The Porcupine Read online

  At nine thirty one morning, Peter Solinsky was standing beside his office desk, soundlessly interrogating one corner of the bookcase fifteen feet away. This was how he practised for the day’s work. He was midway through a question which stretched the legal rules a little, being less an enquiry than a factual hypothesis with implicit moral denunciation, when the telephone irritatingly announced a visitor. Solinsky briefly excused the bookcase, which was perspiring and mopping its brow in a guilty fashion, and directed his attention to Georgi Ganin, Head of the Patriotic Security Forces (formerly the Department of Internal Security).

  Nowadays Ganin wore a suit, to indicate that his work was an unthreatening, civilian business. But on that day, only a couple of years ago, when he had come to fortunate fame, his corpulence had been trussed up in a lieutenant’s uniform, and his shoulder-flashes pronounced him a member of the North-West Provincial Military Command. He had been sent with twenty militiamen to control what had confidently been described as an unimportant demonstration in the regional capital of Sliven.

  It was indeed a small gathering: three hundred local Greens and oppositionists in a sloping cobbled square, stamping their feet and clapping their hands as much to keep warm as anything else. In front of the Communist Party headquarters rose a fat barricade of dirty snow, which in itself would normally have been sufficient protection. But two factors made the occasion different. The first was the presence of the Devinsky Commando, a student organisation which had not yet qualified for a security file. This was hardly surprising, since information on student behaviour had lately become difficult to obtain; and in any case, the Devinsky Commando was registered as a literary society, named after Ivan Devinsky, poet of the region, who despite various decadent and formalist tendencies had proved a patriot and martyr during the fascist invasion of 1941. The second factor was the chance attendance of a Swedish TV team whose locally hired car had broken down the previous day, and who now found themselves with nothing to film but a piece of routine provincial dissent.

  Had the security police investigated the Devinsky Commando, they might have discovered that the poet had a reputation as an ironist and provocateur; and that in 1929 his ‘loyal sonnet’ entitled ‘Thank You, Your Majesty’ had led immediately to a three-year exile in Paris. The members of the student Commando identified themselves by wearing the red bonnets of Junior Pioneers: headgear for ten-year-olds, which was either ludicrously stretched or else satirically attached to the crown with a girlfriend’s hair-clip. The other protesters, like the security forces, had never heard of the Devinsky Commando, and were irritated by what looked like a group of pro-communist infiltrators. Their suspicions were confirmed when the Devinskyites unfurled a banner reading WE, LOYAL STUDENTS, WORKERS AND PEASANTS, SUPPORT THE GOVERNMENT.

  Pushing their way to the front of the demonstration, the Commando took up a position close to the bank of dirty snow and began to chant. ‘LONG LIVE THE PARTY. LONG LIVE THE GOVERNMENT. LONG LIVE THE PARTY. LONG LIVE THE GOVERNMENT. ALL HONOUR TO STOYO PETKANOV. LONG LIVE THE PARTY.’

  After a couple of minutes, the tall french windows on the reviewing balcony opened, and the local party chief emerged to witness for himself a display of support rare in these counter-revolutionary days. Immediately the students widened their repertoire of chants. With fists patriotically raised and red bonnets forming a loyal phalanx, they acclaimed the smiling boss of Sliven:

  ‘THANK YOU FOR THE PRICE RISES.’

  ‘THANK YOU FOR THE FOOD SHORTAGES.’

  ‘GIVE US IDEOLOGY NOT BREAD.’

  The students were well drilled and had loud voices. Their fists punched the air, and there was no hesitation as they switched from one slogan to another.

  ‘THANK YOU FOR THE PRICE RISES.’

  ‘STRENGTHEN THE SECURITY POLICE.’

  ‘LONG LIVE THE PARTY.’

  ‘HONOUR TO STOYO PETKANOV.’

  ‘THANK YOU FOR THE FOOD SHORTAGES.’

  ‘GIVE US IDEOLOGY NOT BREAD.’

  Suddenly, as if they had taken a silent vote, the rest of the crowd joined in. ‘THANK YOU FOR THE FOOD SHORTAGES’ began to echo furiously round the square, the party chief banged shut the french windows, and the demonstration suddenly acquired a hysterical edge which Ganin knew to be dangerous. His men were drawn up at the side of the building, and they now caught the attention of the Devinsky Commando. Three times the platoon of students advanced a few dozen metres towards the militiamen, chanting:

  ‘THANK YOU FOR THE BULLETS.’

  ‘THANK YOU FOR THE MARTYRDOM.’

  ‘THANK YOU FOR THE BULLETS.’

  ‘THANK YOU FOR THE MARTYRDOM.’

  It was noticeable that the Greens and oppositionists preferred not to take up this cry, waiting for the Commando to rejoin them before calling once more in favour of price rises and food shortages. The TV crew were by this time in position and filming.

  Ganin received the order from a stranger in a leather coat, who emerged swiftly from a side door of the party headquarters, mentioned a name and security rank, and instructed him, as a direct order from the party chief, to fire over the heads of the demonstrators, and if that did not disperse them, to fire at their feet. His message imparted, the man disappeared back into the building, though not before his presence had been noted by the students.

  ‘PLEASE MAY WE JOIN THE SECURITY FORCES,’ they bellowed, then, ‘THANK YOU FOR THE BULLETS. PLEASE MAY WE JOIN THE SECURITY FORCES.’

  Ganin marched his men forward twenty metres. The Commando came to meet them. Ganin tried to look confident as he gave the order to aim over the heads of the crowd, but several things alarmed him. First, the authority of the instructions he had received. Second, the fear that some idiot ranker would decide to lower his aim. And third, the knowledge that each militiaman had only one clip of bullets. THANK YOU FOR THE SHORTAGES was a cry which had its echo in the army too.

  With a delaying hand raised to his troops, Ganin walked towards the Commando. At the same time a young man wearing two Junior Pioneer bonnets, one clipped over each ear, detached himself from the students. Swedish Television caught the decisive meeting of these two, the bearded student in big red ear-mufflers, and the rotund, pink-cheeked army officer, his breath fogging out before him in the cold air. The cameraman bravely moved in closer, but the sound recordist had sudden thoughts of his family back in Karlstad. This moment of prudence was just as well for the young lieutenant. Had the ensuing conversation been preserved, his rise to authority might have been slower.

  ‘So, Comrade Officer, are you going to kill us all?’

  ‘Just go. Disperse and we will not shoot.’

  ‘But we like it here. We have no classes at the moment. We were enjoying our exchange of views with Party Chief Krumov. Perhaps you could ask the loyal security officer why his esteemed boss broke off our productive discussions.’

  Ganin had to make an effort not to smile. ‘I order you to disperse.’

  But the student, instead of obeying, came even closer, linking his arm with the lieutenant’s. ‘So, Comrade Officer, how many of us have you been ordered to kill? Twenty? Thirty? All of us?’

  ‘Frankly,’ replied Ganin, ‘that’s not possible. We don’t have enough bullets. What with the shortages.’

  The student burst out laughing and kissed Ganin suddenly on both cheeks. The pink-faced lieutenant laughed back, his face filling the eye-piece of the Swedish cameraman. ‘Look,’ he said confidentially, ‘I’m sure we can work something out.’

  ‘Of course we can, Comrade Officer.’ He turned away, and shouted back to his colleagues, ‘MORE BULLETS FOR THE SOLDIERS.’

  As the Devinsky Commando advanced, their red bonnets flopping, with alternate cries of DOWN WITH THE SHORTAGES and MORE BULLETS FOR THE SOLDIERS, Ganin gestured uneasily at his men to lower their rifles. They did so anxiously, and didn’t look much happier when each of the students picked out a soldier and embraced him vigorously. But the pictures were splendidly dramatic, and the lack of sou
nd enabled viewers to imagine dialogue which was inevitably more noble. Ganin was transformed in this moment from an indecisive, if not cowardly, junior officer into a symbol of decency, an advertisement for the power of negotiation and the middle way; while his brief, silent exchange of pluming breaths in a cobbled square before a palisade of dirty snow was widely taken as a sign that the army, if forced to choose between the people and the Party, would place its support behind the people.

  Thereafter, Ganin’s rise had been so swift that his wife Nina scarcely had time to tack a new rank on his uniform before it became outdated. She was pleased when he moved into civilian clothes; but her amused relief was premature. The dinners Georgi found himself obliged to attend meant that regular alterations had to be made to his suits as well. Now he stood in Solinsky’s office, a corpulent civil servant, red-faced from climbing the stairs, his middle button under pressure despite the doubled thread Nina had used. Awkwardly, he offered a cardboard file to the Prosecutor General.

  ‘Tell me about it,’ said Solinsky.

  ‘Comrade Prosecutor …’

  ‘Mr Prosecutor will do,’ Solinsky smiled. ‘Lieutenant-General.’

  ‘Mr Prosecutor, sir. We in the Patriotic Security Forces wish to encourage you in your work and trust that your diligence will be rewarded.’

  Solinsky smiled again. It would take a while for the old forms of address to die away. ‘What is in the folder?’

  ‘We trust that the accused will be found guilty on all charges.’

  ‘Yes, yes.’

  ‘Such a verdict would be greatly helpful to the PSF in their current restructuring.’

  ‘Well, that’s a matter for the court.’

  ‘And a matter of evidence.’

  ‘General …’

  ‘Of course, sir. This is a preliminary report on the case of Anna Petkanova. The core files have unfortunately been destroyed.’

  ‘Hardly surprising.’

  ‘No, sir. But even though the core files were destroyed much has been patriotically saved. Even if access and identification are not always easy.’

  ‘…?’

  ‘Yes. As you will see, there is preliminary evidence of the involvement of the Department of Internal Security in the case of Anna Petkanova.’

  Solinsky was barely interested. ‘There are dead pigs under every hedge,’ he replied. Frankly, there was little in the public life of the nation over the last fifty years which, on examination, would not disclose preliminary evidence of the involvement of the Department of Internal Security.

  ‘Yes, sir.’ Ganin was still holding out the folder. ‘You wish us to keep you informed?’

  ‘If …’ Solinsky accepted the file almost absent-mindedly. ‘If you think it appropriate.’ Hmmm. How easily he fell back on the old formulas. If you think it appropriate. And why had he said There are dead pigs under every hedge? That wasn’t the way he talked. It sounded like the defendant in Criminal Law Case Number 1. Perhaps he was being infected. He must practise saying Yes and No and That’s stupid and Go away.

  ‘We wish you good fortune with the continuation of the prosecution, Mr Prosecutor, sir.’

  ‘Yes, thank you.’ Go away. Put a soldier into civvies and the length of his sentences doubled. ‘Thank you.’ Go away.

  Vera crossed the Square of St Vassily the Martyr, which had, in the course of the last forty years, also been Stalingrad Square, Brezhnev Square, and even, briefly, in an attempt to get round the whole problem, the Square of the Heroes of Socialism. For several months now it had lapsed into anonymity. Bare, stumpy metal posts imitated the dormant chestnut trees. Both were waiting for spring: the trees to get back their leaves and the posts to sprout name-plates. Then the city would once again have a Square of St Vassily the Martyr.

  Vera knew she was pretty. She was pleased with her high cheekbones and wide-set brown eyes, approved her legs, felt that the bright colours she wore suited her. But crossing the public gardens in the Square of St Vassily, as she did each morning at ten o’clock, mysteriously turned her into a frump. This had been happening now for months. There were up to a hundred men clustered by the garden’s western gate, and not a single one of them looked at her. Or if they did, they looked away at once, not even bothering to check her legs, not smiling at the chiffon burst around her neck.

  Before the Changes, any public gathering of more than eight people had to be officially registered, and the registration procedure might be very ad hoc, consisting of men in leather coats demanding to know names and addresses. Since the Changes, sights like this, of a loosely swirling vortex of people, had become common. Some passers-by joined in automatically, as they would attach themselves to any queue outside a shop in the theoretical hope of a few eggs or half a kilo of carrots. The odd thing about the crowd here was that it consisted entirely of men, most between the ages of eighteen and thirty: in other words, the sort of men who always looked at her. But instead they were in a state of ordered excitement, as one by one, in a scarcely observable, apian process, they were sucked from the outer fringe of the group to the middle, and then, after a few minutes, expelled. Some seemed to have got what they wanted, and headed purposefully through the western gates; the rest drifted off aimlessly in any direction.

  Pornography, that was Vera’s first explanation. You saw groups of men gathered heatedly around an upturned beer-crate on which some badly printed magazine was being displayed. Or sometimes what stood there was a bottle of foreign spirits and a few small glasses; the bottle normally came from the waste-bin of a tourist hotel, and had been refilled with toxic home-brew. Or again, it might be the black market. Perhaps the fortunate ones who went off through the western gates were going to pick up the contraband. Or if it wasn’t that, it was probably to do with religion, or the monarchist party, or astrology, or numerology, or gambling, or the Moonies. Such huddled, fervent meetings rarely concerned themselves with the new democratic structures, environmental pollution, or the problems of land reform. It was always something illegal, or escapist, or at the very best to do with grubby self-advancement. And they didn’t look at her.

  Stefan’s grandmother refused to watch the trial, and at first the students were awkwardly aware of her presence. She sat a few metres away in the kitchen, underneath a small framed colour print of V.I. Lenin, which no-one had dared suggest she take down. She was a short, spherical woman with a down-turned mouth accentuated by the loss of several teeth, and the home-knitted cap she wore at all times, even indoors, added to her circularity. Nowadays she spoke little, finding that most questions did not require answers. A nod, a shrug, a held-out plate, occasionally a smile: you could get by with that. Especially when dealing with Stefan and his young friends. How they chattered. Listen to them round the television, gabbling away, interrupting one another, unable to pay attention for more than a moment. Squabbling like a nestful of thrushes. Brains of thrushes, too.

  The girl treated her with reasonable politeness, but the other two, especially that cheeky one, Atanas, was it … Here he came again, poking his beak round the door, fixing his birdy little eyes on a point above her head.

  ‘Hello, Granny, is that your first husband?’

  Another remark that didn’t need a reply from her.

  ‘Hey, Dimiter, have you seen this snap of Granny’s boyfriend?’

  A second thrush from the nest appeared and examined the portrait for longer than necessary.

  ‘He doesn’t look very cheerful, Granny.’

  ‘And he looks a bit old for you.’

  ‘I should drop him, Granny. He doesn’t look any fun at all.’

  None of this required answering.

  The previous evening she had wrapped a woollen scarf over her woollen hat, taken the picture off the wall and left the apartment without saying where she was going. She had caught a tram to the Square of the Anti-Fascist Struggle, whose name she continued to use whatever insolent bus-drivers called it, and bought three red carnations from a peasant who at first tried to charge h
er double on the ground that she was going to the rally and was therefore a Communist and the cause of all his life’s problems. Her rare sally into speech shamed him into normalising the price, and she had stood in the square with a few hundred other loyalists, while confident men who were clearly not party members patrolled the edges of the gathering. How long would it be before the Party was banned again, forced to go underground? Before the Fascists resurfaced, and young men searched their attics for the faded green shirts of their Iron Guard grandfathers? Ahead she saw an inevitable return to the oppression of the working class, to unemployment and inflation being used as political weapons. But she also saw, beyond that, the moment when men and women would rise and shake themselves, recovering their rightful dignity and starting again the whole glorious cycle of revolution. She would be dead by then, of course, but she did not doubt that it would come to pass.

  It was not until the weekend that Peter Solinsky had time to examine the dossier given him by the security chief. Anna Petkanova 1937–1972. Curious how the dates were always attached so that he knew them by heart. The name and the dates, on postage stamps, memorial plaques and concert programmes, on her statue outside the Anna Petkanova Palace of Culture. Only child of President Stoyo Petkanov. Beacon of Youth. Minister of Culture. Photographs of Anna Petkanova as a dimpled Young Pioneer in her red bonnet, as a serious-faced chemistry student with eye applied to microscope, as an overweight young cultural ambassadress receiving bouquets at the airport on her return from foreign trips. An example to women throughout the nation. The very spirit of Socialism and Communism, the embodiment of its future. The youthful Minister inspecting plans for the Palace of Culture now named in her memory. The stouter Minister accepting flowers from folk dancers, sitting attentively in the presidential box at symphony concerts. The positively fat Minister, cigarette in advanced prodding position, listening critically at meetings of the Writers’ Union. Anna Petkanova, more than a little overweight, unmarried, keen on cigarettes and banquets, dead at thirty-five. Mourned by the nation. Even the nation’s finest heart specialists had been unable to do anything despite the most modern techniques. Her ageing father, bare-headed in the felty snow, standing to attention outside the crematorium as her ashes were scattered. And the plaque on the wall there repeated: Anna Petkanova 1937–1972.