A Place to Stand Read online

  They turned back from the river, after a turn along the dusk-blue, light-bediamonded embankments, and walked up the Andrássy ut till they reached the Liliom Káve-haz, an immense glittering plate-glassed place. Beside it a sort of passage-way led off: down it, and immediately behind the big establishment on the main street was a very small, very modest café bearing the same name, the Liliom-Sörözö, where they turned in. This was quite the humblest place Hope had ever been in. It consisted of just two rooms, an outer one with a polished metal hot-plate and sink and some beer-taps, and an inner one with little tables, at which two or three other groups of rather shabby people sat drinking beer; it was ill-lit, and altogether looked poor. The flower-stall which half blocked the passage-way outside, presided over by a grubby old man with a long grey beard, with its wealth of hydrangeas and hyacinths in pots was the only beautiful thing anywhere about it. Hope noticed the flowers as she came in, and thought of them while she sat in the dingy little room, drinking the coffee which Stefan had ordered from the horn-faced woman who stood behind the polished metal counter. They were still gay—Hope suddenly realized that the celebrations of her new friends probably always took place in surroundings as dim as these, and over coffee, not spirits or wine, yet their wit and liveliness surmounted any environment.

  They were all laughing at some extravagance of Jurek’s when a curious little episode took place. The old flower-seller from the stall outside came pottering in, a pot of blooms under each arm—he leaned over the counter and muttered something inaudible to the horn-faced woman, and then came on into the inner room, offering his wares. The woman followed him casually; she went up to a group at one of the other tables and said—“Will you pay now, or shall I chalk it up as usual?”

  “Chalk it up, please,” said one of the men; he rose as he spoke, and with his three companions went out by an inner door. Hope noticed that they had not finished their beer; the woman gathered up the half-filled glasses and poured them down the sink in the outer room just as two rather murky-looking men came in. Their behaviour was odd: they didn’t sit down, they walked round both rooms, staring rather rudely at the occupants of the tables. “What will you have?” the woman asked them, in a distinctly unfriendly tone.

  “Nothing, thank you”—and they started to slouch out again. She gibed at them as they went—”You’re the ruin of anyone’s business; you won’t drink yourselves, and you won’t let honest customers drink up in peace!“ They turned and scowled at her and banged the door.

  “She was telling them off, wasn’t she?” Litka asked gaily of Hope—she hardly spoke any Hungarian.

  “Yes—but I can’t think why they came in at all, as they took nothing,” Hope said.

  “Oh, they came to look for those four who went out by that little door,” said Hempel airily. “There’s a passage by the lavatory in there that leads eventually into the Káve-haz; so when the alarm is given there, people slip through into this place, and if it’s given here, they dodge along into the big Liliom. The chaps from that table—”he gestured at it with a grin—“were out in the Andrássy ut by the time those two types came in.”

  “But who gave the alarm here?” Hope asked, thoroughly puzzled.

  “Oh, the old flower-seller told the woman, and she told them,” said Hempel. “When she says, ‘Shall I chalk it up?’ it always means that one must clear out. And the flower-seller knows all the Deuxième Bureau agents by sight—that’s why he has his stall here—and he maunders in when he sees any of them turning down the passage.”

  Hope was startled and incredulous—it was like a film, this running through passages at a given pass-word—and a little frightened.

  “What is the Deuxième Bureau?” she asked—it was the first time she had ever heard those ominous words.

  “The secret Police, the local Gestapo—and getting closely tied in with the real Gestapo, now,” said Stefan, in a tone she had not heard in his voice before, cold and hard—and his face as he spoke was suddenly hard too. Then almost casually he added something which she was to remember later on. “But this place is trustworthy: one can leave a message, a suitcase, anything here, and in time they will reach the person they are meant for, quite safely—and no one else.”

  When they left, Litka and Jurek went straight back to the Penzio; she must help her Mother with the supper, the girl said. Stefan escorted Hope home and on the way she too spoke of his Mother. “It must be awfully hard for her, all this,” she said. “You seem to have had such a lovely home, and she loved it so, didn’t she?”

  “She spoke of it to you?” he asked—and no one would have recognized the voice in which he said that, warm and wistful, as the same which he had used when he mentioned the Deuxième Bureau.

  “Oh yes, a lot—while I was waiting for you. She showed me one of your Father’s pictures of it too; I thought it awfully good. And it looked such a charming house.”

  “Ah, I am glad you liked that one. It is all that remains to us of it now, that single picture,” he said with a flat simplicity that smote at Hope. “Did you notice the lime avenue?” he asked.

  “Do you mean the high trees on the right?”

  “Yes—how well you observed it! They were limes,” he said, almost dreamily; “and in summer the smell was so sweet, it came in at all the windows; the bourdonnement of the bees in the lime-blossom came in too, so loud. When I was very little, and went to bed early, I used to fall asleep to the sound of the bees in the avenue on summer evenings.” He went on talking about his home—the ponies, the horses, helping in the hayfields and the harvest-fields, shooting partridges in the autumn and hares in the winter, or driving in sleighs over the iron-hard snow, under the frosty stars, to parties at neighbouring houses; galloping about the countryside in summer. And again Hope thought of that dreary room in the Ibolya Penzio, and what it must mean to exchange that life for this—she was near tears when he kissed her hand in farewell a few yards from the flat.

  But she didn’t go up at once when Stefan left her; she slipped round to the call-box by the taxi-rank and settled an appointment with Dr. Kraljic’s secretary for 11.15 the next day, for herself. She thought of ringing up the Penzio, but decided not to do it from the same box. The next nearest was some distance away, and it was getting late—also Stefan might not be home yet. So she left it for the moment, and rang up later that night from the restaurant where she was dining with some American friends. After some trouble with a person at the Penzio who answered the telephone she managed to get hold of Stefan, and gave the hour. “But remember, twenty minutes sooner, where I said.”

  “It is understood,” he answered. “Thank you”—and rang off.

  The visit went off next day according to plan, as far as Hope’s part in it was concerned. From Alphonse’s establishment she got Dr. Kraljic himself on the telephone, after a mild struggle with his secretary; he told her to wait a moment, and then returned to say “Come along.” Stefan and Hempel were in the square outside, and with the faintest nod in their direction she walked off ahead of them. As they all three stood waiting on the large fuzzy doormat outside Dr. Kraljic’s flat she said hurriedly—“Look, I must hear how it goes. I’ll go back and wait at the Sörözö, shall I, when I leave? And then you can come along and tell me. I just must know if everything’s O.K.”

  “Very well—we will do that,” Stefan said, just as the door opened.

  Hope’s interview with the Serb was brief, and rather gay; they talked about Belgrade for ten minutes—he was charmed that she knew it so well—and then she made her exit through the waiting-room, with a slight gesture of her head towards the two young men, who had carefully chosen seats rather by themselves. She heard a word from the doctor and saw them rise as she went out.

  Pleased, triumphant, but still a little anxious she pattered off to the Sörözö. Goodness, what a lot of walking this job entailed, where you couldn’t use your car!—her feet absolutely ached. She sat down thankfully on a chair in the small inner compartment after ord
ering a coffee as she passed through; it was warm in there, and really rather snug, she thought, though the two little rooms were so dark that the lights were on even now, at midday. One didn’t have to go to places like Gerbeaud always, to sit down and have coffee in peace and quiet.

  It was in fact very quiet in the Sörözö that morning. Hope was the only customer, and when the horn-faced woman brought the coffee, and Hope thanked her in Hungarian with a smile and a pleasant word, the woman lingered by the table and began to chat. “Waiting for your friends, eh?”

  “Yes, I expect they’ll be here presently.”

  “But you are not Hungarian, though you speak it quite well; and you don’t look Polish,” the woman said bluntly—“though come to think of it, you are rather like the girl, in the face.”

  Hope laughed. “No, I’m not Polish; I’m an American.”

  “Jesus Maria! Help!” the woman exclaimed. “An American, here in my Sörözö? Well, that is a thing I never thought to see!”

  “Why not?” Hope asked.

  “Oh, Americans are all rich—they don’t come to places like this. And they don’t know Poles either.” A rather suspicious look came into her eyes. “How come you to have such friends? And why do you speak our language so well?”

  “I’ve lived in Budapest for eight years,” Hope said. “My Father has a job here. I know Hungary better than I know America.”

  But Horn-face was not to be put off.

  “Very well; I see. Big business!” she said, half scornfully. “But why do you have Polish friends? Do you work?”

  At that last question Hope suddenly saw quite definitely what Stefan had meant when he asked her, on that first day as they walked up the Andrássy ut, whether she worked? “Working” clearly meant being in some Polish or other underground racket, as a regular thing—in that sense, it was now obvious that Sam did work, or had worked. She sat silent while she thought this out, but the woman pressed the point. “Do you work?” she asked again.

  “Only for them—my friends,” Hope answered.

  “Well, it’s rather funny,” the woman said. “Forgive my asking, won’t you?—but Americans don’t usually work; they don’t know the languages well enough, as a rule. The English, yes—they work a lot; and mind you, they work well. The French aren’t so good, though they try, I’ll say that for them. And of course there’s no one to touch the Poles. But Americans!”—she blew out her breath in surprise, or some emotion. “I’ve only ever known one American who worked,” she said.

  Something prompted Hope. “Sam?” she asked.

  “Jesus Maria! Yes. Do you know Sam?”

  “Very well indeed.”

  The woman’s face changed in the most extraordinary way.

  “Oh well, if you’re a friend of Sam’s—” She turned as the door opened and a customer came in.

  Time passed, but there was no sign of Hempel and Stefan. Hope had no idea how long it took to give certificates, but allowing half-an-hour, surely heaps of time, they should have got back to the Sörözö at 12.15; they had gone in to the doctor just before 11.30. But 12.30 came, a quarter to 1, 1 o’clock, and still they did not come. She began to get nervous—could anything have gone wrong? She kept glancing at her watch, and presently the woman came over to her table again.

  “They late?”

  “Well yes, they are a little.”

  “Oh, I expect they’ll come soon. But I shouldn’t keep looking at your watch like that—Jesus God, what diamonds! You’re all right here, but you’d do better to leave it at home, you know, when you’re out on a job. It makes people look—and if there’s one thing certain, it’s that it’s better not to be looked at.” She looked Hope up and down herself, with a sort of grim amusement. “You’re pretty noticeable anyhow,” she said, “in that coat.” Hope was wearing her ankle-length coat of pale grey lambskin. “Haven’t you got a plain coat?” Again someone came in at the door, but it was only an oldish man. “Just a moment!” the woman called out, and turned again to Hope. “You’re new to it, I can see. Well, as a friend of Sam’s, anything I can do, you’ve only to ask. But leave that watch at home”—and she went out to her coffee-pots and her customer.

  At 1.30 Hope began to fret. Thank God she was lunching with Tibor, and Hunks were always late—but lunch was at 1.45, Ludlàb was some way away, and she hadn’t the car. She must go, quite soon, and she couldn’t bear to till she’d heard if it was all right. And then once again the door opened, and Litka came in.

  “Well?” Hope asked, as she sat down at the table—“Where on earth are they?”

  “Oh, it’s all right; but a message came for them while they were out, so I went and caught them outside the doctor’s with it.”

  “But”—Hope was greatly disappointed. “Did they get them all right?” she asked.

  “Oh yes, indeed—and they asked me to thank you very very much, and to apologize that they could not come.”

  “But why couldn’t they? This is on their way home.”

  “There was a job that they had to go and do at once; that was the message. They were so sorry. You have been so wonderful,” said Litka earnestly.

  The woman brought two more coffees, unasked. “Boys busy?” she enquired of Litka, who just grinned at her. Hope paid for the coffees, and then put a question.

  “Well, when are they going to leave? Will this job take long?”

  “Oh no.”

  “Well, will they go then?”

  Litka looked serious.

  “There are other things to do first. They must get entry visas for Turkey, and transit visas for Bulgaria.”

  “How long will that take?” Hope, transatlantically, thought in terms of speed, of pushing things through. Litka, of course, didn’t.

  “For people like us, two weeks—perhaps three.”

  Hope felt slightly irritated. “Well, when they’ve got the visas, will they go then?”

  Litka seemed rather rattled by her persistence; she looked embarrassed, and said “Perhaps.”

  “Now Litka, what on earth do you mean? Why ‘perhaps’? Why shouldn’t they go at once, when they get all their papers?”

  “It is not so simple,” the Polish girl said.

  “It seems simplicity itself to me,” said Hope brusquely. “They wanted Yugoslav passports—well, I brought those. Then they wanted these certificates—well, I’ve fixed those for them too. Once they get these visas, what on earth is there to wait for?”

  Litka blushed—her hands fiddled with a corner of the tablecloth. At last—“There is something that they are waiting for, to take out, that was to have come—from home,” she almost stammered, speaking very low—“And it hasn’t been brought yet.”

  “What kind of a thing?”

  Litka was not embarrassed at all by that. With a curious dignity she said, very gently—“Those are questions one should not ask, for they cannot be answered.”

  Her gentleness, combined with this unexpected firmness, rather quelled Hope.

  “I see,” she said reluctantly, though she didn’t really see at all—“but is this thing so terribly important, compared with their getting out?”

  “Oh yes—infinitely more important. You see, for us, now that we have lost our homes and—well, everything—our own lives somehow don’t seem very important any more—only our country. I do worry about Jurek, I can’t seem to help it, especially when he’s on a job like this—” she checked herself. “And my Mother does of course, all the time, about us all. But that’s the way it is, for us.”

  Hope couldn’t help being impressed by that, and the simple way in which it was said. She murmured a vague sympathetic response, but if her words were vague the sympathy was very real. Of course this was quite a new idea to her, and she meditated on it as she sipped her coffee and smiled at Litka. Naturally one loved one’s country, and was proud of being an American—but you never had to do anything much for the United States; certainly not risk your chances of escape for it! What a strange set-up i
t all was. She found herself, all the same, feeling very warmly towards this hatless Polish girl in her shabby checked coat; and it seemed that Litka felt warmly to her too, for when Hope at last jumped up and said that she must rush, she was going to be late for lunch, Litka took her by both hands and said impulsively—“I like you so much! I should like to see you every day!”

  5

  Next day there was another letter from Sam. The only relevant part of it ran—“I hope everything’s gone all right with my birthday buddies. Did they start yet? Be sure to let me know.” And he told her to answer care of the American Consulate-General in Istanbul. When she sat down to write in reply, Hope felt vaguely embarrassed; Sam’s “buddies” had somehow become friends of hers, important to her, even in this short time. However, she wrote away. “No, your friends haven’t gone yet; they’re still waiting for something,” she scribbled; and then answered the rest of the letter.