Free Shadow of a Hero by Peter Dickinson Page A

not to seem rude.
    ‘Letta speaks good Varinian,’ said Grandad, ‘so there’s no need for you to deploy your linguistic skills. They have come from Potok to see me, my darling. We are all three amazed that such a thing is possible.’
    ‘That’s wonderful!’ said Letta. ‘My first real Varinians! You must have been there during the uprising? What happened? They never even mentioned Varina on the news over here, not once.’
    Mr Dashik smiled and shook his head in a puzzled way.
    ‘Everything happened,’ he said. ‘It was like a dream, a dream in which happenings rush at you and are gone and before you know who or where you are, another happening is rushing at you and you have no time to remember anything. Like that. At first we were so afraid. The police seemed to know everything. But there were rumours, and in certain places on the mountains one could pick up Italian TV reports, and crowds began to gather in Potok and the police told them to disperse and fired on them when they did not go and killed three men and two women and a child – I was there, and I saw it happen – and we began to throw stones. Then more police came and more crowds, and they chased us through the streets but we gathered again and threw stones. But many of the police were unwilling to shoot. In Varina, you know, everybody is somebody’s cousin . . .’
    ‘You mean the police were Varinians!’ said Letta.
    ‘Some of them, of course,’ said Mr Dashik, surprised that she didn’t realize.
    ‘The local Secretary of the Communist Party was my sister’s husband’s uncle,’ said Mr Kronin. ‘He was a hard-line Ceau ş escu supporter and had done very well for himself. Everybody was afraid of him. He came out into the Square thinking to cow the uprising with the terror of his presence, but the crowd caught him and hanged him. I was not there, but if I had been I wouldn’t have lifted a finger to save him, family or not family.’
    ‘And then the people in Belgrade took over the broadcasts and told us that the Ceau ş escus had been executed,’ said Mr Dashik. ‘And by now a lot of the police had changed sides, so we had guns and we could shoot back, and Mr Kronin here led the party that took over the Communist headquarters where they were still trying to destroy all their files . . .’
    ‘It was a great shock to read the files and discover how many people one trusted had been in the pay of the police,’ said Mr Kronin. ‘Good friends, neighbours, colleagues at work, drinking companions . . .’
    He shook his head.
    There was a silence. It was like when somebody’s died and their name comes up. There was a boy called Mickey in another class at school who’d been hit by a runaway truck last spring. Like that.
    ‘I suppose you had to read them,’ said Letta.
    ‘Terrible things had been done,’ said Mr Dashik. ‘They could not simply be forgotten.’
    ‘As a people we have no talent for forgetting,’ said Grandad. ‘Remember
The Mountain Pasture
?’
    ‘
Anastrondaitu
,’ murmured Mr Kronin, shaking his head again. ‘I have sometimes felt that there is all our history in that one word.’
    Another silence, and then Grandad said, ‘Well, gentlemen, I hope you have time to sample the delights of the British crumpet. You will? Excellent. Letta, if you would get some more cups and crumpets and perform your office . . .’
    When the visitors had gone Grandad said, ‘What did you mean by calling our friends “real” Varinians? Am I not a real Varinian? Or Mr Jaunis or Mr Orestes? Or your momma and poppa? I will except you, for the moment.’
    He was amused, but there was a faint sharpness in his tone.
    ‘You are, of course,’ said Letta. ‘I don’t know about the others. It’s sort of shadowy. I mean, Mr Orestes seems a bit realler than Mr Jaunis, I don’t know why. I suppose Poppa might be, except that he’s become a sort of nowhere person . . . What did you call him, once?’
    ‘A citizen of