Nanowrimo Winner

8. Darkness

My pen cannot deal with that darkness.

There had been people in Dubitania who thought that the Germans would not be so bad. At least they were a civilised nation, unlike the barbaric Russians. Dubitania had always had a minority population of ethnic Germans who had made a valuable contribution to trade and culture, and it seemed reasonable to hope that however inglorious Dubitania’s fate, it need not involve too much suffering.

Within a month – within a week – even the most ardently pro-German of the Dubitanians realised what a terrible thing had happened. Some of the young German officers were reasonable people, perhaps, but many of the leading Nazis were not just wicked but insane, almost demonic. Everywhere their own progress was threatened by internecine strife and chaotic destruction, by vicious and irrational blows struck against their own allies and friends. It seemed these people could only just hold off from tearing at each other by contemplating the larger murder and destruction they could accomplish by working together.

People say the Nazis lost the war, that Hitler was defeated. Not true. My old history teacher said that if the Germans had not attacked Russia, if they had not attacked America, if they had been moderate, they could perhaps have created their thousand-year Reich. But that misses the point: they wanted no thousand years. The Nazis were not attempting to build anything, to achieve anything solid; all they wanted was to make Europe, the heart of civilisation, into a smoking, traumatised wreck, and they fully succeeded. The war was not a means, the war was the end, the war was what everything else was for. Their own destruction and death was just part of the wider pattern, a price they were, if unconsciously, quite ready to pay. What could they have done with peace? Instead, as the tide turned against them they held on to ensure that Germany itself was also utterly destroyed and rent apart, like every other country where they had set foot, as well as being tainted forever with the blackest of infamy.

My father spent most of the war in hiding, or organising small groups of partisans to undertake sabotage. Although his colleagues in the Twenty were all honourable citizens, most were middle-aged or elderly, and few had any experience in fighting. Most of the dangerous work of leadership in the field was left to my father and to Obertin, whose languid aristocratic manner belied the fit, hard-working, fearless man my father came to respect. It has been said that my father’s ideological convictions were softened by the experience of the war, and even that he became for a time a covert Christian. That is false, but it is true that he regarded the fight against the Nazis as a matter which over-rode the struggle for social justice. As he said in later life, one does not leave the house burning down in order to complete one’s accounts. But he had always been prepared to work with bourgeois and other forces in fomenting the revolution, and he had never been a man of narrow sympathies. It is true that at this stage he worked with agents of the British SOE, and even accepted funds and equipment from them; but these were pragmatic measures, not a sign of weakening conviction.

I cannot – I really cannot – describe in any just way all the horrors that the war brought; I feel the most I can do is to list here the heroic Twenty and mention their fates.

1. Marki Larvartin; one of only two members of the official Communist Party to join the Twenty, responsible for its name and much of the organisation of early resistance to the Nazi occupation. My father, together with Obertin, directed the hopeless fight of the Free Dubitanian Army against the German tanks at Nivili, and had he not been physically dragged away by Obertin would have been killed by a shell.
2. Julio Cesare Obertin; the youngest of the Twenty, an Olympic pentathlete and a leading figure among the reformist Royalists. Tacitly accepted as the military leader of the resistance, and partner to my father as its political head.
3. Lodovi Manumin; a leading figure of the pre-war reform party, a man of great intelligence and resourcefulness who had always suffered frustration under the monarchy. He was already elderly when the Germans issued their ultimatum, and he died, anomalously, of old age not six months afterwards. There is a large statue of him in Larvartin (formerly Colomati) Square.
4. Hercule Agrica: a senior judge, whose scandalously reactionary judgements, including the notorious ruling that progressive taxation was an unconstitutional abuse of power, had made him one of the worst enemies of left-wing and liberal opinion alike. A huge, almost spherical man, Agrica was of little use in the fighting and found that his chief occupation was writing propaganda which only intermittently got published; but by his mere presence he guaranteed support from sections of society which were deeply suspicious of my father and his friends. Agrica was ultimately captured while defying an SS search party. In spite of all his atavistic judgements and the great harm he had done to the progress of Dubitania while in office, he proved when tested to be a man of courage and goodwill. He saved the lives of a fugitive family hidden in the house next door by coming out into the street and creating a great fuss. This was something he was well equipped to do, and he succeeded in distracting the search party, at the cost, as he must clearly have known, of his own life. He was taken away and never seen again. My father said he had not even realised until then that Agrica was Jewish.
5. Count Tulli Romanin; an elderly aristocrat who attempted with more valour than prudence to join in Obertin’s desperate defence of Morovin Castle. He was unable to escape with the other defenders and was taken prisoner. The Germans treated him as a prisoner of war, but he died of old age and the stresses of war after a year of captivity.
6. Septima Domenicin: a representative of the bourgeois parties who in joining the Twenty brought about an irreparable split with her pro-German husband, and was forced to abandon her family. Though already middle-aged, she led many sabotage missions, all successful. These were characterised by exceptional violence towards the enemy and a degree of overkill in the use of explosives; unfortunately, in more than one case a number of innocent Dubitanian bystanders were inadvertently slaughtered by the blast at the same time. Betrayed by an informer, she was captured and tortured, but miraculously found alive in a prison camp after the German retreat. Now white-haired and in poor health, she lived on for another twenty years, and regularly attended formal meetings of the Twenty. In spite of continued efforts she never succeeded in reclaiming her children, whose father had taken them to Switzerland.
7. Lodovi Sprentin; pre-war leader of the Dubitanian Baptist league; an inspiring speaker with remarkable organisational talents. Although the Baptists were a tiny and unpopular minority, Sprentin’s easy charm had made him a trusted national figure, and it was generally taken for granted that he would be the third voice of leadership within the resistance, if not something higher. He was shot and killed in a skirmish only a week after the arrival of the Germans in Sescastri.
8. Juri Hofstadt; general secretary of the Dubitanian Engineering Union, a man with a gift for improvisation which proved most valuable both in keeping up the resistance’s communications and in making up for its lack of weapons. Badly hurt at the battle of Nivili, he was wounded five times during the course of the war and lost three fingers from his left hand while putting together an improvised explosive device. Besides improvising weapons, Hofstadt made three dangerous journeys to collect supplies of ammunition and barely avoided being captured when his route was cut off by an avalanche. After the war he married Felicia Manzani the celebrated ‘Amazon’ of the Northern resistance.
9. Marki-Orelio Tabula; younger son of the Vice-Chancellor of the University of Perta; led a number of sabotage missions with varied success and because of his fluent English was chosen to act as liaison with British SoE agents, six of whom spent more than a year based in a cave on Mount Isidori. He emigrated after the war and spent a number years living quietly in Aldershot, but returned briefly at my father’s pressing invitation in 1966. My father named his new government offices after Tabula in pursuit of some private joke which has, alas, remained private.
10. Pio Ventarin; deputy leader of one of the bourgeois parties; fled to America three weeks after the arrival of the Germans. My father said he was carrying out important work in liaison and public relations, helping to keep the plight of Dubitania before the eyes of the wider world; but most of the surviving members of the Twenty would have little to do with him on his return.
11. Petri D’Issigny; an elderly, taciturn anarchist, one of few survivors of the Dacsvillin rising, a man who held himself somewhat apart from the rest of the Twenty and sponsored a campaign of assassination attempts against Nazi leaders until a series of bloody reprisals carried out against civilians by the Germans obliged him to stop. After the war, his opinions seemed to soften and moderate and he was for a time my father’s Minister of Health.
12. Lodovi Cenari; a moderate socialist, already sixty when the war began. All four of his sons were killed while fighting the Germans or attempting sabotage during the course of the war. Finally in despair Cenari himself began going on increasingly desperate raids, but although comrades died all around him he seemed to have a charmed life. He refused a post in my father’s government and never attended meetings of the Twenty during what remained of his life.
13. Rodolpho Bertani; a maverick of Communist sympathies. At first Bertani was not thought to be fully reliable, but he proved the reverse, leading a stalwart band of partisans and serving the resistance loyally. Three times wounded, he was put in an impossible position when the Germans identified several members of his family and took them hostage. My father persuaded him that it was useless to give himself up: the Germans could not be trusted to release the hostages afterwards. In the event his relations were not killed, but spent the rest of the war imprisoned and Bertani was haunted by guilt ever afterwards. He held a junior post in Tretchin’s government and was then advanced to be minister of Production for my father.
14. Maria Intaglin; Leftist politician who took to espionage during the war. Having spent many childhood years with her uncle in Vienna, she spoke German fluently and could pass as Austrian. Under the Russians her contribution to the war effort was questioned and she was accused of resorting to immorality in her cultivation of leading German officers. When already elderly and a respected member of the Twenty under my father’s government, she achieved a new career as a singer when her quavering but determined rendition of the traditional ballad Patri Neposin brought tears to the eyes of sentimental Twentylanders.
15. Umberti Slavin: a former junior Minister in the short-lived Christian Democrat/Socialist coalition government, Slavin was too old to fight or play much of a role in the sabotage missions which were led by other members of the Twenty, but he took charge of organising safe houses for the resistance and later set up escape routes by which Jews could escape through the Black Sea: unfortunately with only limited success. He survived the war and attended meetings of the Twenty, but was never offered a post in my father’s administration.
16. Juri Franconin: Social Democrat, best known for his espionage work. In the later stages of the conflict he broke cover and led a partisan band in Sescastri itself: he was killed in the terrible Battle of Sescastri when the Germans launched a counter-attack.
17. Liavetna Noforin: before the war, Noforin was a minor socialist politician active in Fergastri and the northern provinces: during the war she operated and supported covert radio communication without ever being caught, though on two occasions she saw comrades being led away by German soldiers as the approached supposedly safe houses. After the war she was out of favour with the Russians and relapsed into obscurity, living a secluded life on a farm near Porti.
18. Fr Grigori Forobdin, Archbishop of Lexandrin. His effectiveness was not much diminished by his alcoholism, but he was too old to take an active part in sabotage or fighting; nevertheless he was a valuable figure in galvanising conservative support. He took to the barricades at the Battle of Sescastri and was killed.
19. Cerna Colpin: a socialist, relatively young compared to most of the Twenty. Her fate is unknown. She disappeared in June 1941 on her way to the Eastern town of Amestria and may have been arrested or killed, but no certain information has ever come to light.
20. Lucas Stilin; having been elected to the Assembly, Stilin followed my father’s lead and became one of the immortal Twenty. Naturally his war was spent following closely behind my father; in fairness, following my father in those days was a strenuous and dangerous task. Stilin won some gratitude for his administrative work for the Twenty, but he remained by choice in my father’s shadow, enjoying mainly reflected glory. One odd thing is that the Germans seemed to have a particular hatred for Stilin; they pursued him with special energy and at one point offered a higher reward for his capture than for that of Obertin or my father. It seems that someone, an enemy of Stilin’s or perhaps a friend of my father or Obertin, had malevolently told them that the thin pale man was the real brains behind the resistance.

During the early part of the war, my father’s relations with Moscow were strained; but everything changed when the Germans invaded Russia. My father received an emotional message from Stalin himself commending his patriotic resistance, and from then on his leadership of the remaining communists was unquestioned.

Let me take up my story later, on a day when my father, his head roughly bandaged, and Obertin (who without modifying his royalist sympathies at all had also become fond of my father) were riding into the north-eastern city of Andra-Nipoli, sitting on the front of a Russian tank. It was safe to do so as the battered German forces were for the moment in full flight (the terrible Battle of Sescastri, when it seemed for twenty-four hours as if the Nazis would succeed in turning the tide of defeat was still a week away). My father wanted the Dubitanians to see that their liberation was coming, not just at the hands of the despised Russians, but also at the hands of their patriotic countrymen, gaunt and starved but undefeated.

“So, Washerwoman,” observed Obertin, “You are the coming man now. Stalin’s darling, the man who showed the true spirit of Communism while the feeble aristocracy was rushing to lick the jackboot of the oppressor, eh?” He smiled sarcastically.

“Lucky for you that I am your friend then,” my father returned, “Don’t worry, if the Russians let me I shall make you my Minister of Hunting. Whatever you want, Julio. I’m in your debt. You saved my life three times.”

“And there are days when I think that twice would have been enough. I don’t want to be Minister of anything in a Communist government,” said Obertin, “All I really want is my estate back.”

“Well, comrade, you are a communist now, whether you like it or not. But I’ll get you a nice house.”

“Can I put something to you, comrade?” asked Obertin, “I did not take up arms against the Germans in order to deliver Dubitania into the hands of the Russians. I’m not ungrateful, these people are liberating us. But the job must be finished. Dubitania must be restored. Our struggle is not finished. You and I should work together a little longer – and when the Royalist government is re-established, I like to think you might be a tolerable Minister of Finance.”

“We’re going to have to accept the help of our allies for a little longer,” said my father, smiling, “You must realise that. A degree of patience will be required. But national self-determination is an intrinsic part of the programme, comrade, it goes without saying.”

“The independence of Dubitania will be respected by the Reds? You really think so? The Russians have always wanted to dominate us and now they have their chance.”

“We are the founding citizens of Twentyland, comrade, and the principles on which the development of the state shall be built are in our own hands.”

“I fear that if the principles of Twentyland are to be developed under Russian supervision they will leave no room for people like me, Washerwoman.”

“Nonsense, Julio, I should abjure any principles which would make a man ignore his debt to a friend. For me, you can live in a stately mansion once again, I have no objection. And if you want, you can be President for all I care.”

I don’t know whether Obertin distrusted my father, but he must reasonably have doubted his ability to keep his promise. I suspect that for him Twentyland represented a future, while what he wanted, not altogether shamefully, was to return to the past. At any rate, that night he disappeared with a group of like-minded partisans. It was apparently largely at his instigation and under his leadership that the Royalists, rallying to Carol, the supposed son of Francis I, raised a rebellion against the floundering Germans in the province of Servinia.

This was not the only example of opportunistic risings; groups espousing Christianity, Social Democracy, and simple nationalism rose in several of the major cities of Dubitania as the grip of the occupiers was loosened. Some of these groups, including the Royalists, received arms and other support from the Americans, intended to help them keep the communists out.

I asked my father once, at the time of the trade embargo, why the Americans felt such unreasonable hatred and opposition towards us. Was it envy? Why should a nation born out of opposition to monarchy have lent its support to the gimcrack regime of the supposed Carol II rather than to Twentyland, a Republic and a Democracy, the two causes the state-controlled parties of the USA were notionally supposed to champion?

The Americans were not evil, he told me. They had been captured by a system which enslaved them and drove them to devote every moment of their lives to a grinding pursuit of money, while filling them with a paranoid fear that all foreigners and many of their fellow citizens were just waiting for an opportunity to steal their pitiful treasures. If that burden could be lifted from their minds, if they could be brought to see money as servant and not as master, then all would be well.

He told me the story of Andrew Carnegie, who as a poor young boy had been allowed to use the library of the rich man living nearby. His gratitude for this was such that when he himself became an immensely wealthy man, he used his money to build free libraries all across America and in other countries. He said a rich man should be ashamed of leaving his wealth to his children, unused.

“Now that is Larvartism for you, Lucia,” said my father, “Although unfortunately poor Carnegie did not have the advantage of knowing that he was a Larvartist. But think what the USA might have become if all its tycoons had been Carnegies? Can you imagine Ford descending into the ghetto and putting his wealth and his gifts into organising good housing for everyone? Rockefeller building free hospitals across the land? Hearst ensuring that every poor boy and girl had the best of schools and the money to make a start in life? Truly I think that country would have been a friend and example to the world, and that world itself would have been a happier one. As it is, we have to bear it in patience when they strike out at us in their fear-filled madness. But don’t worry, Lucia; one day we shall bring the revolution there too.”

As we all know, Obertin had over-estimated the gratitude of the Russians. They found my father a little too popular for their liking; they made him President with no powers and installed their own lackey, Tretchin, as Prime Minister and leader of the Twentyland Communists, although he himself was a figure of the utmost obscurity, being in exile in Russia at the time of the Nazi invasion, and remaining there throughout the war. But for practical purposes the Russians were more than happy to make use of my father’s services and advice. The greatest challenge for him during this period was in fact to manage the Russian reaction to non-Communists and those they perceived as collaborators with the Nazis. He told Stilin, thinner and more ghost-like than ever, that their minds should now be fixed, not on the winning of the war, but on preserving as much as possible for the peace to follow. To this end he was often prepared to tell the Russians, sometimes in flagrant contradiction of the facts, that someone he considered valuable was a known secret communist and covert supporter of the cause.

“Comrade Larvartin,” said one of the Russian officers on one occasion, “There are so many communists in your country I really ask myself how the Germans managed to hold on for so long.” But he smiled as he said it. The Russians were broadly prepared to let my father have his way so long as they could see sufficient Nazis being purged – and there were plenty. Unfortunately there were people who would not accept my father’s help, who would rather the Russians considered them Nazis than Communists, and for these of course he could do nothing.

After the terrible battle for Sescastri was over and people were trying to clear the piles of bodies which littered the streets, my father was told that a Royalist force had attacked Red Army units in a village to the west, and were being pursued.

“Is Obertin with them?” my father asked “He must not be killed.”

“Another communist?” asked Captain Ostrovsky, the young Russian who acted as translator, general assistant and minder for my father, “Comrade Larvartin, these people attacked our soldiers when we are engaged in a struggle with the Nazis. Objectively, they are traitors and fascist renegades. They deserve all they get.”

“I must go there,” insisted my father.

The Russians reluctantly agreed. However, by the time my father arrived, the Royalists, poorly equipped and suffering from bad morale, had all been killed or captured. Obertin was not among them, though some said he had been there. This was no good to my father, since it was one of Obertin’s tactics to spread misleading information about his own whereabouts; his supporters invariably said that he had been with them and escaped only minutes beforehand, as a way of misleading their enemies into time-wasting searches..

On this occasion, though, the Russians had found someone who was possibly even more important than Obertin. A young Russian approached and spoke to Captain Ostrovsky. They conferred for a moment and then the Captain turned to my father.

“Comrade Larvartin,” he said with a smile, “Would you be willing to talk to one of the prisoners? We have a translator, but in this case a native speaker, and one with your background knowledge, will be more helpful.

My father was a little puzzled, but he agreed, and was shown into a small room where a young boy sat, surrounded by Russians. The boy was about fourteen, clearly terrified, and he was wearing a battered uniform. As soon as he heard my father’s Dubitanian accent, he fell on him and begged him to intercede on his behalf.

This, then, was Carol II, or rather, it was the boy the Royalists had been passing off as Carol II. He was, he said, an honest peasant boy named Lambertin; one day while he was working in the fields he had been summoned by the greedy overseer, who had taken him to see a group of well-dressed men standing around two cars on the road nearby. The men had approached him, studied his face closely, and told him to go with them. He had been told that if he behaved himself he could live in a Palace, eat all he wanted, and never have to work. But he had never meant to pretend to be anyone he wasn’t; he meant no harm, and please could my father tell the Russians not to shoot him?

My father questioned the boy and it became clear his story was true. The Royalist party was nothing without a King, and it seemed in their desperation they had seized on a farm boy with a superficial resemblance to pictures of the young Carol II, who himself had almost certainly been dead since the early days of the war. My father was amazed, amused, and astonished. He could not believe that Obertin would ever stoop so low, and he concluded that in spite of the rumours of his presence everywhere his old colleague must have left the country and gone into exile some time ago. At any rate, he managed to persuade the Russians that the boy was no danger; and in later years he employed him as a waiter at the Agraci Palace. Whenever the American ambassador was being entertained, my father would have the drinks served by ‘Carol II’.

“Really, Ambassador,” he would say, “This is the person you wanted to make our King? I shall never understand capitalism. But if you would like him for your ruler, please tell the American people I should be happy to send him over.”