Excerpt from The Patron Saint of Satire and Shenanigans—A Novel.

Romania — that fabled “mouth of heaven” ¹ God left behind on Earth, inconveniently nestled just a breath away from the gates of hell, where the smoke still curls from its scorched front porch.

After the Second World War, the fate of this country — like that of all future-former communist nations — was sealed in perhaps the most unceremonious and unhygienic way imaginable: on the corner of a napkin.

The date: October 9, 1944.

The place: the Kremlin.

It was late, but Stalin and Churchill were still at the table. The fate of the Balkans had been debated before — in corridors, in cables, in cautious language — but this was the night the conversation edged toward something final.

Seated across from one another — separated only by a table, a translator, a napkin, and a pencil — Churchill sensed that, at last, “the moment was apt for business.” So he leaned in and said, with British understatement and imperial casualness:
“Let us settle about our affairs in the Balkans.”

Stalin perked up. Churchill continued, now drafting the arithmetic of empires:
“So far as Britain and Russia are concerned, how would it do for you to have 90% dominance in Romania, for us to have 90% of the say in Greece, and go 50–50 about Yugoslavia?”

One can almost hear the graphite scratching percentages onto the napkin — while, outside, the future of millions was reduced to fractions.

Sir Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill.
Prime Minister of the United Kingdom.
The very man who, during the war, proclaimed that “socialism is a philosophy of failure, the creed of ignorance, and the gospel of envy — its inherent virtue is the equal sharing of misery.”
The same statesman who believed that “the price of greatness is responsibility.”
Yes, that same Churchill — cigar in hand, wit sharpened by war — once reached for a scrap of paper and scribbled the future of Eastern Europe with disarming simplicity:

• Romania: USSR – 90%, Others – 10%
• Greece: Great Britain – 90%, Russia – 10%
• Yugoslavia: 50% – 50%
• Hungary: 50% – 50%
• Bulgaria: Russia – 75%, Others – 25%

Thus, in a moment of after-dinner diplomacy, a continent’s fate was penciled into percentages — history reduced to arithmetic, and the lives of millions, casually balanced on a napkin.

Churchill continues the story: “I pushed this across to Stalin, who had by then heard the translation. There was a slight pause. Then he took his blue pencil, made a large tick on it, and passed it back to us.”

As you can imagine, those percentages were never honored. Stalin was, after all, Stalin. And the USSR was less a government than a gang of disagreeable men with an inflated sense of entitlement. From that premise, everything else follows: they took whatever they could reach — 100% of Romania, Bulgaria, Hungary, Albania, Yugoslavia, Poland. And just to round things out, 100% of something called East Germany.

All these countries would soon disappear behind what Churchill famously called “the Iron Curtain.” With it came the gift that kept on taking: what he once described as the essence of socialism — “an equal sharing of misery.” And so it went. For the next forty-five years.

Then came 1953. Churchill received the Nobel Prize for Literature. The official motivation? “For his mastery of historical and biographical description as well as for brilliant oratory in defending exalted human values.”

Forgive me, but I feel compelled to say that again — with the healthy dose of doubt it deserves: “Defending exalted human values”?

Let me rephrase it in Romanian, because indignation is a native speaker: „Apărarea înălțătoarelor valori umane”?

It must have been the same year they gave Hirohito the Peace Prize, and the Chemistry Prize went to the Nutty Professor.
Because unless you add that kind of footnote, it’s hard to explain how Stalin ends up remembered as one of history’s bloodiest tyrants — while Churchill walks away with €1.16 million and a shiny Nobel medal for turning a quarter of Europe into a 45-year nightmare. Along with everyone trapped in it.

And since we’re on the subject of diplomatic euphemisms: the infamous napkin? It’s gone down in history as “the naughty document.” And that night between Churchill and Stalin? Officially remembered as “the Percentages Agreement.”

If language really does shape reality — and if Churchill really did win a Nobel Prize for Literature — then allow me a few editorial suggestions:

That meeting? Let’s call it “How to Ruin a Continent in Under Ten Minutes.”
And the napkin? “First Draft of a Very Long Misery.”

Still not convinced?

Try a simple thought experiment. Change the names.
Imagine it wasn’t Churchill and Stalin sitting at that table in 1944.
Imagine it was Hitler and Franco.
Same setup. Same translator. Same dirty napkin and half-dead pencil.
They meet in Berlin, on a cold October night, and decide — with the weariness of bureaucrats — to split the eastern third of a continent called Europe.
Hitler leans forward and says:
„Der Zeitpunkt war günstig für ein Unternehmen.”
(The moment was ripe for an enterprise.)

History, you’ll notice, has always had impeccable manners when describing its worst atrocities — especially when those atrocities came with cigars and cocktails.

A few years later, let’s say Hitler happens to write well. He recounts the meeting — same napkin, same tone — in German. Some generous critics call it brillante Redekunst.

And now imagine what happens next.

Two options remain:

Either we accept that Churchill was a politician clinging to a crumbling empire, and chose short-term prestige over long-term humanity — at the cost of a hundred million lives…

Or we give Hitler the Nobel Prize for Literature.
For, quote, “brilliant oratory in defending exalted human values.” There’s a question that won’t let me sleep: Why did Churchill believe Greece deserved a better fate than Romania?

Maybe it was the Bosporus. Or the Dardanelles. Or the Suez Canal.
Or maybe it was the Bougainvillea.

Which raises another question:
Had Churchill known that those radiant vines were actually native to Brazil, would he have reconsidered and spared a thought for Romania’s alpine edelweiss instead?

To be fair, against Greece’s iconic white-and-blue palette, Bougainvillea really does put on a show.

And so it was that, while in Athens power was ceremoniously handed to General Nikolaos Plastiras — to lead a government from which communism had been neatly exorcised — in Bucharest, the handover came with darker terms, and no such ritual of cleansing.

Some say history moves in circles. Others, that it follows a line.
But for countries like Romania, history felt more like a spiral — tightening, descending, each loop darker than the last. All because, one night in Moscow, a man with a cigar handed the future of a hundred million souls to a man with a mustache.

Churchill once said, “The empires of the future are the empires of the mind.”
What he failed to grasp was that Stalin didn’t give a damn about minds. Or Churchill.
Which is how we ended up — for the next 45 years and with over a million broken lives — being mind-fucked by our brothers from the East.

1. There’s a folk poem called „Miorița” — absolutely brilliant — that calls Romania “gura de rai” (the “mouth of heaven”). The original line is pure music: “Pe-un picior de plai, pe-o gură de rai…”
   Which roughly translates to:
   “On a foothill’s edge, at the heaven’s mouth”
   A divine opening, a poetic blessing. ↩︎