‘Most powers would be yours.’
We all looked at her, none of us quite understanding what she meant.
‘What is the point of a ceremonial king?’ she said. ‘We have such a figure already. There’s nothing wrong with the president personally. What is wrong is the government and the fact that the president has no power to make it govern. I have no faith in democracy. It may be a workable system for Americans and British, though I think their systems could more accurately be called plutocracy and oligarchy, but it is not a workable system for us. We are accustomed to centralised power. The king should rule and his ministers carry out his wishes.’
Vakisch looked astounded.
‘No parliament?’ he said. ‘No elections?’
‘Both. But the role of parliament would be to legislate, to enable, to advise, perhaps to modify, definitely not to govern.’
‘And the ministers?’ asked Michael suspiciously. He had already demanded - though by no means been promised - the Ministry of Defence in return for his part in restoring the monarchy.
‘The ministers would be chosen by the king, not elected. The king and his ministers together would compose the executive, but the ministers would be responsible for their actions to the people’s representatives in parliament.’
‘And the king?’ asked Vakisch, seeming more and more during this discussion like a headmaster or senior manager than a guerrilla chief. ‘To whom would he be responsible?’
‘To God,’ said Yelena.
We were all silent. This indeed was a party, faction or person we hadn’t considered at all so far, but if the guerrillas were fighting in the name of the True Faith and if I was their candidate for secular power, then God could hardly be left out and Yelena was unquestionably his spokesperson.
‘A king without a sense of responsibility to God is only a president by another name,’ said Yelena. ‘The mistake in this new age is to strip rulers of their sanctity, to make them too easily replaceable, so that they can be discarded every five years like old cars. People are fickle, easily swayed by conflicting opinions, lacking nerve and stamina. Choice is a great burden to most people. You can see it everywhere, not only in the old Soviet Empire. Let a king rule, that’s his job!’
‘But if he rules badly?’ I said.
‘If he loses his respect for God, he loses the respect of his people and loses his throne. Reality always breaks through eventually, even in the Soviet Empire, though it took seventy years. Reality has already broken through our new democracy and shown it to be at best a flock of sheep, at worst a pack of German wolves.’
This unexpected view of what we might be aiming for had an odd effect on Michael. He became more friendly and amenable, as if the prospect of greater power for me was preferable to whatever he’d originally envisaged. Perhaps it was simply that I’d been transformed from an annoying competitor in his own Slav enclave to a potential patron beyond it. But in any case neither he nor Vakisch saw this fresh prospect as anything much to do with me. Nor, for that matter, did I. It was Yelena’s kingdom we were considering, just as it was Yelena’s nationalist uprising which might lead us into it.
When she saw that none of us had anything more to say for the moment, Yelena opened the kitchen door and spoke to Anna, who brought in a tray of glasses and a bottle of Russian bubbly. We drank to the new kingdom of Ruritania, its king, its ministers (Vakisch had asked for nothing for himself, but surely he would be one of them) and its ... what? How could Yelena’s function be described? Was she the kingdom’s patron, its donor, its sponsor?
‘And you, Yelena . . .’ I said, raising my glass to her, ‘what will you be?’
They all three seemed to think this an awkward and unnecessary thing to say.
‘I will be what I am,’ she said, ‘and then nothing.’
‘Nothing?’
‘Nothing nothing!’ she said vehemently, annoyed at my persistence.
‘To Yelena Nothing, then!’ I said and drank off my glass.
The other two looked even more awkward, staring at their glasses but not joining the toast.
A meal was served and then Michael and Vakisch returned to Chostok. There was still an hour or two of daylight and although the house was now in the shadow of the mountain behind it there was still sunlight out on the lake. I asked Yelena if anyone ever used the boat.
‘We can go for a ride, if you like,’ she said.
It was a small cabin-cruiser which the former Party Secretary-had used for fishing. It started without too much difficulty and, when I’d untied it and unbolted the lakeside door she steered it out a little uncertainly into open water.
‘Do you want to drive, Karl? I’m not an expert.’
‘No, you drive,’ I said, ‘and I’ll look at the scenery.’
The lake was very much larger than appeared from the house and stretched away almost out of sight at the far end from the dam. The mountains there were very steep and sharp. It was a wild and overwhelming place, with everything on the same massive scale as the dam itself, but scenery never does much for me. On this occasion I was in quite a distracted state, both because of the driver and because I was still coming to terms with the events of the past two days: the acceptance of my claim to be king of Ruritania first by the young officers of the Second Regiment, then by the rebels in the camp and finally, just now, even by Michael and Vakisch.
We chugged along close to the dam for a while and then turned back up the lake. The sun had almost vanished in a yellow sky behind the mountains, but its light was still reflected off the water and the snow. Yelena steered the boat with the concentration she gave to everything, but she didn’t need to - there were no islands, no hazards of any sort, no other boats and enough space to manoeuvre a fleet of battleships. She’d changed into white trousers, short brown boots and a white leather jacket with a fur collar, turned up to meet her short hair. It was quite warm in the cabin with the door and windows closed and she’d removed her fur gloves. Her hands were long, like her neck and her face, in which all the features balanced and proportioned each other almost mathematically. Her eyes were half closed against the glare from the water, but she seldom opened them very wide - with her distinct cheek-bones they gave her a faintly Oriental, perhaps Tatar look. There was a little colour in her face, possibly from the warmth of the cabin, but her skin was very pale. Beautiful as she was, I had no great desire at that moment to do more than look at her - she was too formidable, too self-contained. Of course if she’d cared to make the first move, shown any physical response to me, let alone touched my ear again, I’d have been ready and willing for anything and we could have safely let the boat drift.
‘Do you really think,’ I asked, after we’d been going for some time without a word spoken, ‘that I can be that sort of king? I’ve had no training, no experience, never even had power over a dog.’
‘People never know what they can do until they do it.’
‘I could see myself as the ceremonial sort of king,’ I said, ‘because it would be mostly doing what I’ve always done, but with a better wage: playing around, dressing up, driving cars, chatting to people, drinking and dining . . .’
‘You have so little sense of reality,’ she said. ‘Imagine what it would be like occupying this empty shell every waking moment of your life! You’d go mad.’
‘True. But power maddens people too.’
‘We have the winter ahead of us,’ she said. ‘Nothing much can be done to advance our cause in the military way until spring. Equally we have little to fear from the enemy until then. It’s even possible that by the spring they’ll be still more divided and confused than they are now.’
She paused, staring up at the triple peaks, like the middle fingers of a hand, dominating the far end of the lake. They were being invaded, quite quickly, by thick cloud.
‘It’s going to snow.’
She suddenly swung the wheel and the boat right round to head back the way we’d come.
‘Your ignorance, y
our inexperience, your lack of training are probably advantages,’ she said.
‘Thanks.’
‘Tabula rasa.’
‘Meaning?’
‘A clean slate. Ready for anything.’
‘I often get criticised for that.’
The snow cloud was racing faster than we were and overtook us with thick driving flakes and a blasting wind that immediately churned up the water. It turned very dark and the boat, which had a feeble engine, was pulling, sliding and bucking, trying to slew round into the full force of the gale as Yelena continually fought it back on to its course. Then suddenly the engine cut out, the wheel became useless and we were being tossed violently from side to side as the boat drifted sideways into the waves. Yelena looked frightened. She tried to restart the motor, failed and, clinging to the wheel, shouted:
‘Do something!’
I fell rather than walked across the cabin and took hold of the wheel, so that for a moment I had my arms round her and my body pressed against her back, with my mouth on her head. I felt much more exhilarated than afraid.
‘Can you swim?’ I said.
She escaped from my arms and slid on to the bench round the side of the cabin.
‘Don’t be a fool! No one could swim in this temperature.’
‘We’ll have to keep her afloat, then,’ I said encouragingly, without the slightest idea of how that might be done. The whole boat shuddered and lurched and seemed to have taken the opposite decision. I looked hopefully at the dials, but they showed nothing because after trying to restart it Yelena had switched the engine off.
‘Perhaps we’ve run out of fuel?’
‘So what?’
Her fear had turned into anger at my inability to work a mechanical miracle.
‘There might be a reserve tank.’
‘Where?’
‘Good question. I’m afraid I’m as ignorant of boats as . . .’
The boat gave another sickening lurch and tipped so far to one side that Yelena huddled in her corner was below my feet. I looked round the cabin in search of at least a lifebelt, spotted one hanging beside the steps behind and, as the boat tipped the other way and Yelena appeared above me, unhooked it and staggered up towards her with it. She pushed it away.
‘Can’t you do anything to the engine?’
I pushed the lifebelt back at her, even tried to slip it over her head, but between us it fell on the floor and slid to the opposite side of the cabin with the next lurch. As it went I saw that it had the boat’s name on it: ‘LENIN’ - what else?
‘We must just have faith in the good ship Lenin,’ I said, ‘and hope she doesn’t turn right over.’
‘Lenin?’ she shouted, ‘What are you talking about?’
I struggled back to the wheel and, seeing nothing else I could pretend to be busy with, turned the key in the ignition. The engine started. I looked at Yelena as I started to manipulate the wheel and get the boat under control again. Her expression was between fear and relief- she didn’t yet quite believe what she could see and hear.
‘You see,’ I said, ‘Lenin is still a name to conjure with.’
She said nothing, only looked at me sourly. Perhaps she just hated to hear that name or perhaps she wasn’t pleased to have shown ordinary panic. I concentrated on steering - we weren’t out of the storm yet - and used as little power as possible in case it was overstraining which had made it cut out. Gradually we made headway towards the shore and soon we began to see the lights of the house and then of the camp beyond it. Yelena ceased to look sour and came to stand beside me when I pointed to the lights.
‘I’m sorry!’ she said. ‘It can get dangerous very suddenly. I should have been more wary. Luckily we hadn’t gone too far up the lake.’
‘I enjoyed it,’ I said.
‘You have an odd idea of enjoyment.’
I couldn’t tell her that what I enjoyed was not the danger but its effect on her and that I was only not afraid myself because she was. Instead I called up another old memory from my patchy Christian education:
‘You said Jesus never claimed to be a god, but what about the time he walked on the water. That sounds a bit of a miracle.’
We were close to the shore now and the waves were less choppy.
The essence of all the miracles in the New Testament is faith. Jesus was not trying to prove himself a god but to show that one must have faith that there is a God and that He cares about humans. Personally I find the walking on water story uncharacteristic - too much like showing off.’
‘Could you walk on the water?’
‘What purpose could it serve other than to entertain people with primitive ideas?’
‘It would have been an alternative to swimming if the boat had sunk.’
‘Give me the wheel now! You’re going too fast.’
She took the wheel and put the boat briefly into reverse to slow down, then let it drift gently towards the jetty.
‘Even if we had been in real danger I would not have asked God for a miracle to save my own life.’
‘Nor mine?’
‘As I tried to explain before, individual lives are of no importance.’
‘Silly me!’ I said, ‘I thought we couldn’t be in real danger because I didn’t see you praying. But now you tell me you wouldn’t have prayed anyway. I shall be afraid to go out in a boat with you again.’
‘The disadvantage of a clean slate,’ she said, ‘is that everything is of equal value to it: it can’t distinguish between what’s serious and what isn’t.’
‘Not much to be done about that, I’m afraid.’
‘I think there is. It can be written on.’
The boat nosed into the boathouse, scraping the entrance first on one side, then the other.
‘We’ve got the winter for that,’ she said.
19 A Clean Slate
The poverty of my education couldn’t be relieved in four or five months, but at least I wasn’t studying some huge abstract subject like philosophy or geography. My course of study was more limited and technical - like plumbing, electrical engineering or business management - and I had the advantage of individual tuition from a dedicated and inspiring teacher. Also it wasn’t a matter of trying to squeeze me roughly into something ready-made: we were tailoring the job to the wearer as well as the other way round.
History was our theoretical basis, but very selective history: the successes and mistakes of rulers from Pericles and Nero through Louis XIV and XVI to Nicholas II and Gorbachov. Predatory psychopaths like Napoleon, Hitler and Stalin we mostly left out of account, since I wasn’t contemplating conquering Europe, or even Poland. Even so, the majority of our examples ruled big states and didn’t provide very close models for the potential ruler of a tiny land-locked kingdom which would always be dependent on its big neighbours for most of the necessities of modern life - oil and computers, cars and Kalashnikovs. The trouble was that the lesser fry mostly got left out of the books - or at least the German books borrowed or stolen from various Ruritanian libraries by Yelena’s contacts. Machiavelli, who was mainly a little ruler man, was naturally one of our prime texts and I wondered aloud if Yelena found it hard to reconcile his teaching with that of Jesus.
‘ Render unto Caesar that which is Caesar’s covers it,’ she said very off-handedly, as if it was something she didn’t wish to discuss.
‘Yes, but if you represent the interests of Jesus and I represent Caesar’s,’ I said, ‘how would this work in practice?’
‘Explain!’
‘Suppose I promise the job of Minister of Defence to Michael in return for making me king and then give it to Lieutenant Voleski in return for getting rid of Michael! Would you and the True Faith simply stand aside and carry on worshipping, on the principle you quoted, or would you denounce me as wicked and unfit to rule and preach civil disobedience?’
‘Machiavelli wrote mainly for princes,’ she said, ‘Jesus mainly spoke to non-princes. They are not addressing the same questions, but I
would like to think that in the circumstances of Ruritania in the 1990s, which are not at all those of Palestine in the 0020s or Italy in the 1520s, there will be no contradiction between the actions of King Karel the First and the beliefs of the True Faith.’
‘You mean I’d have to do as you tell me.’
‘No. But what you believed to be best in the light of your training.’
‘You intend to wash my brain and fill it with correct thoughts?’
‘Your brain doesn’t need to be washed, it’s tabula rasa.’
‘I may not have many ideas of my own, but I’m very resistant to other people’s, especially when they have an ideological content.’
‘To return to your specific example: the problem, I think, will hardly arise in that form because you will be a very poor pupil of mine if you don’t understand that making rash promises leads to the downfall of rulers. The only condition for promising the Ministry of Defence to either Michael or Lieutenant Voleski should be that they perform the job successfully. I doubt if either of them could fulfil that condition.’
This wasn’t the only hint I got that Michael had a strictly limited part to play in Yelena’s plans.
These theoretical lessons occupied the first few weeks of my course. Most of my time was taken up with reading, but Yelena had other things to do. Often she knew the stuff already - otherwise she relied on me to give her the gist of what I’d read and pick out the salient points. We had tutorials two or three days a week and over meals in the evenings, if she was at home. Many days she was away and would tell me nothing about where she went or what she did. She was very severe if she felt I’d read something too superficially or hadn’t read enough, but on the whole I surprised myself with my own diligence: reading for a practical purpose was very different from any reading I’d done in the past, for exams or in desperation when there was nothing better to do.
I kept fit by walking and running in the snow and by spending an hour a day in the rudimentary gym in the barracks. I also gave English lessons to the soldiers and received Ruritanian lessons in return and on the days when Yelena was away I would usually eat in the barracks. But she discouraged me from joining their military exercises:
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