The Porcupine (15 page)

‘It’s a blanket manufacturer to say that they only ever made him one blanket.’

‘Shut up, boys. Watch.’
]

That night Peter Solinsky, who slept badly on his study floor, wandered into the sitting-room and discovered the newly framed certificate of rehabilitation hanging on the wall. Further proof of the distance between himself and Maria.

Her grandfather Roumen Mechkov had been, as they always put it, a loyal Communist and diligent anti-Fascist. In the early 1930s, as the Iron Guard intensified its violent purges, he had accompanied other leading party members into exile in Moscow, where he had remained a loyal Communist and diligent anti-Fascist until some time in 1937, when he had become a Trotskyist deviationist, a Hitlerite infiltrator, a counter-revolutionary agitator, and quite possibly all three simultaneously. No-one had dared ask questions about his disappearance. Roumen Mechkov did not appear in official histories of the local Party, and for fifty years his family had only whispered his name.

When Maria announced her intention of writing to the Supreme Court of the USSR, Peter had opposed the idea. Any discovery she made would only cause her pain. And besides, she could not bring back to life the grandfather she had never known. What he meant, though did not quite express, was that in his view there were only two possibilities. Either Mechkov had betrayed the great cause in which he had believed, or else he had been viciously duped by it. Which would you prefer your grandfather to be, Maria, a criminal renegade or a credulous fool?

Maria ignored her husband’s advice, posted her submission, and after almost a year received a reply dated 11th December 1989 from A.T. Ukolov, Member of the Supreme
Court of the USSR. He was able, after investigation, to inform the enquirer that her grandfather, Roumen Alexei Mechkov, had been arrested on 22nd July 1937 and charged with ‘being a member of a Trotskyist terrorist organisation and, in this capacity, conspiring to commit acts of terrorism against Comintern leaders and sabotage the USSR’. Interrogated at the Stalingrad (now Volgograd) Regional Department of the People’s Commissariat for Internal Affairs, Mechkov had been sentenced to death by firing squad on 17th January 1938, the sentence being carried out the same day. A review of the case, conducted in 1955, had established that there was no evidence against Mechkov apart from the conflicting and unspecific depositions of other persons arraigned in the same case. A.T. Ukolov regretted that there was no indication of a place of burial, and that no photographs or personal papers had been preserved in the records. He was able, however, to confirm that the subject of the submission had been an active and loyal Communist, who on 14th January 1956 had been rehabilitated. A.T. Ukolov enclosed with his letter a certificate to this effect.

And you hang that on the wall, thought Peter. Proof that the movement to which your grandfather dedicated his life slaughtered him as a traitor. Proof that the same movement decided twenty years later that he was not, after all, a traitor but a martyr. Proof that the same movement did not think to inform anyone of this substantial change of status for another thirty-four years. Maria wanted to be reminded of that?

A loyal Communist becomes a Trotskyist terrorist and then a loyal Communist again. Heroes become traitors, traitors become martyrs. Inspirational leaders and helmsmen of the nation become common criminals taken with their hands
in the cashbox — until, perhaps, at some dread moment in the future, they become charming nonagenarians on TV chat shows. Peter Solinsky looked at the uncurtained window and saw its blackness fill with opening titles.
Stoyo Petkanov: the Rehabilitation of a Helmsman
. Whether or not such revisionism occurred would partly depend on how he performed in the final week of the trial.

And what did professors of law, prosecuting counsel, husbands, fathers become? What new names would be applied, what unnaming would take place? What chance for any of them in the breaking wave of history?

‘I will tell you what a man with pretensions to wisdom once said to me.’

The Prosecutor General didn’t want to hear. He had come to loathe this man. Before, as a mere citizen, he had hated him objectively, usefully. Hatred of Petkanov had been a constructive, unifying force among oppositionists. But since seeing him close up, since talking and fighting with him, the emotion had changed. His loathing had become personal, furious, snobbish and corroding. Past shame, present detestation, future fear: the mix had begun to consume the prosecutor. He seemed to hate Petkanov now as much as he had ever loved his wife; the leader had taken up all the emotional slack that currently existed in his marriage. And now he waited for some tawdry platitude which the swinish ex-President had picked up from some toiling hero of labour who in any case had probably filched it loyally from the collected speeches, writings and documents of the swinish ex-President.

‘He was a musician,’ said Petkanov. ‘He played in the State Radio Symphony Orchestra. I had gone with my daughter. She took me afterwards to be presented to the players. They had performed well, I thought, so I toasted them. This was in the Revolutionary Concert Hall,’ he added, an embellishing detail which for some reason irritated Solinsky like the bite of a horse-fly. Why tell me that, he found himself asking. Who cares in which damn hall you claim to have been impressed by the music? Who cares, what difference does it make? In his rage he heard Petkanov’s story continue distantly, through thick curtains. ‘And in the few words I spoke I talked of the requirements of art in the political struggle, how artists must join in the great movement against Fascism and imperialism and towards building the socialist future. You can imagine’, he said, with a touch of irony well lost on Solinsky, ‘roughly what I said. Anyway, afterwards, as I was moving through the orchestra, a young violinist came up to me as I passed. “Comrade Petkanov,” he said, “Comrade Petkanov, the people don’t care about higher things. They care only for sausage.” ’

Petkanov looked at the Prosecutor General for his reaction; but Solinsky hardly seemed to be focusing. Eventually, as if coming to, he said, ‘I suppose you had him shot.’

‘Peter, you are so old-fashioned. So old-fashioned in your criticism. Of course not. We never shot people.’ We’ll see about that, thought the prosecutor, we’ll dig in the grounds of your prison camps, we’ll carry out autopsies, we’ll get your secret police to squeal on you. ‘No. But let’s say that his chances of becoming leader of the orchestra were a little diminished after this frank exchange of views.’

‘What was his name?’

‘Oh, really, you do not expect me … Anyway, the
point is this. I did not agree with that rather cynical young man. But I also thought about what he had said. And so, every now and then, afterwards, I would repeat to myself, “Comrade Petkanov, the people need sausage
and
higher things.” ’

‘So?’ Such was the wisdom of the Revolutionary Concert Hall. You mutter a few brave words of protest backstage, and if you are not shot then your thought is twisted into some tiny, banal motto by this, by this …

‘So, I am merely passing on helpful advice. Because, you see, we gave them sausage
and
higher things. You do not believe in higher things, and you do not even give them sausage. There is none in the shops. So what do you give them instead?’

‘We give them freedom and truth.’ It sounded pompous in his mouth, but it was what he believed, so why not state it?

‘Freedom and truth!’ replied Petkanov mockingly. ‘So those are your higher things! You give women the freedom to come out of their kitchens and march on your parliament and tell you this truth – that there is no fucking sausage in the shops. That’s what they tell you. And you call this progress?’

‘We will get there.’

‘Hmmm. Hmmm. I doubt it. I ask permission to doubt it, Peter. You know, the priest in my village – and he probably was shot, I’m afraid, there were so many criminal elements around at the time, it could easily have happened – the priest in my village used to say, “You don’t get to Heaven at the first jump.” ’

‘Exactly.’

‘No, Peter, you misunderstand me. Actually, I am not
talking about you. You and your sort have had many jumps already. Many centuries and many jumps. Jump, jump, jump. I am talking about
us
. We have only had one jump so far.’

Character. Perhaps that had been his mistake, his … yes, his bourgeois-liberal error. The naive hope of ‘getting to know’ Petkanov. The stubborn yet foolish belief that the exercise of power reflects an individual’s character, and that the study of character is therefore necessary and profitable. True at one time, no doubt: true of Napoleon and Caesars and Tsars and Crown Princes. But things had moved on since then.

The assassination of Kirov, that was the key date. Shot in the back with a Nagan revolver in the headquarters of the Leningrad Communist Party on the 1st of December 1934. Stalin’s friend and ally, Stalin’s comrade. Therefore, as we innocently used to say, therefore the one person in the world who could not possibly have wished or hoped for it, let alone ordered it, was Stalin himself. This was an impossibility in all known political and personal terms. For Stalin to have ordered Kirov’s death was not just ‘out of character’, but beyond our understanding of what character might comprise. Which was precisely the point. We have moved into an era when ‘character’ is a misleading concept. Character has been replaced by ego, and the exercise of authority as a reflection of character has been replaced by the psychopathic retention of power by all possible means and in mockery of all implausibilities. Stalin had Kirov killed: welcome to the modern world.

Solinsky found he was convinced by this conclusion as long
as he sat calmly in his study looking north, or interrogated the bookcase in his office; but the attempt to see Petkanov as a malign whirr of electrons circling some monstrous vacuum did not survive two minutes in his presence. The old man, shadowed by his wardress, would stand before him arguing, denying, lying, feigning incomprehension; and immediately all the Prosecutor General’s primary emotions – curiosity, expectation, bafflement – were back in place. He searched again for character, for old-fashioned, explicable character. It was as if the law itself demanded the cause-and-effect of logical motive and resultant action; the courtroom simply declined to admit any tinkering with iron consequentiality.

By mid-afternoon on the forty-second day of Criminal Law Case Number 1, Peter Solinsky decided that the moment had come. Yet another line of enquiry, into the use of official petrol for private purposes, had petered out in squabbles and forgetfulness. ‘Very well,’ he said, taking a long, opera-singer’s breath and picking up another file. During the lunchtime adjournment he had splashed water on his face and combed his hair again. In the mirror he had looked tired. He was tired, from his work, from his marriage, from political anxiety, but mainly from being in the presence of Stoyo Petkanov day after day. How tempting it must have been for those fawning members of the Politburo simply to save energy by agreeing with him.

Now he tried to forget his wife, and Lieutenant-General Ganin, and the TV cameras, and all the promises he had made to himself before the trial began. Enough of being the honourable lawyer who patiently eases truth, like a dandelion leaf, from between the teeth of lies. Perhaps he was tired of doing that too. ‘Very well, Mr Petkanov. We
have become more than familiar over the many weeks of this criminal case with your defence. Your defence to all charges and accusations. If something illegal was done, then you did not know about it. And if you did know about it, then automatically it was legal.’