Waltenberg

by Hedi Kaddour

  His Legion of Honour, they say he got it for gallantry in the field. Stripped of it for crouching loins. Plus two or three paragraphs of Sapphic delights. Max wrote his sex scene because he is jealous, not of Margueritte, a novelist whom you can see pulling the strings rather too obviously, but jealous of an Englishman whose book he has read which in London circulates under the counter.

  This book has infuriated Max because as he read it he realised that it was exactly what he would have liked to write himself, it would have established his reputation in a blaze of lightning as a novelist out of the ordinary run of novelists, and he begins to hate the novelist he would like to have been as much as he hates the reader he would like to have.

  So it transpired that this middle-aged Englishman wrote the book Max should have written, it wasn’t so much the story of a gamekeeper and a lady, but the man’s direct way with words like hole, penis, fuck, balls, and at the same time a great tenderness, a taste of apple, delicate gestures, everything that made Max want to say that this happened with Thomas because Hélène could no longer put up with Thomas’s hangdog manner, she took her decision, despite all the smiles of the reader whose sarcastic comments already ring in Max’s ears, she will give him what he has been wanting since the day they first met, only Max will use fewer metaphors than the Englishman, and Hélène will take the lead, for she will no longer allow herself to be taken.

  One evening she goes to Thomas’s house, a nightdress under her cloak, goes up to his room, he is already asleep, she takes off her cloak, the rustle wakes him, don’t move! she gets into the bed, pins Thomas on his back, prevents him making the movements which men always think necessary for the seduction of the female, she doesn’t want him to try to seduce her, men always hurt her, so she will undress him.

  Thomas’s penis when she removes his short drawers, but she has no wish to touch it, she is not a whore, she comes to him out of tenderness, now Thomas is naked the skin softer than she expected she is melted by it she repeats don’t move! and lowers herself on to Thomas laying her head next to his neck, the penis, an apprehension, Thomas makes a movement which hurts her, she says sh! she takes the penis, and Max thinks that the word penis is not entirely appropriate but what other word is there? penis is medical, phallus, too erudite, sex, that’s it, his sex.

  It’s the word Max thought of first on the métro, when the frightened look in the eyes of a woman passenger made him realise that he’d just said it out loud while searching for what he wanted to say, but actually the word came to mind too soon, Max amused himself trying out other words, cock, tail, prick, dick, he changes his mind, and Hélène guides the penis with her hand saying ‘gently’, she is the one who thrusts, the contact surprises her, it’s more than a year since she felt it and the sensation is not the same as with the man then, Thomas does not dare look at Hélène, he has closed his eyes and breathes more loudly, she says ‘don’t hold back’.

  She prevents Thomas from moving, she does not want him to go off as they say, she’d be afraid, and though she had not planned it in advance she’s the one now who, I’ll have to reread the English author thinks Max, he can prolong, describe, change the metaphors the one about melting her all molten, the one about the sword, the one about heaving waves breaking over the very quick of her, leave all that to the poets along with the one about the yielding scissors and the cloth, Hélène moves slowly, just think about what she’s doing, faster keep an eye on Thomas his breathing thinks of herself she tenses suddenly, and when it’s over don’t have too many flowers not as many hyacinth bells as the English writer has, nor meadowsweet nor bluebells, Thomas has given a little cry, she is prone on top of him, from time to time faint stirring between her legs, how many years has she wasted? She kisses Thomas’s face, licks the tears on his cheeks, he tries to caress her she restrains him she does not want to find just another male, with their jerking, their writhing, that stupid look they put on their faces when they dominate, the ridiculous thrusting of their buttocks, some really bite, others just leave unbearable lovebites on the neck, one of her friends told her, ‘They learn about love in the army, at the same time as they learn to march in step.’

  She licks Thomas’s neck, lips, breasts, armpits, desires crowd in on her, she kisses his navel, moves down to the cloud of dark hair, thinks his man-hair is beautiful, his sex has shrunk in the calm shadows, no more threatening than a comma, as on a Michelangelo, she swings her hair over it, she begins to sing softly.

  ‘So I’m not going to be allowed to read the scene which steams up this chalet in the mountains, Max, couldn’t you at least let me add a fireplace, a blazing hearth?’

  ‘Or a pier-glass in veneered mahogany? Now it’s you who are writing novelettes, the story hasn’t even begun yet.’

  ‘You mean this fornucopia isn’t the climax of the tale?’

  ‘I shan’t be publishing any scenes of fucking.’

  ‘Sixty years from now, Max, on the manuscript, it would make an interesting variant, variants give life to books.’

  ‘No variant.’

  ‘So there won’t be any culminating point to your story, nor even a climactic turn of phrase such as you get in the Arabian Nights, a moment of pure poetry, “the buttocks of the young man were so beautiful that the eighteen young girls began to sing”?’

  ‘No scene with fucking, I shall be elliptical, I’ll pick up the story just after.’

  ‘And what did Thomas do just after?’

  ‘He did what you or I did.’

  ‘He went back to sleep?’

  ‘He went off to the war, after marrying Hélène, she didn’t agree with the war, but she was Swiss.’

  ‘He was like us, bit of a socialist, hostile before…’

  ‘His name on the B list of people to be arrested on the first day of the mobilisation.’

  ‘And in your country as in Germany nobody was arrested because everybody agreed with everybody else, it was to be the war to end war.’

  ‘He acted with heroism.’

  ‘Your military medal?’

  ‘To which you can add the Legion of Honour and the croix de guerre.’

  ‘Und ein leg less.’

  ‘Hélène didn’t care for that at all, Thomas came home in 1917, a hero, even the Paris papers had reported his gallantry, an exemplary record, schoolteacher, a pacifist, a son of the people, a captain within three years, six times wounded, defended his position at Verdun to the last man and brought back his wounded CO – one of the Langle de Carys, a Catholic and a royalist – crawled, though he himself had very little feeling in his right leg, genuine front-page material, with coloured-up sketches, they had a field day, but Hélène didn’t care for it at all.’

  ‘1917, your best period, there was some wavering in the ranks.’

  ‘In yours too,’ says Max. ‘Hélène was working in an armaments factory in the valley, she was discreet but well-informed, when Thomas came home she starting talking to people: Zimmerwald, Kienthal, the conferences supporting revolutionary peace, she took part in strikes.’

  ‘Was she arrested?’

  ‘Don’t be silly! In France, my dear fellow, you don’t touch the wives of heroes.’

  ‘They gave her her head?’

  ‘They took good care of her, but that too is a long story.’

  Hans and Max are sitting on two metal chairs, a woman in a dark anthracite uniform appears behind them, they didn’t see her coming, she has a small metal cylinder hanging from her waist, a cylinder with a handle, like the ones bus conductors have, we were just leaving, I can’t help that, two turns of the handle, she holds out two tickets, ten sous please, she moves off in the direction of a small boy who has just sat down and leaps up the moment he spots her, hey you there, the boy runs off.

  Max and Hans have stood up, they have walked on for another hour among the flâneurs, the children, the gardeners, they watch the women walking and try to spot feet that might stumble, with her it’s the left one, you lost, it was the right, they
never agree, they lingered to watch the chess players, Max took Hans by the arm when he sensed that his friend fancied a game, they went on their way until they came across the croquet players and there it was Hans’s turn to make Max walk on, Max laughed saying that for once I have a temptation which is easy to resist! They passed quite near the cluster of hives just by the gate that opens into the rue d’Assas, bees were still busying around, flashes of brown and gold.

  They spoke of the not-too-distant future, for once they would be spending a longer time together, a meeting in the mountains, intellectuals, politicians, artists, economists, scholars, philosophers, neutral ground, an obscure mountain fastness, in Switzerland, Max is to go there for his paper, Hans because he is a member of the ‘Committee for the United States of Europe’, it will take place in six months, right at the beginning of spring.

  Max has asked Hans if he’d have time to accompany him to Brussels, I’ve promised a young writer I know that I’d take him, Brussels and Antwerp, we’re doing a tour of the paintings of James Ensor, Skeletons Fighting over a Herring, King Plague, he’s been mad about the artist for ages, he wants to see the originals again, the great Belgian orgy, delicate doesn’t come into it, The Exception Giving the Rule a Kick up the Backside. Do you know Ensor’s work?’

  ‘Not really. Who’s the young writer?’

  ‘Shows real promise of becoming a great writer, we met half a dozen years ago, he ducked out of school to write, he’s already knocked about the world a bit, he was in Indochina when I was in the Riff, we used to tell each other about the things we’d seen, he was braver than I was, war reporter, anticolonialist, slap-bang in the middle of Saigon, now he publishes art books, he has already written a novel, it’s a very ambitious novel, East v. West no holds barred, and on the side he publishes short, funny tales, I’ll introduce you and one of these days too I’ll take you too to see Ensor’s paintings, the truth of the century, Christ entering Brussels, terrific, Christ riding a donkey, banners saying ‘Long Live the Social State’, honest wives being groped in the procession, foaming glasses of beer and Jesus, three sheets to the wind, delivering a blessing on the whole shebang.

  ‘He’s a painter of great character, if you don’t want to buy one of his paintings he takes it off its nail and puts it on the floor, like a mat, he’s also got a gift for turning a brilliant insult, “demolition man with a sucking mouthpart” for instance is not at all bad to describe a critic.

  My young writer friend loves it. Ensor also does small drawings from life, the beach at Ostend, men playing croquet on the sand, and girls too, Indian ink, three strokes of a brush, and it’s all there, the nine hoops, the mallet swinging like a pendulum between the legs, and the wind blowing among the players, the air is the hardest to do, did I ever tell you I played croquet with Lyautey? It was in Rabat, at the Residence, two years ago, just before Pétain had Lyautey turfed out of Morocco, look, some people never see anything coming!’

  Max shows Hans a young woman sitting on the knee of the young man she’s with, the chair lady comes up, the man laughs.

  ‘Hang on,’ says Max, ‘just watch.’

  Hans and Max stand stock still.

  The young woman has stayed sitting on the man’s knee, both of them snigger at the chair lady who goes off and comes back almost immediately with a policeman, the man and woman get to their feet, move off, blast on a whistle, the forefinger of the gendarme points in their direction, the couple turn, freeze, everyone is staring at them, the policeman’s finger bends into a hook, reels them in with an imaginary line, the couple walk back to the policeman who marches them off to one of the police boxes outside the Senate. Max takes Hans by the elbow once more.

  ‘Amusing, don’t you think? Yes, Ensor also does pastiches of Rembrandt, Doctors Pouffamatus and Transmouffe examining the stools of King Darius after the battle of Gaugamela, to determine if the defeat can be attributed to the disorders of the royal intestine, which is quite an undertaking! The Belgians reckon him to be a great painter, but they can’t control him, the burghers lose sleep over him, he paints a strike and demonstration, he has this man with his skull split open by a rifle butt, people living on a second floor spew their dinner over police underneath, while on the top floor a man with a pig’s head kisses a woman who makes a face, I’m going to take another look at all that with my boy genius, sure you won’t come to Brussels with us?’

  Hans has run out of time, at least that’s what he tells Max, what he doesn’t say is that he wants to call in at the Paris office of Cunard, information about transatlantic crossings, perhaps even cross on the Queen Mary from Le Havre to Southampton, just to see what it’s like to stride around the decks thinking of Lena, Hans makes up a story about having to be in Berlin in two days, shall they meet up again at Waltenberg, at the Waldhaus, in March?

  Sure, says Max. It’s not that he’s that terribly keen to make the trip to Waltenberg in March, but his boss wants him to go. Max would much rather cover some sporting event, yes, write a novel and report on a sports event, lend his support to the French rugby team which is going through a bad patch, that’s what I need, creativity, play, it would make a change from the Riff and Shanghai, you know what I’ll miss by going to Waltenberg? I’m going to miss the Six Days, I’ll miss the France-Portugal football match, France-England at rugby at the Stade Colombes, and I shall also miss, here Max does a shuffle with his legs, jabs the air with his fists, a child stares at him, Battalina v. Genscher, the world light-heavyweight title fight, because I’m also going to have to report on a session of the council of the League of Nations before travelling up that mountain, I’m quite happy, long live Waltenberg and its yahoos! And meanwhile I shall continue to beaver away at my story set in Savoie, I’ll leave blanks for you to add landscapes and objects.

  Max stops, grabs Hans by the sleeve and brings him to a halt, an affectionate look:

  ‘Hans, wouldn’t you like the both of us to go to America and look for her? Mérien would find me an assignment. You could tell me why you’re afraid to find her, why you’re such a difficult man. What happened up there, all those years ago?’

  *

  Silence, the silence and the stillness must have woken him, Max listens, a moment later metallic clangs, voices, then silence again, Max does not like it, it’s not long ago since silence like this was a direct threat to life and limb, his and those of any number of others, a silence which was a prelude to earthquake or apocalypse, depending on the ideas and beliefs of the individual, ideas and beliefs which in the coming minutes would no longer carry any weight whatsoever, the grotesque lull which turns you into a lump of meat smelling of fear, flattened to the ground, ready for the mincer.

  Max listens, dispersing any remaining sleep in his state of high alert.

  Creaking sounds. They come from outside, though not entirely, the creaking of metal and wood, very clear in the silence, small jolts, bustle and activity at one end of the coach. Max pulls back the curtain over his window, it’s very dark, he must be in Switzerland, he scrapes away enough frost to make a hole to see through the glass: feeble light cast by two lamp posts, a clock, nobody about, a quarter to four, no sound of any machinery, and the world, or what is left of it at this hour, has ceased turning.

  On a sign Max reads Landquart, it’s the start of the Grisons, the high mountains. The coach has stopped rocking. More jolts. Max realises now that his coach is being hitched to a high-altitude train. Silence again, a voice says something in German, a lilting kind of German, and slowly the coach starts moving, accompanied by the puffing of a shorter-breathed engine than the ‘Mountain’ which Max had admired before boarding it in the Gare de l’Est. The platform slips past, then a few houses, they scowl under an uncertain moon.

  He’s on his way to Küblis, from there he can get a bus or car to Waltenberg, his left shoulder aches, and it will get worse and worse, he tells himself, as he thinks of his wounds for the first time that day, of the after-effects that will be his legacy into old age.
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  The spring of 1929 began officially a few days ago and it is even colder here than it was in Paris, all Max can make out through the fog of his own breath are the high walls the snowplough has left along each side of the track, they’re so close to the sides of the coaches you could almost touch them with your hand. In places the sides of this corridor are lower, and permit glimpses of a landscape muffled by snow under the moon, dimpled with occasional swellings, like large bubbles: buried villages.

  Even during the winters of the Great War he had never seen as much snow, under the stars the land is broken white, as far as the eye can see, a cold planet.

  The train is not travelling fast, Max tries to get back to sleep, try to keep off that left shoulder, he lies on his other side, shuts his eyes, but he hears the blood thumping in his temples, a sure sign of insomnia, he is cross with himself for waking up, don’t get all het up, breathe slowly, stop thinking about it, try inventing one of those conscious dreams you use for getting off to sleep, he closes his eyes, imagines he is a policeman, a superintendent, calm temperament, and he embarks on his favourite plot, a story about a beautiful suspect who says she committed a murder but whose innocence he sets out to prove and thus unmask the husband, but the woman is strange, the more she wins Max over to her side and makes him want to get her out of trouble, the more inextricably guilty she seems, and on the contrary the superintendent’s well-meaning enquiries merely multiply the charges against the woman whose name he wants to clear.

  Ordinarily, it’s a pretty effective dream, his mind, unable to break out of the labyrinth and come up with some way of saving the woman, overheats, gives up and surrenders to the security of real dreams which he can feel gradually encroaching on his initial reverie, they provoke short-circuits which last longer and longer, commotions, things that happen for no reason: the suspect he is interrogating suddenly turns into the teacher he had when he was little or a dead friend with whom he sallies forth to buy a bunch of violets in an unknown town.