The Porcupine

by Julian Barnes

  ‘You can’t see it all the year round now,’ Solinsky commented. ‘Because of the pollution. Such advances we have made.’

  ‘And we climbed all morning.’ Petkanov was unperturbed by the interruption; his story ran on tramlines. ‘The ground underfoot was rough, with many boulders, and the track was not always clear, and several times we had to cross the river of stones. It’s some … geological thing, I don’t know the name for it. Then we entered the cloud, and for some distance we couldn’t see where we were going, and we were glad that the path was clearly marked, that others had gone before us.

  ‘We were beginning to get hungry and a little disheartened, though none of the comrades complained, and our boots were wet and our muscles aching, when all of a sudden, we came out of the cloud. And there, above the cloudline, the sun was shining, the sky was blue, the snow was beginning to weep, and the air was pure. Spontaneously, without anyone planning it, we all burst into “Stepping the Red Pathway”, and just sang ourselves to the top of the mountain, linking arms and marching together.’

  Petkanov looked across at his visitor. For decades the story had provoked sighing nods of assent and wiped-away tears; all Solinsky offered him was black-eyed belligerence.

  ‘Spare me your cheap analogies,’ said the Prosecutor General. God, he had listened to them all his life, the parables, the exhortations, the made-to-measure moralities, the scraps of peasant wisdom. He quoted one that came haphazardly to mind. ‘To plant a tree, you must first dig a hole.’

  ‘That is true,’ replied Petkanov benignly. ‘Have you ever seen a tree planted without a hole being dug?’

  ‘No, I probably haven’t. On the other hand I’ve seen all too many holes dug where they forgot to plant the bloody trees.’

  ‘Peter, son of my old friend. It would be a mistake to imagine that I know nothing. I know that people live by what you call cheap analogies.’

  ‘I’m glad you said that. We always knew that deep down you despised the people, that you never trusted them. That’s why you spied on them all the time.’

  ‘Peter, Peter, you may be familiar with my voice, but you really should try to hear what I actually say. It might be useful to you in your mighty role as Prosecutor General, apart from anything else.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘So, what I said was, I know that people live by what you call cheap analogies. It is not I who despise them for doing so, but you. Your father was for some time a theoretician. Does he have nice theories about bees nowadays? You yourself are an intellectual, everyone can see that. I am merely a man of the people.’

  ‘A man of the people whose collected speeches and documents run to thirty-two volumes.’

  ‘Then, a hard-working man of the people. But I know how to speak to them, and how to listen.’ Solinsky did not even begin to protest. He was beginning to feel a certain weariness. Let the old man chatter on, they weren’t in court any more. He didn’t believe anything Petkanov said, and he doubted if the former President did either. Was there a rhetorical term to denote this kind of lop-sided conversation, in which hypocritical monologue met contemptuous silence? ‘Which means that I know what the people want. What do people want, Peter, can you tell me that?’

  ‘You seem to have appointed yourself the expert today.’

  ‘Yes, indeed, I am the expert. And what do people want? They want stability and hope. We gave them that. Things might not have been perfect, but with Socialism people could dream that one day they might be. You – you have only given them instability and hopelessness. A crime wave. The black market. Pornography. Prostitution. Foolish women gibbering in front of priests again. The so-called Crown Prince offering himself as saviour of the nation. You are proud of these swift achievements?’

  ‘There was always crime. You just lied about it.’

  ‘They sell pornography on the steps of the Mausoleum of the First Leader. You think that is funny? You think that is clever? You think that is progress?’

  ‘Well, he isn’t inside to read it.’

  ‘You think that is progress? Come on, tell me, Peter.’

  ‘I think,’ replied Solinsky, who despite his weariness retained his lawyer’s instinct for leverage, ‘I think it’s appropriate.’ Petkanov looked at him sharply. ‘The First Leader specialised in pornography, I’d say.’

  ‘There is no comparison.’

  ‘Ah, but there is, an exact one. You said you gave the people hope. No, what you gave them was fantasy. Big tits and huge cocks and everyone screwing one another endlessly, that’s what your First Leader was selling, its political equivalent anyway. Your Socialism was just such a fantasy. More of one, in fact. At least there’s some truth in what they’re selling outside the Mausoleum nowadays. Some truth in that muck.’

  ‘Who’s going in for cheap analogies now, Peter? And how delightful to hear the Prosecutor General defending pornography. You are no doubt equally proud of the inflation, the black market, the whores on the streets?’

  ‘There are difficulties,’ Solinsky admitted. ‘This is a period of transition. There have to be painful readjustments. We must understand the realities of economic life. We must make goods that people want to buy. Then we shall achieve prosperity.’

  Petkanov cackled delightedly. ‘Pornography, my dear Peter. Tits and cocks. Tits and cocks to you too.’

  ‘You know what I think?’

  ‘You think we should stop watching, Dimiter.’

  ‘Yes, but now I know why I think that.’

  ‘Beer, please.’

  ‘It’s like this. We were brought up, weren’t we, in school and with the newspapers and television and our parents, or some of them anyway, to think that Socialism was the answer to everything. I mean, that Socialism was right, was scientific, that all the old systems had been tried and didn’t work, and that this one, this one we were lucky enough to live under, this one was … correct.’

  ‘No-one thought that, Dimiter, not really.’

  ‘Maybe not, but that’s what we thought other people thought, didn’t we, until we knew, until we found out that most of them were just pretending. And then we realised, didn’t we, that Socialism wasn’t an unanswerable political truth, and that there are two sides to every question.’

  ‘We realised that with our mother’s milk.’

  ‘Yes, there’s always a choice of two.’

  ‘Very funny, Atanas.’

  ‘So what I’m trying to say, watching this trial, day after day, listening to the prosecution, listening to the defence, waiting for the judges to decide, is that it’s being … it’s being far too nice to him.’

  ‘Because the charges are so trivial.’

  ‘No, not that at all. Because the whole thing doesn’t represent reality. Because there comes a point when there aren’t two sides to every question any more, there’s only one side. All that’s coming out of his mouth is lies and hypocrisy and irrelevant shit. It shouldn’t even be listened to.’

  ‘We should have had a moral trial?’

  ‘No, nothing at all. We should just have said, this is a question which doesn’t have another side. Just holding a trial is giving him false credit, is admitting that even in this case, even in this worst of cases, there is another side to the story. There isn’t. End. With some questions, there’s one side only. End.’

  ‘Bravo, Dimiter. Give him a beer.’

  They were silent for a while. Then Vera said, ‘We’re at Stefan’s tomorrow. Normal time.’

  ‘Lieutenant-General, anyone would think you were working for a verdict of not guilty against the former President.’

  ‘Mr Prosecutor?’ The Head of the Patriotic Security Forces was bemused.

  ‘Well, you always arrive when I am preparing my cross-examinations.’

  ‘I shall call later.’

  ‘No, no. Just tell me.’

  ‘Notes concerning Central Policy for the years 1970 to 1975.’

  ‘I didn’t know there’d been one.’

  ‘There was muc
h dissatisfaction expressed during that period … No, that’s to say, there was much dissatisfaction expressed during the first half of that period with the performance and ambitions of the Minister of Culture.’

  Solinsky allowed himself a smile. Really, this soldier had turned himself too successfully into a bureaucrat. ‘The security forces disapproved of certain Prokofiev symphonies?’

  ‘No. Well, not exactly, though now you mention it there was much criticism of the programme for the Second International Jazz Congress.’

  ‘I thought the Party approved of jazz as the true voice of an oppressed people suffering under international capitalism?’

  ‘They did. That is repeated more than once. But the particular individualism of one oppressed performer, coupled with a personal interest in his welfare by the Minister of Culture, was held to be detrimental to the future of Socialism.’

  ‘I see.’ Perhaps there was a vestigial sense of humour lurking beneath this rounded suit. ‘But anyway?’

  ‘But anyway. The personal ambitions of the Minister of Culture were considered dangerous and anti-socialist. Her taste for imported personal goods was held to be decadent and anti-socialist.’

  ‘And imported personal musicians?’

  ‘That too. And the President’s own ambitions and wishes concerning his daughter, according to these preliminary notes towards a final report which has not yet come to light, were also deemed detrimental to the interests of the State.’

  ‘Were they?’ Now that was interesting. It had little to do with Criminal Law Case Number 1, but it was distinctly interesting. ‘Are you saying that the Department of Internal Security murdered her?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘What a pity.’

  ‘I do not have the evidence to say that.’

  ‘But if you found such evidence?’

  ‘I would give it to you, naturally.’

  ‘General, how far would you say the DIS was controlled in those days?’

  Ganin reflected for a while. ‘I would say about as much as it always is. Always was, I mean. In some areas there was strict control and reporting. In others, general operational approval but no detailed reporting. And in special areas the DIS acted according to their own understanding of what they perceived to be the best security interests of the State.’

  ‘You mean, they knocked people off?’

  ‘Certainly. Not many, as far as we can tell. And not for some years, anyway.’

  ‘No doubt a shortage of fingerprints.’

  ‘Exactly.’

  Solinsky gave a slow nod. Reports shredded. Fingerprints wiped. Bodies long gone to the crematorium. Everyone knew what had happened, everyone had known at the time. Yet when people like him were trying to make a succession of charges stick against the man who ran the whole business, it was as if nothing of the sort had occurred. Or as if what had occurred was in some way normal, and hence almost forgivable. The conspiracy of normality, even in crazy times.

  And because everyone knew what had happened, everyone had in some unspoken way approved of it. Or was that too sophisticated? Ascribing guilt to everybody was another popular modern conspiracy. No, people had not spoken largely because of fear. Thoroughly justifiable fear. And one part of his job, every day now, on television, was to help expunge that fear, to reassure people that they would never have to give in to it again.

  Stoyo Petkanov was chuckling as he climbed into the Zil on the steps of the People’s Court. Hadn’t been in one of these for years. He’d always used a Mercedes himself, in his last years anyway. That Chaika they’d given him up to now was all right, if a little heavy in the suspension. Then this morning, on some excuse, they’d sent this shitty Zil limo from the Sixties. Well, it would take more than that. They could have sent a jeep and he’d still have been in a good humour. What counted was what happened in court. And he’d had another good day. That skinny, pop-eyed intellectual they’d put up against him was losing hair by the hour.

  The old fox was leading them a merry dance.

  He settled back in the unfamiliar bench seat and began to share this reflection with his escort.

  ‘The thing about an old fox’, he began, ‘is that …’

  A tram on the boulevard outside came to a halt in a squeal of soprano steel. The convoy stopped. Ha, everything breaks down under them. Can’t even run the buses. He scrutinised the crowd behind a zig-zag of ineptly arranged crush barriers. They’re letting them get closer than they used to, he thought; closer at least than when he had the Mercedes.

  Petkanov noticed some young hooligans behind the nearest barrier shaking their fists at him. I put those shoes on your feet, he answered them silently, I built the hospital in which you were born, I built your school, I gave your father a pension, I kept the country free of invasion, and look at you, fucking scum, daring to wave your paws at me like that. But now they were doing more than that. Two of the barriers had sprung apart and some thugs were running towards the car. Shit. Shit. The fuckers. The double-crossing weasels. That’s why they’d given him the Zil, that’s how they’d decided to do it, right out in the open … then his face smacked the worn red carpet in the well of the car and a militiaman’s weight kept him fastened there. He heard a thunderous metallic pounding, and suddenly the carpet burnt his face as the Zil wrenched itself into speed and swerved screechingly round the stalled tramcar. He was kept pinned to the floor until they were back in the sunken courtyard at the Ministry of Justice (formerly Office of State Security).

  ‘Oh God,’ said the soldier as he climbed off him, ‘Grandfather’s shat himself.’ He laughed. The driver and the other militiaman joined in.

  ‘The shit’s in the other trouser leg now,’ commented the driver.

  Then they humiliated him all the way back to the sixth floor, leading him the long way round, displaying him to everyone they met, and trying to think up a new phrase every time. ‘Uncle’s done a nuisance in his knickers.’ ‘Potty time for the President.’ Each different expression, however feeble, made them laugh even more. Finally, they took him to his room and let him clean himself up.

  Half an hour later Solinsky arrived. ‘I apologise for the momentary lapse in security.’

  ‘They bungled it. You should have been displaying my body to the American media by now.’ He imagined the lying headlines. He remembered the Ceausescus, their splayed bodies. Tracked down and hurriedly shot after a secret trial. Nail down the vampires, quick, quick. Nicolae’s body, the very body he’d hugged on many a state occasion, emptied of life. The collar and tie still neat, and an ironic, half-smiling expression on those lips that he, Stoyo Petkanov, had many times kissed at the airport. The eyes were open, he remembered that detail. Ceausescu was dead, his corpse was displayed for Rumanian television, but his eyes were still open. Had no-one dared close them?

  ‘It was not what you thought,’ said Solinsky. ‘Just a few kids who wanted to bang on the car roof. They didn’t have a weapon between them.’

  ‘Next time. Next time you’ll let them.’ The old man lapsed into silence. Solinsky had heard about the former President shitting himself. For almost the first time he looked shrunken and humbled, just an old man sitting at a deal table with a half-finished pot of yoghurt in front of him.

  ‘They loved me,’ he said unexpectedly. ‘My people loved me.’

  Solinsky wondered whether to let that go. But why should he? Just because a tyrant had messed his trousers. He was the Prosecutor General at all times, he should remember that. So he answered, slowly and emphatically, ‘They loathed you. They feared you and they loathed you.’

  ‘That would be too easy,’ Petkanov countered. ‘That would be too convenient for you. That is your lie.’

  ‘They loathed you.’

  ‘They told me they loved me. Many times.’

  ‘If you beat someone with a stick and order them to say they love you, and keep on beating them and beating them, sooner or later they will tell you what you want to hear.’

  ‘It was
not like that. They loved me,’ Petkanov repeated. ‘They called me Father of the People. I dedicated my life to them and they recognised it.’

  ‘You called yourself Father of the People. The security police held up banners, that was all. Everyone hated you.’

  Ignoring Solinsky, the former President stood up, walked to his bed and lay down. He said to himself, to the ceiling, to Solinsky, to the deaf-mute militiaman, ‘They loved me. That is what you cannot bear. That is what you will never come to terms with. Remember it.’ Then he shut his eyes.

  In repose he seemed to regain his toughness and stubbornness; the flesh relaxed in folds, but the bones got harder, more prominent. As Peter Solinsky was about to look away, he spotted a terracotta dish beneath the low bed, with a plant straggling out across the floor. So the rumour was true. Stoyo Petkanov really did sleep with a wild geranium under his bed, superstitiously imagining that it brought good health and a long life. It was just a dictator’s silly whim, but at that moment it terrified the prosecutor. Good health and a long life. Petkanov liked to boast that both his father and grandfather had lived to be centenarians. What would they do with him for the next twenty-five years? Peter had a sudden, nauseating vision of the President’s future rehabilitation. He saw a television series, Stoyo Petkanov: My Life and Times, starring a genial nonagenarian. He saw himself cast as a villain.

  The former President began to snore. Even in this he was not predictable. His snore had no frailty to it, or even comedy; instead it was dismissive, almost imperious. Obediently, the Prosecutor General left.

  He had been disappointed with the others. Scuttling away, dying, getting ill. Like a good peasant, he despised illness. They had gone soft, got old. What were those lines he had learnt in Varkova? That had been a test of endurance. Hard labour, beatings from the warders, and the constant fear of a visit from the Fascists with their green shirts and whirling weapons. A commando of the Iron Guard had left six comrades dead in their cells while the prison officers played cards. He who has learned in the tough school of Varkova, Petkanov was fond of saying, will never give up the cause of Socialism and Communism. And what had been whispered to him in his first week there, by a comrade in the exercise yard?