The Porcupine (13 page)

The prosecutor was on his feet, the President of the Court was consulting with his assessors, but Stoyo Petkanov continued to bellow at his adversary. ‘Don’t you deny it. I have seen the photographs. She was very well built. I congratulate you. I have seen the photographs. Tell me, what is corruption? I congratulate you. I have seen the photographs.’

The judge brought the session to a hasty close, the TV
director faded down the sound while instructing Camera Number 1 to stay tight on the prosecutor’s alarmed features,
the students were momentarily silent
, Stefan’s grandmother cackled to herself quietly in the kitchen while the television played to an empty sitting-room, and Peter Solinsky, when he returned home, furious and betrayed, found that a bed had been made up for him on the floor of his study. He would sleep there, with only the distant Alyosha for company, until the end of the trial.

And that weak cunt with birdshit on his head had been such a hypocrite, such a betrayer of Socialism. When Gorbachev came on his round of urgent consultations, which consisted of informing his oldest, closest allies that he would drop them down the crapper unless they stumped up some of Uncle Sam’s hot, hard dollars, he had offered him the boldest deal in the country’s political history.

‘Comrade Chairman,’ he had said, ‘I propose a full integration of our two countries.’ What a stroke! At the very time when rumour-mongers and the lackeys of the capitalist press were producing ever more slander about the imminent collapse of Socialism, at that precise moment to be able to say: look, Socialism is growing and developing, look how two great socialist nations join their destinies together, how the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics now has a sixteenth member! How that would have confounded the slanderers!

But Gorbachev had turned his proposal down without even the courtesy of reflection. He had made the same offer to Brezhnev a decade earlier, and at least Leonid had considered it for some months before expressing fraternal
regret. Whereas Gorbachev had been contemptuous. ‘That is not what we understand by restructuring,’ he had replied, going on to suggest that Petkanov’s revolutionary plan was motivated by a desire to avoid paying his oil bill.

Now the world could see what that self-important fool meant by restructuring. He meant letting the USSR — what Lenin built, what Stalin and Brezhnev defended — he meant letting all that go fuck itself. He meant letting the republics fuck off whenever it pleased them. He meant bringing the Red Army home from its fraternal stationings. He meant getting on the cover of
Time
magazine. He meant ducking for dollars like a whore in the lobby of the Sheraton Hotel. He meant sucking Reagan’s dick and then sucking Bush’s. And when the republics thumbed their noses at him, when he let the Soviet Union and the cause of international Socialism be humiliated by those shitty little Baltic states, when he had his very last chance to defend the Union, to save the Party and the Revolution, to send in the fucking tanks for God’s sake, how did he react? Like a dimwit
babushka
who sees her potatoes dropping out of a hole in her string bag. Oh, there goes another one, dearie me, well it doesn’t matter, there are lots left. Oh, and another one, no, that doesn’t matter either, that little tattie wanted to get away anyhow. And oops, another, naughty little spud, still, I wasn’t hungry, was I? And the imbecile old
babushka
gets home and the string bag is empty. But it doesn’t matter, because
dedushka
hasn’t had the strength to raise his hand to her in years. ‘All them tatties is gone,’ she tells him. ‘Let’s have warm water again for supper.’ ‘That’s what we had yesterday,’ says
dedushka
complainingly. ‘You’ll get used to it,’ she replies, running the tap. ‘Anyway, most of them tatties was rotten.’

And that cunt in the Kremlin had been such a hypocrite
too. Of course Petkanov was not suggesting that his proposed political union take place instantly, without discussion, without a full consideration of economic factors. His offer had been, at this stage anyway, primarily an expression of solidarity, goodwill and intent. Whereas Gorbachev had reacted as if his motive was one of short-term economic gain, as if his bold scheme amounted to no more than a desire to get his country’s debt cancelled.

And what had been happening all the while? Gorbachev was busy selling the DDR to the Federal Republic.
Selling
the East to the West. Sixteen million socialist citizens put into the biggest slave auction in the history of mankind, with all their land and houses and cattle and enterprises. Why didn’t anyone protest about
that
? A few malcontents and hooligans in the last days of Erich’s helmsmanship whined about the necessary restrictions on the right to travel. But did anyone complain about being sold like pigs in a farmers’ market? Sixteen million citizens of the DDR in exchange for 34 billion Deutschmarks — that was the deal Gorbachev struck with Kohl in one of the vilest and blackest deeds in the history of Socialism. And then, at the end, Gorbachev squeezed an extra 7 billion Deutschmarks out of Kohl, and went home very pleased with himself, idiot
babushka
that he was. Forty-one billion Deutschmarks was the price of betrayal nowadays, Socialism’s thirty pieces of silver. And they let him do it. The army, the KGB, the Politburo, between them they put together one feeble botched coup. They let him do it, they let him give it all away.

‘What the echo of the wall tells/Is the rotting of the stone and not the souls!’ But the smell coming out of Mother Russia recently was the stink of rotting souls.

‘I think you would like to hear a joke now,’ said Atanas.

‘How you anticipate our every need.’

‘Do I?’

‘That’s how you’ll know to pass me another beer before telling your joke.’

‘You have the idleness of a man with two years’ national debt around his neck.’

‘Get on with it, Atanas.’

‘This is a story of the plains, concerning three men whom I shall name Ghele, Voute and Gyore. It is a particularly appropriate tale for those who cannot fetch their own beer. One day, these three worthy peasants were lazing beside the Iskur river and talking generally among themselves, as people are apt to in such stories.

‘ “Now, Ghele,” said one of the others, “if you were a king, and had all the powers of a king, what would you most like to do?”

‘Ghele thought for a while and finally said, “Well, that’s a tricky one. I think I would make myself some porridge and put into it as much lard as I liked. Then I wouldn’t need anything else.”

‘ “What about you, Voute?”

‘Voute thought for quite a bit longer than Ghele, and eventually he said, “I know what I would do. I would bury myself in straw and just lie there for as long as I pleased.”

‘ “And what about you, Gyore?” said the other two. “What would you do if you were a king and had all the powers of a king?”

‘Well, Gyore thought about this for an even longer time than the others. He scratched his head and shifted around on the bank and chewed on a grassy stalk and thought and thought and got crosser and crosser. In the end, he said,
“Damn it. You two have already picked the best things. There isn’t anything left for me.” ’

‘Atanas, is that a joke from the period after the Changes, from the dark days of Communism, or from the earlier age of the fascistic monarchy?’

‘It is a joke for all epochs and for all people.
Beer
.’

‘General?’

‘Mr Prosecutor, sir. First, I would like to express …’

‘Don’t. Don’t bother, General. Just tell me.’

‘The top document, sir. To begin with.’

Solinsky opened the file. The first paper was headed simply
MEMORANDUM
and dated the 16th of November 1971. There was no indication at the top of any government ministry or security department. Just a half-page typed statement with two signatures attached. Not even signatures, initials. The Prosecutor General read it slowly, discarding the jargon automatically as he went. That was one of the few skills you learnt under Socialism: the ability to filter out bureaucratic distortions of the language.

The memorandum concerned the joint problems of internal dissent and external slander. There were exiles abroad paid by the Americans to broadcast lies about the Party and the government over the radio. And there were weak, easily influenceable people at home who listened to these lies and then attempted to propagate them. Slander of the State, under the criminal law, was a form of sabotage, and to be punished as such. It was at this point that Solinsky’s translation broke down. The saboteurs, he read, were to be ‘discouraged by all necessary means’.

‘ “All necessary means”?’

‘It is the strongest term,’ replied Ganin. ‘Much stronger than “necessary means”.’

‘I see.’ Perhaps the General was developing a sense of humour. ‘And where does this document come from?’

‘From the building formerly occupied by the Department of Internal Security on Lenin Boulevard. But the signatures are worth examining.’

There were two of them. Initials only. KS and SP. Kalin Stanov, then head of the DIS, later found in a stairwell with a broken neck, and Stoyo Petkanov, President of the Republic, Chairman of the Central Committee, titular head of the Patriotic Defence Forces.

‘Stanov? Petkanov?’

The General nodded.

‘Where did it turn up?’

‘As I said, in the building on Lenin Boulevard.’

‘A pity Stanov’s dead.’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Has Petkanov’s signature turned up on anything else?’

‘Not that we have discovered so far.’

‘Any indication that he understood the term “all necessary means”?’

‘With respect, Mr Prosecutor …’

‘Any evidence of specific cases, any specific authorisation, any instruction from the President, any specific reports back to him about what happened to these … these presumed saboteurs?’

‘Not so far.’

‘Then how do you imagine this might help me?’ He pushed back his chair and his eyes were shiny olives as he glared sternly at the security chief. ‘There are rules
of evidence. I am a lawyer. I am a
professor
of law,’ he added emphatically. But at that moment he did not feel particularly like one. Years ago a friend of his had seduced a peasant girl, with the help of a few bribes and certain promises he did not intend to keep. The girl, who came from a strict family, finally agreed to go into the woods with him. They had found a quiet spot and started to make love. The girl appeared to thoroughly enjoy the experience, but just as she was approaching her moment of delight, she suddenly opened her eyes and exclaimed, ‘My father is a very honest man.’ Solinsky’s friend said it had taken all his self-control not to burst out laughing.

‘Then let me speak to you for a moment as if you were not a professor of law,’ said Ganin. He seemed somehow bulkier today, as he sat across the desk from the thin-faced prosecutor. ‘We in the Patriotic Security Forces, as I have said, trust that your diligence in Criminal Law Case Number 1 will be rewarded, despite … despite recent embarrassing disclosures. It is important to hold this trial, for the good of the nation. It is equally important that the accused be found guilty.’