Nanowrimo Winner

24. Going Home

Lucia had expected that it would be easy to travel to the Palace and hard to get inside once she got there; but it proved to be the other way round. The disorder in the streets of Sescastri meant that public transport was at a standstill, and taxis were rare. In the end she got a lift into the city and walked the rest of the way; she found she still knew the streets quite well. There were angry crowds round the Palace, and it took her some time to work her way round to the entrance, but as soon as the guards heard that she was expected, they let her through without even troubling to check her credentials.

Inside, the place seemed almost empty. A frowning, pig-faced guard in a peaked cap, who was the only person sitting at the reception desk, ignored her completely and in the end she simply walked off to the President’s office on her own inititative; although it had been many years, she still knew the layout.

The Agraci Palace was smaller and less impressive than it had been when she was young. It was much clearer now that a lot of the decorative work was second-rate and lamely imitative. The place was indeed, Lucia saw now, an artistic treasure of a kind; but its particular charm was the way it presented a naïve, unselfconsciously provincial take on high art. It was sort of baroque, but baroque by hearsay, baroque passed through a chain of Chinese whispers; and it was baroque enthusiastically updated to accord with the tastes of the 1970s. It reminded her of the LPs her father had kept in the flat where she and her mother lived, and played whenever he visited; records in which Mozart was rendered on a vibraphone and Handel was finally given the rhythm section he had always so sadly lacked. On a table to the side she noticed an ivory figure; Botticelli’s Venus clumsily realised in three dimensions; hair, fig leaf and other added embellishments in ormolu. The shell in which the goddess stood had been used as an ashtray – who knows, had probably been intended as one. She began mentally roughing out a magazine article which she knew would go down well with her editor if she could get a few good photographs to go with it: she would announce the rediscovery of a neglected style – Dubitanian Eclectico. Sophisticated Parisians would love it; Americans would try to buy it. The Twentylanders would not even notice that they were being patronised. She became aware of her own disloyalty and remembered the serious nature of her visit.

There was hardly anyone around. In the old days, the Palace had been a teeming anthill of officials and politicians, now she saw only a few people here and there, all of whom seemed to be hurrying away with boxes and bags. Could they actually be evacuating? Were things that bad already? No-one was waiting in the ante-room, and there was no-one at the secretary’s desk. After a moment’s hesitation, Lucia pushed the door open, and there he was at his desk, not fatter as she had imagined, but thinner, almost shrunken, white-haired, and wearing glasses. Shockingly, he did not recognise her at first.

“About time,” he said, “Where is Liavetna?”

“Daddy,” said Lucia, “It’s me.”

He stared at her for a few moments, and then gave a guarded smile.

“I’m glad you’ve finally come back,” he said, “Sit down.”

She sat down on the sofa; he remained behind his desk.

“I read your letter,” he said, “Such a long letter. And such a terrible thing for a father to have to read! Such lies! Lucia, I don’t understand why you didn’t ask me about any of this at the time. Was I so frightening?”

“The things Stilin told me,” she said, “Weren’t they at least partly true?”

“Of course they weren’t true,” he said. There was a faint sound of shouting from the street outside. He opened a desk drawer, took out the long letter, and put on his glasses.

“That bastard,” he said, “really, it’s too much, I mean, I lived in fear of him for years, but if I’d known what he was saying about me… See, this business of Sophia Faratrin: first the mother and then the daughter!”

“It wasn’t true?”

“Oh yes, I believe it’s true up to a point, something like that happened, but the small incorrect detail is that it happened to the Roman Emperor Tiberius, not to poor little Marki Larvartin. But I see why he told you this; he wanted it in the back of your mind when he told you that final, disgusting lie, so that you would be ready to believe it. And then it seems I procured under-age girls for Glauci Vespin! The way he twists it! I always insisted that the Council of Twenty must be morally above reproach; but people told me that Glauci was involved with young girls. Stilin would have had him shot, perhaps: that was his usual remedy. Me, I waited until we were visiting the school and then I whispered in his ear: so are these the kind you like, Glauci? It was enough.”

“Lavordin; the same, the same twisting of the truth. The singing. You see, Lucia, the real problem at Lavordin was that there was food there. At that time people were starving, so they would pretend to be ill in order to get into the hospital, where at least they could eat. The doctors would not help me identify the healthy ones; they did not want to throw anyone out, they meant well even if the hospital was collapsing under the sheer numbers of people who wanted to be admitted. So I told the patients that anyone who was too ill to sing loudly would be shot, to free up the beds. Then the ones that sang loudest and seemed fit got a boot up the arse and told that if they malingered again, they’d have me to answer to. No-one was really shot.”

“And you were never in league with cousin Ursin to betray your comrades, either?”

“Lucia, I did some bad things, but they were always done to save my own life. What could I do: between him and Stilin, I had to do what I was told. They were terrible men; every day I thought one or other of them would kill me. Look. Lucia, this was all a plot of Stilin’s to send you away. He never wanted there to be anyone else I might listen to. That’s why he got rid of Ursin, and your mother, and poor Porfri… He’s dead himself now, thank God – oh no, not me, I didn’t touch him. It was his lungs. He smoked too much, you know that.”

Lucia opened her mouth as if to speak, but thought better of whatever she was going to say. Then she tried again.

“I haven’t come here to listen to more explanations. I don’t want the truth any more,” she said, “No more true stories. Was there ever an explanation that really made things better? I never seem to hear one. I’ve come to realise that all I want is better, more uplifting lies. I want the shiny surface. I’m just looking for a really good liar; I know that now. But there’s one thing I do want to tell you. All this stuff, do you know what you did to me? You destroyed my ability to trust anyone, to believe in anything simple or good. Do you understand? Once, in Italy, I was sitting in the student common room, and we were watching the television. There was footage of Nelson Mandela, that speech he made after being released. The others were all drinking it in, how saintly he was; and all I could think was: who the hell do you think you’re fooling, you wicked old man?”

“Ah, comrade Mandela,” he observed, “who could blame him?”

“But do you know what the worst thing is?” she demanded, “The worst of all? Never in my life will I be able to hear anyone say ‘I love you’ and just believe them. You took that from me forever: I will never have it.”

“But I love you, Lucia; I always did; you must know that. I wish we had talked about this, if only you had come to me. I wish we could have straightened things out. This last business – did you really believe that I was the father of Felicia’s child? That’s atrocious, I can’t believe that.”

“No, I never believed that; the way Stilin presented it, like a conjuror bringing out his rabbit; just another trick. He had miscalculated, in any case; I think he had assumed that Felicia was ashamed, that she would be secretive about Grigori’s father. But Felicia was not ashamed of anything and she had already told me, quite casually, that the father was Leo Asmodin. That was far more credible.”

“So if you didn’t believe him, why did you leave like that?”

She shook her head irritably.

“I was always going to leave,” she said, “Don’t you remember? That was why I came to see you in the first place; because I wanted to leave. Nothing Stilin could say was going to change that. Once I found out that my family was a lie, I wanted to get away; and that meant away from Dubitania. Stupid Stilin was so used to manipulating people he never noticed that I didn’t need manipulating. He was wasting his time – he should have just handed over the passport; I would have gone.”

“Well then,” he said, “at least you came back today. If I am so bad, why have you come?”

She frowned at him.

“I’ve come to rescue you. Dubitania is falling apart. The whole Eastern bloc is falling apart. It can’t last – you can’t get the Russians to come in this time. I’ve come to take you away. Come to Paris now before it’s too late.”

“Excuse me, this country is called Twentyland, if you would remember? I’m not in danger. Gorbachev, those other people, they let things go. I don’t let things go. I used to be afraid. You know, it’s true, I have had many enemies. I used to see them in my dreams, coming with guns and ropes. But I don’t fear that any more. You see Lucia, we have passed a watershed in history. With the gradual improvement of technology and organisation, a determined leader can now keep himself in power whatever people think of it. And I am that lucky person, the one who was on top when the wheel froze forever. The days of revolution are over; the people cannot kill the King any more. Of course, if the King is stupid enough to open the borders and send away his soldiers, he must face the consequences; I’m not doing that. ”

“Nice theory, Daddy, but I’m afraid the evidence says otherwise. You know there are crowds of people outside this very building shouting for your head? You know that the Peasant Union members who you called out to march in your favour have joined the protest? You know that the CPV have had to deploy their own men to protect this building because the municipal police refused to do it? And the only thing that’s holding the CPV together is the fear of what will happen to them when the regime is swept away?”

“It’s Inmacra. He was slack, he let things go. I had to get rid of him, get a new man. He’ll sort it out. But no politics here, please, can’t we talk like father and daughter? If I am so bad, why not just leave me to my inevitable fate? Don’t tell me you don’t care a little, Lucia.”

“I do care. I certainly care. You know what I’ve discovered about myself? I’m an intensely selfish person. Those friends you betrayed and killed, all those people who starved because of you; oh, I disapprove, but they don’t mean anything to me really. Not in the final analysis. I don’t get upset over them. What matters, what I do care about, is what you did to me. That’s all I can deal with. And… well, I suppose you know you came for me once when I was unpopular. At school. Whatever you are, whatever you’ve done, you did that. You came for me; I thought I should come for you.”

“I remember,” he said softly, and smiled. “So I did one good thing, perhaps that’s something at least. Maybe when I’m dead I’ll get one afternoon out of Hell now and then, you think so, Lucia?”

“I didn’t say it was a good thing. Just that it was one real thing you did for me.”

“So I never did anything else for you? What a bad father.”

“Don’t give me that!” she exclaimed, “What, you mean you clothed and fed me and brought me up, all that? Everything you gave me belonged to other people; all you did was say hello every so often when you came by to screw my mother.”

“OK, so none of that counts, it’s fair enough. And I never did anything good? That’s a shame. I wish I had just done one good thing that you could remember when I’m gone. I suppose I must be grateful you remember that maybe once I did some one small thing for you, even if it was not a good thing.”

They sat in silence for a few moments.

“What was it you whispered in the teacher’s ear?” she asked at last.

“I remember exactly. I said to her, you see that flag outside, comrade, with the twenty stars? Well if I ever, ever again hear that my daughter has been made unhappy in this place, your guts will be flying from that flagpole in less than thirty minutes. Please understand that I am a simple man, not a teacher, I do not understand metaphors or figures of speech.”

He smiled proudly; suddenly there was a loud bang from somewhere else in the building.

“But this is intolerable!” he exclaimed. He went to the door and threw it open. “Liavetna! Where the hell are you?” he shouted.

There was no-one, but another bang floated up the stairs, and then another.

“Come with me,” said Larvartin, setting off towards the noise. “What has happened here – where is everyone?”

“Don’t go down there. I think the protestors have broken in.” said Lucia.

“Nonsense! It’s just Inmacra’s mess.”

They walked down the stairs and through the corridor to the entrance hall. The Palace was deserted. The empty rooms they passed seemed to have been abandoned in haste: Larvartin stopped to look into one or two, but there was no-one there. As they arrived in the hall there was another tremendous bang: it was clear that the CPV, one way or another, had gone: the protestors, instead of standing behind barricades, were now at the door, and attempting to beat it down.

The pig-faced guard, at least, was still sitting behind the desk.

“What the hell is going on here?” demanded Larvartin, “Call security! Where are they?”

The guard did not reply: he merely stared back at Larvartin. For an uncomfortable few moments they stared at each other in silence.

“Is there a back way out?” asked Lucia.

“No,” said Larvartin, beginning to look fearful as well as angry, “But there is a helicopter on the roof.”

The lift, facing directly into the hall, was small and antiquated, one of the kind with a folding grille instead of a door. It took three attempts to get the grille to close properly, and then the lift seemed to move very slowly. The steady banging receded hearteningly as they rose; luckily the doors of the Palace were sturdy, built for defensive use. On the top floor Larvartin led the way to a short staircase up to a door which gave on to the roof: but the helicopter was not there.

Larvartin shaded his eyes and scanned the horizon.

“There!” he said, “You see him? The bastard can only have taken off a few minutes ago.”

“What now?”

“There is an emergency phone back down in the entrance hall. I think I’ll have to call somebody.”

“Do we have to go down there again?”

“Well, otherwise we could go to the cellars and lock ourselves in until it’s all over. But I don’t like that idea too much. There are still a lot of people down there, prisoners, and some of them are not nice.”

“Alright. Let’s try the hall.”

As the lift descended, the banging gradually became louder again. Lucia put a hand over her eyes.

The pig-faced guard was gone now; it seemed they were entirely alone in the Palace. Larvartin reached over the desk and pulled out a red phone. He put it to his ear, but it was clearly no good.

“Dead,” he said, “Lucia, I’m sorry about this. I think the best thing is to go back to the roof. They won’t be able to reach us there, and someone will send a helicopter or the CPV will come back if we wait it out.”

The lift grille stuck again and would not open properly. Lucia squeezed into the lift through the gap: Larvartin seized the handle and shoved it back and forward. After a moment it gave way, shut with a clang, and bounced open again a few centimetres; this time it was stuck fast and they could not move it. In the background there was a grinding sound as the lock on the great front door of the Palace finally gave way. A group of angry people burst through.

“There he is!” shouted someone, “By God, that’s him – look!”

One of them waved a noose.

“The rope is waiting for you, Larvartin!” he said.

They crowded into the hall; for the moment some strange inhibition seemed to keep them at arm’s length. Larvartin stepped away from the lift, but his escape was already blocked. He took a step towards the protestors and held up one arm: the rhetorical gesture somehow brought silence.

“Comrades!” he said, in an affected, oratorical voice: “Think carefully before you do this. I am an old man. Do you want to make yourselves murderers in order to shorten my life by a miserable few weeks?”

“It’s a deal,” said one of the protestors, a bald man in a thick quilted jacket. They all laughed.

“There’s another one. Who’s that?” asked another, pointing at Lucia, who was standing frozen in the lift.

“Her? I should be asking you,” said Larvartin, “Isn’t she one of yours? She came at me with a knife twenty minutes ago.”

“Is that true?” demanded the bald man.

“Comrade,” said Larvartin, dropping the oratorical tone and speaking in the demotic accent of Sescastri “I’m not going to use my last breath for telling lies.”

They dragged him away to find somewhere they could hang their rope.

And that is it: 63,304 in the end. Badly in need of editing and revision, but that can wait a bit. Sincere thanks to everyone who has read some or all of it; any feedback is very welcome. My apologies to the people who were directed here by Google even though they were clearly looking for something else entirely.

(Incidentally, anyone who read last year’s effort may be interested to know that the chapter where John Faletcher gives an irritable dismissal of the non-existent word ‘diminimus’ still attracts a small trickle of people trying to look it up. I’m sure he would be pleased, and I hope they’re edified.)

22. The singers of Lavordin

I think that it was at Lavordin hospital that I first realised for sure that Larvartin was insane. I had known for a long time that he was a strange, cruel man, of course, but he had conducted his affairs with such ruthless but apparently rational cunning I had not realised that he was mad.

Of course, it all began with that undiplomatic report where the Italian said conditions at Lavordin were ‘Stone Age’. Larvartin always hated to be patronised or disparaged by foreigners, and he was especially sensitive about Italians; he had regarded them as especially arrogant ever since he had had a particularly vituperative interview with one of Mussolini’s agents just before the outbreak of the war. When he read the report, he was thrown into a state of complete rage, and he marched up and down his office shouting and throwing things at the walls. Finally he insisted that together with a detachment of the CPV we should go and see the place for ourselves.

I thought myself that although conditions were not literally those of the Stone Age, they were certainly not very good. In most wards the patients were crammed in two to a bed, one facing each way; most of them wore their normal outdoor clothes. We saw little use of any drugs apart from aspirin, and most of the staff were not qualified nurses or doctors but filthy servants dating back to the days when the place had been more or less a hotel, all of whom treated the patients with contempt and no doubt stole their belongings whenever they could. The place stank, and not of disinfectant. Larvartin stayed under control at first, although I could see the anger was building up inside him. We were shown round by a young doctor, haggard with fatigue, clearly at the lowest possible ebb; I found out afterwards that he had not slept for three days. He told the simple truth, quite frankly, whether from habit or because he didn’t care any more whether Larvartin killed him or not.

“The problem, Larvartin,” he said, “Is that this is not a real hospital at all. It was never a properly equipped hospital and now it’s just a stinking shed where the sick are shovelled in every day. Give it another few weeks and it will be a charnel house.”

“That will not happen, Comrade Doctor.” said Larvartin, with a menacing light in his eye, “But we must take steps. That patient – “ he pointed to a grey-faced man, “What is his illness and how can it be cured?”

The doctor raised his eyes momentarily.

“That patient has a serious heart problem,” he replied, “He will die soon. There is nothing we can do. We do not have an operating theatre of any kind, let alone one which could attempt heart surgery. We don’t even have any useful drugs beyond some basic analgesics. Frankly his only chance would have been to leave the country – abroad he could have been treated. Here, we can do nothing except leave him alone and let matters take their course. To tell the truth, we have other priorities.”

“Priorities? Yes, indeed. Prioritisation is the key here. I had not realised things had got so disorganised.” Larvartin said, pressing his lips together, “But we will change that. We will change it now”.

He called the hospital staff together. Some were depressed, unmoved, but I could see that others, the younger ones mostly, were in fear of their lives.

“We are going to manage our problem here,” he said to them all, “So that no-one can reproach us with inefficiency, you understand me? We cannot have people lying here day after day dying with nothing being done, it’s not acceptable. Our first step is address the priority cases. You – the doctor. I want you to go back to Ward One and pick out the ten sickest patients. Bring me a list of their names.”

Puzzled, but not without signs of hope, the young doctor left the room and came back after a few minutes with a clipboard, which he handed to Larvartin.

“This first patient has emphysema,” he began, “There isn’t much we can do, but if we had oxygen…”

“Enough: do you think I want his life story, really doctor, we have no time for gossip.” said Larvartin peremptorily, handing the clipboard to Captain Ventarin, the commanding officer of the CPV squad, “Here, Ventarin. See this list? Take these bastards outside and shoot them.”

For several moments no-one quite believed it; even I thought for a moment that it was a clumsy joke. Then Ventarin, who had enough experience of Larvartin to know that hesitation was dangerous, gathered his wits and left the room. Someone at the back let out a thin scream.

“Ward Two!” said Larvartin. Looking pleased with himself.

But now that he knew what was going to happen to them, the young doctor refused to identify further patients for liquidation. Larvartin ignored him and summoned another doctor, a grey-haired old consultant – but he would not help either. It was one thing to stand by and let murder happen, but to pick out the victims was more than any of the medical staff could stomach. In the end the job was deputed to the most brutish of the servants. Larvartin worked his way through the wards systematically. When it came to the children, however, not even the bestial servant would select the victims. There was an impasse for a few moments and I really thought Larvartin might have the entire hospital liquidated then and there, staff and all. But instead he finally smiled and stalked off to the children’s ward himself, with the CPV and the line of horrified staff trailing behind him.

“Alright,” said Larvartin to the sick children, as if it were a treat, “This is what we’re going to do, you’ll enjoy it. We’re going to have a singing competition. You must all sing as loud as you can. I’m going to walk round and listen. If anyone is too sick to sing really loudly, Ventarin here will give him his medicine, OK?”

The terrified children began singing at the top of their voices. Some, who were actually unconscious or genuinely too ill to sing, stood no chance, and others were paralysed by fear. Each of these, one by one, was pointed at by Larvartin and taken outside where they received a bullet in the head at point-blank range. Ventarin was forced to reload several times.

Larvartin was put into a good mood by the implementation of his plan; he seemed pleased with his own ingenuity in devising the singing test. He gave instructions that every morning all the patients must sing; the three weakest on each ward would die. I looked at him standing there with blood flecks on his suit, his eyes wide open, and I said to myself, this man, this man who clings to me like the Old Man of the Sea, his mind is gone. I thought someone would kill him: I thought Ventarin would finally sicken of slaughtering sick children and turn his gun on his master. But it did not happen. Instead Ventarin and his men seemed to be getting into their stride, getting used to the business. They began smiling again.

Now Larvartin applied himself to the building of a surgical ward. He had all the patients outside and forced them to attempt to dig foundations, whatever their illness or injury. There was no plan, and nothing worthwhile was accomplished that first day except the creation of a ghastly mud heap. On subsequent days, Larvartin send his men out to conscript people from nearby towns. It so happened that the young poet Georgi Versantin was caught up by one of these press-gangs. Brought to the chaotic scene of the building work, which now consisted of a series of irregular holes, not unlike rough graves, Georgi wiped his face with one hand and shouted in a trembling voice:

“Comrades; when Khrushchev said ‘we will bury you’, didn’t he mean the capitalists?”

No-one answered.

“You know, we should get Carl Mustin out here and make him show them how to dig.” said Larvartin with a grin, forgetting that Carl Mustin had been sent to the cellars of the Agraci Palace three weeks before and no longer had functioning limbs.

In the end, thank God, after staying near the hospital for a week, he grew bored and returned to Sescastri. The Minister of Health was able to restore some semblance of order and propriety at Lavordin, but he was not able to get rid of the CPV, who continued to arrange what they called singing practice every morning. They stopped shooting people, but they continued to check that the patients were in good voice.

The new surgery, by the way, was eventually constructed by a team of Italian workers brought in by the Minister of Health, who was terrified that Larvartin would come back to inspect progress. The cost was huge, and for the next three years Lavordin took up over 60% of the entire national hospital budget. The facilities and staffing really did improve in the end, albeit at the cost of plunging most of the other hospitals in Dubitania into crisis. We were even able to show the place to some international visitors, at Larvartin’s insistence. CPV men wearing white coats stood in every corridor, and the staff were effusively welcoming to their overseas colleagues, begging them to stay as long as they could: they knew that while the foreigners were there, no-one would be shot.

That was all bad enough, but it got much worse. My lasting memory of Lavordin Hospital is from many years later, when the Blumenite inoculation campaign was at its height and Larvartin and I undertook a visit. By then, I doubt whether there was a competent doctor in the place. Half the staff were Party placemen, half were Blumenite zealots, mostly with few genuine academic qualifications. If a handful of properly-qualified medical staff remained from the old days, they were so cowed and browbeaten that they were no longer of any use.

Most of the patients had begun by accepting the Blumenite injections as legitimate medicine, but as they gradually grew sicker, their doubts increased: then a new wave of patients appeared, people whose illness was solely a matter of the injections, victims of the workplace campaigns and ‘spontaneous’ street visits which the Blumenites had been running all over the country. There was no room for this new influx: they sat or lay wherever they could, and soon became as grey-faced and emaciated as the original inmates, whose beds they usurped as soon as the owners died, or indeed more often as soon as they weak enough to be thrown out on the floor.

I was told that some of the patients, at length, had tried to escape, though who knew where they could have gone. At any rate, they were easily intercepted and beaten back by the resident thugs, some of whom had spent nearly their whole careers at Lavordin by now. The miracle was that people still came to the hospital; but there was no longer any other hospital, however dysfunctional, in the whole of Puttonyi Province. I remembered the young doctor’s words from years ago and thought how much better an honest charnel house would be, compared to this horror.

Astonishingly, poor Sergi Scalapin, now well over ninety, was still there. Forced out of retirement at gunpoint to give the hospital some credibility, the old surgeon was no longer allowed to intervene in the care of any patient; he was kept locked in an office which served as his cell and marched round the hospital twice a day by the CPV men in a grotesque parody of a ward round. I tried to speak to him when Larvartin had left the room, but he would not raise his head or respond to me.

Larvartin, for his part, seemed delighted by everything, and when our visit was concluded by a ‘singing concert’ arranged by sniggering CPV thugs, he professed himself delighted at the progress which had been made.

“Comrade patients!” he said in a bizarre speech of thanks, “If anyone asks you who made Lavordin what it is, don’t tell them it was Marki Larvartin. Always remember that everything that happens here is your own doing!”

The CPV men laughed and applauded.

58,240. Two more chapters, but they won’t count towards the Nanowrimo total (not that it matters)

21. Dropping the Pilot

For a while Larvartin’s vicious instincts were held in check by a reasonable fear that if they were provoked, his many enemies would succeed in deposing and killing him. But after a couple of years had passed, he found that he was still secure; that his secret police had inspired such fear that no-one dared to say an open word against him; instead he was surrounded by toadying flatterers. He now decided to buttress his own position further by eliminating anyone whom he suspected of the smallest disloyalty.

Strangely enough, the chief obstacle to the satisfaction of his thirst for vengeance proved to be Controller Ursin. Ursin was, of course, not at all averse to violence and repression, but for him it was chiefly a means to an end. He wanted a stable, efficient state; if it were necessary to take out the odd troublemaker he would not hesitate, but he wanted it done unobtrusively, ‘clinically’ as he would often say. He had no appetite for a Twentyland Terror or the haphazard execution of unthreatening, compliant citizens.

Accordingly, he dismissed most of Larvartin’s accusations and refused to grant his request for what amounted to a personal death squad. He could not, of course, refuse to provide bodyguards, but he removed their captain, Chlori Forobdin, who seemed to him to be forming too friendly a relationship with Larvartin, and replaced him with Tulli Inmacra, a cynical fellow and one of his own most trusted lieutenants.

As the years passed, Ursin had become increasingly impatient about playing second fiddle to his cousin. The course of history, he clearly felt, had never been meant to go this way, and he was convinced that he could run the country more correctly if he were President himself. He was obliged to accept that as a former Royalist agent and a leading collaborator with the Nazis, he was lucky to be alive at all, and could hardly expect to be a natural candidate for the leadership of a Communist republic. But with the passage of time his sense of his own unsuitability began to fade, and the high-handed behaviour of his cousin began to grate on him more and more. This, I think, may have caused his tone in refusing Larvartin’s requests to be a little peremptory; and by now Larvartin was not used to being refused anything. Relations between the cousins perceptibly cooled.

The Council of the Twenty had formal meetings once a month in those days: they gathered round a long table in the great Hall of Karl Marx (formerly St George’s Hall) and reviewed reports from the Ministries. One September, however, they found they had different business to conduct.

Larvartin opened the meeting in his usual affable, joking manner, and then, looking solemn, announced that he had a serious matter to put before them. He praised the work of Ursin: his indefatigable pursuit of justice, his intelligence, his energy, his zeal in the cause of our precious Republic. The assembled Council members began to wonder whether this was the build-up to Ursin’s getting a medal, or to his involuntary retirement. But Larvartin went on to say that thanks to Ursin’s dedication, a terrible discovery had been made. On the sheet of paper before him – he held it up with its back toward his audience – were the names of three conspirators. These evil men had begun working on plot to strike at the very centre of the republic by assassinating not only him, Marki Larvartin (that would be a relatively small matter, he declared piously) but also many members of the Twenty and several senior Ministers, with a bomb. A bomb in a suitcase. At this point, inexplicably and to the bemusement of the Council, he smiled; but soon recovered his gravity.

These conspirators, he went on, were not fly-by-night reactionaries or disaffected metropolitan types. No: the names on the paper before him – supported by the clearest of evidence, thanks to the unceasing investigations of Comrade Ursin! – were important, trusted figures in the government of Twentyland.

The silence that followed this pronouncement was profound and prolonged. Ursin himself was, as usual on these occasions, standing behind Larvartin. From the expression on his face it was clear that he knew absolutely nothing about this: moreover, from where he stood he could see (as could I, sitting on Larvartin’s right hand) that the piece of paper which was supposed to bear the fatal names was in fact completely blank. I don’t know to this day whether letting Ursin see this was an uncharacteristically subtle piece of psychological warfare on Larvartin’s part, or simply another symptom of his growing derangement.

The Council members looked uneasily at one another and finally Jakoubian plucked up the nerve to speak. Was it possible, he asked, that is, when Comrade Larvartin said that the conspirators were members of the government… important members… could it be that, if Comrade Larvartin was prepared to tell the Council, could it be that perhaps one or more of the names were the names, the names of members of the Council of the Twenty itself?

Larvartin stared gravely and simply nodded his head once.

All at once, Juri Mustin, one of the younger and more energetic members of the Council got suddenly to his feet.

“Let this farce end here!” he exclaimed, rhetorically, “Do you wonder that I should plan to kill this wretch, this evil parasite, when the same burning desire must live in the heart of every loyal Communist and every simple patriot in the land? Let everlasting shame fall on any man here who has not wished that this cancer could be excised from our country’s government! For my part I shall conceal the truth no longer, but stand on my feet at last; and if I have to die, I shall die a free Dubitanian and a true socialist!”

He pulled a long-bladed opinelca from his pocket and started towards the head of the table, but he had not got more than two paces away from his chair before his head was blown apart by a bullet from Ursin’s pistol.

I think two paces is quite a long distance in the circumstances. There were at least six armed guards in the room, but it seems they had instructions not to shoot without Ursin’s explicit command. I suppose it was also understandable that the other Council members were too nonplussed to seize the traitor. At the time, nobody raised any questions about the apparent lack of enthusiasm of those present about defending the President, but I do wonder whether Ursin was actually a trifle disappointed with the calibre of the assassins he had to face. If Mustin had kept his mouth shut and asked to see Larvartin in private, he would have stood a fair chance of succeeding, simply because no-one had foreseen the possibility of a Council member launching a murderous attack with a simple opinelca. Instead he made a windy speech and set off on his deadly mission with all the dispatch of a peevish tortoise, more or less forcing Ursin to shoot him. In a way it was suicide.

Anyway, Ursin brusquely instructed the terrified Council members to sit down again and stay where they were: he summoned additional guards who took away the body and did some minimal clearing of the mess – it was impossible to remove all the blood spots and fragments quickly. Now Larvartin cleared his throat and it became apparent that the meeting was to continue a little longer.

“Comrades!” he said, “I regret to inform you that the name of Juri Mustin is not one of the three on the sheet of paper I have before me.”

He told the members that the extraordinary incident they had just witnessed nevertheless confirmed the appalling danger in which the Republic currently stood. It was essential that the Council and the government should be purged of disloyal elements, and he therefore hoped that members would not object to his imposing upon them a small test. He would ask each member of the Council to consider the matter and by noon the next day supply him with a list of those whose loyalty they considered doubtful. If they successfully identified the names on his list, he would be greatly reassured. The Council members, still understandably shocked, said nothing, and after a moment or two, realising that the meeting was now over, they stood and filed out in a depressed silence.

Larvartin’s car – his second oldest Zastra – was waiting in the leafy square outside, but he indicated by a gesture that he preferred to be alone, and that I should not go with him. As the car pulled away, my arm was seized roughly from behind: it was Ursin.

“What the hell is going on, Stilin?” he demanded, “If you’ve set him up to start a purge…”

“No! No, I know nothing about it,” I protested. “This is something he has come up with on his own.”

“Well, you and I are going to nip this in the bud,” he said, “Get in the car!”

I had not noticed that Ursin’s own car gliding smoothly up behind me. We rode in silence.

In the palace, Ursin strode unchecked through the building until we came to the anteroom – crowded with waiting officials; there the secretary attempted to waylay him, but he brushed her aside and shoved the door open.

Larvartin, looking up with some surprise, was sitting on a sofa with a teacup in his hand: in a corner was Inmacra, standing with his hands behind his back. And at the other end of the sofa sat Esmeralda Larvartin in a green silk dress.

“Juri!” she exclaimed fondly, as though we were expected, “And Lucas? Come and sit down.”

Ursin let out a strange kind of sigh, but he could not shove Esmeralda aside. We tamely sat down and accepted cups of tea.

“Now, I’m glad you’re here, Juri,” said Esmeralda, “I want you to knock a bit of sense into your cousin. He works so hard and yet he won’t take a proper holiday. He wants to go to the Black Sea, can you believe it, no of course you can’t, and for a week. Will you tell him that we must go to Capri? Why else would we have a villa if we are never going to use it? And for a month, really he looks so haggard, it must be a month, he’s exhausted, you know Lucas, I blame you, yes I’m sorry, but you keep him so late and you take him away so often, don’t you? You can’t deny it, of course you can’t.”

I was in such a state of terror about what Ursin was going to do I could hardly speak, and my teacup rattled on its saucer; but luckily Esmeralda expected nothing from me. Ursin had a more difficult time, smiling with clenched teeth and gradually going red in the face with frustration and impatience. It was an hour before Esmeralda finally released us, and the sight of her large silken rump wobbling out through the door was simultaneously one of the most welcome and most terrifying things I have ever seen.

As soon as she was gone Ursin stood up.

“I’ll come straight to the point,” he said, running a finger round the inside of his collar, “I don’t know what scheme you think you’re embarking on, Marki, but it’s not going to happen.”

Larvartin tried to speak, but Ursin held up one hand and continued.

“I’ve waited long enough, Marki,” he said, “We didn’t work together for all those years so that you could turn the place into a shambles, a laughing stock. No, shut up and listen to me. It’s over. You’ve had long enough. You’re retiring. You’re not leaving this room till you’ve signed a resignation letter; then you can come with me and I’ll take care of the rest. Is that clear? I said: is that clear?”

“Dear God!” exploded Larvartin, “After all I’ve done for you, Juri, is this it, no ounce of gratitude? All the years I spent living with scum while you were lording it over me from your fancy office. Well, I’m sorry to hurt your feelings but somehow it turned out they didn’t want you, did they? They wanted me. Out of the goodness of my heart I’ve kept you on, but face it, Juri, you’re past it; yes, we must face it, you’re a clapped-out gangster, and if I’m ever going to get this place sorted out, if we’re ever going to modernise you’ve got to go. Is that clear?”

Ursin stared at him for a moment, and then his hand moved towards the big black pistol. Larvartin let out a cry of rage and leapt on his cousin, seizing him round the throat.

I backed away from the struggling men, filled with horror but also a wild kind of hope. After all, I had not meant to devote my life to being the lackey of a corrupt dictator. When I joined the Party all those years ago, I did it out of genuine belief in socialism and the equality of men. But ever since that day in the farmyard when Porfri was killed, I had been living a lie, the prisoner of a ghastly parasite whose appetite seemed to grow and grow. Now at last, I might be free if Ursin could only get his gun out of its holster.

“Stilin?” said a calm, clear voice in the background. It was Inmacra. I never understood Inmacra; either there was something missing in his mind, or he understood the world in a different way to me – if so, it must be admitted that his way seemed to work. At any rate, I never saw him upset or disturbed, even in circumstances when any rational man might have shown some fear or disgust. He had calmly taken out his own gun and now, behind the frantically struggling figures of Larvartin and Ursin, he gestured politely, deferentially, to me with his left hand, almost like a waiter: this one – or this one?

Shuddering violently, I raised my hand and, fighting back my fear, pointed to Larvartin. There was a single loud bang.

But when I opened my eyes again, it was Ursin on the floor. Larvartin was getting his breath back, already thanking Inmacra for his loyal service and promising promotion. But how? My puzzlement only lasted a few moments. I had misinterpreted Inmacra’s gesture. He had meant, not which one shall I shoot? but which one do you want to keep? I had pointed to the wrong man.

The death of Ursin naturally fed the flames of paranoia so far as treachery in high places was concerned. Most of the Twenty produced a list of denunciations – a few brave souls refused to do so – and a round of investigations and trials began the next day, with Inmacra in charge. Soon the cellars of the Agraci Palace were full. Now a kind of deadly chain reaction occurred as senior officials put in pre-emptive denunciations of those they thought might be about to accuse them. To be accused was, with rare exceptions, to be condemned. Execution was not enough for Larvartin; he took pleasure in extorting bizarre confessions from the condemned, sometimes wholly unrelated to the charges against them. A few valiant souls went to their deaths in silence, but most were prepared to say anything after a few days in the cellars. Some went too far for their own good; when Larvartin found a prisoner whose confessions were especially enthusiastic and extravagant, he would sometimes keep them alive for more entertainment at future sessions. Meanwhile three floors of Tabula House had to be commandeered to hold additional prisoners; but in due course the firing squad began to catch up with the backlog.

It must have become clear to Inmacra that he and I were riding a tiger, and that if the treason trials went on, we should inevitably end up as victims ourselves. Since the day of Ursin’s death, he seemed to regard me as a fellow-conspirator; he sought me out and asked what my plan was.

“You’ve had your fun, Luci,” he said condescendingly, “How are you going to wrap this one up?”

“Me?” I protested, “It wasn’t my doing.”

“Wasn’t it?” he asked, “I gave you the choice, didn’t I? If it had been up to me, I would have kept the Chief. Come on, you’re the only one he listens to.”

“You’re wrong. He won’t listen to me. He won’t listen to anybody.”

“No?” said Inmacra. He leaned towards me. “Tell you what, though…” he said.

The next day when Larvartin came down to his office, he found Esmeralda waiting for him with tickets to Capri. By the time they returned, three months later, things had been returned to normal, and Larvartin seemed to have forgotten about treason, at least for the time being.

56,156 According to the plan, there are 24 chapters. I may not finish them all in November, but I’ve got the 50k, so that’s alright.

20. Barley

Official accounts speak of Larvartin being a brewery clerk in his youth; this is true except for the significant omission that at the same time his father was the proprietor of the Sestenburg brewery, which of course was and remains the largest in Dubitania. He was the heir apparent; as soon as it became clear that his brother Tibri was uninterested in brewing, old Cesari Larvartin decided that Marki must be his successor, and Tibri’s death obviously settled the matter. In spite of all his other concerns, Larvartin did take over in due course as the head of the business, and surprisingly he remains in personal charge of the brewery to this day.

Of course, ownership of a brewery did not make one part of the aristocracy exactly; the old ruling class did not yield to mere wealth so easily – but the Larvartins had been wealthy for three generations and were beginning to make their way into the fringes of polite society. Larvartin took another step up by marrying Esmeralda – a frightful woman, by the way, but she was the daughter of one of the Marcher Counts.

I used to think that the retention of the old brewery was a good sign. I thought it was encouraging that among all the Lenin Squares and Larvartin Streets, the brewery remained stubbornly the Sestenburg. Now I know that this is just part of the wider pattern of patternlessness.

I should like to be able to say that Sestenburger Doppelbock, at least, has remained as good as it ever was, but although it is still a fine beer, even it has suffered to some degree. Larvartin never allowed the brewery to go short of barley or hops, but at times he has been forced to bring supplies in from outside the brewery’s traditional area, and indeed from outside the country altogether; and I’m afraid this does make a difference. How can it be, you might ask, that this was necessary? Isn’t it the case that Twentyland has always enjoyed dramatic agricultural surpluses?

In Twentyland we have of course had the advantage of not one, but two agricultural revolutions. Under Russian domination, there was a half-hearted attempt at collectivisation which only succeeded in bringing together groups of peasants in some of the less fertile parts of the country, leaving larger enterprises and even a few of the old feudal estates virtually intact. When Larvartin became President, he was visited by a delegation from the Agricultural Worker’s Union , the organisation which had succeeded Tillarin’s ridiculous guild, itself the successor to CINDATA. The delegation reminded him of his own role as a founding member of CINDATA and the struggle for a ten-denari wage, and called on him to undertake a thorough reform of farming. Their proposals naturally involved a minimum wage, but they also called for a redistribution of property, allowing their members access to land of their own. Larvartin was at his most jovial that day. He told them he would satisfy all their desires, but that he proposed to learn from the errors of Soviet collectivisation. They should understand, he said, that this was not a matter to be undertaken by the central government; no, the matter was in their own hands. Entirely in their own hands. But they could rely on him to bring the spades, and if necessary, the guns.

Not all of the members of the union were pleased with this response – they had been rather hoping that the central government would indeed undertake the land reform programme itself. But they thought it wise not to object. A week later the first worker invasion took place at a farm outside Belparica: one morning the farmer found a group of armed workers standing outside his door. They told him his farm was being collectivised, and he had an hour to pack and get out. Instead, he and his family barricaded themselves into the farmhouse and called the police. The Belparica police did not appear, but three CPV men arrived, broke down the farmhouse door, and took the farmer away, leaving his wife and children to flee as best they could.

This scene was repeated with variations at hundreds of Twentyland farms over the next few months. The seized farms were generally divided up between the invaders, who either turned their allocation into primitive subsistence operations or frankly allowed them to run wild.

The disorganised and haphazard nature of this supposed collectivisation movement led some to protest, demanding that Larvartin must step in, either defending the farmers or imposing some kind of organised programme. The initial response was an edict which retrospectively legalised the seizures which had taken place, and provided the basis for future ones.

Larvartin called me into his grand salon at the Palace one day and showed me a letter from the Agricultural Workers Union begging him to introduce a more regular collectivisation programme.

“You see how it is, Lucas?” he said, “I always tell them these matters are in their own hands, but in the end it always comes down to me. Well, I suppose we must stir ourselves.”

He had a squad of CPV men waiting outside: we drove for a couple of hours, out of Sescastri and up to the foothills of the Graupins on the borders of Andrania Province. This was a fertile area and we passed many prosperous-looking farms, but the one whose gate we turned in at surpassed them all. Everything here was in order, no weeds, everything in immaculate rows, and the barley in particular appeared to be flourishing. As we made our way up the drive, a whole range of crops and animals presented themselves to our gaze one after another, all in the very best of condition. It was a large estate, and it took some time to reach the house and outbuildings at the centre.

There, the CPV men ran inside and emerged after a few minutes with the proprietor, in his shirtsleeves with hands tied behind him. His face was so white I thought he might faint.

“Molerin!” said Larvartin, “We’ve met before, haven’t we? I thought I might come and look at that barley you were talking about. I think you were right – it’s just what I need for the brewery.”

A group of workers appeared round the corner: they hesitated and then came forward.

“Beloved leader!” said one of them nervously, “We are honoured!”

“Have no fear,” said Larvartin, “I am here to help: we have come to introduce collectivisation.”

“Oh, but we are collectivised already,” said the worker, “Mr Molerin here told us that he did not think it was right for him to continue in ownership of the farm any more, so last month we set up a worker’s collective and he turned over the ownership of the land and assets to the committee. He remains as manager, but his pay is the same as ours and he is answerable to the committee.”

For a moment Larvartin actually looked flummoxed, but then he shook his head.

“I can see, comrades,” he said to the CPV men, “This is going to be harder than I hoped. Take the lot of them.”

He had all the farm workers and their families herded away with Molerin. They scattered petrol in the farmhouse and set fire to the place.

The first Agrarian Revolution was finally brought to a conclusion six months later by the intervention of Ursin, who brusquely told Larvartin that large areas of the country were in chaos and he personally would not allow any further use of his men to support seizures. Reluctantly Larvartin declared collectivisation complete. That winter we suffered starvation in three provinces and suffered the humiliation of accepting food aid. By now being humble before the Russians had lost some of its edge, but it was still a terrible blow to national pride to accept help from Hungarians, and even worse, from Romania, though in the latter case the quantities involved were little more than token.

Larvartin was somewhat embarrassed, not by the crisis he had engendered, but by the sneering reaction it evoked in the foreign press, and he eagerly grasped at the opportunity to put matters right which was offered a few years later by the principles of his favourite Blumen.

Blumen, who now had his own research institute, had been concentrating on the application of cryptomorphic principles to plant growth. Larvartin and I visited his laboratory where we were overwhelmed by a display of giant pumpkins, perfect sheaves of wheat, magnificent turnips, and so on. Larvartin told Blumen that his collectivisation had been betrayed by deviant elements, but that he now had every confidence of making good all the country’s losses. Many photographs were taken of him posing with the pumpkins, and these have appeared regularly in our newspapers ever since to illustrate the success of the year’s harvest. The age of the photographs is evident from two factors: first, Comrade Larvartin never looks any older, but more conclusively, since that year, no pumpkins have grown in Twentyland.

Larvartin issued an edict that only Blumenised seed was to be planted that year. He immediately received messages from leading scientists asking him to rescind the edict: a delegation from the People’s academy visited him. He received them in his office at the Agraci Palace, and I vividly remember what a hangdog, frightened lot they were. Their spokesman, perhaps not the ideal choice, was Professor Vitalin of the Scholastic University of Lexandrin. With extreme deference and courtesy he explained that although academics and farmers appreciated the significance of Blumen’s work, it had been impossible to reproduce his results. Large-scale trials would be necessary before the country’s entire agricultural production could be staked on the immediate success of the theory. Professor Vitalin quoted from Italian and American journals which listed flaws in Blumen’s reasoning and science; one of the American ones said that the theory was saved from obvious falsity only because large parts of it were incomprehensible, and it listed ‘Twenty high-school science errors’. This too was probably a tactical error – Larvartin was never likely to listen to criticism from Italy, and anything the Americans disapproved of must in his eyes be good.

He listened to the delegation, however, and thanked them for coming.

“Professor Vitalin,” he said, “What was your father’s occupation?”

Vitalin looked startled.

“He was a judge, beloved leader, in the High Court.”

“I see,” said Larvartin. He went on to ask the same question of other members of the delegation, and his point became clear. They were the sons of landowners, bishops, and other professors. I noticed that Larvartin was being a little selective; Dr Forobdin in the front row was famously the son of a rubbish-collector, and Lucia Palatzia, I seemed to remember, was an orphan. But they were not asked. Instead Larvartin pointed out Blumen’s humble origins; he was being asked then, he said rhetorically, to take the judgement of capitalist scientists and the offspring of the upper classes as somehow inherently better than that of a simple worker and a native Twentylander? Perhaps they were right. Perhaps the evidence was on their side. Perhaps Blumen’s methods had not achieved results yet. But what was this? He held up a photograph of himself embracing one of Blumen’s giant pumpkins.

The senior members of the delegation were dismissed from their posts, and poor Vitalin found himself taking up residence in the darker cellars of the Agraci Palace. A week later I had a letter from three collectives based near Blumen’s laboratory; they were complaining about his confiscation of all the entries at the market gardening competition they had organised amongst themselves. I discovered that Blumen had not succeeded so far in growing anything at all, and had shown us these ‘borrowed’ specimens of agricultural produce instead. I made sure Larvartin saw these complaints, but I said nothing directly about them.

That year we were saved only by our inefficiency: it was impossible to blumenise all the seed in the country in time for planting, and impossible to check effectively on compliance with the edict. But Twentyland, which had been a sizeable net exporter in almost all agricultural categories now became desperately dependent on imports of wheat and other commodities which we could ill afford. Out in the country there was frank famine; in Andrania and Servinia the population fell to forty percent of its pre-war levels, and not entirely through emigration.

Larvartin attributed the failure of the crop to sabotage, and in particular to the non-use of blumenised seed. He sent out patrols of CPV men to check on compliance. There was no escape from these patrols: if they found signs of blumenised seed in your barns it meant you had stored the seed instead of sowing it; if they found unblumenised seed it meant you had planted that, and the unavailability of blumenised seed was not accepted as an excuse. Most of the farmers who were still contriving to keep their farms in operation were now herded into ‘Explanation camps’ for re-education. Their farms were collectivised and labour was provided by conscripted students and academics who had been identified as harbouring anti-Blumenite sympathies; by working on the land, they were to gain a new and more correct perspective.

“You have shown yourselves traitors as intellectuals,” said Larvartin in a little pamphlet which the sneering CPV men handed out to them, “But perhaps you can yet become happy and useful as agricultural labourers. Seize your future, comrades!”

53,317 words. Still going…

19. The Battle of Sescastri

Stilin’s manuscript was not very well organised. Instead of a connected narrative, he seemed to have written about particular episodes at different times as the mood took him. These were generally bound together with white tape, or sometimes stapled, and all put together in a general heap. Some of the sheafs were yellowing and dog-eared. One was prominently labelled ‘SESCASTRI’. I took it from the pile and began to read.

We joined the Red Army as it finally approached the borders of Twentyland. As it became clear that the Germans were going to lose the war, the Resistance had gathered itself for a new effort. If the weakened Germans could be thrown out by Dubitanian efforts, a measure of independence might be achieved and Russian influence limited. It would also be no small thing for national pride to be able to say that we had freed ourselves, instead of simply being assimilated by another bloated empire.

The surviving members of the Twenty found that they now had renewed support. Many who had previously despaired took heart; others prudently calculated that joining the resistance now would give them a stronger position in the post-war nation. Moreover, the Germans, weakened by the removal of every man they could spare to fight the Russians, looked increasingly vulnerable.

A great uprising was planned and carefully timed; when we rolled into Andrania with the Red Army, we found that Nipoli was already in the hands of the Twenty and the Germans were keeping up only a last stubborn resistance in the suburbs of Andra, which they abandoned at our approach. Twentyland was a geographical reality again. Obertin, Tabula, and Hofstadt met us on the road and we all entered the city together in triumph, with cheering crowds on every street. We set up a base in the foyer of the grand Municipal Hall of Andra, the only part of the building still intact; the retreating Germans had vengefully attempted to destroy it with explosives. The first evening was given over to celebration, but after that we ran into trouble.

In Sescastri, a whole range of different groups had come together to rise against the Nazis; democrats, Royalists, ethnic and religious parties were all represented. Naturally members of the Twenty played the leading role. With weapons they had brought out of hiding, improvised or stolen, these heroic partisans had actually succeeded in displacing the demoralised Nazis, taking control of the centre and East of the city. Obertin and our other colleagues urged the Russians now to lose no time in pressing forward to reinforce them. Larvartin, to all our astonishments, opposed this.

Obertin and Tabula assumed at first that Larvartin wanted the resistance to have time to take full control of the capital before the Russians arrived; they assured him that Sescastri would be completely out of Nazi hands within twenty-four hours, but stressed that there were great risks involved and that it was imperative the Russians got on the road as soon as possible. But that was not the way Larvartin was thinking. The rebels, he said were not the true champions of the people of Twentyland, but the undigested remains of reactionary Dubitania. These people were as much the enemies of Twentyland as the Germans, and if the two were at each other’s throat, we should not intervene until they had finished. Hofstadt said nothing to this: he simply left the camp and went to join the socialist Resistance in Livorin with a group of his personal allies and friends. Obertin and Tabula remonstrated with Larvartin, but could not shift him.

For their part, the Russian commanders said they planned to move forward immediately, whatever the locals thought about it. But Larvartin told them that he was acting on Comrade Stalin’s personal instructions; he produced an envelope which he said contained specific guidance; no one was to advance on Sescastri until he, Larvartin, was satisfied that the time was right. The Russians were not really convinced by this, but there was just enough doubt in their minds to make them decide to wait a little longer. After all, it was nothing to them if the Germans and Dubitanians fought among themselves for a while.

The next day the rebels succeeded in ejecting the Germans from Sescastri completely, and even captured a few slightly damaged tanks. The German forces fell back on Belparica. For a day, no-one moved. In Andra, Obertin and Tabula desperately tried to persuade the Russians to move forward, but their efforts were cancelled out by Larvartin, who continued to insist that the time was not right. The Russians had requested clarification from Moscow, but since this was allegedly a matter of personal instructions from Stalin, only Stalin could give this, and for the moment he failed to do so. Tabula obtained advice from his British contacts, but this was a tactical mistake; the Russians raised their eyebrows; maybe Larvartin was right, they thought, and settled more firmly in Andra than before.

The Germans were now being reinforced by others who had evacuated from Yugoslavia. They noticed the Russians’ loss of momentum, and smarting at their expulsion by ordinary citizens, launched a counter-attack on Sescastri. It began with a prolonged bombardment which smashed many of the city’s great buildings, previously undamaged, and forced the Resistance into what shelter they could find. Desperate messages were sent to the Russians asking for their immediate assistance.

On the second day of what was now the full-scale Battle of Sescastri, Obertin left Andra in disgust and hurried back to the capital to give what help he could; Tabula tried to keep up the pressure on the Russians. They now received a message from Stalin; they were not to hesitate, it said, but should press ahead as Comrade Larvartin instructed. Surely, insisted Tabula, this was clear – they must press ahead as soon as possible. No, said Larvartin; read the message carefully; they were to press ahead as he instructed, and only as he instructed. And he instructed them to remain in Andra for the time being. The Russians shrugged and sent a further request for clarification.

In Sescastri, the Resistance fought valiantly, but ordinary men and women armed with knives and Molotov cocktails were ultimately no match for German troops with tanks and machine guns. The Germans took their time, advancing systematically street by street, leaving no building standing and no man, woman or child alive.

Now at last the Russians decided to move forward, but they moved slowly and cautiously and instead of the main Fergastri road, they took the slower route via Nivilli. In Nivilli they paused again for another twenty-four hours, hoping that further clarification might now arrive; then they moved on again, reaching the outskirts of Sescastri the following day. At that point they came into contact with some lightly-armed German forces, and halted once more. The Germans had thrown a cordon round the entire city to block off the Resistance’s escape. By now they had reduced most of the city to ruins, and the shattered remnants of the Resistance were pinned down in a tiny area of the eastern suburbs.

Now at last Larvartin said the Russians might advance; when they did so the Germans fell back on Belparica again without attempting to defend the wreck of Sescastri.

I don’t think anything contributed so much to Larvartin’s unpopularity as his betrayal of Sescastri. Until the terrible battle began, the city had been relatively intact; afterwards two-thirds of the population lay dead in the streets and most of the buildings had been pounded to rubble. He was so unpopular at first that even the Russians felt they had to install someone more neutral as Prime Minister. Of course, his actions were entirely consistent with the principle he followed throughout his career: that it is more important to eliminate one’s rivals than one’s enemies.

50,853!!! But there’s more…

17. War

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

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

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

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

He sighed and crossed one leg over the other.

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

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

Obertin inclined his head in assent.

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

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

Obertin nodded gracefully again.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

46,268

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