Authors: Malcolm Bradbury
‘She disappeared, that is true,’ said Gertla, ‘Irini was sent to a camp in 1956.’ ‘A camp?’ I asked, ‘You mean to prison?’ ‘In 1956 she went
into the streets, fighting the Russian tanks,’ said Gertla, ‘Then she tried to cross the frontier to go to the West. She did not succeed. You will not remember these things, of course.
The British were too busy, invading Egypt at Suez. That is what gave the Russians their chance to come in.’ ‘I wasn’t even born then,’ I said. ‘No, of course,’
said Gertla, ‘So it doesn’t even matter to you, I think. But in the Soviet bloc it mattered to everyone.’ ‘When Irini was caught, what did Criminale do? Did he help
her?’ ‘What did he do?’ said Gertla, ‘Of course Bazlo did nothing.’ ‘Nothing?’ I asked, shaken. Gertla smiled at me. ‘No, by this time his affair
with her was entirely over. Now he was with me. Bazlo did nothing, because Irini and I were not of the same kind at all. You must understand I had a very different opinion of those
things.’
It shouldn’t have done, but it took me a moment, as we stood there, to understand just what Gertla meant. I was a nice upstanding young man, and Gertla was calling up battles I had almost
forgotten, decisions that I hardly recognized. Then I saw, and said, ‘You supported the Russian invasion, you mean?’ ‘It was the only way,’ she said, ‘If that
revolution had succeeded, what has happened now would have happened even then. I was a Marxist then, I still am today. And I hope you realize that what has happened now will not succeed for long.
Soon there will be a coup in Russia, these foolish freedoms that are not freedoms will be swept away, the Party will take control again, to hold the empire together. This is just a small moment in
a larger process.’ ‘Maybe,’ I said, ‘But did Criminale support the Russian occupation too?’ ‘We sat in our apartment above Budapest and watched those tanks roll
in,’ said Gertla, ‘I told Bazlo to stay away from his democrat friends and get behind what Kadar did. The coup was bound to fail. I was right, of course. If he had not done it, today he
would have been no one. He would probably have gone to a camp too. Then who would have heard of Bazlo Criminale?’
She leaned on the fence. I looked at her, and knew there was something very firm and steely about Gertla Riviero. I also knew she wasn’t telling me this by chance. She understood I was a
journalist, and a story told to a journalist is a story for print. I said, ‘Why are you telling me this?’ She thought a moment and then said, ‘The Lukacs of the Nineties, that is
just what Bazlo is not. Lukacs was a real philosopher. He used reason to prevent chaos and create a meaning to history. Bazlo needs chaos nowadays, and he cannot afford to think of history. He
thinks it will save him from the past, and the future. But the past does not go away. Democracy, the free market, do you really think that can save us? Imagine, in a place like this? Inflation at
130 per cent, the rich against the poor, the army waiting, and only the exercise of power can prevent chaos? As Bazlo understood once, when he was with me, Marxism is a great idea, democracy just a
small idea. It promises hope, and it gives you Kentucky Fried Chicken. You know what Bazlo is now? The philosopher of Kentucky Fried Chicken. I think we should go back to the house.’
I stood there. ‘You haven’t told me what happened to Irini,’ I said. ‘Is that what interests you?’ she asked, ‘Well, you cannot check anything with her, she
died, a long time. All this surprises you, I think. It is not the usual story of Bazlo Criminale. The dissident, opponent of the regime. But you are a journalist, Mr Jay, you must know the real
truth is always a little bit round the corner. Nothing is ever quite what the official story says it is, no?’ ‘True enough,’ I said. ‘Really,’ said Gertla, ‘Did
you never ask what Bazlo did in 1956, when so many great choices had to be made? Didn’t you ask what side he was on, whom he supported? It never occurred to you?’ ‘Of
course,’ I said, ‘But according to the book by Otto Codicil . . .’ Gertla looked at me and laughed. ‘The book by Codicil?’ she said, ‘I hope you didn’t
believe a word of it?’ ‘Some of it,’ I said.
‘Well, I don’t believe a word of it,’ said Gertla, ‘And I wrote it.’ ‘
You
wrote it?’ I asked, astonished. ‘It was thirty years after 1956,
and the scores were still being settled,’ said Gertla, ‘It was best to show Bazlo in a very positive way. He was being challenged in many places.’ ‘Then why publish it under
Codicil’s name?’ I asked. ‘Oh please, it was a whitewash, for both of us,’ said Gertla, ‘You can hardly think I would print it under my own name.’ ‘And why
in the West?’ ‘To make his reputation,’ she said. ‘And how did it reach Codicil?’ ‘I had good channels, I had good friends,’ said Gertla, ‘And
Codicil, well, that one had some debts it was time for him to pay. Let us go in, I have told you enough.’
She started walking quickly back, towards the hacienda; I followed, still trying to take in what she’d told me. I admired Criminale (I still do); I didn’t wish at all to believe the
story – about his politics, his duplicity, above all about his betrayal of Irini. My first thought was that, here in the land of labyrinthine fictions, I had been told yet another fiction.
But Gertla was certainly not trying to amuse me; there was something firm, bitter, determined about her, a steely political temper, that made me suspect it was probably true. ‘You probably
wonder why, if I wrote that then, I say this now,’ said Gertla, looking at me, ‘Well, I am here, and free. Political events have changed, it is time to tell the truth. And I am jealous
for myself. The Criminale of 1956 was my Criminale, the best Criminale. Even those love letters he wrote to Sepulchra were not so good as the ones he wrote me. She made him foolish. I made him
wise.’
‘You made him a hardline Marxist,’ I said. ‘And why not?’ asked Gertla, ‘Didn’t we work for the biggest truth, the best idea? Do you know that even when he
went to the West he reported on everything, really, everything, through me?’ ‘And I suppose you had good contacts,’ I said, remembering again what Ildiko had said. ‘Yes, he
is now my husband,’ she said. ‘Your husband here?’ I asked. ‘Yes, both of us are here,’ said Gertla, ‘Of course it is better we have new names.’ I said,
‘I suppose you understand what this would do to Criminale’s reputation, if I went home and printed the story. And you’d be a part of it too.’ She looked very directly at me.
‘You think I care?’ she asked, ‘Look, nobody comes here. Now I am free, I can explain. Why shouldn’t he explain too?’ ‘What should he explain?’ I asked.
Gertla stopped for a moment, and stared hard at me. ‘Today they all pretend,’ she said, ‘They hide the past, they lie about how they became what they are. It just happened. I was
forced by the Stasi, made to do it by the KGB. I only listened, I didn’t mean. They are just intellectual acrobats, you understand? But do you believe them? What they did, they
chose.’
‘Or perhaps you persuaded him,’ I said, ‘He was in love with you.’ ‘No,’ said Gertla, ‘Do you really think none of them, those intellectuals, ever meant
not to build the Marxist dream? You think nobody ever believed it, all of it? The crushing of the bourgeoisie, the destruction of property, the struggle against Fascism, the rise of the
proletariat? Let them admit it, that was what they thought. And in a few years from now, people will say, of course, they were right. I like Bazlo to be remembered for what he used to be, not the
amusing thing he is now. Oh, by the way, if you like it, you can check everything I say. The secret police files in Budapest, the Stasi files in Berlin, they are all open now. Unless maybe someone
has been very kind, and burned everything. But I don’t think so. And one day it will all come out, anyway. And you will help me, you are a good journalist, yes?’
*
I took the jumbo flight back to London the very next day. The plane rose up over the wide River Plate; the pampa stretched out endlessly. Then cloud cover came in, and I
thought hard about what had just happened down in the country below. The last thing I had come for was more of the tale of Bazlo Criminale. Even so, I was coming back with a story, something no
journalist can reject. And I was also coming back with terrible knowledge, or knowledge that was terrible if true. And the more I thought about it (I had a bad hotel-room night to think it over),
the more I thought it probably was. What Gertla had told me seemed borne of two enduring and authentic forms of human emotion. One was ideology, but the other was sexual jealousy. Gertla, I
thought, wanted to repossess two things she had once had: political certainty, and Bazlo Criminale.
In the afternoon, the plane landed at Rio de Janeiro and refuelled. It was another and different Latin America, steaming, mountainous, tropical, exotic. Then came the dull onward flight, as I
looked through my notebooks, planned my pieces, tried to order my thoughts. I landed back in London the following morning, and returned tired to my flat. The next day, still jetlagged, I went into
my newspaper office, tried to sort my thoughts on Magical Realism, and reported the happy resumption of cultural relations. All that done with, I leaned forward, over my computer terminal, there in
the drab newspaper office, and realized that, like it or not, I had not entirely done with the uncomfortable quest for Doctor Criminale.
On a lovely evening in the early summer of 1991, in an extremely excellent restaurant in a corner of the Grand’ Place – the splendidly gabled market square that
forms the heart of Brussels, just as Brussels itself nowadays forms the heart of our brave New Europe – I sat pleasantly drinking champagne across the white-clothed table from Cosima
Bruckner. Brussels, with its great stone public buildings, capped with green-domed roofs of verdigrised copper, glowed with the warmth of an early June day. Outside in the great cobbled square, the
evening tourists were beginning to wander, the evening drinkers to gather on the café terraces. Inside the quiet restaurant in the corner, behind thick net curtains and velvet drapes, it was
already quite clear that La Rochette was somewhere just a little bit special. In fact it was obviously the heart of the heart of the heart of Europe. As Cosima, leaning forward, and revealing a
stunningly fine cleavage I had not even known was there before, quietly explained to me, while we sipped at our bubbles at a table for two by the window, power and privilege, politics and pleasure,
all customarily met and mingled around the tables and banquettes of the Restaurant La Rochette.
As we sat, a row of silver carts passed us by, bearing large pink lobsters on their final funeral journey to stoke the meditations of a group of European Foreign Ministers, informally gathered
together to put a few finishing touches to the looming of the year 1992. On banquettes in another corner, a dark-clad band of the Higher Eurocrats – Commissioners and Directors-General, Chefs
de Cabinet, Directors and Principal Administrators A4, certainly nothing lower nor less – were calling to the maître d’, Armand, to bring them their usual order, and opening up
their slimline leather document cases to consider some fundamental European Community crux: the noise emission levels, say, of petrol-driven lawnmowers in urban and semi-urban areas, or whatever
may have been worrying them about the Euro-future that night. In various alcoves, huddled over bottles of the finest claret and burgundy, Euro-lawyers and Euro-lobbyists, Euro-fixers and
Euro-framers, were wheeling and dealing, dealing and wheeling, while the glossy, backlessly dressed Euro-bimbos they had brought with them for purposes of elegant decoration yawned frankly into
their makeup mirrors and glanced seductively around the room. A visiting delegation of Arab sheikhs, in their best white robes, sat together at a central table, drinking the spirituous liquors
forbidden to them at home while their foodtasters, dressed in appropriate black, sat together quietly at a smaller table behind.
Meanwhile a pianist of concert standard, or even better, played somewhere unobtrusively in the background. Great crystal chandeliers tinkled and twinkled just above our heads. Dark-suited and
near-invisible waiters, one hand held behind their backs, slipped small boatlike pâtisseries of herbs, caviars and other rare goodies onto the crested plates in front of us, trying subtly to
tempt us towards the complex erotic joys of future gastronomic adventure. ‘This really is quite a place, Cosima,’ I said, looking around appreciatively. ‘Oh, yes, I think
so,’ said Cosima Bruckner. ‘About the best I’ve ever been in,’ I said, ‘And you come here often?’ ‘Not so very often,’ said Cosima, ‘It would
be a month’s salary. But naturally in my job it is necessary to come here from time to time and check on how those in the Commission spend their expenses.’ ‘Well,
naturally,’ I said, ‘So just explain to me, what
is
your job? You told me once you were a sort of sherpa on the Beef Mountain.’
‘This was not exactly true,’ said Cosima, ‘Oh look, do you see who is sitting over there, under the mirror?’ ‘Who is it?’ I asked. ‘The King of the
Belgians,’ said Cosima, ‘You don’t recognize him?’ ‘I’m afraid not,’ I said. ‘Such a pity, nobody ever does,’ said Cosima, ‘But of course
you know this man who has just come in. With the Yves Saint-Laurent suit, and the Légion d’Honneur in the buttonhole?’ I looked at the small sharp bird-eyed man, glancing around
the restaurant. He looked important, but he was entirely unfamiliar. ‘No, I don’t think so,’ I said, ‘Who is it?’ ‘That is only the Deputy-President of the
European Commission, the man under Jacques Delors,’ said Cosima, ‘He comes here all the time.’ ‘So he’s powerful, then?’ I asked. ‘Powerful?’ asked
Cosima, ‘This is the man who has been put in charge of 1992. I work to him also. His name is Jean-Luc Villeneuve.’ ‘How fascinating,’ I said. ‘But this man is not at
all what he seems,’ said Cosima, leaning forward confidentially. ‘No, of course not,’ I said. Now I knew I was back, firmly back, in the strange conspiratorial Euro-world of
Cosima Bruckner.
*
So how did I come to be there, tête-à-tête in the heart of the heart of the heart of Europe: the New Europe where, as at some great medieval court, the
world’s princes and plenipotentiaries gathered, where the ministers of great nations came to consult, the lawyers to plead, the modern courtiers to make their courtly careers, the framers to
frame, the fixers to fix, the sick, the poor and the foreign to beg for crumbs from the princely European table? Well, as it happens, it happened something like this. After I had jumbo-jetted my
way back from Argentina, I spent, I admit, a depressed and directionless few weeks. For several months I had been obsessed by a quest that had confused me, challenged me, fascinated me, elated me,
but which had now ended in disappointment. I felt upset and dismayed by the tale of Bazlo Criminale that Gertla had told me. Whether it was true or not was no longer quite the question. It had
burdened me with things I really did not want to know.