Tales of Adventurers Read Free Page A

with a determined Englishman in a temper. No
doubt they would be equally helpless with a Russian.”
    Ion quickly related the fanatical resolution which had brought his godfather to Bucharest. His two friends were delightfully sympathetic, enthusiastic indeed. This penetration of the Iron
Curtain merely to obtain a cook appealed both to Roumanian pride and Roumanian love of a jest. A plan swiftly emerged from committee. It was for Ion and his godfather to call on Traian – who
was still alive, and whose son might be the very man for Devenor – and then to catch the column in the marshaling yards or anywhere along the line to Constantsa.
    Fortunately the trust of the three functionaries in one another was not so great that they had entirely burned their boats. Each of them had kept a car and driver waiting on a dirt road, beyond
the belt of trees, all ready for swift return to Bucharest in case of accident or treachery. Mines and Railways now dismissed their cars, and returned to the column in high spirits. As soon as the
road was clear, Devenor and his godson drove off in the third car.
    Traian had been the headwaiter at the Gradina for twenty years, and had retired shortly before the war. If Devenor had known his address, he would, he said, have gone to see him at once, and
left his damned godson to the inevitable end of his career as a commissar. Traian was a man you could trust. In all the years of his highly civilized trade he had never lost his peasant
integrity.
    He lived exactly where he ought to live: in the old eastern suburbs of Bucharest, where the streets of white, single-storied houses preserved something of the character of an untidy and once
prosperous village. At the back of a yard, where the dusty earth just kept alive a tree, a few flowers and a couple of hungry hens, they found Traian sitting under the eaves of his house in the
melancholy idleness of the old. He looked ill fed and disintegrating; otherwise he was the same Traian who had hovered for twenty years at Devenor’s shoulder, whose middle-aged wedding
Devenor had attended (and attended for a full riotous fourteen hours), whose retirement had been put beyond the reach of poverty by the subscriptions of Devenor and his friends.
    Traian and Devenor embraced with tears in their eyes.
    “And why not?” Devenor insisted. “Why not? Hadn’t we known each other at our best and proudest? We embraced the splendor of our past manhood.”
    The old man – aged by undeserved and unexpected hardship rather than years – had no fear of godson Ion. To him gilded youth, whether it was communist or whether its checks were
frequently returned to drawer, was gilded youth. He talked freely. His wife was dead. His son, Nicu, trained in the kitchens of the Gradina and destined – for the Gradina thought in
generations – to be the next chief cook but one, was working in a sausage factory. Traian himself was destitute. He could no longer be sure that he even owned his modest house.
    “The tragedy of communism,” said Devenor, “is that the State won’t help those who can’t help themselves. Even so, Traian wanted me to take his son. Yes, at an
hour’s notice. Nicu was asleep inside, before going on the early morning shift. Yes, he begged me to take his son.”
    Devenor, of course, turned the offer down flat. There couldn’t be any question of taking Nicu’s support away from his father. Like a couple of old peasants, they talked the problem
out unhurriedly, with many mutual courtesies, while the precious minutes of the night slipped away. Godson Ion fumed with impatience. He told Devenor not to be a sentimental fool. He told Traian
not to spoil the boy’s chances. He was remarkably eloquent in pointing out that there was no future at all for Nicu in Roumania, or for any man of taste and ability who hadn’t, like
himself, had the sense to join the party.
    Meanwhile Traian’s voice was growing firmer, and the ends of his white mustache