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15. Ursin Revealed

I spent the following hours in a state of great distress. I did not, of course, believe everything that Stilin had said; it was too ridiculous, and his malice was too evident. But I could not help feeling that there was some truth in it. I resolved not to return for another conversation; it would do no good to listen to more poison. I seriously considered whether it was my duty to report what Stilin had said to my father, even though I had given a kind of promise not to do so.

In the end, if only to find out what further horrors Stilin could devise, I went back to his sordid little office.

Stilin put out his black cigarette and smiled thinly.

“Now then. You know, I hope, that Juri Ursin was your father’s first cousin?” he asked.

I had steeled myself for more shocks, but this was so unexpected that I felt my stomach turn over.

“Oh yes. Ursin was your father’s oldest friend and ally; he dates back long before my time, even. I don’t quite know how the relationship became what it was: I know Ursin was a rising young officer in the Custodes Regin, and I think that your family somehow arranged for it to be him that investigated the episode of your uncle’s bungled assassination attempt. When he came to talk to your father, he found that Marki was able to show him many papers which had belonged to Tibri, and give him many useful names of anarchists and other radicals. Ursin’s career was given a boost, and your father was well rewarded.”

“I think at first, the idea was that your father would try to contact the radical movements, pretending he had been inspired by his brother’s death, and obtain some more information for Ursin in return for further rewards. Your father did unexpectedly well at it; he must, I think, have found that he enjoyed the game of deception, and you know he was always able to make friends. He began to get more seriously involved, and Ursin was able to thwart or arrest so many would-be revolutionaries that he was promoted; he became a star of the custodes. Over the course of time, they got more and more ambitious until they began to think they could eliminate the radical opposition altogether. The idea was that eventually, once Ursin had killed or arrested everyone, he would step in and protect your father from the Royalist forces, giving him a well-paid official job. Of course, in the long run it turned out the other way around; it was your father who protected and employed Ursin.”

“You see, that’s how the custodes got to be so effective after Dacsvillin. During the rising, all the barriers had come down and the different radical groups had mingled and fraternised. Your father got all their names, and Ursin gradually winkled them out one by one. Paradoxically, your father’s position within the radical left was progressively strengthened as all the other promising figures were eliminated. Ursin and he weren’t, at that stage, trying to promote your father’s political career; his politics were a joke to them; but in practical terms it was exactly as if he was a ruthless operator who would do anything to get to the top, including having all his leading colleagues murdered until there was hardly anyone else remaining on the left with any credibility as a leader.”

“It was some time before it dawned on the radicals that there was an informer among them. I must have been very stupid, because I didn’t realise it was your father until after Dacsvillin; then the revelation was rather brutal and my nose was rubbed in it. Your father was already depending on me to help him; his gifts were conversational, he found it difficult to come up with convincing political rhetoric, whereas I seemed to have the knack of it. I would have found it difficult and even dangerous not to stick with him.”

“Dangerous?”

“You’ll see about that, Lucia; all I really mean is that I was already very much in your father’s power. Now on the day you mention in your account, your father, Essedrin and I had gone out to a remote farm where your father said there was a contact who wanted to supply us with weapons. We were desperate for guns in those days, and would take considerable risks if there was any prospect of getting them. In fact, all your father wanted to do was check whether this supposed contact was someone Ursin should be dealing with – but we didn’t know that.”

“This was the day Porfri Essedrin was killed?”

“Yes, poor Porfri.”

“I had no idea that you were there.”

Stilin smiled bitterly.

“I was always there,” he said. “I shall never forget that day. We got to this wretched farm and there was no reply when we knocked at the door. Your father started round to the back to see if he could find any signs of life, and we followed. When we turned the corner, we were just in time to see Ursin clapping your father on the back. I turned to run – I don’t think Porfri understood what was going on – but there behind us were two of Ursin’s men with guns trained on us, smirking. We stood stock still and saw clearly, unmistakably, that your father and Ursin were on the best of terms. Your father was upbraiding Ursin for his impatience, which Ursin laughed at jovially.”

The agents behind them, Stilin explained, had urged them forward, and when Ursin saw the two communists his face fell. They could now see that he had three more of his men with him: they had marched the old farmer out into the back yard and shot him in front of his own barn.

Poor Porfri took a long time to work it out.

“Marki?” he asked, “What is going on here?”

He stood there with his face contorting as he tried to get his head round the idea that his friend and protégé was an atrocious traitor.

My father, Stlinin said, did not reply; he threw Porfri a look of utter contempt and spoke to Ursin instead.

“You see how you’ve messed it up, Juri?” he said, “It’s about time you learnt some discretion, really it is.”

“I’m sorry, Marki, I didn’t realise you were coming out here,” said Ursin, mildly, “I’m afraid I think I’ll have to deal with your friends now. I hope this won’t inconvenience you too much.”

“Don’t shoot the thin one,” said my father, “He’ll do as he’s told. But this pig here, I’m not going to stop you, truly he has overstayed his welcome many times over already with his lectures about the scum of Sescastri.” He gestured at Essedrin, who could bear it no longer; he leapt forward suddenly, seized my father by the neck and one leg, folding him up like a closing book and before Ursin could react intelligently, had my father at his mercy.

“Porfri was a strong man,” said Stilin, thoughtfully, “If he had had his wits about him, he could easily have broken your father’s neck and changed the history of our beloved country. Perhaps he was just too gentle to do that a man he had thought was his friend.”

Instead, Porfri merely hoisted my father above his head, and with a grunt, hurled him at Ursin. My father and Ursin were left sprawled on the ground, but before poor Porfri could think what to do next, he was cut down by the bullets of Ursin’s men.

“I was in absolute terror,” Stilin told me, “This was the first time I knew for sure that your father was the traitor. I did not know whether he would trust me or negligently have me shot like poor Porfri. But in the end Ursin took us both back to Sescastri, and your father set me to the task of explaining to our comrades what had happened. I chose to keep many elements of the truth in my version, as you know. I must say again that you have told the story very well yourself.”

I felt sick.

“How do you come up with these vile lies, Stilin?” I demanded.

“I steal many of them,” he said, “Oh, I see what you mean, no, what I’ve just told you is the simple truth. But let’s see, this next business about your father’s escape from the Morgin House, dressed as a washerwoman? That is really the story of Mr Toad, you can look it up.”

“Mr Toad?”

“Have you read The Wind in the Willows, Lucia? If a story is popular with capitalist children, it will generally go down well with the Dubitanian political intelligentsia, I have found. Of course you will understand now that your father had no need to escape from the Morgin House; if he went there to help with the interrogations one day, he and Ursin would walk out again arm in arm afterwards.”

I’ve never hated anyone as much as I hated Stilin then.

“The other way I get my lies together,” he continued, “is just to mix up the truth a bit, as you’ve already seen with the gallant death of poor Essedrin. Now another example is this case of the Café Rosenstrauss, where your father’s earlobe was shot off. That much is true, you see, but it wasn’t Ursin who did it – it was Grigori Asbertin, the syndicalist.”

“I don’t understand.”

He told me that Ursin had indeed laid a trap in the café, but it was for Asbertin. He was a dangerous man at that time; resourceful, popular, and as brave as a lion. My father made an appointment to meet him in the café, then the police turned up, meaning to drive him out of the back, to where Ursin and my father were waiting.

It was Asbertin who realised what was going on and craftily escaped over the roof, and then it was Asbertin who could not resist the senseless bravado of standing up and shouting to defy his enemies. But it was Asbertin who was the crack-shot, too. With one bullet he shot Ursin in the gun hand, knocking the famous pistol across the yard; with the other he took off my father’s earlobe. It was deliberate, Stilin said; he didn’t mean to kill my father or he could easily have done so.

“Traitor!” he shouted, and he held up a length of rope. ‘You don’t deserve a bullet, Larvartin. This is for you.” He began backing away, still holding up the rope. “Remember, Larvartin; the rope is waiting for you!”

My father was crouching down, clutching his ear in pain, but Ursin, with blood streaming from his hand, took a step forward.

“That’s right, coward!” he shouted, “Run like the scum you are!”

Asbertin, who had been about to turn away, raised his gun again and turned back.

“You dare call me a coward!” he exclaimed coldly.

“That’s what you are. A yellow, snivelling coward!” shouted Ursin, clutching his bleeding hand.

“My God. If there’s a man who knows about cowardice, true cowardice… let me tell you something, Ursin,” began Asbertin, “There’s not a single man in my organisation who would…”

But at that point the policeman whom Ursin had seen creeping up behind Asbertin clubbed him on the head, and his chance to escape was lost.

“What shall we do with him?” asked my father when his ear had been dressed.

“Well, he brought his own rope,” answered Ursin, “Shame not to use it. Let’s tell them he lost his nerve and committed suicide in terror.”

Stilin seemed to relish this nasty story particularly, and he spent some time shaking his head and muttering.

“Perhaps by now, Lucia,” he said, “You will have grasped the general principles behind my vile lies, and you will not need me to explain about the meeting of the Democratic Socialist Union of Dubitania, for example. It is true that Ursin’s men fought with the police, but the disagreement did not arise from the deluded belief that Ursin was a rebel. No, when Ursin’s men arrived they found that the police had identified your father and were about to beat his brains out, and they were obliged to intervene summarily on his behalf.

“You will also realise that it was not particularly remarkable that your father should invite Juri Ursin to be his Controller of Police. Actually, it still is remarkable, but in a different way. There is one point I should clarify, though. The edifying story of Ursin in the trench has some basis in truth; he did indeed fight on with a small band of comrades long after the rest had fled or surrendered. However, I think you have assumed that he was fighting the Nazis, with the Royalists in the North. In fact, this episode took place a little later, and Ursin and his men were actually fighting for the Nazis, against the Red Army. He and your father always liked to keep a foot in both camps, if they could.”

“That can’t be true.” I said, “That can’t be true. The Russians would never have allowed a Nazi supporter to be given such a post. ”

“Perhaps not, if they had known,” asserted Stilin, coolly, “Your father was the Russians’ man. He did everything for them, and he was able to pull the wool over their eyes here and there. The greatest crisis of his career was when they left. But we’ll come to that, Lucia.”

41,133 words. Going well…