The Porcupine

by Julian Barnes

  What the echo of the wall tells

  Is the rotting of the stone and not the souls

  He had kept the faith. His country had been a model of Socialism, the most loyal ally of the Soviet Union until the betrayals and the weaknesses began. How strong they had been only a short while ago, how united. What respect the world had offered them, what fear. The firm and decisive fraternal action of 1968 had shown the world. Fascist America was being humiliated in its imperialist adventuring in Vietnam, Socialism was gaining ground everywhere, in Africa, in Asia, in Europe. It was a time of great hope, when the leaders stood proudly shoulder to shoulder.

  Now look at them. Erich running away to Moscow, holing up like a rat in the Chilean Embassy, waiting for a plane to North Korea. Kadar dead after the betrayal of opening his frontier: you could never trust a Hungarian. Husak dead too, eaten up by a cancer, gibberingly accepting the last rites from a priest in a frock, beaten down by that scribbler he should have banged up for life. Jaruzelski not up to it, joining the other side, saying he now believed in capitalism. Ceausescu, at least he went down fighting, if running away and being executed by firing squad counts as fighting. He was always a mad hog, Nicolae, out for the main chance, playing both sides against the middle, refusing to join the fraternal action of 1968; but at least he had a bit of spine and tried to hold things together until the end.

  And then, worst of all, there was that weak fool in the Kremlin who looked as if a bird had shat on his head. Getting into that publicity duel with Reagan. Please let me give away some more SS-20s – now will you put me on the cover of Time magazine? Man of the Year. Woman of the Year, thought Petkanov. The Russians weren’t even up to running a vodka stall nowadays. Look at that attempted coup of theirs. Pathetic of Gorbachev to get caught by it. Pathetic of the loyalists not to do the obvious things – take out the radio and television, take out the newspapers, take out the parliament buildings, neutralise the dangerous figures. And what did they do? They let that fascist Yeltsin make a hero of himself. What had happened to all the lessons of history when not even the Russians could organise a coup?

  And that left him. He had seen it coming, seen the possibility at least, ever since Comecon hiked the oil price in 1983. Then Gorbachev started prancing round the West looking for dollars and goodwill. And now everything was fucked. Gorbachev was fucked – off to be a professor in the United States, they said, getting his tip, thank you Mr President sir. The Soviet Union was fucked into little pieces, the DDR was fucked, Czechoslovakia would snap like a carrot, Yugoslavia was fucked from stem to stern. Look what had happened to the DDR. The capitalists marched in, bankrupted everything, declared it inefficient, threw everyone out of work, picked up all the nice old houses for themselves as second homes, brought every single law into line with capitalist law, and that was it, the DDR fucked. That blonde bitch runner who won those athletics championships, she was all that was left of the DDR. Easterners: fourth-class citizens, despised, unemployed, laughed at for their little cars. Zoo exhibits.

  And that left him. ‘What the echo of the wall tells/Is the rotting of the stone and not the souls.’ He had been in prison before, that was where it had all started, and his soul had not rotted then. Nor had it rotted now. He was never going to crawl away to a priest and die like Husak or scuttle off to the Kremlin like Erich. The new government of plant-loving Fascists had wanted to put him on trial. They knew just what they needed: a weak old man confessing his crimes, pleading guilty to anything in exchange for his life. And he had played it just right in the preliminary interrogations. Refused to co-operate, said he didn’t acknowledge their authority, denounced their bourgeois justice, all the time wearily repeating that his only wish was to be allowed to retire to the country and live out his last years in peace. He did this day after day, until they were absolutely sure of one thing, which was that they ached to put him in court. His plan all along.

  He didn’t care what happened to his life, but he did care what happened to his faith. They were selling pornography outside the Mausoleum of the First Leader. The priests were dancing on the tables. Foreign capitalists were sniffing round the country like dogs on heat. The Crown Prince, as the newspapers had started calling him again, was eyeing his family’s palaces and saying of course he wouldn’t come back as monarch, just as a businessman trying to help his country if that was permitted. And then he sent his wife on ahead and when she went to a football match no-one watched the game. All this talk about people wanting a referendum on the return of the monarchy, as if it hadn’t been decided years ago. The usual tricks. Why didn’t the newspapers publish that photograph of the Crown Prince’s three uncles in the uniform of the Iron Guard?

  And that left him, Stoyo Petkanov, Second Leader, helmsman of the nation, defender of Socialism. That cunt Gorbachev had fucked it, fucked everything. Came here on his royal visit, waving his two little words in the air and expecting everyone to applaud. Telling us at the same time that unfortunately he would no longer be able to accept our money in exchange for his oil. Hard currency only. The irony of the Chairman of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics soliciting American dollars from the leader of his staunchest socialist ally appeared to be lost on him. When told that the nation had very few dollars, Gorbachev replied that the way to discover dollars was to restructure the country with more openness.

  He had been proud of what happened next. ‘Comrade Chairman,’ he had said, ‘I have a proposition, a restructuring of my own to suggest. My country is currently undergoing certain temporary difficulties, the reasons for which we both acknowledge. Our two nations have always striven most closely together in following the socialist path. We were your loyal ally in opposing counter-revolutionary forces in 1968. Yet you come here and announce that our currency will no longer be valid with you, that a new separation is to be put between our two countries. This does not strike me as necessary or, if I may say so, fraternal. I have a different idea to put to you, a different vision of the future. I propose, instead of our two nations each stepping out on its own red pathway as we cross this river of stones we have just encountered on the great mountain, I propose, instead of this, that we draw closer.’

  He could see Gorbachev’s interest was fully roused. ‘What do you mean?’ the Russian asked.

  ‘I propose a full political integration between our two states.’

  Gorbachev was not expecting this. It had not been in the preliminary protocols. He did not know how to handle the situation. He had come to tell the Second Leader what to do in his own country, and decided beforehand that he was dealing with some idiot comrade of the old school, one who did not understand the way the world was moving. But he, Stoyo Petkanov, he had been the one with the plan, and the Russian had not liked that.

  ‘Explain yourself,’ Gorbachev had said.

  He had explained himself. He had talked of the nation’s continued and loyal striving towards Socialism, internationalism and peace. He referred to his people’s historic struggle and their continued aspirations. He candidly addressed the contradictions which can emerge and which can harm the interests of social construction if they are not investigated and if purposeful action is not taken by the Party and the State for their settlement. Parenthetically, but yet centrally, he recalled his adolescent epiphany on Mount Rykosha. In conclusion, he spoke rousingly of the future, of its challenges and opportunities.

  ‘As I understand it,’ his visitor had finally said, ‘you are proposing that your country be incorporated into the USSR as the sixteenth republic of that Union.’

  ‘Exactly.’

  The defence was offered a day’s adjournment after the regrettable incident at the courtroom gates. State Advocates Milanova and Zlatarova, whom the former President had unexpectedly started to consult on minor business, were in favour; but Petkanov overruled them. And the next morning, as the Prosecutor General pressed him yet again about his notorious personal greed, his mood was benign, his innocenc
e ebullient.

  ‘I am an ordinary man. I need little. I have never, during all my years as helmsman, asked much for myself.’

  [‘The fool asks much, but he is more of a fool who grants it.’]

  ‘I have simple tastes. I do not require many things.’

  [‘What can you need when you own the whole country?’

  ‘More than just the country. Us too. Us.’]

  ‘I have no money hoarded away in Switzerland.’

  [‘It must be somewhere else then.’]

  ‘When they found Thracian gold on my land, I gave it voluntarily to the National Archaeological Museum.’

  [‘He prefers silver.’]

  ‘I am not like the imperialist presidents of the United States, who present themselves to their fellow-countrymen as simple folk, and then leave office laden down with riches.’

  [‘Us, us.’]

  ‘I have been awarded many international honours, but I have always accepted them on behalf of the Party and the State. I have often given money to the nation’s orphanages. When the Lenin Publishing House insisted that I took royalties on my books, since otherwise writers would not be encouraged to do so themselves, I always gave half away to the orphanages. This was not always publicised.’

  [‘We are the orphans.’]

  ‘My late wife never dressed in Paris fashions.’

  [‘She should have done. Bag of suet.’

  ‘Raisa! Raisa!’]

  ‘My own suits, for that matter, are made from cloth woven at a communal production centre close to my own home village.’

  Solinsky had had enough. At the start of the morning’s session, he might have been prepared to let things go quietly. But his tolerance was decreasing daily, and the onset of tiredness he felt was edged with nausea. ‘We are not talking about your suits.’ His tone was peremptory and sarcastic. ‘We do not wish to hear that you consider yourself a paragon of virtue. We are investigating your corruption. We are investigating the way in which you systematically bled this country to death.’

  The President of the Court was beginning to feel tired too. ‘Be specific,’ he urged. ‘This is not the place for mere denunciation. You can leave that to the speakers in the public squares.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘But what is corruption?’ Petkanov suavely picked up the argument, as if Solinsky’s irritated outburst had merely been a prompt. ‘And why do we not talk about suits?’ He stood with his hands on the padded bar, a compact figure, head set low on the shoulders, and questing nose raised to sniff the courtroom air. He seemed the only person with any energy that day; he was the one driving the tribunal along. ‘Is not corruption in the eye of the beholder? Let me give you an example.’ He paused, knowing that this offer of actual information, set beside his habitual denials and failures of memory, would compel attention. ‘You, for instance, Mr Prosecutor General, I well remember that time we sent you to Italy. The middle-Seventies, was it not? You were, or at least you then proclaimed yourself to be, a loyal member of the Party, a good Communist, a true Socialist. We sent you to Turin, you will recall, as part of a trade delegation. We also gave you some hard currency, which was a privilege, the fruits of the labours of your fellow-countrymen. But we gave you some.’

  Solinsky looked at the bench. He didn’t know what was coming — or at least, he hoped he didn’t know what was coming. Why hadn’t the President of the Court intervened? Wasn’t this mere denunciation too? But all three judges were complacently sitting on their hands, showing an immoderate interest in Petkanov’s tale.

  ‘How, the court might ask, does a good Communist spend the hard currency provided for him by the sweat of the workers and peasants at home? Does he buy socialist books by our fraternal Italian colleagues, books worthy of study? Does he perhaps give some money to a local orphanage? Would he save as much as possible, bring it home and return it to the Party? No, no, no, none of these things. He spent part of it on a nice Italian suit, so that he could be more elegant than his comrades when he returned home. He spent some of it on whisky. And he spent the rest of it,’ Petkanov paused again, an old ham who had long ago understood that old hams’ tricks work, ‘he spent the rest of it on taking a local woman to an expensive restaurant. I ask you simply, is this corruption?’

  He waited, nose in the air, rims of his spectacles glinting in the TV lights, and just before anyone was likely to answer, he went on, ‘The woman later went back to the Prosecutor General’s hotel room, it goes without saying, where she spent the night.’

  [‘Wow.’

  ‘Up the arse. Up the arse.’

  ‘Poor old Solinsky. Right up the arse.’]

  The prosecutor was on his feet, the President of the Court was consulting with his assessors, but Stoyo Petkanov continued to bellow at his adversary. ‘Don’t you deny it. I have seen the photographs. She was very well built. I congratulate you. I have seen the photographs. Tell me, what is corruption? I congratulate you. I have seen the photographs.’

  The judge brought the session to a hasty close, the TV director faded down the sound while instructing Camera Number 1 to stay tight on the prosecutor’s alarmed features, the students were momentarily silent, Stefan’s grandmother cackled to herself quietly in the kitchen while the television played to an empty sitting-room, and Peter Solinsky, when he returned home, furious and betrayed, found that a bed had been made up for him on the floor of his study. He would sleep there, with only the distant Alyosha for company, until the end of the trial.

  And that weak cunt with birdshit on his head had been such a hypocrite, such a betrayer of Socialism. When Gorbachev came on his round of urgent consultations, which consisted of informing his oldest, closest allies that he would drop them down the crapper unless they stumped up some of Uncle Sam’s hot, hard dollars, he had offered him the boldest deal in the country’s political history.

  ‘Comrade Chairman,’ he had said, ‘I propose a full integration of our two countries.’ What a stroke! At the very time when rumour-mongers and the lackeys of the capitalist press were producing ever more slander about the imminent collapse of Socialism, at that precise moment to be able to say: look, Socialism is growing and developing, look how two great socialist nations join their destinies together, how the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics now has a sixteenth member! How that would have confounded the slanderers!

  But Gorbachev had turned his proposal down without even the courtesy of reflection. He had made the same offer to Brezhnev a decade earlier, and at least Leonid had considered it for some months before expressing fraternal regret. Whereas Gorbachev had been contemptuous. ‘That is not what we understand by restructuring,’ he had replied, going on to suggest that Petkanov’s revolutionary plan was motivated by a desire to avoid paying his oil bill.

  Now the world could see what that self-important fool meant by restructuring. He meant letting the USSR — what Lenin built, what Stalin and Brezhnev defended — he meant letting all that go fuck itself. He meant letting the republics fuck off whenever it pleased them. He meant bringing the Red Army home from its fraternal stationings. He meant getting on the cover of Time magazine. He meant ducking for dollars like a whore in the lobby of the Sheraton Hotel. He meant sucking Reagan’s dick and then sucking Bush’s. And when the republics thumbed their noses at him, when he let the Soviet Union and the cause of international Socialism be humiliated by those shitty little Baltic states, when he had his very last chance to defend the Union, to save the Party and the Revolution, to send in the fucking tanks for God’s sake, how did he react? Like a dimwit babushka who sees her potatoes dropping out of a hole in her string bag. Oh, there goes another one, dearie me, well it doesn’t matter, there are lots left. Oh, and another one, no, that doesn’t matter either, that little tattie wanted to get away anyhow. And oops, another, naughty little spud, still, I wasn’t hungry, was I? And the imbecile old babushka gets home and the string bag is empty. But it doesn’t matter, because dedushka hasn’t had the strength to raise his h
and to her in years. ‘All them tatties is gone,’ she tells him. ‘Let’s have warm water again for supper.’ ‘That’s what we had yesterday,’ says dedushka complainingly. ‘You’ll get used to it,’ she replies, running the tap. ‘Anyway, most of them tatties was rotten.’

  And that cunt in the Kremlin had been such a hypocrite too. Of course Petkanov was not suggesting that his proposed political union take place instantly, without discussion, without a full consideration of economic factors. His offer had been, at this stage anyway, primarily an expression of solidarity, goodwill and intent. Whereas Gorbachev had reacted as if his motive was one of short-term economic gain, as if his bold scheme amounted to no more than a desire to get his country’s debt cancelled.

  And what had been happening all the while? Gorbachev was busy selling the DDR to the Federal Republic. Selling the East to the West. Sixteen million socialist citizens put into the biggest slave auction in the history of mankind, with all their land and houses and cattle and enterprises. Why didn’t anyone protest about that? A few malcontents and hooligans in the last days of Erich’s helmsmanship whined about the necessary restrictions on the right to travel. But did anyone complain about being sold like pigs in a farmers’ market? Sixteen million citizens of the DDR in exchange for 34 billion Deutschmarks — that was the deal Gorbachev struck with Kohl in one of the vilest and blackest deeds in the history of Socialism. And then, at the end, Gorbachev squeezed an extra 7 billion Deutschmarks out of Kohl, and went home very pleased with himself, idiot babushka that he was. Forty-one billion Deutschmarks was the price of betrayal nowadays, Socialism’s thirty pieces of silver. And they let him do it. The army, the KGB, the Politburo, between them they put together one feeble botched coup. They let him do it, they let him give it all away.