The Porcupine by Julian Barnes

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. Patheticof 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 hiscrimes, 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