Waltenberg

by Hedi Kaddour

  And this is the man who went hopping and skipping through the trees in the Jardin du Luxembourg like a young puppy the day I said I love you, why do I like being in this situation? I live for him, he wasn’t very good at philosophy, so I helped him without letting on, his thesis, I checked through the whole thing for him, and my own book isn’t finished, he began to make his way and I loved watching him do it, he doesn’t need me, I’m patient with him and it gets on my nerves, he won’t let me smoke, because he loves me, he says I shouldn’t have that second slice of cake, love is the sum of everything you prevent me doing, Malraux isn’t like that, he calls me Madame, very entertaining the preface he wrote for Les Liaisons.

  ‘The mistake men make,’ the young woman goes on, ‘is to think that women are still like they were in stories about ogres and Bluebeard.’

  ‘Ah, ogres,’ says Max, ‘ogres are finished, whereas we at least took the century by the throat, terrifying ogres, tremendous romance, nowadays they call it an inner adventure, the time I spent screwing my way around the Quartier Latin seen through the keyhole of consciousness, no ogres, no story, no more stories, the blues as experienced by a moron who has lost his memory, bed and bored, no more playing a character in a book, personal pronouns, do I look like a personal pronoun type? Voyeurs, tight-arses or maybe the opposite, they guess the answers before they’ve read the book, game’s up, there ain’t no more ogres in the inkwell, nor in my lady’s chamber, not nowhere, no more ogres, no more Adventure, shush! listen!’

  Max casts an amused glance at de Vèze who has decided it is time to act, to place his right foot on the foot of the young woman, not a caress, just his foot resting on hers, as if it were an old habit, the arch of his foot itches, first he must scratch it on the back of the shoe he has taken off.

  ‘Shush!’ orders Max, ‘don’t say a word! The ogre: “Love shyly but slyly, Adore the fine lady and stay full of guile, But don’t eat her child, Like the Russian ogre in my tale, Nor injure her dog or tread on its tail.”’

  De Vèze cannot locate the shoe he’s just taken off, not on the right or the left, it’s not anywhere, he moves his foot around on the wood of the floor while trying to keep his torso upright.

  ‘I love those lines by Hugo,’ says Malraux, ‘that grotesque side he has to him.’

  ‘Which poem is it from?’ enquires Morel.

  ‘It’s the story of the Russian ogre who is in love with a fairy, he eats her brat because she’s kept him waiting,’ says Malraux, ‘but also because he takes everything literally.’

  ‘And also because brat rhymes with fat,’ concludes Max.

  De Vèze can’t find it, starts feeling annoyed, somebody’s moved my shoe, it’s that big-eared bastard who’s made my shoe vanish, or else it’s her, that’s why she’s grinning like that.

  Malraux again:

  ‘In fact, no one knows if Hugo is mocking lovestruck ogres or if he’s making a case for men to have the right to devour women.’

  ‘He certainly,’ says the Consul, ‘had a big reputation as a man-eater.’

  ‘His darling Juliette could have told you all about that,’ says Max. De Vèze feels the dinner drawing to a close, he’ll have to stand up in full view of his fellow diners without his right shoe, there’ll be jokes, worse: there won’t be jokes.

  The young woman smiles at Max.

  ‘Is it true,’ asks the grey diplomat, ‘that towards the end of their life together Juliette refused to let him go upstairs and devour the maids in the attic?’

  ‘Yes,’ answers Malraux, ‘she forbade him to devour anyone but he made her eat, she had cancer, swallowing was agony; at dinner, in front of everybody, he’d say “aren’t you eating anything, Madame Drouet?” She’d force herself to take a few mouthfuls just to please her old ogre.’

  ‘The end of loving,’ says Max.

  ‘The end of everything, my dear Baron,’ says Malraux, right elbow on the table, hand open and palm up, carrying an invisible tray.

  And in that ‘my dear Baron’ there is something surprising that suddenly holds the assembled company in its thrall, an unexpected tenderness, it’s not irony, nor politeness, nor the affection a novelist might feel, all things considered, for the model for his character, but a tenderness which is exaggerated, yet also scrupulous and attentive, the sort of tenderness hands might show for a thousand-year-old death mask, as if Malraux – putting their present difference of opinion behind him – was remembering, and wanting now only to remember the time when, still very young, at the close of a war in which he had not fought, he had met a Goffard who used fits of the giggles and comments about James Ensor as a means of escaping the shadows of hell, look here, young man, Ensor’s pictures are treee – menn – doussly— shush! don’t interrupt!, its done, got our tickets for Brussels, and Antwerp, masked figures fighting over a hanged man, tremendously far in advance of real life!

  Later, Malraux published his own account of that evening in Singapore, he did not mention de Vèze, who has always wondered why, nor did he mention the Morels, he spoke mainly about Clappique, with affection, but omitting any reference to the ‘Lolita Incident’.

  In Singapore, at dinner, there was one other moment of tension, when they’d talked about Churchill’s funeral, in February, superb, what with Moulin and Churchill we’ve had some magnificent funerals recently, Max launched into one of his verbal flights, the beautiful spectacle of three hundred sailors pulling the gun carriage, the slow march, the foot which freezes in mid stride and then unfreezes, it’s not a march, it’s the celebration of a rite, no question of one-two, one-two, that’s for the living who will go on, here – shush! not a word! – what lies in wait is a hole in the ground, so they go one, mark time, two, mark time, one, mark time, two, and it creates a kind of pitch or swell, three hundred sailors.

  Three hundred white caps like the foam on slow waves bearing off the First Lord of the Admiralty.

  ‘And not before time,’ said Max, ‘he was getting out of control, he started raging against what he called the “negrification” of the United Nations, when my friend Linus went to interview him ten years ago, Churchill showed him an English newspaper, in it was a photo of a black man and a white woman, both members of the Salvation Army, and he said to Linus “Is this what I’ll find when I get to heaven? if so, I don’t want to go anywhere near a place like that”, Churchill’s wife was much more dignified than him, he was really very old.’

  In Malraux’s account, he and Clappique get on swimmingly, mostly they talk about the script for a film which was never mentioned in de Vèze’s hearing, Malraux also omitted any reference to the two diplomats, the pink and the grey.

  Nor did he record the awkwardness which settled over the table when Max brought up the rumours about moles which were already doing the rounds at the time, Malraux had dismissed the issue with a wave of his hand, OAS officers trying to sell old floor-sweepings to the Americans, assassins sitting on their hands in exile while they waited for the next amnesty, Max had quoted his friend Linus Mosberger again:

  ‘Shush! don’t say anything! according to Linus there are a lot fewer moles in France than in England or Germany, because if you confront a Frenchman with a photo of his off-duty extra-marital activities he’ll order half-a-dozen copies for his friends, whereas for Anglo-Saxons regular caning until the age of twenty tends to leave them vulnerable.’

  Nor does Malraux seem to have had dealings with the same Consul, did he talk to Clappique next day at the Raffles and get this other conversation mixed up with the one of the previous evening? Did he make it up? After all, he was perfectly free to do so, certainly he makes Clappique quote the Hugo poem but he never said anything about the kangaroo on Valerie’s bed, but he did talk about another kangaroo, the one belonging to Nina de Callias, a rich patroness of the arts, friend of Verlaine, who posed for Manet’s Lady with the Fans, the magnificent Nina.

  When he read Malraux, de Vèze realised that the young woman’s neckline that evening had been the same
as Nina de Callias’s in the painting, but without the gauze, without the necklace at her throat, otherwise the beauty spot on her cleavage would have been less visible, nor feathers in her hair, nor fans on the wall behind her, there hadn’t been a wall behind her, she’d been sitting with her back to the night, the white of her shoulders, the soft line of her chin, in his account Malraux recalled that the kangaroo had eaten all the green parts of Nina’s large carpet during the siege of Paris in 1870.

  Just as people were saying goodnight at the gates of the villa in Singapore, Max had shown de Vèze the sky:

  ‘Look, see the moon that makes hearts ache, shush! we must see each other again soon, lots to tell you, we’ve met before, obviously you can’t remember, you’d just turned five, we can meet in Rangoon or Paris, or in the Alps.’

  Chapter 9

  1928

  Flaubert’s Bust

  In which Hans Kappler dreams of Lena Hotspur and has a conversation with his friend Max Goffard.

  In which Max Goffard tries his hand at erotic writing and suggests that Hans Kappler might care to become a landscape painter.

  In which Max Goffard finally gets on a train for Waltenberg and the European Seminar.

  In which we learn how Max Goffard became a great reporter and is now a sports enthusiast.

  Paris, September 1928

  He was a member of a croquet club and played assiduously on the paths of the Jardin du Luxembourg

  Georges Duhamel, Salavin

  This happens in the Jardin du Luxembourg, Hans and Max are strolling, like old friends. One day they emerged from their fox-holes, came face to face, a ringing of bells, the Armistice, it’s all over. Max sees a Hun officer who comes towards him and says, in French:

  ‘Shall we exchange tobaccos? Tobacco is the recreation of a gentleman.’

  They talk for hours; the Hun tells him he intends to go looking for a woman, while Max says he has no idea what he is going to do.

  Since then, they have arranged to meet at least once a year. Today is a September morning, the first phase of autumn, before the cold sets in: autumn of fruits, a palette of brown, dark green, orange, rust, with hints of ash and lavender blue. Max and Hans saunter, make their way back to the gardens’ north exit, passing sequestered nooks as they go, the bronze statue of Bacchus on his donkey with the nymphs writhing around him, the bust of Verlaine, there’s rain at intervals, then a wind to chase the rain away, the trees drip and an emerald light bursts from the verges of the walkways.

  They go as far as the edge of the orchard, head back to the centre of the gardens via the little Punch and Judy show. Through the foliage, the light forms patches of fluctuating brightness which warm the fragrance, to which the damp earth adds its quotient of sweet chestnut, plane and sometimes the tang and sweetness of spruce resin when the sun revives their scents and holds them suspended in the space where light turns to shadow for the delight also of the eye – trees, aromas and light join together to perform a fleeting role, for they are at the mercy of the cloud which will descend and wrap the gardens in unyielding grey.

  By the ornamental pond, children with sticks launch their hired sailing boats which set off in pursuit of fierce pirates.

  ‘Listen to this,’ says Max, opening his newspaper, ‘I’m quite fond of Monsieur Sarraut at present, you Germans can have no real idea of what a colonial empire is and the effect it has on the beauty of verbal expression: “Since the native population claim the right to express their wishes directly, Monsieur Albert Sarraut said he believes that this rightful claim must be examined before it has an opportunity to turn into a shrill demand.” Shrill demand! Rightful claim! The colonials will flay Sarraut alive for saying such a thing.’

  Max aims a kick at a pile of dead leaves.

  ‘Hans, this is going to turn nasty, look!’

  Another kick.

  ‘The past is rotting before our very eyes.’

  They continue strolling.

  ‘What are you writing at the moment?’

  Max it is who asked the question, anxious to know what the other man is up to, a concern which will make him speak about the thing which he finds hurtful.

  It is both considerate and cruel, like all good questions; the two men get on famously together, Hans is the anxious type, Max feels increasingly that he is a failure, especially when he is with Hans, they are friends, Hans looks away into the shrubbery and answers, saying he’s keeping a diary, that’s all, he has already published four novels, three of them since the end of the war; he also translates a great deal of French literature for a Stuttgart publisher; he is what is called an established writer.

  Max again:

  ‘Have you really done with fiction?’

  Hans doesn’t know. All he wants for the moment is to keep a diary, like Jules Renard, write in short bursts, a vertical style, with no images, images put whiskers on a style, every day try to create an effect like the one of the shy friend who wipes his feet when he leaves a house, or the woman who remains silent at the top of her voice, do I really like Renard? Renard tries a fiction cure to get fiction out of his system, I need to do the same with his Journal, read it until I’ve had more than my fill, oh yes, Hans knows what Renard said, about a diary killing off the novel you might have written, Max’s questions sting Hans who never knows if he can do better than what people have thus far admired in the tales he has spun. For Hans, Renard’s Journal is a collection of hundreds of brief stories, life on the hoof, superb, I’d like to translate it, even if the style is a touch brittle for my taste.

  ‘A very written life,’ says Max, Renard always has a phrase in his head ready to lasso whatever is going on around him, ‘he goes out hunting through the streets of Paris, all he lives for is his journal, and he calls that being free.’

  ‘And what do you do?’

  Hans has taken Max by the elbow, French style, he tries to put his question as delicately as possible, Max wanted to be a writer before the war, now he’s trying to tell a story, a story which slips through his fingers.

  ‘I’m a novelist who’s started keeping a journal,’ says Hans, ‘and you are…’

  ‘… a journalist who’s begun writing a novel, you’re extremely kind, but it’s not exactly a novel; it’s a true story, some people I met last year, in the Haute-Savoie.’

  Hans didn’t much care for that ‘you’re extremely kind’, a hint of sourness, but he says with forced cheerfulness ‘Haute-Savoie! Regionalism!’ at any moment Max will start burbling on about a three-cheese Swiss fondue, the little chimney sweep and the kind-hearted maids, and unFrench Swissisms.

  ‘It’ll do me good, it’ll be a change from journalism and spewing out words like a machine gun, a year ago I was still reporting from the Riff.’

  ‘I read your stuff,’ says Hans.

  No, Hans didn’t read anything, it was copy for press consumption only, what could be printed, not everything, Hans, you couldn’t say everything if you wanted to stay in the field and not get sent home courtesy of the military, not easy being a reporter in the Riff with the military around, you stay on willy-nilly, rotten job, a month or two, you leave, you go back.

  For four years, Max made the round-trip at least twice a year, each time I told myself I’d write about it later, I kept my eyes open, for my articles I kept mostly to the beauty of the branches of acacia in the beds of the wadis and the doctors who treated trachoma. When you write like that, you cut anything that oversteps the mark; the more you cut, the less your eye sees, what you preferred not to see resurfaces in the night, so don’t let anyone tell us that the war should have acted on us like a vaccine, it was a soldier’s world, now I hear screams in the night, no not in the night, in my dreams, and I wake up screaming, Hans I’m sick and tired of being a war correspondent, you get to see too much of what happens to the civilian population, or maybe I should take up sports reporting.

  ‘And the best you could manage after the Riff was to swan off to Shanghai?’

  Max had wa
nted a change of scene, Shanghai, the floating brothel, the first time he’d read about it was in his father’s favourite paper, Paris-Soir, he was thirteen, he burst out laughing, it was in the drawing room, there were guests, he was sitting by himself in a corner, he giggled.

  ‘What’s so funny, Max?’

  His father is very proud of having a son who reads newspapers.

  ‘I’m reading an article about Shanghai, papa.’

  The two words were hidden in a paragraph, ‘floating brothel’, Max reads them out to the whole drawing room, time for bed, in another family it would have been a clip round the ear and get up to bed, in our house no clip on the ear, just time for bed, an infinite iciness in my father’s voice and no newspapers for two years.

  Instead Max took up the piano, he played Bach, and Wagner arranged for keyboard, it helped him when he became a journalist, a real asset in any drawing room, in the best families, throughout the whole of Europe.

  China also means painting with a fine brush, people who spend three years learning how to draw a rock, the five shades of black ink, a waterfall as a living thing, the brush which makes the wind flow between the mountains, that’s what Max was looking for, not floating brothels, but rather the scroll that is opened in the back of a shop, time which stops devouring the minutes, recapture time, before painting a bamboo first give it time to grow inside you.

  Three weeks after Max arrived in China, Chiang Kai-Shek started liquidating his revolutionaries, Shanghai, stationary locomotives, boilers, screams, yes, the world’s press reported it, the absolute height of horror said the papers, there were also more classical forms of giving quietus, the main square, men in single file, women too, the majority civilians, decapitation by sword, not easy, even when people have their hands tied, they lie down, they just won’t kneel, some crawl around screaming, especially the innocent, they don’t get far, scream hard enough to shatter their larynxes, not enough blocks to put heads on, the blade does not always strike clean, Chiang Kai-Shek’s troopers roll up their sleeves, work in groups, yank them by the hair, use their bayonets, the work hardly progresses, the prisoners are lined up one behind the other by the hundred, occasionally one is calmer, steps forward without having to be pushed or pulled, shouts out a few words, no one will translate the words for Max, and Chiang’s officers beat the more ineffectual troopers with English-style canes, they turn to Max, English-style jibes directed at those about to die: