Days of Your Fathers by Geoffrey Household Read Free Book Online

because a singer was off form. I could not deny that the flames were out, but that was all.
    The next song was a doina . She started so artificially that I assumed she was bored and impatient to return to Vitalianu. Up to the middle of the first verse I could see that the expert, too, was doubting his theory.
    And then, I suppose, in spite of her armour of blind misery, she realised what she was singing: a lament. It is a thing we have forgotten in the uniformity of our urban life. Lament. There will be a soldier here and there who knows what it means. He may have heard the cry of the bugle, over a lonely burial, follow the spirit into the sharp, foreign air, or listened to the ‘Flowers of the Forest’ while tears, unnoticed, spread over the grim face of the piper.
    That was the quality of Firefly’s doina , for she had found in it the expression of her agony. As the voice soared and wailed and broke, I heard – I was in no state to see anything – a meaningless string of code-words and code-names dictated into the telephone. They punctuated the terrible melody of grief, staccato as the sounds of men killing each other in the distance while still you stand by a grave.

Keep Walking
    She strolled quickly away from the post box, knowing that the game was up. This was the end, and she was not prepared for it. She had always expected it to come – if it had to come – at home or in the course of some police check. But evidently they had not found out her name. They only knew about the post box and the timing. She would learn how they knew after her second or third interrogation. If she had then any curiosity left. There was nothing for it but to keep walking until those two security agents came alongside and gripped her arms.
    The trick had worked for nearly a year. She posted her reports just before the box was cleared; the envelope would then be at the top or conspicuous among the top four or five. Thus it was easy for the postman to pocket and pass on the letter. One had only to be sure that the right man was on the collection round. It had even been possible, in an emergency, to by-pass the censorship of foreign mail.
    She had not given herself away by any change of expression or sudden movement. She could count on that. After dropping the letter in the box she had continued on her way at an even pace. Behind her eyes remained a photograph of the scene. She had time to run it through memory and develop it as she walked.
    On the opposite pavement, where usually there was only a handful of women scurrying home to prepare lunch, two men had been talking together. They were in no way remarkable. They might have been two door-to-door salesmen or canvassers comparing notes. It was the greatest luck that she knew one of them by sight; the most abominable luck that she had not spotted him before the letter was posted.
    The photograph also showed two more men on her side of the street, looking in a shop window. They might be innocent passers-by but, if they were not, they fell neatly into the composition. One pair would wait until the collection was made from the box; the other pair would make the arrest.
    She did not look round. She tried to believe herself a plain, respectable citizen so that neither her walk, her back nor her hands could possibly suggest guilt. Now, what would experienced police agents do? Their case could not yet be quite complete. It would be unshakeable as soon as that envelope at the top of the box was opened. But for the moment? Well, since their suspect appeared unworried and tripping along fairly purposefully, they would tail her; it might be profitable to find out where she was going and to whom she talked.
    But they could take no risks of losing her. If she hailed a taxi or jumped on a bus, that would be the end. She could not be allowed to break contact. They would instantly obstruct any move which gave her the slightest chance of escaping.
    So keep walking. A harmless human