The Genius of the Carpathians nodded so happily his conical astrakhan hat wobbled. ‘I wanted it to be seen from outer space. To build it, we first knocked down most of the old historical centre of Bucharest, along with a couple of dozen churches, six synagogues and got rid of no fewer than thirty thousand houses.’
‘Why did you do that?’ Jimfish asked.
His friend smiled. ‘My capital city was once known as Little Paris. But I came, I demolished, I redeveloped. And Little Paris became Big Bucharest.’
The helicopter put down on the roof of a tall building that his friend identified as his home from home, the Central Committee of the Communist Party. Waiting to greet them were army officers, policemen, bodyguards and important Party officials in big caps with huge peaks and Jimfish began to appreciate how special his new friend was. Whenever he spoke, everyone in hats clapped in unison and took up the chant: ‘Ni-co-lae Cea-oooo-şes-cooo… Romaneeeeaaah!’
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.