Nanowrimo Winner

16. Stilin’s memoirs

If I had felt upset before, after our second conversation I felt sick. The horrid, twisted version of reality which Stilin took such pleasure in retailing revolted me. I could not understand how a man could nurture such poisonous thoughts about the person he spent his life following. On balance, I thought that Stilin was mad. I resolved not to talk to him again. But after I had kept away for a week, a soldier came to the door and presented me with a note from the skeletal secretary and a sheaf of papers. My mother was out, standing hopelessly in a waiting room for the chance of a brief conversation with a clerk about the forms she had filled in to request that the repair of our kitchen window could be upgraded to category three, which would in theory give us some chance of it being done within six months. So I had the opportunity to examine the papers in privacy.

There was note attached.

Lucia, it said, I’m sorry if you find this difficult. These papers are drafts I made a couple of years ago. I hoped then that I would outlive your father, and might be able to publish the truth. I thought it might make some amends for the terrible things I have helped with, or concealed. Please read them, and if you feel able, come and talk to me again.

I began reading, and I was still reading when my mother came home.

“What’s that, Lucia?” she asked, coming up behind me. I wasn’t sure she and I were on friendly terms yet: we had had a tremendous argument when I came back from seeing my father. I blamed her for lying to me just as much as I blamed him; to be honest, I blamed her more.

“It’s nothing,” I said, “Nothing for you to see.”

————————————-

Dacsvillin was the turning point. Before that, the situation was not really promising in many respects. Larvartin was still a fairly minor figure and Ursin was only a successful officer with a knack of picking off leftist agitators in brutal style. Neither was all that well-liked or trusted by their own colleagues.

Larvartin, with his constant wheedling attempts to make friends and his apparent lack of serious political opinions, struck his fellow Party members as a lightweight, and many others on the left frankly considered him a fool. He was pleased to let them think so; he had no real ambitions to become a political leader in those days. I think it is an indictment of them all, however, that they never suspected his treachery. Those old leftists saw human beings as little more than economic abstractions; if they had been more curious about their comrades as human beings they might have been suspicious about Larvartin’s feverish solicitude. The truth was that he was a dangerous man to underestimate; the only thing more dangerous was to let him see that you did not underestimate him.

Ursin, also, was not much liked by King Francis. Contrary to what we are told nowadays, the King took an active interest in his own armed forces, and this included careful oversight of the custodes. He himself had noted Ursin’s string of successes; although he found the man’s manners vulgar, he tried to apply meritocratic principles, and was content to agree to Ursin’s early advancement. What really put him off was the brutality of Ursin’s operations. King Francis regarded it as part of his duty to defend the rule of law in Dubitania, and he found Ursin’s habit of gunning down perceived enemies of the regime where they stood in the street to be distasteful and improper. What made it worse was that many active members of the revolutionary parties, the kind of people Ursin was shooting, were not simple proletarians, but progressive members of the upper or upper-middle classes; some of them were even people who were slightly known to the King. It was not good form to shoot workers, but to kill the children of people who had been introduced at Court was really a dreadful error in the King’s eyes.

But then came Dacsvillin. When word first arrived of the rising , the communists held a rambling debate. They all agreed that the rising was not a correct revolutionary proceeding, although there were three different points of view about why: Pavari and his friends held that it was essentially ethnic in character and not proletarian; Misondri and the majority said that its essential character was that of a bourgeois revolution against feudalism; Bertsch agreed that the Dubitanian historical context was not yet sufficiently advanced for Dacsvillin to be a socialist revolution, but also denied that it was anti-feudal in character.

They all took it for granted, however, that for various reasons they would go and join in. Larvartin was the only member to speak against: he actually went so far as to say he would not personally go to Dacsvillin under any circumstances, and it seemed embarrassingly clear that simple fear was playing the major part in deciding his views. He looked pale and his voice trembled as he spoke. To save his blushes, Pavari proposed that he should remain in Sescastri in order to keep channels of communication with Moscow open: and this was readily agreed.

It must have been with some surprise, therefore, that after Cavallin’s siege had been in place for three weeks, the rebels found that Larvartin, Essedrin and I were waiting at the Marien Gate with two wagons full of supplies. Poor Porfri was beside himself; it had cost him dear to stay at home in Sescastri while his comrades were out having revolutionary fun, and only his great regard for his friendship with Larvartin had caused him to stay behind.

In retrospect, I find it hard to understand why the suspicions of the besieged were not aroused at that point. Cavallin’s blockade was admittedly not all that rigorous: I don’t think he really wanted to cut the city off completely. If we had smuggled ourselves in at a postern somewhere, it might have made sense; but surely it was a little odd that we were able to drive two wagons right up to the front door without being troubled by the Royal guardsmen who were clearly visible only two hundred metres away? All I can say is that at the time I did not find it particularly strange myself: I just thought it was another example of our daring and the Government’s lax ineffectiveness.

By then of course, anyone who brought fresh supplies was sure of a welcome, and no-one took it ill when Larvartin announced that he intended to ration their distribution. Rationing and bureaucracy came only too naturally to most of those inside the ancient walls. I remember the vigorous nodding along the rows of delegates as Larvartin made his speech about how the rebels were themselves the embryo of a new republic and should exemplify amongst themselves the equitable distribution of resources which the new regime would surely usher in. They were, you might say, suckers for that kind of thing, as I knew when I wrote it.

Some of the rebels, it is true, raised an eyebrow when they found that in order to qualify for a ration they were required to supply rather a lot of details about their revolutionary and true identities, their affiliations and even their normal addresses. Any who objected, however, were easily won over by an appeal to comradely co-operation, and Larvartin’s theatrical gesture of tearing up their details as soon as they had been recorded. This bizarre gesture was meant to show that while rectitude required him to record the information, comradely feeling made it impossible for him to keep it if he felt they had any reservations. This illogical business (in fact he palmed the actual details and ripped up a blank form) seemed to evoke warm feelings in all of them. Probably the only sensible one among them was a saturnine anarchist called D’Issigny, who said little and filled in Larvartin’s form readily with details which I later discovered with a certain admiration to be entirely fictitious.

On the morning of the day after we completed our first issue of rations, Larvartin woke me at five o’clock in the morning. I had been pleased to get a room of my own, even though it was a small one at the top of a run-down old house near the walls, but in the grey light of the early morning it looked cold and severely uninviting. The bare floorboards and white-washed walls suggested that this had been a maidservant’s bedroom before the occupiers had fled: the only remaining sign of the former occupant was a picture of Enrico Caruso in a ridiculous medieval costume, cut from a newspaper, which had been pinned to the wall.

“Come on, Lucas,” said Larvartin, impatiently, “No time to lose. We’re going home.”

“Home?” I asked stupidly. I thought at first he must have quarrelled with Pavari or with one of the other leaders, but it appeared that it had never been his plan to stay long in Dacsvillin. Porfri, he told me, was staying behind, but we needed to get back to Sescastri to give Moscow news of our progress.

“Will we be able to get through the besiegers?” I asked, but he merely smirked at me.

Once again, instead of using an obscure postern, we left by the Marien Gate. As it happened, Porfri was on duty there, otherwise I think it might have been difficult to persuade the guards to open the gate for us. As on the way in, we found we could walk away down a minor road in full view of the besieging troops without anyone taking a pot-shot or riding up to see what we were doing. In fact, Larvartin actually waved at the Royalists: at the time I took it for a piece of reckless bravado, but now I realise it was in all probability a pre-arranged signal.

With Larvartin’s ration list, Ursin was in a position to identify and wipe out the majority of serious revolutionary activists; but more to the point, he was able to provide evidence of the extent of revolutionary sentiments, and create the alarm he needed to justify his activities. It was not a foregone conclusion that Dacsvillin would be followed by a clamp-down. It is not widely known, but I have seen documents which show that Francis I was actually on the brink of abdicating at the time.

The King had prepared a speech in which he declared that although he was King, he was not himself a Royalist. He regarded himself as merely holding in trust a sacred responsibility to manage Dubitania’s inevitable transition to democracy. He had thought that the people of his country understood that he was simply trying to steer the ship of state through a turbulent period until a stable new regime could be put in place. But the rising in Dacsvillin made him think that perhaps he had become an obstacle to progress. He was prepared, therefore, to step down from the throne and call together a National Assembly which would debate a new constitution.

I don’t know whether Francis was completely sincere in all this, or whether he was merely indulging his pique over the uprising, but he seemed serious enough to alarm his courtiers and the Royalist party very considerably. With Ursin’s information, they were able to persuade the King that his abdication would plunge the country into bloody conflict, and that it was his duty to remain on the throne for a few more years. He was also persuaded that Ursin alone could restore the ship of state to an even keel, and it was therefore agreed that he should at last become Director of the Custodes Regin.

I know now that Larvartin was also at this time thinking of throwing in the towel. I have seen a letter to Ursin in which he points out that with the virtual elimination of the opposition, their goal is achieved. He no doubt expected to be able to drop the façade, and take up the rewards Ursin had promised him – a dukedom, a political sinecure, and fifty thousand denari.

But Ursin was thinking of his own career. If he took out all the radicals in one fell swoop, he would enjoy a moment of glory, but then he would have nothing to do. He was aware that King Francis did not like him very much, and was afraid that unless he continued to demonstrate his usefulness, the King would soon get rid of him, as he had done with many previous Directors. He therefore arranged the assassination or imprisonment of all the revolutionary leaders who seemed to him to be immediate dangers: but he retained a selection of the others for future use.

In the much reduced pond of radical opinion, Larvartin found himself now to be one of the bigger fish, and much the boldest – why shouldn’t he be bold? His impatience with Ursin was qualified by a growing enjoyment of this leading role, and perhaps even then some half-serious idea of turning the tables and becoming a revolutionary in earnest might have occurred to him.

When the German ultimatum arrived, Ursin was of course able to brief Larvartin. He told him that the Germans had insultingly demanded that as the price of their accepting Francis’ submission, he must deliver unanimous agreement at the Assembly. With Pavari in jail and many others dead or in exile, Larvartin was in command of the handful of communist delegates, and felt able to demand a high price. If Ursin would not deliver, he could get what he wanted from Francis himself.

I went with Larvartin to the Agraci palace. After waiting for what seemed like hours in a dusty anteroom, we were taken into a grand room with large paintings on the wall, where King Francis sat behind a table with three advisers. There was only one chair on our side of the table: Larvartin sat and I was left to stand behind him like a footman – perhaps I deserved it.

The King remained silent while Larvartin explained his demands, only raising one eyebrow. In return for delivering the communist votes, Larvartin demanded that he should become Duke of Septen, Head of Posts for Andrania Province, and receive an emolument of fifteen thousand denari.

The King paused and looked at his counsellors.

“Well, Mr Washer,” he said, “I think that’s all clear. Yes, all very clear. There’s only one thing that puzzles me. You see, you ask quite a high price, but tell me – haven’t we bought you already?”

The counsellors laughed loudly.

“Thank you, at any rate, for coming in,” said Francis, sarcastically, “But you see, we’ve found a cheaper contractor – a Mr Pavari?”

“Pavari? You’re going to release Pavari? But I’m the representative,” protested Larvartin.

“Not any more. Good day!” The King smiled and the courtiers laughed again.

I have never seen anyone as furious as Larvartin as we were unceremoniously bundled out of the Palace. He found that he was now suddenly isolated: Pavari had been quietly released the day before and had already re-established himself with the Party. I was the only communist who remained loyal to Larvartin. In addition his status as a member of the Assembly had been questioned and unless he could do something quickly he would find himself rejected by all parties and in severe danger. It happened that Ursin was away at this time and could not be contacted: Larvartin, in a panic, assumed that he had been abandoned, but in fact Ursin was merely ingratiating himself with the Nazis. If he had been available, there is no doubt in my mind that Larvartin would have followed his lead and become a collaborator. As it was, and luckily for us, that option did not seem to be open.

There was one last desperate card Larvartin could play. It was known that Obertin, Sprentin, and Manumin were attempting to organise resistance to the Germans’ demands: he went to them and asked to join their party.

We met them, rather ominously, in the upstairs room of the Grand Café. This time there were plenty of chairs around the table.

“Personally,” said Obertin languidly once the preliminaries were out of the way, “I’ll take anyone who wishes to join us. This is not a time to be choosy. But you must admit, Larvartin, this is a little strange. Your party takes its orders from Moscow, and Moscow has signed a friendly pact with the Nazis. Have you broken up with your own party?”

“I think he has,” said Manumin, without waiting for Larvartin to reply, “They have filed a request for his status as a representative to be revoked in favour of the old Chairman, that Italian fellow. Luigi Pavari. I imagine that’s why Mr Larvartin is here. He wants us to uphold his status. Legally, I think it would be correct to do so: the members of the assembly are not delegates but elected individuals. However, I see no reason why we should bale him out unless he is sincere, which seems doubtful in the circumstances.”

“The case is actually debatable, Lodovi,” said Sprentin, who was a lawyer, “Your interpretation of his status is based on recent Assemblies, but historically Dubitanian Assemblies have followed many different rules, and there are prima facie precedents for a member being replaced. I think if it came to it the High Court might take the view that the Assembly was a Royal creature anyway and that the principle of “Le Roi le veut” might prevail. Why do we want these people, anyway?”

“A vote is a vote,” said Obertin, “I have no desire at this juncture to begin making windows into men’s souls. Anyone who will fight Nazis is qualified as my friend just now.”

“I have a principled objection,” said Sprentin, “I will work with any Dubitanian of good will – that goes without saying. But atheistical terrorists are another matter.”

“I’m not a terrorist,” said Larvartin desperately, “I’ve never killed anyone. And… and I’m not an atheist. Not exactly. Not really.”

Sprentin raised his eyebrows.

“Is that so?” he asked, and seemed lost for further words.

Larvartin dropped his head into his hands.

“Look,” he said, “I’ll be frank. If you don’t take me, they’ll kill me. I don’t know whether the Royalists or maybe the communists will get to me first, I can’t say when, but one of them will kill me. Please take me. Please. I’ll do anything you say. Anything.”

“It would be useful to have one communist, at any rate,” conceded Manumin.

“Two, Lodovi. Two communists,” said Obertin, and looked at me,” What is your view, Mr Stilin?”

“We act together in this,” said Larvartin, gruffly.

“I see that,” conceded Sprentin, “But it did cross my mind to wonder whether we were addressing ourselves to the organ-grinder or the monkey.”

The following day Sprentin – yes, it was Sprentin – made the famous speech, and Twentyland was born. Larvartin wasn’t even there – he was still too afraid of being assassinated.

44,340 words. This was the toughest section yet – I hope it doesn’t show.

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…

14. Stilin’s Story

I don’t think Lucas Stilin can ever have been a man who looked healthy and vigorous, but now – I suppose he must have been in his seventies or even his eighties, it was hard to tell – he seemed half skeleton, half ghost.

He had a small office of his own, not in the Agraci Palace but in the ugly new glass-and-concrete Tabula House next door, where the administration of the country increasingly took place. It was a complete contrast to my father’s huge and luxuriously appointed room; Stilin’s office resembled a cell, and the furniture was all brand new, of low quality. I suppose the way he followed my father around meant that he was hardly ever in his own office, so perhaps it didn’t matter much to him what it was like. There was only one picture on the wall; not the ubiquitous portrait of my father, but one of Chou En-Lai.

He offered me a seat across the desk from him, carefully placed his cigarette in the ash tray, and sat fiddling with some papers for a long time. I had, with some reluctance, given him a copy of my little booklet about my father, and I could see it on his desk.

“Lucia… may I call you Lucia?”, he began, “Your father’s instructions have placed me in a difficult situation.”

“I don’t altogether see why, Comrade Stilin, He merely asked you to tell me the truth about him.”

“Yes, yes. That’s it, you see.” He frowned at me as if I had said something improper. “Let’s see if we can approach the issue by talking about your manuscript. Hm. I liked it very much. I believe you have some talent.”

“Thank you.”

“But of course, I would be bound to like it, since in a way I had a hand in writing it.”

“What?”

“You’ve written a nice account here, I like it very much, but you didn’t invent it, did you? No, of course not. You got it from your mother, and added the simple style which makes it so charming. But now. Your mother – she didn’t invent it either?”

“No, of course not,” I replied, a little indignantly.

“No, No, I know your mother a little, of course, Lucia, and I think I can safely say that she never invented anything, A woman of formidable intelligence, and no imagination whatsoever. In fact, if I may stop beating about the bush – I am the, the inventor of most of these stories.”

I stared at him in incomprehension.

“Did you ever wonder, Lucia, why your father kept me by him all the time? How it was that I was still alive and not in the cellars – but I forget, you wouldn’t wonder about that. The thing is, your father is a man of action, Lucia: he isn’t really very good with words, especially if they have to be written down. Since very early on, he has used me as the one to give him sonorous speeches, pithy sayings, and homely wisdom; rationalize his actions, and invent the uplifting story of his life.”

We gazed at each other in silence.

“Now, I think you have come to a place where you can slightly understand my problem. When your father sent you to me, he asked me to tell you the truth. But he did not mean the truth. He meant, Lucas, once again I want you to vindicate me, to provide an account that will make me look good, at least superficially. There are three problems for me.”

He sat back and sighed.

“One is that my ingenuity is limited, and frankly I don’t see how I can give you a sufficiently flattering account that will remain at all plausible when you begin to be able to look into the matter yourself. The second problem is that I should like to tell you the real truth, to take your father’s instruction literally. It’s time I told someone, I shall not live much longer. The third problem is… well in your own interests I think there are certain things you ought to know. We’ll come to that. So what are we to do? How about this? I propose to you an agreement, Lucia: I will tell you the truth, if you promise to try to continue to behave as if your father was the most wonderful man in the world. Is that acceptable?”

“No. No promises. I don’t even know why I’m listening to this nonsense.”

“Very well, in that case I don’t know what more I can say. We must take it that your booklet is the truth, and very well told: I do like what you have done with my inventions.”

He wriggled in his chair and stared at me owlishly. There was a lengthy silence. It was in reality perhaps no more than a few minutes, but a few minutes in these circumstances is a long time.

“Oh very well,” he said at last, “You insist that I sign my own death warrant, or rather something much worse. Of course, I knew you would. Very well: I am an old man, and very wicked; I cannot say that you are unjust. But you must promise me one thing at least. The whole story will take some time to tell. You don’t talk to your father at all, not about any of this, until I have finished. Is that much agreed?”

“Alright,” I said, with foreboding, And so it began.

“Let’s use your booklet to start with,” said Stilin, “Let’s see if we can correct a few things.”

Stilin said it was my mother’s scruples rather than my father’s that prevented my status being made public from the start. My father, he said, felt no shame about his additional families, and although he could not acknowledge them all formally was more than happy to have them known. He even took some of his children on public visits: Felicia often went on trips with him; she had opened a new library once, apparently, and no-one had thought anything of it.

“You know now, at any rate, why you did not live at the Palace,” he said, “And that your father did, some of the time at least. You know too, that there is no lunatic asylum – or mental hospital – in the cellars of the Agraci Palace?”

I shook my head mutely.

“Well there isn’t. At least, not unless we consider that anyone who attracts your father’s resentment is a lunatic. You’ve heard of the Morgin House, the old Royalist prison? All the torture equipment was brought from there, and has been considerably improved and developed since. Your father reserves the cellars for prisoners he likes to keep close and visit occasionally. Many of his old comrades are down there. Pavari, for example, what’s left of him. A couple of members of the original Twenty – Slavin, Noforin. Officially they’re dead, but in fact they were not so lucky. It’s something of a surprise that I’m not down there myself, but I’ve made it my business to survive, for some reason.” He chuckled in a dry, dusty way.

Overall, he told me, there were currently about 200 special prisoners in the cellars of the Agraci Palace. My father would visit them from time to time, force new confessions from them, invented crimes, make them swear to ludicrous things, for no other reason than his own amusement. He would try out new tortures, and for certain prisoners he had special ‘projects’ which had been specially devised for them. I’m afraid I told Stilin not to tell me about these; it was too much.

On my father’s sex life there was much more. Stilin confirmed, at least, that the horrid story about my father approving new recruits to the trade of prostitution in Sescastri was exaggerated; however, at one stage my father and certain close cronies took to making ‘research trips’ to the city’s many brothels, during which they would compete to see how many girls they could ‘reform’ in the course of a night. The larger and more prosperous of the Sescastri houses of ill repute accepted these visits as an unavoidable overhead, and would try to ensure that experienced staff who were ready to cater to my father’s particular tastes were the only ones on duty at the time; but sometimes in the case of smaller or newer enterprises my father’s sudden appearance had led to regrettable misunderstandings, uncontrolled violence, and even fatalities.

My father, Stilin said, did not confine his attentions to prostitutes and his several mistresses and concubines.

“That time we came to your classroom?” he said, pointing a finger at me, “Of course I was not in a position to hear, but I think I can guess what it was he whispered to your teacher. A time, an address, a room number. She was a fairly attractive young woman, as I recall. Perhaps, forgive me, that was the real reason for the visit.”

According to Stilin, it seemed that there was only one member of the current Council of Twenty whose wife or daughter had not been ravished by my father, and that was Jakoubian, whose sole female relation was his mother, a revolting hag of well over ninety. My father apparently used this as one of his jokes at meetings of the Council; when the options for solving some problem were running out, he would say it looked as if he might be forced to visit Jakoubian’s mother after all.

“But these are powerful men, surely?” I asked, “Why is it that they allow themselves to be humiliated like that?”

“You must remember that your father is in complete control of the police and the armed forces,” said Stilin, “These Twenty Council men may be running the country, but a misplaced word from any of them, even at the formal Council meetings themselves, and they would be dragged from their chairs and shot. They always try to stop your father meeting any members of their families. Do you know Georgia Faratrin? She would only be a few years older than you.”

I shook my head.

“She was the daughter of Grigori Faratrin, Minister of Social Policy, and a member of the Council. A beautiful young girl, no more than fifteen at the time. Unluckily your father came across her one day and invited the Faratrin family to a dinner. When it became clear what he wanted, the girl’s mother Sophia begged and pleaded with him to leave the girl alone, all to no avail; finally, in desperation, she offered herself as a substitute on condition he would spare her daughter. Well, Sophia was only in her thirties, and still an attractive woman; your father agreed and took her immediately into a private chamber, which led directly off the dining room – just like that. Georgia and her father sat in frozen silence at the cold dinner table for half an hour, armed guards all around them, and then they heard your father’s voice shouting from inside the chamber. Cautiously they went to the door. Inside, Sophia Faratrin was lying unconscious on a couch, naked, bruised, and bleeding from the head. Your father, also stark naked, was sitting in an armchair with a glass of brandy. ‘Good, but not good enough,’ he said: ‘I’m afraid we’ll have to have the daughter after all.’ ”

“She was only fifteen?”

“I believe so. I’m sorry to shock you, but please believe that I think frankness about all this is in your own best interest at the moment.”

He told me that many years ago now, my father took Glauci Vespin, the Minister for Education, to visit the famous Armenian girls’ school in Livorin. When they got there, he felt that the Minister seemed glum.

“It’s your wife, isn’t it, Glauci?” said my father, “You need a young woman to cheer you up – like one of these.”

“These are too young for me, Marki,” said the terrified Minister.

“Nonsense. I tell you what, let’s see how low you can go. Pick one out, go on. They’d be honoured, I’m sure. I’ll ask the headmistress to get you a room.” and then with sudden freezing menace, he demanded “Or are you disdaining my hospitality?”

I told Stilin I could not believe these revolting stories; they must be apocryphal.

“I was there,” he said, calmly “I was always there. You know that. These eyes, these ears.”

“I can’t believe, at any rate, that my mother was aware of all this.”

“No,” agreed Stilin, “Not all of it. There’s plenty more if you want to hear it, Lucia, more and worse.”

“Worse?”

“Oh yes. Things that made Ursin himself cover his eyes, though in his way he was as bad as your father. Wicked, but not so mad.”

“You think my father is insane?”

“Yes. I would call it mad. He hides it well, but not from me. We’ll come to that later on, and you can form your own opinion. Do you still want to go on?”

I hesitated.

“Yes,” I said, “Yes, go on. But no more about the… the sex.”

“Very well,” said Stilin, “So let us move on the second chapter of your booklet, and now is the time to speak more of Controller Ursin, who has played such a large and important part in your father’s remarkable achievements.”

“No more now,” I protested, “No more.”

There was another long silence. Stilin took out a new cigarette and lit it.

“Will you come back tomorrow?” he asked.

“Yes. Yes.”

“And you remember, do not speak to your father. It’s probably best you don’t see him at all. Otherwise I shall be in the cellars before I can finish the story.”

He smiled without a trace of genuine mirth, stood and came round the desk: I had not noticed that the door had been locked behind me, but now he opened it again, and let me out.

38,858 words

13. A Conversation with Marki Larvartin

The secretary gazed disapprovingly at the young woman over the top of his glasses. It was clear that in his view she had no right to be sitting in the spacious anteroom, once perhaps the dressing room of a Grand Duchess or a Princess; still full of large and rather uninspired oil paintings depicting scenes from classical mythology, but now also fitted with rows of filing cabinets in battleship grey, and three or four desks. This was a room for senior bureaucrats to cool their heels in, hoping nervously that their briefing papers would be deemed satisfactory, or possibly wondering in fear why they were about to be rebuked.

The young woman, about seventeen or eighteen, was dressed well; that is to say, in the style of someone who enjoyed access to Sescastri’s foreign currency shops, and perhaps even to foreign shops. But she lacked the bovine confidence that normally went with being the daughter of a high official; she seemed angry and nervous.

All at once the door of the President’s office opened with a bang; the secretary flinched in shock. There he stood on the threshold, Marki Larvartin himself, greyer and a little more florid than the framed picture on the secretary’s desk, but unmistakably the Hero of the Twenty.

“Lucia!” he exclaimed, “What are you waiting there for? Anton, you fool,” he turned to the secretary, “Why didn’t you show her in immediately? Get us tea, please. Come in Lucia.”

The girl’s face went through a rapid change when Larvartin appeared. First, an unthinking brilliant smile flashed into view, an expression which transformed her whole appearance for a moment, then it was at once replaced by a more considered scowl. She stood and followed the President into his office.

The President of Twentyland had old-fashioned taste, or perhaps he merely deferred to the overwhelming grandeur of the Agraci Palace. His office was a huge room, richly carpeted and hung with long velvet curtains. Over by one wall, on which hung a painting of the Oath of the Horatii , clearly but distantly inspired by the work of David, was a long mahogany desk with orderly piles of paper ranged across it. On the other side of the room there were chairs and a low marble topped table: on the wall hung an eighteenth-century Bohemian tapestry depicting in fanciful detail the Defenestration of Prague.

“Lucia!” said her father, enfolding her in a bear hug which she did not resist, and leading her to an ornate armchair, “So good to see you. How is your mother?”

“She… she is well,” said Lucia hesitantly, “Although of course things are not so easy as they were. Was it really necessary to take away her job and her flat?”

“Listen,” said Larvartin at once, in a conciliatory tone, “I didn’t do that. Your mother was one of my private secretaries. When she lost her temper with me, when she left me, she never wanted to see me again, much less carry my bags around to meetings all day. She asked for a transfer. The job she got, I know it’s a long way off and it’s dull compared to working in the Palace, and also she doesn’t get special allowances any more. But it was the job the system assigned her. It’s what she asked for. With the flat, it’s the same thing; the old place was my place; she didn’t want it, she didn’t want anything from me, you understand. It was not by my wish that she moved out: I asked her to stay – don’t you believe me?”

“Hm,” said Lucia, the wind slightly taken out of her sails by this different perspective.

There was a knock at the door and a maid carrying a tray came in with tea. Smiling brilliantly first at Larvartin and then with scarcely diminished enthusiasm at Lucia, she set out cups and saucers and withdrew.

“Would you…?” asked Larvartin, and with bad grace Lucia poured the tea.

“You know,” she resumed at last, “I always thought when I was small that we lived in an ordinary worker’s apartment. I thought everyone had a place like that, or better. Now I realise it was a flat big enough for twelve people, it was near the Castelveci; it was furnished with antiques and modern electrical appliances and it had central heating. When we moved, I though we were going to a similar place, but we went far away to a mildewed concrete box scarcely big enough for a rabbit, where the stairs smell of urine and there are power cuts every day. And I realised that there were hundreds, thousands just like it, that this is normal in Twentyland, that in fact there are many people who live in worse conditions.”

“Listen, Lucia,” said her father, “If you want, I will call Anton in here; if your mother will only consent, you and she can move back into the old place tomorrow, and she can have a job as a personal secretary in the Foreign Relations Service; she won’t need to see me, only nice people. She can work for that young fellow Leo Asmodin, he’s very handsome, the one the secretaries call the film star, she can correct his ideology, it will do him good. Or not if she doesn’t want to. Shall I do that? What do you think your mother will say? Will it be thank you very much, or will she spit in my eye and refuse everything? You know your mother, you know how she will behave, but seriously if you think it is worth trying I will do it now. OK?”

Lucia grimaced. She knew, unfortunately, that he was essentially right.

“Why did you lie to me so much?” she demanded, “Why didn’t you just explain how things were, instead of leaving me to find out?”

“Well, it’s true our housing in the capital here is not yet as good as we should like…”

“Not that!” she exclaimed, furiously, “Not about that! About you, and her, and me. You let me go on thinking we were a perfect family. You let me make an idiot of myself telling people you weren’t married because of my mother’s feminist principles. You just treated me…”

“Like a child? Oh. I’m sorry, Lucia, it was bad, I know. But put yourself in my place. Do you explain these things to a four-year old? Or next year? Or when is the good time when you tell them everything?”

“Neither of you ever explained.” she went on, “And no-one else dared talk to me about you. It wasn’t until you broke up. Then I was walking through the streets one day, and there was a big crowd heading for the Palace. They said you were making a speech, and they all had to go. I thought it was funny that they didn’t know who I was, and I went along with them. I thought you might see me and wave back. Anyway I went along, and there you were on the balcony, waving – and there was some awful fat woman like an opera singer, covered in jewels. They told me it was your wife. They thought I must be stupid, or a foreigner or something, not to know. Do you think that was a good way to find out that you were married, had always been married – just not to my mother?”

“Ah.” said Larvartin, frowning, “You know I haven’t slept with Esmeralda since 1952. We are just keeping up appearances, really, it’s stupid I know but she insists, and she has her rights, you know.”

“Keeping up appearances? That’s a good one. All the time I thought you were living with us, you were living at the Palace with your wife and four children. And also you were living in another flat with the junior Minister of Trade. And God knows how many casual mistresses you had besides. There was a man in the crowd who took pleasure in telling me all about your masculine prowess. I think he could see I was shocked, though he had no idea… He told me… he told me that every time a new prostitute is registered in Sescastri, she has to be personally “approved” by you. I didn’t think we even had prostitutes since the revolution.”

“Oh, that’s nonsense, Lucia,” he protested, “I’m not as good a man as I should have been, but I don’t believe I’m as bad as you think, either… You must understand, a man in my position, it’s not that I go after women, they come after me, all the time. Really, I’m under pressure at all times from women hardly older than you. You know I said to your mother once, isn’t she glad she never has to queue for anything the way everyone else does, and she said – it was a little coarse, I’m sorry, she was angry – she said, oh, I queue alright comrade, in Sescastri they call it horizontal queuing. You know, Lucia there are plenty of women who want to shove into that queue. And I’m only human. I try to do my best, you know, it’s not always easy. ”

“I was such a fool,” she complained, “I thought you were so wonderful. I wrote a little booklet about your wonderful life. I thought I was telling the real truth, instead of that ridiculous official biography.”

“Oh, Mischkoff? You know that was done by the Russians, he never even came here. It was one of a series on Leaders of the Communist Nations. Then they translated it into Dubitanian, and what was I to do? People started buying it; I couldn’t ban it, exactly, could I?”

“But why couldn’t you have been just a little more honest? It was such a shock. I thought I was the beloved daughter of our great leader, and then I find I’m just the last and least of the bastards of some horrible old lecher.” She had been speaking with her eyes lowered, but now she couldn’t quite help glancing up at him to see whether she had gone too far.

“You’re not the least, Lucia, you’re the best. I’m sorry you found out the way you did, but you are my beloved daughter; what’s more you’re the only one of my children with any brains. The rest, you know, I love them too, but somehow they all have brains of solid Servinian oak. Sometimes I think I must be extremely stupid myself, to have such children. My daughter Felicia Pertari, she was the best at school apart from you, but if she were here, do you know what she would say? She would say ‘Uh?’ and she would carry on chewing gum. That’s what she always says. As for the boys, well, I think we must have some Neanderthal genes in the family somewhere, truly if they could learn to bang rocks together it would be a triumph for the socialist educational system.”

“It’s no good.” said Lucia, “It’s no good trying to be funny, it’s no good trying to flatter and tempt me. You don’t understand what you’ve done to me. It’s not just something to be swept away with a few stupid promises. I didn’t come here for that. All I want you to do is give permission for me to leave the country. I want to go and study abroad. In Italy. In Padua. I may not come back. That’s all I want from you.”

Her father pulled a face.

“That’s a lot, Lucia,” he said, seeming genuinely shaken, “To let my own daughter go, like that? I need someone to help me, to carry on my work, Lucia. I thought it would be you. Can’t we work things out?”

She shook her head without speaking. Larvartin frowned and his face darkened.

“The truth, that was all I needed!” she burst out suddenly, “Is that so much to ask?”

Larvartin stared at her.

“Listen, Lucia,” he said, “I’ll do a deal here. You think I let you down, I lied so badly? OK, you want the truth. I’d like you to know the truth. Take it from me, you don’t know it yet. First you take that booklet of yours and show it to Lucas Stilin. He knows everything, that’s why he’s here. I’ll tell him he’s to tell you the story as it really was. The whole truth. Then you can go if you want, but for three years only. But also you should go to Paris, I think, not Padua.”

Lucia stood up uncertainly, and while she hesitated Larvartin seized her again in a crushing embrace. He seemed to have cheered up again.

“Lucas will be glad to have someone to tell all that stuff to at last” he said, “And if you’re going to be President one day, you need to know, eh?”

After the door had closed behind her he stood for a moment staring after her. He shook his head, turned and sat behind his desk. .

“Stilin?” he shouted, “Stilin! Take those headphones off and come in here.”

36,528 words

12. May Day

Of all the stories my mother told me about my father, the one which made the deepest impression on me, of course, was the story of May Day.

When the Russians finally decided to leave Twentyland, Colonel Ostrovsky came to see my father for the last time.

“I take it for granted, Comrade,” he said, “that your country will remain a loyal observer of the Warsaw Pact and fully co-operative with the fraternal economic and political initiatives of your allies. I just hope that now you’ve got the place, you can run it, because you won’t be getting any help – you understand that?”

He paused, sighed, and took off his hat.

“Good luck, Marki,” he said, “You’re going to need it. Lots of it. But you won’t fail through lack of cheek. Comrade, I salute you for the last time.”

He embraced my father and marched out of the Palace forever.

People assumed that once the Russians had gone there would be an adjustment: that Tretchin would be unceremoniously ejected and my father would take over as Prime Minister. Tretchin must have thought so, because he tried to leave the country and was intercepted at the airport. My father reassured him: there would be proper elections for a new Prime Minister in due course, in which he was welcome to stand if he wished: in the meantime my father would remain President.

What happened was that without any law being passed, or any appointments being made, the President somehow became the real leader of his country and the office of Prime Minister became a minor one. Perhaps it would be truer to say that people recognised openly now that my father had always been the leader, whatever the Russians thought about it.

Nevertheless, Ostrovsky’s references to my father needing luck were not idle. The people of Twentyland had soon got over their gratitude at being liberated, and they were not at all happy to find themselves in the Soviet orbit. In old Dubitania, there had been a somewhat unrealistic sense of being a leading Romance nation, one of the three pillars of European culture along with France and Italy. Dubitania looked first to the Mediterranean for its culture: and second, to Germany and Austria. The Twentylanders still regarded the Russians as very much their inferiors: to have Russian soldiers swaggering through the streets of Sescastri, helping themselves to any small items that took their fancy, seemed to them a deeply wounding humiliation, and to have their children taught Russian at school instead of French was quite unendurable. The departure of the Russians obviously did a great deal to dispel these tensions, but there was still some resentment against the Party and it was quite possible that this resentment would turn itself against my father. There was no doubt that certain clandestine groups had begun making plans for risings against his regime in favour of some variety of reactionary bourgeois social democracy, and even, farcically, in support of a restored monarchy. It must be remembered that at this stage, my father had not yet had the freedom to introduce his own distinctive policies, and that while he still commanded the support of the great majority of Twentylanders, he had not yet attained the unanimous popular backing which we now take for granted.

A key milestone would be the first grand May Day parade to be held in Sescastri following the departure of the Red Army. For several months beforehand, Commissar Ursin was forced to neglect his supervision of the police while he attempted to ensure that the armed forces of Twentyland would be able to put on a good show. This was no easy task; frankly, they were threadbare and suffered from low morale.

My father was uneasy about the whole thing, displaying an uncharacteristic quietness and passivity. It seemed as if for the time being he had lost his sense of direction. The one thing that rekindled his energy at that time was the intermittent efforts which were made by Ursin and others to get him to wear the uniform of a Field Marshal.

“I should rather wear a skirt.” he said, “And you know, if you don’t shut up about this, Juri, I really think I will.”

The process of planning seemed dogged by problems; my father said he thought we should set a precedent among the Communist nations of the world by delivering the May Day parade in July. But eventually everything was arranged. Early on the day of the parade, my father was sitting wearing his uncomfortable best suit in the upper room of the Café Napoleon, which had been reserved for his use, when Ursin strode in with a grim smile on his face.

“We’ve got an assassin, Marki.” he declared jubilantly, “Young fellow, standing in the crowd, carrying a big suitcase with a home-made bomb in it.”

“A suitcase?” asked my father, incredulously.

“Yes. An amateurish piece of work – he was lucky he didn’t blow himself up by accident. My men had him within three minutes of him showing up. I don’t think he had any detailed plan. He was just hoping that somehow he could get near you, and then I suppose he was either going to hurl it at you or blow himself up as well. Amateurs. If this is the best the opposition can do, you can sleep pretty easy.”

“You didn’t shoot him?”

“No, no. Took him clean as a whistle – hop! – the people standing next to him didn’t even know anything had happened. I thought you might want to talk to him. Shall I have him brought up?”

“No, no,” said my father, “I’ll come down.”

They had the boy handcuffed, standing in the open with a couple of Ursin’s men in black uniforms. Behind them, missile launchers and a couple of tanks were edging back and forth arthritically, making a thunderous noise and spewing out clouds of smoke. It was noticeable that the Twentyland markings were fresh and recent, in contrast to the obvious age of the vehicles, and the outline of the earlier Russian markings was still clearly visible.

The boy was tall and thin, rather unhealthy in appearance, about eighteen, pale, with a defiant look on his face. It seemed that the neatness of his extraction from the crowd had not precluded his being given a quick but thorough beating.

“It seemed a great relief to me, at first anyway, that he was fair-haired and looked upper-class somehow,” my father said, “If he had at all resembled Tibri, I’m not sure I could have spoken to him. Though perhaps that would have been better”

“Why did you want to kill me?” he asked the boy, “What have I done to you that would justify that?”

“You killed my father.” the boy replied defiantly.

“Your father?”

“Yes. You and your filthy Russians. He was betrayed, they set a trap and then you shot him down with machine guns. You didn’t even give him a chance.”

“I’m sorry, but I assure you I know nothing about it,” said my father, “I’m afraid it’s true that our Russian allies did not always behave well. Lots of decent men got killed; I did what I could at the time and I bitterly regret that I couldn’t do more, but I don’t think your father’s death was anything to do with me.”

“You deny it,” said the boy, “Like the coward you are. But when they came for him they told him they had come with a present from Comrade Larvartin.”

“What was your father’s name?” demanded my father.

The boy threw back his head in a sad attempt at haughtiness.

“Julio Cesare Obertin.” he said.

My father covered his face with his hands and stood in silence for a long time.

“Marki?” asked Ursin at last.

My father removed his hands and looked at the boy.

“They lied to you,” he said, “They lied atrociously. Your father was my friend. I should rather have died myself than caused his death. I wanted… I would have… He…” he tailed off, shook his head hopelessly and was silent again for several minutes.

“Let him go,” he said to Ursin at last, “He is not to be punished, He has every reason to kill me. He has the right to kill me, in fact. He has the right to kill me three times over if he could.”

“Very well.” said Ursin briskly, and beyond one small twitch of an eyebrow, he betrayed no surprise, “Lads, you heard the Chief. This gentleman is not to be punished. Take him back to the centre and let him clean up a bit, put something on those cuts. Then I want to see him before he goes, to apologise personally – understand? Make sure he waits till I come – alright?”

My father looked unwell and unsteady. They brought a chair and he sat with his face in his hands.

“Time to get ready for the parade, Marki,” said Ursin at last, “This is important, remember? We’ve got to put on a good show for the people.” He looked at my father with real concern. “Marki?” he asked, “Are you OK?” There was no answer. “Look, Marki,” he said, putting one hand on my father’s shoulder, “That was all nonsense. You know as well as I do that Obertin had no son. That story about the Russians is just some malicious nonsense. Chances are, Obertin’s living it up in Rio at this very moment. You know that.”

My father sat up.

“More bombs, more guns, Juri,” he said, “Always more guns.” He stared at the missile launchers which were still revving and shifting on the road nearby. “Tell them to put the bloody things away.” he said, hoarsely.

“What?”

“The guns. Put the bloody guns away. And the soldiers. No, wait – they can stay if they like, but no marching, and no guns. Otherwise they can go back to barracks. We don’t want that today. No more of that.”

“But Marki, they’ve been rehearsing all week. What am I going to say? What do you expect me to tell the commanders of the Twentyland Armed Forces?”

“Tell them to fuck off.” said my father.

* * *

At the dais where my father was due to make his speech, there was consternation. There were rumours that the whole parade had been called off. Then my father appeared, calm and apparently unruffled, although there was no sign of the troops who should have been waiting to salute him. In fact, for the first time, he was smiling in his old, confident way.

My father’s speech began along predictable lines. He expressed gratitude for the fraternal support of the Red Army over many years, and said that Twentyland was now entering on a new era.

“It is customary on these occasions, comrades,” he said, “To make a display of our most formidable weapons. I intend to adhere to that tradition, and I mean to show you the most powerful item in my armoury. With this weapon, I intend to seize, not territory or power, but the future itself. The strange thing about this potent apparatus is that it spreads, not death and destruction, but hope and joy. Comrades, join with me.”

And with that, he reached down and picked up – his three-year-old daughter Lucia! Yes! He held her up for the crowd to see; there was a moment of surprised silence, and then a roar of relief and applause. He set her on his shoulders and descended from the dais. It became clear that he meant to lead the procession himself. From streets on every side came columns of schoolchildren. A group of Ursin’s black-clad henchmen moved among them, handing out flags and balloons with varying degrees of embarrassment, and the whole peculiar cavalcade set off.

At first the crowds of people standing by were puzzled, then gradually they became amused, and finally charmed. The spectacle of my father, like Bacchus and Silenus rolled into one, leading a wild, disorderly procession of laughing children down the grand avenue was irresistible. Parents and other children left the crowds on the pavement to join in, and the procession swelled in size; the difference between procession and audience began to blur. The Sescastri People’s Guard Marching Band appeared, playing a jaunty march; they looked sheepish, but they too began to smile as the spirit of the day caught them up. Gradually the procession split up and turned into a general rout all through the streets of Sescastri; a huge children’s street festival.

“The effect was astonishing,” my mother told me; “Really, it was as though the sun had come out for the first time after a long, long winter. You could see the strain and fear leaving people’s faces. After that day, your father had nothing to fear from anyone.”

That is why, unlike all its allies, Twentyland has May Day parades without guns, composed mainly of children; and not orderly bands of Young Pioneers or carefully drilled gymnasts, but chaotic, joyful, promenading parties, that roam all over the town, where the soldiers are dressed as clowns or pixies, and no weapon more deadly than a balloon on a stick is ever to be seen.

This parade was of course the occasion depicted in the famous poster “Encarpa Futura!” which you can still see displayed in waiting rooms and other public spaces; it shows the famous piggy-back ride with the slogan in large letters in the background. My mother has often told me of the deep impression made by the figure of my father waltzing tirelessly through the streets.

“He laughed so much,” she said, “It was infectious. You couldn’t help joining in. He laughed and laughed until the tears were streaming down his face.”

*”Grasp the future!”

34,131 words

11. Aldo’s Legs

My father was embarrassed by the way people would put up plaques or even statues celebrating his contribution to some undertaking. Often enough the tribute was well-deserved, but he would never accept this. In his view the people who laid the bricks were far more deserving of credit for any new building: all he had done was talk. He could rarely be persuaded to cut ribbons or unveil things, even when he had played a crucial role in inspiring and directing the project. On the occasions when he could be made to attend this kind of event, he would often seize someone from the crowd and try to force them to wield the silver trowel or the golden scissors. He said he could not understand why people were so intent on putting him in a false position.

My mother found this attitude irritating, and told him frankly that in her view it was only another species of vanity.

“It’s as if you thought the people’s applause wasn’t good enough for you,” she said.

But at the same time she herself was not always particularly impressed by the monuments and occasions my father was asked to celebrate. She said that many of his best achievements went unnoticed because they had been delivered inconspicuously: some time spent with a factory manager here, a private conversation with a local official there, and something marvellous would happen for which my father would steadfastly deny responsibility.

Her favourite example of his unobserved influence was the famous story of Aldo’s legs. In Dubitania, sports had largely been the preserve of the upper classes, and the country had a poor record in almost everything but shooting, riding and croquet as a result. In this respect Twentyland at first resembled its predecessor; although new sporting opportunities now became available, few of the workers and even fewer of the former peasants felt much inclined to take them up. At the national athletics meeting which would in many cases finalise membership of the Olympic team, the majority of competitors were middle-class, and not a few were former aristocrats. This included one of our best hopes, the marathon runner Athanasi Dilagin, who was the grandson of a former Prince and the nephew of the Archbishop of Andra-Nipoli (who was still Archbishop, by the way, though his income was greatly reduced and he now inhabited only one wing of the archiepiscopal palace).

As Athanasi was warming up near the marathon start, which on this occasion had been set up on the road just outside the stadium, he noticed a young tea-seller whose urn, which he carried strapped to his back, was sticking out into the road slightly; he paused, put his hands on his hips, and shouted – rather curtly perhaps – at the tea-boy to move.

This unpromising opening led to a dialogue in which Athanasi was informed that his ears stuck out, that the country no longer belonged to him, and that his feet were taking up more room than the urn. In return the tea-boy he was told that he was a gipsy, a spiv*, and that he dealt in horse-piss. The interesting prospect of a fight between the two parties was dispelled by onlookers who separated them; they told the tea-seller that this was none other than Athanasi Dilagin the famous runner.

The tea-seller was dressed in traditional embroidered costume of Puttonyi Province, said to be based on a combination of Scythian trousers and the clothes and equipment of a Roman legionary (though to see the resemblance requires some imagination); and he had a dignified moustache which slightly disguised his youthfulness. He smirked and said that he himself was none other than Aldo Forobdin** the famous tea-seller. He observed that Athanasi ran like his mother the feral bitch, and said that if he liked, he, Aldo would show him how to run like a human being. Athanasi’s coach and most of the officials standing by took this as mere insolence, but the small crowd which had gathered was half-seriously on Aldo’s side, and began chanting his name. Athanasi said that if Aldo wanted to join the race, he was all for it.

So at length Aldo put down his urn and, without anything in the way of preparation, walked over to the starting line, where a large group of athletes was already gathered. It was now noticed that below the trousers which ended a few inches above his ankles, he was barefoot. The officials from the Twentyland Athletics Federation frowned and shrugged at each other, but they did not intervene.

Athanasi thoughtfully selected a place as far away as possible from his humble competitor. There was a pause; the gun was fired, and the race began. Knowledgeable onlookers expected Aldo, as a naïve runner, to dash off at an unrealistic pace – it seemed far from clear that he even knew how far he had undertaken to run – but in fact he stumped off stolidly, making no attempt to get to the front. He had promised to show how human beings ran, but he must have seen some strange examples of humanity; he ran with a straight, upright back and with his arms held up as though to elbow the other competitors aside.

Over the next hour or so the story of Aldo’s challenge spread like wildfire, and the crowd waiting around the finishing line grew steadily. Most of the idlers were vaguely on Aldo’s side, but it was no great surprise when after some two and a half hours it was Athanasi who appeared first, looking only a little stressed. He completed the course in good style, turning in a personal best and looking encouragingly as though he could easily have screwed a bit more speed out of his legs.

But then, not much more than five minutes behind, came Aldo. He was clearly suffering, and his peculiar gait had collapsed into a kind of shuffling amble, but as he crossed the line in second place, he got a tremendous ovation. When he had recovered, as the rest of the field were streaming in, Athanasi came forward and offered his hand. Aldo sniffed, and shook it.

“Well, tea-man,” said Athanasi, “You finished, at any rate – that was something. You’ve showed us you can run a bit.”

“You have shoes, and trainers, and money,” observed Aldo, “But I have one thing you will never have. Peasant legs!”

Athanasi laughed good-naturedly, but as Aldo was limping back to pick up his tea-urn, he shouted:

“Next time, keep the bloody urn out of the way!”

Aldo did not respond, but a dark look of anger flashed over his face.

This encounter obviously became well-known in Twentyland, and nearly everyone was full of praise for the plucky tea-boy who had, the papers suggested, exemplified the robust spirit of the nation. The newspapers all carried the story of how he had begun running at the age of twelve when his mother took to sending him off to deliver her home-made Emboustra cheese pie to his aunt’s house fifteen kilometres away every Saturday. Aldo found that if he ran both ways he could get the job done more quickly, and gradually running 30 kilometres without much of a pause became something he was quite used to.

“That extra twelve is no joke, though!” he said

Given the national enthusiasm, it was clear that Aldo would not be allowed to give up competitive running easily. He was quickly inducted into the Amateur Athletic Club of Vegamatrin (the Sescastri club, controversially, refused to have anything to do with him) and the rules were bent to allow him to compete in another marathon some two months later which was also on Athanasi’s schedule. A return contest was too attractive a prospect to be missed.

Athanasi himself made no protest, but his supporters were vocal. They pointed out that Athanasi Dilagin was Twentyland’s best, if not only, hope of a gold medal at the Olympic games. Aldo Forobdin might be a character and something of a prodigy, but was the nation going to put its best chance at risk by staging some meaningless populist rivalry? In any case, although Athanasi might be the descendant of aristocrats, he himself was a simple soldier, whereas Aldo was an entrepreneurial capitalist, albeit on a very small scale.

However, nothing they could say had any effect on the general desire to see Aldo race Athanasi again, and in due course they found themselves standing together on the starting line. Noting that although Aldo was now decked out in brand-new running kit he was still barefoot, Athanasi offered to lend him running shoes; a gesture which evoked only indignation.

“I understand you,” said Aldo, tensely, “You are trying to interfere with my style. You think that with those things flapping around my feet I could not run properly.”

At this Athanasi lost patience, and swore at the tea-seller. They edged apart again and when the whistle blew, Athanasi went well ahead. Aldo, cheered on enthusiastically by bystanders, plugged on in his characteristic style.

At the twenty kilometre mark, a young woman more enthusiastic than the rest leapt out and threw her arms round Aldo’s neck. For a moment he looked merely annoyed, but then spectators cried out in horror as they saw the young woman kick Aldo’s ankle. She was wearing heavy boots with steel toecaps, and poor Aldo immediately fell sideways and rolled on the ground in pain. The young woman disappeared into the crowd.

Aldo waved away the stretcher which had been brought, and after ten minutes’ respite hobbled away again. He had boasted of his legs, and it now seemed that his ankles must have some special strength: within a hundred yards he was running naturally again, or at any rate as naturally as he ever did. Soon, with a grim expression on his face, he was more than making up for lost time. The crowds along the way cheered him on.

In the final mile Aldo at last sighted Athanasi, and began to close the gap. His face was now screwed up into a furious expression, and it seemed that it was anger that was powering his legs up the final straight. Athanasi, somehow sensing the presence of his rival, glanced back and raised his eyebrows in surprise; summoning energy from some inner reserve, he put on a final sprint. He crossed the line just a yard ahead of Aldo.

The two of them jogged a little further together as if they were the best of friends.

“I’ve got to admit, Forobdin,” said Athanasi, “You’re pretty good at second place.”

“Although your sister is a whore,” responded Aldo, disdaining subtlety, “She kicks like a mule.”

“What?”

“She has the face of a mule too. Perhaps instead of running you could ride her – she is clearly well–used to being ridden…”

But Aldo was forced to break off and duck at that point. He easily dodged Athanasi’s fist, and retaliated with a haymaker to Athanasi’s ear. Before anyone could intervene, Dubitania’s leading athletes were engaged in a terrible, flailing fight. When Aldo was at length pulled away from Athanasi, he had a black eye and his fine moustache was twisted down at one side, but he was uninjured: when Athanasi was released, by contrast, he had an ominous limp.

“What the hell is the matter with you, peasant?” he demanded, “Why did you have to insult my sister?”

“She kicked my ankle,” said Aldo with dignity, “So now I have kicked yours.”

“My sister is in France.”

A short man in a straw hat plucked nervously at Aldo’s long sleeve.

“Mr Forobdin,” he said nervously, “The woman who kicked you – they have her. She got out of St Matthew’s Refuge – the lunatic asylum.”

Just for a moment a look of doubt and shame flitted across Aldo’s face.

“You have peasant’s legs alright,” observed Athanasi, “and peasant’s manners; and worst of all, peasant’s brains.”

Matters went from bad to worse over the next few months. It took several weeks before Athanasi’s ankle had recovered sufficiently for him to train again, which was the cause of bitter resentment among his supporters. When at last the Twentyland team marched around the Olympic stadium, it was observed that Aldo was wearing in his belt an opinelca, the traditional Dubitanian shepherd’s knife with a curved blade designed to slit the throats of wolves. People speculated half-seriously about whether he meant to stab Athanasi with it, or merely ward off any lunatics who assaulted him.

At this point my father decided matters had gone far enough. He went down to see the two runners together privately. No-one knows quite what he said to them, but he must surely have called on their patriotism and invoked the shining code of fraternity embodied in Marxist-Larvartism. No doubt he used more down-to-earth language, however: I think it is entirely possible that he simply sat down and said:

“Tell me your problems.”

On the starting line the next day, Athanasi and Aldo looked each other in the eye and solemnly shook hands. Aldo’s supporters were overjoyed when for the first time he was observed to be running just ahead of Athanasi: more sophisticated observers understood that this meant the tea-seller had agreed to help his rival, probably to the detriment of his own chances.

Today, though, it seemed Aldo had legs of iron and nothing could hold him back. Both runners drew slowly ahead of the field, and gradually built up a comfortable lead over a Kenyan runner in third place. But as they came into the last few hundred yards the worst possible disaster took place: Athanasi twisted his weakened ankle. He stopped at once, and Aldo, still a few paces ahead, stopped too.

“Go on, go on!” protested Athanasi, “I’ll be OK. One of us has got to win it.”

Aldo hesitated.

“For Twentyland!” said Athanasi.

Aldo smiled.

“You’re not thinking straight, comrade,” he said, “I don’t want to win a medal for Twentyland but make it into a place where a man runs off and leaves his countryman, do I?”

He stepped forward, turned his back, and suddenly hauled Athanasi up on his back as though he were a tea-urn.

“Aldo!” exclaimed Athanasi, “Put me down and run!”

Aldo tottered towards the finishing line; all at once the Kenyan appeared and swept past with no more than an incurious glance at the two of them. Slowly Aldo began to pick up speed, and he hit the line at a decent trot, only a few minutes behind the Kenyan and a few minutes ahead of a German, the next runner to arrive.

A puzzled official was standing by.

“Give him second place,” said Aldo, putting Athanasi down, “I’ve had enough of it.”

The German approached and said something to the official.

“I’m afraid,” said the official in German, “That your friend will be disqualified. It’s not for me to adjudicate, but this West German gentleman is also contending that you should be disqualified, on the grounds that there was an element of mutual assistance.”

Aldo could not follow this, but Athanasi, who spoke good German, translated for him.

“We don’t care about that,” said Athanasi to the official, “Aldo may not have been the first runner to cross the line today, but he ran the best race.”

The German spoke incomprehensibly to the official again, and gestured assertively at the Twentylanders.

“Oh, give him the medal,” said Athanasi, “Give him both. Give him six medals. Perhaps it will help him feel happy about his sad grey country where everyone must be better than everyone else. Tell him what Comrade Larvartin said; in our country we have one thing that he will never have: socialist legs.”

* ‘listofandi’; much more insulting than the nearest English equivalents, this is fighting talk whoever it is addressed to.
** No relation to any of the other Forobdins mentioned here. ‘Forobdin’ is one of the most common of Dubitanian names, as witness the traditional use of ‘Private Forobdin’ to designate a typical soldier, a sort of Dubitanian ‘Tommy Atkins’ figure.

32,028 words

10. Science

Although he absorbed history books avidly, and re-read certain political texts over and over again, my father was not an intellectual, and while advances in medicine and practical technology quickly kindled his enthusiasm, high theoretical science tended to leave him cold or even sceptical. This was sometimes a source of slight embarrassment when he was called on to hand out prizes or make speeches at some University. I particularly remember one visit to the People’s Observatory high in the Graupin mountains where he asked to be shown the eyepiece on the giant radio telescope, and accused the astronomers of looking into the bedroom windows of Sescastri in their spare time. The Head of the Observatory was a dignified old man in a grey three-piece suit; the smile on his face got more and more fixed as the visit proceeded. Of course my father was unabashed.

“Comrades,” he said, “No less a figure than V.I.Lenin himself was a keen amateur astronomer. On one occasion, while he was visiting the fields to examine the splendid surpluses which were being produced by the latest five-year plan, he came upon a worker leaning on a gate and staring into the evening sky. On being questioned, the worker explained that he was puzzled by the appearance of a bright star while the sun was still up – indeed, quite close to the sun. Lenin smiled, and explained that this was no star but the planet Venus. He discovered to his horror that the worker had no idea of astronomy and in fact had never heard that the Earth went round the Sun. Lenin was mortified to think that the Soviet education system had somehow left this man with an understanding little better than that of a peasant, and immediately gave him a quick extemporised description of the Solar System. The man seemed appreciative, so warming to his challenge, Lenin settled down and gave the lucky worker a splendidly concise and clear summary of modern cosmology, technically accurate throughout, but couched in simple everyday language which even an ordinary worker could easily follow. He mentioned a number of constellations and some of the main stars that made them up, giving details of their characteristics and the stages in their normal life-cycle. Was the worker not amazed, he asked finally, by the achievements of modern science in measuring the unfathomable depths of space and working out the composition of the stars themselves? The worker agreed, but said that the thing that surprised him most was not that anyone should have measured the stars from a distance, but that anyone should have been able to find out what their names were. Comrades, I beg you: consider yourselves today so many Lenins.”

However, my father rightly considered himself a good judge of people, and when he first came across Raphaele Blumen he decided that this scientist, at least, was worth listening to. Blumen was a young man from Servinia province, the son of farm labourers. At the time of their first meeting he was more or less desperate. His seminal paper, On Cryptomorphosis, written at the age of 25, had been rejected out of hand everywhere and he was in trouble with the Professor of his Department for his continued attempts to have it discussed. Blumen was convinced that his rustic Latio-tinged accent and unpolished manners were making him the object of snobbery. It so happened that my father was due to make one of his rare visits to the Scholastic University of Lexandrin that month to open a new laboratory: Blumen decided on desperate measures. By begging the Professor’s secretary for her help, he managed to get himself added to the guest list for the reception which had been organised. At the door, however, he was turned back for being improperly dressed, having turned up unthinkingly in his stained old lab coat and clogs. Rousing himself with an effort from the depths of despair, he went back to his lodgings, managed somehow to borrow a half-decent suit, hurried back and was admitted. Without further ado, he charged forward through the startled guests and thrust a slightly dog-eared copy of his paper into my father’s hands.

My father, naturally, was startled: there he was, sinking gradually into torpor as Professor Vitalin plied him with Puttonyin wine and talked interminably about cyclotrons – he had a quite unrealistic hope that my father would agree to fund the construction of one at the University – when suddenly a skinny young man with a shock of curly hair thrust the Professor’s wife aside with an atrocious lack of manners, and pushed a sheaf of papers into my father’s hand. Blumen was pale and undernourished; his cheekbones stood out while his chin receded, and his red-rimmed eyes blazed with passion.

“Blumen!” Vitalin exclaimed, “Really, this is too much!”

“Will you, will you…?” said Blumen incoherently, never taking his eyes off my father. “It’s… it’s extremely important.”

“You want me to read this? I’m sorry young man, don’t think I don’t appreciate the compliment, but really I am no scientist. If this is a learned paper, you might as well give it to a bear in the forest as to me.” My father looked curiously at Blumen; the young man himself at least was legible and interesting, but even a quick glance showed that the paper was incomprehensible. My father held it out to Vitalin.

“I’m very sorry, Comrade President,” said Vitalin, “Please, you understand that in every institution there are disorderly elements who will not accept the judgement of their peers. Blumen here is a clever young man, and we value his enthusiasm, but he must learn to accept that his work is completely at odds with the established consensus of the scientific community. The occurrence of a few unusual correlations does not provide a reason to cut through the foundations of modern cellular biology.”

Dr Niardin, a balding man standing to Vitalin’s right, had been turning gradually red in the face as he listened to this.

“Vitalin, you are altogether too soft,” he exclaimed, “This young man has shown all too clearly that he has no place in any respectable place of learning. Originality and intelligence are worthless unless controlled by a proper respect for the orthodox consensus of the scientific community and the guidance of senior members of the field. Science is a discipline, not the free expression of an individual’s wilful curiosity. This intrusion is intolerable, and as for that – ” he gestured at the paper, which my father was still holding in mid-air “- that is a prime example of how the individualistic pursuit of strange and exotic data and the egotistical display of mere cleverness would overturn science as we know it if they were allowed to do so.”

My father blinked once, and said:

“Perhaps it is my duty to read the paper after all.” and he lowered his arm again.

Of course, my father had been right in the first place – there was absolutely no point in his reading the paper. He solemnly worked his way through it the following morning, but was entirely unable to make out even approximately what it was about, beyond gleaning the wholly false impression that it was something to do with the functioning of radio waves of some kind. Bearing in mind the reaction of the academic staff at Lexandrin, my father didn’t think it was worth referring the thing to another professor, but instead he sent it to Sergi Scalapin the surgeon and asked him to read it. Over the course of time, Scalapin and my father had developed a kind of respect for each other; in my father’s case he trusted Scalapin all the more because the old man made no secret of the fact that he continued to detest my father’s socialism. On this occasion, typically enough, Scalapin refused to come to my father’s office, saying he couldn’t spare the time, so my father went to the trouble of travelling to Oni-Litani to see him.

“I don’t know why you gave this to me, Larvartin,” said the old surgeon irritably, once they were settled in the room he used for his consultations. It was a well-proportioned room; rather sparsely furnished, but there was a splendid view of the lake and the celebrated pier of Oni-Litani. Scalapin, a stoutish old man with a severe expression, sat in a comfortable leather armchair, the only thing in the room which was not strictly utilitarian.

“I’m not a theoretical scientist,” he continued, “Oh I try to keep up, you know, but basically I’m a simple butcher. However, I know enough to be able to say that the young man who wrote this needs his arse kicked.”

“Really?” said my father, disappointedly.

“Yes. I’ve never read such a silly, pretentious paper. Look at this nonsensical passage about extra-sensory perception. I think it’s meant to be a joke, but I can tell you that any serious academic would drop the damned thing there without reading another word, and if this were submitted to a proper journal – well, if the academic staff at Lexandrin are any good it would never come near that. Frankly I think your boy is lucky he hasn’t been thrown out on his ear.”

“My boy?”

“Blumen, for heaven’s sake,” said Scalapin irritably, waving one hand, “I assume he’s one of your damned Communist Party blue-eyed boys, isn’t he? You see, Larvartin, you’ve got to learn to separate science from politics. If you start promoting the crackpot theories of young physicists simply because they’re good members of some Party committee, you’re going to do irreparable damage to the scientific reputation this damned country has somehow hung on to.”

“So the theory is worthless?”

“I expect you were hoping it was going to be some kind of brilliant breakthrough. Well, I’ll tell you about that,” said Scalapin, with a sly grin, “One point I keep in mind when reading papers like this is that the best scientists are not always the best at expressing themselves. Some people build a career on a facility with words while being mediocre researchers, while some good scientists never get the attention they deserve because they can’t write appealing prose.”

“So I decided to meet this Blumen myself. I got him over here. I couldn’t make out what his bloody paper was about – a lot of arrogant nonsense, mostly, but there was no denying that if you could penetrate the dreadful language, there were some sharp, elegant formulations in there, and some surprising connections. Well, he sat where you’re sitting and talked to me for half an hour, and it was no better than reading his paper. A fellow as young as that can’t afford to put on airs, he needs to express himself in simple, terms, with a proper degree of humility. After all, he’s out of his field altogether.”

“Is he?”

“Of course he is. Even you must have realised that. Blumen is a physicist, but he’s writing about biology – and on top of that most of what he says is pretty severely mathematical. I like to think I’m capable of a few advanced bits of maths, if it comes to it, but really this is a bit outside my range. At any rate, that’s half the problem with Blumen; he uses the wrong biological terms, he introduces new concepts of his own where they’re not needed, and he mixes in all sorts of stuff from physics and maths into some horrible kind of pudding.”

“Anyway, in the end I shut him up, told him he wasn’t dealing with his Lefty friends now, and made him work through the whole thing with me, step by step. He was pretty angry about it, I can tell you – quite red in the face with rage – but I’m quite used to keeping a firm rein on conceited young doctors. Now at first it was as bad as ever, but then all of a sudden when he was talking dismissively about Turing waves, I suddenly began to see what the hell he was getting at.”

“The point about it all is, Larvartin, that autopoietic morphogenesis is virtually a new field, and a pretty strange one. It’s almost as if someone wrote about the topological invariance of lyrical poetry. It’s such a different angle, I imagine it would have been impossible for his professor to take it in properly even if your boy had set it out clearly.”

He smiled.

“So, you think there’s something it in after all?” asked my father, “What… excuse me, but what actually is Blumen’s theory about?”

Scalapin opened his mouth and then looked keenly at my father and sighed.

“Let me offer you an analogy, Larvartin,” he said, “Now you know that our bodies, like all living things, are made up of cells? Yes alright, I’m just trying to keep it simple for you. Now in a human body, the different cells have to be controlled, so that they grow into the right kind of cells, muscle cells, say, or skin cells. They also have to have their growth controlled and so on, do I make myself clear? Well, the systems by which this control is exercised are quite complex. In fact, it might be better to speak of a principle rather than a system.”

He paused and sat staring at my father as if that was the end of the explanation.

“But what…” began my father and was immediately interrupted.

“Suppose we had the traffic in a big city to control?” said Scalapin, “Now there are various ways we can control it. We can change the road signs. We can put policemen in, yes? We can make gates restricting what kind of vehicles are allowed into our city. All these things, these are the kind of things that researchers have studied, hoping to be able to control the traffic. Now you see, it’s as if Blumen comes along and offers them a radio. They don’t understand how a little black box is going to control the cars and trucks in their city. But Scalapin knows that all the vehicles in town have radios and they are talking to each other all the time, you see? And now we can talk to them too, we can make them do what we want.”

I don’t know what impelled Scalapin to adopt this extremely imprecise analogy – in fact Blumen’s theory centres on a set of algorithms which allow growing cells to organise themselves in exquisite detail without central guidance. But the choice of radio-controlled cars as a metaphor was unfortunate because it cemented in my father’s mind the impression that the whole thing was to do with radio waves, a view which could never afterwards be wholly eradicated, much to Blumen’s own frustration.

“This is an important discovery, then?” demanded my father.

“Does it matter? You’ll tell everybody it’s important anyway, won’t you? Can’t have the blue-eyed Party member a failure, can we? Yes, alright Larvartin, luckily it turns out that somehow or other your boy has come up with something of real substance – if it’s true. In fact, if it’s true, it might eventually turn out to be quite important. ”

“Scalapin, Blumen is not my boy and he’s not a Party member. So the theory does need to be followed up?”

“What you need to do now is get someone who is competent to rewrite this paper so people can understand it and it can be published. Then other people must replicate and extend the results. Much bigger tests, much, much bigger. Then if it’s all confirmed, there will be dozens of useful new avenues. But first, proper scientific peer review.”

“Would you be able to rewrite the paper?”

“Absolutely not. I’m a surgeon, not an editor. You’ve got a whole government department full of advisors and doctors, surely to God you can find someone to do it without dragging an old surgeon away from his work. But get it done properly.”

He stared balefully at my father in silence.

“Thank you, Scalapin,” said my father, “Excuse my ignorance, but I think it would help if you could give me a few further clues about the theory. What practical benefits we might get from all this, for example.”

“Ha! You mean what diseases will it cure. All that’s a long way off, Larvartin, this is theoretical stuff. Well, speculatively, off the top of my head, I’d think the main potential avenues would have to do with healing processes, the management of abnormal development, perhaps age-related problems. Oncology, very likely. Really at this high theoretical level there could be the widest imaginable implications, or virtually none. To be honest my guess is that the theory will ultimately produce a richer understanding but not many actual therapies. Perhaps that’s pessimistic, but I’ve seen a lot of good theoretical work which in the end merely helped us understand more clearly what we couldn’t do and why we couldn’t do it.” said Scalapin.

“Of course,” replied my father. “Look, Scalapin, there’s another side to all this. How was it that the significance of Blumen’s stuff was missed? Alright, he may not express himself well, but someone should have done what you did – taken him in hand. I wonder whether we’ve allowed the old structures to persist in our Universities? Should we be bringing the revolution into our laboratories?”

“I want nothing to do with that.” Said Scalapin shortly and emphatically. “Look, I accept that you mean well. I grant that some of the things you’ve done in Lavordin and elsewhere have worked better than I expected. But please God, if I have any influence with you at all, keep your damned revolution out of science.”

There was an awkward pause.

“You see,” said my father gently, “I don’t want to do anything to the professors. I’m not going to shoot them. I just want them to set themselves free from their own fears and prejudices; I want people to take control of their own work. That’s all it’s about. We’ve talked about this so many times.”

They sat in silence for a few moments and then my father rose to go.

“I’m very grateful for your help with this,” he said, “Please remember that if you ever need any help here…”

He turned to go.

“Oh, Larvartin,” exclaimed Scalapin, “Try plants.”

“Plants?” asked my father, turning back again.

“Yes. Plant growth. This morphogenesis – it might be possible to do something about plant growth with it. Worth asking somebody to look at it, once you’ve got the paper rewritten.”

“Thanks.” said my father, and so the seed of the Second Agrarian Revolution was planted.

29,397 words

9. The Freeing of Twentyland

Now at last Twentyland seemed to stand on the shores of a sea of freedom and happiness, but instead a grey era began. Elections were held, but on the Soviet model: although there were in theory three parties – the Communist Party, the Peasants’ Party, and the Dubitanian Social Democrats – there was only one list of candidates. My father found himself prevented from standing or campaigning in his own interest. Tretchin the puppet was instead made Prime Minster, under the close supervision of the Russians. My father was offered a largely honorary post as the President of the Council of Twenty, the largely decorative body which in principle advised on matters of constitutional or national import – it consisted of survivors of the original Twenty with some new nominees to make up the score. He bore this for a while with good patience, and then one day he called all the leading officials and party members together and had a quiet conversation.

After that, the Russians found that they were being politely ignored. Everyone listened to them with great, perhaps even exaggerated respect, but took no notice at all of anything they said. There was no defiance, and no outward rebellion; but everything the Russians initiated or sponsored seemed to run into difficulty and delay. This might have been the result of chaotic incompetence and mismanagement – there was plenty of that – but at the same time a number of policies the Russians actively opposed seemed to be in the process of effective implementation. There was a de facto deregulation of trade in food: the introduction of Russian into the school curriculum stalled and went into reverse After a while, Colonel Ostrovsky raised the matter with my father.

“You know,” said my father, “These matters are really outside my remit, Comrade: I have no executive powers. It seems to me you are concerned with the implementation of policy here, not a matter of national ideology. You should address your concerns to Comrade Tretchin – I should not like him to get the impression I was going behind his back.”

“Of course, of course,” said Ostrovsky, “But you see, Comrade Larvartin, I feel that this is not simply a matter of implementation: on the contrary, it seems as if a different set of policies is in effect being promulgated. Don’t you feel that there is a gap between the line we discussed in the Council of Twenty and what is actually happening in Twentyland? Do you feel that the country is actually responding to the advice it is being given?”

“I should be very sorry if you felt in any way that your advice was not valued, Comrade Ostrovsky,” he said, smiling, “But you must appreciate that the citizens and administrators of Twentyland have to take account of local conditions in a way which our valiant allies may not always understand.”

Ostrovsky pursed his lips for a moment.

“Let me be clear about this, comrade,” he said, “I am being advised that there is an orchestrated policy at work here, a policy, not of non-co-operation, not of national deviation exactly, I cannot say that, but let us say of incomplete realisation of the practical consequences of our joint commitment to the international brotherhood of socialist states. I don’t say that is in fact the case, but it’s suggested by the advice I am receiving. Now you must remember that your country was greatly helped to establish itself in freedom and democracy by the friendly support which Comrade Stalin gave to the heroes of Twentyland. If it should appear that certain elements – perhaps even certain high-ranking elements – did not altogether reciprocate that friendly support, well, then it might become necessary for us to consider whether the Twentyland regime would benefit from certain changes. You know, comrade, that certain countries, when liberated from Nazi tyranny, proved to need more direct help than others. If it were thought that Twentyland needed it, there can be no doubt that my superiors would be ready to provide very direct help. Very direct indeed, let there be no doubt of that., It can scarcely be thought that we should allow ourselves to be held back by lack of support from any group or individual, however popular.”

“You seem so tense, Ostrovsky,” my father replied, “I think you need a break. You should spend some time with your family. At home.”

Under my father’s guidance the Council of Twenty remained loyal supporters of Soviet foreign policy, of Cominform and the other institutions, and generally did nothing that the Russians could take real exception to. But Twentyland continued to steer its own course which quietly diverged in small ways from the prescribed model. Red Army soldiers began to receive small gifts from Twentylanders, always accompanied by a card which thanked them for their fraternal assistance, and wished them well on their return to their homeland.

My mother, in relating her stories, always represented my father’s handling of these matters as uniquely skilful, but for once I don’t agree. I hardly think his policy could have succeeded if Twentyland had been of strategic importance, or otherwise of special value to the Soviet authorities. Our armed forces were still far too weak to offer the slightest deterrent to the Russians had direct intervention been undertaken. I’m afraid the plain truth is that we simply weren’t important enough for the Russians to bother too much about us. My father, if my mother is to be believed, also played an extremely dangerous game of counter-espionage, trying to arouse Stalin’s suspicions of the leading Russian officers. I could never get any details of this, but it seems to me an uncharacteristically devious strategy; one which could very easily have backfired, or perhaps on the other hand have caused the disgrace or death of essentially blameless men like Ostrovsky, who were basically well-disposed towards my father and went along with him to some degree.

It goes without saying that in Mischkoff’s account there was never the slightest divergence of view between my father and the Russian authorities; indeed, in his biography my father appears almost servile in his closeness to Comrade Stalin. Mischkoff relates an entirely fictitious episode in which my father is supposed to have reminded Tretchin of the fine example of resolution shown by the Russian leader and thereby persuaded him to continue with a programme of agricultural reform and collectivisation.

It is true, however, that before too long Stalin withdrew his troops from Twentyland. It seems that Ostrovsky complained of my father’s uncooperative behaviour: Stalin, however, remembered my father as a hero of patriotic resistance during the war, and reacted badly. He suspected that my father was, as he felt himself to be, surrounded by potential traitors: instead of supplying the additional authority Ostrovsky was seeking, he summarily ordered him to withdraw. When Stalin died and Khrushchev took power, Twentylanders feared for a while that the Russians might return, but they never did, and if anything Khrushchev seemed even more well-disposed towards my father than Stalin had been . At last, at last, we were masters of our own destiny.

26,273 words.

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.”

7. The Destruction of Dubitania

In spite of a widespread belief that he had Nazi sympathies, King Francis attempted to keep Dubitania neutral as the second World War began. His Government studiously avoided the expression of any view, and luckily had no treaty obligations which could not be harmlessly disavowed. However, it soon became clear that neutrality would not be possible to sustain. The Germans would insist that Dubitania was an ally or an enemy, and the fate of Bessarabia showed that if we did not yield to them, we should merely become the slaves of a different master, or else the country would be torn apart. Most Dubitanians at that time, and certainly the King, thought that German domination would be more tolerable than Russian intervention, but Francis wanted if possible to avoid the opprobrium of having tamely submitted. After prolonged and agonised discussions, his counsellors suggested that he could perhaps at least spread the blame for the inevitable concession. He therefore took the extraordinary step of issuing a general amnesty to all political activists and called elections to a special Grand Assembly which would decide the nation’s fate.

My father, of course, could scarcely believe that this amnesty applied to him, or that it would be honoured, but having consulted his friends and allies, he decided to test it. He and a number of other leading Communists put forward nominations as candidates for the Assembly, and amazingly, found they were accepted as a matter of course. The pleasure my father felt in being able to come forward and campaign openly almost compensated for the fearful situation of his country.

The cause of anti-Nazism rejuvenated my father’s enthusiasm, at any rate. I think the long years of unavailing struggle must have had some erosive effect even on his unquenchable optimism, but now he threw himself into the campaign, bursting with energy and conviction.

According to Mischkoff, my father was in constant danger of being shot by Royalist soldiers, and his life was only saved by the scores of honest Dubitanians who would flock to hear him wherever he went; in fact the amnesty was fully honoured and my father was treated with unexpected respect. He says he thinks that at times of crisis, people turn to familiar figures, and that he had now been around long enough to be viewed with a degree of affection even by his enemies. It is true that his climactic speech in Colomati Square, which now bears his own name, was attended, if not heard, by a crowd which packed the space tight; but he also faced hecklers and hostility, especially at the beginning of his campaign.

500 deputies were elected to the Assembly in a national vote; Mischkoff says my father got the highest vote of any candidate, but my understanding is that in fact he was merely the leading communist candidate; moderate nationalist figures were in reality the most popular. We really do not need to pretend that even under Francis I Dubitania was already a communist country. At any rate, my father and several other Party members were duly elected and the Assembly met in the grand Hall of St George.

After some ceremonial preliminaries and a series of inconsequential debates about the national constitution, the King now explained that he had received an ultimatum from the Nazi government; he must sign a treaty of alliance committing the Dubitanian army to fight alongside the Germans, and providing full access to Dubitanian territory and resources, or be considered an enemy, with all that that implied. The Dubitanian army, whose equipment and training had barely changed since the last century, could not realistically hope to hold out against Hitler without international help, and the chances of material assistance from any other country were clearly negligible. The King therefore felt he had no alternative but to accede. He asked the deputies to endorse the signing of a treaty which would give the Germans what they wanted. He tried to present it as essentially a non-aggression pact, similar to the one signed by the Russians, but everyone knew the truth.

There was a lengthy discussion. Although they were slow to admit it, most of the deputies accepted the King’s reasoning. Indeed, a majority of my father’s comrades felt that since Hitler had signed a pact with Stalin, the communists should favour a pragmatic deal with the Nazis.

My father, however, was among the minority of deputies who regarded a deal with the Nazis as inconceivable. He told the Assembly that the question history had presented to them was not whether to resist the Nazis, but how; he said, with tears in his eyes that he had spent long miserable years underground, but that he would infinitely rather return to being a fugitive forever than hand his country to the Germans. There is no safety in such a course in any case, he insisted; you cannot deal with a rabid wolf by taking it into your bed.

All the accounts agree that my father’s rhetoric made a deep impression, and for once I think they are probably accurate; but when the final vote was taken only twenty deputies voted with him – and one of those was Lucas Stilin, who afterwards confessed that only personal loyalty had made him do so.

“It was the first time I ever thought that in purely rational terms Comrade Larvartin was mistaken, he said, “But fortunately I followed my instincts and not my brain.”

My father felt, at least, that his twenty deputies were the best of the lot, even though a number were members of the bourgeois parties, and there were even aristocrats among them, notably the famous Julio Cesare Obertin – while the other communists had voted against him. Lodovi Manumin, the former Chancellor who had almost been killed by Uncle Tibri, white-haired now, was among the twenty, and so was that notorious chauvinist reactionary, the immensely fat old judge Hercule Agrica. The Assembly went into recess and my father called the twenty together: they conferred, cautiously at first but with growing goodwill, about what could be done in this emergency. Then an extraordinary thing happened – my father was summoned to the Agraci Palace for a personal audience with King Francis and his Chief Minister. He consulted his new-found colleagues, who agreed that the summons must be answered.

My father was, of course, in fear of his life as he approached the Palace for the first time – little did he suspect that one day he would have his office there, and fill the ballroom and reception rooms with lunatics – it seemed quite likely that this was simply a crude ruse to capture or kill him; or perhaps even hand him over to the Germans. Every curtain – and there were lots of curtains –seemed to him to be harbouring an assassin or a spy.

My father had vaguely expected to be led to the throne room itself, where he had confused ideas of Francis wearing the Crown of St Hortense and the full Royal regalia, surrounded by courtiers. Instead, a footman took him along thickly-carpeted corridors to a small room with oil paintings on the walls – my father thought he recognised the Oath of the Horatii – and an elegant Hepplewhite table in the middle where the King and his Chief Minister were already sitting. My father felt a strange residual sense of unease as he approached; he says he actually found himself wondering whether he was supposed to bow. Instead he held out his hand, and after a slight pause, the King stood up and shook it.

Francis I was a thin man, with white hair and whiskers, beneath which a suggestion of a Hapsburg chin could be seen. He wore the white dress uniform of a Dubitanian Field Marshal. He began, in a soft, refined voice, by praising my father’s speech; he could tell, he said, that in my father’s breast there beat the heart of a true Dubitanian, and that was why, in spite of everything, he had thought it was worthwhile to speak to him. In the interests of their common mother country, would my father consider withdrawing his vote, and persuading the twenty deputies to do the same?

My father was puzzled. His side had only twenty votes, whereas the King had 463 (there were some abstentions, some calculated absences, and one deputy had died of a heart attack just before the vote was taken). Surely that was enough?

The King explained that he thought the Germans would be happier if the vote could be considered unanimous. Anything less might suggest to them that their new allies were half-hearted, and that could have consequences. While my father sat in astonished silence, the Chief Minister leaned forward and added that it would not, though, be necessary to vote for the treaty; simple abstention would be sufficient.

My father lowered his eyes and sat in silence for a few minutes. The strange thing, he told the King at length, is that I feel great sympathy for you. I should hate you and despise what you are trying to do, but I don’t. But of course I cannot do what you ask. Let me ask you in turn, don’t you realise that this will never work? You see how the Nazis are humiliating you before they have even arrived, making you go on your knees to some scurvy red who spent most of his life trying to have you deposed? You can’t think they will let you remain here, even as a figurehead. Please, if you won’t fight with us, go into exile while you still can. Go to Argentina, or Switzerland. Retire. Withdraw with honour. Don’t let your time end in disgrace. Don’t make your heirs ashamed that your dynasty ended so badly.

There was a long silence, and then the King’s face fell, and he lowered his eyes. The audience was over. The next day my father returned to the Assembly and made a new speech, that speech, the speech which changed the land forever.

He was, he said, a patriot. He loved Dubitania with all his heart. And there before him, in the deputies sitting in the hall, he could see Dubitania, the true image of his homeland. And yet that homeland had decided to submit to, no, to join forces with an unmeasurable evil. What is a man to do when his country joins with Satan? He must part from her. That was what he had come to do; to give up his country. Yet if this is truly Dubitania, then I feel I am an exile already, he said. Since yesterday I have been eating the bread of a strange land. My country is no longer Dubitania. He looked at the twenty deputies who had arranged themselves around him and concluded;

“From today I am no longer a subject of the King of Dubitania, but a citizen of the land of the Twenty, a free country which we founded yesterday with the best that could be recovered from the wreck of Dubitania.”

He and the Twenty went off to prepare what defence they could. They found that they had far more support in the real Dubitania than they had had in the Assembly. A great many citizens, perhaps the majority, were prepared to fight for the freedom and independence of their country. My father said that he felt the same way as he had felt in the Assembly, that the country was being passed through a sieve; all the gold remained with him in Twentyland, while the dross fell through to King Francis in the shell of Dubitania.

Francis I submitted to the Nazis and within two weeks, the streets of Sescastri were full of German tanks. His reign lasted for only a few further weeks of humiliation before he was deposed in favour of a Dubitanian fascist nonentity. This led to a group of Royalists with some members of the armed forces breaking away; but instead of joining my father, they took refuge in the northern Graupin mountains, only to be winkled out gradually by the Germans.

In the eastern provinces, the Twenty set up a provisional government, and a large part of what was left of the Dubitanian army rallied to them. It made little difference. They say that when the General Reinhardt, the Nazi commander, heard that the anti-Nazi part of Dubitania was being called ‘Twentyland’, he said it was well named: a country which would last twenty days. The German armoured divisions, with overwhelming air superiority, could not be stopped, but Reinhardt was proved wrong: there was bitter, street-by street fighting for a month before the Twentyland government became merely the underground national Resistance movement and a terrible darkness settled on Dubitania.