politically naive, their simplification of obvious issues and the evident sincerity of their indignation will be admirably suited to the campaign against the outcome of the trial.’ She folded the letter. ‘Petlarov is interesting, is he not?’
‘Very.’
‘So very wise, and yet not a whole man.’ She picked up her tea reflectively. ‘His nerves were never strong enough for power.’
‘Unlike your husband’s.’
She looked up, a little sharply, as if I had interrupted a train of thought. ‘Yes, let us talk about Yordan,’ she said, ‘and about the trial. That is why you are here.’
‘I don’t wish to distress you, but I should like you to know about something that happened today.’
She nodded. ‘Yordan made one of his demonstrations. I already know about it.’
‘It wasn’t in the official bulletin.’
‘No. Every evening since we have been under house arrest an old friend of our family has come to see us. Every evening he is searched by the sentries and every evening the sentries find some money in his handkerchief. They let him pass.’
‘I see. The demonstration was moving.’
‘Yes, I was told that. It is a great relief. After this they will not dare to withhold his insulin injections.’
There was a curious lack of emotion in the way she said it. We might have been discussing a mutual acquaintance.
‘Do you think that was all he hoped to gain from it?’
‘What else is there, Herr Foster? Please do not think that you must spare my feelings. Yordan will be condemned.’
‘Petlarov had another explanation. He said that your husband seized the chance of discrediting the evidence of the prosecution.’
‘Yordan is a good lawyer.’
‘From the way your husband used his opportunity Petlarov deduced that there might be some evidence against him that can only be dealt with by discrediting it.’
She looked slightly puzzled. ‘Evidence that can only be dealt with by discrediting it?’ she repeated.
‘Yes.’
She shrugged. ‘There will no doubt be many things too absurd even for denial.’
‘There is no true evidence that can be brought to support any of the charges?’
She looked surprised. ‘Of course not.’
‘No facts at all that could be twisted into evidence of corrupt negotiations in 1944?’
‘Most facts can be twisted, Herr Foster.’
‘But in this case not credibly?’
‘No.’
‘That would be true also of the alleged association with the Officer Corps Brotherhood?’
‘Doubly so. The idea is absurd. My husband was the man primarily responsible for the destruction of the Brotherhood.’
‘You think that false evidence will be brought?’
‘They have no alternative,’ she said with a touch of impatience.
‘Then it will be easy for your husband to disprove the evidence?’
‘If he is allowed to do so, yes. But I do not follow the trend of your questions, Herr Foster. The charges are obviously absurd.’
‘That is what troubles me, madame. If there is no vestige of a case to support them, they are too absurd. As Petlarov points out, if they had to fake evidence, there were less fantastic charges available.’
‘Petlarov is sometimes too clever. It is perfectly simple. Association with the Brotherhood is a capital offence and today also a disgrace.’
‘You do not expect to be surprised by any of the evidence?’
‘Nothing that the People’s Party can contrive would surprise me.’
For a moment or two I sipped my tea. There was something difficult I wanted to say. She was sitting attentively waiting for me to go on. The sun was dying and in the faint after-light her face was astonishingly youthful. I might have been looking at the young schoolteacher whom the lawyer Deltchev had married, the young woman of Greek family whose lips may have had even then the same gentle, inflexible determination that I saw now.
‘Madame Deltchev,’ I said, ‘when you were speaking of your daughter you referred to your husband as the man who betrayed his party.’
‘I was representing him as my daughter sees him.’
‘But you do not see him that way?’
‘I understand him better than that, Herr Foster.’
‘That might not be a reply to the question, madame.’
‘Is the question important for your understanding of the trial?’
‘I do not know your husband. It seems to me important that I should.’
She sat back in her chair. She had just put her tea down on the table beside her, and her hands rested lightly on the chair arms. There they could reveal nothing.
‘You saw my husband in court today. You could see the evidence of most of the qualities you wish to know about — his courage, his cleverness, his sense of timing, his determination. One thing the circumstances would not let you see — his absolute integrity, and I, who know his heart, will vouch for that.’
The light was very dim now, and in the shadow of the chair her face was difficult to see. Then she leaned forward and I saw her smile.
‘And in case you wish to ask me about his weaknesses, Herr Foster, I will tell you. He cannot accept people as they are, but only as his reason dictates they should be. Feeling he suspects, reason never, and the idea that in him the two may be connected he rejects completely. Therefore he is often mistaken about people and just as often about himself.’
I was silent for a moment. Then I got up to go.
‘May I come and see you again, madame?’
‘Of course, Herr Foster, please do.’ Then she paused. ‘I shall in any case be here,’ she added.
‘Afterwards, if you are allowed to do so, will you leave the country?’
‘When Yordan is dead, do you mean?’
‘When there is no more to be done here.’
‘Then I shall go on living behind our wall,’ she said. ‘Did you not notice our wall?’
‘It’s very fine.’
‘You will see such walls round most of our old houses. In Bulgaria and in Greece, in Yugoslavia, in all the countries of Europe which have lived under Turkish rule it is the same. To put a wall round your house then was not only to put up a barrier against the casual violence of foreign soldiers, it was in a way to deny their existence. Then our people lived behind their walls in small worlds of illusion that did not include an Ottoman Empire. Sometimes, as if to make the illusion more complete, they painted the walls with scenes of national life; but only on the inside, for that was where life was lived. Now that we are again inside our walls, the habits of our parents and our childhood return quietly like long lost pets. I surprise them in myself. This room for instance. Since Yordan’s arrest it has been the only room on this floor of the house that has had the shutters open in the daytime. My feelings tell me it is better so. But why? No reason except that from all the other windows on this floor one can see the street.’
‘Isn’t it dangerous to deny the street?’
‘For my children, yes. For me, no, for I shall not try to impose my private world upon the real. My son Philip is a student in Geneva. He will be a lawyer like his father. Already he promises to be brilliant, and Switzerland is a better place for study than here. I hope to make it possible for Katerina to join him there.’ She paused. ‘Yes, by all means come again, Herr Foster. When you wish.’ She pressed a bell-push. ‘Rana will unbolt the doors and show you out. I will tell her also to admit you if you come again.’
‘Thank you.’
We shook hands and said goodnight. As I went to the door I heard the old woman’s sandals flapping along
