Jimfish by Christopher Hope Read Free Book Online Page A

Lamp Shop”, because he can afford so many lights and everyone else must make do with a few weak bulbs.’
    Jimfish could not help smiling and before he could compose his face, the little man frowned.
    â€˜Allowing jokes was just one of Erich’s missteps. The other mistake was his wall.’
    â€˜You mean putting it up?’ Jimfish asked.
    â€˜Not at all.’ The little man shook his head so vigorously his conical hat almost flew off. ‘His mistake was to let it fall. This is a leader who said, just the other day, that his wall will be standing in fifty or a hundred years. But as you have seen, it is being pulled down before our eyes, without so much as a by your leave! The guards who yesterday were primed to shoot escapees are today helping little old ladies to scrabble through the cracks and claim their one hundred marks welcome money from the West Germans, then head out to shop in the Kurfürstendamm. It’s disgusting! Let’s leave this failed state before we are polluted.’
    â€˜Shall we switch off some of these lights first?’ Jimfish asked. ‘Or Erich will face a very large electricity bill when he gets home.’
    â€˜He’s unlikely to be back this way,’ said the little man. ‘He left a few hours ago for Moscow. Now follow me.’ He led the way down some stairs and into a secret tunnel. ‘This is an emergency route Erich built in case he ever needed to leave quickly and quietly.’
    The Genius of the Carpathians and Jimfish hurried along the tunnel beneath Erich’s Lamp Shop, passing under the Schlossplatz, and came out in what had once been the stables of the German emperor on the banks of the Spree river. And here a helicopter was waiting, its rotors whirling.

C HAPTER 9
    Bucharest, Romania, 1989
    As the helicopter rose, Jimfish could see below him the wall that once divided the city pocked and perforated by the iron beaks of hundreds of human woodpeckers. The Genius of the Carpathians sat beside him, rehearsing a speech he was to make as soon as he arrived home.
    â€˜There has been a little bit of difficulty in my country. Doubtless encouraged by the appalling events of the falling wall in Berlin. Instead of doing the decent thing and sending in the tanks, our Russian friends have been unhelpful. They keep talking about what they call “openness” and “reconstruction”. This is madness. As my old comrade Kim Il-sung likes to say, “The openness we need is found in the barrel of the gun.” And as for “reconstruction”, that’s for reactionaries. We true Communists prefer cementation. Provocation must be crushed.’
    The pilot of the helicopter was on the radio and told his chief what he was hearing: ‘It’s more than provocation, sir. It’s wholesale insurrection in Timişoara and Bucharest.’
    The little man was having none of it. ‘As soon as wetouch down in my capital, I will address the cadres, structures, formations and Party elements and all dissenters will be obliterated.’ And then, looking down from a great height on his capital city, he formally welcomed Jimfish to the Socialist Republic of Romania.
    â€˜I feel I have built the place myself.’
    As the chopper dropped lower, Jimfish could make out among the huge buildings tiny, ragged creatures wheeling sticks of firewood along icy boulevards. When he remarked on how lone and lost they looked, the little man in the conical astrakhan hat smiled at his ignorance.
    â€˜Those are individuals and do not count. Only the masses have weight. When we speak, thousands are wheeled out to applaud and then loosed against the provocateurs. Wait and see.’
    As they prepared to land he pointed to various landmarks. ‘You can see the Palace of the People, a monument to the Party and the masses, inspired by a similar marvel erected by my friend Kim Il-sung, that pharaoh amongst pygmies. But mine is