The Porcupine

by Julian Barnes

  When Maria announced her intention of writing to the Supreme Court of the USSR, Peter had opposed the idea. Any discovery she made would only cause her pain. And besides, she could not bring back to life the grandfather she had never known. What he meant, though did not quite express, was that in his view there were only two possibilities. Either Mechkov had betrayed the great cause in which he had believed, or else he had been viciously duped by it. Which would you prefer your grandfather to be, Maria, a criminal renegade or a credulous fool?

  Maria ignored her husband’s advice, posted her submission, and after almost a year received a reply dated 11th December 1989 from A.T. Ukolov, Member of the Supreme Court of the USSR. He was able, after investigation, to inform the enquirer that her grandfather, Roumen Alexei Mechkov, had been arrested on 22nd July 1937 and charged with ‘being a member of a Trotskyist terrorist organisation and, in this capacity, conspiring to commit acts of terrorism against Comintern leaders and sabotage the USSR’. Interrogated at the Stalingrad (now Volgograd) Regional Department of the People’s Commissariat for Internal Affairs, Mechkov had been sentenced to death by firing squad on 17th January 1938, the sentence being carried out the same day. A review of the case, conducted in 1955, had established that there was no evidence against Mechkov apart from the conflicting and unspecific depositions of other persons arraigned in the same case. A.T. Ukolov regretted that there was no indication of a place of burial, and that no photographs or personal papers had been preserved in the records. He was able, however, to confirm that the subject of the submission had been an active and loyal Communist, who on 14th January 1956 had been rehabilitated. A.T. Ukolov enclosed with his letter a certificate to this effect.

  And you hang that on the wall, thought Peter. Proof that the movement to which your grandfather dedicated his life slaughtered him as a traitor. Proof that the same movement decided twenty years later that he was not, after all, a traitor but a martyr. Proof that the same movement did not think to inform anyone of this substantial change of status for another thirty-four years. Maria wanted to be reminded of that?

  A loyal Communist becomes a Trotskyist terrorist and then a loyal Communist again. Heroes become traitors, traitors become martyrs. Inspirational leaders and helmsmen of the nation become common criminals taken with their hands in the cashbox — until, perhaps, at some dread moment in the future, they become charming nonagenarians on TV chat shows. Peter Solinsky looked at the uncurtained window and saw its blackness fill with opening titles. Stoyo Petkanov: the Rehabilitation of a Helmsman. Whether or not such revisionism occurred would partly depend on how he performed in the final week of the trial.

  And what did professors of law, prosecuting counsel, husbands, fathers become? What new names would be applied, what unnaming would take place? What chance for any of them in the breaking wave of history?

  ‘I will tell you what a man with pretensions to wisdom once said to me.’

  The Prosecutor General didn’t want to hear. He had come to loathe this man. Before, as a mere citizen, he had hated him objectively, usefully. Hatred of Petkanov had been a constructive, unifying force among oppositionists. But since seeing him close up, since talking and fighting with him, the emotion had changed. His loathing had become personal, furious, snobbish and corroding. Past shame, present detestation, future fear: the mix had begun to consume the prosecutor. He seemed to hate Petkanov now as much as he had ever loved his wife; the leader had taken up all the emotional slack that currently existed in his marriage. And now he waited for some tawdry platitude which the swinish ex-President had picked up from some toiling hero of labour who in any case had probably filched it loyally from the collected speeches, writings and documents of the swinish ex-President.

  ‘He was a musician,’ said Petkanov. ‘He played in the State Radio Symphony Orchestra. I had gone with my daughter. She took me afterwards to be presented to the players. They had performed well, I thought, so I toasted them. This was in the Revolutionary Concert Hall,’ he added, an embellishing detail which for some reason irritated Solinsky like the bite of a horse-fly. Why tell me that, he found himself asking. Who cares in which damn hall you claim to have been impressed by the music? Who cares, what difference does it make? In his rage he heard Petkanov’s story continue distantly, through thick curtains. ‘And in the few words I spoke I talked of the requirements of art in the political struggle, how artists must join in the great movement against Fascism and imperialism and towards building the socialist future. You can imagine’, he said, with a touch of irony well lost on Solinsky, ‘roughly what I said. Anyway, afterwards, as I was moving through the orchestra, a young violinist came up to me as I passed. “Comrade Petkanov,” he said, “Comrade Petkanov, the people don’t care about higher things. They care only for sausage.” ’

  Petkanov looked at the Prosecutor General for his reaction; but Solinsky hardly seemed to be focusing. Eventually, as if coming to, he said, ‘I suppose you had him shot.’

  ‘Peter, you are so old-fashioned. So old-fashioned in your criticism. Of course not. We never shot people.’ We’ll see about that, thought the prosecutor, we’ll dig in the grounds of your prison camps, we’ll carry out autopsies, we’ll get your secret police to squeal on you. ‘No. But let’s say that his chances of becoming leader of the orchestra were a little diminished after this frank exchange of views.’

  ‘What was his name?’

  ‘Oh, really, you do not expect me … Anyway, the point is this. I did not agree with that rather cynical young man. But I also thought about what he had said. And so, every now and then, afterwards, I would repeat to myself, “Comrade Petkanov, the people need sausage and higher things.” ’

  ‘So?’ Such was the wisdom of the Revolutionary Concert Hall. You mutter a few brave words of protest backstage, and if you are not shot then your thought is twisted into some tiny, banal motto by this, by this …

  ‘So, I am merely passing on helpful advice. Because, you see, we gave them sausage and higher things. You do not believe in higher things, and you do not even give them sausage. There is none in the shops. So what do you give them instead?’

  ‘We give them freedom and truth.’ It sounded pompous in his mouth, but it was what he believed, so why not state it?

  ‘Freedom and truth!’ replied Petkanov mockingly. ‘So those are your higher things! You give women the freedom to come out of their kitchens and march on your parliament and tell you this truth – that there is no fucking sausage in the shops. That’s what they tell you. And you call this progress?’

  ‘We will get there.’

  ‘Hmmm. Hmmm. I doubt it. I ask permission to doubt it, Peter. You know, the priest in my village – and he probably was shot, I’m afraid, there were so many criminal elements around at the time, it could easily have happened – the priest in my village used to say, “You don’t get to Heaven at the first jump.” ’

  ‘Exactly.’

  ‘No, Peter, you misunderstand me. Actually, I am not talking about you. You and your sort have had many jumps already. Many centuries and many jumps. Jump, jump, jump. I am talking about us. We have only had one jump so far.’

  Character. Perhaps that had been his mistake, his … yes, his bourgeois-liberal error. The naive hope of ‘getting to know’ Petkanov. The stubborn yet foolish belief that the exercise of power reflects an individual’s character, and that the study of character is therefore necessary and profitable. True at one time, no doubt: true of Napoleon and Caesars and Tsars and Crown Princes. But things had moved on since then.

  The assassination of Kirov, that was the key date. Shot in the back with a Nagan revolver in the headquarters of the Leningrad Communist Party on the 1st of December 1934. Stalin’s friend and ally, Stalin’s comrade. Therefore, as we innocently used to say, therefore the one person in the world who could not possibly have wished or hoped for it, let alone ordered it, was Stalin himself. This was an impossibility in all known political and personal terms. For Stalin to have ordered
Kirov’s death was not just ‘out of character’, but beyond our understanding of what character might comprise. Which was precisely the point. We have moved into an era when ‘character’ is a misleading concept. Character has been replaced by ego, and the exercise of authority as a reflection of character has been replaced by the psychopathic retention of power by all possible means and in mockery of all implausibilities. Stalin had Kirov killed: welcome to the modern world.

  Solinsky found he was convinced by this conclusion as long as he sat calmly in his study looking north, or interrogated the bookcase in his office; but the attempt to see Petkanov as a malign whirr of electrons circling some monstrous vacuum did not survive two minutes in his presence. The old man, shadowed by his wardress, would stand before him arguing, denying, lying, feigning incomprehension; and immediately all the Prosecutor General’s primary emotions – curiosity, expectation, bafflement – were back in place. He searched again for character, for old-fashioned, explicable character. It was as if the law itself demanded the cause-and-effect of logical motive and resultant action; the courtroom simply declined to admit any tinkering with iron consequentiality.

  By mid-afternoon on the forty-second day of Criminal Law Case Number 1, Peter Solinsky decided that the moment had come. Yet another line of enquiry, into the use of official petrol for private purposes, had petered out in squabbles and forgetfulness. ‘Very well,’ he said, taking a long, opera-singer’s breath and picking up another file. During the lunchtime adjournment he had splashed water on his face and combed his hair again. In the mirror he had looked tired. He was tired, from his work, from his marriage, from political anxiety, but mainly from being in the presence of Stoyo Petkanov day after day. How tempting it must have been for those fawning members of the Politburo simply to save energy by agreeing with him.

  Now he tried to forget his wife, and Lieutenant-General Ganin, and the TV cameras, and all the promises he had made to himself before the trial began. Enough of being the honourable lawyer who patiently eases truth, like a dandelion leaf, from between the teeth of lies. Perhaps he was tired of doing that too. ‘Very well, Mr Petkanov. We have become more than familiar over the many weeks of this criminal case with your defence. Your defence to all charges and accusations. If something illegal was done, then you did not know about it. And if you did know about it, then automatically it was legal.’

  Petkanov smiled as his defence advocates rose to object. No, it was rather a good summary by this neurotic pimp of a prosecutor. He waved them to sit down. ‘I did nothing that was not approved by the Central Committee of the Communist Party,’ he repeated for the hundredth time, ‘and ratified in decrees of the Council of Ministers. Everything that I did was entirely legal.’

  ‘Very well. Then let us consider what you did on the 16th of November 1971.’

  ‘How can you …’

  ‘I do not expect you to remember, since your memory, as has been amply demonstrated, functions only to recall actions supposedly within the law.’ Solinsky held the document given him by Ganin and looked down at it briefly. ‘On the 16th of November 1971 you authorised the use of all necessary means against slanderers, saboteurs and anti-state criminals. Would you care to explain what we are to understand by the expression “all necessary means”?’

  ‘I do not know what you are talking about,’ Petkanov replied calmly. ‘Except that you seem to be approving of sabotage and anti-state crime.’

  ‘On that day you signed a memorandum authorising the elimination of political opponents. That is what “all necessary means” refers to.’

  ‘I do not know what document you are talking about.’

  ‘Here is a copy, and a copy for the court. This is a memorandum from the files of the Department of Internal Security bearing the signatures of yourself and the late General Kalin Stanov.’

  Petkanov barely glanced at the paper. ‘I do not call that a signature. I call it a set of initials, quite probably forged.’

  ‘You authorised on that date the use of all necessary means,’ Solinsky repeated. ‘This authority allowed the departments of both Internal and External Security to take action against political opponents at home and abroad. Opponents like the broadcaster Simeon Popov, who died of a heart attack in Paris on the 21st of January 1972, and the journalist Miroslav Georgiev, who died of a heart attack in Rome on the 15th of March of the same year.’

  ‘Suddenly I am responsible when old men have heart attacks all round the world,’ Petkanov replied jovially. ‘Did I scare them to death?’

  ‘In the years preceding the executive authority you granted in November 1971, the Special Technical Branch of the DIS in Reskov Street was conducting experiments aimed at producing drugs which, when administered orally or intravenously, produced the symptoms of cardiac arrest. Such drugs were used to disguise the fact that the victim had in fact died as a result of a previous or simultaneous criminal poisoning.’

  ‘Now I am accused of manufacturing drugs? I do not even have an honorary degree in chemistry.’

  ‘During this same period,’ Solinsky went on, feeling a noisy exhilaration within him and an intense silence around him, ‘the Department of Internal Security, as can be seen from many notes and memoranda, had become increasingly alarmed about the erratic behaviour and personal ambition of the Minister of Culture.’

  Solinsky paused, giving himself time, knowing that the moment had come. He was fuelled by a rich mix of virtue and passion. ‘Anna Petkanova,’ he added, unnecessarily, and then, as if citing her statue, ‘1937 to 1972. The DIS frequently reported that her private and public behaviour was of a kind they characterised as anti-socialist. You took no notice of their reports. Further, they were alarmed to discover that you intended to designate the Minister of Culture as your official successor. They discovered this’, the Prosecutor General casually threw in, ‘by the simple means of bugging your presidential palace. Their dossier on Anna Petkanova records increasing concern about the influence she had, and would continue to have, over you. Anti-socialist influence, as they put it.’

  ‘Absurd,’ murmured the former President.

  ‘On the 16th of November 1971 you authorised the elimination of political opponents,’ Solinsky repeated. ‘On the 23rd of April 1972 the Minister of Culture, who had previously been in excellent health, died quite unexpectedly and at a surprisingly early age of a heart attack. It was pointed out at the time that the nation’s leading heart specialists were quickly summoned and did everything they could, but were unable to save her. They were unable to do so for a simple reason: because she was not suffering from a cardiac arrest. Now, Mr Petkanov,’ the Prosecutor General continued, his voice hardening to warn off the state defence advocates, who were already on their feet, ‘I do not know and frankly do not much care exactly what you knew and exactly what you did not know. But we have it from your own lips that everything you authorised was, under the terms of the New Constitution of 1971 which you introduced, automatically and entirely legal. Therefore, this is no longer a charge I bring merely against you in a personal capacity but against the entire criminal and morally poisoned system at whose head you stood. You killed your daughter, Mr Petkanov, and you are here before us as the representative and chief director of a political system under which it is entirely legal, in your much-repeated phrase, entirely legal for the head of state to authorise the death even of one of his own ministers, in this case Anna Petkanova, the Minister of Culture. Mr Petkanov, you killed your own daughter, and I ask the court’s permission to add the charge of murder to those already listed.’

  Peter Solinsky sat down to loudly unjudicial applause, to the drumming of feet, the thumping of desks, and even some raucous whistling. This was his moment, his moment for ever. He had thrust the pitchfork into the earth, one tine on either side of the neck. Look at him snarl and wriggle, spit and fret, pinned out there for all to see, exposed, witnessed, judged. This was his moment, his moment for ever.

  Daringly, the TV director split the screen.
On the left, seated, the Prosecutor General, eyes big with triumph, chin raised, a sober smile on his lips; on the right, standing, the former President in a whirl of fury, banging on the padded bar with his fist, bawling at his defence lawyers, wagging his finger at journalists, glaring up at the President of the Court and his impassive, black-suited assessors.

  ‘Worthy of American television,’ Maria commented as he closed the apartment door, briefcase in hand.

  ‘You liked it?’ He was still breathing extra oxygen after the showdown, the uproar, the honey of applause. He felt he could take on anything. What was his wife’s sarcasm when he had defeated the rage of a once-powerful dictator? He could remould anything with words, smooth down his domestic life, sugar Maria’s sour disapproval.

  ‘It was vulgar and dishonest, contemptuous of the law, and you behaved like a pimp. I suppose girls came round to your dressing-room afterwards and offered you their telephone numbers?’

  Peter Solinsky walked into his small study and gazed out across the smog towards the Statue of Eternal Gratitude. Tonight, no sun caught the gilded bayonet. This was his doing. He had doused the blaze. They could cart Alyosha away now, turn him into teapots and pen-nibs. Or give him to young sculptors and let them rework him into new monuments in praise of the new freedoms.

  ‘Peter.’ She stood behind him now and rested her hand on his shoulder. He couldn’t tell whether the gesture was meant as apology or consolation. ‘Poor Peter,’ she added, thereby ruling out apology.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because I can’t love you any more, and after today I doubt that I can even respect you.’ Peter did not respond, did not even turn to see her face. ‘Still, others will respect you more and, who knows, perhaps others will love you. I shall keep Angelina, of course.’

  ‘The man was a tyrant, a murderer, a thief, a liar, an embezzler, a moral pervert, the worst criminal in our nation’s history. Everyone knows it. My God, even you are beginning to suspect it.’