He stared at her, puzzled.
‘I mean, were they Romanians? Russians? Serbs?’
‘They came from here,’ he said. ‘I know which cell was Illa’s because another cousin told us. He was one of them. He would have liked to help her but he was afraid. We were all afraid. All of us.’
He was a small, plump, worried man, about forty, she guessed. He hadn’t liked telling her what he did, but she could see he felt he had to. She was going to apologize when he smiled and shook his head.
‘Those years are gone,’ he said again. ‘This is a happier day.’
He let the others through the trap and unbolted the door, holding his foot against the bottom so that the people crowding on the top step of the flight that led up to the doorway didn’t tumble through, but had time to stand clear. They looked over their shoulders, surprised, but didn’t stir or make room, so all Letta could see was the solid wall of their backs.
‘Wait,’ said their guide. ‘You come, mister.’
He and Van went back through the trap and returned with four chairs, for Letta, Nigel and themselves. They climbed up with the chill, grim room behind them and the sunlit Square in front, and waited.
They were now at the side of the Square, with the cathedral on their right and the hotel façade stretching away on their left. The cathedral clock stood at two minutes to noon. Many of the crowd had their backs to the hotel in order to watch the minute hand edge round. As it crept towards the mark they began to make shushing noises. The murmur of voices dwindled and died. Silence filled the Square, not mere absence of sound, but positive silence, a great pool of stillness which the Varinians had willed into being and which now lay brimming between the buildings in the sunlight. A baby cried. A far dove called and was answered. The first quarter donged out, followed by a shuffling of feet on stone as the crowd turned to watch the balcony. The central windows were now open. The second quarter donged, but no-one heard the third, or the fourth, or the solid boom of the noon bell, because Grandad was standing on the balcony and the cheering drowned them all. Sheets of flags waved above the close-packed heads, the noise went on and on, unstoppable. Letta half-fell, but their guide caught her and set her back on her chair. She realized that she had been jumping up and down, and her throat was hoarse with yelling. The cathedral clock said almost ten-past twelve, but it seemed to her that Grandad had come out barely a minute ago. She was dazed, drunk, drugged with the shared, immense emotion. A crowd like this could do anything, anything . . .
It was shared too. It wasn’t just a lot of different people’s excitement all totalled up. It was one thing, like the silence had been, something they made between them all. And with it they shared a purpose and a will. Grandad had been making quiet-down gestures with his hands for some time, and they’d paid no attention, but now they had had enough and all together, in a very few seconds, they fell silent. Here and there a hoarse cry of greeting rose, but he waited a moment or two more, raised his head and began.
‘My friends, my countrymen . . .’
Another burst of cheering crashed out, and another after the next few words. They never let him get through a whole sentence, but that didn’t matter. In fact it barely mattered what he said. He was there, officially, to open a festival of Varinian culture, and Letta thought he must have talked mainly about that, but to be honest, she wouldn’t afterwards have been able to tell you what it was about, if anything. All she could have said was that it was wonderful, and that it was in simple Field except for the last three words, and those nobody heard at all because of the crash of cheering that greeted the first Formal syllable. But everyone in the Square knew what he was saying.
‘Unaloxatu! Unaloxotu! Unaloxistu!’
This was the motto embroidered on the battle-standard of the first Restaur Vax. You could see it in the cathedral again, after fifty years, because somebody had managed to hide it away when the Germans came, and kept it hidden all the time the Communists were in power. It was the real thing, Steff said. He’d told Nigel the words meant ‘One nation we were. One nation we are. One nation we will be’, and they did, but the English wasn’t the same, because the una bit meant ‘whole’ as well as ‘one’, and the ‘lox’ bit meant ‘country’ as well as ‘nation’, and in Formal it took only one whole word to say each part (which you couldn’t do even in Field) so that you felt you were making it true by the very way you said it.
At length their guide decided it was time to go back, so he managed to get the door closed and bolted and let them in through the trap, then led them back the way they had come. Letta’s family didn’t go to church, but she remembered a bedtime prayer which Biddie’s mum had said with them when she was staying there last year, and whispered it now as they passed the place with the cells in it. When they got back into Grandad’s room he was still out on the balcony, and the cheering was roaring on, as loud as ever.
LEGEND
The Riddle
NOW THAT THE five Pashas were slain, the Turks were afraid to face the Varinians in battle. But Selim was Pasha of Virnu, across the river, and he was subtlest of all the Turks.1 He said in his heart, ‘I will send spies against this Restaur Vax, Greeks and Bulgarians and Croats, who yet speak the language of these dogs and may pass themselves off as true Varinians, and so join his bands, and be trusted until they are permitted to stand by his side, and then they will strike him down. Moreover, to give them courage, I will put a price on his head of seventeen thousand kronin. Very likely these spies will be found out, but that too is good, for Restaur Vax will see that he cannot any longer know which volunteers he can trust.’
Then one came to Restaur Vax saying that he was a Varinian from beyond the river, and talking good Field. Restaur Vax questioned him closely, and he answered well, but in the middle of questioning him Restaur Vax cast his glance down by the man’s feet and cried ‘Phidi!’ which is the Greek word for a viper. At that the man leaped clear even before he cast his own glance to the ground, and by this he was seen to be a Greek. So they took him away and slew him.
Restaur Vax said, ‘This is Selim’s doing.’
His chieftains answered, ‘We must therefore trust no new recruits.’
Restaur Vax took thought and said, ‘Not so. We will test all who come to us with a riddle. We will say to each man, “What were you? What are you? What will you be? Answer us now with the words that you learned in your mother’s arms.”’
So it was agreed. Seventy-seven spies came, speaking good Field, pretending to be true Varinians, and saying they wished to fight the Turk. But not one of them could answer the riddle, nor did they return alive to their own pastures. But of all the many Varinians who came, none failed the test. Had they not learnt the answer in their mothers’ arms?2
1 Selim Pasha (1712–1777) was not a contemporary of Restaur Vax. Pasha of the Western Province from the early age of twenty-six until his death, he earned a justifiable reputation for both efficiency and ferocity, and continues until the present day to be a general bogeyman of Varinian folklore.
2 ‘The Lame Girl’s Lullaby’ has the refrain Tutunatu tunutotu tutunistu, which is popularly explained to be in Old Varinian and to mean ‘Asleep you were. Asleep you are. Asleep you will be.’ That is to say, before birth, in the cradle, and in the grave. The point of the story is that an impostor would be unlikely to know the nonsense refrain of a cradle song.