The Porcupine (9 page)

These rumours were all more or less confirmed by Lieutenant-General Ganin’s file, along with the detail that the President’s wife had, in her declining years, paid secret visits to the little wooden church in her native village, and that her invalidism was largely caused by vodka. But all this had become history. Anna Petkanova 1937–1972 was dead. So was her mother. Stoyo Petkanov was currently answering the nation on various charges, but having a drunken priest-kissing wife was not one of them. And the gymnast? As far as Solinsky could remember, he had lived in Paris for a while, where his career had not prospered, then had taken a coaching job in a mid-western American city. They said that one night, drunk again, he had stepped out in front of a truck and been killed. Or had that been someone else?

It was all a long time ago. The Prosecutor General pushed aside the file and looked up from his desk. The sun was beginning to set, and its rays were catching the bayonet on the Statue of Eternal Gratitude to the Liberating Red Army. Yes, of course, it was there that he had first set eyes on Anna Petkanova. One May Day the serious-minded chemistry student with eye pressed inspiringly to microscope had accompanied her father to the wreath-laying. He recalled a stocky figure, a serious, rather pug face, and hair coiled rope-like on top of her head. At the time, of course, she had seemed unimaginably glamorous, and he would have died for her.

In one respect, the trial was like most other trials that had taken place here over the previous forty years: the President of the Court, the Prosecutor General, the defence
counsel and the accused – most of all the accused – knew that anything other than a verdict of guilty was unacceptable to higher authority. However, apart from this concluding certainty there were no fixed points, and no legal tradition to follow. In the old days of the monarchy a cabinet minister had occasionally been impeached, and a couple of prime ministers dismissed from office by the roughly democratic method of assassination, but there was no precedent for such a public, open-ended trial of a deposed leader. And although the actual charges were tightly drawn to minimise the possibility of the defendant evading conviction, the President of the Court and his two assessors felt an implied permission, bordering on a national duty, to let the proceedings sprawl. Rules of evidence and questions of admissibility were broadly interpreted; witnesses could be recalled at any time; counsel were allowed to pursue hypotheses beyond normal legal plausibility. The atmosphere was more that of a market than of a church.

Stoyo Petkanov, the old horse-trader, did not mind. In any case, he was rarely interested in procedural minutiae. He preferred the broad defence and the even broader counter-accusation. The Prosecutor General had similar powers to range widely in his cross-examinations and general speculation; all the bench had to do was ensure that this representative of the new government was not too obviously humiliated by the former President.

‘And did you, on the 25th of June 1976, grant, or instruct to be granted, or permit to be granted, to the said Milan Todorov, a three-room apartment in the Gold section of the Sunrise complex?’

Petkanov did not answer at once. Instead, he let an expression of amused exasperation seep into his face. ‘How
do I know? Do you remember what you were doing fifteen years ago between two sips of coffee? You tell me.’

‘I am telling you then. I am telling you that you made or permitted to be made such an order in direct contravention of the rules governing behaviour of state officials in respect of housing.’

Petkanov grunted, a sound which normally preluded an attack. ‘Do you have a nice apartment?’ he suddenly asked the Prosecutor General. When Solinsky paused for thought, he was hustled. ‘Come on, you must know, do you have a nice apartment?’

[
‘I have a shitty apartment. Correction. I have twenty per cent of a shitty apartment.’
]

Solinsky had hesitated because he didn’t particularly think he did have a nice apartment. He certainly knew that Maria was dissatisfied with it. On the other hand, it came hard, the idea of openly denigrating where you lived. So finally he said, ‘Yes, I have a nice apartment.’

‘Good. Congratulations. And do you have a nice apartment?’ he asked the court stenographer, who looked up in alarm. ‘And you, Mr President of the Court, I expect a nice apartment comes with the job? And you? And you?’ He asked the deputy judges, he asked State Defence Advocates Milanova and Zlatarova, he asked the chief militia officer, and he didn’t wait for an answer. He pointed around the courtroom, there, there, there. ‘And you? And you? And you?’

‘That’s enough,’ the President of the Court finally ordered. ‘This is not the Politburo. We are not here to be harangued like dummies.’

‘Then do not behave like dummies. What are these piddling charges? Who cares whether fifteen years ago
some struggling actor was permitted to live in two rooms rather than one? If this is all you can find to accuse me of, then I cannot have done much wrong in thirty-three years as helmsman of the nation.’

[‘
He said “helmsman” again. I think I’m going to choke.’ Instead, Atanas spat cigarette smoke over Stoyo Petkanov
.]

‘You would rather be charged’, Solinsky felt free to suggest, ‘with the rape and pillage of this nation, with economic vandalism?’

‘I have no bank account in Switzerland.’

[‘
It must be somewhere else then
.’]

‘Answer the question.’

‘I have never taken anything out of this country. You talk about rape and pillage. Under Socialism we benefited from a rich supply of raw goods from our Soviet comrades. Now you invite the Americans and the Germans here to rape and pillage.’

‘They invest.’

‘Ha. They put a small amount of money into our country in order to take a larger amount out. That is the way of capitalism and imperialism and those who allow it are not only traitors but economic cretins.’

‘Thank you for your lecture. But you have not told us yet what you would prefer to be charged with. What crimes are you prepared to admit to?’

‘How easy it is for you to talk of crimes. I admit I made mistakes. Like millions of my fellow-countrymen, I worked and I erred. We worked and we erred, and the nation advanced. Isolated facts cannot be taken to charge the head of state out of the context of the age, the time. So I am here defending not just myself but also those millions of patriots who worked selflessly for all those years.’

‘Then perhaps you would tell the court about these “errors” which you deign to admit, but which are, it seems, conveniently less than crimes?’

‘Yes,’ said Petkanov, startling the prosecutor. He had thought the defendant incapable of such a simple word. ‘I take responsibility for the pre-October 12th crisis, and I am willing for my share of that responsibility to be clarified. I think, perhaps,’ he went on, in his most statesmanlike tone, ‘I think perhaps I should be tried for the nation’s foreign debt.’

‘Ah, you are at least responsible for something. You actually remember something and you are also responsible for it. And what do you think might be the appropriate sentence for someone who runs up the nation’s foreign debt in a final attempt to hold on to power, so that it now represents two years’ salary for every man, woman and child in the country?’

‘Much of that is your doing,’ replied Petkanov easily, ‘since the rate of inflation is I understand currently running at forty-five per cent, whereas under Socialism inflation did not exist, since we used scientific methods to combat it. Naturally at the time of the pre-October 12th crisis, I consulted the leading economic experts of the Party and the State, on whose written reports I relied, but I am willing for my share of the responsibility to be clarified. And then, of course,’ he went on with more evident complacency, ‘it would be a matter for the judgement of the people.’

‘Mr Prosecutor General,’ said the President of the Court, ‘I think it is time we returned to more immediate business.’

‘Very well. Now, Mr Petkanov, did you or did you not, on the 25th of June 1976, grant, or instruct to be granted, or permit to be granted, to the said Milan Todorov, a
three-room apartment in the Gold section of the Sunrise complex?’

Petkanov sat down and flapped a dismissive hand. ‘Do you have a nice apartment?’ he asked of no-one in particular. ‘Do you? And you? And you?’ He turned on his hard chair and addressed the motherly wardress standing behind him. ‘And you?’

[
‘I have a rotten apartment,’ said Dimiter. ‘I have twenty per cent of a really shitty apartment.’

‘What do you expect? You owe two years’ salary to President Bush. Lucky not to be living with the gypsies.’

‘We worked and we erred. We worked and we erred.’

‘We certainly erred.’
]

Maria Solinska waited an hour outside the Friendship 1 block before she could get on a bus. No, I do not have a nice apartment, she thought. I want an apartment with more room for Angelina, where the electricity does not go off every two hours, where the water supply does not simply dry up as it did this morning. The whole city seemed to be breaking down. Most of the cars were off the road because of the petrol shortage. Even cars converted to gas were now under plastic shrouds since gas had been restricted to domestic use. The buses ran when a tanker brought oil, when the mechanics could push-start them, when the bandits who drove them deigned to turn up as a change from ducking for black-market dollars.

She was forty-five years old. Still attractive, she thought, although she could make no sure deduction from Peter’s intermittent zeal. During the Changes people had been too
busy, or too tired, to make love: that was another thing which had broken down. And afterwards, when they did, they were scared of the consequences. During the last statistical year, the number of live births had been exceeded both by the number of abortions and by the number of deaths. What did that tell you about a country?

Really, the Prosecutor General’s wife should not be expected to take a bus to the office and be hemmed in by fat peasant rumps. She had always worked hard and done her best, it seemed to her. Papa had been a hero of the Anti-Fascist Struggle. Her grandfather had been one of the earliest party members, had joined before Petkanov himself. She had never met him, and for years he had scarcely been referred to, but since the letter arrived from Moscow they could be proud of him again. When she showed the certificate to Peter he had refused to share her pleasure, grumpily commenting that two wrongs did not make a right. That was typical of his recent behaviour, which was quietly, smugly triumphant.

She had married him at twenty. Almost at once his father had done something stupid; people said he had been lucky to escape with exile to the country. And then, at almost the same age, Peter had left the Party, stupidly, provocatively, without even asking her advice. There was something unstable about him, something that sought trouble, just as his father had sought it. And then he’d applied to prosecute Stoyo Petkanov! A middle-aged professor wanting to play the hero! Pathetic. If he lost, he would be humiliated; even if he won, half the people would still hate him, and the other half would say he should have done more.