The Romanian Question

DREAMS TO REMEMBER

All that day the train travelled at high speed westwards, through Roumania. It did not stop, but slackened speed slightly as it passed through the larger towns en route. Only the higher officials of the Roumanian main railway line knew of the passage of the special, heavily-screened train, its destination or its passengers. Towards midnight, the Yugoslav frontier lay only a few miles ahead. As the lights of Timisoara, capital city of Banat, the rich wheat province of Western Roumania, began to glow through the darkness, the driver sounded the engine whistle to warn the station of his approach. The train slowed down to pass through. Just as it left the station platform and was again gathering speed, sharp flashes and the staccato cracks of rifle fire burst from the thick undergrowth of the steep embankments by the side of the railway track. Bullets spattered sharply against the steel framework of the carriages and crackled against the reinforced glass of the windows. The driver quickly accelerated and the train shot forward at full speed towards Yugoslavia - and safety. The would-be assas-sins, it was discovered later, were members of the Iron Guard, the Fascist terrorists of Roumania who, at the behest of Adolf Hitler, had brought about the downfall of King Carol, brought his realm to ruin and degraded it to the level of a province of Nazi Germany.

King Carol, Hitler and Lupescu, A.L. Easterman, 1942

MOURNING THE EXCESSIVE fantasies of an unhappy celibacy, Jerry Cornelius split with some feeling from the Car-pathian convent where, for the past few years, he had been holing up. Life looked to him as if it might just be worth living again. Eastern Europe was perking with a vengeance.

Though it had to be said, some people were already waving goodbye to their first flush of Ruritanian innocence.

“My view of the matter, Mr C, is that we should’ve nuked the bastards where it hurts.” In middle age Shakey Mo Collier was growing to resemble the more disturbed aspects of Enoch Powell. His pedantry had a tenancy to increase as his enthu-siasm faded, and Mo, Jerry thought, was nothing without his enthusiasms. He blew Mo a kiss for old time’s sake and climbed into his coat-of-many-colours, his leather check. It still had the smell of a hundred ancient battles, most of them lost. “Down these mean malls a man must shop.” He checked his credit the way he had once checked his heat.

These were proving easy times for him. But he missed the resistance. Who had given him all this unearned power whilst he slept?

It was then that he realised he had dozed out a class war in which the class he had opposed, his adoptive own, had won back everything it had seemed to lose and now had no further ambition but to maintain its privileges with greater vigilance than last time. He was the unwilling beneficiary of this victory. He became confused, too sick to spend. He felt his old foxy instincts stirring. He grew wary. He grew shifty. He stepped back.