“There’s a lot of people in between, a lot of little people. A lot of bad women gone right, and good men gone down, and whores who should have been virgin brides in Wyoming, and judges who a more enlightened age would recognise as calcu-lating psychopaths - and all the rest; every piece of human flotsam, and every kind of virtue… Courage-in-adversity, rotten wealth, Church-pure poverty, damned near insane self-sacrifice and the pettiest, meanest kind of greed you ever heard about. You wouldn’t believe it. You don’t have to. Only I have to believe it. It’s my job.”
DON’T TOUCH ME THERE
I had hoped to be able to secure interviews with the leading figures in the political drama which had set the world wondering and had created consternation in Roumania. I was hopeful of being able to discuss the situation with the King himself, with Goga, and with the most significant figure in Roumania, Corneliu Zelea Codreanu, leader of the Iron Guard, fascist, terrorist, murderer and most rabidly violent of Jew-baiters. Arrangements to see King Carol and Goga were made with comparative ease; to meet Codreanu proved a much more difficult task.
King Carol, Hitler and Lupescu
JERRY WASN’T EVEN sure of immortality any more. The rules kept changing on him and the chronic vibrations were making him ill.
“You’re overstretched, lad.” With a flourish of his pale grey moustache, Major Nye guided the helicopter away from Dublin where he had discovered Jerry wandering on the frozen Liffey. “You need a bit of time to yourself.”
“I didn’t think it was allowed.”
Clearly Major Nye found this remark in doubtful taste.
“There’s not a lot left, after all,” Jerry added lamely. “What with the Ukrainian going off like that.”
“You’re just depressed because of your dream of anarchy. Well, old son, it seems it isn’t to be.”
“Are you sure there’s been no news from Scotland?”
“Not the kind you’ve been hoping for. I doubt if there’s a black flag left flying or an anarchist keel still in the sky. Those days are over, dear boy, even in your fantasies. They never had a chance. Too romantic, even for an experienced India hand like me!”
The references were getting blurred. Jerry understood now why the only bits of history that were interesting were the bits that were almost never recorded. The slow turning of an honest Bavarian burger into a Waffen SS fanatic, for instance. These mysteries remained, so it seemed, the province of unreliable liars and braggarts, falsifiers of their own identities, the novel-ists.
“One’s qualifications stand for nothing these days,” said Major Nye, turning happily towards Wilton and poetry. “But I’m sure there’s some sort of niche you can find for yourself.”
Jerry felt the old spirit slipping away again. He was regretful. He had never been able to reach Bucharest in the hey-day of his powers.
“Here we are, dear boy. Keep your chin up.”
With cheerful confidence Major Nye put them down.
COLD LONELY NIGHTS
Mr Iliescu, the son of a railway worker and a one-time favourite of Ceausescu, was not specific about who would be recruited into the new force, designed to deal with political violence. Already many miners have volunteered. Some opposition politicians and student leaders have likened it apprehensively in advance to a modern version of the Nazi brownshirts. “We shall have to see about that,” the president replied when asked about its composition.
The Times, 25 June 1990
THE MILES OF underground concrete, like some vast, unpopu-lated parking garage, were lit by busy gas jets set at alarming intervals. Between them were shadows, the stink of blood, the horribly uncleansable miasma of terror. He had to be in the foundations of some evil, if monumentally unimaginative, fortress. He had almost certainly made it to Ceausesculand.
Propping the bike against a malodorous pillar, he swung off his rucksack.
Beneath his sandwiches and his thermos he dis-covered a psychic map of the city. It was not as out-of-date as he had feared and Jerry found it easy to follow into the 90s. He paused to do the last of his Columbian Silver. At moments like this, grit and integrity only came in powder form. In some ways, he thought, it was like sniffing the dust of some ancient and forgotten empire; the nearest he got to dreaming these days.
STRIKE LIKE LIGHTNING
I took up residence in the Athenee Palace Hotel and later in the morning after my arrival, I took stock of this most notorious caravanserai in all Europe. It was exciting to realise that here I was in the meeting place of the Continental spies, political conspirators, adventurers, concession hunters, and financial manipulators. Here at the crossroads, as it were, dividing Europe from Asia, in the centre of the Balkan cockpit, were hatched most of the plots and devilments that, in days gone by, upset a government here, fomented a revolution there and, on occasion, planned an assassination.
King Carol, Hitler and Lupescu
MISS BRUNNER WAS beside herself. “We put a stop to all that,” she said.
“We made a land where the English middle classes could bray with confidence.”
“Oh, it’s not such a bad old world.” Gratefully Sir Kingsley lifted another pink gin to the kind of triangular sphincter which was his mouth. In fact, things were looking up, all in all, he thought, at The Jolly Englishman.
He stared bleakly at his white, puffy fist and longed for his old pals. Most of them had failed to make it into the decade. Come to think of it, he reflected with a mourning grin, so had he.
Miss Brunner thought his attitude defeatist. “You might be enjoying the decline, Sir K, but some of us aren’t going to stand for it.”
“Fair enough.” The embodiment of the nation’s literary aspi-rations offered her a weary leer. “Bend over, darling.”
She couldn’t resist power, no matter how deliquescent it had become.
She giggled and ordered him another double. “You were honoured,” she reminded him admiringly, “for services to your country.”
“For services to Time, actually.” He accepted the gin.
“I do love you intellectuals.”
“Bugger Jane Austen.”
“Fuck George Eliot.”
“Pat Norman Mailer on the bottom.” At this, he recovered himself.
“Naturally.” On trembling palm she offered him her pork scratchings.
“How’s your little boy?”
Not everything, she consoled herself, had gone to pot.
“I heard they named a pub after me in Magalluf,” said the old penman proudly. Then, almost immediately, he grew gloomy again.
“My luck, it’s full of blokes in pink underpants drinking Campari Soda.”
FANNING THE FLAMES
Denying any dichotomy between his speech to the miners and his subsequent more measured address at his inauguration, Mr Iliescu said: “What is fundamental is who started the violence and who provoked the violence.”