The Porcupine by Julian Barnes

Author:Julian Barnes [Barnes, Julian]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 978-0-307-79789-6
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2011-05-31T16:00:00+00:00

‘You know what I think?’

‘You think we should stop watching, Dimiter.’

‘Yes, but now I know why I think that.’

‘Beer, please.’

‘It’s like this. We were brought up, weren’t we, in school and with the newspapers and television and our parents, or some of them anyway, to think that Socialism was the answer to everything. I mean, that Socialism was right, was scientific, that all the old systems had been tried and didn’t work, and that this one, this one we were lucky enough to live under, this one was … correct.’

‘No-one thought that, Dimiter, not really.’

‘Maybe not, but that’s what we thought other people thought, didn’t we, until we knew, until we found out that most of them were just pretending. And then we realised, didn’t we, that Socialism wasn’t an unanswerable political truth, and that there are two sides to every question.’

‘We realised that with our mother’s milk.’

‘Yes, there’s always a choice of two.’

‘Very funny, Atanas.’

‘So what I’m trying to say, watching this trial, day after day, listening to the prosecution, listening to the defence, waiting for the judges to decide, is that it’s being … it’s being far too nice to him.’

‘Because the charges are so trivial.’

‘No, not that at all. Because the whole thing doesn’t represent reality. Because there comes a point when there aren’t two sides to every question any more, there’s only one side. All that’s coming out of his mouth is lies and hypocrisy and irrelevant shit. It shouldn’t even be listened to.’

‘We should have had a moral trial?’

‘No, nothing at all. We should just have said, this is a question which doesn’t have another side. Just holding a trial is giving him false credit, is admitting that even in this case, even in this worst of cases, there is another side to the story. There isn’t. End. With some questions, there’s one side only. End.’

‘Bravo, Dimiter. Give him a beer.’

They were silent for a while. Then Vera said, ‘We’re at Stefan’s tomorrow. Normal time.’

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