The Last Hundred Days

by Patrick McGuinness

  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?’

  Leo waved it off. ‘Well, you know how it is… after all, experience is what you want in a whore…’

  About the Author

  Patrick McGuinness was born in Tunisia in 1968 of Belgian and Newcastle Irish parents. Brought up in various countries, including Iran, Venezuela, France and Belgium, he studied at Cambridge, York and Oxford. He is the author of two collections of poems, The Canals of Mars and Jilted City, which have been translated into several languages, and of various books on French and British literature. He has won an Eric Gregory Award for poetry, the Levinson Prize from the American Poetry Foundation, and in 2009 was made Chevalier dans l’Ordre des Palmes académiques for services to French culture. He has also written and presented programmes for radio, including the Radio Three features ‘A Short History of Stupidity’ and ‘The Art of Idleness’.

  He is Professor of French and Comparative Literature at Oxford University, and lives in Caernarfon, Wales. This is his first novel.

  Copyright

  Seren is the book imprint of

  Poetry Wales Press Ltd

  57 Nolton Street, Bridgend, Wales, CF31 3AE

  www.serenbooks.com

  © Patrick McGuinness 2011

  ISBN 978–1–85411–561–4

  The right of Patrick McGuinness to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in
accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.

  A CIP record for this title is available from the British Library. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted at any time or by any means electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without the prior permission of the copyright holder.

  This book is a work of fiction. Like most fiction it is taken from life; for this reason names and details of characters have been altered to protect actual persons.

  Cover photograph © Andrei Pandele www.ap-arte.ro

  Inner design and typesetting by books@lloydrobson.com

  The publisher works with the financial assistance of the Welsh Books Council.