Waltenberg

by Hedi Kaddour

  At Monfaubert, the dragoons charge, that is, those who have not yet fallen to the rhythm of the noise which is for all the world like the sound of a very large sewing-machine, a Spandau no different from the thousands in service in the German army, manufactured under licence from the British and modified Prussian style.

  ‘The target must not merely be pierced,’ declared the Emperor, ‘but riddled.’

  The dragoons charge in a dream and what they take aim at with the point of their swords, of their lances, of their dreams, are other men’s dreams.

  If they’d been faced by ordinary troops, they would not have charged.

  Facing them are dreams the colour of doves which have surfaced from the remote mists of time. And if it were not for these dove-grey dreams, there would have been no German victory against the Russians less than a month ago at Tannenberg, dreams which emerged from a labyrinth as old as the act of dreaming itself, but barely make it into the light of day.

  At first, Max did not understand Calmette’s death there in the offices of Le Figaro, the reasons for it, not Henriette Caillaux’s reasons, a woman whose letters someone intends to publish is fully entitled to shoot the swine who would do such a thing, no, what Max did not understand at first were Calmette’s reasons, such a serious-minded man, with no interest in scandal, he had just noted in his diary that The Rite of Spring was an offence against morality and that Nijinsky displayed ‘gross indecency’ in certain of his choreographed movements.

  So why publish private letters? It was the sort of thing sensation-seeking newspapers did. And in Le Figaro! The same Figaro that went so far as to denounce the tango for obscenity, a so-called ‘society’ dance which, let it not be forgotten, requires the man to thrust one leg between those of his partner. Calmette had not dared write these details down in full, but he had spelled the message out to the men on the presses in the print-room: ‘I will not allow such filth to corrupt the Family!’

  And Max, ten years after the war, will be told that Calmette, normally so prudish and sober-sided, had a very good reason for turning his worthy Figaro into a rag filled with scandal and purloined letters, not a political reason, but rather a madness, because Calmette was mad and madly in love with another woman, a woman of letters whom Caillaux also loved to the point of wanting to divorce Henriette. Let’s summarise.

  Monsieur Caillaux, Madame Caillaux, Monsieur Calmette, and bringing up the rear, a woman of letters. Calmette, madly in love and jealous of this woman of letters, had unearthed Caillaux’s old letters to his wife Henriette and was about to publish them. When she read the letters written to Henriette Caillaux, the woman of letters would lose interest in Caillaux. So Calmette decided to put an end to Caillaux, his policies and the designs he was said to have on a woman of letters who had the nerve to hesitate between a politician and the editor of Le Figaro.

  A formidable lady, this woman of letters, all caustic and cream, a great name, a voice of her own, poison and poems, ‘you have strength and I have guile; your strength is to be the one I love’. An ambassador, very much an admirer of the lusty male form, is about to sit down facing her. There is a hat on the chair, no point in sitting down, the hat’s quite soft. A literary lady with genuine poems to her credit, ‘even in my heart where your blood beats’, then later the mistress of a married man, the man dies, the literary lady turns up at the funeral, very dignified, stays in the background, and when the mourners file past the open grave she throws her cloak into it.

  The tango, the Holy Office decides, is an infernal dance, one final demonstration of this impious dance is given in the presence of Pius X by a couple of young Roman aristocrats, a brother and sister of irreproachable moral rectitude, who nevertheless wish to defend the tango, which tango did they dance? for the Pope commiserated with them on having to perform these ‘very tiresome movements’, nevertheless the tango is forbidden by the Vatican, and at least three of the shots fired in Calmette’s office turn Calmette into a corpse, Henriette into a tragic heroine whom it is henceforth impossible for him to divorce even to marry a woman of letters, Calmette into political flotsam, and peace into a cause amputated of all leaders save Jaurès – whose voice Péguy would dearly love to drown out beneath the drums of the guillotine – who is a habitué of the Café du Croissant, with its carved wood façade and gold lettering.

  He was young and good-looking, he said ‘I love you, Lena’, he put a lot of feeling into the way he looked at me, we were on a mountain, he didn’t know where to begin, the back of his neck was soft, it made me want to drag him into my room, I did it, it felt good, I managed to say Liebchen and Hansele but it wasn’t love, it was the mountain, I might have started to fall in love with him later on, when Marie-Thérèse…

  He just went on staring at her, I was furious, I didn’t want him to fall for another girl but that in itself is not enough to make a man love you. You can write books about it, but it’s not enough. I thought he was very silly to stare at her like that, she started kicking up like a mare in season, she was insufferable, he just looked moony, a woman and a damp-eyed puppy, in a farmyard, I didn’t bother to say anything, anyway I wasn’t really in love with him.

  He could have done whatever he liked with her, it wouldn’t have bothered me. To start loving a man because you see him straightening his tie before going up to some Marie-Thérèse who jiggles all she’s got for everyone to see, wears vulgar dresses, in that pink Liberty print, a pink muslin blouse, pink pearls and shows as much cleavage as it takes to attract looks from the morons, and very few from me.

  I suddenly had this feeling that I had ceased to be anything, that I had no breasts, no backside, but I didn’t feel that I had fallen in love. I didn’t say anything and it didn’t last. Anyway she’s got peculiar breasts. I left the pair of them to it, he came after me, men are like that.

  I know exactly when I started to love him, three months after we’d been together, Arosa, that farcical episode at Arosa, on the first floor of the chalet we’d rented for one night, with the raised bed.

  I’d climbed into it, I was waiting for him, he was also already in his nightclothes, a little painted wooden chair, at the foot of the bed, the solemn look he gave me as he stood on the chair to join me, very amorous, as was only right and proper.

  His foot went right through the chair, foot, calf, knee and halfway up his thigh, went clean through the flimsy wooden seat of a chair which was never intended for amorous use, a chair painted pale blue. He nearly fell over, he couldn’t free his leg, it might have happened to me, he wasn’t really hurt, only very annoyed.

  He tried to extricate his leg but the splinters began sticking in his thigh, he swore, turned red in the face, a parfit knight with a chair circling his naked thigh, that’s what set me off with the giggles, I shouldn’t have, the most awful giggles, I bit my lip, I didn’t want anyone on the floor below to hear me, my hot-blooded knight in a nightshirt, with one leg through a chair, we must get help, out of the question, he tried to break off the splintered wood but he was standing and couldn’t do it, I was helpless with laughter, I bit the inside of my cheeks, we must have been making a terrible row, I could see he was in a bad way, I got down clinging to the bed posts.

  He was beginning to be in real pain, I stopped laughing, I made him lie down on the floor, on his back, with his leg in the air, the chair clamped around his leg, I managed to slide the chair up his thigh to ease out the splinters which had started to dig into his flesh, he had good thighs, he didn’t seem to be thinking about sex any more.

  I kept my eyes on the job, I snapped off the splintered ends one by one to widen the hole in the chair and pull it off without doing him any damage, gently, and then I got the giggles again because I suddenly wanted to say: if only Marie-Thérèse could see you now!

  Of course all that was already over and done with, but I still wanted to say it, naturally I didn’t do anything of the sort, a fit of the giggles, my lover man, on his back, beautiful light of a candle, one leg in the air, hi
s white nightshirt pulled up, with him doing his best not to make too indecent a spectacle of himself, come on try, with one leg in the air and a chair wrapped round it, I was laughing, I couldn’t get the last of the splinters out and pull the chair down over his knee.

  His skin was smooth, I wasn’t laughing now, I kissed him, and suddenly I loved him more than I had ever loved anyone before, he didn’t quite get it, for him love meant taking my breasts in both hands and gazing at me solemnly, I liked that too, though not as much as when he was on his back with that chair around his leg.

  The staccato rat-tat-tat continues in bursts, riders are still falling in the clearing at Monfaubert, mown down by the chattering sewing-machine which has swung round towards them, but Captain Jourde can no longer react, regroup, respond, for the Captain is down, back propped against a tree, he has taken a burst in the chest.

  He asks the lieutenant to sit him up, the lieutenant obeys, then walks into the throng of riderless horses and helmetless riders, some covered in blood and clinging for dear life to the pommel of their saddles, others screaming and thrusting and smiting, keep hold of this rage, keep the goal before you: destroy the Boches and their filthy dreams.

  Captain Jourde is determined to die facing the enemy, but what he sees in front of him standing not two metres away is his own black mount, an Anglo-Norman thoroughbred, looks thin, has blood on its chest, it holds up one leg, which is also bleeding, the horse shudders, looks at the Captain who is saying to himself that the charge he led has failed, around him bullets whine, smack, slap, mew, ricochet, shatter a stone, a nose, the Captain’s hand claws at the grass.

  The regimental log simply states that the Captain died in battle, the press prefers ‘on the field of honour’ or ‘for France’, it makes a great deal of difference to a good many women who henceforth enter into what is called ‘the heroic wakefulness of wives’.

  Calmette, Caillaux, Henriette Caillaux and a woman of letters, after the war Max will be told that he’s an obsessive, there is more to History than one floozy’s flings, History is made by the mass of humanity, the prevailing laws, nations, passions, men of true greatness, great ideas or inter-imperialist contradictions, the hand of God, Max, or the wood that burns so that trees may turn green again, the act of righteous revenge which burns down the house which sets fire to the street, the act becomes a crime, then begets a new and more handsome street, war as a crime without punishment, undertaken to restore right: passions which at the last bring you back to the universal, or on the contrary the pure instinct of death, with nothing before it, especially not women, actually my dear Max, I challenge you to publish the name of that woman of letters who is supposed to have been loved at the same time by both Calmette and Caillaux, ‘I hold the roses close so that my arms are pricked’, the Swiss Ambassador talked about it in his correspondence, but he was Swiss.

  Max gets under the skin of his friends on both the left and the right. He makes the Great War turn entirely on ‘a pair of frilly lace knickers’, it’s too anecdotal my dear Max, wait a minute, at least let me tell the end of the Caillaux story, this woman reporter, a colleague, a friend, has just met Madame Caillaux, seven years after it happened, she asked her: ‘When Calmette collapsed after you shot him, what was the first thing you felt?’ What was Madame Caillaux’s reply? I could give you three guesses but I’ll tell you anyway: ‘That I was not in love with my husband.’

  Max is sometimes pretty odd, puts you in mind of Molière’s cunning valet, Scapin, the sort of man who ends up thinking that everything’s one big joke, that it was on Madame Poincaré’s account that Poincaré the warmonger wanted to be President and that Madame Caillaux prevented her husband making peace, Max has a very odd way with him, all that talk of knickers, also quite incapable of hanging his mackintosh or overcoat on a coat-stand, he always leaves it draped over a chair, a desk, any old place.

  He says he does it out of nostalgia for the coat pegs they had in the trenches, that’s right, for more than a month one winter they used the feet of frozen corpses sticking out of the trench walls, bit of a bonus according to Max, German army boots, that didn’t matter, they made decent coat pegs, then when the thaw came they turned out to be French corpses, their own comrades, in a perfect state of preservation: German boots and French corpses, imagine.

  And so people will forgive the knickers and restore full conversation rights – this is long after the war is over, in the mid-1920s, in the Brasserie de la Paix on the Boulevard des Italiens – you’ll have to tell another story, Max, so come on, let’s have it:

  ‘Out of the question!’

  ‘Come on!’

  So Max tells the story of the Pieds Nickelés, their last cartoon adventure in book form published before the war, in which it wasn’t Poincaré who replaced Fallières, it was the famous gang comprising Ribouldingue, Filochard, and Croquignol, the Pieds Nickelés became ministers under Fallières, they had the same slogan as Poincaré, Republic, Duty, Country, a landslide for the Pieds Nickelés in the elections, men in frock-coats prevaricate, great junketings, big spending, gambling, living like kings only more so, Fallières gets worried and Ribouldingue comes up with: ‘If Fallières tries to stick his nose in our affairs, we’ll fettle Fallières, him and his bally heirs!’

  Fallières went away, goatee, lips pursed and pop-eyed and opened a tobacconist’s shop, leaving the Pieds Nickelés in the Élysée Palace to drink, thieve, and have lots of fun in frock-coats, this was late in 1912. Fallières and bally heirs. Ribouldingue, Croquignol and Filochard! If they’d stayed in power instead of Poincaré, there would have been peace.

  ‘No Max, a true story, not this kid’s stuff!’

  ‘We would also have had peace if that serious incident involving France and England in April 1914 hadn’t been speedily resolved.’

  ‘Max, where did that come from? Your fifth beer? There was no such incident.’

  ‘No, as true as I live and breathe, if a Franco-British stand-off had happened no one would have wanted war, a major incident of some sort, say a great dinner at the Élysée Palace, April 1914, King George having to lead off from the drawing room into the dining room with Madame Poincaré on his arm, and behind them would come the President and Queen Mary.’

  Max lines up sugar lumps, one for each person, sets them out in a square.

  ‘And a couple of hours before the dinner, Queen Mary is heard to say, “Me? Walk behind that woman? Never!” Panic, they toy with the idea of letting the Queen go first, with the President, but that would mean a king walking behind a president, Madame Poincaré threatens to boycott the dinner and the talk in the Queen’s entourage is of bigamy, of getting back on the boat, you get the picture, a major incident, within an inch, France loses her alliance with Britain, therefore would tread much more carefully with Poincaré no longer telling the Russians to just go ahead. At the time, he kept saying “I intend to force the Russians to be less feeble.”’

  ‘Max and his “ifs”! If, my aunt! Perhaps the French would have been more prudent, but the Austrians would have been more aggressive, I don’t buy it, put those sugar lumps away.’

  ‘However that may be, comrades, we did avoid a Franco-British incident, by a whisker.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘I didn’t think you were interested, you really want to hear about my incident?’

  Max reaches for the sugar lumps again and lines them up in a single row.

  ‘Very well, it’s very simple, in the Élysée, enormous double swing doors separate the drawing room and the dining room, all that they had to do was open both doors wide so both couples could go through abreast, though it’s not as straightforward as that, both the ladies, the Queen and the President’s wife, speed up, each trying to put a clear length between her and the other, so that the procession reaches the table at a canter.’

  Max never liked Poincaré, he makes up all kinds of stories, yes, quite true, says Max, and I’ve changed my mind about Poincaré, I thought he wanted war and got it, I wa
nted a culprit, someone who’d betrayed his own side, Max, politics is primarily the art of betraying your own side, I know, says Max, and Poincaré is our collective sellout, remember Pio Baroja, hugely talented novelist, late 1916: ‘the French and the Germans are only fighting from cowardice; they are each under the thumb of a terrorist organisation and can do nothing about it.’

  Max’s points his index finger at his comrades:

  ‘Robert, primary schoolteacher, Paul Robert, family holiday in the country, summer 1914, hot, only just arrived, 2 August, order for general mobilisation, had to leave his holiday cottage but the owner demanded payment of the full month’s rent. And Poincaré remains a terrorist.’

  Three troops at full tilt, charging at German dreams. At first they ride recklessly towards the machine gun. Later they’re more careful. Charging dreams, their primary mission the Captain had said, the rumble of hooves, a rifle bullet in a horse’s flank, the horse twists its neck and withers, rears up, is still rearing up when its heart bursts, the sound of a lance piercing a body, the whistle of sabre blades as they charge those German dreams, another rider is down, the bottom half of his face flops on his neck, a slice of soft flesh, blood, spittle, the lower jaw gone, blue eyes, intensely blue.