The Romanian Question - Michael Moorcock, ebook
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//-->The RomanianQuestionMichael MoorcockScanned & Proofed By MadMaxAU****DREAMS TO REMEMBERAll that day the train travelled at high speed westwards,through Roumania. It did not stop, but slackened speedslightly as it passed through the larger townsen route.Onlythe higher officials of the Roumanian main railway line knew ofthe passage of the special, heavily-screened train, itsdestination or its passengers. Towards midnight, theYugoslav frontier lay only a few miles ahead. As the lights ofTimisoara, capital city of Banat, the rich wheat province ofWestern Roumania, began to glow through the darkness, thedriver sounded the engine whistle to warn the station of hisapproach. The train slowed down to pass through. Just as itleft the station platform and was again gathering speed, sharpflashes and the staccato cracks of rifle fire burst from thethick undergrowth of the steep embankments by the side ofthe railway track. Bullets spattered sharply against the steelframework of the carriages and crackled against thereinforced glass of the windows. The driver quicklyaccelerated and the train shot forward at full speed towardsYugoslavia - and safety. The would-be assas-sins, it wasdiscovered later, were members of the Iron Guard, theFascist terrorists of Roumania who, at the behest of AdolfHitler, had brought about the downfall of King Carol, broughthis realm to ruin and degraded it to the level of a province ofNazi Germany.King Carol, Hitler and Lupescu,A.L. Easterman, 1942MOURNING THE EXCESSIVE fantasies of an unhappy celibacy, JerryCornelius split with some feeling from the Car-pathian convent where, forthe past few years, he had been holing up. Life looked to him as if it mightjust be worth living again. Eastern Europe was perking with a vengeance.Though it had to be said, some people were already waving goodbye totheir first flush of Ruritanian innocence.“My view of the matter, Mr C, is that we should’ve nuked the bastardswhere it hurts.” In middle age Shakey Mo Collier was growing to resemblethe more disturbed aspects of Enoch Powell. His pedantry had a tenancy toincrease as his enthu-siasm faded, and Mo, Jerry thought, was nothingwithout his enthusiasms. He blew Mo a kiss for old time’s sake and climbedinto his coat-of-many-colours, his leather check. It still had the smell of ahundred ancient battles, most of them lost. “Down these mean malls a manmust 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. Whohad given him all this unearned power whilst he slept?It was then that he realised he had dozed out a class war in which theclass he had opposed, his adoptive own, had won back everything it hadseemed to lose and now had no further ambition but to maintain itsprivileges with greater vigilance than last time. He was the unwillingbeneficiary of this victory. He became confused, too sick to spend. He felthis old foxy instincts stirring. He grew wary. He grew shifty. He steppedback.****I’M STILL LEAVING YOUWhat Jessica Douglas-Home observed as she touted thepolling booths with her interpreter and driver was that onlymembers of the Salvation Front were represented at thepolling stations. Opposition members had everywhere beenprevented from turning up. Opposition workers reportedposters torn down and offices ransacked, even by the police.Opposition newspapers were mislaid or destroyed anddespite a decree that campaign-ing must stop two daysbefore the election, there was the last-minute distribution of afree newspaper publishing photographs of all the officialcandidates. “Every one from the Ceausescu era,” saysJessica sadly. “Simply a game of musical chairs.”Sunday Telegraph,27 May 1990THE TIME MACHINE was a sphere of milky fluid attached to the frontlamp-holder of a Raleigh ‘Royal Albert’ Police Bicycle of the old, sturdytype, before all the corruption had been made public. Jerry hated the lookand feel of the thing, but he needed to take a quick refresher in 1956, tosee if some of the associations made sense. At the moment, as he wipedthe Bucharest dust from his handle-bars and checked his watches, he wasdown-right terrified.Was it just the threat of liberty which alarmed him, or was the worldactually on the brink of unimaginable horror as, in his bones, he feared? Heshuddered. Whatever they might say, he had never relished the worst.Especially when the best seemed so much more within his grasp.Yet this was the dangerous time. It always was. “As power-holders laydown their arms, those who have known little power are quick to seekadvantages.” Prinz Lobkowitz bent to pump up the front tyre, his wispy greyhair falling over eyes in which humour sought to disguise the concern hefelt. “And there is nothing to say they won’t abuse that power as thorough-lyas their predecessors down the centuries. It’s the same in the Middle East.Most of these people have never experienced anything like the familiardemocracy of the West. They have no faith in it. They have been suppliedwith myths which prove how degenerate and immoral it was. These aredeeply conservative people. They worship their ignorance since that was allof their religion that was left to them. They defend their ignor-ance as othersmight defend a principle.”“Sometimes you don’t sound a lot different from the party hacks.”Jerry gave the front wheel an experimental bounce. “That’s a lot better.Thanks.”Prinz Lobkowitz fitted the pump back on the frame. “They are allshades, I suppose.”Jerry got the bike into the proper rhythm and was gone before hecould say goodbye. The pearly grey mist opened before him. It was goodto be on the move again. He only hoped no-one had changed the oldmegaflow routes.This would not be the best moment to be Lost in Time, though Godknew, it looked as if the whole of England was now in that situation. He hadnever imagined a future as miserable as this. He had thought the SexPistols had meant something more than a trend in T-shirts. They had allbeen bought over by lifestyle magazines.He gazed wonderingly back at this unbearable future and foundhimself suddenly in a coffee-bar in Soho talking to some-one called Max,who waxed his moustache and wore a pointed beard, about Blind JesseFuller and Woody Guthrie. These were the years of private obsession, ofsmall groups of enthusiasts never acknowledged by the common media,not evenMelody Makerwhich was full of Duke Ellington and referred toElvis only on the cartoon page. “This was before your enthusiasm becamethe common currency of the sixties,” said a Shade, “and you thought youhad achieved a better world. Then you sold it back to them for shares inBiba, Mary Quant and Ann Summers, just as they merged with the City.”“Humbug!” Jerry desperately attempted to disengage from a moralityhe thought he’d discarded years before. “I don’t want any of this. Where’smy mother?” She would understand. He had missed total immersion. Whenhe was this aware of actuality, he tended to retreat in every complex way heknew. Time experienced at such relentlessly close quarters gave him theheeby-jeebies. He shivered. 1956 had been bad enough without this aswell.It was time to split again.****I AIN’T DRUNKIn the case of Roumania and King Carol, Goebbels had asuperb opportunity to demonstrate his perverted talents. Tenyears’ experience as Hitler’s supreme disseminator ofcalumny and hatred had made him master of every trick andtwist of this iniquitous profession. Since he had made thescience of Jew-baiting with the poison pen his specialty, hefound no difficulty in applying his evil genius to the peculiarconditions prevailing in Roumania where, for many decades,the ‘problem’ of the Jews had been raised to a front rankpolitical issue.King Carol, Hitler and LupescuBUT THE SIXTIES and seventies made him cry. He couldn’t stand thesense of loss. How had they all been persuaded to hand their keys back totheir jailors?Was freedom really so frightening?Evidently a lot of Romanians thought so.****BORN IN GEORGIAPresident Ion Iliescu pledged yesterday to keep Romania onthe road to democracy and to end what he called thecountry’s moral decay.Reuter/Majorca Daily Bulletin,21 June 1990“DON’T TELL ME!” Jerry smiled at the air-stewardess as she laid her towelat the edge of the pool. He leaned his arms beside it and tried to drag hispale body higher from the water of Tooting Bee Baths. “You’re psychictoo!” Her answering sneer would have sunk the Bismarck. “I knew it!” Jerrywas in a fairly insensitive mood that afternoon. “I like your taste inboob-tubes,” got him reported to the life-guard and, “Come fly with me,”thrown out of the pool area.As he slouched off across Tooting Common, whistling to his horribledog, he wondered if his grandma was home from work and maybe good forhalf-a-crown, or at least a bag of toffees (she did half-time at Rowntree’s).He jumped further backward until he was comfortably unaware of his freemovement through Time and was able to turn his attention from thestewardess, still baffled by his sixties’ slang, to the toy-soldier shop backnear St Leonard’s Church in Streatham Hill, a few minutes walk up the mainroad and down towards the Common. He wanted to make sure his navalgun-team was still there. He’d given the man 9d a week for it and he wasonly another l/6d away; but he couldn’t be sure of anything any more. Washe creator or the created? This unlikely thought made him pop in to thequiet of the church and glare with some respect at the stained glassprophets whom he now completely confused with God. For him, God hadbecome a plurality of saints and angels. He’d had Rudolf Steiner to thankfor that. Jerry - or someone like him - grinned into the dusty shadows of theAnglican sacristy. There was nothing left to steal.Jerry tipped his hat to the new generation and turned back to his toys.Two more weeks and he could land a team on Forbidden Island. Hissailors almost within his grasp and the summer sun melting the sweet tar ofStreatham, he sauntered down towards Norbury and Jennings’ secondhand book shop where he planned to trade his wholesome volume ofTheCaptainfor a novel calledMonsieur Zenithby Anthony Skene, his currentliterary favourite and inventor of Zenith the Albino, the smoothest crook that
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