Nanowrimo Winner

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.

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…

OK, the pace has slackened a bit (it isn’t Sunday any more) – but here’s chapter 2.

2. Ursin
This morning I came across that little piece I wrote last year about my father bursting into school, and read it again with warm nostalgic pleasure. It wasn’t really the truth that I saw my father at home every day, though. Often he had to go away on journeys, sometimes for weeks at a time. Frequently he slept at the Palace on a camp bed, or in some provincial town where he was making a flying visit. For long stretches of my early life, I saw him only about once a week on average. When he was away, instead of his stories about Robespierre and Lenin, my mother would tell me stories about him: about his own turbulent early life and his role in the Revolution that turned poor backward Dubitania into the Twentyland of today.

I enjoyed reading my little memoir again and I have decided to record here my own version of these stories, or at least my favourites from among them – they might make a little book to give to my father on his birthday. I might even be able to offer some corrective to the silly hagiographic nonsense which has been peddled by some authors, and show that my father was never infallible or superhuman; that in fact his characteristic genius lay specifically in his gift for carrying the generous, egalitarian impulses which motivated his socialism through into its implementation. In this he was always a stark contrast with so many of our otherwise admirable leaders, who love the people but whose golden love seems somehow to be transmuted into the lead of oppressive bureaucracy when they put it into practice, if indeed it does not end up being freely scattered through the barrel of a gun.

Speaking of guns reminds me that his great enemy in those early days was Ursin, the head of the Royal secret police, the so-called Custodes Regin. In my imagination this man was Sheriff of Nottingham to my father’s sprightly Robin Hood. There were many revolutionaries who were hunted by the custodes, but Ursin had picked out my father as the most dangerous of them all.

“There are many Lenins in that man.” he said.

Ursin was a tall man with close-cropped hair and a hooked nose with a black moustache underneath it: he wore big boots and a leather jacket, but in spite of this menacing appearance he was far from being a mere thug and he directed his organisation with diabolical energy and sharp intelligence. He personally supervised the pursuit of my father during the period following the abortive Dacsvillin uprising, when the revolutionary movements were in disorder and many progressive cells were destroyed or exposed. Ursin carried a big black pistol with which he personally executed anyone his agents captured, in flagrant disregard for the law, which even in the Royalist times did not run to summary murder. He seemed to have some sixth sense which told him where his prey had gone to ground, and one after another the leaders and chief members of the different factions were gradually eliminated. But although he came close on many occasions, he could never get my father.

On one occasion, Ursin actually had my father and his old friend Porfri Essedrin trapped in a farmyard with a high wall. They had ventured out into the country to see an old man who claimed to have a cellar full of guns and ammunition; but when they arrived it was clear that the old fellow was senile and had nothing to offer them but rambling monologues about his days in the old Citizen Militia. This was especially annoying as they had twice got lost on the journey and it had already taken them the best part of a day just to get to the old man’s cottage. As they headed back to the road, they caught sight of a black Zastra car which was unmistakably one of those belonging to the custodes (no Robodins for them). Somehow Ursin’s bloodhound nose had put him on their trail yet again.

They turned round at once and set off across country in the opposite direction through a gloomy grove of pine trees, but soon got lost once again. When they emerged from the trees they spotted a farm, a group of low buildings in the distance, and they made their way to it in the hope of finding help. In the trees, however gloomy, they had been out of sight, but now they were dreadfully exposed as they crossed the fields, and must have been seen. Moreover, when they arrived at the farm they found no-one at home and the door securely locked. As they stood irresolutely in the farmyard, surrounded by a high wall, Porfri caught sight of a group of people hurrying across the fields towards them: Ursin at the head of a gang of thugs. Porfri was a huge, muscular man, a true proletarian, who had already protected his comrade in many tight spots. At once he picked up my father and flung him bodily over the top of the wall. From the other side, my father heard the shots that ended poor Porfri’s life. My mother would say when recounting this episode;

“But the good Porfri had saved not only his friend, but his country.”

My father was able to get away back to the nearby woods, where the custodes lost his trail: he arrived back in Sescastri hours later on foot, exhausted, covered in mud, and grief-stricken by the loss of his stalwart comrade.

Another dangerous episode from my father’s earlier life began when he was betrayed by an alienated Party member named Hugo Pertari, whose young wife Anna had named my father at random as her partner in adultery, simply in order to shield her actual lover. The angry cuckold blew my father’s cover to the authorities and the custodes surrounded the house where he was hiding. Hoping to discourage the police from a thorough search of the house, which might reveal clues to the hiding places of more comrades, and knowing that he was surrounded on all sides, my father gave himself up. They handcuffed him and imprisoned him in the Morgin House, the terrible Royal prison made from a 13th century castle, from which no-one had ever escaped. My father had a cold stone cell in the dungeons with only a few handfuls of straw on the floor. But there was an unexpected hiatus. As it happened, Ursin was out of the country at the time: knowing his personal interest in this particular prisoner, the custodes decided to contact him before proceeding. Ursin, as they had foreseen, sent back orders that my father was to be kept alive until he could return to shoot him himself.

At this point, even my father’s dauntless optimism had begun to fade, and he wrote the eloquent little piece which has since been published as Testament, setting out in visionary terms the political journey of his life to that point and what he hoped his legacy might be. But all was not lost.

Anna Pertari, whose husband had now fled the country in fear of the wrath of his fellow Party members, was stricken with guilt at the way she had indirectly sent an innocent man to his death. She managed to make friends with some of the staff at the Morgin House and began helping them on a casual basis, going with some of them right inside the gates on deliveries of fresh laundry. Finally she persuaded the old woman who did most of the work to take a day off and let her handle a delivery alone: amongst the bed linen she smuggled a set of women’s clothes into the prison, and my father escaped under the noses of the negligent guards, dressed as the old woman. The guards were too negligent ever to have noticed that while one woman went in, two had come out, and in fact they were never able to guess how my father had escaped.

“The unfortunate consequence,” my mother would say, “Was that the false story of adultery with Anna Pertari was now taken to be true, since why would the young woman risk her life to save your father otherwise?”

At any rate, this picturesque tale was the origin of the joking toast to the washerwoman which old Dubitanian Communists used to drink (and sometimes they still do). At gatherings where there were others present of differing or uncertain loyalty, they delighted in remarking on the quality of the tablecloth or someone’s shirt, and then proposing “The washerwoman!”*. In Dubitania it was not uncommon for a prolonged series of toasts to degenerate into a more or less frivolous drinking game, so any Royalists, fascists, or bourgeois revisionists present were not especially surprised at this apparently silly toast, and would not hesitate to drink my father’s health unknowingly.

On another occasion, my father actually lost part of his left earlobe. Sitting in the old Café Rosenstrauss reading the newspaper, my father saw a noisy group of custodes approaching with dogs. They were making such a fuss and calling out in such a stagey way that it seemed clear that they wanted to be seen, so suspecting an ambush, my father went discreetly upstairs, crawled out of the toilet window and descended across the roof of an outhouse. Peering down, he was amused to see none other than his old enemy Ursin standing patiently in hiding behind a corner of the building, waiting for my father to come out of the back door. it was a trap, but clumsily set. My father crept around until he was behind a wall set back from the café. He could have got clean away, but some imp tempted him and he could not resist raising his head and shouting;

“The duck has flown!”

He had, he admitted, severely underestimated Ursin’s presence of mind: the agent whipped round so quickly and fired so accurately that he blew off my father’s earlobe, and my father had to run away streaming a trail of blood everywhere. Only by running down to the river and leaping on to a passing coal barge did he escape with his life.

“The shot was perfect,” my father said, “It was only because my head jerked to one side that it missed my brain. I truly think that if the word ‘duck’ had not been in my mind at the time, I should have stood still and been shot. I must put this to the People’s Psychological Institute – an interesting point for them to research. In the end, I found out that Ursin wasn’t even after me that day; he was looking for Grigori Asbertin the syndicalist, who as a matter of fact was lurking in the cellar in a state of suicidal panic. So I should have kept my egotistical mouth shut and slipped quietly away. What makes it worse is that when Asbertin heard the shooting he thought he was doomed; he put a rope through a hook and hanged himself down there in the cellar, among all the barrels, poor fellow.”

My father’s own favourite story, however, was about the time he went as a fraternal delegate to a meeting of the Democratic Socialist Union of Dubitania, in a side room off the old Town Hall of Merovia, a medieval suburb of Sescastri. Before the meeting had reached item two on the agenda, which is to say after about three hours, there was a heavy knocking on the door, and the session was interrupted by a detachment of the ordinary criminal police, who had somehow heard a garbled report that a seditious and disorderly meeting was in progress. As it happened, the socialists were prepared for this: they had an enormous picture of King Francis on the wall, and a false agenda written up on a board, and they succeeded in persuading the police that they were in fact a branch of the Dubitanian Royalist League.

Things had reached this happy stage, with the police tendering genial apologies, and the supposed Royalists competing to see who could push obsequious deference closest to the limit of plausibility, when it occurred to my father that if the simple police had got to know about the meeting, it could hardly have failed to reach the ears of Ursin. So he drew the commanding officer of the police squad aside and confided in him. Having conferred amongst themselves, he explained, the Royalists, feared that the story the police had heard meant that their arch enemy Marki Larvartin and his gang of thugs were coming to attack them. They thought it was best to close the meeting and evacuate at once, and he would advise the police to leave, too. Naturally, the police declared that they were not going to run away, but would be only to pleased to encounter these ferocious insurgents, of whom they had all heard. My father praised their boldness. Larvartin, he said, was easily recognised by his close-cropped hair, his black moustache and the leather jacket he invariably wore.

So, the supposed Royalists deferred the rest of their meeting and made their way uneventfully to safety. But from the security of the roof of a neighbouring inn, my father then watched the entertaining spectacle of the Dubitanian police attempting to arrest Ursin, who had arrived less than twenty minutes after the socialists’ retreat. Ursin had only a few of his men with him, which left his side heavily outnumbered; and he was obviously taken by surprise at first, but he and his men were bigger and more capable fighters than the policemen, so all in all it was a well-matched contest.

The tale of Ursin has, as everyone knows, an instructive twist. Some years later, after the war, it was Ursin who found himself in the Morgin House, which was used for a time by the triumphant Red Army to hold prisoners of special importance. My father, of course, went to see him; Ursin refused to speak to him at first.

But my father was not easily thwarted.

“You have been after me for some time now, Juri Ursin,” he remarked, “You have killed many of my best friends and very nearly killed me. I think you personally have held back the revolution in Dubitania for many years. How would you deal with an enemy like that? I think we must find a suitable way for you to pay your debt.”

Ursin merely grunted. My father reached into his pocket and took out Ursin’s own big black pistol, which had been confiscated on his arrest.

“You know,” my father said, “I heard the story of you in the trench at Porti. You and six young soldiers were cut off there and besieged for fourteen days with scarcely any food. On the fifteenth day, one of the soldiers somehow caught a mouse: they butchered it with an opinelca,* boiled it up in a can and brought it loyally to you as their commander. But you said – is this true? You said: there are no officers in this trench, only brothers and Dubitanians. I will not eat until everyone eats, and I don’t mean to die until everyone dies either. Is this true?”

“Yes, it’s true, damn you. Any one of those boys was worth ten of you.”

“Maybe – though you’ve surely heard that I too fought the invaders of our country, and alongside Royalists, too. In a different way and another place, of course. I’m glad the story of the trench is true, anyway. I thought that was the true spirit of our country, that history had somehow made a hero of you after all.”

“Don’t mock what you don’t understand.”

“No mockery, Comrade. You had it dead right. No officers, only brothers. I don’t eat until everyone eats. That’s what Communism means to me, Ursin no more and no less. We must build our country on those principles. You were a true Communist in that trench, although you didn’t have the advantage of knowing it.”

“What?”

My father stood up for a moment and looked Ursin in the eye.

“I can’t make a country if all I have with me are my old comrades, Ursin. I want you too. I want you to be my Controller of Police. If you won’t do it, if people like you can’t recapture the patriotic spirit of that trench, then the land is doomed, and you might as well shoot me. One way or another the chase ends here. But think first. Think what we might make of this country if we work together.”

With that, he handed over the pistol.

Ursin held it for a while, staring at it as though he couldn’t understand what it was any more. Then he softly put it down on the table.

So you see, my mother would conclude when she related this tale, your father’s silly ideas about Louis XVI in a clockmaker’s shop – the man wasn’t fit to sweep the streets, let alone mend clocks – are not idle words. When it came to it, he was prepared to put his principles into action, even if it meant overlooking the murder of his best friend and many attempts on his own life. I must tell you honestly, Lucia, that I should not have done it; I should have had Ursin put away for the rest of his life. But your father saw something in him and was able to draw it out. Controller Ursin was reclaimed; he became a decent servant of the state, efficient and tenacious, but fair and even merciful at times. To this day he is among your father’s most valued administrators, she would insist.

But you know, I don’t suppose there were any bullets in that pistol.

* There is a pun of sorts here: in Dubitanian, ‘Lavratina’ = washerwoman
* The opinelca is a traditional Dubitanian shepherd’s knife, supposedly designed for fighting wolves.

Total to date: 6,353 words. Just a bit ahead of schedule.