Waltenberg

by Hedi Kaddour

  ‘You went through four the wrong way, didn’t you?’

  Max, Morel and de Vèze watch them, the pink diplomat joins them, bald, ruddy complexion, an inane, unforgiving expression in his eye, a face descending in ledges towards his thick lips, he lisps:

  ‘It’s a very feminine game.’

  ‘You look worried,’ says Max.

  The pink diplomat whines:

  ‘It’s so hard finding honest domestic help in Singapore, they don’t know anything and they steal. There’s this one I’ve got, this morning, in order to make him return a dinner jacket the police had to teach him a harsh lesson, like the English do, with a cane, it was painful to see, eighteen he was, skin very smooth, hardly smelled at all, for a minute he didn’t understand what was happening, held face down on the table, he started struggling, they tied his feet to the legs of the table, white buttocks, he confessed at the fourth stroke but the sergeant said to go up to fifteen, I didn’t care about the jacket, but you’ve got to have law and order, as the Anglo-Saxons say.’

  The diplomat’s chin rises and points to the horizon, tautening the fat on his neck which settles back into its regular folds when his chin comes down again.

  Weird, de Vèze thinks, a sodomite singing the praises of law and order. They do it as a cover, a friend of his told him one day, but de Vèze thinks there might be more to it than that, there must be a visceral pleasure to be got from defending law and order in a society which puts you behind bars each time it catches you with a squaddie in a public toilet, de Vèze has known officers who were, as they say, limp-wristed but nevertheless laughed like drains, and quite genuinely, whenever they heard repeated what Clemenceau said about Lyautey, ‘at last we’ve got a general with balls up his arse, though unfortunately they’re not his’, as though they gladly accepted the fact that they had two existences, one led in the dancing dark and the other in the light of day, in a society which dealt ruthlessly with the dancing shadows of which they were the – often heroic – guardians.

  Morel, followed by the pink diplomat, walks away from Max and de Vèze towards his wife.

  ‘They make a lovely couple,’ says Max to de Vèze, ‘I mean the husband and wife, but she must find him a bit of a bore at times, even if he does take her round all the embassies, did you know he used to be a member of the Communist Party? Actually, he’s not the only one here this evening who came up via the Party, not you, you never had the time, anyway all these young people here this evening did, yes, I’m very well informed, it’s my job, there isn’t one of these youngsters who resisted the temptation, even the bearded chap in grey, likewise his pink chum, and maybe the young woman too, but Budapest, ’56, went deep, they all jumped ship and then explained more or less why to the “bourgeois press”, yes, I was there too, Budapest, I’ve seen a bit of everything.

  ‘The hardest part? With those Russian tanks you’re spoiled for choice. But if you want the biggest funk I was ever in: youngsters, a bridge over the Danube, just before the Russians arrived, a gang of kids, none more than thirteen, nobody knew where they came from, looked dirt poor, I was talking to passers-by who were carrying loaves of bread home, one of them shouted laughingly to the kids: aren’t you a bit young to be playing with those? A quick burst of gunfire, the kids had sub-machine guns, the man I’d been talking to lying there in his own blood, breathing his last, the kids continue pointing their guns at us, they have the eyes of chicken-thieves.

  ‘The people who had loaves put them down on the ground for the kids to see and then we all backed away, very slowly, you couldn’t get to those kids, I’ve seen as much real war as you, but I never felt as scared as I did that day, so anyway, Budapest, for these young people who are here with us this evening, marked the break with their classless dreams, and today they’re all Gaullists or congregate in the centre or belong to the “wait-and-see” brigade, that’s why they think so much of this man who’s keeping us waiting, he did exactly what they did, or rather they did what he did, though without the risks and the fanfares.

  ‘Me? I never really felt tempted, never read Marx, I prefer Shakespeare, history always barks like a mad dog. By the way, Ambassador, were you aware that we’ve met before? Obviously you don’t remember.’

  Max leaves de Vèze, zigzags his way across the lawn, the sky has cleared, now and then the wind carries a few fading drops of rain or sea-spray, in the distance a few weak attempts at rainbows, a pale look to everything, the ocean and the moist air dilute and flatten, absence of anything to catch the eye, of high ground, ars, in Morocco there was more contrast, they called it ars abu lhawa, the clouds drift away, a still damp sun, the brown land shiningly wet, a rainbow against the sky, very bright, the agent for Native Affairs had translated for Max, ars is marriage, so ‘the jackal’s wedding’, the jackal is truly their animal, their Reynard the Fox, and it also defines their politics, a jackal and a lion were sleeping on the edge of a ravine, the jackal says to the lion move over please, and the sleeping lion starts to fall over the edge, at the last moment he reaches out with his claws, pulls the jackal’s tail clean off and as he falls cries I’ll recognise you when we meet again! The jackal, minus tail, lopes off, gathers all the other jackals together, says let’s go and eat apricots, they reach the apricot-tree, how do we get at the apricots? I’ll tie all your tails to the apricot-tree, you shake it, then we’ll eat the apricots, so he ties all their tails, then goes to keep watch while they shake the tree. He races back shouting, hunters! dogs! every man for himself!

  And off he runs. All the jackals pull so hard that their tails come off, the lion catches our jackal, you made me fall, I pulled your tail off, our jackal says that all jackals are tail-less, send for them, they all come, now which one will you recognise?

  The pulled-off tail is a political fable, Monsieur Goffard, here, as soon as a jackal loses his tail he does everything he can to ensure that he’s not the only one it happens to, that’s how you get them exactly where you want them.

  Max rejoins the young woman, takes her by the elbow with the familiarity that is allowed to men of his age, he brushes Morel to one side.

  ‘We must talk rags.’

  He whisks her off from under de Vèze’s nose and just as de Vèze is about to say something, Max steers her towards the Consul’s wife, leaves her there, I amuse her, I’m the person she feels most at ease with this evening, I’m the oldest but I’m not that old, how old is Chaplin? The girl’s bored, we could see each other again in town, between four walls, I wouldn’t be a nuisance to have around, true, but I’m not Chaplin, this convolvulus is lovely, that blue, the faded hues of burnt sienna, you don’t often come across convolvulus in those colours, it’s unreal, in the Chefchaouen region they had a song that went something like ‘might as well try to separate me from you as to disentangle the poppy from the bindweed’, it was a war fought thicket to thicket, rock to rock, pursuits over scree hanging on to branches of juniper, at dawn along jackal trails, they know the terrain like the back of their hands, God help those who abandoned their fields and went to live in towns, magnificent clumps of oleander in the beds of wadis which hadn’t seen real rain for years, some roots would burrow down fifteen, twenty, thirty metres looking for water, Abd el-Krim’s lieutenants said that after they’d won the war they’d rebuild Al Andalûs and its fountains, but their men hated towns.

  The pink diplomat walks over to de Vèze, asks him what he thinks of Monsieur Goffard who is so keen to be called Clappique, rather provocative, don’t you think? don’t you feel he’s trying to create an incident? the way he looked at the main gate saying I’ll get even, yes, he passes through here once or twice a year, the Consul cultivates him for what he knows, we don’t like him much, and tonight he seems even more out of control than usual.

  De Vèze gives the impression that he’s listening to the pink diplomat though he’s really watching the historian’s wife just a few metres away who is standing in front of a bank of green leaves and convolvulus.

  ‘The
garden is superb,’ says the pink diplomat, ‘you don’t know anything about plants? I’ll soon put that right, I won’t say anything about orchids, they’re all over the island, but have you seen the trees, the arboretum?’

  De Vèze can’t see it.

  ‘I’ll show you, not the coconut trees nor the palms or the bamboos, look there, clove-trees, and behind them, in the distance, on the left, that strange object that looks like a tangle, at the sea-edge, it gives off a rather acrid smell, like ammonia, decomposition, you must have heard of it? A speciality of the region, the man who used to own the property insisted on having one in his garden and it did so well that we’ve never managed to get rid of it, you need to keep an eye on virtually a daily basis, or just keep it dry, too much work, so we leave it to its own devices, it’s not unpleasant to look at and it doesn’t smell unless the weather gets too hot, it’s a complete world of unlikely shapes, an underworld, larvae, transparent crabs, fish which breathe with lungs, tadpoles, globules of what looks like snot, all fermenting, sucking, roots reaching up and grabbing the air, water-spiders in the matted branches, I’m boring you, did you see? Something moved, you know sometimes you can see monkeys up in the leaves, real ones, on the lawn it’s all so very different,’ palm to the sky the hand of the pink diplomat gestures towards the croquet players only a few metres away, he gives the impression that he is sizing them up, he murmurs: ‘This is what we fought two world wars to defend!’

  De Vèze does not rise to this, the young woman’s face is quite charming, dimples, pointed nose, lips not too big nor too small, teeth a tad rabbity, de Vèze watches for the moment when he’ll get her profile, then abandons her face to catch the way the light behind her shows her legs through the material of her dress, they are almost sturdy, not exactly what he goes for, I prefer long legs, ah! the aristocracy of long legs! but hers have style, are muscular and cope very nicely without high heels, enough for an evening’s entertainment but not worth ruining your whole life for.

  And finally Malraux makes his appearance in the garden of the villa, charcoal-grey suit, white handkerchief in the breast pocket, dark tie, quick stepping, he no longer has that rebellious flop of hair over one eye, his baldness is spreading in all directions over his scalp from a central patch of stubbornly resistant hair, he emits a thin smile, he looks in better health than rumour has it:

  ‘Please don’t stop whatever you’re doing! Croquet! I insist you finish your game, I didn’t even know playing it was still allowed, fear not, Consul, I won’t tell the General that his diplomats are in the habit of playing such a quintessentially English game, good to see you again, de Vèze, it’s twenty years since the last time! Actually I think I’ll join in the game, that way I shall be as guilty as you, oh just an ordinary pastis, Pernod if you have it, not too much water, one ice cube, thank you.’

  Malraux with a magisterial flourish reaches for a mallet:

  ‘You know, I played here in 1925, not at this villa, in the hotel, the Raffles, the English called croquet “the lord of lawn games”.’

  ‘“Lord, lord”,’ said Max in the wings, ‘as well they might, croquet was invented by French peasants and it was passed on to the English via Ireland, the lord of lawn games has a whiff of the potato about it, anyway, this particular lord is on the point of extinction, killed off by baseball, ultimately the Yanks will kill off everything, except in out-of-the-way places like Singapore, the last gasp of empire, which will stagger on for just a wee while longer, though it’s soon to be an independent republic.’

  Max turns towards Malraux:

  ‘My dear author, if you don’t mind being my partner I shall be an active participant, as a matter of fact I was in the middle of explaining to these young people the rule of tight croqueting, to recap, a tight croquet is allowed when I have succeeded in hitting another player’s ball with mine, this entitles me to a second shot, using considerably more force but still within the rules of the game, shush! don’t say a word, I shall now fetch the ball which I hit with mine, watch carefully, I place it so that it touches mine but without moving it by so much as a hair’s breadth, I put one foot on my ball, then thwack! I strike my own nice ball with my mallet and out shoots the other nasty ball, I can either hit it as far as I can or alternatively take careful aim and knock it through an illegal hoop, which is very much like diplomacy since it means pushing your opponent into making mistakes, which means the nasty ball has to be thwacked. You can peel as much as you like, but you’ll not thwack everything into the long grass.’

  They played on for some time while the daylight drained from the town and the ocean, from time to time Max would drift off into his thoughts, Rabat, his youth, barely thirty years old, in my head I’ve never got beyond thirty, I still feel that’s how old I am, how I got around in those days! you could tell that young woman all about it, not sure if she’d listen, she speaks very well, very clipped, you’re older than Chaplin was when he married his wife, she’s not really paying any attention to you, she’s watching the Ambassador from Rangoon, he’s not aware of it, he’s happy to strut and swagger for her benefit, he hasn’t noticed that she’s observing him back, there weren’t any women like her in Rabat, this one can talk, has the voice of someone who isn’t dependent on the way men look at her, she knows things, she can answer back, that ‘didn’t you?’ to the Consul’s wife just now was spunky stuff, in Rabat there were women who had a certain style but the minute they opened their mouths they ruined it, Lyautey just couldn’t pick them, and Max was only interesting when he was talking, he got his best ideas from looking into the eyes of women, a friend once told him that a woman’s look can sometimes be better than sex, he made conquests, today you’re just an old story-teller who needs to be holding forth, I’ll have to tell them about the rain maidens.

  That doll on a manure heap in the Riff, at Chefchaouen, not the same smell as is now blowing in from the far end of the grounds, it was stronger, doll is hardly the word, a grain shovel, made of wood, a piece of wood nailed crosswise to the handle, the blade of the shovel is the hips, encapsulated a whole concept of Woman, then a small piece of cotton veil, red wool for a coat, a silk belt, a few Spanish coins around the head, the agent for Native Affairs said it’s intended to invoke rain, they’re dying of drought at present, and they’re not allowed down on the plain unless they agree to surrender, woe to any who rise up in revolt only when their necks are already placed between block and sabre, so they make a doll, the children make a doll, they call it a rain maiden, they pour water over it and process with it from the mosque to the marabout, praying for rain, at the end of their march they prop it upright in a dungheap and go back home to wait for the rain to come, come on, de Vèze, wake up, dear boy, it’s your turn.

  De Vèze has almost begun to feel happy, playing croquet, drinking his whisky, watching the birds cross the sky, talking to the writer he so admires, and watching the young woman, Malraux and Max are paired, a team, they’ve been playing at a fantastic rate, with Malraux tending to invent new rules at every turn, they’ve even argued, Max has been behaving like a crotchety old man to ensure he remains in charge of operations, he has provoked Malraux, once he called him young man, he didn’t do it again, he quite deliberately talked to himself or said As sure as my name is Clappique! and Malraux pretended not to hear so as not to have to follow it up, the Consul watched them anxiously, he had invited Clappique on his own initiative, he could feel an incident involving Malraux looming.

  Something suddenly came over de Vèze at the thought that he would probably never see the young woman again, I must have her, she’s got no business being with that man, the prissy bookworm, women belong to the men who love them most.

  The young woman has seen a large bird in the clouds.

  ‘An albatross,’ said de Vèze, edging nearer her.

  ‘No it’s not,’ said Max.

  And the Consul’s wife:

  ‘It’s a frigate-bird.’

  ‘Four metres wingtip to wingtip,’ adds Max,
‘a bird that’s all wing, it flies at ten thousand feet and sleeps on the bosom of the storm.’

  He looks straight at de Vèze:

  ‘There are frigate-birds and there are gannets, the gannet is the most ridiculous bird, the fat girl on the beach, you can kick her and she won’t even try to run away, spends all the time stuffing herself, and she’s drawn to frigate-birds, they’ve developed a technique for not overtiring themselves, they wait for a gannet to fly close to them, then they wallop it over the head until it coughs up the fish it’s got in its craw, it’s true, they keep swatting it, the fish falls from the gannet’s beak and they catch it in mid-flight, frigate-birds don’t have very nice manners.’

  ‘It’s not true,’ says Malraux, ‘in the wild frigate-birds and gannets get on very well.’

  ‘It’s just a story,’ says Max, ‘it’s…’

  ‘It’s pure Goffard,’ Malraux interrupts.

  The young woman:

  ‘As soon as you get these stories about male and female, people start making everything complicated.’

  *

  ‘Is it only because you have doubts that you’re sulking?’ Lilstein asks you in a patient voice. ‘But doubts are vital in our line of work! And at your age it is a highly valuable commodity, can you imagine me working with a zealot? If you were a keen Frenchman brimming with the highest ideals, I wouldn’t give myself six months, too dangerous! Look, if you want to stop for a while, get some perspective, do it, doubts about what? Still think you’re a spy? Up to now I’ve been spying for you, Khrushchev and his missiles, a few years back, Khrushchev ready to give way, a hell of a tip-off, was I asked to feed it to you? Don’t be sarcastic, it’s politics, there are no free lunches, what matters is results, maybe my information did come from comrades who at the same time were urging Khrushchev to dig his heels in, knowing that he’d back down, so it would be easier to kick him out afterwards, yes, you’re right, it wasn’t a very nice game to play, you’re a clever judge of these things, maybe too clever, not a nice game at all, maybe it did happen like that, maybe not.