Unexpected Mrs. Pollifax Read online

  “Yes, but if only we had a knife!”

  Farrell said flippantly, “Maybe someone will start throwing knives at that party of yours and you can deftly catch one between your teeth and hide it in your pocket.”

  Unfortunately there was not a knife to be seen at the party. There were forks—Mrs. Pollifax at once secreted two of them—and various-sized spoons, but no knives, not even dull ones. Mrs. Pollifax might have become despondent again if it were not for the raki that Lulash had filched from the wine cellar in the larger building. He and Major Vassovic had obviously begun sampling it already. “Join us,” said Lulash with shining eyes.

  “I believe I will,” said Mrs. Pollifax, and startled them by emptying her glass. “It is extremely sweet of you to have a party for me,” she told him with feeling.

  “Have an olive,” said Lulash, embarrassed. “Have more raki.”

  “But you have no knives,” pointed out Mrs. Pollifax.

  “Why do you need a knife?”

  “I always eat olives with a knife,” Mrs. Pollifax told him hopefully. “A sharp knife.”

  “Americans do this?”

  “Always.”

  Major Vassovic shook his head. “We have no knives. Try a fork.”

  Mrs. Pollifax philosophically accepted a second glass of raki instead, and was sipping it when Colonel Nexdhet arrived bearing a dish of cheese and what looked like a zither. Mrs. Pollifax’s reaction to his arrival was ambivalent: she felt extremely wary of him and yet as a human being she liked him.

  “General Hoong will be coming too,” said the colonel. “It seems that he enjoys parties.”

  “Then I will sing before he comes,” said Lulash, and promptly sat down on the floor and crossed his legs. “Please,” he told Mrs. Pollifax, gesturing her toward the desk chair. The colonel plucked a few strings of his peculiar-looking instrument and Lulash began to sing a song filled with weird half notes and pauses.

  How beautiful is the month of May

  When we go with the flocks to the mountains!

  On the mountains we heard the voice of the wind.

  Do you remember how happy we were?

  In the month of May, through the blossoming trees,

  The sound of song is abroad on the mountains.

  The song of the nightingale, ge re ge re ge re.

  Do you remember how happy we were?

  I would I had died in that month of May

  When you leaned on my breast and kissed me, saying,

  “I do not wish to live without you.”

  Do you remember how happy we were?

  I wish again the month of May

  That again we might be on the mountains,

  That again we might hear the mountain voices.

  Have you forgotten those days of beauty?

  There was a long silence when he finished. With his head still bowed Lulash said sadly, “There was a Russian engineer in Tirana, she once said to me those same words. Where is she now?”

  Why was it, wondered Mrs. Pollifax crossly, that love songs everywhere had to be so terribly sad? Major Vassovic was noisily blowing his nose and Mrs. Pollifax realized that something was needed to cut the treacly sentiment that was submerging them. She herself did not feel sad; on the contrary the raki had left her lightheaded and a little belligerent. She turned to Colonel Nexdhet and said with unsteady dignity, “Colonel Nexdhet, I have been thinking about your country and I have decided it was immoral of you to give it to China.”

  Lulash looked appalled. “He gave us to China?”

  The colonel said firmly, “Not personally, Private Lulash.”

  “Then who did? That’s what I’d like to know, who did give us to China?”

  The colonel shrugged. “Russia moved out, China moved in.”

  Major Vassovic looked up and said piously, “We needed and wanted China to help us. We gave ourselves to her gratefully, willingly.”

  Lulash looked insulted. “I didn’t have anything to say about it, Major—did you? What this country needs is a George, a George …” He turned to Mrs. Pollifax. “Whoever he was you told me about.”

  “Washington.”

  “Tha’s right, George Washington. And let me tell you something else, Colonel, if anybody was to ask me who to give this country to, I’d say, give it to Mrs. Pollifax.”

  “Why, thank you, Lulash,” she said warmly.

  Colonel Nexdhet said mildly, “Lulash, you have had too much raki.”

  “I? Too much? It is a lie. I will sing to you another song.”

  “Yes, please do,” said Mrs. Pollifax.

  “An old song,” announced Lulash defiantly. “Full of old heroes who belong to Albanians and nobody else. I will dedicate it to—”

  The door opened and General Hoong entered in full dress uniform, medals pinned to his chest, a pistol strapped to his belt.

  “To democracy!” shouted Lulash, standing and emptying his glass of raki.

  General Hoong looked around him and focused at last upon Lulash. He said distastefully, “Private Lulash, you are drunk.” To Mrs. Pollifax he bowed and said, “I have come to your party. I have brought for it a bottle of vodka.”

  Mrs. Pollifax said eagerly, “Did you bring a knife with you to open the bottle?”

  “A knife? No, a corkscrew,” said the general reprovingly. “Vassovic, open the vodka.”

  “At once, General,” cried Major Vassovic.

  General Hoong removed the pistol from his side, held it at arm’s length and fired six shots into the ceiling. “The party may begin now,” he announced. Seating himself next to Mrs. Pollifax he said, “I like noise with a party.”

  “Yes, it is so convivial,” she admitted, her eyes on the pistol which rested upon his knee. “What an interesting-looking gun, General,” she said.

  “Since it is empty you may look at it,” he said condescendingly. “It is a Japanese pistol, called a Nambu.”

  “How very odd,” murmured Mrs. Pollifax, and held it to the light admiringly. When she had finished admiring it she placed it carefully on the top of the desk between them.

  “Some vodka?” suggested General Hoong.

  “Oh, a very little,” she said, and as he leaned forward she neatly slid the Nambu into her pocket.

  “I sing my next song,” cried Lulash, and reaching over to pluck the strings of the instrument on Nexdhet’s lap he began chanting loudly,

  Ahmet Bey, the Beautiful! O! O! Ahmet Bey!

  Ahmet, the son of the Mountain Eagle …

  From the stricken look on Major Vassovic’s face Mrs. Pollifax at once deduced that this was a subversive song. She moved closer to General Hoong and said, “It really is so very kind of you to join us. Very considerate.”

  His empty eyes turned to look at her. “A general is always alone,” he said.

  “But soon General Perdido will be back and you can be alone together.”

  He said fastidiously, “Perdido is a barbarian.”

  Mrs. Pollifax thought about this and nodded. “Yes, he is.”

  General Hoong sighed. “I am not the happiest of men.”

  “I’m sorry,” Mrs. Pollifax told him with sincerity. “I can quite understand why, of course. You live a very isolated life up here. Have you hobbies?”

  “I have a mistress.”

  Mrs. Pollifax considered this frank statement and gamely nodded. “Yes, that would help to pass the time.”

  “And I write poetry.”

  “Do you really! I wish that I might hear some.”

  “My most recent one I have committed to memory. I will recite it for you.”

  “Please do,” said Mrs. Pollifax, and wished that Lulash would end his interminable song about Ahmet Bey.

  Closing his eyes General Hoong recited in a sonorous voice:

  Pale moon torn by white clouds:

  Spool of purest light.

  Enchanted Timeless.

  Without heart, lacking grief.

  I gaze, and wish my soul

>   Lacked heart and bore no grief.

  “But that is charming,” said Mrs. Pollifax.

  “Yes,” he said simply.

  “I had no idea you were so sensitive, General Hoong. I had no idea you suffered so. You seem so—so impervious to the demands of your job.”

  “I suffer,” he announced firmly.

  “Then you really must find another job,” she urged him sympathetically. “You certainly must be qualified for some work where you don’t have to shoot people, or beat them, or torture them to death.”

  “Job?” he said, frowning. “Job?” He sighed and drained his glass of vodka. “There is nothing wrong with my job. It is my mistress who causes me torment.” He stopped talking and began staring broodingly into space.

  Lulash had reached the end of his song. He said to Mrs. Pollifax, “Now you must take a turn and sing to us a song of your country.”

  “I?” said Mrs. Pollifax.

  “Yes, yes, for it must be a beautiful country, a country of justice,” cried Lulash exuberantly. “Maybe one day Albania too will be like that, let us all drink a toast to that hope.”

  Major Vassovic gently belched. “Shplendid idea.” He lifted his glass.

  Colonel Nexdhet was smiling mockingly. “Well, Mrs. Pollifax?”

  Mrs. Pollifax accepted the challenge, arose and bowed to General Hoong. “We have your permission to drink Lulash’s toast, General Hoong?”

  General Hoong roused a little from his reverie. “What? Oh yes, I like noise with a party.”

  “To the United States of America,” said Mrs. Pollifax in a ringing voice. Remaining on her feet, however unsteadily, she sang one chorus of “God Bless America.” It was on this note, carrying with her the general’s Nambu pistol but still lacking a knife, that Mrs. Pollifax withdrew from the party, pleading weariness.

  “I tried,” said Mrs. Pollifax, sitting on the edge of her cot and staring sadly at Farrell. “I tried to steal a knife, but all I could bring back was the pistol.”

  Farrell was still admiring it. “At this moment, Duchess, the odds against our escaping have just shrunken by about five hundred.”

  “But it isn’t a knife,” she pointed out. “It’s true that you could blow the top of the tree off with a pistol but you can’t make a crutch with a pistol.”

  “Nevertheless, you can’t imagine how much more secure I feel,” said Farrell. “Get me the cartridges and I’ll load it.” She gave him the two Nambu clips and he grinned. “You’re turning into quite a scavenger, you know. How was the party?”

  “Quite dismal, really. Except for Lulash.” Mrs. Pollifax smiled reminiscently. “Lulash would like a George Washington for Albania.”

  “You haven’t been planting seeds of insurrection, have you, Duchess?”

  “Well, it’s a change from planting geraniums,” she retorted.

  He finished loading the pistol, patted it lovingly and slipped it beneath his mattress. “I strongly advise getting some sleep now, considering what’s ahead of us.”

  The effects of the raki were wearing off, leaving Mrs. Pollifax depressed. “Sleep?” she said resentfully. “Why?”

  “Because if we’re going to be shot tomorrow trying to escape I’d much prefer dying with someone who can say something jaunty, like ‘I regret that I have only one life to give for my country,’ or—”

  “Jaunty!” exclaimed Mrs. Pollifax, but she was smiling. “That’s all very well but I didn’t bring Bartlett’s Quotations with me, you know.”

  “A pity. Do come up with something magnificent, though, will you? Surprise me,” he suggested with mischief in his eyes.

  At that moment Colonel Nexdhet walked in, but Mrs. Pollifax’s sense of humor had returned—Farrell had seen to this—and she realized that she could face the next day, if not with equanimity, at least with a philosophic stoicism. Then she realized that Farrell was pointedly staring at her and she raised her eyebrows questioningly. Slowly and deliberately his glance moved to Nexdhet, who was removing his jacket in preparation for a night’s sleep. Mrs. Pollifax’s eyes followed and abruptly widened. Colonel Nexdhet was wearing a knife strapped to a sheath on his belt.

  “Our third miracle,” said Farrell quietly.

  Mrs. Pollifax could scarcely believe it, but being of a practical mind she at once said, “You or me?”

  Farrell gestured ruefully toward his leg. “You, I’m afraid.”

  Mrs. Pollifax nodded. She put away her table, yawned elaborately, scratched her leg—lice, obviously—and lay down. “Good night, Colonel Nexdhet,” she said sweetly. “It was a lovely party, wasn’t it?”

  “Oh?” He looked surprised. “Oh yes, good night.” He nodded curtly to Farrell and stretched himself full length on his cot. It really was a pity, thought Mrs. Pollifax, that he had to continue sleeping in the cell with them; at his age he must long for clean pajamas, a comfortable mattress and a private room. Then she remembered that at least he had bathroom privileges, and this cut short her pity and she lay on her side with her eyes fixed upon the knife and tried, through the gloom, to figure just how it was affixed to his belt.

  Farrell began to snore gently—she did not believe for a moment that he was sleeping—and Nexdhet began to snore loudly. There were no sounds from the hall or the guardroom. Mrs. Pollifax slowly sat up, the mattress producing even more ominous rustlings than usual, which only substantiated her suspicion that it was filled with corn husks. Once in a sitting position she remained so for a few minutes to make certain the snores continued. She stood up and waited again before moving slowly toward Nexdhet’s cot. She was nearly there when she was attacked by an almost irrepressible urge to giggle; she had just remembered that when she was a child she had been given a part in a school play where she had to glide like a wraith. After it had been explained to her just what a wraith was the result had been this same gliding, tight-hipped movement. Firmly she controlled herself and leaned over Nexdhet. Neither his breathing nor his snores changed. Her hands moved to his belt and she fumbled with the strap on the sheath, gently drawing it up and out. When this had been accomplished she sank to one knee, and with one hand steadying the bottom of the sheath she placed the other on the handle of the knife and pulled. The knife came out easily. Still Nexdhet had not stirred, and after a moment’s hesitation Mrs. Pollifax glided, still wraithlike, to Farrell’s cot.

  He was still snoring softly but his left hand reached out, open-palmed, to accept the knife that she placed in it; then he turned on his side, his back to her, and Mrs. Pollifax knew he was hiding it under his mattress. She returned to her own cot and sank upon it with relief, corn husks and all. Two minutes later she was asleep.

  CHAPTER 16

  In the morning when Mrs. Pollifax awoke she realized at once that a fateful day was beginning. She lay and thought about this dispassionately, almost wonderingly, because to every life there eventually came a moment when one had to accept the fact that the shape, the pattern, the direction of the future was entirely out of one’s hands, to be decided unalterably by chance, by fate or by God. There was nothing to do but accept, and from this to proceed, doing the very best that could be done. Without knowing the end, reflected Mrs. Pollifax; like being wheeled into an operating room and wondering if one would ever see this or any other ceiling again. Twenty-four hours from now would she and Farrell be staring at these same stone walls, or would they be free, or would they even have survived to see that next day?

  Farrell was sleeping soundly. She momentarily begrudged him such discipline until she remembered that he did his exercising at night. Colonel Nexdhet was sleeping too, and suddenly she remembered the knife she had taken from him and was afraid. He would wake up soon and find it gone and know at once that she or Farrell had taken it—who else could have stolen it from him while he was asleep in a locked cell? She wondered why on earth they hadn’t thought of this last night. They had so badly wanted a knife and Nexdhet had walked in wearing a knife and it had seemed like their third miracle.

>   “When actually it may prove our undoing,” she thought.

  As if he had felt her thoughts Nexdhet sat up and yawned and rubbed his eyes. Meeting her gaze he nodded, and one hand went to his sweeping white moustache to smooth it. Mrs. Pollifax fought to keep her eyes from dropping to the empty knife sheath; she prayed that Colonel Nexdhet’s talents did not include mind reading. Nexdhet’s second move was to stand up and stretch, and then his hand went out to his jacket at the foot of the bed. While Mrs. Pollifax watched with alarm he lifted the jacket, patted one pocket and shrugged his arms into the sleeves. At least he had not seen the empty sheath, she thought wildly, and waited next for him to feel for the knife’s presence. But he didn’t. He leaned over and began tying his shoes.

  Farrell sat upright. He, too, glanced quickly at Colonel Nexdhet and then anxiously at Mrs. Pollifax, who shook her head. At the same moment steps echoed in the hall, keys rattled, the door opened and the guard named Stefan walked in carrying breakfast trays. Nexdhet spoke curtly to him in Albanian, and then walked out.

  “Bathroom privileges,” muttered Farrell darkly.

  “You don’t suppose there’s a bathtub on the premises?” asked Mrs. Pollifax breathlessly.

  “A shower maybe.”

  Mrs. Pollifax closed her eyes and thought yearningly of hot water coursing down her body and taking with it the accumulation of dirt and dust, and then, most voluptuous of all, the feeling of being clean again and not itching. Life was incredibly simple when stripped to its essentials, she reflected, and for a moment her thoughts lingered on luxuries taken for granted during a long life. Except it was not really a long life, she amended, certainly not if it was to end today, and she began to feel quite angry with these people for wanting to kill her. “After all, it’s my life, not theirs,” she thought peevishly, “and all I did was …”

  All she had done, she added more reasonably, and with a faint wry smile, was to walk into CIA headquarters and offer her services as a spy. This made her at once feel better, since it was obviously a spy they would wish to kill rather than Emily Pollifax of New Brunswick, New Jersey. Somehow this knowledge made it less personal; women were always so sensitive to snubs.