with it, held high like a prize.
Marie-Galante wiped her eyes and said, “Oh dear God.”
The colonel persisted. “What I was going to say, was that we are very much indebted to Ivan Kostyka, but it has nothing whatever to do with money.”
In the center of the room, a great commotion. A zebra had snatched a pair of eyeglasses from a very fat man with a shaved head, who turned pink and tried desperately to look like he was having fun. And while he was perhaps too embarrassed to try to retrieve the glasses, his wife clearly wasn’t. She ran shrieking after the girl, who danced away from her, then climbed up on a table, put the glasses on the zebra head, and did a vivid dance on the general theme of myopia. Meanwhile, the Companions played away at full volume, the clarinet soaring to its highest register as the crowd cheered.
Maniu started to speak, but his wife put a hand on his arm, and they all sat back and watched the show. In time, the zebras went prancing off and, a few minutes later, a waiter appeared at the table, bearing Colonel Maniu’s tie on a silver tray.
“Our local amusements,” Madame Maniu said.
“Not so different in Paris,” Marie-Galante said. “It takes people’s minds off their troubles. Do you suppose that poor little man got his glasses back?”
“I expect he did,” Madame Maniu said.
“I promise you he did,” the colonel said. “That poor little man is something or other in the German legation.”
“Always politics,” Serebin said.
“Well, here anyhow,” Madame Maniu said.
“No, it’s everywhere.” Serebin finished his drink and looked around for a waiter. “Maybe time for the desert island.”
“I’ll go with you,” the colonel said. “But we better learn to speak Japanese.”
“You were telling us a story, colonel,” Marie-Galante said.
“Yes,” Maniu said, a sigh in his voice. “I suppose you should hear it. What happened to us was this: in the spring of ’38, Codreanu and his followers were arrested. Codreanu himself had murdered the prime minister, at the railway station in Sinaia, and he and his thugs were plotting to overthrow the king and take the country for themselves. So, certain trusted officers, and I was one of them, one of the leaders, managed this arrest, done in such a way that there was no violence. But the Iron Guard wouldn’t go away. Cheered on by their supporters- philosophy professors at the university, civil servants, just every sort of person, they assassinated Calinescu, the prime minister who’d ordered the arrest. Six months later, as the uprising continued, somebody lost patience with the whole business and Codreanu and his followers were executed. ‘Shot while trying to escape.’ Now that’s the oldest story in the world, and for all I know they may actually have been trying to escape, but true or not doesn’t matter. Codreanu was a threat to the state, so it was either that, or have him as dictator.
“The Iron Guard vowed revenge, it was like somebody had knocked down a hornets’ nest. One of their responses was to let it be known that I was involved in the original arrest. They didn’t come after me-maybe more couldn’t than didn’t, I was very careful-but our two daughters, in school in Bucharest, were harassed. By schoolmates and, far worse, even by some of the teachers. I mean, they spit on them, on children. When Kostyka found out about this, he arranged for them to go to boarding school, in England, where they are now. I suppose we could have gone as well, but I wasn’t going to be thrown out of my own country, you understand, not by these people. So, you see, our friend helped us when we were in trouble, and paid for it. Now, if we’re needed to do this work again, we’ll do it. But please, for God’s sake, be careful.”
“For now,” Serebin said, “we need only to know who we can trust.”
“For now?” The question mark was barely there-Maniu’s irony well tempered by courtesy.
“We’ll have to see,” Serebin said. “There may…” He stopped short as he saw the singer Valentina, working her way toward them through the crowd.
A waiter brought two chairs, and they all squeezed in together. The second chair was for the singer’s gentleman friend, gray and diffident, older-maybe fifty to her thirty, with stooped shoulders and a hesitant smile. “Gulian,” he said, introducing himself with a nod that passed for a bow, and said little after that. Across the table, Valentina was not much like the typical chanteuse. A studious girl, beneath the rouge and mascara, soft and pretty, probably Jewish, Serebin thought, and conservatory-trained, working as a nightclub singer because she needed the money.
Serebin ordered champagne, and Marie-Galante proposed a toast to Valentina. “To thank you for your song,” she said. “I am Parisienne. ”
“Piaf is inspiring,” Valentina said. Like most educated Roumanians, she spoke reasonably good French. “I heard her in Paris. Twice. Before the war.”
