Waltenberg

by Hedi Kaddour

  Some arrive by car, the bodywork of some cars is made of different kinds of precious wood, others prefer the cable-car, more amusing, each time a cable-car arrives it brings two or three guests and the next cars come up with their trunks and their servants, each time a car passes a pylon it dips, some pylons are very tall, if you’re sitting in the front it’s quite terrifying, like being on the Figure of Eight, the passengers got very cold and Max found a moment to say:

  ‘The last time it was just here the floor gave way.’

  The seats of the cable-cars are covered with midnight-blue plush, the plush is changed annually, large trunks being wheeled round and round the lobby, the frantic bustle in and of itself is hardly worth a second glance, it’s when one of the trunks cannot be located that it becomes entertaining, Maynes’s wife, for instance, the ballerina, has lost her main trunk, not hysterical, never in public, merely on the verge of tears.

  The husband in a panic. John Maynes, Sir John, is reshaping the economy of Europe and he’s in a panic about a trunk, yes, it’s his wife’s, no, there are no gems in it but even so, important things, a cabin-trunk, one side for hanging clothes, the other with drawers, no, not monogrammed canvas, nothing common or garden, genuine English leather, dark, very handsome, must have been left on the Paris train, the train that has carried on to Coire and not just Coire, it goes to Vienna and Istanbul, Maynes, one metre ninety, stands out head and shoulders in the lobby, don’t worry, I’ll get a car and catch up with the train.

  Madame Valréas says no you won’t, but not to Maynes, to him she says:

  ‘John, we’ll try and find a solution.’

  She cannot in any way contemplate the prospect of his tearing along the road to Vienna, a disaster, he’ll be gone for at least two days, that’s without reckoning avalanches, all this fuss over a bird-brained ballerina’s knickers, oh yes, in the end Maynes told me that the most important item in the cabin-trunk was his wife’s underwear, he’s one of the major figures attending the Seminar, he’s not to budge from here, we’ll find another solution, we’ll send a telegram.

  In the garage, Mrs Maynes’s trunk was in the garage, a silly mistake by a servant, not one of the hotel’s employees, they know their business, it must have been a servant of one of the participants, good, that’s all settled, Madame de Valréas has embraced Maynes’s wife.

  The merry-go-round could now start up again, in full swing now, ladies’ maids in dark coats, cloche hats, they size up the hotel maids, they soon get the picture, don’t be nice to them, you tell them what to do, but careful how you go with the head housekeeper, she gives no quarter, she treats you as if you were a guest but if you’re not on the right floor or if you use the guests’ stairs you get a ticking-off sharpish and you’re reported to the Baroness’s office, so know your place, it’s the rule, and the lift is out of bounds.

  In the lobby, Maynes is very pleased to meet up again with Édouard, Van Ryssel’s French novelist friend, they haven’t yet got the key to their rooms, the trunk has been found, they take time to talk, and Mrs Maynes knows she mustn’t interrupt her husband when he’s talking to a writer.

  Whenever she loses a trunk, all she has to do is look glum and John can think of nothing but her, it’s delightful, but one day I interrupted my husband when he was chatting to Mrs Woolf, I can’t stand the woman but they say she writes wonderful novels, I told them if you’d care to come back down to earth we could go in to dinner, John didn’t say anything, they got up pleasantly enough and all through dinner they made small talk, I would have liked them to continue their discussion with us, when I’d interrupted them Mrs Woolf was talking about the gulf which splits masculine intelligence in two, I thought she’d be keen to pursue this with other women but actually she went out of her way not to say anything interesting, and every time it seemed that she might John always managed to bring the conversation back to small talk, he’s very English that way. I didn’t say anything, not even afterwards, I truly think he doesn’t realise what he’s doing when he’s like that, if I made a scene he would know and it wouldn’t make a scrap of difference, I prefer to reserve any scenes I make for the women who run after him.

  So Mrs Maynes leaves her husband to chat with his friend Edouard. It’s an Edouard who’s on top form, smooth face, black hat, long cape, long legs, he is very proud of his long legs, Maynes doesn’t let him get a word in edgeways, he has read Edouard’s latest novel in French, all this novel-within-a-novel business isn’t the crux of your book, what I like about it so much is the way you deal with those hearts of gold, family men who want morality to be the gold standard of existence, the character who’s a judge, his name is Moulinard, I think he’s so funny! side-glance from Maynes at the fair young man who is with Édouard, Édouard hasn’t introduced him, Maynes would like to ask him his name, but that might make Édouard cross.

  If Édouard hasn’t said anything to me it’s because he doesn’t trust this young man who can’t be all that attached to him, don’t say anything, the young man won’t always be with dear Édouard, this Moulinard of yours, Édouard, the more he demands total truthfulness from his children, the more they lie to him, a heart of gold who asks for words of gold, the ultimate value, and all he gets in return are lies, false coin, it’s exactly like economics, no good trying to base anything on the gold standard, it was all right before 1914, your novel is spot on, gold is a folly, Mr Churchill re-established the gold standard in Britain, it led to inflation and unemployment, I’ve explained all that in a short tract, I’ll give you a copy, The Economic Aftermath of Mr Churchill, what’s needed is what you make your young hero say at the start of the novel, ‘let’s give credit’, obviously you aren’t talking specifically about economics, but the young man eventually decides to ‘give credit’ to his mother’s good taste, does he not? he discovers that his father is not really his father, trust is dead, he has just lost his gold standard, if I may so express it, belief is dead so he says ‘let’s give credit’, and to his friends he offers an exchange, it’s a brilliant idea, now don’t say it isn’t, I do realise that you aren’t an economist but you’ve said something quite new that we could act on today.

  Why doesn’t the young man look at me when I’m talking? Is he bored? Am I boring him? No, when I’m bored I always look at the person I’m talking to, he won’t look at me, he’s good-looking, he knows it, a little too much, it would be delightful to make him feel unsure of himself, Édouard spoils him, he mollycoddles him, the generalised offer of credit, Édouard old man, essence of trade, that’s what you’ve hit on, it’s what we need, circulation, healthy circulation, without dogma or gold standard, a glance from Maynes at the young man.

  Out of the corner of her eye, the Baroness watches Maynes and Édouard who have finally got to their feet, she’d like to talk to them but she has Hans Kappler on her hands, he is already anxious to get back to Germany, one of the key men of the Seminar, an important humanist, classed as left-wing, a great one for bringing people together, yet he wants to be off when he’s hardly got here, it’s not on account of a trunk but because of a woman, you couldn’t make it up, he is in the lobby with Madame de Valréas, he can hear singing, a rehearsal, die Welt ist leer, the world is empty, it’s coming from outside, Schumann, not a soprano, a fine, rounded voice, Hans thinks fast, he blanches, Madame de Valréas is suddenly worried, Hans does his best to reassure:

  ‘It’s nothing, Baroness, it’s the altitude, I should have listened to my doctor, I feel slightly dizzy.’

  The Baroness puts it down to the heat, the central heating, she makes Hans step out on to the terrace, lean on me.

  The voice that sings is coming from somewhere above their heads, one of the rooms at the front of the building, Hans cannot pin it down, the Baroness puts a hand on his shoulder.

  ‘You like Schumann, Hans, I know for a fact, it’s a surprise I organised with you specifically in mind, it’s for the last day, you are so pale.’

  ‘Touch of altitude sickness, Baroness, m
y heart, I don’t know if I’ll be able to stay.’

  ‘Hans, what on earth are you talking about? Don’t be silly, everyone gets it, the body needs to adapt, that’s all, and you’re not to tell me some story about this being the first time you’ve been here, that time before the war, I know everything.’

  The Baroness’s violet eyes bore into Hans’s, she lifts an eyebrow, raises a half-smile to make her mouth more interesting, arches her neck, he was trembling as he stood next to me, I held him by the arm, it was no good blaming the altitude, I knew at once that there was a woman behind it, he was trying to identify the window as if it was a matter of both death and salvation, I didn’t let go of him, I made a mistake about the recital, a genuine recital, Hans, and that’s not all, God he’s shaking, the recital was a mistake, Hans leaving the Seminar the day he arrives, it’s crazy, I was told he might know her, he’s shaking, he’s playing this up, turn the knife in the wound without further ado:

  ‘Come along, Hans, let’s go and say hello to the singer, or should I call her a prima donna or a diva? I never know what to say, she’ll be delighted.’

  ‘First I must rest a while, Baroness.’

  No, he must see her, kiss her on both cheeks, then he’ll stay and stop being a nuisance, find some reason, I’m sure she’s read your books, Hans, a very personable young woman, come along, damn he’s digging his heels in, her name’s Stirnweiss, that’s done the trick, I’ve said the name and he’s stopped looking green at the gills, he’s stopped shaking, he has a silly grin on his face, she’s not the one he was thinking of, he’s turned back into a man, shoulders back and eyes forward.

  ‘An excellent programme, Hans: Schubert, Schumann, a closing recital, a little bird told me you like romantic Lied, you see I’m not just a wicked aristocrat in the pay of the steel cartel and ruthless capitalists, I have a heart and a soul, and my European soul chooses music of which my heart makes a gift to my friends, come along!’

  Hans does not wish to take the lift, Madame de Valréas holds Hans’s left hand and puts her right arm around his waist, they make their way up the great staircase which rises in a spiral from the middle of the lobby, Hans is not as thin as he looks, she leads him, third floor, corridor on the left, Hans is alert, nonchalant, you change very quickly, what play-acting!

  ‘Stirnweiss, you say, Baroness? I never came across the name, except perhaps in an American newspaper a few years ago.’

  ‘Impossible, Hans, I think she did live for some time in the United States. But I gather that Stirnweiss is her stage name.’

  The sound of singing comes nearer, Hans can hear it quite distinctly now, the Lied of the widow, a pseudonym, the voice is not as low but rounder than before, with more feeling, she has come back to feeling, it’s her, the song of the widow, she used to sing it, the end of love, die Welt ist leer, the world is empty, I’m the one who’s empty, I shall stand before her clothed in my foolishness, as I did once before, is it fifteen years already? a stupid gesture, I am as empty as I was then, not one drop of blood left, a stage name, and it’s her voice, with feeling, she’s nearly overdoing it, she must always have been emotional underneath but she hid it, it was Nietnagel who couldn’t stand sentiment, she used to say that if you want sentiment in music listen to a military band, I’d rather anything than come face to face with her now, Baroness Valréas’s hand tightens on Hans’s faintly faltering hip, she blames herself, I never know when to keep my mouth shut, I only had to say stage name and he blanches, this man was a hero in the war and he turns white the moment you say stage name, where’s Max got to? never there when you need him, he could look after his friend, keep him here. On the third-floor landing, Hans and Madame de Valréas see Maynes coming towards them.

  ‘There, Hans, you see one of our greatest economists.’

  ‘Yes,’ says Hans, ‘we’ve already met, in London.’

  One hand is kissed, another is shaken, a few friendly words, no need to hurry, mustn’t give the impression that we are in a hurry, Hans latches on to Maynes, delighted to see you again, you know, I didn’t altogether follow what you said in London about public works and the exponential effect; Maynes isn’t going to pass up an opportunity for converting someone like Kappler, a European with influence, to the cause of public works, even on the landing of a hotel, it’s simple, it can be summed up in a few words, if you permit, Baroness, such works always provide a greater return than the sums invested in them, one Deutschmark invested in public works gives a return of two or three for the overall economy, it’s precisely what happened with the great pyramids, it’s the same with the aftermath of earthquakes.

  Maynes leans on the aged oak rail which runs the length of the landing and tries to make it vibrate, fails, smiles, ditto with war, wars have always increased the wealth of nations, you have to know how to spend, bankers don’t like spending, but it’s the same with their gold mines, a very fixed smile on the face of Madame de Valréas, Maynes talks too much, she hasn’t let go of Hans, you spend money digging holes in the ground, adds Maynes, and you call them gold mines, in fact they’re large-scale works, but when it’s about gold, bankers call it sound finance.

  Madame de Valréas does not want him to be cut off mid-flow, but Maynes is telling stories about bankers, next time she’ll ask Van Ryssel:

  ‘Do you believe all this business about public works as much as Maynes does? He spends his time telling me all about it, he’s very nice but I find him just a trifle dogmatic.’

  And Van Ryssel will understand that Madame de Valréas speaks on an equal footing with the great and the good, he will ask her when she’d had this talk with Maynes, Van Ryssel is suspicious, a man does not produce a quarter of all Europe’s steel without acquiring a suspicious mind, he is convinced that here in the Waldhaus meetings are being held and will continue to be held without him, since he himself spends his time organising secret meetings he believes everyone else is doing the same, Madame de Valréas will not disabuse him, she will invite him to take coffee with Briand and Wolkenhove, and Van Ryssel will think he’s being invited to a secret meeting, afterwards it will be easier, just between ourselves:

  ‘My dear Van Ryssel, I’m going to have to ask you to do me a large favour.’

  ‘You have no need to ask, Baroness, no sacrifice is too great for our cause, besides sacrifice is not the word, it’s an investment.’

  Smile on Van Ryssel’s face, they’re wrong to call him a toad, he can be very charming:

  ‘My accountant has already taken care of it, Baroness.’

  On the landing, Maynes is in full spate:

  ‘If you decided to sink a deep hole, bury bottles full of old banknotes in it and then pay private companies to dig the old banknotes up again, you could almost get rid of unemployment.’

  Hans is grateful to Maynes for having detained him as he approached his time of trial, Madame de Valréas sets the example of the mine and the bottles to one side, Maynes drives on, that said, it would be better to build houses and dams to bring electricity to the houses, but for many of my colleagues that would be tantamount to communism, Madame de Valréas will have no truck with the word communism, it’s always the same with Maynes, give him his head and he says the most inappropriate things.

  ‘John, we could listen to you for hours, you have such a wonderful flair for economics, but you must excuse us, there is someone Hans and I positively must see.’

  ‘I haven’t forgotten,’ says Hans, ‘why don’t you come with us, we’re going to see Madame Stirnweiss.’

  The Baroness decides this is an excellent idea, they will bear Maynes off with them just as far as the end of the corridor, Stirnweiss will be delighted, but I know for certain that you’ll never dare set foot in Stirnweiss’s suite without your wife, you miserable economic worm, you’d like to but you’re scared of your lady wife, you’d do anything rather than come with us, she repeats the invitation:

  ‘Come along then, John.’

  Again the voice in the corridor, Nun has
t du mir, you first made my heart ache, la re re re, she repeats the first bars, the ache, more rubato than ever, but no tremolo, Hans has the impression that the voice at times comes perilously near to a tremolo, you’re not being fair, if there’s a tremolo it’s in your own voice, whereas she is actually singing, she has changed, a stage name, but it’s her, Maynes has disappeared, Hans and the Baroness are just a few steps from the door, Hans asks: ‘How does the end of this corridor relate to the rest of the building? It’s the end of one wing, is that right? The north wing? I seem to recall that the north wing extends outward over a precipice, twenty metres of building projecting over nothing, a crazy idea.’

  ‘I’ve no idea, Hans, but twenty metres is an exaggeration, it’s all supported on steel girders sunk into the granite, they’re a great deal more solid than the Eiffel Tower, and the views are stunning, it’s not the neatly tended kind of landscape but then we are in the heart of the high Alps after all, young mountains.’

  ‘I am convinced. Baroness, that these rooms here look out over a void.’

  From the start, in the hotel, everything has been going round and round at high speed, ideas, glances, forces, words, around the rooms and through the corridors, out on to the terraces, over the dance floor, down the gravel walks outside, in the rooms, even as far as the village to which you sometimes went down by the only permanent means of access when snow blocked the new road, the cable-railway, with its yellow-and-black cars, forces and rhythms, people don’t talk over aperitifs the way they do in the formal sessions, over drinks or in the lounge it’s speed that counts, words are tossed around to tickle up thoughts, no time is given for thoughts to develop, they’re shot at like guinea-fowl, what we want is the abolition of private property, the communism you’re so fond of means misery all round plus watch-towers, have you seen that photo of Venice on the front page? All the canals frozen solid, that’s crazy, you get watchtowers because of war and wars are caused by you and your steel, in the world weather conference in Prague they’re talking about global cooling, what happened about that colonel who was arrested in London charged with being a crook? A hero in the Great War, an Australian, the times we live in are a disgrace, Europe must get back to the ethnic superiority which made it great, the Neuville system is the key to the way the world will be organised, a system which will be neither capitalist nor socialist.