Free Territorial Rights by Muriel Spark

of London after that first night of his return, and on subsequent warm nights when they had taken a boat down the river all day under the blazing sun. More and more she wanted to hear about the ‘sociology’ of the West. She slept with Serge as if he was a bourgeois sea with the waves breaking over her. She told him she had found out a lot more recently about her father; he had been ‘killed in the war’ only so far as it was during the war that he died, and his calling had something to do with the court of King Boris, but he had not been in the army, he had been in the Bulgarian consular service; what he had been doing actually during the war in Venice, where they said he was buried, she did not know, since there never had been a Bulgarian consulate in Venice. Lina said she would like to find out, and meant to travel to Italy one day.
    That would be a good thing, said Serge; she ought to travel. One could appreciate the Republic of Bulgaria better having been away for a while.
    She already had a job as an art teacher in a secondary school. Many years after Serge’s return, Lina managed to get a trip to Paris with an educational group tour. There, on the day before she was due to return, she left her hotel, left the group, went to the police station and defected. ‘Name: Lina Pancev … Sex: female … Occupation: painter and teacher of art, advanced grades. Degree in Education 2nd Class. University of Sofia, Bulgaria. Former residence Sofia, Bulgaria. The above-described individual states that she seeks refuge in the West for political and ideological reasons. We are informed that her group …’
    This had been a year before she met Robert Leaver in Paris. At first, she had caused a public stir; her name was in all the newspapers of Western Europe ‘Red Girl Painter Defects’ and ‘Balkan Woman Artist Makes Getaway’: ‘Lina Pancev a top Bulgarian artist was today reported to be in hiding under the protection of wellwishers after her defection Tuesday. Pancev, who also teaches art, left her group of Bulgar educationists, requesting asylum from the French government and pleading that she had been followed for over one year by the secret police and she “couldn’t stand it any more”. She made her bid for freedom at 11 a.m. yesterday and is being held in a secret location while her position is being clarified. Miss Pancev had declared herself fearful of reprisals by Balkan agents in Paris.’
    She made friends with a girl ballet-dancer who had defected from Romania and a young man who had positively fled from Czechoslovakia; she was taken up and put down again by several hostesses of the art world; she was taken on a trip to London. She lamented the lack of her own former paintings which she despaired of getting out of Bulgaria: ‘I have nothing to show. I can’t get my work out.’ She painted some men fishing in the Seine, but nobody bought her pictures.
    Lina could never understand the illogic of the West. ‘What have we defected for?’ she used to say, along with some of the more obscure refugees from communist countries who used to gather together in certain cafes or sometimes in the Orthodox churches on a Sunday. In London, Lina thought that the charwomen, going to work in Hampstead where she insisted on staying, were far too well dressed, not nearly shabby enough in comparison to the housewives who employed them.
    She was at first less followed by secret agents than she thought she was. Very hard, she tried to trace the address of ‘Deborah’, the girl-friend whom Serge had described with semi-ridicule. The glamour of that woman and all her circumstances which had so gripped Lina, grew as she looked from face to face; long hair, long skirts, no make-up, not very pretty, rich and with alimony, very careless, very untidy. There were plenty of Deborahs, no matter which was the real one. Lina was unable to make her own good hair untidy, but she went into long dresses. She had boy-friends and slept with