The Lives and Times of Bernardo Brown by Geoffrey Household Page A

invited to share the wine, managed to put over his opinion that the policeman was a crook who only wanted money and that Bernardo needn’t worry about him. Englez — bourn, bourn! They had won the war. Romanians were grateful. And there was their St. George! So indeed he was, a gallant, armoured, dark-browed ikon over the bed. Bernardo undressed and slept magnificently, seeing nothing whatever wrong with Romanians except that all classes were very poor and ready quite rightly to get their cut out of anyone richer, that they had an objection to Jews and abused their police who seemed at first sight most reasonable chaps.
    The reasonable chap called for him while he was breakfasting and accepted a glass of pale yellow spirit. Bernardo’s credit appeared to be good, so he had one himself. Kovacs, he thought, would have enjoyed it though never admitting that this plum gin— tsuica they called it—was better than apricot brandy.
    Daylight revealed that nothing more than a large village had grown at the junction, its houses mostly of timber and puddled clay under white plaster. All down the long mainstreet the inhabitants stared at their policeman’s conspicuous bag. The majority wore conical hats of sheepskin even in full summer, their shirts outside their trousers and rubber shoes—what in God’s name did they wear before the coming of the automobile?—held on by thongs to the knee.
    On the edge of open country was a two-storey house, whitewashed to conform with the rest but built of bricks and standing in its own garden. The policeman rang the bell and—since this was too mild and courteous a summons—shouted for Mihai Toledano. The door was opened by a darkly pretty girl in embroidered blouse and skirt. Bernardo noticed that Romanian national costume did not include the many petals of petticoats. Petticoats—Magda—hell! Minds must be kept on money.
    Followed by his shadow of the law, he was led to a room overlooking the garden where a man in his fifties with finedrawn, angular, Semitic features received them with dignified reserve. When he had heard the policeman out, he addressed Bernardo in German. Bernardo shook his head and tried Spanish, encouraged by the name of Toledano.
    Instantly he was at home. Toledano’s Spanish was clear, slow and very exactly grammatical. The brown uniform stared, apparently surprised that this well-dressed anthropoid could make itself understood.
    ‘Of course I will change your money. I will also telegraph the police at Czernowitz to get in touch with your friend and return your passport. I’ll explain all that to this fellow and tell him he can call on you at the hotel at any time. Give him a hundred lei and shake his hand!’
    It was evidently a generous tip establishing Bernardo as a land-owning boiar . The cop saluted once on the spot and again at the door.
    ‘Your friend has your baggage, too?’
    Bernardo laughed. He must have spread some sort of radiance from outer space into that house so lonely among its neighbours.
    ‘What do you think?’ he asked.
    ‘That perhaps I should not send the telegram.’
    ‘You are very kind. What part of Spain do you come from?’
    ‘My family left Spain over four hundred years ago.’
    So that was it! Bernardo had never before met a Sephardic Jew. He only knew the history of their expulsion from Spain and that they had settled in the East.
    ‘Are there many of you here?’
    ‘Very few. Here in Moldavia they are all Ashkenazim, speaking their own German. I was glad to hear my language. You are not a Jew, I think, but tell me what I can do for you.’
    ‘After five minutes, Don Mihai?’
    ‘You remind me of my son.’
    ‘I’d like to meet him.’
    ‘You cannot. God’s will be done!’
    ‘I am so sorry. The war?’
    Toledano nodded. Bernardo impulsively decided to trust him. He cut his story short, leaving out the privacies of Magda, and answered a few acute questions. Across the desk grave eyes seemed to accept his adventures as