‘I shall not, I imagine, be needing the petrol.’ Petkanov gave a chuckle which invited complicity. ‘Perhaps you might …?’ But the officer was already shrinking away. ‘No, I understand. And they would only add a charge of attempting to bribe a member of the Patriotic Defence Forces, wouldn’t they?’
The militiaman did not reply. ‘Anyway,’ Petkanov continued, like someone theoretically interested in having a new game demonstrated to him, ‘anyway, tell me how it works.’
‘Each coupon represents a week’s supply of the goods listed on the ticket. You are responsible for the rate at which you consume rationed goods.’
‘What about sausages? I do not see them here. My love of sausages is well known.’ He seemed more puzzled than complaining.
‘There are no coupons for sausages. The fact is, sir, there are no sausages in the shops, and therefore it would be useless issuing coupons for them.’
‘Logical,’ replied the former President. He began tearing off one ticket from each coloured sheet. ‘I will not be needing the petrol, for obvious reasons. Bring me the rest.’ And he thrust the confetti at the officer.
An hour later, a soldier returned with one loaf of bread, 200 grams of butter, a small cabbage, two meatballs, 100 grams of white cheese and 100 grams of yellow cheese, half a litre of cooking oil (a month’s supply), 300 grams of washing-powder (ditto) and half a kilogram of flour. Petkanov asked him to set them down on the table and bring him a knife, a fork and a glass of water. Then, beneath the formal eyes of the two militiamen, he ate the meatballs, the white cheese and the yellow cheese, the raw cabbage, the bread and the butter. He pushed back his plate, briefly eyeing the washing-powder, cooking oil and flour, then went to his narrow, iron-framed bed and lay down.
In mid-afternoon the senior militiaman returned. In some confusion, as if he himself was partly to blame, he said to the supine prisoner, ‘You do not seem to have understood. As I explained …’
Petkanov swung his short legs on to the noisy boards and marched the few metres across to the officer. He stood very close and poked the greeny-grey uniform hard, just below the left collar-bone. Then he poked again. The militiaman stepped back, not so much from the assaulting finger as from his first true close-up of a face whose image had dominated all his previous life; a face now lifted hectoringly up at him.
‘Colonel,’ the former President began, ‘I do not intend to use my washing-powder. I do not intend to use my cooking oil or my flour. You may have observed that I am not a baba in an apartment block beyond the boulevards. The people you now choose to serve may have fucked up the economy so that you all have to live with this … confetti. But when you served me,’ – he emphasised this with another hefty prod – ‘when you were loyal to me, to the People’s Socialist Republic, you will recall that there was food in the shops. You will recall that there were sometimes queues, but there was none of this shit. So you go away, and from now on you bring me socialist rations. And you can tell Prosecutor General Solinsky, first that he can go fuck himself, and second that if he wants me to eat washing-powder for the rest of the week he personally will bear the consequences.’
The officer had retreated. From then on meals arrived normally for Stoyo Petkanov. He got yoghurt as often as he requested it. Twice there had even been sausage. The former President made jokes about washing-powder to his guards, and each time food came he told himself that things were not lost, that they underestimated him at their peril.
He had also compelled them to fetch his wild geranium. At the time of his illegal arrest the soldiers had made him leave it behind. But everyone knew that Stoyo Petkanov, faithful to the soil of his nation, slept with a wild geranium beneath his bed. Everyone knew that. So after a day or two they capitulated. He had pruned the plant with his nail scissors to make it fit under his low prison bed, and ever since he had slept better.
Now he was waiting for Solinsky. He stood two metres from the window, his left foot toeing the white line. Some incompetent had attempted to paint a smooth semicircle on the pine boards, but his arm must have trembled, either from fear or drink, as he dragged his clogging brush. Were they really worried about an attempt on his life, as they claimed? If he were them he would have welcomed one, and let him stand wherever he wanted. In those first few days, whenever they took him from his room a sudden scene ran through his head: a halt by some grubby metal door in the basement, an oiled release from the handcuffs, a push in the back and a cry of ‘Run!’ to which he would instinctively respond, and then a final concussion. Why they hadn’t done it he couldn’t imagine; and their indecision gave him another reason for contempt.
He heard the militiaman’s heels click as Solinsky arrived, but did not turn his head. In any case, he knew what to expect: a plump, greasy boy in a shiny Italian suit with an ingratiating expression on his face, the counter-revolutionary son of a counter-revolutionary, the shitty son of a shit. He continued gazing out of the window for a few more seconds, then said, without deigning to look round, ‘So, now even your women are protesting.’
‘It is their right.’
‘Who next? Children? Gypsies? Mental defectives?’
‘It is their right,’ Solinsky repeated evenly.
‘It may be their right, but what does it mean? A government that cannot keep its women in the kitchen is fucked, Solinsky, fucked.’
‘Well, we shall see, shan’t we?’
Petkanov nodded to himself and finally turned. ‘Anyway, how are you, Peter?’ He bustled across, extending his hand to the Prosecutor General. ‘We haven’t met for far too long. Congratulations on your … recent fortune.’ Not a boy any more, he had to admit, and no longer plump: sallow, thinnish, neat; hair beginning to recede. For the moment he looked thoroughly at ease with himself. Well, that would change.
‘We haven’t met’, Solinsky replied, ‘since my party card was withdrawn and I was denounced in Truth as a fascist sympathiser.’
Petkanov laughed easily. ‘It seems to have done you no harm. Or do you wish you were still in the Party today? Membership is not closed, you know.’
The Prosecutor General sat down at the table and laid his hands on a manila file in front of him. ‘I understand that you have attempted to refuse legal representation.’
‘Correct.’ Petkanov stayed on his feet, judging this tactically advantageous.
‘It would be advisable …’
‘Advisable? I spent thirty-three years making the fucking laws, Peter, I know what they mean.’
‘Nevertheless, State Advocate Milanova and State Advocate Zlatarova have been appointed by the court to act as your defence counsel.’
‘More women! Tell them not to bother.’
‘They are ordered to appear before the court and will act as required.’
‘We shall see. And how is your father, Peter? Not too well, I hear?’
‘The cancer is advanced.’
‘I am sorry. You will embrace him on my behalf when next you see him.’
‘I doubt it.’
The former President watched Solinsky’s hands: they were thin, with black hair down to the middle knuckle; bony, fleshless fingertips pattered nervously on the pale cardboard. Deliberately, Petkanov pressed on. ‘Peter, Peter, your father and I were old comrades. How are his bees, by the way?’
‘The bees?’
‘Your father keeps bees, I understand.’
‘Since you ask, they are sick too. Many are born without wings.’
Petkanov grunted, as if this showed ideological deviationism on their part. ‘We fought the Fascists together, your father and I.’
‘And then you purged him.’
‘Socialism is not built without sacrifice. Your father understood that once. Before he started waving his conscience around like it was his prick.’
‘You should have stopped that sentence earlier.’
‘Which one?’
‘Socialism is not built. You should have stopped there. That would have done.’
&n
bsp; ‘So, do you plan to hang me? Or do you prefer the firing squad? I must ask my distinguished female defence counsel what has been decided. Or am I expected to throw myself from this window here? Is that why I’m not allowed near it until the right time?’
When Solinsky declined to reply, the former President sat down heavily opposite him. ‘Whose laws are you charging me under, Peter? Your laws or my laws?’
‘Oh, your laws. Your constitution.’
‘And what will you find me guilty of?’ The tone was brisk yet collusive.
‘I would find you guilty of many things. Theft. Embezzlement of state funds. Corruption. Speculation. Currency offences. Profiteering. Complicity in the murder of Simeon Popov.’
‘Not something I knew about. I thought he died of a heart attack, anyway.’
‘Complicity in torture. Complicity in attempted genocide. Innumerable conspiracies to pervert the course of justice. What you will actually be charged with is to be announced in the next few days.’
Petkanov grunted, as if sizing up some deal on offer. ‘No rape, at least. I thought that’s what those women were demonstrating about, that according to Prosecutor General Solinsky I had raped them all. But I understand they were only protesting against the fact that there is now less food in the shops than at any time under Socialism.’
‘I am not here’, replied Solinsky stiffly, ‘to discuss the difficulties inherent in the changeover from a controlled economy to a market economy.’
Petkanov chuckled. ‘Congratulations, Peter. My congratulations.’
‘On what?’
‘That sentence. I heard your father’s voice in it. Are you sure you don’t want to rejoin our renamed organisation?’
‘I shall talk to you next in court.’
Petkanov continued to chuckle as the prosecutor gathered up his papers and left. Then he went over to the young militiaman who had been present throughout the interview. ‘Did you enjoy that, my boy?’
‘I didn’t hear anything,’ the soldier replied implausibly.
‘There are difficulties inherent in the changeover from a controlled economy to a market economy,’ repeated the former President. ‘There’s no food in the fucking shops.’
Would they shoot him? Well, there were no bears in the ground. No, they probably wouldn’t: they didn’t have the guts. Or rather, they knew better than to make a martyr of him. Much better to discredit him. Which is what he wouldn’t let them do. They would stage the trial their way, how it suited them, lying and cheating and fixing evidence, but maybe he’d have a few tricks for them too. He wasn’t going to play the part allotted him. He had a different script in mind.
Nicolae. They shot him. On Christmas Day, too. Yes, but in hot blood, chased him from his palace, followed his helicopter, trailed his car, dragged him out before what they laughably called a people’s court, found him guilty of murdering 60,000 people, shot him, shot them both, Nicolae and Elena, just like that, nail down the vampire, that’s what someone had said, nail down the vampire before the sun sets and he learns to fly again. That’s what it had been, fear. It wasn’t the people’s rage, or whatever they called it for the western media, it was simple brown-trousered fear. Nail him down, quick, this is Rumania, thrust a stake through his heart, nail him down. Well, there are no bears in the ground.
And then almost the first thing they’d done in Bucharest afterwards was hold a fashion show. He’d seen it on television, tarts displaying their breasts and legs, and some woman designer sneering at Elena’s dress sense, telling the world how the Conducator’s wife had ‘bad taste’ and dismissing her style as ‘classical peasant’. Petkanov remembered that phrase and its intonation. So this is where we are now, which is where we were before, with snooty bourgeois whores sneering at how the proletariat dressed. What did a man need clothes for? Only to keep warm and to hide his shame. You could always tell when a comrade was showing deviationist tendencies, he would be off to Italy for a shiny suit and come back looking like a gigolo or a pederast. Just like Comrade Prosecutor General Solinsky after his fraternal visit to Turin. Yes, that had been an interesting little business. He was glad he had a memory for such things.
Gorbachev. You only had to look at the people surrounding him to see there was going to be trouble. That nose-in-the-air wife of his with her Paris frocks and American Express card and her competition for best-dressed capitalist wife with Nancy Reagan. Gorbachev couldn’t even keep his own wife in line, so what chance was there of him stopping the counter-revolution once it had started? Not that he’d wanted to. You could see those gigolos he travelled with, all his advisers and special representatives and personal spokesmen who couldn’t wait for their foreign trips to get some Italian tailor crawling up their legs. That spokesman, what was he called, the one the capitalists loved, he had a shiny suit. The one who said the Brezhnev Doctrine was dead. The one who said it had been replaced by the Frank Sinatra Doctrine.
That was another moment when he’d realised that everything was fucked. The Sinatra Doctrine. I did it my way. But there was only one way, one true scientific path of Marxism-Leninism. To say that the nations of the Warsaw Pact were being allowed to do things their way was as good as saying, We don’t care any more about Communism, let’s just hand it all over to the American bandits, fuck it all. And what a phrase to choose. The Sinatra Doctrine. Toadying to Uncle Sam like that. And who was Sinatra? Some Italian in a shiny suit who went around with the Mafia all the time. Someone Nancy Reagan went down on her knees to. Yes, that made sense. It all started with Frank Sinatra, the whole fucking thing. Sinatra fucked Nancy Reagan in the White House, that’s what they said, didn’t they? Reagan couldn’t control his wife. Nancy had a dressing-up competition with Raisa. Gorbachev couldn’t control his wife. And Gorbachev’s spokesman says we’re all going to follow the Frank Sinatra Doctrine. The Elvis Presley Doctrine. The McDonald’s Hamburger Doctrine. The Doctrine of Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck.
His Department of External Security had once shown him a document passed on by their fraternal colleagues in the KGB. It was an FBI report on the safety of the American President, his levels of protection, and so forth. Petkanov always remembered one particular detail: that the place where the American President felt most safe, and where the FBI considered him most safe, was in Disneyland. No American assassin would dream of shooting him there. It would be sacrilege, it would be an offence against the great gods of Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck. This was what it had said in an FBI report conveyed to Petkanov’s Department of External Security by the KGB in case such information might prove useful to them. For Petkanov it had confirmed the infantile nature of the Americans who would soon be invading his country and buying it all up. Welcome, Uncle Sam, come and build a big Disneyland here, so that your President will feel safe, and you can listen to your Frank Sinatra records and laugh at us all because you think we are ignorant peasants who don’t know how to dress.
They had to be witnesses, Vera insisted. All four of them together: Vera, Atanas, Stefan and Dimiter. This was a great moment in their country’s history, a farewell to grim childhood and grey, fretful adolescence. It was the end of lies and illusions; now the time had arrived when truth was possible, when maturity began. How could they be absent from that?
Besides, they had been together from the start, from that recent, distant month when it had felt almost like a lark, an excuse for the boys to hang around Vera and flirt with her safely. They had gone along to those first anxious protests, uncertain what they could say, how far they could go. They had watched and marched and shouted as it had all turned serious and stiflingly passionate. Terrifying, too: they had been together when that friend of Pavel’s had been half-crushed by an armoured car on Liberation Boulevard, when the militiamen guarding the presidential palace had lost their nerve and started hitting women with their rifles. Several times they had run from gunfire, shit-scared, dodging into doorways, linking arms and trying to protect Vera. But they had also been there when it had begun to
feel like pushing at a loose, worm-eaten old door, when the soldiers grinned and winked at them, and shared their cigarettes. And not long afterwards they knew they were winning because even some Communist Party deputies had wanted to show their faces at the demonstrations.
‘Rats jumping ship,’ commented Atanas. ‘Weasels.’ He was a student of languages, a drinker and a poet, who liked to claim that his scepticism disinfected the germy souls of the other three.
‘We can’t purify the human race,’ Vera told him.
‘Why not?’
‘There’ll always be opportunists. You just have to make sure that they’re on your side.’
‘I don’t want them on my side.’
‘They don’t count, Atanas, they don’t matter. They just show who’s winning.’
And then, with a final push on the door, Stoyo Petkanov was gone, overnight, not allowed to pretend he was ill or making way for his successor, just packed off by the Central Committee to his house in the north-east province with a five-man guard for his own protection. At first that finger-in-the-wind deputy of his, Marinov, had tried to hold the Party together as a conservative reformist, but within weeks he was stretched and snapped on his own rack of incompatibilities. Then events began to blur like bicycle spokes; yesterday’s improbable rumour became tomorrow’s stale news. The Communist Party voted to suspend its leading role in the nation’s political and economic development, renamed itself the Socialist Party, urged a Front for National Salvation involving all main political organisations, and when this was turned down, called for elections as soon as possible. Which the opposition parties didn’t want, or at least not yet, since their structures were rudimentary and the Socialists (formerly Communists) still controlled state radio and television and most of the publishing houses and printing works, but the opposition was obliged to take its chance and won enough seats to put the Socialists (formerly Communists) on the defensive, although the Socialists (formerly Communists) still had a majority, which western commentators found incomprehensible, and the government was still inviting the opposition parties to join in and save the nation, but the opposition parties kept saying, No, you fucked it up, you sort it out, and if you can’t sort it out, resign, and then things stumbled on with half-reforms and wrangles and insults and frustration and fear and black markets and rising prices and more half-reforms, so that none of it was heroic, or at least not in the way some had anticipated – a valiant hussar sabring through the rope of slavery – instead it was just heroic in the way that work could be heroic. Vera thought it had been like slowly prising open the fingers of a fist closed tight for half a century, a fist which held a gilded pine-cone. At last the cone fell free, badly crushed out of shape, and heavily tarnished by the sweat of years; but even in this form its weight was still the same, and its beauty just as treasured.