‘He’s coming back.’
‘. . . forty-three Jews died in the Square. Others were hunted down in their homes.’
‘We did this?’ said Letta, as Van came panting in. ‘Us Varinians?’
‘The great-great-grandparents of many of those whom you saw.’
‘Ancient history,’ said Van. ‘What can you expect if the price of bread goes up ten times in a month. Crumpets ready?’
LEGEND
Selim’s Return
THERE WAS A girl of matchless beauty born in the valley of the Spol.1 When she was five years old the Turks took her and offered her for sale in Jirin market. There the slave-captain of the Pasha of Jirin saw her, and bought her for his master. Years passed and each year she became yet more beautiful.
When she was almost a woman, Restaur Vax drove the Pashas from Varina, and they fled, taking their households with them to Byzantium. There they found the Sultan greatly vexed for the loss of Varina, and he cast them into his dungeons and ordered their goods to be taken from them and sold, but reserved for himself the best.
Thus it was that the Warden of the Imperial Harem came to the Sultan and said, ‘A young woman of matchless beauty has been entered in the inventory.’ And the Sultan said, ‘Let us see her.’
She was brought and stood before him and looked proudly at him, and without fear, so that he was amazed and said, ‘We are the Sultan of all the world. Are you not afraid?’
She answered, ‘I am a Varinian. How should I be afraid?’
He asked her, ‘Are you Varinians then afraid of nothing?’
‘None of us knows how to be afraid,’ she answered.
‘Not even the little children in the dark of the night?’ he demanded.
At that she laughed and said, ‘When I was a little child, sometimes in the dark of the night I was afraid that Selim Pasha would come for me, but now he is in your dungeons, so I have nothing to fear.’
Then the Sultan sent for his Chief Vizier and said, ‘We have a man called Selim Pasha in our dungeons. Let him be taken from the rack and set free, and restored to his household and his honour. Let gold and armies be given him, as much as he may ask, and say to him that he has a year and a day in which to restore to us, by what means he may, our lost province of Varina. And if he should fail, then his state shall be ten times worse than it is now.’
So it was as the Sultan commanded, and before the ice had melted from the great river, Selim Pasha raised his standards outside the walls of Potok, and behind him stood an army of seventeen thousand bazouks.
1 The women of Spol Valley are still proverbial for their beauty, as the men are for their stupidity.
AUGUST 1990
VAN RODE HIS new bike north to settle things with Sue and arrange for having his own gear moved to Winchester. A few days later he was back, in time to come and have tea with Grandad and Letta. It was a Saturday so Momma came too, not because she particularly wanted to see Grandad but because Van was there. Since he’d been home from Potok, Letta had realized for the first time how deeply Momma cared about Van, in a way she didn’t seem to about Steff or Letta herself. It was the sort of thing that happened in families, Letta knew – not that Momma made a parade of it, in fact she’d probably have denied it completely if you’d asked her, but all the same she was different when Van was around, brighter and less fussed with the business of keeping the household going.
It was a lovely late summer afternoon and they had the window open, with the roofs and tree-tops of Winchester spreading away below them. They weren’t talking about anything much, just sitting there peacefully, when Van said, ‘Will Poppa be home in time for St Joseph’s?’
Poppa was in Bolivia, advising about bridges.
‘When’s St Joseph’s?’ said Momma.
‘Oh, Momma!’ said Van.
‘Twenty-seventh,’ said Letta, ‘and he better had be, because it’s my birthday the day after.’
‘Of course it is,’ said Momma. ‘I don’t know why I said that. Yes, he’ll be home.’
‘Can we have kalani?’ said Van.
‘To welcome home our various prodigals it really ought to be trozhl,’ said Grandad.
‘You get me the goats’ udders and I’ll do you trozhl tomorrow,’ snapped Momma. ‘I could do kalani, I suppose, though the lamb’s nothing like the same here . . .’
‘Not tough and stringy enough,’ said Grandad.
‘As a matter of fact Poppa did bring a bottle of bitter sauce home from Potok,’ said Momma. ‘I was keeping it for the goose at Christmas. And I saw some figs at Sainsbury’s, so we could have dumbris for afters . . .’
Letta was delighted it wasn’t going to be trozhl, which was a slithery sort of stew which she’d found disgusting. Kalani was just kebabs with green peppers, but you dipped them in this sauce which almost shrivelled your mouth first go, but made you want to try again. Dumbris were whole figs inside a jacket of spiced dough, deep-fried and coated with honey, intensely sweet and delectable. ‘Eat three and die in paradise’ was the saying about them. The point was that it was almost impossible to swallow more than one. However much your mouth wanted to, your throat refused.
‘No fields like Father’s. No food like Mother’s,’ said Van.
They all laughed. It was another saying, much the same as ‘Home Sweet Home’. In fact Letta had seen it again and again on plates and plaques and even T-shirts on the souvenir stalls in Potok. She could almost hear Momma purring.
‘We’ll be all right for wine,’ said Van. ‘Hector brought some home from his uncle’s vineyard. He gave me a couple of bottles.’
Grandad had been sitting back in his chair, looking benign and relaxed, but now he flashed a sharp glance at Van.
‘Old Paul Orestes has got the vineyard back?’ he said.
‘A couple of months ago,’ said Van.
‘They used to make really good wine,’ said Grandad. ‘It will be interesting to see whether the Communists managed to ruin that also. When did you see our Hector?’
(That was what he really wanted to know.)
‘Last night. I stayed with him on the way down.’
‘Why didn’t you stay with Steff and Mollie?’ said Momma, refusing, as always, to notice the fact that her sons didn’t get on with each other. ‘It’s only a few miles different.’
‘I took a cup of tea off Mollie,’ said Van. ‘Don’t you want the wine, Momma?’
She shrugged and spread her hands with a twisting motion, as if she were wringing out an invisible cloth, a gesture she never used to make but which Letta had seen again and again on the streets of Potok. It meant almost anything you wanted it to mean.
Grandad was still watching Van.
‘Wasn’t I given some almond brandy?’ he said. ‘Did that find its way home? We will need it after the dumbris.’
‘In any case,’ said Van, ‘Mollie’s spare room is pretty well chock-a-block with paperwork for next year’s festival.’
‘Next year’s festival?’ said Momma.
There was a silence.
‘They aren’t seriously going to try and have another festival next year?’ she said.
‘It has been suggested,’ said Grandad, ‘but I, for one, was not aware that the project was sufficiently far advanced to fill a whole bedroom with paperwork.’
He spoke drily, but Letta could hear he was both surprised and angry.
‘It isn’t like that,’ she said. ‘At least according to Nigel. He says they were hardly back before people were ringing up wanting to book places. Mollie kept telling them how iffy it was, but they still insisted on putting their names down and some of them are sending money. She’s just keeping track.’