Waltenberg

by Hedi Kaddour

  ‘You’ll find it on the shelves,’ the girl said frostily.

  Then, more winningly:

  ‘Unless you prefer it in the deluxe Pléiade edition?’

  ‘No, I’ll go on browsing,’ said de Vèze.

  He asked her where the crime novels were kept, crime fiction is simple, you just turn to the last page, not the back of the cover but the last page of the story, and you can see at a glance if it ends happily, then the first page, for how well the plot is set up, two basic conditions, and if he has time de Vèze skims two or three pages in the middle, to get the rhythm, the tone, as he did with the Kessel, ten years ago he was able to read an Ellroy last thing, even the murkiest of them. He can’t do that any more, nowadays he can read them during the day, especially when he’s travelling, but not the evening, in the morning an Ellroy works well, a whack with a baseball bat in the crotch or a headless woman, it inoculates you against pity and terror, you shut the book and you can go forth and confront the denizens of the new day with a soul that’s been fortified.

  But no way can he read The Black Dahlia late at night, so how did you manage it ten years ago? Ten years ago you could read James Hadley Chase, in one of those crime novels this guy has a model train layout, he rapes a woman on it, the woman could feel a part of the station dig into her shoulder, it must have been Miss Callaghan Comes to Grief, someone punished a girl by pouring turps over her pubis, it took her a few moments to grasp what was happening, the idea is to rid yourself of feelings of pity and terror with turpentine tales before you drift off into sleep.

  You didn’t like sleep, you fell into it still clutching a James Hadley Chase or a James Ellroy, bur nowadays you can no longer cope with violent crime thrillers before going to sleep, it means you no longer need to be inoculated against your dreams, you’re not afraid of sleep any more, that’s progress, so why do you spend an hour lingering in front of your books every night? you’re not afraid of your dreams any more and you can’t get off to sleep, and in the morning you find it harder and harder to get started, you stay up too late, you’re losing your inner buoyancy, hundreds of bloody books within easy reach and you can’t even find one in the whole mountain to keep your pillow company for half an hour, except, for the umpteenth time, Les Secrets de la princesse de Carignan.

  De Vèze stops by the water’s edge, life was good, it was inevitable that Bantam Bum would have turned up at the Embassy sooner or later, no, it had all started much earlier, much earlier, one day in Moscow or Berlin or Prague a bureaucrat had pulled out de Vèze’s file and added a note recommending that he should be made the target of an operation, the note was circulated, it rose higher and higher until it reached the level at which the decision was taken.

  Alternatively, someone high-ranking said find me a target, and the order went all the way down to the minor bureaucrat who sent de Vèze’s file back up, and it was de Vèze who had beaten off the competition from other contending files, something to be proud of, he was made a target, he’s certain of it, they used him for a propaganda operation, otherwise they’d never have allowed him so much freedom in Moscow, with Vassilissa, the French security services won’t admit it but he is certain he has been the object of what is called a ‘treatment’.

  And now the French too are giving him the ‘treatment’, but as if he were a minor story, whereas he is certain he was at the centre of the plot, it ought to have been enough to leave him at his post in Moscow and see what happened, they might have learned a great many things, they might have made the people on the other side believe that France had known all along, that all they’d been given was duff intelligence, they could have turned the operation round, but no, the clique now in charge took the opportunity to eliminate a Gaullist, the new clique, the heirs of Pétain and the OAS, they’d wanted his hide for a long, long time.

  Or again: it was the mole himself who’d fingered him, that’s it, had the mole run into him one day in Singapore? In Moscow? Or here in Paris? It was he who had written the note, who had flagged up de Veze’s name for a possible propaganda operation, de Vèze had been under surveillance since the middle of the 1960s, and one day he’d been used to protect the mole, de Vèze spoke about all this in Paris, he had been listened to, highly ingenious, one of the committee members said it was the stuff of high art, thinking of how to protect the mole even as he was being planted, with de Vèze as circuit-breaker and Berthier as fallback, and anyway the whole thing was a shambles.

  And now? go away? or write a book he’d want to read? not enough money to buy a boat, I don’t even have enough money to live off, I’ve resigned, it’ll be years before I start getting my pension, someone cannier would have negotiated some sort of paid part-time contract, have to look for a job in business, won’t have time to write.

  Thirty years, all of them defunct, de Vèze is now level with the Petit Pont, no, the Pont au Double, you’re mixing them up, the Petit Pont is the one before, the one that leads to the Hôtel-Dieu, the wind sweeps the slates of the buildings clean, their roof-ridges too, everything is clear and bright, a man stands in profile, facing the river, grey overcoat, very worn, houndstooth cap, an old man, virtually a tramp, he leans on his stick looking distinguished, his eyes are fixed on the opposite bank, Notre-Dame.

  De Vèze halts, thinks he is closer to this man than to his own youth, and if I’ve got time to look at him it’s because I am now nothing, the currently powerful right has got rid of a Gaullist, even the Americans must have been consulted, for de Vèze it’s the end of everything, he is certain that his Minister and the President wanted to keep the Americans happy, in particular the CIA man they talk about, Walker, the whatsit-thrower, they gave him the head of a Gauilist to keep him happy.

  The end of everything, de Vèze wonders if he should try to get even, if I get even will my revenge have also been planned by whoever landed me in this mess?

  At the far end of the Pont au Double, just before the square in front of Notre-Dame, a number of teenagers are roller-skating, they’ve set up rows of empty Coca-Cola cans, they slalom at crazy speeds through the cans, hardly ever knock one over, it’s virtuoso stuff, they are virtuosos.

  Still facing the Seine, the old man has not moved, grey coat, stick, cap, almost a tramp, suddenly he cries out:

  ‘On les aura! We’ll get them!’

  Chapter 7

  1965

  The Uses of Croquet

  In which Max Goffard meets up once more with his author in Singapore and recalls the Riff wars.

  In which de Vèze speaks of Bir Hakeim and decides to seduce a young woman who reads novels.

  In which you rejoin Lilstein at the Waldhaus Hotel so that you might share with him the scruples of a Paris-based spy.

  In which Lilstein reassures you by relating the history of Tukhachevsky.

  Singapore, July 1965

  In traditional organisations, self-esteem always begins as a provocation.

  René Fraimond, La Fin du monde rural

  The grounds of a large house, pre-dinner drinks are being served.

  The guest of honour, the man de Vèze admires is not here yet. There are a good half-dozen of them waiting for him on the lawn, the French Consul at Singapore and his lady, two other diplomats both over thirty, one grey with a beard like a monkey’s arse, the other pink in a salmon shirt with a double-barrelled Christian name. Also just arrived are a young historian very much in vogue, Philippe Morel, and his wife Muriel.

  The most striking figure in the group is a man relatively advanced in years, quick movements, old-fashioned monocle, very sprightly, brings to mind a comic character in a play, the engaging con man, jug ears, he plays to the gallery while they wait, he has introduced himself to de Vèze: I am Baron de Clappique.

  De Vèze would never have believed that there had actually been such a person as Clappique.

  ‘It’s not his real name,’ whispers the Consul, ‘actually he’s a journalist, Max Goffard, he’s promised me he will behave himself, but he’s gett
ing restless, he came expressly to meet our guest of honour, spring a surprise on him, I thought it would be a good idea to bring them together, they’ve known each other for ages, but our Monsieur Goffard has decided he wants to be called Clappique, I’m afraid there might be trouble.’

  The journalist steps up his brusqueness.

  ‘Ears, lie down! They are radar dishes not cauliflowers, for years I was called ‘Cauliflower’, I fought the first war with these cauliflowers, it was modern technology that saved me, I went through the second with my radar receivers, the war-correspondent’s ultimate weapon! ah yes, I remember the soldiers in their red trousers, the summer of 1914, the Cossacks already close to Berlin, the Germans surrendering for bread and butter, and yesterday morning Johnson decided to unleash his B52s on Vietnam, it’s a funny old business!’

  Everyone on the lawn is outraged, the Americans haven’t understood a thing, they’ve got to be stopped one way or another, or at least restrained.

  The Consul has told de Vèze in confidence that the journalist fought all through the First World War and that in 1918 he was the only survivor of his whole Company.

  ‘But the experience didn’t turn him into a stay-at-home, did you know he was also one of the survivors of the Hindenburg disaster? Not easy, not easy at all. Between the two world wars he wandered round the colonies, Morocco especially, the Riff wars in the 1920s, they called him “African” Goffard. Ask him to tell you about it,’ said the Consul, drawing on his meerschaum pipe, ‘then maybe he’ll stop calling himself Clappique.’

  At seventy, Max Goffard is back in Asia again, working for a news agency.

  ‘Yeah,’ says he, ‘I don’t know if you’re like me but I can’t take Paris, the banks of the Seine, for a more than a week, that’s my limit, so off I toddle to Vietnam, the last of the colonial wars, I’ll have seen them all, all their struggles for independence since the Riff, the inter-war years, too right, that was a real war too, they were in a sense the forerunners, with some habits left over from the old days, not in the best taste, Vietnam is the end of an era, I’ve come full circle, I also wanted to go to Peking, but no visa, and no one intervened to help me get one, I’m not liked everywhere, people complain that I cast a shadow.’

  A smile, Max’s eyes swivel towards the garden gate:

  ‘But I’ll get even!’

  While they wait for the guest of honour to arrive, the Consul’s wife suggests a game of croquet, there was no time for her husband to do more than glare at her, the others acquiesced, fancy, the best she can come up with is a game of croquet saying it was the latest thing in Singapore.

  Max was enthusiastic:

  ‘It’s starting up again, 1914 all over, no, ’25 or ’26, I did play in 1914 but the last time was ’26, in Rabat, in the gardens of the Residence, Lyautey’s place, a great moment, I’ll have to tell you about Lyautey, you know in those days I talked a lot with our beloved Lyautey, who’d overstayed his welcome, about the colonies, the Riff war. He was all Indochina, he’d interrupt me and say, Clappique, I’m an Asia man, absolutely! And I’d have to listen, and fascinating it was too, now and then I’d be permitted to say a word about the Riff, anyway, until he gets here, everyone look to their mallets!’

  Max has explained the rules to the beginners, the Morels and the two diplomats, the grey one and the pink one: the nine hoops stuck in the lawn, the ball you hit with a mallet, but please not as in golf, you barbarian, watch me, face forward, legs apart, mallet swinging like a pendulum between the legs, eyes front, then a smart, sharp tap, clack, taking turns, in teams of two, through the nine arches, yes nine, I didn’t make the rules, (to the pink diplomat) no sniggering! nine hoops, in order, and then turn for home, Rabat, though, was a different kettle of fish!

  Max is starting to feel hot, he swings his arms about, shuffles his feet, blinks a lot, no, he says to de Vèze, I never liked being called ‘The African’, in those days, during the Riff wars, I wasn’t very good at my trade, shush! not a word, at times Max goes off into a kind of trance and ignores all and sundry, he lets his eyes settle on the ocean, the lawn, the trees, not very good at my trade at all.

  In one corner of the garden, on the side nearest the sea, there is a twisted knot, which looks beyond unravelling, of roots which turn into branches or trunks, branches that take root in the soil, a tangle of trees and leaves so intricately intertwined that you can’t make out what’s what, your eye returns to the lawn, the Consul said that his garden is a bottomless pit, you stop tending, draining, uprooting for just one week, and nature sneaks back, puts out shoots, you can’t see it happening, and then one fine morning you find yourself with creepers swarming all over the veranda, and as for the lawn, don’t ask! a very fragile thing is a real lawn, the soil, the climate, a true, even green, cut with shears once a week by gardeners on their knees.

  Max surveys the garden, a large white patch stands out against the green, nine hoops, ages ago a chap in a white djellaba is playing croquet, only has one eye, in 1925 in the gardens of the Residence at Rabat, the man’s right eye is fine, he’s a quick learner, he plays well, he’s one of the finest shots in the whole of the Atlas, old man, lost his eye in a shoot-out with our side, now he’s one of us, one of the best formal surrender ceremonies we ever organised, you should have seen the way he handed over his rifle! Anyone would have thought he was giving it to us to clean, us the overlords! Pity that times change, a terrific do, yes that’s really the scent of orange blossom, 1925, end of an era that no one sees coming, the moment when Lyautey is about to be pushed on to the sidelines by Pétain, but no one sees it coming.

  Spit-roasted mutton, no, braised lamb, at the Residence the spit-roasts are generally left to the tourists, we have more sophisticated palates, a baked-mud oven, a very fierce flame, when the fire begins to make hot embers a bucket of water is thrown on to them, two or three sucking lambs are laid on the cinders, the oven is closed and made airtight, it’s left to cook for ten or twelve hours, the meat is incomparably tender, Lyautey is very partial to a game of croquet, see how considerate he is with the man with one eye, a government school, strategy, alliances, your shot, you’ll understand.

  In Morocco at that time things are not going at all well, so play a game of croquet, make an effort not to gloat too much over Spanish setbacks in the northern Riff, thirteen thousand hidalgos killed in two nights at the start of the revolt, they never recovered from that, lots of prisoners, the privates, had their throats cut; for the officers the Riffians demanded ransoms with fairly short deadlines, Lyautey likes watching his guests eat, Moroccan-style, with their fingers, looks down rather on those who use both hands and the ones who guzzle their food and leave nothing on their plates, it was better to be a prisoner of Abd el-Krim’s regulars, with them you didn’t get much to eat but at least they tried to abide by modern laws, whereas the others, the not-so-regulars who fought only when the enemy crossed their land, had no idea of how to treat prisoners.

  The ones whose throats they did not cut were tied head down to a stake, then a fire was lit at the foot of the stake, to some they dangled the prospect of the fiery furnace and to the rest they talked of paradise, mind you, our soldiers didn’t take many prisoners either, photos of heads lined up in a row on a low wall by grinning squaddies, they send stuff like that home, when they kept a prisoner, it was to make him talk, and their letters to their mates, yesterday we occupied a village, bints to bust your tackle. Lyautey’s officers did not care for that sort of thing.

  On the lawn of the Consulate, de Vèze has noticed the historian’s wife, yellow dress, bare shoulders, wispy floating material, he tries to approach her, a reflex, for something to do until the guest of honour comes, because she’s married, because he wants her to look at him, she’s not a tease, not very tall, almost plump, light auburn hair, pointed nose, quick movements, not my type, it would be a change.

  And the historian-husband has twigged what de Vèze is up to, like the dog which instinctively positions himself between its
mistress and the passer-by, he spends his time coming between de Vèze and his wife, accidentally as it were, like Moine, Albert Moine, who also went to school at the Lycée Montaigne, Moine is in a restaurant with his wife, she is ten times better-looking than him, one day he was seen with this woman, no one ever knew how he’d managed it, dark hair, beautiful and, as in Brave New World, pneumatic, with eyes that shine. The moment he sees de Vèze coming towards their table Moine gets up, round face, small round glasses which make him look like Beria, he stands in front of the table, says hello, shakes hands, darling this is my friend Henri de Vèze, Éliane, my wife, it’s twenty years ago since that happened but you can still hear Moine’s intonation, very refined, ‘my wife’, intended to indicate that you’re not such close friends as all that, he smiles, Moine knows you only too well, he stood in your path, with his left hand extended holding his napkin to remind you that he has better things to do than talk to you, no way will you be invited to join them, show’s over, the women have been shared out and you sense that if you try to force the pace the distinguished husband will grab you and wrestle you to the ground, it comes to the same with the historian and his wife.

  All de Vèze can do is glance at the young woman out of the corner of his eye, plumpish, vivacious, against a background of greenery, a weird display of vegetation obviously assembled by a collector who put tropical plants next to a few species imported from Cornwall, the ones that have survived, for broadly speaking European plants need winter, a proper winter.