The other men in the room look like the sort of people they have replaced. In most cases they are the same people. Then I see him. The camera picks out the end of his cane, sweeps across the room, then pulls back to where he sits on a chair a little to the left of the new Prime Minister. Trofim feels no need to underdress; he even wears his Party lapel badge. When he talks everyone listens. The expression on his face is one I have never before seen: concentrated, penetrating and completely impersonal. Trofim seems transfigured. A commanding presence, he is not in charge, but from the way they all consult him and ask his opinion, show him the new decrees as they pass them – eighteen in the first hour of government – he does not need to be anything so crude as
in charge
. Trofim has been transfigured into himself.
The
NSF
spokesman declares that Ceauşescu has been captured after escaping by helicopter and will be brought to trial. The people’s representatives have taken control of the radio and television stations, and of the
Scînteia
building. They blame the Securitate loyal to Ceauşescu for continuing fighting and claim the army has been on the side of the people from the start. It may not be their first lie, but it is certainly the first I can recognise.
I am surprised by a fresh belly laugh, a great, enveloping cackle of cynicism and bitter hilarity. It is coming from myself, and it soon veers into something that’s full of anger and ridicule and self-mockery. And then tears. I can feel them stinging, mixing with the cigarette smoke and the fumes of Slivovitz coming up from my guts.
New brothel, same old whores,
wasn’t that what Leo had said?
I slept in my clothes and woke late, parched and sweating alcohol. At the hotel desk was a phone message from Phillimore inviting me for Christmas lunch.
Drinks from 11 am,
the note said, and gave an address. The hotel receptionist told me it was only two blocks away and outlined the route on my
JAT
tourist map.
Phillimore opened the door holding two cups of mulled wine, a crepe cracker crown angled rakishly on his head. ‘Merry Christmas.’ His living room was decorated with portraits of distinguished ancestors, admirals and commodores with names like Fortescue and Phillimore-Mannering, who watched over the latest and, judging from the disconsolate bachelorhood of his flat, the last of their bloodline. Phillimore’s only festive concession appeared to be a single bauble hanging from a rubber plant.
A smell of roasting wafted from his tiny kitchen. A small woman in a headscarf was basting goose and uncorking wine. In Phillimore’s living room, Euro News played the familiar images, except now the Ceauşescus were under arrest and stared, wrinkled, wild-haired and terrified, into the camera.
‘Sorry. You’ve probably had enough of that,’ said Phillimore, turning off the television and refilling my cup. ‘If I’d known you were a friend of Leo’s – no reason you should have said, of course not – but if I’d known I’d have sorted you out for cash immediately and put you on a flight yesterday. You’d at least have had Christmas at home.’ Phillimore was pointing a cracker at me.
‘You know Leo?’ The cracker came apart and its tiny explosion made me jump.
‘Known him for years, though it’s been a while now since we met. I used to keep an eye on things over here for him – you know, paperwork, visas, export permits… low-level stuff but still basically corrupt.’ He gave a glum smile and raised his cup. ‘I’m afraid you’re my only Christmas guest, but there’s plenty to eat and drink. I’ve got no plans for today, except the Queen’s Christmas message at four and embassy staff drinks tonight if you’re interested…’
Phillimore was easy to be with. He had the undemanding sadness of the lonely-by-choice. Just being with him was an unburdening, a clearing-out. ‘So Leo called you?’ I asked.
‘Last night, late. On some sort of portable telephone. Terrible reception. Said to look out for you, and I told him you’d actually already been. He said to tell you everything was fine, that they were safe. Then he told me to help you out with cash. Actually he made me promise to tell you to come back to Bucharest, but I’d be going against Foreign Office advice if I did that. Look, here’s three hundred dollars, more than enough to get back –
back where
is up to you. Take them and I’ll settle up with Leo later.’
We listened to the Queen’s speech over roast goose stuffed with buckwheat and some Croatian wine.
Christmas day for the Ceauşescus ended early, because that morning they were executed against a wall and their not-yet-dead bodies were finished off by handgun.
By five o’clock, Phillimore and I were watching film of the trial on television.
It is only the Ceauşescus we see, sitting at a small table in a Targoviste bunker. They were defiant to the end, and strangely tender in their small proprieties. It is always the small proprieties that stick in the mind. Perhaps it’s because they seem to take death’s measure and, for a brief moment, to square up to it: the way she buttons up her coat and juts out her chin decisively; the way he strokes her hand, smoothes his hair, puffs out his chest. Is it my memory playing tricks or does she, minutes before the end, wrap a scarf around his neck? She is disorientated and in terror, but musters a mad defiance. Asked how old she is, she replies, ‘You shouldn’t ask a lady her age,’ this, no more than half an hour before they are shot.
Every dictator’s trial has one of these moments of unexpected dignity or fastidiousness when the bloodlust that has been stirred up in us begins to waver. What is he saying? There are subtitles, but it’s just a desolate life-and-death patter: ‘I am the president’, ‘I do not recognise this bandit court…’, ‘I will answer to the people, and to the people only’…She: ‘We made you. We looked after you. Is this how you repay us?’, ‘This is nonsense: the Romanian people love us and will not stand for this
coup
.’ Bravery? Or just fantasy outlasting its relationship with reality, like the last note of a symphony hanging in the silence that will swallow it up?
They are found guilty of a range of crimes, from starving their people to owning too many pairs of shoes. At one point, their defence lawyer has to be reined in by the prosecutor because he is shouting abuse at them. Their accusers are kept out of sight, and their names, when either Nicolae or Elena mentions them, are blanked out of the subtitles. One of the voices is Manea’s, I recognise it, but though the names of those at the trial were eventually released, Manea’s does not figure among them.
It’s all finished now. The camera pans across the corpses. Their faces are intact, the entry wounds tidy; on the other side the exiting bullets have ripped through their skulls, and the backs of their heads flap open like hoods blown off in a gale. She lies across the pavement while he has died on his knees with his torso and head thrown back. Someone opens their eyes and checks their pulse.
There’s a sudden jolt and we see an irrelevant snatch of blue sky as the cameraman loses his balance: a perfect azure expanse, empty, weightless. Then he steadies himself, stepping across first the one body then the other: the close-up of their hands, parted where the bullets’ force tore them from each other’s clasp. The clothes of the dead are what stay in the mind, not their faces: she has a shoe missing, his Astrakhan hat is by his side; her bag, which she kept until the end, still lodged in the crook of her elbow.
Afterwards, before the Christmas pudding, Phillimore brought me a consulate compliment slip with a long phone number. ‘It’s Leo’s, his portable phone… he said to give it to you. Ring him from here if you like.’ He set a bottle of Slivovitz on the table, poured a few shots over the pudding and lit it with a match.
Leo was breathless, excited, radio and television loud in the background.
‘Where are you?’ I asked.
‘I’m in the flat. Well – your flat. We’re all here, Ottilia, Iulia, Ozeray’s come over, we might even get a visit from the new government’s senior policy adviser, Comrade Trofim. Ottilia’s sleeping right now, she’s been in the hospital all night. She wants you back, but I think she knows she wasn’t meant to leave. This is where she belongs.’
‘I know that. What’s it like?’
‘It’s carnage, but we’re winning.’ I noted the
we
. ‘Where are
you
?’
‘Where you knew I would be. At Phillimore’s. We’re on the Christmas pudding.’
‘Did he give you an advance? Good. Now that you’ve had a couple of days to think about things, it’s about time you came back… anyway, it’s safe now.’
‘
Safe?
What d’you mean
safe
? I can hear the bullets! I can see it on the bloody TV! Doesn’t look safe to me… what about Vintul, Stoicu, the rest of those bastards?’
‘Bullets? No, just the odd ricochet… dunno about Stoicu. I expect he’s keeping his head down. He might resurface – but he’s harmless enough so long as Manea’s in charge.’ Then Leo’s tone changed. I could feel him looking around to see who was listening, then I heard him change rooms, his voice drop. ‘Vintul won’t though. That’s been dealt with.’
‘What d’you mean
dealt with
?’
‘Let’s just say we got a tip-off from someone in the know – the Lieutenant and a couple of his people took care of him. He was rounded up with a bunch of Securitate goons and, as the phrase goes,
The People exercised summary justice
.’
In other words Manea had told Leo where to find Vintul, and Leo had put the word out. There was always room in a revolution for the settling of old accounts – Manea’s, Ottilia’s, Leo’s. Mine too now, it seemed.
‘Hello? You still there?’ Leo shouted. ‘So – what’s your plan? Let me tell you what you’re missing…’
‘Save your breath, Leo.’
There was an overnight train to Bucharest and if it was running I would be on it. One of the advantages of communism was that Christmas was just another working day.
I checked out of the Lasta Hotel and walked with Phillimore to the station.
At the
guichet
I asked for a single to Bucharest and counted out my money. The woman at the till looked up in astonishment and asked me to repeat first my destination and then my ticket type. Phillimore accompanied me to the platform and gave me a bag containing the remains of lunch and a bottle of mineral water.
‘Regards to Leo,’ he said plaintively, ‘perhaps now he’ll be able to visit more often.’
Two platforms away stood the Brussels train: BEOGRAD/
BRUSSELS
. People were piling onto it already, standing in the corridors, dragging in their luggage. The Bucharest train was a ghost train, twelve carriages empty but for a few news crews. With the borders open, the street-fighting, the Ceauşescus dead and the storming of the luxurious palaces and villas, Romania was now journalistic gold.
I took a compartment to myself. Belgrade’s rain had turned to snow, mounting up on the rubber seals of the windows. I leaned my forehead against the freezing glass and watched the Brussels-bound intercity pull out. After twenty minutes, our crew arrived, unshaven and in unbuttoned grey tunics. After forty, the engines started up.
A few compartments down my nearest and only neighbours were paramilitary-looking men with black berets. Some were obviously armed. All were Yugoslavs. They smoked and drank and listened to pogrom-rock. In the next cabin, sitting alone surrounded by newspapers in French and German and English, their boss, a muscular, blond-haired man looked me over, raised his eyebrows, and pulled the blinds across his window.
Eight hours later, after unexplained stops, passport checks and a two-hour wait at the border, we pulled into Bucharest Central station. It was a chaos of departures and aborted departures. Trains pulled out with men and women hanging off the doorhandles, bags and cases strapped to the carriage roofs, people in the sleepers sitting four to a bunk.
I was prevented from leaving my cabin when one of the Yugoslav black berets blocked the door, giving his employer and the rest of the bodyguards time to make their exits. When I was allowed to disembark I saw up ahead of me the tall blond man flanked by his guards and luggage carriers. Though he moved fast and powerfully, he limped hard. He carried a walking stick but didn’t use it – it was there to remind him and those around of his infirmity and how completely he had overridden it. If he saw Leo standing under the old clock on the empty arrivals board he gave no sign. Leo meanwhile was talking into a mobile phone, his back half-turned, a rolled-up copy of
The Times
under his arm. There were no police to be seen, and though I heard gunshots in the distance, normality was pushing through like weeds in cracked paving: the smell of bread, the sound of trams and buses, kiosks open for business. There was even a new newspaper,
Adevarul
, with its headline ‘Trial of a Tyrant’. A new poem by Palinescu was announced.
‘What’s up?’ said Leo as we embraced, ‘you look like you’ve seen a ghost…’
Over his shoulder, leaning against a black Mercedes, I saw Cilea in her sunglasses and grey fur coat. I felt my stomach seize up. Back from Paris? More likely she had never left. I followed Belanger with my eyes, still holding Leo against me, stopping him from turning towards them. Cilea faced me, but I do not know if she saw me. In any case, her smile was for Belanger. As he lifted her up she laughed and threw her head back, then covered his face with kisses. He carried her into the back of the car, then they were gone.
‘No, nothing. I thought I saw someone I knew,’ I said, letting Leo free himself. He set off, pulling me through the crowds, a counterflow to the human traffic. His ambassadorial Skoda had a new laminated card on the dashboard – ‘On Provisional Government Business’ – and a detachable siren lay on the passenger seat. A few shots rang out nearby. Some people ducked. Leo didn’t even hear.
‘Ottilia’s waiting, and I’ve booked Capsia for you both – you’ll be glad to hear there’s been no regime change
there
…’
‘That’s good to know,’ I looked out as we passed the Boulevard of Socialist Victory, its gravestone facade eerily undamaged. ‘As for the rest of the country, let me guess:
New brothel, same old whores
– isn’t that what you told us?’