Sofia in Venice died a natural death, while his friend Victor Pancev was killed. This was all that could ever be ascertained afterwards by his friends. Who killed him and why, nobody knew. It was said that he was killed by monarchist agents of Bulgaria who suspected him of having been part of the plot to poison King Boris. But the two maidservants who remained in the Villa testified only that he was found dead in the garden and that his body was ‘taken away’.
The two servants were Katerina and Eufemia. They inherited the Villa under the will of the old count, who had no relatives at his death; it was supposed they were his illegitimate daughters.
Lina Pancev grew up in communist Bulgaria in the midst of a large family of cousins, uncles, aunts, and step-brothers, for as soon as Victor Pancev’s death was officially established his widow had married again.
Lina had no interest in the past, King Boris and all that set about whom her elders sometimes let fall nostalgic phrases, even sentences. She had an early talent for drawing; later she learned to paint objects with photographic exactitude, and to portray people a little larger than life. She did views of monasteries, hills and landscapes, cloudscapes, flowers on a table; she went to the Black Sea and did work-groups at the docks all looking in the same direction, very tanned; and she excelled at women, large and strong, coming out of a shoe factory near her home, all looking healthy and refreshed after a good day’s work. These women were in some demand from Lina’s hand. It might have been, when she finished her studies in applied architecture at the university, that she could have been able to earn her living by her paintings alone.
One summer, her second cousin and boy-friend, Serge, returned from London, having spent six months there on a student exchange programme. Lina sat by the open window, doing nothing, with the flower-boxes of pink geraniums on the sill beside her, listening to Serge as he talked during the long summer evening. He was lean-faced, tall and idealistic, with vivid large brown eyes and a dark skin.
Lina’s mother came in with a bowl of fruit, jaunty, still with her slim figure, her hair smartly cut, her dimples and pointed chin. She laughed as Serge, without waiting for the knife and the fruit-plate to come, took a peach and bit right into it with his white teeth. Lina laughed, too. The mother left the room and Serge continued to talk against the noise of traffic and children in the street below.
He spoke in the manner of his own education; automatically he exaggerated, and he meant it. England, he said, was full of ideological contradictions. They were hypocrites, especially the young people; their left-wing movement was a laugh. Nice people sometimes, but only because of their innocence; they simply did not know themselves, and how truly they were bloated capitalists. Three meals a day, and always money in their pockets; you couldn’t distinguish between them and the Americans.
Most of all Serge talked about the woman in Hampstead he had stayed with for a while; it was a love-affair ‘at least if you call it a love-affair when there’s no illusion of permanency on either side’.
Lina prepared a supper of ham omelettes; she laid two places, for they were alone in the house, her step-brothers and sisters being either in the country with relatives or at a youth camp, and her mother gone off to play cards, her step-father working late in the shipping office where he was a manager, international section. Lina told Serge to stop eating the fruit lest he spoil his appetite, and to save up his story while she went to prepare the supper. She felt the woman in Hampstead was the part of his tale she was hungry for, like supper. Swiftly she cut the bread and bore it in with the omelettes, all on one tray, with the tomato and cucumber salad.
‘Well, what about her, your London woman?’ she said after they had started to eat. Serge,
The two servants were Katerina and Eufemia. They inherited the Villa under the will of the old count, who had no relatives at his death; it was supposed they were his illegitimate daughters.
Lina Pancev grew up in communist Bulgaria in the midst of a large family of cousins, uncles, aunts, and step-brothers, for as soon as Victor Pancev’s death was officially established his widow had married again.
Lina had no interest in the past, King Boris and all that set about whom her elders sometimes let fall nostalgic phrases, even sentences. She had an early talent for drawing; later she learned to paint objects with photographic exactitude, and to portray people a little larger than life. She did views of monasteries, hills and landscapes, cloudscapes, flowers on a table; she went to the Black Sea and did work-groups at the docks all looking in the same direction, very tanned; and she excelled at women, large and strong, coming out of a shoe factory near her home, all looking healthy and refreshed after a good day’s work. These women were in some demand from Lina’s hand. It might have been, when she finished her studies in applied architecture at the university, that she could have been able to earn her living by her paintings alone.
One summer, her second cousin and boy-friend, Serge, returned from London, having spent six months there on a student exchange programme. Lina sat by the open window, doing nothing, with the flower-boxes of pink geraniums on the sill beside her, listening to Serge as he talked during the long summer evening. He was lean-faced, tall and idealistic, with vivid large brown eyes and a dark skin.
Lina’s mother came in with a bowl of fruit, jaunty, still with her slim figure, her hair smartly cut, her dimples and pointed chin. She laughed as Serge, without waiting for the knife and the fruit-plate to come, took a peach and bit right into it with his white teeth. Lina laughed, too. The mother left the room and Serge continued to talk against the noise of traffic and children in the street below.
He spoke in the manner of his own education; automatically he exaggerated, and he meant it. England, he said, was full of ideological contradictions. They were hypocrites, especially the young people; their left-wing movement was a laugh. Nice people sometimes, but only because of their innocence; they simply did not know themselves, and how truly they were bloated capitalists. Three meals a day, and always money in their pockets; you couldn’t distinguish between them and the Americans.
Most of all Serge talked about the woman in Hampstead he had stayed with for a while; it was a love-affair ‘at least if you call it a love-affair when there’s no illusion of permanency on either side’.
Lina prepared a supper of ham omelettes; she laid two places, for they were alone in the house, her step-brothers and sisters being either in the country with relatives or at a youth camp, and her mother gone off to play cards, her step-father working late in the shipping office where he was a manager, international section. Lina told Serge to stop eating the fruit lest he spoil his appetite, and to save up his story while she went to prepare the supper. She felt the woman in Hampstead was the part of his tale she was hungry for, like supper. Swiftly she cut the bread and bore it in with the omelettes, all on one tray, with the tomato and cucumber salad.
‘Well, what about her, your London woman?’ she said after they had started to eat. Serge,
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