Waltenberg

by Hedi Kaddour

  He stumbled over quotations from Thorez, especially when he wanted to say something complex, he struggled for words, he quoted Thorez ‘there was no Stalinism’, he’d started out as a boiler-maker, ‘the word is part of our opponents’ vocabulary’, no one knew when he’d joined, he spoke slowly, hesitated, ‘there has come about … although the policy was right and just … rooted in the principles of Marxism-Leninism’, a comrade who was still young, about forty, a proletarian.

  And the members of the editorial board took pleasure in prompting him with the quotes he found it hard to regurgitate whole, ‘there has come about a retreat from these Marxist-Leninist principles in given historical conditions’, they competed with each other, they vied to be the first to come up with the words the member of the Politburo was groping for, ‘these conditions now exist’, even statements they didn’t much care for, ‘there was no Stalinism’, a real joy, putting words into the mouth of an important Party official, even if he’s a deputy, being able to disappear behind words that could have no come-back, lending a helping hand to a comrade who was experienced but still young, a genuine member of the proletariat who was not in the habit of memorising essential quotes, no, he did remember one, it wasn’t Thorez, it was Casanova, ‘when we are fair and square with the revolutionary proletariat, then, and only then, will our conscience be clear.’

  One comrade thought it funny to give only the first part of a Thorez quote, whereas all the comrades have always known that with Maurice it’s invariably the second part that matters, ‘The number of different roads to socialism has nothing to do with the content of the dictatorship of the proletariat’, this left the comrade deputy baffled by the violence of Maurice’s contention, it was clear that he was thinking of the possible implications of such an assertion, a few words more and it would be pure Titoism, that is, the idea that there could be purely national roads to socialism, even if Tito had never stopped being a traitor and a monster, the comrade deputy was a man who missed nothing.

  But another comrade, the biggest ‘doubter’ on the editorial board, gleefully supplied him with him the rest, ‘that content being of necessity common to all countries which are marching towards socialism’, everyone breathed again, they didn’t agree with the comrade deputy, not really, but that was no reason for allowing a proletarian to flounder in a morass of hesitation, so you give him a helping hand, compete to be the most accurate, Thorez’s idea is developed, it circulates, unifies.

  To get back to the story, someone said he’d found it well-written, no, well-written means primarily that it engages with the real lives of the proletariat, go reread André Stil’s latest novel and the letter which the factory girls in Nîmes wrote him, that’s what’s meant by well-written, no one had said nay to this, though whenever two or three of you linger over a meal there’s always one who makes the other laugh by parodying André Stil’s prose style, good-naturedly though, for he’s one of the prime movers of Humanité, showed tremendous courage over Indochina, but in the end there was general agreement: no one was prepared to back the short story written by the great writer.

  A German writer to boot, one of the comrades finally reminded them of the fact, until then no one had wanted to bring this up, and a German who lived among revanchists, who sometimes had dealings with the deepest-dyed right, the right of Preuves, that ‘turncoats’ rag’ as another comrade dubbed it.

  Then they’d moved on to other articles, philosophy, sociology, psychology, agreement reached pretty quickly on the line-up of the next issue, there was only the story to reject, they’d added an editorial condemning the fascist riots in Paris, when gangsters in the pay of the collaborator Tixier-Vignancourt had attacked Party headquarters, you were both happy and unhappy, unhappy with yourself and the others, and reasonably happy because you didn’t have to fear the consequences of feeling unhappy, a splendid example of chiasmus, some of your comrades tore their hair, but you are turning into a permanent chiasmus, all in all a good meeting of the editorial board, the deputy member of the Politburo had a few more fairly harsh words for the former Hungarian leadership and the corrections that were needed, and when the question arose of who would reply to the great writer to inform him that his story had been rejected, the comrade member of the Politburo said the story would be published, it is politically necessary that the story should be published, Hans Kappler, a bourgeois writer of great eminence who is coming over to us, a German social-democrat, at the very time when we want to show a united front with the socialists.

  In consequence of the wide-ranging exchange of views which has just taken place, the story will occupy a prime position, heading the line-up of the next issue, the publication date of said issue must accordingly be brought forward by two weeks, we can count absolutely on the cooperation of the printworkers’ union, after these closing remarks from the representative of the Politburo the proposal was agreed nem con, the deputy member of the Politburo was a sound man, he’d succeeded in stimulating the critical faculties of everyone present and strengthened their discipline.

  If you’d known this, you would have defended the story, on second thoughts, that would not have gone down well, what the members of a Politburo like is purity and discipline.

  And the best test of discipline comes when you’ve expressed an opinion which is the very opposite of the decision that is finally reached, you liked the story, you damned it, they were publishing it anyway, all was for the best, you lied and the Party did not agree with your lie, both of you in roles which fitted like a glove.

  In the train bowling along towards Switzerland you reread the story to the publication of which the comrade deputy attached such importance, and you still don’t have the smallest inkling of the reasons why it was chosen.

  At Chaumont, a man gets into the compartment, carrying a case, he glances at the woman, sits down opposite her, tweeds, brogues, a swaggering manner, she smiles at him, the man smiles back then looks across at you, it is not a stare but he continues looking, he looks you in the eye, thick neck, large ears, hands like dinner plates, hairy too, you feel uncomfortable, no wedding ring, your eye again catches his as though he’s not stopped staring the whole time you’ve been observing his hands, his eyes are very pale, his eyes are on you, the woman reads her magazine, he is looking at you.

  It’s oppressive, you look up, you catch his eye, his probing eye, he does not smile, he seems to be thinking about you, thinking about something, he never takes his eyes off you though he has no justification for doing so, he doesn’t bother with the woman, you are caught in his gaze, you bury your face in your magazine, there are women who give shirts as presents and in return get an electric coffee-grinder or a Hoover vacuum cleaner, there are no workers anywhere in the magazine, they only show workers when they are being fired on by Russian soldiers, the man makes you feel uncomfortable, you are nothing, but the woman had smiled at him, he does not look at her.

  You try but fail to think of something other than the way the man’s looking at you, you’ve tried reading but that didn’t work, the man’s hand grips the back of your neck, you’re with him on a bridge, he slams your face against a wall, hurts you, the other hand reaches for your trousers, his hands are hard, he does not look at the woman, he sits facing her but does not look at her, the basilica of Chaumont recedes into the distance, a man selling refreshments pushes the compartment door open, in your pocket your grip tightens on the coin the woman gave you, suddenly the man speaks to her, very direct, anything but polite, the woman chooses a fruit juice, she has accepted the man’s offer, the man has a beer.

  You tell the vendor you don’t want anything, the man holds up a note of large denomination to the vendor, the vendor can’t change it, why don’t you come back later, the woman laughs, takes out her purse, no, no, we’re living in a modern world now, the man gets cross, he looks very annoyed, the woman calms him with a smile, I’m enjoying this moment, allow me, all right, but only on condition that I pay you back later, the woman smiles at the man
as she pays.

  The vendor says thank you and is about to move on, you say just a moment, please, you hadn’t wanted anything but now you ask for a bottle of Vichy, and you pay with the warm, perfumed coin the woman gave you, you say keep the change, the vendor takes the metal cap off the bottle, gives the top a wipe, passes it to you, the man and the woman get out together at Mulhouse.

  It was late at night when you reached Klosters, the hotel owner couldn’t find your name on the register, he hurried off and woke his wife, she never told me we were expecting a young French gentleman, must have slipped her mind, but it’s all sorted out now, one night in the hotel, already at altitude, you can’t get off to sleep, the sheets are scratchy, you didn’t abandon the magazine after all, you know it by heart, in Budapest a Russian officer reaches for his holster as he strides towards the photographer’s lens, as if he was about to draw his pistol, ‘Camels, no other cigarette is so easy on the throat’, you’ve no more cigarettes, the soldiers in blue helmets have entered Alexandria, Eisenhower is a man with a Quaker background, he has allowed himself to be manipulated by the under-developed countries, the magazine dislikes Americans, not all of them, but it sure doesn’t like Eisenhower.

  He’s an ally who forces the French and the English to get out of Egypt, the magazine doesn’t care much for Cabot Lodge either, ‘On colonial matters, Monsieur Cabot Lodge has ideas, ideas which he didn’t get from the history of his native Massachusetts, where the price of Indian scalps ranged from a hundred dollars for the scalp of a warrior to five for the scalps of girls under ten, Monsieur Cabot Lodge believes that the new nationalist pressures are legitimate,’ there are also pictures of Guy Mollet and Anthony Eden, Eisenhower has refused to meet the French and English ministers who’d come for the UNO session, the President’s diary is too full to receive all the ministers of every delegation, ‘the Americans are treating us as if we were the Sudan,’ says the magazine.

  An American official is talking about the French and the English, these people want to rebuild their empires, they still think it’s 1910, they’ve got to learn, the Soviets had issued an ultimatum, they too could pounce on Alexandria and deal ‘strategically’ with the Franco-British fleet, for the military ‘strategically’ includes nuclear weapons, Puskas has not returned to Hungary, his wife has managed to flee to Austria, she phones him, at night, the Russian Vladimir Kuts has won the 5,000 and 10,000 metres in the Melbourne Olympics, in the 10,000, he makes twenty-three attempts to shake off Pirie, his great rival, twenty-three spurts in a 10,000 metres, the magazine shows him crossing the line but says nothing of the applause, as you turn the pages you find a high percentage of everything that’s been happening these last few weeks but from a rather stomach-turning angle, a point of view that you do not share but which you soon might, you look for details of the deaths of the three militants killed during the fascist demonstrations against the Party in Paris.

  You carry the names of the three men in your head, Ferrand, Le Guennec and Beaucourt, less has been said about Beaucourt because he was a member of Force Ouvrière, Le Guennec was wounded in the fascist attack on Party headquarters, on the Wednesday evening, he was a veteran of the Spanish Civil War, it was more complicated with Ferrand, he died of his injuries on the Wednesday evening, the same evening as Le Guennec, but with him it was a gun butt, at Montmartre Metro station, a gun butt, that meant the flying squad, at the time Humanité did not distinguish between the three, it just spoke of ‘victims of the fascist riot’ but didn’t say anything else about the flying squad.

  Next morning, you are cold, a long walk by yourself around Klosters, bus for Waltenberg in the early afternoon, an hour’s climb up a road which must have been built by the Devil himself, you’ve still got your magazine, you reread it knowing full well that doing so will make you feel sick but you don’t want to see the drop, another walk at the top, you feel tired, you shouldn’t have agreed to this meeting.

  *

  And at tea-time you are back at the Waldhaus sitting opposite Lilstein, without knowing how or why, and it is now a bit late to ask yourself that, and Lilstein has left you no time to think about your own position, he promised to tell you a tale, and he goes off on endless tangents, like some Oriental story-teller or an alcoholic:

  ‘With me, young gentleman of France, you won’t be a spectator but a one-hundred-per-cent participant. What you ask your common or garden spy to do is to occupy a place in the sun while remaining a shadow, which is in itself very difficult, but you, you shall do much, much more, you are about to realise an ideal, you will not be simply the eyes or ears which perceive the drama, you will be the actor, you will play the lead in the great scenes.’

  The woman with red hair has reappeared in the deserted lounge of the Waldhaus carrying a Linzer Torte on a large plate, she cuts two generous slices and warns that it is still hot, Lilstein thanks her in a quiet voice then carries on, removing his spectacles, an action which makes the look in his eyes childlike, avid.

  ‘An actor is exactly what I mean! And it gets even better: on occasions you will actually be the author of the drama, you’ll devise the whole thing, I pride myself that I never ever spy on events, I create them, and you’ll reach the stage where you don’t know if you are talking about some incident in which you participated or if you yourself created what you want to talk about, like some very keen scholar, like a creator, the artist of one’s own life, we are going to fight against the warmongers, and in order to do that you are going to become one of them, “a hardliner”, as the Americans say.’

  Lilstein stares at his portion of tart but does not touch it.

  ‘Are you getting the smell of vanilla and cinnamon? It’s so faint as to be almost undetectable, it’s absolutely essential not to be heavy-handed with these things, I promised you a story? No, I haven’t forgotten, it’s a story which means a great deal to me, it’s the story of my mother, I need time. I’ve already told you that in 1945 the Soviets had put her in a very nice two-roomed flat in Moscow. A fierce militant, starting in 1916, she’d taken up the cause in the days of Zimmerwald and Kienthal, during the pacifist congresses which were staged while the Great War raged around them, women could circulate more easily than men, does that ring any bells? An ardent militant and a brilliant doctor, she knew a lot of people, she was widely respected, two rooms all to herself in Moscow in 1945 was quite something, when I was recalled to Moscow after my little trip to Kazakhstan, I was so pleased to see her again, she showed me round Moscow, then I started to get very busy.

  ‘Moscow! I’d dreamed of it all through my youth, the future was already there, and I was made welcome, a few months of specialised training, then I was sent back to my own country, to my home town on the shores of the Baltic, I said goodbye to my mother and left for Rosmar, fog, dockside cranes, a handsome sea front and a quite superb brandy, finished your tea? Shall we order a small brandy apiece? No? The French don’t really much care for brandy. Never been to Rosmar? One day I’ll take you there and you can taste our brandy, ein Kümmel, two salmon on the label, double distillation, forty-five degrees of pleasure and guile, flecks of gold in a flaxen robe, but no vulgar overtones.

  Lilstein can wait no longer, he cuts a small piece of tart with his dessert fork, blows on it gently and consumes it slowly.

  ‘It’s still too hot, it doesn’t burn the mouth but it’s still too hot for you to get the full benefit of the aromas, when I was a boy, at Rosmar, I was always too impatient to wait for the tart to cool sufficiently, I really must take you to Rosmar, we’ve rebuilt everything, excellent, sometimes I wonder how we did it because at the end of the war the only people still there were the halt, the hand-wringers and the thieves.

  ‘Look, isn’t that superb? the lattice on the tart, it gives the design added strength, it holds the jam, and it’s not absolutely regular, that’s important, you should never forget to have enough scraps of short pastry left over to make the lattice for the tart. The day I got back to Rosmar, a Russian general sen
t for me, in his office there were shelves, thousands of index cards, not all of them recent, he loved flicking through them himself, out of the window you looked down on the world, 1947, let battle commence, Rosmar!

  ‘But let’s not get carried away, I was pissing my pants as I stood before the general, those were days when it was more useful to have been an officer in the Wehrmacht than a communist in one of Hitler’s camps, some memories are hard to live with, his office stank of orthodox pigsty, my Russian said “that lot need a boot up the arse!” His referring to the people of my home town as “that lot” presented me with a problem, if I also called them “that lot”, what did that make me? Different? They were the ones who wanted to make me different, they would have even gassed me or similar if that’s what it would have taken, the bastards. I wanted nothing to do with their difference nor with the Russian’s difference, I was working with the breath of the dead blowing down my neck, “a boot up the arse”, I was prepared to do that to the adults, I did it, you soon get sick of doing it, but the children? I wanted something new, “risen from the ruins and with face turned to the future”, to rebuild with the children, and I even put one over on the general.’

  Lilstein interrupts himself for a moment to look out of the window, a jackdaw, almost motionless, it is so near that you can make out the yellow of its eyes, it is flying into the wind, it pitches, rolls, adjusts its feathers to counteract the power of the rushing air.