Jimfish (5 page)

C
HAPTER
8

East Berlin, 1989

When Jimfish tried
his cell door, it was unlocked and he wandered at will in the deserted building, lights left burning, filing cabinets open, office after office knee-deep in ribbons of shredded paper, as if someone had wanted to destroy as many files as possible. When he walked outside he was swept up in crowds chanting ‘
Wir sind eine volk!
', which, as he spoke Afrikaans, he understood to mean ‘We are one people!' But why should they insist on it? he wondered. What else could they be?

Jimfish shouldered his way through the jubilant throngs, left the deserted Stasi Headquarters and walked to the once-imposing Protection Rampart, now torn by gaping holes. A smiling border guard happily helped him to clamber through a gap into the western side of town, where an official greeted him with an envelope stuffed with a hundred German marks. Jimfish understood not a word but his benefactor's demeanour told him that the cash was ‘welcome money', a gift to spend in the gigantic
street-party that engulfed Berlin. So it was that each day he joined the joyous, tipsy crowds carousing from Karl-Marx-Allee in the East to the Kurfürstendamm in the West, returning in the evening to sleep in his old cell at Stasi Headquarters, barely aware of the days flying by. Before he knew it, November had gone and with it all but the last
pfennigs
from his stash of welcome money. From what he had seen of the heart of newly unified Berlin, Jimfish felt that the welcome cooled as his money dried up, and he knew he would have to move on.

One evening in the midst of the singing, dancing, ecstatic tumult, Jimfish noticed a small man, well muffled against the winter cold, wearing a black conical astrakhan hat. He seemed alarmed by the fierce joy of the crowds, shaking his head and repeating again and again: ‘It's time to change, it's time to change.'

‘What? Do you mean the way this country is run?' Jimfish asked him.

‘No, no,' said the little man. ‘This is not change. It's anarchy. I mean it's time for me to change my clothes and have them burnt. I have done so every morning all my life. But my staff deserted me to gape at this hysterical rabble and I've not put on a clean suit for days.'

‘But why burn your suit after wearing it just once?' Jimfish asked.

‘To protect myself against radioactive contamination. Even when I went to visit the Queen in Buckingham Palace in London I took a fresh suit for each day, as well as my own sheets. Her Majesty made me a Knight Grand
Cross of the Most Honourable Order of the Bath, but I'd give my knighthood away right now for a fresh change of clothes. And a shower.'

‘Well, if it's contamination that worries you, then steer clear of me,' warned Jimfish. ‘I've spent time in Chernobyl putting out the fire and my radioactive reading is probably off the scale.'

‘If you've been in the Soviet Union then yours will be socialist radiation from the peaceful atom. And it is to a semblance of socialist order that I must return very soon. Do you happen to know what Lenin said in 1903?'

Jimfish had to confess he did not.

‘He said: “Where one or two socialists are gathered, there the glass must be raised.” From which part of the world are you?'

‘Africa,' said Jimfish.

‘I have a great friend in Africa. He runs Libya and comes to visit us often. We are brothers under the skin. He is called “The Guide” and I am “The Genius of the Carpathians” or, if you prefer, the “Danube of Thought”. As a socialist you should get out of this country right now before you catch whatever contagion is on the loose and go back to Africa.'

‘That's not possible. I have nothing. No money and no transport,' Jimfish confessed.

‘Then come with me,' said the little man in the black conical hat who burnt his suits each day. ‘I have a helicopter waiting.'

He hurried Jimfish into a huge palace, ablaze with light. ‘This is, or was, the home of my old friend Erich, the ruler
of the German Democratic Republic, until he made an unfortunate series of missteps.'

Jimfish gazed at the blazing forests of chandeliers, neon and fairy lights that lit up the vast palace, admiring especially the veritable zoo of stuffed animal heads everywhere on the walls.

‘He owns a lot of lights, your friend.'

The Genius of the Carpathians nodded. ‘This palace is known to locals as “Erich's Lamp Shop”, because he can afford so many lights and everyone else must make do with a few weak bulbs.'

Jimfish could not help smiling and before he could compose his face, the little man frowned.

‘Allowing jokes was just one of Erich's missteps. The other mistake was his wall.'

‘You mean putting it up?' Jimfish asked.

‘Not at all.' The little man shook his head so vigorously his conical hat almost flew off. ‘His mistake was to let it fall. This is a leader who said, just the other day, that his wall will be standing in fifty or a hundred years. But as you have seen, it is being pulled down before our eyes, without so much as a by your leave! The guards who yesterday were primed to shoot escapees are today helping little old ladies to scrabble through the cracks and claim their one hundred marks welcome money from the West Germans, then head out to shop in the Kurfürstendamm. It's disgusting! Let's leave this failed state before we are polluted.'

‘Shall we switch off some of these lights first?' Jimfish asked. ‘Or Erich will face a very large electricity bill when he gets home.'

‘He's unlikely to be back this way,' said the little man. ‘He left a few hours ago for Moscow. Now follow me.' He led the way down some stairs and into a secret tunnel. ‘This is an emergency route Erich built in case he ever needed to leave quickly and quietly.'

The Genius of the Carpathians and Jimfish hurried along the tunnel beneath Erich's Lamp Shop, passing under the Schlossplatz, and came out in what had once been the stables of the German emperor on the banks of the Spree river. And here a helicopter was waiting, its rotors whirling.

C
HAPTER
9

Bucharest, Romania, 1989

As the helicopter
rose, Jimfish could see below him the wall that once divided the city pocked and perforated by the iron beaks of hundreds of human woodpeckers. The Genius of the Carpathians sat beside him, rehearsing a speech he was to make as soon as he arrived home.

‘There has been a little bit of difficulty in my country. Doubtless encouraged by the appalling events of the falling wall in Berlin. Instead of doing the decent thing and sending in the tanks, our Russian friends have been unhelpful. They keep talking about what they call “openness” and “reconstruction”. This is madness. As my old comrade Kim Il-sung likes to say, “The openness we need is found in the barrel of the gun.” And as for “reconstruction”, that's for reactionaries. We true Communists prefer cementation. Provocation must be crushed.'

The pilot of the helicopter was on the radio and told his chief what he was hearing: ‘It's more than provocation, sir. It's wholesale insurrection in Timişoara and Bucharest.'

The little man was having none of it. ‘As soon as we
touch down in my capital, I will address the cadres, structures, formations and Party elements and all dissenters will be obliterated.' And then, looking down from a great height on his capital city, he formally welcomed Jimfish to the Socialist Republic of Romania.

‘I feel I have built the place myself.'

As the chopper dropped lower, Jimfish could make out among the huge buildings tiny, ragged creatures wheeling sticks of firewood along icy boulevards. When he remarked on how lone and lost they looked, the little man in the conical astrakhan hat smiled at his ignorance.

‘Those are individuals and do not count. Only the masses have weight. When we speak, thousands are wheeled out to applaud and then loosed against the provocateurs. Wait and see.'

As they prepared to land he pointed to various landmarks. ‘You can see the Palace of the People, a monument to the Party and the masses, inspired by a similar marvel erected by my friend Kim Il-sung, that pharaoh amongst pygmies. But mine is larger.'

Jimfish said he had never in his life seen anything so big.

The Genius of the Carpathians nodded so happily his conical astrakhan hat wobbled. ‘I wanted it to be seen from outer space. To build it, we first knocked down most of the old historical centre of Bucharest, along with a couple of dozen churches, six synagogues and got rid of no fewer than thirty thousand houses.'

‘Why did you do that?' Jimfish asked.

His friend smiled. ‘My capital city was once known as
Little Paris. But I came, I demolished, I redeveloped. And Little Paris became Big Bucharest.'

The helicopter put down on the roof of a tall building that his friend identified as his home from home, the Central Committee of the Communist Party. Waiting to greet them were army officers, policemen, bodyguards and important Party officials in big caps with huge peaks and Jimfish began to appreciate how special his new friend was. Whenever he spoke, everyone in hats clapped in unison and took up the chant: ‘Ni-co-lae Cea-oooo-şes-cooo . . . Romaneeeeaaah!'

Among the welcoming party was a stern woman and she now called out to the Danube of Thought: ‘For heaven's sake, Nicolae! You look like a tramp. I can see you haven't changed your clothes in days.'

Whereupon the little man turned pale and went into a huddle of security men, in a manner Jimfish had seen on a rugby field, when a player wished to replace his torn shorts in a modest manner. When he emerged he wore a new suit, although whether his astrakhan hat had been replaced Jimfish could not tell.

‘Now burn the old suit,' ordered the stern woman. ‘It's sure to be infected with Falling Wall syndrome.'

Just how important she was Jimfish understood when his friend introduced her: ‘This is Lenuţa, Deputy Prime Minister, Mother of the Nation, Head of the Cadres Commission, Revolutionary Fighter for the Motherland, as well as being my wife.'

Lenuţa straightened Nicolae's conical hat, fussed with his scarf, buttoned his winter coat, and Jimfish was invited
to accompany the presidential couple, police officers, bodyguards and bulky Securitate agents to the balcony overlooking the gigantic square, where thousands waited in the December chill. Even though Nicolae had been rehearsing his speech on the helicopter, he was slow in getting started and mumbled a lot.

The Deputy Prime Minister kept hissing at her husband, ‘Speak up, Nicolae!'

The helicopter pilot interpreted Nicolae's remarks for Jimfish, who got the impression that depite rehearsing his speech, Nicolae was floundering. He spent long minutes greeting the municipal workers, soldiers and city councillors. The crowd muttered and hissed and, although some factory workers clapped, rattling their banners in support, the muttering and hissing in the square grew noisier as Nicolae sputtered on. Suddenly, a series of explosions that might have been fireworks or even gunshots were clearly audible. Nicolae became very irritated and banged the microphone, shouting ‘Halloo! Halloo!' in the manner of a schoolmaster chivvying his pupils. Then there began a sound no one had heard in decades, when the Genius of the Carpathians addressed the nation: a hullabaloo so brazen and impudent that everyone on the presidential balcony refused to believe what their ears told them.

‘Surely it's the wind wafting your achievements to the world,' said a Securitate officer.

‘Or a choir of owls saluting the greatness of your genius,' said a second man.

These artful attempts to explain the angry booing that interrupted Nicolae's speech from the balcony were
received in silence by the Genius of the Carpathians.

Lenuţa knew instantly that something alarming was happening, and shouted, ‘Speak to them, Nicolae!'

In the pandemonium, her orders seemed to Jimfish as fruitless as the helicopters he'd watched sprinkling sand on the flames of the Chernobyl reactors. The leader's bodyguards now decided it was time to put a good deal of space between themselves and the mob.

A Securitate man dared to interrupt the leader. Sidling up to him, he tapped Nicolae on the shoulder: ‘We could use the tunnels below the square, which you, sir, had the foresight to build.'

The Danube of Thought shook his conical hat. ‘That way we'll end up in the middle of these madmen, like moles coming up in the neighbour's garden; they'll reach for a spade and smash our heads in. Better we take the helicopter to a friendly barracks, return in force with loyal soldiers, then shoot everyone who opens his mouth.'

The functionaries on the balcony agreed this was a sound idea and hurried the presidential couple into the lift and up to the roof of the Palace of the People, while far below the angry mass in the square surged around the walls of Party Headquarters like a wild sea.

Perhaps he had come at last, Jimfish realized, face to face with the rage of the lumpenproletariat. Yet how could this be, in a land devoted to the health and happiness of just that favoured class whose champion was Nicolae Ceauşescu and whose side he was on? If history had so very many sides, however would he know the right one?

C
HAPTER
10

Târgovişte, Romania, December 1989

The helicopter was
lifting when Nicolae's wife suddenly remembered something she had forgotten.

‘We can't go without the gifts. And fresh changes of suits for Nicolae.'

So lift-off was aborted and into the strong room ran the presidential couple, and the safes were opened. Lenuţa had been referring to the official gifts with which Nicolae had been presented by many heads of state over his twenty-five years in power: leopard skins from Mobutu Sese Seko of Zaire; silver doves from the Shah of Persia; an enamelled yak from Mao Zedong; portraits of Lenin and Stalin; and even a bullet-proof limousine.

But the crowds downstairs had now broken into the building and were heading for the roof. Though Lenuţa sighed at having to leave behind shoals of shoes, forests of furs and towers of tiaras, she snatched the diamonds given to her by Jean-Bédel Bokassa, then ruler of the one-time Central African Empire. Her husband took only the moon rocks presented to him by the American President Richard
Nixon, stuffing them into his pockets, before the Securitate officers, hearing the shouts of their pursuers who were now racing up the stairs, pushed the presidential couple into the lift, which creaked and trembled as it climbed, under the combined weight of the bodyguards, then broke down on the top floor and the doors had to be forced open. By now, so terrified were Nicolae and Lenuţa, they had to be half-carried to the waiting helicopter.

Nicolae seemed to regard Jimfish as a lucky token, because he insisted he come with them. Two bodyguards climbed aboard, which meant Lenuţa had to perch uncomfortably on Jimfish's knee. But there was no time for objections; the first demonstrators were on the roof, heading for the helicopter as it lifted.

Nicolae was elated, swearing to return with troops loyal to him and to the cause. But not long into the flight, the pilot announced that they were being tracked by radar and could be blown out of the sky at any moment.

‘Then put down immediately!' Nicolae ordered, seeing a road beneath them.

As soon as they touched down, one of the Securitate men leaped out and stopped a passing car, showing his pistol by way of encouragement as he ordered the astonished driver to accept several passengers. But in the tiny car they were even more crowded than they had been in the helicopter and Nicolae was obliged to jettison his bodyguards.

It was in these cramped conditions that they arrived in a town called Târgovişte and found a house where the owner showed them to a room and promised they would
be safe. Lenuţa was wary and cautioned Nicolae with a Romanian proverb she translated for Jimfish: ‘Do not sell the skin till you have shot the bear.' But her husband ignored her.

Once the presidential couple were inside the room, Jimfish was relieved to see the owner of the house turn the key in the lock, sure that this was done to protect them. It was only when he heard Nicolae banging on the door and a troop of soldiers suddenly arrived and took up guard outside the room that Jimfish realized something was amiss.

‘What are you doing here?' he asked the soldiers.

But they did not understand him. However, the pilot who had announced to his boss – falsely it seemed – that their helicopter could be blown out of the sky at any moment, suddenly reappeared. He translated Jimfish's question for the soldiers, who were most amused and gave this answer: ‘We are here to shoot the dictator and his wife.'

‘Without a trial?' Jimfish was shocked.

‘Of course there is to be a trial. The dictator and his wife will be charged with treason, fraud, murder and embezzlement. When found guilty they will be executed.'

Jimfish felt more confused than ever. ‘But then this is not a revolution, it's a military coup.'

‘You're a simple lad,' the soldiers told him, ‘and you can't see the difference between a coup and a revolution. Where have you been all your life?'

‘I come from Africa,' Jimfish told them.

‘Ah, well,' they nodded, ‘that explains it. In Africa you
have a coup every day of the week. That's to say a violent, undemocratic takeover of the state, often by disaffected military men. Our revolution is very different. It's a spontaneous democratic uprising, led by and for the people. Anyone who calls it a coup is a counter-revolutionary simpleton and will face the same fate as the dictator, if this simpleton is not careful.'

Jimfish still failed to see the difference, though he was too polite to say so. He was keenly reminded of his own country, where show trials, run by supine judges, reduced legal tribunals to loyal mouthpieces of the regime and turned judicial chambers into kangaroo courts. His puzzlement must have been clear to the soldiers, who were gripped by a burst of missionary desire to enlighten this benighted African. When Jimfish offered to leave the house, they insisted he stay and see how much better things were done in Europe. So it was that Jimfish had a seat at the events that now unfolded.

First, the soldiers drew lots as to which of them would serve in the firing squad. Then they selected the wall against which the guilty pair would be shot the moment their trial ended. Next the haggard defendants were led into the courtroom to face the military judges. A lawyer, brought from Budapest to represent the prisoners, advised them to tell the court they were mad. Nicolae refused to recognize the legitimacy of the court, while Lenuţa – who was, it seemed, more widely known as Elena – said little.

Arriving at the verdict took no time at all.

Jimfish watched as the condemned prisoners were bound with rope and marched to the appointed wall. The
firing squad took a few steps back and then, apparently unable to wait another moment, the soldiers wheeled, opened fire and kept shooting. Other soldiers appeared at upstairs windows and joined in the fusillade, so that, for long moments after the first shots knocked Nicolae and Elena to the ground, dozens more bullets continued to buffet their bodies, making them shake and quiver as if alive.

Finally, silence settled and the bodies were carried away to be buried in unmarked graves. All those who had taken part in the execution wished each other a very happy Christmas and said it was the best gift they could have had. Jimfish briefly wondered if he should have said something about the diamonds of the Emperor Bokassa, which Elena had in her pocket, or the moon rocks from Richard Nixon that Nicolae carried, but he rather feared the soldiers would immediately dig up the bodies again.

Terrible though the scenes had been, he tried to feel grateful for being shown why a military coup was not to be confused with a revolution, and exactly where a fair trial differed from a kangaroo court. But the knowledge was bitter. He had begun to see that such things depended on a triad of useful principles: first – on who had the guns; next on who was dead when the shooting stopped; and last but most important: on who was in charge of the words used to talk about what had happened when it was all over.