dairymaids, demitasse cups and saucers, bud vases, ashtrays. And photographs in standing frames: Princess Baltazar with King Carol, Princess Baltazar with various significant men-minor royalty, chinless aristocrats, and two or three nineteenth-century types with grandiose beards and decorations.
“So many friends,” he said, when she returned with the coffees and thick slices of the dangerous-looking Moldavian pastry.
“What other pleasures in this life?” she said, sitting next to him on the couch. “Will you relent on the roll, monsieur?”
Serebin smiled as he declined. “And who is this?” he said, pointing at one of the photographs.
“Ah, if you were Roumanian, you would not have to ask,” she said.
“A well-known gentleman, then.”
“Our dear Popadu, the economics minister, a few months ago, and a great friend of Elena’s.” She meant Lupescu, the former king’s mistress. “I am told he is lately in Tangier.” Sad for him, to judge from her expression.
“And this?” The man he pointed to looked like a Ruritanian minister in a Marx Brothers film.
Why that was Baron Struba, the well-known diplomat. “Poor man. He was on the train with Carol and Elena, and he was shot in the-well, he couldn’t sit down for a month.” Serebin knew the story. When Carol had abdicated in September, he’d had a train filled with gold and paintings, even his collection of electric trains, then made a run for the Yugoslavian border. Along the way, units of the Iron Guard had fired on the train and, while Lupescu, a real lioness, had remained resolutely in her seat, Carol had gone into exile cowering in his cast-iron bathtub.
“You seem to know,” Serebin said, “everybody.”
The princess was demure on that point, eyes lowered, saying volumes with a modest silence. When she looked up, she rested a hand on the couch by his side. “And what brings you to Bucharest?” she said. Her smile was inviting, her eyes soft. He was, if he let on that he was rich or powerful, going to be seduced.
“I am here to buy art,” he said.
“Art!” She was delighted. “I can certainly help you there. I know all the best dealers.” He could return to Paris, he realized, with a trunkful of fake Renoirs and Rembrandts.
“Then too, I wanted to do a favor for a friend of mine, who used to work for a Swiss company here. Called, what, DeHaas, I think, something like that.”
Her eyes changed, and there was a longish silence. “What sort favor?” Her French was dying.
“To see old friends. Get back in touch.”
“Who are you, monsieur?” she said. She bit her lip.
“Just a Parisian,” he said.
Her eyes glistened, then a tear rolled down her cheek.
“I will be arrested,” she said. She began to cry, her face contorted, a thin, steady moan escaping her compressed lips.
“Don’t, please,” Serebin said.
Her voice rose to a tiny, choked-back wail. “The matrons.”
“No, no, princess, no matrons, please, don’t.”
She began to fumble with the back of her dress, her face had turned a bright red. “I will please you,” she said. “I will astound you.”
Serebin stood. “I am so sorry, princess.”
“No! Don’t go away!”
“Please,” he said. “It was a mistake to come here.”
She sobbed, her face in her hands.
Serebin left.
Outside, as he walked quickly away from the botanical gardens, he realized that his hands were shaking. He headed for a cafe on the Calea Victoriei, sat on the glass-enclosed terrace, thought about a vodka, ordered a coffee, then took a newspaper on a wooden dowel from a rack by the cash register-a copy of Paris Soir, the leading Parisian daily.
Reading the paper did not make him feel better. The German propaganda line was not overt, but it was everywhere: we are crusaders, out to rid Europe of Bolsheviks and Jews, and, regrettably, have been forced to occupy your country. Please pardon the inconvenience. Thus twenty minutes of Paris Soir gave Serebin a bad case of traveler’s melancholy-what one learned not to see up close was unpleasantly clear from a distance. Life in Paris, said the paper, had always been amusing, and it still was. There were reviews of films and plays-romantic farce much the current taste. Recipes for stewed rabbit and turnips with vinegar-it may be all there is to eat, but why not make it delicious? Interviews with “the man on the street”-what ever happened to plain old common courtesy? There was rather hazy news of the campaigns in North Africa and Greece, with expressions like “mobile defense” and “strategic readjustment in the battle lines.” And news of Roosevelt, urging Congress to loan money and ships to Britain. Gullible people, the Americans, how sad.
And so on. From local murders, robberies, and fires, to indoor bicycle racing, and, finally, the obituaries. Which included:
The artistic community of Paris has been saddened to learn of the death of the Polish sculptor Stanislaus Mut. Turkish papers reported yesterday that his body had been found floating in the Bosphorus, death having occurred from unknown causes. Istanbul police are investigating. Born in Lodz in 1889, Stanislaus Mut lived much of his life in Paris, emigrating to Turkey in 1940. Two of his works, Woman Reclining, and Ballerina, are on display at the Art Museum of the City of Rouen.
Serebin recalled meeting Stanislaus Mut, who’d been courting a Russian woman at the cocktail Americain on Della Corvo’s yacht. What happened? An accident? Suicide? Murder? Did his presence at the party make him an associate of Polanyi’s? Serebin returned the paper to its rack and paid for his coffee. Fuck this day, nothing’s going to go right.
But maybe it was only him. Back at the Athenee Palace, Marie-Galante had good news. She had visited with a professor of botany at the university. “He will do anything,” she said. “We have only to ask.”
“What can he do?”
That she didn’t know.
Well then, why was he there in the first place?
“He said he reported to DeHaas on developments in Roumanian science and technology.”
“Oh.”
“Don’t look at me like that. What happened with Princess Baltazar? Were you charmed? Were you- naughty?”
Serebin described the meeting.
“Maybe I should have gone with you,” she said, slightly deflated.
“You think it would have made a difference?”
She hesitated, then said, “No, probably not.”
The next two days were a blur. Life got harder: a number of calls went unanswered, and a few of the people who did answer spoke only Roumanian, managing an apologetic word or two in English or German, then hanging up. The heat went off in the Lipscani house, Serebin and Marie-Galante worked in their coats, breath steaming. The eight German names on the list were not telephoned. A police detective threatened to arrest them if they came anywhere near his house, while three people didn’t know a single soul in Paris or in France for that matter yes they were sure.
The wife of a civil servant thought they were selling bonds, which she made it very clear she didn’t want to buy. At the hotel desk, no contact from Troucelle, which was either good or bad, they couldn’t be sure. An accountant, from an office that worked on the books of the oil companies, said, “I cannot meet with you, I hope you will understand.”
“If the question is,” Serebin said to Marie-Galante, “can Kostyka’s intelligence apparat be brought back to life, perhaps we have an answer.”
“Don’t give up,” Marie-Galante said. “Not yet.”
Through the concierge at the Athenee Palace they hired a car and driver to take them up to Brasov, in the foothills of the Carpathians north of the city. “Dracula country,” Marie-Galante said. “Vlad Tepes and all that, though these days it’s mostly ski resorts.” And antique shops, where peasant arts and crafts were for sale. Serebin
