The Porcupine (10 page)

Lieutenant-General Ganin arrived, as before, with a manila folder stuck out in front of him. Perhaps he woke up like that, and the only way to get rid of his condition was to come and see the Prosecutor General.

‘We trust, sir, that the course of the trial is proceeding according to your best expectations.’

‘Thank you. Tell me about it.’ Solinsky reached out and simply took the folder, jerking the security chief into commentary.

‘Yes. Report of our investigation into work done at the Special Technical Branch in Reskov Street. Mainly in the period 1963 to 1980, at which point the branch was transferred to the north-east sector. Many of the reports from Reskov Street have remained intact.’

‘Pride in their work?’

‘Who can tell, Mr Prosecutor?’ The General stood stiffly and anxiously before him, more like a provincial lieutenant than a key figure in the restructuring of the country.

‘General, on another matter …’

‘Yes, sir?’

‘Do you happen to know … It isn’t relevant, I just wondered if you knew what became of that student, the one with the beard, who kissed you in the snow.’

‘Kovachev. As a matter of fact I do. He organises the visa queue for the US Consulate.’

‘You mean, he works for the Americans?’

‘No, no. Haven’t you seen them, the men in the Square of St Vassily the Martyr? They’re queuing for the US Consulate.’

‘I don’t understand.’

‘They don’t want to stand in the street, outside the building. They’re ashamed, or afraid people will disapprove, or they’ll get into trouble. Something like that. So they organise
their own queue in the public gardens, by the western gates. Kovachev runs it. You’re given a number, and every morning you turn up to see if you’ve reached the head of the queue. If you haven’t, you come back the next day. No-one cheats. Everyone obeys him. He’s quite an organiser.’

‘We need him on our side.’

‘He won’t come. I’ve tried. He sent me a postcard when I got these.’ Ganin automatically touched his shoulder, as if his wife had sewn two golden pips on his civilian suit. ‘It said: GIVE US GENERALS, NOT BREAD.’

Peter Solinsky smiled. This Kovachev sounded quite a character. Unlike his stodgy general. ‘So where were we?’

Ganin resumed his stiffness. ‘It seemed that you would be interested in our summary of the research conducted in Reskov Street as it pertained to the effects achieved in the area of the inducement of simulated illness.’

‘Specifically?’

‘Specifically, inducement of the symptoms of cardiac arrest by oral or intravenous drug.’

‘Anything more?’

‘Anything more?’

‘Any evidence of specific use in individual cases of this research work?’

‘No, sir. Not in this file.’

‘Well, thank you, General.’

‘Thank you, Mr Prosecutor, sir.’

They had spent another long afternoon getting nowhere. It was like squeezing a sponge: mostly the sponge was dry, but on the rare occasions when it wasn’t, the water
ran straight through your fingers. Perfectly well-attested examples of the former President’s colossal greed, his brazen acquisitiveness, his kleptomania and furious embezzling, just seemed to vanish in open court before the eyes of several million witnesses. That farm in the north-west province? A birthday present from the grateful nation on the twentieth anniversary of his appointment as Head of State, but in any case a gift only for his lifetime, and he rarely went there, and if he did it was only in order to entertain foreign dignitaries and thus advance the cause of Socialism and Communism. That house on the Black Sea? Offered him by the Writers’ Union and the Lenin Publishing House in acknowledgement of his services to literature and in return for his waiving of half the royalties on his
Collected Speeches, Writings and Documents
(32 volumes, 1982). That hunting lodge in the western hills? The Communist Party, in recognition of the fortieth anniversary of the President’s successful application for a party card, had generously voted … and so on, and so on.

As the case proceeded, Petkanov seemed to get more unpredictable, not less. The Prosecutor General never knew, at the start of a session, if the defendant was going to respond to him with flagrant aggression, joviality, banal philosophy, sentimentality or stubborn muteness, let alone when or why he might switch from one mode to another. Was it some bizarre strategic ploy, or a true indication of a deeply vacillating personality? In his car on the way to the Ministry of Justice, bearing a folder of superficially incriminating affidavits, Peter Solinsky reflected that his plan of getting to know Petkanov, the better to predict his moves, had so far made little progress. Would he ever come to grasp the man’s character?

When he reached the sixth floor he found the former President, as if choosing his mood deliberately to annoy, at his most buoyant. What, after all, was Stoyo Petkanov but a normal person with a normal character who had lived a normal life? And why should this not make him the very spirit of cheerfulness?

‘Peter, you know, I was just remembering. When I was a boy, I used to go on outings with the Union of Communist Youth. I remember the first time we climbed Rykosha Mountain. It was late October, and snow had already fallen, and you could not see the summit of the mountain from the city because of the cloud level.’

‘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.’