Nanowrimo Winner

17. War

That was a bad time for Larvartin. I managed to make myself useful – in fact I flatter myself that I became the secretary and honest broker of the Twenty for a while, making a virtue of the fact that I had no following and no power. The Twenty were formidable people and most of them had formidable egos. Larvartin was treated with disdain by most of them. Things almost came to a head early on when poor Sprentin was killed.

At that early stage, we were still trying to mount some kind of direct resistance to the German advance, and could if we wished delude ourselves into thinking that we had a chance of holding them up. But at the same time we were preparing safe houses, radios, and ammunition dumps in secret cellars, against the day when we would have to take to guerrilla warfare. Sprentin was leading a party which was delivering some guns to a house in Nipoli – nothing especially dangerous – when the Germans launched a sudden determined incursion and caught him and his handful of supporters by surprise. They were wiped out.

The following day Obertin had a quiet talk with Larvartin. We sat on rocks in a little valley by the side of the river; a peaceful spot where it seemed nothing was wrong with the world after all.

“You see, Marki,” he said, “People are asking questions. It was very odd that the Germans should launch such a narrowly focused attack on Nipoli at this stage. It looks as if they knew somehow that Sprentin was going to be there.”

He sighed and crossed one leg over the other.

“Now you were never on good terms with Sprentin,” he observed, “and last week you disappeared for a while.”

“You know, Julio,” said Larvartin, “Forgive me if I repeat this, but I have already told you that I went to check the brewery. It may seem strange, but you know that place, it was precious to my father and on his deathbed I swore to him I would look after it. You understand the call of family loyalty, Julio, I know you do.”

Obertin inclined his head in assent.

“I’ve been defending you, Marki, he said, “But I’m afraid I must now ask for your assurance. Will you give me your word that you had nothing to do with Sprentin’s death?”

“Julio, I swear it. My God, to betray someone to the Nazis, and out of petty personal spite? Anyone who could do that deserves to rot in Hell.”

Obertin nodded gracefully again.

“And if I knew that someone had done it I should send them there, believe me,” he said, quietly.

Of course I can’t be sure what happened: I was not with Larvartin when he went on his brewery visit. I remained with the Twenty, which is why I never came under suspicion. But it is certainly the case that by that stage Ursin was already working for the Nazis, and probably looking for any information he could use to build up his credibility, just as he had done with King Francis.

Reading back my manuscript I see the phrase: ‘we were still trying to mount some kind of direct resistance to the German advance’. Hah. Even now I cannot quite stop myself from glamorising our desperate struggle. We all tell romantic stories about the resistance. Every man of the right age claims to have been involved in it. The truth is that we were hanging on to bare survival by our fingernails. What little we could do in the way of sabotage harmed innocent citizens without materially affecting the Nazis; those who had supported us to begin with began to think we were putting them in danger for no reason, and began to turn against us. We did whatever we could to stay alive, whether it was sleeping with the Germans under the guise of espionage, using our scarce supplies to blow up anyone we thought was untrustworthy, fleeing the country, or simply hibernating in mute terror in someone’s cellar, crouched over a radio. ‘Resistance’ is a severely misleading term.

In 1941, we were contacted unexpectedly by Pavari. He and the rest of the Party had broken off all contact with Larvartin and myself at the outset of the war, following Moscow’s instructions to co-operate with the Nazis, but now they were in desperate straits and wanted a reconciliation. Their position was unenviable; they had discovered that Stalin had gone so far as to gather up the exiled German communists who had taken refuge in Russia and had had them, his non-Russian comrades, sent back to Hitler to be slaughtered. The implications were not lost on Pavari: he asked us to meet him in a barn near Amestria, in the east of Sescastri Province.

“If that’s not a trap, I’m a Hungarian,” observed Bertani.

Nevertheless, it was agreed that Larvartin and I would attend the proposed rendezvous, and it was felt we should take a non-communist with us. Cerna Colpin, a charming young woman with whom I had formed a kind of friendship, volunteered.

Amestria is a traditional, stone-built town, famous for its rose gardens: to the casual summer visitor it is a pleasant place: but lurking darkly on the horizon that day it seemed full of menace. We found the barn without difficulty and staked it out for a couple of hours, one before the scheduled meeting time and one after; then finally we decided to go inside. Larvartin and I kept guard outside while Cerna went cautiously inside to check: there was no-one.

If anything, I was relieved: I had secretly feared that we should find the communists already captured or killed by Ursin and a gang of SS men. We checked the map once more to make sure we were in the right place, and decided to call it a day. Cerna announced that she was going into Amestria, and set off over the fields; I never saw her again. Larvartin and I headed north, back the way we had come. After walking for fifteen minutes were ambushed in the lane and captured by Pavari and his men.

They tied our hands and led us off to a truck they had parked nearby. Pavari looked thinner and his hair was grey; but capturing us had clearly made him cheerful. We had caused him a great deal of trouble, he said; he and his comrades had been striving to show Moscow that they were co-operating with the Nazis, but every day there was news of how “communists” were working for the Twenty. This upset Moscow and caused strain in relations. Now there would be no more problems.

I thought we were dead, but Pavari had decided we were to be sent to Moscow instead. For Comrade Stalin to deal with personally. After he had finished gloating, he left us in the back of the truck and the grim journey began.

I will pass over the details of that terrible journey: they are not varied, and someone else’s distress is a subject of little interest to the reader. Half the time I was gagged or had my head in a hood; the time passed in a kind of nightmare of cramp and discomfort. We did not wash or sleep in a bed for six days. Finally – I conjecture it was when we passed the Russian border – conditions improved: we were given reasonable prison facilities when we stopped each night and rode in a kind of bus, no longer bound or gagged, with an escort of soldiers. There was no longer any sign of Pavari or any of his henchmen. We assumed that we should eventually find ourselves in front of a firing squad, but that a long period of confession would be required first.

It was not to be. I still don’t know exactly how long the journey took, but let’s say two weeks after our capture we were taken into a hotel room, invited to bathe and shave, and given fresh, smart clothes.

“What is this, Lucas?” asked Larvartin, “Is it just that they want us to look good for the trial?”

We were ushered into a large, well-lit room and now I knew I was in a nightmare: a figure got up as Josef Stalin himself, only about a foot too short, came forward and enveloped each of us in a big hug.

“Comrades!” he smiled, “So you are the patriots?”

Yet it was no nightmare; this was, incredibly enough, Stalin himself, who happened not to be quite the giant I had always imagined. It was some time before we fully understood, but of course what had happened was that while we were making our appalling journey, the Nazis had violated the non-aggression pact and invaded Soviet territory. Their unstoppable progress towards Russia itself had caused Comrade Stalin a kind of nervous breakdown: he had spent days closeted in his dacha, and when he emerged he had a new line: this was now not a struggle for socialism, but a great patriotic war. It followed that we anti-Nazi, patriotic Dubitanians were the true communists, and had been all along; those incorrect elements who had betrayed their country by co-operating with the Nazis had now been exposed, and their credibility was gone.

I must admit that Larvartin was quicker than me at adjusting to this new situation; he could always turn on the charm when he needed to, and now he played up to Stalin adroitly. His tendency to be too ingratiating, too flattering, did not seem to be a problem here; he seemed to be exactly what the Soviet leader needed, politically and perhaps more important, psychologically. By a fortunate quirk of timing, we were the first people who could lend some kind of credence to the idea that the communists were naturally the backbone of patriotic resistance to Nazism, and this seemed to be something that Stalin needed to prove, not just to the nation, but to himself. I don’t know where Larvartin’s energy came from: once I realised we were not going to be shot, I lapsed into a sort of exhausted paralysis. I could not help being aware that even Stalin’s friendship might not be much use now, since Hitler was set to sweep into Moscow within weeks.

But who could say we would not survive even that? It seemed that Larvartin was under God’s, or possibly Satan’s special protection; I could not explain his luck otherwise. He was certainly determined to exploit his advantage in the days and weeks that followed. There was a steady stream of officials who wanted to brief and instruct us: but if there was anything Larvartin didn’t like, Comrade Stalin would somehow find his way into the conversation and the officials would back off.

In the end, of course, the German advance ran out of steam, and Stalin found some competent generals, removing the endless political interference which had hamstrung his commanders in the early stages. Most decisively, the huge scale of Soviet resources began to tell: the Russians could fight ineptly and ineffectively, take all the casualties the Germans could inflict, over and over again, and instead of dwindling, their army kept growing as more recruits arrived. The Germans might take many fewer casualties, but each one reduced their strength permanently and they were progressively eroded.

We were only able to make intermittent contact with our surviving colleagues in the Twenty; we sat tight and waited for the day when we should return in triumph.

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