The Romanian Question

OUR LOVE IS RUNNIN’ OUT

The knife-sharp air bit painfully into my face when I stepped from the Orient Express at Bucharest in the early hours of New Year’s Day, 1938. The gloomy station, silent save for the shufflings of the few sleepy porters and the tired hissings of the engine, gave emphasis to the frigidity, as it were, of my entry into the Roumanian Capital. It was not a heartening beginning of my mission to investigate the real meaning of King Carol’s nomination of the fascist, anti-semitic govern-ment of Octavian Goga.

King Carol, Hitler and Lupescu

LYING ON THE artificial beach at Nova Palma Nova reading a Largetype edition of The Prisoner of Zenda and listening to Ivor Novello’s Glamorous Night on his Aiwa, Jerry congratulated himself: an earlier generation would have been reading The Prisoner of Zenda on a Blackpool or a Brighton beach. What Romania really needed at the moment was a decent Colonel Zapt. But then everything kept changing. Maybe Ruritania was no longer a viable model? The thought filled him with sadness. He looked up, expecting to see the towers of Zenda fading before his eyes, but his horizon was filled with neon, with the magic names of a different age - Benny Hill, Peter Sellers and Max Bygraves; McDonald’s and Wimpy.

This vision disturbed him. These days almost any vision disturbed him.

Some sixth sense warning him, he looked up. Una Persson was tramping across the canary-coloured sand. She wore a Laura Ashley sun-dress and blue Bata strap-ups. In her hands was a heavy Kalashnikov.

That was enough for Jerry. He retreated into the romance of an earlier age and would have stayed there were it not for the touch of cold steel on his sphincter.

“I need some help, Jerry,” she said. She had removed one earphone.

It was hideous. Her voice mingled with a hundred machine noises, the video arcades, discos and pinball halls, the traffic of road, sea and air.

“What?” He desperately tried to hear her. It was too late to try to cross her. “Eh?”

“Come along now.” She reached towards his other ear.

“Damn you Rasendyll,” he said. “Can’t they find some other poor devil to be king?”

“You ain’t the king, boy. You’d be lucky to be queen for a day. You missed your chances.” Shakey Mo’s little rat face twitched with a kind of lascivious rage. Hanging about near the steps up to the promenade, he had for obscure reasons smeared blacking on his face. He, too, was sporting a rather unfashion-able olive green leisure suit. Things had to be bad when Mo got this patronising. “Where the hell you been, man? Life goes on, you know, even if you haven’t noticed.”

“I ain’t drunk, I’m just drinkin’,” said Jerry.

“You could have fooled me.” He removed his wraparound shades with a flick of the wrist once considered sexy.

“Which isn’t saying a lot, really.” After a second’s hesitation Mrs Persson dumped her rifle and the book beside the hot-dog stand. She couldn’t make up her mind about them. Nothing stayed obsolete for long, these days.