Miro broke off from Hazay to explain, found his English wasn’t quick enough for his thoughts and switched into German, with Tibor interpreting: “No, he blames Russia – I am sorry, he blames both. Both wanted the war … Vienna wanted Bulgaria to win, Russia wanted her to lose, why? … I understand, so Turkey would grab back Adrianople herself but it will cause less trouble to take it from Turkey, who has no friends – ”
“Except the Kaiser,” Hazay suggested.
“ – than from Bulgaria.” Miro muttered something, Hazay laughed and Tibor tried to translate: “He says to … to do something rude to the Kaiser. That will not be in his poem, I think.”
Miro said more.
“… so the Habsburgs and the Romanovs act in one royal conspiracy for opposite reasons … the sufferer is the ordinary soldier who has no illusions, who knows he will die on the battlefield … Pigshit!” Tibor bellowed. “The one illusion a soldier has is that we will live through anything! If he thinks he is going to die, he runs away!”
Nobody seemed to notice the shout except Lucy, and Ranklin who was thinking: so Tibor’s been a soldier. But with conscription, so had every man in the cafe except the gypsy band and, it seemed, Miro. Now he sat silent and frowning, presumably recasting a verse.
Ranklin took advantage of the lull to ask Hazay: “What is the news of the peace conference?”
Hazay put on his diffident smile. “The Great Powers want a part in the final decision …”
“Ha! Let them stay out,” Tibor grunted. “They were six months in London to make new frontiers and how long did they last? – six days. And if Miro is right, already two of your Great Powers worked to destroy the treaty before it is signed even.”
“Count Berchtold says …”
“Tbe Foreign Minister in Vienna,” Ranklin whispered to Lucy.
“I know,” Lucy didn’t whisper back.
“… he says that any agreement reached without Austria-Hungary can only be provisional.”
“Let the Balkans settle their own frontiers,” Tibor growled.
“That was what this last war was for, no?” Hazay said.
Ranklin felt he ought to say something; just sitting and listening could arouse suspicion. But he was pretty sure that anything he said would be wrong.
“No frontiers are ever going to be completely just,” he said cautiously. “Or where do you stop before every village, every house, is a nation? The Balkans need to start exporting things they can sell, not just nationalist fervour.”
Miro glared at him, pale-faced and dark-eyed; he obviously understood English better than he spoke it, and gabbled out an answer.
Tibor interpreted again: “He asks do you want a life of comfort or a road to travel? Do you want an armchair or a cause?”
Ranklin felt himself being dragged into the whirlpool. “Europe’s elephant country. If you startle the elephants in Vienna and Berlin and Paris and St Petersburg – ”
“And London?” Hazay suggested.
“Yes, and London, too – into a stampede, they won’t watch where they put their feet.”
Tibor leant his big arms on the table. “So, your fine grey men in London will tell these peoples that nationalism is dangerous, hey? These peoples whose nationalism has liberated them from four hundred years of Turkish rule? Come again in four hundred more years and tell them then – if you can also tell them how to untangle the flags of liberty and nationalism.”
Yes, Ranklin thought sadly, I was wrong. Oh, I was right, but so in his own way is Tibor – and so, in many ways, are so many others. And suddenly, before he realised why, he felt a terrible fear, as if the courtyard had vanished to leave him alone in a vast cold desert.
Until that moment, like anyone else thinking about a European war, he had wondered what might start it. But he should have been like the man in the story who, shown Niagara Falls for the first time and told proudly how many millions of gallons of water poured over it, had asked simply: “What’s to stop it?”
“Perhaps,” he said, looking over their heads, perhaps to reassure himself of the courtyard walls; “we all have this disease of war. Only we’re not showing all the symptoms yet and we haven’t started dying.” He looked at Tibor. “You and I could be enemies tomorrow.”
Tibor sat back, smiling uneasily. “You would be a soldier?”
“For my nationalism? Oh yes. As you would for yours.”
Hazay said: “Each on top of your elephant.”
They grabbed the silly image gratefully and roared with laughter, then poured more wine and Ranklin offered round his case of English cigarettes and everyone lit one – even Lucy.
But after one more glass, Miro had to get away to his poem, and Tibor decided to go with him. He shook Ranklin’s hand and then, on an impulse, hugged him. “So,” he said, standing back, “we must meet at Philippi.”
“Perhaps we’ll neither of us find the way.”
They took the evening with them. Ranklin paid the bill, watching Hazay’s expression to make sure he got the complicated division of the tip right, while Lucy asked: “Will he get his poem published?”
“Somewhere,” Hazay said. “Perhaps not in Nyugat, but in some magazine. I will help if it is needed. And,” he smiled at Ranklin, “if you wish to write a poem in answer, I will translate it for you.”
And even when it seemed I was being honest, Ranklin thought, I was just hiding the fact that I am already your enemy. That’s why I’m here.
“Thank you, but no. Poetry isn’t really my style,” he said.
44
The car was waiting for them in the square by the church, but Ranklin led the way past it to a bit of neo-Gothic nonsense called the Fishermen’s Bastion. It was being built when Ranklin was last in Budapest and was nothing more than a lookout point across the river to Pest, but elaborated with steps, parapets, arches and needle spires.
“Why Fishermen’s?” Lucy asked.
“They used to live around here, and their Guild had the job of defending this stretch of the city wall against besiegers. I don’t know if they ever did, but that’s the story.”
“Everything seems to be war: wars in the past, wars just down the road now, war tomorrow …”
“I’m afraid that’s Europe for you.” It wasn’t an answer. Perhaps he had hoped to see an answer in the peaceful twinkling lights of the city that, at night, could be any city with its ordinary butchers and bakers and candlestick-makers. But the view did the opposite: just emphasised how small and lonely their island of lights was, how endless the dark plain that surrounded it.
Lucy seemed to pick up the thought. “But why, why start a war in the middle of all this?” She gestured at the lights. “I know the politics are dreadfully complicated, but …”
“That might be one reason. I think a lot of people, ordinary people, in most European countries, feel that things are getting too complicated: that a simple outright war will clear the air.”
“Would it?” she asked doubtfully.
“I don’t know – it doesn’t seem the best of reasons for a war.”
She turned away towards the car. “If there is a war, would you really become a soldier?”
“Yes.”
“But aren’t you too old?” she asked with that charmingly direct manner Corrinna had mentioned.
Ranklin winced. “Well, I was a soldier – once. They’d probably take me back.”
“An officer? I thought you had to be terribly grand to be an English officer.”
“In the Guards or Cavalry, yes, but we’ve got generals who’ve risen from the ranks. Not that I did. But I wasn’t a general, either.”
“Why did you leave?”
“Oh – for a change. Nothing much happens in an army in peacetime.”
They climbed into the back of the car, which started with a jerk towards the Vienna Gate.
“And how long have you known Corinna?” Lucy asked.
“Just a few months – since I started working for her father.”