Waltenberg

by Hedi Kaddour

  Which Lilstein is it who wants to say to Kappler whatever you do don’t go back, and will tell him, despite the orders of the Minister and the directives of the General Secretary of the German United Socialist Party, comrade Walter Ulbricht:

  ‘Don’t go back, Herr Kappler.’

  What’s got into you, wanting to say something like that to a bourgeois writer who presents one of the finest opportunities our propaganda machine can hope to come by? Don’t be a fool, just settle for doing what you’re supposed to. If a tenth, a hundredth of what you want to say to Kappler should ever reach any one else’s ears, you’ll find yourself facing a real charge of high treason, and you won’t be sitting on any stool this time, it’ll be over very quickly. Or maybe that’s exactly what makes you want to do it? The fact that where you live you can’t say ‘don’t go back’ to an old friend without ipso facto putting your life in deadly danger?

  Ipso facto was the expression Kappler used to employ in those far-off days when he wanted to show Lilstein that the real never rises to seek the best under its own impetus and that it frequently finds itself biting its own tail.

  Which Lilstein should he show Kappler? Lilstein doesn’t know, it’s only by talking to Kappler that Lilstein will be able to discover what he himself really thinks, you can tell him all sorts of things but you will have to make up your mind what exactly you’re going to tell Kappler.

  In any case, Kappler will go his own sweet way, so how do I manage to get him to trust me? no good talking reasons, Herr Kappler, there are three reasons why you should abandon this plan, Kappler won’t even try to argue, he’ll just say I don’t give a damn, young Lilstein.

  Why try to get him to change his mind? it’s risky, virtually impossible, you’d be better off concentrating on the meeting with the other party, the appointment after lunch at the Waldhaus with the young Frenchman: the future.

  Soon it will be eleven o’clock, Lilstein is outside the Konditorei, you’re going to have to give Kappler something, a secret, that’s it, people trust you if you confide in them, give Kappler something in confidence, but what? that you don’t care for your Minister? Or get round to asking him the question he’s expecting to be asked: have you seen her again?

  *

  It is three in the afternoon in the main lounge of the Waldhaus, you’ve come from Paris, you’re not yet thirty but you’re tired, you’re sitting opposite a man named Michael Lilstein, his movements are unhurried and he says to you straight off:

  ‘I’m particularly anxious that you don’t become a spy, young gentleman of France. Spy is the word for the ones who get caught.’

  A glance out of the window, the mountains of the Grisons, the high Swiss Alps, the peaks of the Rikshorn, Lilstein’s face is smoothskinned, hair blond, complexion fine, eyes foxy, eyebrows unruly at the ends, has the look of a student who’s spent years dawdling here in the great lounge of the Waldhaus, which is deserted and dark once you move away from the windows, a few cabinets made of some heavy wood, which have already retreated into the shadows for the night, and a vast rack stacked with crockery standing just behind Lilstein, everywhere the smell of childhood, floor polish and beeswax, you winced when he said ‘young gentleman of France’. Lilstein adds: ‘Spies are voyeurs, thieves, miscreants, but you’re different, I invite you to be my equal.’

  Lilstein says ‘I’ very freely, not at all the sort of thing you’d expect from an East German, and he tells you a great deal about himself:

  ‘My dear fellow, I’m forty-two but I’m already very old, I was over thirty when the Soviets liberated me from Auschwitz, it’s not the sort of thing you ever forget, they also saved my mother and installed her in Moscow in a nice two-roomed flat, and me they sent to one of their Eastern steppes, to patch me up, goat’s milk, mutton grilled over a wood fire with cumin, long walks, the plain stretching away as far as the eye could see, made the head spin, I marched through oceans of marguerites, growing close to the ground to keep death away, here it’s more aggressive. So it wasn’t you, young Frenchman, and comrade, who asked for this meeting?

  ‘It wasn’t me either, let’s say it was good old Roland Hatzfeld who fixed it up, you don’t know? The name means nothing to you? Forgotten it already? Oh, that’s very good but, just between ourselves, quite unnecessary, you can trust me. Why? Because you want to and because I’ve a splendid story to tell you while we sit here looking out on this magnificent view which is so friendly to untruth.’

  Lilstein gestures to the Rikshorn:

  ‘Tremendous, isn’t it? Crystalline rock fractured by layers of ice over millions of years so that today a man can whizz blithely down it in five or six seconds, it’s not all over yet you know, it should yield a new peneplain in due course, the time-spans of physical geography are a comfort, so soothing, after all, man did not lose his tail overnight, but forgive me, that’s the language of the guard-room and the Rikshorn ought to bring out the poetry in us, so, to say sorry, I shall now tell you my splendid story.’

  A waitress with strong hands has set down two Tee mit Rum, Lilstein drinks his in tiny sips, lifts his head, looks towards the far end of the room, lowers his voice like a conspirator:

  ‘Do you smell that scent of warm apple, slightly acid, rather pert, that comes from afar? The wife of the hotel owner has taken the tart out of the oven, a Linzer, Linzer Torte is her speciality, to me it’s a drug, I can hold out for six, eight months without coming for a fix, and then I invent a mission for myself, a meeting, anything, just so that I can come here. Are there other places in Europe? Of course there are, but there’s nothing to compare with what the owner’s wife makes here. Before the war, I wasn’t very interested in food, nowadays I love going to tea-rooms, pastries, I never let tea-times go by, but I only eat Linzer here. Smell it? Beneath the fragrance of the apple, an accompaniment of raspberry, sharp, sweet? Not too much raspberry, the raspberry should know its place, as an accompaniment, Gut, whether it was Hatzfeld or no, we can talk, and if you’ve come this far you’re not going to turn down the chance of a good argument, even so at your age you should be ready to move things on, I’m not asking for your soul, young gentleman of France, we’ll just work together to move things on.’

  Lilstein has said ‘work’, he has placed the elbow of his right arm on the table, his hand is level with his eyes, fingers up, he gently rubs the end of his thumb against the tips of the other fingers, like a baker assaying the quality of flour, as if what he is about to propose is the product of some subtle craft:

  ‘Work together, each on his own side, like equals, I won’t ask for your soul, actually thanks to me you’ll have two, two souls, the one you shaped for yourself, the one that’s fine and great and revolutionary, the one that wants the good of all mankind because human nature is basically good and because all that’s required is a better way of organising needs, means and talents, some day all that could be sweeter than springtime, you’d not forgive yourself for giving up your great soul, so idealistic, at last, the classless society.’

  A pause. Lilstein really seems to believe in the classless society, and at the same time you sense that he doesn’t believe in it wholeheartedly, though you’d be hard put to say what it is that makes you feel he doesn’t believe in it and, on reflection, if you consider closely the impression he gives of believing in it, you’d find it just as impossible to put what he does mean into words, is he doing it on purpose? he looks straight at you and goes on:

  ‘All the things you dreamed of in that great revolutionary soul of yours, my dear fellow, and then crash! the wretched let-down of Budapest. Whereupon you feel like dumping your great soul, if you do, you’ll have to adjust to a life of emotional inertia, you’ll give up selling Humanité on Sundays in the market, reject the friendly greeting of the comrades, the roast chestnuts, I’ll spare you the rest, it’s so kitsch, you have problems justifying tanks that roll over civilians, and lurking behind soul number one is the other one, the soul that’s realistic, lucid, disenchanted, bourgeois,
cynical, the one that enables you to get an important job, to fulminate against the Russians and strikes, to remind yourself that solid obstacles must be placed in the way of human desires because human nature and so on and so forth.’

  There’s no one else in the room, Lilstein speaks slowly, in measured terms, it’s dangerous, the place might be bugged, the waitress at the far end of the lounge who comes and goes at intervals might overhear snatches of their conversation, a professional like Lilstein must know, but it doesn’t stop him:

  ‘When soul number two, the soul of a young, concerned Frenchman, is thwarted, it might go as far as to declare that life is a struggle, just as the old one used to be actually, but now it’s a different struggle, the triumph of the strong, the struggle for survival – you don’t much like this second soul, it was bequeathed to you, it’s the family soul, the soul of the nice part of town where you live, at first you hated it, but it’s not always wrong, it is very effective, you might say it has the effectiveness of capitalism, it’s in Marx:

  ‘So you see, two souls, one full of dreams, the other believing it sees things as they are, but you don’t really care for either one or the other, and as you leave the Party of your youth you find that you fall between two souls, ideas with no way of implementing them, ideas with no point, a pointless life before you’ve even lived, but I can show you how to keep both souls, how to make the most of both of them and act: a soul that dreams and a soul that does not dream.’

  Lilstein has raised his right hand, it is closed except for the index and middle fingers which make a V to accentuate ‘two’, it also recalls Churchill’s V:

  ‘Two souls. Dreams? We’ll dream them together, a just, classless society but you won’t need to get your hands dirty defending that dream, I’ll spare you the embarrassment of having to defend Pravda editorials, there’s no point now, in future you’ll bury your fine soul deep inside yourself and meantime, in public, you’ll be the other one, the bourgeois, realistic soul, the one you dislike, the soul that would – dreadful fate – see eye to eye with Antoine Pinay, Joseph Laniel or Guy Mollet, a soul so lucid it does not believe in forgiving, leave it to do the dirty work, though it’s not as dirty as all that, you’ll denounce tyranny, show trials, anything from Bukharin to Stalin’s doctors by way of all your Slanskys and Rajks.’

  Two swallows of tea, a glance at the view over the Grisons, to allow the shadows of Slansky and Rajk to depart. Lilstein resumes:

  ‘And I’m not entirely sure there won’t be more trials, you know the old joke, a Marxist is a man who doesn’t believe in life after death but does believe in rehabilitation after death, you will denounce the whole set-up, it will stand you in good stead, you’ll condemn the economic chaos, the bogus statistics, the whole Potemkin village of Sovietism, the camps no one talks about, like the one I was released from in 1953, there are still party officials who want to keep them on, reopen them for Nagy or even Gomulka, Gomulka has already spent four years in a camp, he’s used to it, like me. Not all the Soviet comrades are ruthless Kapos, but there are some who are best left well alone.

  ‘You must denounce the whole shooting match, and make your denunciation pack a punch even if it makes people turn on you, because turn on you they will, they’ll accuse you of turning on the Party, no one leaves the Party without some payback but your Good Soul will say your conscience is clear whereas if it was your good soul people had turned against, your lucid soul would never rush to your defence, all of which in short brings me to my proposition:

  ‘You won’t have to disown your ideals in degrading battles, nor defend everything Suslov or Thorez says, even if they say it in defence of the working class and the human race, on the contrary you will at last be able to say what you really think of the presence of the Russians in Budapest, in public, rather than publicly justify their presence and privately think it’s madness, see how coy I am myself, the presence of the Russians, a splendid euphemism, you will embody lucidity, you’ll tell the world Drop the masks! and the world will beg you to remove its masks. And it will make no attempt to touch yours.

  ‘We shall go on dreaming, young Frenchman, but I won’t promise you the moon and stars because I don’t believe in them any more, I leave all that to the angels, the sparrows, the Party activists and the men with twisted minds.

  ‘That said, there’s still work to be done among men, beyond men, riding your luck, dreaming of a socialism cleansed of the scum, I’ll go further: I don’t know who will win. I’m speaking of a distant future, I don’t know which of the two sides will win, our dreams or their capitalism, but you’ve nothing to lose: if it’s your bourgeois soul that triumphs you can simply forget the other one, and if it’s your revolutionary soul that emerges victorious you’ll never have left the fold, I’ll be there to vouch for it, two souls, and I’ll always be frank with you, no not frank, frank is for hypocrites, I shall be unambiguous, we shall be equals, after all I too might have two souls.’

  Lilstein has noticed that you have raised your eyebrows, he might also devise a mime to go with his two souls, eyes open wide, hands expressive, but he doesn’t, his face is a blank and his words are cool:

  ‘I propose we start with a straightforward exchange of information, not straight away, in a year or two, in the mid-term, anything that will help me rein in my more excitable comrades, the warmongers, the ones who believe you need tanks to help people think and camps to teach them to be punctual, do I surprise you? Already? None of this sounds anything like what you get from official spokesmen? But if I were just an official mouthpiece, I’d have disappeared long ago, in the camp they sent me to, not Auschwitz, a different one, six years after Auschwitz, one of the camps no one talks about.

  ‘One day I’ll tell you about it, I’ve a great fund of stories, meantime when you’re in a position to, you can help me fight the warmongers, your Great Soul will tell me everything soul number two has garnered, I will pass on to you the secrets of the world I belong to, you will bring me yours, I shall today give you something that will make you very precious to your imperialist masters, you will become – you may smile – a keen supporter of the Cold War.

  ‘A very sophisticated but rock-solid supporter, you will write splendid articles attacking communism, and very well-informed they’ll be, it will be great fun, anyone who leaves the Party eventually turns into a supporter of the Cold War, but I suggest you become one straight away, you’ll find it amusing and will leave the ranks of the Party without feeling that you’re betraying anything, you have two souls, the disenchanted soul will remain the handmaid of your dreaming soul and will help it not to betray those dreams.

  ‘A pact? No, we won’t have a pact, the idea doesn’t fill me with confidence, obviously one day you might be tempted to reverse the roles and betray me, betray what we’ll have become, but I don’t want pledges, I’ve got faith in you, young comrade, absolute faith, why? because I know all about you, if once upon a time you betrayed your family by joining the Party it was because you saw that your family was the betrayer, you know, we two are alike, if later on you betray the working class, such a pompous expression but there it is, if, I was saying, you betray the working class after betraying the bourgeoisie, you’ll have nowhere else to go, and you’re not old enough to return to the crucifix of your boyhood, your need not to be a traitor is too strong, just like mine.

  ‘What did I betray? The world’s youth, young gentleman of France. We’ve both lost our stake, we need each other, let’s stay together, let’s try to be civilised, and maybe thanks to us all these people will some day step back from the edge, it’s what is called peaceful co-existence, we’ll help to make the phrase fashionable.’

  The Waldhaus is at an altitude of 1,700 metres, it’s where forest gives way to rock, it’s also where the Waldgang starts, a ski slope, not the highest but the most attractive, with its passage through woods, the stretch along the lake, the long diagonal over the west face, a balcony from which on a fine day you can see for a hundred kilo
metres.

  Already there are a few early skiers here before the crowd of holidaymakers arrive, the descent starts with a ‘wall’ sixty metres long that runs parallel to the bobsleigh track but slopes more steeply, on the launching platform stand medics’ sledges ready for service, each one numbered separately, black on a yellow background. From time to time, the wind blows the powdery snow into the air where it glows red in the last rays of the sun.

  ‘Have I got you wrong, my dear fellow? I don’t care much for “my dear fellow”, I much prefer young man, my young friend, my young French friend, we’d be friends, I once was a young friend to a man I gready admire, he still calls me young Lilstein, no, I feel that if I call you my young friend you won’t care for it, you say you have no information to give me, that you are not important? I know that but I’m talking about the future, we have plenty of time, I’ll start, I’ll give you some hard information.

  ‘And in a year or two Paris will be at your feet, doesn’t the prospect tempt you? It’s because you’re young, let me be ambitious for you, at this juncture you don’t like yourself very much, it’s not healthy, a high percentage of the troubles I’ve had were caused by people who didn’t like themselves, who liked other people because they did not like themselves, who were forever ready to sacrifice themselves, and to sacrifice others to save them, through self-loathing, through fear of themselves, but we shall know only constructive fear, welcome to the realm of constructive fears and feverish times, young gentleman of France.