Waltenberg

by Hedi Kaddour

  Max has picked the croquet teams: the Consul and his wife, no, said the Consul, I have to keep an eye out for the arrival of our guest, must stick to protocol, very well, said Max, de Vèze I’ll inflict you on our Consuless.

  The Consul’s wife is a tiny lady with a downcast mouth, a flat chest, ‘Consuless’ has not gone down at all well with her, Madame Morel, Max went on, you keep your husband who likes history, but let’s have no domestic scenes, croquet is a less bloodthirsty game than conjugal tennis but can also have its moments, and the two inseparable great diplomatists of tomorrow, the pink and the grey, can stay together, I shall supervise, he surveys the scene and smiles, the first plays take place against a background of trees, the fan-palms, the Perrier bottleshaped palm trees topped with thornless branches, and other successively taller palms which lift the whole space up towards the sky, why does Singapore look so small today? Nothing like what it was back then, maybe because I was younger? The same hoops, maybe not the bottle-shaped trees, but the same wooden balls, the same mallets, Rabat, lawn and gravel, same game, but it feels so cramped today.

  Even the gravel in the paths doesn’t seem of the same standard as in ’25, you aren’t up to the same standard either, the chippings are less uniform, not as well maintained, six small stones and a bigger one, a full-scale revolt, six small stones, we left the Residence at Rabat with its perfectly raked gravel, and the jacaranda trees, I’ve not seen any jacarandas here in Singapore, did four hundred kilometres of twisting roads, and then we were in the high jebel, confronted by more small stones, and you do not understand.

  It’s a game, explained the agent for Native Affairs who accompanies Max to the Riffian village, six small stones in one hand, with the other the little girl tosses the big one in the air, and before she catches it she has to put one of the small stones on the ground, and so on, I throw the big one up, I grab a small one, I put it down, I catch the big one before it hits the ground, I throw it up again, I grab a small one and put it next to the first one, when she gets to the end she starts again, she tosses the big stone in the air but this time she puts two little ones down, not together, one after the other, quickly, while the big stone stays aloft you look up, you keep your eye on it so it doesn’t bang you on the nose, and the girls who manage twos can go on to throw the big stone up again and pick up and set down three little stones one after the other every time they throw the big stone up, the longer they go on the harder it gets, the likelier it is that they’ll get hit in the face, no, I never saw it played myself, the agent for Native Affairs described it to me because on two occasions I’d seen little heaps of stones on the ground, at the entrance to a village that had been bombed, there were also traces of hopscotch and rain maidens.

  An ideal husband, murmurs de Vèze as he observes Morel, worse than Moine, worse than a guard dog, a full back, a very close marker, never a moment to get anything going with the wife.

  It’s Morel’s turn first, he hits his ball very quickly, rejoins his wife, Morel, you hit it too hard, cries Max, you’ve gone through the second hoop without going through the first, you’ll have to come back through hoop two the other way, before you can go through hoop one, then you’ll go through two again, the right way this time, otherwise it doesn’t count, Morel protests, the rules mean he’ll have to negotiate the second hoop three times, and de Vèze has stayed close to his wife; it’s quite usual, says Max, you have to clear the backlog, you’ve racked up a number of errors, you’re allowed to clear them, this is a very honest game, especially if you strike the ball properly instead of poking it cautiously with the mallet like our friend here! Max nods towards the grey diplomat, you’re pushing not hitting, it’s against the rules, foul stroke, you’ve got to make a noise, old man, a recognisable sound, wooden mallet against wooden ball, a distinctive ‘clack’, you went through the hoop in the right direction, but it wasn’t a legal stroke, naughty naughty, you were seen, so you’ll have to play the hoop again from the other side, so back you go!

  De Vèze watches the young woman, her breasts move a little when she leans forward to play her shot but stay pretty firmly in place, that’s the good thing about girls with fuller figures, young flesh, elastic, on a plate, a woman to spend a siesta with, the woman is lying naked on de Vèze, she straddles him, he takes her breasts in his hands, she smiles, arches her back, and Max, who has observed what de Vèze is up to and the husband who keeps getting in his way, finds the spectacle hugely entertaining; Monsieur Morel there’s something I wanted to ask you, he gives the husband no option, don’t you think there’s a peculiar smell, comes in waves, acidic, it’s not coming from the town, de Vèze tries to use the opportunity to make a masterly approach to the wife, and then Max, with one hand on Morel’s shoulder, calls to de Vèze, can’t you see it’s your strike next, whatever are you thinking of?

  De Vèze hits a ball, just goes through the motions, to be free of it, but Max detains him: tell Morel here how it works, contemporary history, events we have lived through, that’ll get him out of his precious seventeenth century, but not now, good, now listen to me everybody, all you’ve had up to this point are the basic rules, they define a game suitable for morons, but there’s more to croquet than that!

  Croquet is a noun but also a verb, and ‘croqueting’ is precisely what makes the game human, aggressive, vicious, with its alliances, reprisals, betrayals, double-dealing, reconciliations, yes, patching things up, what does ‘to croquet’ mean, ladies and gentlemen? It means you are entitled to hit your opponent’s ball into the sky-blue yonder, using his, as in pétanque, your opponent thinks he’s nearly home then thwack, it’s into the long grass with him, you’re already past the turning post and making for home, you meet a player who’s been held up, a dawdler, an innocent and thwack! the innocent knocks your ball all the way to Pétaouchnok, and you wonder if his innocence was really innocence, so, on with the game, it’s all about strategy, shush! no talking, play’s started, I’ll be keeping an eye open.

  Max smiles as he watches the first efforts of his pupils, in the end it’s all about innocence, mustn’t let anyone anticipate your next move, a clear look in the eye, a smooth lawn, Pétain’s air of innocence, at Rabat.

  Lyautey never saw it coming, the hero of Verdun disembarks, inspection visit to Morocco, because Abd el-Krim’s Riffians have started to harass our lines of defence on the Ouergha, and the great leader of Verdun knocks his ball gently so that it rolls to a stop touching Lyautey’s, which gives him the right to croquet, first touch then you can croquet, innocent smiles, may I, Marshal? Be my guest, Marshal! Pétain tight-croquets and Lyautey ends up in Pétaouchnok, semi-retirement, return to France, no one there to meet him off the boat, makes for Paris, the only thing waiting for me in the rue des Saints-Pères was a letter from the inland revenue, a demand for unpaid taxes.

  Later a consolation prize, chair of the Colonial Exhibition committee, at the time I didn’t see it coming, no one saw it, Lyautey didn’t want a war in the Riff, you negotiate, you play for time, you divide and isolate and win back hearts and minds, I do note that the building of the Arabo-Berber School has fallen further behind schedule, so I’m asking you to take a personal interest in the work, you will report to me direcdy every two weeks.

  A school for the sons of chiefs, the rebels want the Riff to be a republic, we won’t give it to them, but we can negotiate a form of autonomy with allegiance to the Sultan of Rabat, ceremony, white cloak, parasols, black slaves, Abd el-Krim will kiss his hand, it’s negotiable, he’d go to kiss the hand, and the Sultan would take back his hand, no he must actually kiss his hand, and then the Sultan will confer the accolade on him.

  In receiving the accolade, Abd el-Krim must kiss his shoulder, no, no kiss, which would you prefer? a man who pretends to kiss the hand and will keep his word? Or another man who will lick the back of the hand, the palm of the hand, the other hand and afterwards hatches some underhand plot? Lyautey was seriously tempted to allow Abd el-Krim to become firmly established, so as
to boot the Spaniards out of Morocco, teach them a lesson for staying neutral in 1914, the sky was bluer, more intense than in Asia today, fewer clouds, a scent of orange trees and just as much of a shambles, colonial troops getting a trouncing from peasants who pour down from their mountains, not proper mountains really, one morning the call goes out to the harka, twenty men from the tents of each douar, a couple of douars per lejf, no precise figures, a few leffi per part of a tribe, plus a tribe, it soon adds up to hundreds and thousands of men.

  A mass mobilisation, an army of men who have no leaders but know each other, here they come down from the hills, I hang on for dear life, I am overrun, swept along by the rush down a slippery slope, the meat at the Residence was succulent, Lyautey watching his guests feeding off lambs served whole.

  His own officers tore off pieces with a light, almost mechanical flick of the wrist, three fingers of the right hand, without looking, choicest morsels must go to the guests, to the chiefs who have come to be honoured or to the Parisians who do not know what to do with the titbits which are set politely down on the rim of the large dish in front of them, red wine is served, to it ice is added, the ladies from Paris laugh very loudly, gorgeous ceremonial tents, the largest for the greatest personages and then lesser groups under progressively more rustic tents, it’s protocol, first the dishes go round to high-ranking officials, next to low-ranking officials, then to their subordinates, and when they have been poked at for the fifth or sixth time they reach the attendants and, finally, the women in the compound at the back.

  ‘Look at that, a show of breathtaking menace,’ says Max, pointing to a galloping herd of leaden clouds over Singapore, ‘there’s going to be a deluge, dear people.’

  ‘Not so,’ says Morel, ‘the wind off the sea prevents the clouds from massing, it won’t come to anything much.’

  ‘And the tree hasn’t stirred,’ adds the Consul.

  From a tin of Capstan he has taken two small flakes of tobacco, which he proceeds to rub in his palm before filling the bowl of his pipe with it.

  ‘Tree?’ asks Morel.

  ‘That one,’ says the Consul, gesturing to a tree as supple as a large papyrus, ‘when a real storm is brewing it closes up, but it hasn’t stirred, so we’re in the clear.’

  ‘So come along ladies, play!’ Max orders, ‘since such is the will of the tree!’

  Singapore, those were great times, some right, and the rest were wrong, those who had bombers were wrong to drop bombs, and those who kept to the forest, the paddy-fields, the night, were wrong not to negotiate. And those who’d spent forty years trying to understand, that is the English and the French, could play croquet in Singapore as in days of yore and tell each other that at last they’d been proved right.

  *

  This time it was you who reached the Waldhaus ahead of schedule, you arrived from Paris the day before, you stayed the night in the valley in the village hotel, the Prätschli, and next morning you took the cable car up to the Waldhaus. You are uneasy, you have a premonition, you are sitting by a window and you see Lilstein coming towards you through the lounge, stiff as a poker, moving as awkwardly as a student, he smiles, greets you, rubs his hands together and comes straight out with:

  ‘They’ve screwed up, young gentleman of France, I know that they’ve taken the decision, they’re going to bomb Vietnam, carpet bombing, Johnson will make the announcement two weeks from now, you can tip the wink to your friend the Minister, it will give him a chance to make a prediction, it will do his reputation no harm!

  ‘The Americans have fouled up, they can drop as many bombs as they like, it’s a quagmire, they can fight a war from the air, but the more bombs they drop the less they’ll be capable of establishing themselves on the ground, and they’ll go home with their tails between their legs, as your side says, your de Gaulle is right about this, plus the two of us and a few of our friends, we’re working to make reason prevail, reason will cut through this whole mess, but we’ve got to give it a helping hand, like at the time of Cuba, this isn’t espionage, it’s diplomacy, discreet, why so glum? This information is worth a pot of money, they’re going to start bombing in two weeks, all’s well! Let’s just carry on.

  ‘We’ll need to be cautious, not go too fast, do nothing robust, just look at what we’ve achieved in ten years, you’re no longer a nobody, Cuba, I gave you good information, “the Soviets will withdraw their missiles”, you used it to submit a first-rate analysis of the situation, your friend the Minister liked it, today he is respected and he is grateful to you, not excessively so, he has a talent for forgetting services rendered, but he knows you can be useful to him, he regurgitated your analysis in a full Cabinet, with de Gaulle in the chair, hold firm whatever the cost, be strong, he’s no Gaullist but in a tight corner he’s sound, stand up to Khrushchev, give full backing to the Americans, Khrushchev will withdraw his missiles, you saw the result, we forced death on to the back foot, that’s our only reward, so let’s carry on, with all due humility.

  ‘Our only reward is the outcome, your friend backed the Americans and he impressed de Gaulle, it must be done, and moreover comrade Nikita, a dangerous amateur, got the chop, nothing drastic, a five-roomed flat in Moscow, not to be sneezed at, and when people in the street ask him how things are, Nikita says, so-so, amateurs get the chop, I’m not sure that between Beria and him we gained much by the change, yes, I recall very clearly hearing you talking about the various deaths of Beria, you have a good memory, three deaths was it? no, at least six, and you are quite right, in the notes the doctor made about my mother’s ravings the name of Beria did not appear.

  ‘Not once. At first I thought it was the ultimate precaution, we’ll have to come back to that, Beria, a sadist, a psychopath, a man sexually obsessed, the Russians love to frighten themselves by kicking their corpses in the ribs. If the Soviet Union is the kind of country that could be dominated by a man like him, then it isn’t much of a country, or else Beria is much more than a man who ripped the panties off women, just think, Peter the Great died before he became Peter the Great and it was the great nobles took it on themselves to write the story of his life, or take the Emperor Augustus, he died before being Emperor Augustus, and it was Antony who wrote his portrait, Octavius the psychopath, which he most certainly was, like Beria, who was nothing like Augustus, or Iago, picture Iago, it’ll cheer you up.’

  Lilstein’s digressions are of course intended to cheer you up and also to impose his ways on you. You’ve decided that you would go on looking grim to make him ask you what was wrong, you’ve thought hard about what you are going to say to him, that you’ve just reread Faust, that it’s not working any more, and then he manages to make you listen again to his anecdotes or fantasies, by the time he’s finished it’ll be too late, he will have taken you by the hand once more, you will want to speak but won’t be able to get the tone right, you’ll sound hesitant or brusque, and appear to be missing the point.

  ‘Picture Iago,’ Lilstein goes on, ‘an Iago who turns into an enlightened minister, an expert in maritime growth, he dies twenty years after that unfortunate business with the handkerchief, mourned by all, a statue facing out to sea for the centuries to come, I have a very bold hypothesis: what does Beria do when he succeeds Yezhov? What does Beria do after Stalin dies? He was always close to Bukharin’s programme, a man of the right, work, profitability, a few market mechanisms, the Party worries about ideology and leaves the managers to manage things, let’s have done with anti-Semitism and all that “Greater Russia” rhetoric, when he died some of the people implicated in the white-collar plot had to wait two years before they were freed, simply because the order for their release was signed by Beria.

  ‘Each time he was fully in charge of security he ordered the doors to be opened, and in ’53 he goes very far, he is ready to accept a form of German reunification on condition that it stays neutral, he has a clear idea of what growth means and what nationalities are, we’ll speak of that later, yes, it’s dangerous to
talk about such matters, even today, that is why they went to so much trouble to kill Beria, one death but several versions, we can’t make different models of the same motor car, but when it comes to death there’s no one to touch us.

  ‘So there is a fourth version, more fanciful, Beria attends a party at the Polish Embassy, shield decorated with a white eagle on a red background, we can add without fear of error that the Ambassador’s wife has skin like a peach, and dimples and that she’s wearing Chanel, Beria came in his own car, with Voroshilov and Bulganin, first-rate cuisine, meat that melts in the mouth, vast amounts of drink, Polish vodka obviously, end of the reception, they drive off into the night, the car, Beria, Bulganin, Voroshilov, everyone’s pissed, they go to the Lubyanka, to Beria’s flat, a drunken farce, with Malinovski and Konev in the car behind, Beria’s driver has been changed, he’s a colonel, three minutes later Beria is standing before a court presided over by Marshal Konev, judged, sentenced, executed in a cellar with which he was intimately acquainted.

  ‘There are other versions, I’ll tell you those another day, stories of bullets in the back put there by his friends, but we run no such risk, we trust each other.

  ‘And then times started to change, between the two of us we made terror take a step back, we contributed in our modest way to push back the shadows of unnatural death, and your Minister friend cannot dispense with your conversation, we are moving forward, so you’re rereading Faust? Now why did you tell me that?

  ‘Because you have doubts? It’s only to be expected, you’re French and if you had fewer grandiose sentiments you’d have fewer doubts.’

  *

  The wives of the Consul and Morel are having cross words over a hoop, the young woman has quickly got the idea that you mustn’t let people get away with anything: