The Dragonfly Pool

But the delegation was not joking. Bergania had decided to become a republic, but they wanted a president. Not a figure of power, like the American president, but a figurehead who would coordinate the work of the assembly and represent the country. They pointed out that other European states had done the same thing, appointing playwrights or respected scientists to preside over the assembly, and they made it clear that as a Berganian, a friend of the former king, and a war hero, he was the perfect choice.

Matteo continued to say no—but he made a mistake. He returned to Bergania to help them find another candidate, and this was his undoing. He returned to the mountains that he and Johannes had climbed as children, to the streams they had fished, to the forests in which they had roamed.

There is a saying that the landscape in which a child spends the first seven years of its life will leave a mark it cannot escape. A child brought up by the sea will always carry a longing for the ocean; a town child, reared to the sound of traffic and the warm bustle of neighbors, will never quite settle in the silence of the countryside.

So it was with Matteo. Standing on the snowcapped peaks of his homeland, breathing in the pine-scented wind, he was caught.

“I’ll do it for five years,” he had said, “and then you must find someone else.”

The hall erupted into applause. The secretary announced the historic inauguration of the new Republic of Bergania. And the president rose to make a speech.

It was the shortest speech ever made by a president, but no one forgot it.

“Today sees the start of the new Republic of Bergania. I have agreed to serve as your president, but I do so because of three things: the memory of my friend Johannes who reigned as your king and gave his utmost; the example of his son, Karil, who has had the humility to reject kingship . . .”

Here Matteo had to pause because the clapping and cheers were deafening, and Karil, who was sitting with his friends, had to stand up and bow.

“And because of the people of Bergania,” he finished, “who toiled and suffered through the years of hardship and occupation and who deserve their turn in the light.”

The party went on all night. The dancing in the square, the fireworks, all the festivities, which had come to an end with the shot that killed Johannes, were unleashed. The next morning most of the visitors slept late, but two people crept out by the back door of the palace and made their way to the dragonfly pool.

It was unchanged in its stillness and its beauty.

“I suppose it all began here,” said Tally.

“Yes. When you said you would be my friend and nobody could stop you.”

“And nobody has,” said Tally. “Nor ever will.” And then: “Will you come back here to live do you think, ever?”

“Perhaps. I would like to work here one day. Not yet—but when I’ve got enough experience, try to set up clinics and hospitals. It’s because you lent me your father after mine died.”

Dr. Hamilton had not been able to keep Tally and Karil out of harm’s way in the holidays after the bombing began. They had insisted on coming back and helping in any way they could. Digging people out of the rubble, carrying stretchers to the ambulances, Karil had seen what the arrival of a doctor could mean to the injured, and when it came to choosing his profession he found that the decision was already made. He was starting at medical school in the autumn.

“But I’d need someone to help me. Someone a bit fierce maybe. The kind of person whose great-grandmother removed the socks of tramps in the London Underground.”

Tally felt no need to answer. She had known from the start that her life and Karil’s were bound up together and now she watched as he felt in his pocket for the pebble he had brought back to his homeland and dropped it into the water. Their reflections, side by side, were still there, steady and unmoving, when the surface was quiet again.

But there was one more ceremony to attend, and they had left it till the day on which they were going home. It took place out of doors, high in the mountains, at the base of the Quartz Needle, where Uncle Fritz had erected a small headstone with an inscription.

Pom-Pom had lived with the government-in-exile throughout the war, and the news that his bride had passed away in Brazil had come as a considerable relief. Uncle Fritz had intended to do what he could to save the ancient line of Outer Mongolian pedestal dogs, but the journey would have been arduous and Pom-Pom, in human terms, was already over a hundred years old. When the little dog died at last (not in Uncle Fritz’s arms but on his feet) it did not seem right that he should lie in a London pet cemetery surrounded by traffic and fumes, and since the mountains of Mongolia were out of reach, Uncle Fritz had brought his ashes back to the high peaks of Bergania and interred them there.