The Romanian Question

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.”

The Times, 25 June 1990

JERRY’S MOPED WAS acting up. It had never been as reliable as the Royal Albert, even on normal roads, and was behaving like a grumbling old dog as it picked its way along Romania’s ancient tracks.

The great chasms and towering rocks, the gigantic torrents, gloomy forests and barren shale all inspired in him an awe of Nature. After less than two hours of this experience he found himself talking loudly to himself in German.

From Goethe it was but a short step to the Jewish Problem, something he had hoped to avoid on this holiday.

“Blut ist Hut,” he sang resignedly. “Sturm me daddy, eighty to the car…” and with this he began a descent into the cloud-hidden depths of a mysterious valley. So much for the subtleties of the human spirit! For him there were more urgent demands on his attention. How on earth had the English managed to make themselves the narrowest and most reactionary people in Europe and still see themselves as generous and enlightened? It was a wonder to him, and a privilege, to observe this fantastic progress at first hand. Gibbon, for instance, had been forced to speculate and, from his position, had found the decline of Rome almost impossible to accept.

Increasingly, this had led him into those mighty abstractions the Victorians created from the stuff of the Enlightenment and which, they convinced themselves, were solid as the British Empire.

“Das Volk ehrt den Kiinstler, Johnny.”

Marrakech was looking better all the time. Jerry was glad he had lost none of his old instincts. In fact he seemed quicker on his toes than he had been in his glory days. He, better than anyone, knew when to head for the border.