The Balkan Trilogy by Olivia Manning Page B

Sophie, her face glum, stared in turn at the reactions of the three male listeners – Guy saying ‘Oh dear!’ and wiping his eyes, Inchcape with his head thrown back, and Dobson rocking in quiet enjoyment.
    ‘But what sort of balls?’ she asked when the story was over.
    ‘Croquet balls,’ said Inchcape.
    ‘Then I do not understand. Why is it funny?’
    ‘Why,’ Inchcape blandly asked, ‘is anything funny?’
    The answer did not satisfy Sophie. She said with some asperity: ‘That is an English joke, eh? Here in Rumania we have jokes, too. We ask “What is the difference between a kitten and a bar of soap?” I think they are silly, such jokes.’
    ‘Well, what is the difference?’ Guy asked.
    Sophie gave him an irritated look and would not answer.He set about persuading her until at last she whispered in a petulant little voice: ‘If you put a kitten to the foot of a tree, it will climb up.’
    Her success surprised her. She looked around, suspicious at first, then, growing complacent, said: ‘I know many such jokes. We told them at school.’
    ‘Tell us some more,’ said Guy.
    ‘Oh, they are so silly.’
    ‘No, they are very interesting.’ And after he had coaxed her to tell several more, all much alike, he began a dissertation on basic peasant humour, to which he related the riddles to be found in fairy-tales. He called on Yakimov to confirm his belief that Russian peasant tales were similar to all other peasant tales.
    ‘I’m sure they are, dear boy,’ Yakimov murmured, his eyes vacant, his body inert, life extinct now, it seemed, except in the hand with which, every few minutes, he lifted the brandy bottle and topped up his glass.
    Dobson, almost asleep, slid forward in his chair, then, half-waking, slid back again. Inchcape was listening to Guy, his smile fixed. It was late, but no one showed any inclination to move. The restaurant was still crowded, the orchestra played on, Florica was expected to sing again. Harriet, suddenly exhausted, wished she were in bed. Guy had told her that on hot summer nights the diners in these garden restaurants might linger on under the trees until dawn. This, however, was not a hot summer night. Gusts of autumnal chill came at intervals from outer darkness and hardened the summer air. Someone, earlier in the evening, had mentioned that the first snow had fallen on the peaks that rose north of the city. She hoped that discomfort, if nothing else, would soon set people moving.
    She watched Yakimov drain the last of the bottle into the glass. He then began glancing about, his eyes regaining the luminous gleam of life. When a waiter approached, he made a minimal movement and closed his eyes at the bottle. It was whipped away and replaced at such speed, Harriet could only suppose Yakimov had over waiters the sort of magnetic powersome people have over beast and birds. His glass newly filled, he sank back, prepared, Harriet feared, to stay here all night.
    As for Guy, the evening’s drinking had not touched on his energy. It had merely brought him to a garrulous euphoria in which discoveries were being made and flights taken into metaphysics and the moral sciences. Every few minutes, Sophie – happy and vivacious now – interrupted him possessively to explain what he was saying. Was it possible, Harriet wondered, that this talk was as fatuous as it seemed to her?
    ‘One might say,’ Guy was saying, ‘that riddles are the most primitive form of humour: so primitive, they’re scarcely humour at all, but a sort of magic.’
    Sophie burst in: ‘He means, like the sphinx and like the oracle. Oracles always spoke in riddles.’
    ‘Not the oracle at Delos,’ said Inchcape.
    Sophie gave him a look of contempt. ‘The oracle was at Delphi,’ she said.
    Inchcape shrugged and let it pass.
    At midnight Florica came out to sing again. This time Guy was too absorbed in his own talk to notice her. Harriet looked towards Ionescu’s table, but there was no one there. Florica,