The Porcupine (16 page)

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.’

‘If that’s the case,’ she replied, ‘it shouldn’t have been difficult to prove without whoring for television and inventing fake evidence.’

‘Meaning?’

‘Peter, you don’t really think the worst criminal in our nation’s history would sign such a useful document which Ganin just happened to discover when the prosecution wasn’t having the success he’d hoped?’

Naturally, he had considered that, and was ready with his defences. If Petkanov hadn’t signed that memorandum, he must have signed something like it. We are only putting into concrete form an order he must have given over the telephone. Or with a handshake, a nod, a pertinent failure to disapprove. The document is true, even if it is a forgery. Even if it isn’t true, it is necessary. Each excuse was weaker, yet also more brutal.

In the grim silence of marital despair, he felt sarcasm rise unstoppably to his mouth. ‘Well, at least our legal system is a slight improvement on that of the NKVD in Stalingrad around 1937.’

Maria took her hand off his shoulder. ‘It’s a show trial, Peter. Just the modern version. A show trial, that’s all. But I’m sure they’ll be very pleased.’ Then she left the room, and he continued looking out over the smog, with the growing realisation that she had also left his life.

That imbecile boy prosecutor didn’t know what he was up against. If hard labour in Varkova hadn’t broken him, when even some of the toughest comrades wet their pants at the thought of a visit from the Iron Guard, he wasn’t going to be beaten down by this pitiful cabbage-brained lawyer who was fifth choice for the job. He, Stoyo Petkanov, had sent the boy’s father packing without much trouble, kicked him out of the Politburo on a ten-to-one vote and then kept him
well watched in his bee-keeping exile. So what chance did this ball-less son of his stand, pottering into court with a silly grin and a bagful of faked evidence?

They – all of them – had this absurd idea that they’d won. Not the trial, which was no more significant than a priest’s fart, since they’d arranged the verdict two seconds after deciding the charges; but the historical struggle. How little did they know. ‘You don’t get to Heaven on the first jump.’ Look how many jumps they and their sort had had over the centuries. Jump, jump, jump, like a spotted frog in a slimy pond. But so far
we
have had only one jump, and what a glorious leap it has been. Especially since the whole process began not as Marx had predicted, but in the wrong country and at the wrong time, with all the counter-revolutionary forces lined up to strangle it at birth. Then the Revolution had to be built amid a world economic crisis, defended in a bloody war against Fascism, defended once more against the American bandits with their arms race, and yet … and yet we had half the world on our side in a mere fifty years. What a glorious first jump!

Now capitalist filth and newspaper whores were vomiting up their slanders about ‘the inevitable collapse of Communism’ and ‘the inherent contradictions of the system’, smirking as they filched the very phrases which had applied for so long – and still applied – to capitalism. He’d read of a bourgeois economist called Fischer who claimed that ‘the collapse of Communism signifies the repurification of Capitalism’. We’ll see about that, Herr Fischer. What was happening was that just for a brief historical moment the old system was being allowed a last little hop in its slimy frog-pond. But then, inevitably, the spirit of Socialism will shake itself again, and in
our
next jump we shall squelch the capitalists down into
the mud until they expire beneath our boots.

We worked and we erred. We worked and we erred. Perhaps, in truth, we had been too ambitious, thinking we could change everything, the structure of society and the nature of the individual, within a couple of generations. He himself had always been less sure about this than some others, and had constantly warned against the resurgence of bourgeois-fascist elements. And he’d been proved right in the last year or two, when all the scum of society had risen to the surface again. But if bourgeois-fascist elements could survive forty years of Socialism, imagine how unquenchably strong in comparison is the soul of Socialism itself.

This movement to which he had dedicated his life could not be snuffed out by a few opportunists, a sackful of dollars and a cunt in the Kremlin. It was as old and as strong as the human spirit itself. It would come back, with fresh vigour, soon, very soon. It might have a different name, a different banner. But men and women would always want to walk that path, that tricky uphill path across the river of stones and through the damp cloud, because they knew that at the end they would burst into the bright sunshine and see the mountain top clear above them. Men and women dreamed of that moment. They would link arms again. They would have a new song – no longer ‘Stepping the Red Pathway’ as it had been on Rykosha Mountain. But they would sing this new song to the old tune. And they would gather themselves to make that mighty second jump. Then the ground would shake and all the capitalists and imperialists and plant-loving Fascists and filth and scum and renegades and fucking intellectuals and boy prosecutors and Judases with birdshit on their skulls would shit themselves one final, mighty time.