In Europe

candles, loaves of bread and bottles of Coca-Cola.
    There are dozens of coffins on sale beside the cemetery gate. Every fifteen minutes another family comes in by cart or by car, the bell-ringer leans into the ropes, priests, gravediggers and beggars come rushing up.
    I watch as Grigore Pragomir (b.1909) is buried, as his open coffin is slid from a dented blue van, as one of his grandsons walks around paying everyone from a big bundle of banknotes, as Grigore is pulled along on a squeaky cart by two boys with cigarettes between their lips, as the cross with his name on it slowly disappears among the headstones.
    At the grave of Nicolae Ceauşsescu – a mound of earth, a small head-stone with his portrait, five withered bouquets – three visitors are standing around. ‘You see that? They buried him crossways!’ one man says. ‘His feet aren't pointing east, they buried him like a witch. Until he's put back straight, things will keep going badly with this country.’ ‘No, no,’ a wizened female beggar cackles. ‘His grave is full of stones. He's not dead at all. At his execution, all they did was drug him, he flew off to be with his friend Gaddafi. He lives in a lovely palace there, I saw a picture of it in the paper.’ ‘Nonsense,’ a prim lady in black mumbles. ‘He had to die, it couldn't be any other way in a country like ours, with such a history of murder and bloodshed!’ ‘That's right,’ the man says, ‘but it wasn't a pretty sight.’ ‘Go to the devil!’ the dwarf-woman shouts. ‘And Nicu, his son, isn't dead either. He lives with his father. But
she
is dead!’
    She escorts us to the grave of the former First Lady, another mound of earth marked with nothing but a dirty little wooden cross. Two dogs come staggering by, still stuck together after mating. At the gate the bell is tolling for Floarea Ene (b.1947), who is being brought in on the bed of a little red truck. The dogs and beggars come rushing up again. Her four daughters are sitting beside the coffin, caressing her face, one of them weeps inconsolably:‘Mama, mama!'While she is being lifted down, the mobile phone belonging to one of her sons starts ringing. Then Floarea is lifted onto the cart as well, it is time for her to go with the boys with the cigarettes, there is nothing else for it.
    People in this country are wild about magical events, preferably accompanied by lots of death and doom, because after that, reality always comes as something of a relief. This morning a Sunday paper opened with the headline: ‘Professor Virgil Hincu predicts major earthquake in Bucharest on 15 January!’ A magician in the city claims to have found a remedy for cancer. People have lined up in front of his door, holding bottles, because the elixir must be ‘refreshed’ every week. Stories still circulate about the Securitate, rumours full of secret prisons and tunnel complexes where the Ceauşsescus still reign supreme.
    Above ground, however, little remains of their intellectual heritage. In the national library, for example, I searched fruitlessly for
Omagiu
(Homages), a quaint volume consisting only of foreign accolades addressed to Ceauşsescu and distributed around the country in hundreds of thousands of copies in honour of his sixtieth birthday. But like the dozens of works by the great leader himself and his spouse, it is nowhere to be found.
    What did Europe think of this dictator, who let dissidents waste away in their cells by the hundreds? Much later, in the unsurpassed library of the University of Amsterdam, I stumble upon a copy of
Omagiu
. It contains a succession of phrases like ‘appreciation for the enormous contributions of Nicolae Ceauşsescu’, ‘the welfare of country and people’, ‘unflagging efforts’ and ‘peace and cooperation among the peoples’. Signed by, among others, President Jimmy Carter, King Juan Carlos, King Carl Gustav and Holland's Prince Bernhard – ‘With the fondest of memories’. The compilation contains cheerful photos with Tito (1969), Emperor Bokassa (1972),King Baudouin and Queen Fabiola (1972), President and Mrs Pat Nixon (1970), Queen Juliana and Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands (1973), and many other heads of state. Nixon is quoted:‘Because of his profound understanding of the most important world issues, President Ceauşsescu can make a major contribution to solving the most urgent problems facing humanity.’ As a professor at the University of Bucharest, Elena received