Among the welcoming party was a stern woman and she now called out to the Danube of Thought: ‘For heaven’s sake, Nicolae! You look like a tramp. I can see you haven’t changed your clothes in days.’
Whereupon the little man turned pale and went into a huddle of security men, in a manner Jimfish had seen on a rugby field, when a player wished to replace his torn shorts in a modest manner. When he emerged he wore a new suit, although whether his astrakhan hat had been replaced Jimfish could not tell.
‘Now burn the old suit,’ ordered the stern woman. ‘It’s sure to be infected with Falling Wall syndrome.’
Just how important she was Jimfish understood when his friend introduced her: ‘This is Lenuţa, Deputy Prime Minister, Mother of the Nation, Head of the Cadres Commission, Revolutionary Fighter for the Motherland, as well as being my wife.’
Lenuţa straightened Nicolae’s conical hat, fussed with his scarf, buttoned his winter coat, and Jimfish was invited to accompany the presidential couple, police officers, bodyguards and bulky Securitate agents to the balcony overlooking the gigantic square, where thousands waited in the December chill. Even though Nicolae had been rehearsing his speech on the helicopter, he was slow in getting started and mumbled a lot.
The Deputy Prime Minister kept hissing at her husband, ‘Speak up, Nicolae!’
The helicopter pilot interpreted Nicolae’s remarks for Jimfish, who got the impression that depite rehearsing his speech, Nicolae was floundering. He spent long minutes greeting the municipal workers, soldiers and city councillors. The crowd muttered and hissed and, although some factory workers clapped, rattling their banners in support, the muttering and hissing in the square grew noisier as Nicolae sputtered on. Suddenly, a series of explosions that might have been fireworks or even gunshots were clearly audible. Nicolae became very irritated and banged the microphone, shouting ‘Halloo! Halloo!’ in the manner of a schoolmaster chivvying his pupils. Then there began a sound no one had heard in decades, when the Genius of the Carpathians addressed the nation: a hullabaloo so brazen and impudent that everyone on the presidential balcony refused to believe what their ears told them.
‘Surely it’s the wind wafting your achievements to the world,’ said a Securitate officer.
‘Or a choir of owls saluting the greatness of your genius,’ said a second man.
These artful attempts to explain the angry booing that interrupted Nicolae’s speech from the balcony were received in silence by the Genius of the Carpathians.
Lenuţa knew instantly that something alarming was happening, and shouted, ‘Speak to them, Nicolae!’
In the pandemonium, her orders seemed to Jimfish as fruitless as the helicopters he’d watched sprinkling sand on the flames of the Chernobyl reactors. The leader’s bodyguards now decided it was time to put a good deal of space between themselves and the mob.
A Securitate man dared to interrupt the leader. Sidling up to him, he tapped Nicolae on the shoulder: ‘We could use the tunnels below the square, which you, sir, had the foresight to build.’
The Danube of Thought shook his conical hat. ‘That way we’ll end up in the middle of these madmen, like moles coming up in the neighbour’s garden; they’ll reach for a spade and smash our heads in. Better we take the helicopter to a friendly barracks, return in force with loyal soldiers, then shoot everyone who opens his mouth.’
The functionaries on the balcony agreed this was a sound idea and hurried the presidential couple into the lift and up to the roof of the Palace of the People, while far below the angry mass in the square surged around the walls of Party Headquarters like a wild sea.
Perhaps he had come at last, Jimfish realized, face to face with the rage of the lumpenproletariat. Yet how could this be, in a land devoted to the health and happiness of just that favoured class whose champion was Nicolae Ceauşescu and whose side he was on? If history had so very many sides, however would he know the right one?
CHAPTER 10
Târgovişte, Romania, December 1989
The helicopter was lifting when Nicolae’s wife suddenly remembered something she had forgotten.
‘We can’t go without the gifts. And fresh changes of suits for Nicolae.’
So lift-off was aborted and into the strong room ran the presidential couple, and the safes were opened. Lenuţa had been referring to the official gifts with which Nicolae had been presented by many heads of state over his twenty-five years in power: leopard skins from Mobutu Sese Seko of Zaire; silver doves from the Shah of Persia; an enamelled yak from Mao Zedong; portraits of Lenin and Stalin; and even a bullet-proof limousine.
But the crowds downstairs had now broken into the building and were heading for the roof. Though Lenuţa sighed at having to leave behind shoals of shoes, forests of furs and towers of tiaras, she snatched the diamonds given to her by Jean-Bédel Bokassa, then ruler of the one-time Central African Empire. Her husband took only the moon rocks presented to him by the American President Richard Nixon, stuffing them into his pockets, before the Securitate officers, hearing the shouts of their pursuers who were now racing up the stairs, pushed the presidential couple into the lift, which creaked and trembled as it climbed, under the combined weight of the bodyguards, then broke down on the top floor and the doors had to be forced open. By now, so terrified were Nicolae and Lenuţa, they had to be half-carried to the waiting helicopter.
Nicolae seemed to regard Jimfish as a lucky token, because he insisted he come with them. Two bodyguards climbed aboard, which meant Lenuţa had to perch uncomfortably on Jimfish’s knee. But there was no time for objections; the first demonstrators were on the roof, heading for the helicopter as it lifted.
Nicolae was elated, swearing to return with troops loyal to him and to the cause. But not long into the flight, the pilot announced that they were being tracked by radar and could be blown out of the sky at any moment.
‘Then put down immediately!’ Nicolae ordered, seeing a road beneath them.
As soon as they touched down, one of the Securitate men leaped out and stopped a passing car, showing his pistol by way of encouragement as he ordered the astonished driver to accept several passengers. But in the tiny car they were even more crowded than they had been in the helicopter and Nicolae was obliged to jettison his bodyguards.
It was in these cramped conditions that they arrived in a town called Târgovişte and found a house where the owner showed them to a room and promised they would be safe. Lenuţa was wary and cautioned Nicolae with a Romanian proverb she translated for Jimfish: ‘Do not sell the skin till you have shot the bear.’ But her husband ignored her.
Once the presidential couple were inside the room, Jimfish was relieved to see the owner of the house turn the key in the lock, sure that this was done to protect them. It was only when he heard Nicolae banging on the door and a troop of soldiers suddenly arrived and took up guard outside the room that Jimfish realized something was amiss.
‘What are you doing here?’ he asked the soldiers.
But they did not understand him. However, the pilot who had announced to his boss – falsely it seemed – that their helicopter could be blown out of the sky at any moment, suddenly reappeared. He translated Jimfish’s question for the soldiers, who were most amused and gave this answer: ‘We are here to shoot the dictator and his wife.’
‘Without a trial?’ Jimfish was shocked.
‘Of course there is to be a trial. The dictator and his wife will be charged with treason, fraud, murder and embezzlement. When found guilty they will be executed.’
Jimfish felt more confused than ever. ‘But then this is not a revolution, it’s a military coup.’
‘You’re a simple lad,’ the soldiers told him, ‘and you can’t see the difference between a coup and a revolution. Where have you been all your life?’
‘I come from Africa,’ Jimfish told them.
‘Ah, well,’ they nodded, ‘that explains it. In Africa you have a coup every day of the week. That’s to say a violent, un
democratic takeover of the state, often by disaffected military men. Our revolution is very different. It’s a spontaneous democratic uprising, led by and for the people. Anyone who calls it a coup is a counter-revolutionary simpleton and will face the same fate as the dictator, if this simpleton is not careful.’
Jimfish still failed to see the difference, though he was too polite to say so. He was keenly reminded of his own country, where show trials, run by supine judges, reduced legal tribunals to loyal mouthpieces of the regime and turned judicial chambers into kangaroo courts. His puzzlement must have been clear to the soldiers, who were gripped by a burst of missionary desire to enlighten this benighted African. When Jimfish offered to leave the house, they insisted he stay and see how much better things were done in Europe. So it was that Jimfish had a seat at the events that now unfolded.
First, the soldiers drew lots as to which of them would serve in the firing squad. Then they selected the wall against which the guilty pair would be shot the moment their trial ended. Next the haggard defendants were led into the courtroom to face the military judges. A lawyer, brought from Budapest to represent the prisoners, advised them to tell the court they were mad. Nicolae refused to recognize the legitimacy of the court, while Lenuţa – who was, it seemed, more widely known as Elena – said little.
Arriving at the verdict took no time at all.
Jimfish watched as the condemned prisoners were bound with rope and marched to the appointed wall. The firing squad took a few steps back and then, apparently unable to wait another moment, the soldiers wheeled, opened fire and kept shooting. Other soldiers appeared at upstairs windows and joined in the fusillade, so that, for long moments after the first shots knocked Nicolae and Elena to the ground, dozens more bullets continued to buffet their bodies, making them shake and quiver as if alive.
Finally, silence settled and the bodies were carried away to be buried in unmarked graves. All those who had taken part in the execution wished each other a very happy Christmas and said it was the best gift they could have had. Jimfish briefly wondered if he should have said something about the diamonds of the Emperor Bokassa, which Elena had in her pocket, or the moon rocks from Richard Nixon that Nicolae carried, but he rather feared the soldiers would immediately dig up the bodies again.
Terrible though the scenes had been, he tried to feel grateful for being shown why a military coup was not to be confused with a revolution, and exactly where a fair trial differed from a kangaroo court. But the knowledge was bitter. He had begun to see that such things depended on a triad of useful principles: first – on who had the guns; next on who was dead when the shooting stopped; and last but most important: on who was in charge of the words used to talk about what had happened when it was all over.
CHAPTER 11
Bucharest, Romania, Christmas 1989
Jimfish flew back to Bucharest, on Christmas Day, aboard the same helicopter in which he had begun his journey with Nicolae and Lenuţa-Elena. He landed once again on the roof of the Party Headquarters to be met by the same generals, Securitate officers and Communist Party functionaries who had waved goodbye to the presidential couple on their last fateful journey. They all wore the same hats, yet they were now very different. ‘Viva the revolution! Romania libera!’ they chorused, waving their hats, much as they had done just hours earlier when they chanted ‘Ni-co-lae Cea-oooo-şes-cooo . . . Romaneeeeaaah!’
The change in their demeanour was nothing short of miraculous. They had shed their Party badges, unclenched their fists and went about hugging each other in an ecstasy of self-congratulation. Gone was every trace of banners and bunting, along with portraits of the beloved leader. A lifetime’s solemn, sincere, dogged attachment to the Party had vanished overnight.
So complete was the transformation that Jimfish’s head began to spin like a giddy top. The men who led this revolution were surely the same officials who willingly murdered, harried, spied on and lied to the very people in the square all through the long rule of the late dictator. Who had flinched in horror when the crowds dared to boo the Genius of the Carpathians and who fled for the roof when the crowds, revved up on the rocket fuel of lumpen-proletarian rage, invaded Party Headquarters.
When Jimfish asked them what they felt about Nicolae and Elena’s show trial they looked at him as if he were quite mad. When he admitted that he had been saddened by the firing squad in Târgovişte, they laughed outright. Was he, they demanded, a counter-revolutionary?
‘We fought for freedom and defeated the tyrant. Finishing him off was the best Christmas present in the world. We have given the people what they wanted: the dictator is dead. Anyone who can’t see that is an enemy of the revolution.’
With that they beat Jimfish savagely about the head and might have killed him had he not run into the very lift that had once saved Nicolae from the angry mob. The lift descended to the ground floor and Jimfish escaped into the giant square in front of Party Headquarters, where a vast crowd was still camped in their threadbare coats, cold and hungry, watching on a large screen scenes from the execution of Nicolae and Elena, replayed day and night, as if this were all the food they needed, and the images of the bloody end of these two monsters was also the end of tyranny and terror. While to Jimfish – ashamed though he was of his negative thoughts – it seemed as if the way the Ceauşescus had died, rather than killing off the past, had given the old demons a new lease of life, free to haunt the country for years to come.
As he turned away from the ghastly images, a tall, elegant black man in a dove-grey tunic, wearing on his head a leopard-skin toque, offered Jimfish his silk handkerchief.
‘Wipe the blood from your eyes, my friend.’
The stranger wore heavy black spectacles and he carried a wooden sceptre, surmounted by a leopard.
‘How sad to find these crowds rejoicing at the murder of their Great Leader. We would never allow this in Africa.’
For the first time since the loss of Lunamiel, the murder of Jagdish and the shooting of Soviet Malala, Jimfish felt happiness rising inside him like the sun and he grasped the other’s hand. ‘My compatriot! I’m from the Mother Continent, too. My name is Jimfish of Port Pallid, a tiny town on the eastern coast of South Africa.’
The other lifted his sceptre in salute. ‘And I am Marshal Mobutu Sese Seko Nkuku Ngbendu wa Za Banga – which is to say, “The All-powerful, Earthy, Fiery Warrior Who, through His Endurance and Inflexible Will to Win, Moves from Conquest to Conquest, Trailing Fire in His Wake”. I am the embodiment of Zaire, a country twenty per cent bigger than Mexico and very, very rich in diamonds and minerals. You may call me the Great Leopard.’
Jimfish complimented the gentleman on the size and wealth of his homeland.
‘Far more than a simple homeland,’ said the other. ‘Zaire is my personal invention. The very appellation, along with what my citizens are allowed to wear or name themselves, as well as how my nation’s riches are spent, are all extensions of my dreams. A country that began as a land of slaves and sadness, which greedy European imperialists called the Belgian Congo, is now, thanks to my vision, the glorious, authentic Republic of Zaire. People know me as its Great Marshal, Grand Chief and Messiah.’
‘And you were a friend of the late Nicolae and Elena Ceauşescu?’ Jimfish guessed.
The gentleman held up two fingers tightly pressed together. ‘We were as close as this. Brothers under the skin. Imagine how I felt when, on Christmas Day, lying in bed in my palace, I tuned into satellite television to find myself witnessing the Genius of the Carpathians being done to death by barbarians. I ordered my jet to be made ready and flew post-haste here to Bucharest, hoping at least to arrange for my old friend a state funeral in Zaire. Too late, alas. Why do those who killed the great Ceauşescu not see they had the leader they deserved? A reflection of themselves?’
Jimfish reported what he had been told. ‘They called him a cruel tyrant.’
‘Cruelty in a leader is often plain common sense. In my country, for exampl
e, some say I don’t bother to feed my prisoners. But why should I, when I can’t even feed my own peasants? However, cruelty needs to be judiciously employed . . . I once had the pleasure of hanging four of my ministers in a popular public ceremony, attended by fifty thousand enthusiastic citizens. It was on the feast of Pentecost, as it happens. Punishment is all the more impressive – I speak as a fervent Catholic – when combined with piety. Murder, tout seul, is a clumsy tool. Better to pay off your rivals or have them done away with discreetly or buy them back into government on your own terms. Genial corruption is the key. Steal if you like, I counsel my ministers, soldiers and gendarmes – but not too much – and not all at once. That way you win more.’
‘What I can’t fathom about those who killed the Genius of the Carpathians and his wife,’ said Jimfish, ‘is their reasoning. They were socialists yesterday, call themselves democrats now and yet they beat those who disagree.’
The gentleman in the leopard-skin toque shook his head sadly. ‘We will never understand the reasoning of Europeans, if they possess anything of the sort worth bothering with. Western ways have no place in Africa and that’s why I have abolished Christian names. They’re nothing but sentimental western affectations, so I have banned them. And business suits may no longer be worn. They’re symbols of the old imperialism. Not fitting for the tiger-daughters and lion-sons of the New Africa, who deserve real leaders. In our tradition we have room only for one chief, one Big Man.’
‘Surely some opposition is good in a democracy?’ Jimfish asked.
‘In our authentic Zairean system, democracy is the foundation on which the leader bases his divine right to rule. When opposition is needed, I provide it by calling an election and standing against the President. That way voters may choose freely between me and myself, but there can be only one winner.’
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