Victory Square

by Olen Steinhauer

  “He always claimed to act and speak on behalf of the people, to be a beloved son of the people, but he only tyrannized the people all the time.” This, then, was the prosecutor. He examined his notes again. “You are faced with charges that you held sumptuous celebrations on all holidays at your house. The details are known. These two defendants,” he said, motioning toward them with a broad sweep of his hand, “procured the most luxurious foodstuffs and clothes from abroad. They were even worse than the king, the former king. The people received only two hundred grams per day, and only with an identity card.”

  “Eating,” muttered Ilona Pankov, loud enough for everyone to hear. “Is that what they’re accusing us of?”

  The prosecutor stopped in the center of the floor—outside the reach of the camera, Gavra noticed—and pointed at them. “These two defendants have robbed the people, and not even today do they want to talk. They are cowards. We have data concerning both of them. I ask the chairman of the prosecutor’s office to read the bill of indictment.”

  Another man in the front row—tall, lanky, with coarse cheeks and mouth—stood and read directly from his pages, without flourish or any hint of showmanship. His voice, like that of the president of the court, quivered. “Esteemed chairman of the court, today we have to pass a verdict on the defendants Tomiak Pankov and Ilona Pankov, who have committed the following offenses: crimes against the people. They carried out acts that are incompatible with human dignity and social thinking; they acted in a despotic and criminal way; they destroyed the people whose leaders they claimed to be—”

  “Is this a joke?” said Ilona as Tomiak squeezed his arms tighter across his chest.

  The chairman of the prosecutor’s office paused, then continued. “Because of the crimes they committed against the people, I plead, on behalf of the victims of these two tyrants, for the death sentence for the two defendants. The bill of indictment contains the following points: genocide, in accordance with Article 356 of the penal code—”

  Perhaps it was the mention of the death sentence that drew To-miak Pankov’s head up and made his wife briefly cover her eyes.

  “Two,” continued the chairman of the prosecutor’s office. “Armed attack on the people and the state power, in accordance with Article 163 of the penal code. The destruction of buildings and state institutions, undermining of the national economy, in accordance with Articles 165 and 145 of the penal code. They obstructed the normal process of the economy.”

  “You don’t even know what normal process of the economy means,” hissed Ilona Pankov.

  The prosecutor, who had remained standing, crossed his own arms over his chest and turned to them. “Did you hear the charges? Have you understood them?”

  “I won’t answer,” said Tomiak Pankov. “I will only answer questions before the Grand National Assembly. I do not recognize this court.” He leveled a stiff finger at the prosecutor. “The charges are incorrect, and I will not answer a single question here.”

  “Note,” said the prosecutor, raising his own finger. “He does not recognize the points mentioned in the bill of indictment.”

  Gavra squeezed his hands between his knees to stop them trembling. He’s since tried to explain it to me, but I honestly can’t imagine what it was like to be in that room, watching this display. People in other countries might compare it to having their president or prime minister prosecuted and sitting in the courtroom aisle and watching, but that’s nothing. In those countries average citizens speak daily about how their leaders should be put in jail. They openly say that they would be happy to turn the lock on their cell and would voluntarily keep guard. Those are entirely different places.

  Tomiak Pankov was a man whose portrait graced the walls of every public building and many private homes. His volumes of collected speeches were de rigueur purchases. Four times a week, documentaries praising the life and life-works of this peacemaker and friend of the environment were aired on television. We knew everything about him, from his humble beginnings on a farm outside Uzhorod to the boxes full of medals he’d received from the queen of England, from America, from African countries only we had heard of, because by then they were our only allies.

  And when the food shortages began, when the Maternity Laws came into effect, when the petrol and coffee ran out, we didn’t run through the streets screaming for his blood. We stayed inside with our faulty heaters and waited for something to change for the better. Because Tomiak Pankov was like an abusive father. After all the years together, you can’t help but feel some anguished love for him, but that doesn’t temper the fear. One wrong word, and you’ll be faced with rage you might not survive.

  Gavra, who’d known only this Great Leader, felt as if he were a witness to, and participant in, patricide.

  “I will not sign anything,” said Pankov.

  “This situation is known,” the prosecutor continued, pacing comfortably as if, by his example, he could ease the tension in the room. “The catastrophic situation of the country is known all over the world. Every honest citizen who worked hard here knows that we do not have medicines, that you two have killed children and other people in this way, that there is nothing to eat, no heating, no electricity.”

  “What? What’s he talking about?” said Ilona Pankov. Her husband didn’t bother answering.

  “All right, then,” the prosecutor said. “Who ordered the bloodbath in Sarospatak?”

  Tomiak Pankov squeezed himself tighter and shook his head.

  “Who gave the order to shoot in the Capital, for instance?”

  “I won’t answer.”

  The prosecutor was at the edge of their table, but still beyond the camera’s view, his voice rising to a shrill pitch. “Who ordered the shooting into the crowd? Tell us!”

  Dryly, Ilona said to her husband, “Forget about them. There’s no use in talking to these people.”

  The prosecutor feigned exasperation. “Do you not know anything about the order to shoot?”

  The old couple wasn’t even looking at him.

  “What about the order to shoot?” he persisted. “There’s still shooting going on. Fanatics, whom you are paying. They’re shooting at children; they’re shooting arbitrarily into apartments. Who are these fanatics? Are they the people, or are you paying them?”

  Tomiak Pankov peered beyond his interrogator to the far wall, directly into the video camera with its red power light burning. “I will not answer. I will not answer any question.” He held his head rigidly toward the lens. “Not a single shot was fired in Victory Square. Not a single shot. No one was shot.”

  The prosecutor shook his head and raised his finger again. “By now, in the Capital, there have been forty-four casualties.”

  “Look!” said Ilona. “And that they’re calling genocide!”

  The prosecutor continued, his patience beginning to wear. “In every municipal capital there is shooting going on. The people were slaves. The entire intelligentsia of the country ran away—they escaped. No one wanted to do anything for you anymore.”

  “Excuse me,” said an eager voice from among the observers, but Gavra, through his blurred vision, couldn’t make out who it was. Not an officer. “Mr. President, I would like to know something. The accused should tell us who the mercenaries are. Who pays them? And who brought them into the country?”

  “Yes,” said the prosecutor, nodding. “Accused, answer.”

  Tomiak Pankov restated his now-famous defense as his wife whispered into his ear. “I will not say anything more. I will only speak at the Grand National Assembly.”

  “Ilona has always been talkative,” said the prosecutor. She halted her whispers and glared at the young man. “But otherwise she doesn’t know much. I’ve observed that she is not even able to read correctly, but she calls herself a university graduate.”

  Ilona Pankov, in an instant, became all venom. She banged her small, red-knuckled fist against the table. “The intellectuals of this country should hear you—you and your coll
eagues!”

  This was the kind of display the prosecutor wanted to provoke. He shook his head playfully. “More than her talkativeness, she’s well known for all the titles she’s always claimed to have. Scientist, engineer, academician—yet she doesn’t know how to read. An illiterate, inadequate academician.”

  “The intelligentsia of the country will hear what you’re accusing us of!” She threw herself back into her chair, as if the incredible force of her will could silence all further debate.

  The prosecutor looked up from his notes. “Tomiak Pankov should tell us why he doesn’t answer our questions. What prevents him from doing so?”

  Perhaps realizing how he looked on camera, Pankov straightened. “I will answer any question, but only at the Grand National Assembly, before the representatives of the working class.” He looked into the camera lens. “Tell the people that I will answer all of their questions. All the world should know what’s going on here. I only recognize the working class and the Grand National Assembly—no one else.”

  The prosecutor smiled. “The world already knows what’s happened here.”

  “I will not answer you putschists,” he said firmly, again crossing his arms.

  “The Grand National Assembly has been dissolved.”

  Tomiak Pankov looked caught off guard by that, as if he had been basing all his hopes on the National Assembly, which throughout his long reign had never said no to him. “This isn’t possible. No one can dissolve the National Assembly.”

  “We now have another leading organ,” said the prosecutor. “The Galicia Revolutionary Committee is now our supreme body.”

  The trembling continued, and Gavra felt sick. He wanted to run out of the room, because he kept being invaded by memories of this old man at the hunting lodge in the Carpathians. There was something almost charming about those memories. But the prosecutor hadn’t lied: Pankov was a murderer. Indirectly, perhaps, but a murderer nonetheless. Yet the prosecutor himself, by being allied with Jerzy Michalec, who was grinning beside him, was a murderer as well. Off to the right, in the next row up, he saw Nikolai Romek gaping at the courtroom with the awe of a fan at a soccer game. The whole room stank of corruption.

  Tomiak Pankov waved his hand. “No one recognizes that organ. That’s why the people are fighting all over the country. This gang will be destroyed,” he said, tapping a finger on the table to signify the whole room. “They organized the putsch.”

  “The people are fighting against you,” said the prosecutor. “Not the new forum.”

  “No. The people are fighting for freedom and against the new forum.” He shook his head. “I do not recognize the court.”

  The prosecutor slid back, closer to the audience and farther from the camera’s reach. “Why do you think people are fighting today? What do you think?”

  “As I said before,” Pankov said evenly, “the people are fighting for their freedom and against this putsch, against this usurpation. And this putsch, as you know, was organized and financed from abroad, which the people will not stand.”

  No one in the room was able to take his eyes off the old man.

  “I do not recognize this court. I will not answer anymore.” He tried to return the collective gaze but looked confused suddenly. “I am now talking to you as simple citizens, and I hope you will tell the truth. I hope that all of you aren’t also working for the foreigners and for the destruction of our nation.”

  The prosecutor threw up his hands in a maudlin expression of capitulation and turned to another young man in the front row, who had not yet spoken. “Ask him. Ask Pankov if he knows he’s no longer president of the country. Does he know this? Does he know as well that Ilona Pankov has lost all her official state functions? And does he know, further, that the entire government has been dissolved?”

  The small man he’d been speaking to stood slowly. He rubbed his mustache, which looked damp, but before he could pose the questions, the prosecutor pivoted on his heel and faced the president of the court, who was still sweating. “I ask this to find out on what basis this trial can be continued. It must be cleared up for everyone,” he said, touching his palm with every other word, “whether Pankov wants to, should, must, or can answer at all. How are we to know how to proceed?”

  The president of the court stared impotently back at the prosecutor, then settled his dull eyes on Tomiak Pankov. He checked his watch, then cleared his throat. The damp-mustached young man approached the Pankovs’table. “Do you,” he said with a thin, wiry voice, “Tomiak and Ilona Pankov, know the aforementioned facts— namely, that you are no longer president, and that you have lost all your official functions?”

  Pankov didn’t. “I am the president of this country. I am the commander-in-chief of the army. No one,” he said, emphasizing it with a loud, clear rap on the table, “can deprive me of these functions.”

  “But not of our army,” said the prosecutor, stepping forward. “You are not commander-in-chief of our army.”

  “I do not recognize you.” Pankov shook his head. “I am talking to you as simple citizens, and I tell you: I am the president of this country.”

  “What are you really?” said the prosecutor.

  “I repeat: I am the president and the commander-in-chief. I am the president of the people. I will not speak with you provocateurs anymore, and I will not speak with the organizers of the putsch and with the mercenaries. I have nothing to do with them.”

  “Yes,” said the prosecutor, “but you are paying the mercenaries.”

  “No. No.”

  “It’s incredible what they’re inventing,” Ilona Pankov said. “Incredible.”

  “Please, make a note,” said the prosecutor, turning back to the audience. “Pankov does not recognize the new legal structures of power in the country. He still considers himself to be the country’s president and the commander-in-chief of the army.”

  Then he spun again on his heel, pointing at the couple. He seemed to be enjoying himself now.

  “Why did you ruin the country?” He moved closer. “Why did you export everything? Why did you make the farmers starve? The produce the farmers grew was exported, and farmers came from the most remote provinces to the Capital and other cities in order to buy bread. They cultivated the soil in line with your orders and had nothing to eat. Why did you starve the people?”

  “I will not answer this question. As a simple citizen, I tell you the following: For the first time I guaranteed that every farmer and every worker received two hundred kilograms of wheat per person, not per family, and that he is entitled to more. It’s a lie that I made the people starve. A lie, a lie in my face,” he said, his voice rising. “This shows how little patriotism there is, how many treasonable offenses have been committed.”

  The prosecutor, full of himself, could easily match Pankov’s pitch. “YOU claim to have taken measures so that every farmer is entitled to two hundred kilograms of wheat. Why do they then buy their bread in the Capital?” He reached into his pocket for the notepad, flipped to a page, and read aloud from Tomiak Pankov’s own words, words that described his program for feeding the country. Then he looked up again. “We have wonderful programs.” He shook the pad at Pankov. “Paper is patient. Why are your programs not implemented? You’ve destroyed the villages and the soil. What do you say? As a citizen?”

  Pankov leaned forward, addressing the whole room. “As a citizen, as a simple citizen, I tell you the following: At no point was there such an upswing, so much construction, so much consolidation in the provinces. I guaranteed that every village had its schools, hospitals, and doctors. I have done everything to create a decent and rich life for the people in the country, like in no other country in the world.”

  Gavra was losing strength. The barrage of accusations thrown back and forth seemed to be hitting him in the stomach. But Pankov’s last words made him squint at the old, deluded man. A decent and rich life… like in no other country in the world.

  That truly was a surprise. All
you had to do was walk down the street to see what a miserable place our country had become. Breadlines, ration cards, electrical shortages. He thought back to that place in Virginia called Brandermill, the enormous houses made of wood, not concrete, and the forests, and the large rooms and unbelievably large refrigerators. How could someone who had ever stepped into another country say those words?

  Maybe that’s what began to urge Gavra toward the path he would follow. It certainly pointed the way.

  “We have always spoken of equality,” said the prosecutor. “We are all equal. Everybody should be paid according to his performance. Now we finally saw your villa on television, the golden plates from which you ate, the food you had imported, the luxurious celebrations— pictures from your luxurious celebrations.”

  Pankov stared back at him, blank, perhaps shocked that dirty hands had been rummaging through his stuff. Ilona, though, recovered quickly.

  “Incredible!” she shouted. “We live in a normal apartment, just like every other citizen. We’ve ensured an apartment for every citizen through corresponding laws!”

  “You had palaces.”

  “No,” said Tomiak Pankov. “We had no palaces. The palaces belong to the people.”

  “Yes, yes.” The prosecutor nodded in a simulation of agreement. “This is true. But you lived in the palaces while the people suffered.” He spread his hands. “Children can’t even buy plain candy, and you’re living in the palaces of the people.”

  “Is it possible we’re facing such charges?” said Pankov, as if truly surprised.

  “Let us now talk about the accounts in Switzerland, Mr. Pankov,” said the prosecutor. “What about the accounts?”

  “I’m not mister,” sneered Pankov. “I’m comrade.”

  “Accounts in Switzerland?” asked Ilona. “Furnish proof!”

  “We had no account in Switzerland,” said Tomiak. “Nobody has opened an account. This shows again how false the charges are. What defamation, what provocations! This was a coup d’etat.”

  The prosecutor was all smiles. “Well, Mr. Defendant, if you had no accounts in Switzerland, will you sign a statement confirming that the money that may be in Switzerland should be transferred to the state, to the State Bank?”