Judgment on Deltchev

CHAPTER FOUR

Pashik had promised to drive me to the trial, and we met for breakfast. He nodded at the envelope I was carrying with the approving smile of a friendly schoolmaster.

‘Ah, Mr Foster, you have been reading.’

‘Yes. There’s a lot of material there. Did you collect it?’

He fingered his chin self-consciously for a moment; he had shaved. ‘Why do you ask, Mr Foster?’

‘Because a lot of the unpublished stuff was obviously done by someone who knew Deltchev very well and liked him. You?’

‘Ah, the memoir.’ He looked embarrassed. ‘That was commissioned by one of my papers from Petlarov.’

‘Who’s he?’

‘He was Deltchev’s secretary and friend — until the elections. Then they quarrelled. He was paid for the memoir, but it was not used. It was not the moment.’

‘Where is Petlarov now? Is he here?’

‘He may be.’

‘I should like to talk to him.’

‘He will know nothing about the trial, Mr Foster.’

‘I’d still like to talk to him.’

‘He may not wish to see you.’

‘Then he will say so. You said you wanted to be helpful, Pashik. Here’s your opportunity.’

He wriggled unhappily. ‘Please, Mr Foster. I see I must explain to you.’ He lowered his voice. ‘You do not understand. After the arrest of Deltchev, Petlarov was naturally arrested too. He is released now, but he is still suspect. It would be most indiscreet to have relations with him. I cannot take the risk.’

‘You don’t have to. Just get a message to him from me. I suppose he can speak German?’

‘I do not know. Perhaps not.’

‘Send a message as if from me asking him to telephone me at my hotel this evening.’

He sighed. ‘Very well, Mr Foster. But I think it will be useless.’

I held up the envelope with the file in it. ‘We don’t want to take this with us, do we? We could leave it at your office on the way and write a note to Petlarov at the same time. Your office boy can deliver it.’

He pursed his lips together at this. ‘I see you still do not trust me, Mr Foster,’ he said.

‘What do you mean?’

He saw the danger of explaining just in time. ‘It is not important,’ he said with dignity.

He took the envelope from me. Then I remembered. ‘Oh, by the way,’ I said, ‘what does this refer to?’ I showed him the paper with the Aleko note on it.

He looked at it blankly for a moment. ‘Oh, that, Mr Foster,’ he said, and taking it from me put it in his pocket, ‘that is nothing. Something from another file.’

When once you know how a person lies, it is difficult for him to deceive you again. With Pashik it was a special tone of voice he used for direct lies that gave him away — a cold, too matter-of-fact tone. He had used it before in telling me the untrue story of the American journalist who had tried to go to Greece for the weekend. I supposed the fact that he had lied about this piece of paper to be equally unimportant.

The large courtroom at the Ministry of Justice had been thought too small for a political trial of such moment. It was being staged, therefore, in the main lecture hall of the Army School of Aeronautics, a modern building on the outskirts of the city.

The walls, ordinarily decorated with engineering charts and war trophies, had been hung with flags — those of the Republic and of the Soviet Union, and, at greater intervals, those of the other sympathetic nations of Eastern Europe. Just above on either side of the judges’ dais two draped Soviet flags bulged over (but, tactlessly, did not quite conceal) one of the trophies, the tail plane of a Russian aircraft, presented by a German flak unit during the war. Pinned to some of the flags were notices printed in four languages saying that smoking was prohibited. In the balcony a row of soundproof booths had been erected for the interpreters relaying translations of the proceedings to the earphones of the foreign diplomatic and press representatives below. In the balcony, too, on heavy stands or clamped to the balcony rail, were big floodlights pointing down into the court to illuminate it for the Propaganda Ministry’s film cameras. Beside the judges’ dais, on both sides of the prisoner’s rostrum, at the corners of the hall, in the balcony, by the doors, and below every flag on the walls, guards were posted. They were all officers or NCOs and armed with machine pistols, which they did not sling, but held ready in their hands. It had been explained by the Propaganda Ministry that when the evidence against the criminal Deltchev was publicly known, attempts might be made by the people he had deceived to kill him before justice could be done.

The courtroom was crowded. My place and Pashik’s were in the foreign-press section, below the edge of the balcony and to one side. In the centre was the diplomatic section. On the ledge in front of each seat in these two sections were a pair of earphones and four plug sockets marked with letters distinguishing the Russian, French, English and German interpretation channels. Also on the ledge was a duplicated copy of the indictment in French. There seemed to be no seats for members of the public without tickets, but several rows behind us were prominently labelled with notice cards bearing initials, which Pashik said were those of prominent trade union organizations. The occupants of these seats were obviously in their best clothes and on their best behaviour. They all wore badges, and in one row there was a group of peasants in national costume. They looked as if they were attending a prize-giving. The front rows, however, had a different look about them. These seats were reserved for the important party members and functionaries. Their occupants wore dark neat clothes and either sat with self-conscious, preoccupied frowns or conversed in busy undertones with their neighbours. Aware of being in the public eye, they were concerned to show that they had business there and were not merely favoured spectators. It was warm, and most of the women and many of the men had highly coloured paper fans.

At about ten o’clock the floodlights in the balcony were turned on and the fluttering sound of film cameras began. A buzz of anticipation went round the courtroom; then, as the three black-robed judges came slowly in, all stood up. The judges went to their places on the dais but did not sit down until the national anthem had been played through a loudspeaker. It was all curiously reminiscent of a royal visit to the opera. Even the low murmur of conversation which began as we sat down again was familiar. All that was different was that instead of the lowering of lights and the rise of a curtain somebody stood up and called out the name of Yordan Deltchev, and all eyes turned toward a pair of glazed doors beside the dais. Then there was silence except for the sound of the cameras and the distant throbbing of the generator which supplied the power for the floodlights.

After a moment or two the glazed doors were flung open and three men entered the court. Inside the door they paused for a moment blinking in the lights that poured down on them. Two of them were uniformed guards, tall, smart young fellows. Between them was an elderly man with a thin, grey face, deep-set eyes, and white hair. He was short and had been stocky, but now his shoulders were rounded and he was inclined to stoop. He stood with his hands thrust deep into his jacket pockets, looking about him uncertainly. One of the guards touched his arm and he walked over to the rostrum and stepped onto it. A chair had been placed for him, but for a moment he stood there looking round at the flags on the walls. He smiled faintly. He still had his hands in his pockets. Then, with a curt nod to each of the judges, he sat down and closed his eyes. This was Yordan Deltchev.

There were twenty-three counts listed in the published indictment against him. They charged (principally in count number eight, though the same charge was paraphrased in two other counts) that he had ‘prepared terrorist plots against the state and conspired with reactionary organizations, including the criminal Officer Corps Brotherhood, to secure, for financial and other personal advantages, the occupation of the motherland by troops of a foreign power’. There were other charges concerned with terrorist activity, the smuggling of arms, and plots to assassinate members of the People’s Party Government ‘in particular P. I. Vukashin’. Sprinkled throughout were dark references to ‘various confederates’, ‘notorious foreign agents’, ‘hired saboteurs and murderers’, ‘reactionary gangsters’ and so on, while the name of the Officer Corps Brotherhood recurred with the persistence of a typewriter bell. It was soon evident that the indictment was a propaganda document intended for foreign consumption. It said, in effect, or hoped to say, ‘He is the kind of man against whom such charges may seriously be brought,’ and, ‘He is accused of so much that of some he must be guilty.’

The public prosecutor conducted his case in person. His name was Dr Prochaska and he was one of the few members of the legal profession who had joined the People’s Party before it had come to power. He was an authority on questions of land tenure, and most of his practice had been concerned with cases involving them. He had had little experience of court advocacy of any kind and none at all in criminal proceedings. A stout, pugnacious-looking man with quick, jerky movements and a habit of licking his lips every few seconds, he seemed more concerned to defend himself against accusations of weakness than to present his case effectively. He made scarcely any reference to the official indictment and dealt with only two of the charges in it. If he could prove, or seem to prove, those, then Deltchev would stand convicted on the whole indictment. That, at least, was the impression I had of it. From the commencement of his long opening address he adopted a tone of ranting denunciation that carried little conviction and confused even the more reasoned passages. In spite of the earphones on my head, and the voice of the interpreter quietly translating the speech, I was constantly distracted by the sight and half-heard sounds of its originator.

His case, however, was dangerously simple.

It was generally known that at the time of the German retreat in 1944 Deltchev, who had been secretly in touch with both the Russians and the Western powers, had gone to great lengths to secure Anglo-American, rather than Soviet, occupation of the country. Against the wishes of a majority of the Committee of National Unity, he had at one point gone so far as to propose to the Western Powers that the national army should continue to resist the Russians in the north so as to give the Americans and British time to prepare an airborne invasion from Middle East bases.

It was now suggested by the Prosecution that this proposal had come in fact from the Western Powers themselves and that Deltchev’s support of it had been bought with the promise that he would have control of the reallocation of the German oil concessions. In other words, he had tried to sell his countrymen’s lives for money and power.

The other favoured charge was the one that had so amused my economist friend. It was that Deltchev had planned to assassinate Vukashin, the head of the People’s Party Government, and that he was, in fact, a member of the Officer Corps Brotherhood. If this could seem to be proved, he could quite legally and with full popular approval be sentenced to death. The case against Deltchev was designed to destroy both him and the Agrarian Socialist Party which had produced him for ever.

I left the court that day in a peculiar frame of mind. I felt as if I had been to the first night of what had seemed to me a very bad play only to find that everyone else had enjoyed it immensely. A Propaganda Ministry bureau had been set up in a room adjoining the court. On the way out Pashik stopped to get the official bulletin on the day’s proceedings. The room was crowded and I waited in the doorway. There were a number of tables, each signposted with the name of one of the official languages. As I stood there, I saw a bald young man whom I thought I knew coming away from the English table. I had noticed him earlier in the day and been unable to place him. Now as he pushed his way out we came face to face. He nodded.

‘You’re Foster, aren’t you?’

‘Yes. We’ve met before.’

‘Sibley, Incorporated Press.’

‘Oh yes.’ I remembered, too, that I had not liked him.

‘What are you doing here?’ he asked. ‘Getting local colour for a new play?’

I explained. He raised his eyebrows. ‘Very nice too. Still, I expect you’ll make a play out of it sometime, won’t you?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘I should have thought that there were masses of material for you. It’d make quite a nice little paragraph, your being here. Do you mind if I use it?’

‘Yes, I do.’ I smiled as I said it, but not very cordially.

He laughed. ‘All right, I’ll spare you. But it’d be nice to send something even a little more interesting than these handouts.’ He waved the sheets in his hand. ‘I’m at our Paris office really. I’ve been lent for the trial. Why I can’t think. An office boy could file this junk for all of us.’ He turned his head as Pashik came up. ‘Hullo, Georghi, we were just talking about you.’

‘Good evening, Mr Sibley. We must be going, Mr Foster. I have to get to the office.’

‘That’s our Georghi. Always on the job!’ Sibley grinned. ‘Where are you staying, Foster?’

I told him.

‘We must have a drink together,’ he said.

In the car Pashik gave me the bulletin. I glanced through it. Most of it was composed of extracts from Dr Prochaska’s address. They were even more idiotic to read than to listen to. I put the bulletin down. The streets leading back to the centre of the city were narrow and crowded and Pashik was a driver who twitched at the wheel instead of steering with it. He squeezed his way none too skilfully between two carts.

‘Mr Foster,’ he said then, ‘there is a suggestion which I think I must make to you.’ He looked round at me soulfully. ‘You will not, I hope, be offended.’

‘Not at all. Look out.’

He twitched away from a cyclist just in time. The cyclist shouted. Pashik sounded the horn unnecessarily and put on speed.

‘It is a small thing,’ he said — the car swayed unpleasantly across some protruding tram lines — ‘but I would not, if I were in your place, be too friendly here with Mr Sibley.’

‘Oh? What’s the matter with him?’

‘It is nothing personal, you understand.’

‘But what?’

‘He drinks too much and becomes indiscreet.’

‘I don’t see that that has anything to do with me.’

‘His associates will be suspect.’

I thought for a moment. ‘Mr Pashik,’ I said then, ‘as a newspaperman don’t you think that you’re a bit too anxious about the censorship and the Propaganda Ministry and the police and all the rest of it?’

A woman missed death by an inch. He sounded the horn absently and shook his head. ‘I do not think so. It is difficult to explain.’

‘What’s so difficult about it?’

‘You are a stranger here, Mr Foster. You look on our life from the outside. You are interested in the trial of a man whose name you scarcely know because his situation seems to you to contain the elements of a spiritual conflict. Naturally so. You are a writer of fiction and you make the world in your own image. But be careful. Do not walk upon the stage yourself. You may find that the actors are not what they have seemed.’

‘Is Sibley one of the actors?’

‘I was speaking generally, Mr Foster.’

‘Then I’m sorry but I don’t understand what we’re talking about.’

He sighed. ‘I was afraid not. But perhaps it does not matter.’

I let that one go. A few moments later he pulled up outside my hotel. I got out of the car.

‘Shall we meet for dinner, Mr Foster?’

I hesitated. The air outside the car smelt good. I shook my head. ‘I think I’ll get to bed early tonight,’ I said.