Waltenberg

by Hedi Kaddour

  ‘By the way, have you noticed? In the village they’ve knocked down the Konditorei; Waltenberg has changed a lot. The Waldhaus seminars are expanding, they’re going to set up a kind of forum for the great decision-makers of the Western world, they’re looking for willing helpers. You wouldn’t fancy making yourself indispensable to these people? They earn a lot of money but can’t write for toffee, it would make the perfect excuse for all your comings and goings, we might even be able to drop the guff about classified ads for bibliophiles.’

  *

  In the cortege, Max asked Lilstein if he knew the young woman with the pearl-grey scarf, she’s a few steps behind them, the face means nothing to Max but Lilstein isn’t so sure, might she look a little like Hans? A niece? A daughter?

  ‘He never had children,’ says Max, ‘nor any relatives of her age, he’d have told me, mistress maybe? I don’t see him committing suicide when he had a royal dish like her in his bed, or perhaps she’d stopped wanting to warm it for him.’

  ‘In that case, would she come to his funeral? Max, she really does look like him.’

  ‘No, the face is completely different.’

  ‘She looks at people just the way he did, as if she were constantly trying to force the world to give her a reason for living. In any case, she’s been looking this way as if she knew us, maybe I’m imagining things, Max, why suicide?’

  ‘Perhaps for the same reasons as Socrates?’

  ‘No one sentenced him to death, Max, on the contrary, we let him go back to the West as soon as he asked to go, we said nothing, he was immensely respected, a man who encapsulated his century.’

  ‘He wanted a lot more, young Lilstein, he wanted to see the GDR become the land he’d dreamed of, it was an awful lot to ask. He went back to you in ’56 as a gesture of provocation, at a time when you were committing your biggest foul-ups, and because he realised that the CLA. was using him, that famous association “for the freedom of culture”, he believed in it implicitly, a genuine realignment of intellectuals to further the freedom of culture, and then he found out that the meals, plane tickets, hotel bills, everything was paid for by the CIA, that didn’t bother people like Spender or Koestler, but it stuck in Hans’s craw, he slammed the door, went back to Rosmar, at the worst possible time, Budapest, to provoke, and also to punish himself, and it didn’t work, so he went back to the West, and when he’d got sick of you, of both you and them, he threw his death in your faces.’

  ‘Moral rigidity, that’s why he killed himself,’ says Lilstein, ‘because he couldn’t forgive himself for dreaming his dreams.’

  ‘Or because he’d run out of the kind of books he could read before going to sleep, or couldn’t remember the name of a friend he was at school with, or because some dog kept barking all night, or because he realised that he was beginning to sound querulous, like me, all those days when you could have worked but instead you let them be filled by stupid things, you can kill yourself for that, because you’ve had enough of living with your own remains, or because of something entirely trivial, you’re making me cross with your questions, he almost died once of a broken heart, in 1914, and he also wanted to kill himself when he left his house at Rosmar the first time, in 1934.’

  ‘We let him have it back, fully restored.’

  ‘Yes, but you stayed exactly the same, I mean your wonderful regime. Last year you and yours rode into Czechoslovakia to do a spot more restoration work, that also made his day.’

  An argument carried on in an undertone in the nerve-centre of the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution: some wanted to lift the suspect immediately, in the middle of the funeral, must know how to make the most of an opportunity, the fact that it was a funeral will soon be forgotten, the fact that they got him will be all that’s remembered, I tell you the target’s a heavyweight, it’s been going on for years and years, we hold him responsible for the denunciation and deaths of dozens of our agents in the East, no, I’m not exaggerating, and even if those deaths were indirect, he is still objectively complicit in a number of murders because he undermines our position. Actually, replies a voice, I think it’s funny that you should use the word objectively the way the people on the other side do.

  And the man who said objectively and has just attracted the remark about the people on the other side turns pale, because he is in fact from the other side.

  Lilstein leans towards Max, in a quick whisper, voice cautious or broken, or ironic:

  ‘Hans never recovered from his experience of real socialism.’

  ‘If anyone wrote anything like that in your amazing Democratic Republic, young Lilstein, they’d shunt him off to prison, you are a stirrer, you should be someone really important over there, you know what he left on his bedside table? A quote from a poet: “Do not let me into your Paradise, there I should suffer torment more terrible than anything Hell has to offer, I choose Hell, Hell is all I want.” Obviously you know the poet is the one who penned your national, democratic, people’s anthem, no less?’

  ‘And now, Max, the Germans are going to fight to find out who it really was that Monsieur Kappler did his talking to, “your Paradise”, I can just imagine the next few weeks in the papers.’

  ‘Is it true what they say? that you are now in charge of inter-German relations? that is, of selling your dissidents to the Federal Republic? Give me an interview on that subject, and I’ll tell you about Lena’s funeral?’

  ‘Max! A truce, a few hours!’

  The young woman with the fair hair and the pearl-grey scarf has come up to Max and Lilstein:

  ‘Good morning, my mother isn’t well, she asked me to come instead of her, she knew you’d be here, I have a photo, you’re Max and you’re Lilstein, my mother told me: “You’ll have no trouble recognising Max Goffard, he’ll be more or less the same as in the photo, the one with the big ears, the other one is the tall adolescent who’s standing next to them, he must be about fifty-five now, he’ll certainly be there, by Max’s side.” I’m Frédérique’s daughter. My mother also said: “Give them my love, you must stick close to them, it’ll stop them getting into arguments during the funeral.” That’s all.’

  There are five of them in the photo, skis on feet, plus-fours, Norwegian sweaters, Max is wearing a Basque beret, Hans and Lilstein have caps, Lena a soldier’s beret, Erna a woolly hat with a pompon, behind them the façade of a hotel, an immense double chalet, with flowers in the windows.

  ‘Period kitsch,’ says Max, ‘it was Frédérique who took the photo outside the Waldhaus, I took one too, of Frédérique and the other four, have you got it with you?’

  ‘I’ve seen it, my mother wouldn’t let me have it, she admitted that you were a crazy gang, all in love with each other and none of you knowing how you stood with the others. She also said the men weren’t very good at it.’

  ‘Young Lilstein lost sleep over it.’

  ‘Max wanted to move from Erna to Frédérique,’ said Lilstein with a smile, ‘and one evening there he was back in the corridor, all the doors closed, actually, not all of them: he had the luck for which Monsieur Kappler and I would have given our eye-teeth, but he didn’t seem any the happier for it.’

  ‘That’s not strictly true,’ said Max, ‘but you can understand why we were crazy: what beautiful creatures those women are! What became of your mother, young woman? You know, to us she is immortal.’

  Lilstein does not listen to the answer the young woman gives Max, he is at Waltenberg with those beautiful skiing girls, forty years ago, with one of them, the slope of a coomb, a breath-stopping diagonal, having got up at four in the morning, there were about ten of them, I’d never have missed a session of the Seminar but she wanted to trek across country on skis, she had nothing else to do, she was there for the closing recital, needed fresh air, it was the guide who’d come and roused Lilstein, a cross-country with her, a whole day, as I got up I banged my forehead, under the eaves, a room with twin beds, thick waxed beam, just above the bed.
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br />   Max is launched into a series of wild questions, did your mother ever talk about Maynes? Or Merken? Splendid fellows! And that young philosopher who looked like a Boy Scout, Hans and I used to pull his leg, a young Catholic, took Madame Merken’s fancy, name of Moncel, nowadays he’s a very big name in theatre.

  ‘My mother knows less about him than I do,’ the young woman said, ‘I often bump into him, I’m an actress.’

  She said this gravely, for Max’s benefit she adds:

  ‘I know Monsieur Kappler didn’t like the theatre.’

  ‘It wasn’t quite that, young lady, he was suspicious of theatre, for instance he couldn’t stand Lorenzaccio.’

  Lilstein knocked his head, when you get out of bed in this room under the eaves you always forget to pay attention, afterwards he took more care, I got ready keeping out of that beam’s way, I went out, forgot my scarf, I went back up to my room, retrieved my scarf from the bed, I took care and I still knocked the back of my neck as I stood up, my brother grunted, without waking up, departure four thirty, still dark, three-quarter moon, incipient headache, headaches always made me slow-witted, I’m going to be with her for a whole day and already I’ve got a headache.

  Max and Hans had been to see Lorenzaccio in Paris in the early fifties, as they came out afterwards Hans looked unhappily at Max, he hadn’t been able to stand the play.

  ‘And it was the Théâtre National Populaire too,’ resumes Max, ‘Gérard Philipe, Ivernel, big production, full house, enthusiastic audience, not at all the regular Comédie Française audience, more tweedy people, often with no tie, mix of middle-class, civil servants, clerks, workmen in their Sunday best like in Russia, a lot of young people, either in couples or in groups.’

  Forefinger towards the face of Frédérique’s daughter:

  ‘You know, young lady, when people talk about the theatre-goer they are mistaken, the theatre-goer is never in the singular, but almost invariably a couple, formed, or about to be formed, or to split, who knows? The basic unit is the couple and what happens within the couple who go to the theatre, you act for couples, Hans and I were an exception, a pair of old friends. I told him to watch the couples, all those attractive women, I’d have preferred seats in the balcony so I could look down their cleavages, he said I had a dirty mind. He found the play very peculiar.’

  Skis and sticks over one shoulder, hat pulled down, measured pace, two by two along the road, the clunk of steel-tipped boots, some use a ski-stick like a walking-stick, after half an hour they leave the road, a path already flattened in the snow, overlaid by a few centimetres of fresh frosted powder, the bracing air in the chest, the trachea, Lena is chatting to one of the young French girls, Lilstein is just behind her with an Englishman, the hardest part for me is to stay in contact with London, the Englishman is as tall as Lilstein, thick lips, hair already receding though he’s not yet forty, it’s Maynes, he makes a point of seeking Lilstein out, the path winds up gently towards the first col, they are making towards Davos, the guide has a sing-song voice, ‘not so fast’, ‘not so fast’, he stops two men who have gone on ahead, ‘halt!’, he tells them to go to the back, puts Lena and Lilstein at the front, with himself just behind them, it’s the first time Lilstein has ever wanted to kiss a mountain guide, he tells the guide our English friends are not best pleased, a woman has been put at the head of the group.

  ‘The theatre is a tough business to be in, Monsieur Goffard,’ says the young woman. ‘You shouldn’t speak ill of it.’

  Max decides that she looks like her mother, the same modulation, low and categorical, in the young woman’s voice. She adds:

  ‘I prefer Monsieur Moncel even if he’s unfair about what I act in, with his Figaro reviews.’

  ‘Oh, he’s turned over a new leaf,’ says Max, ‘you were there for The Cherry Orchard, last year? Or when he went to see The Days of the Commune? When the curtain comes down, the audience gives the Berliner Ensemble a standing ovation, La Weigel comes down off the stage, imagine, she’s there in the stalls, with Aragon, Elsa, the leading communists, the left-wing intellectuals. In the centre aisle a silence settles from the back, a man walks forward slowly, on the arm of a friend, a woman, he goes up to La Wiegel, it’s Moncel greeting Brecht’s widow! And everyone smiles at him, that too was a great spectacle.’

  The guide tells Lilstein:

  ‘Fräulein Hotspur, excuse me, Fräulein Hellström, is very much at home in these mountains, she knows this route very well, she’s already done it several times.’

  ‘Was that a long time ago, Madame Hellström?’

  ‘You can call me Lena, Michael, if you call me Lena and not Madame I’ll teach you to put your questions more graciously, yes, I’ve been on a good number of these cross-country treks, here, with our guide, before the war, before ’14, now don’t go repeating that even though it doesn’t really matter, look!’

  She points to a mountain top just beginning to turn pink, the Rikshorn.

  ‘You see those little clouds, they say the old man’s smoking his pipe, fine weather, with a small risk of becoming unsettled, in the mountains a small risk can turn into something big, unleash equinoctial fury. Maybe this wasn’t the right day for a jaunt.’

  They come across the tracks of weasel or stoat, a bend every three hundred metres or so, what’s after the col? Another col, it’s a theorem of a mountain, every col is followed by another and higher col, one of the French girls shouts:

  ‘My sunglasses! I’ve forgotten my sunglasses!’

  The guide smiles, pulls another pair out of his anorak, holds them out to her, that’s his job, to think of everything, especially think for people who forget their sunglasses, he’d lined up his charges outside the hotel, the list out loud, gloves, hat, biscuits, flask, sunglasses, he himself carries a bag which must weigh all of twenty kilos, plus two spare ski tips and a rope slung over the top; the French girl had said yes without checking if she really had her sunglasses; Lena has even thought to bring a sort of small pad which she inserts between her shoulder and the skis, the going is becoming harder now, it’s not long before people aren’t talking, throats burning, time to adjust, the guide repeats ‘not so fast’, Lilstein has a tendency to go faster, Lena puts one hand on his arm, squeezes his biceps:

  ‘You must do what the grown-ups tell you.’

  Lilstein does not care at all for the remark.

  ‘Hans didn’t like Lorenzaccio one bit,’ says Max, ‘not the play, Hans said here you find it exaggerated but for a German it’ll do, he added: “What I don’t understand is why it should be such a success here in the heart of Paris in front of all these people, how long is it? Hardly six, seven years since the Occupation ended, great left-wing actor, left-wing director, people’s theatre, civic theatre to use your word, and what’s the play about? A tyrant protected by a German garrison, have I got it wrong? The Duke has a stronger libido than Pétain but that’s what it is, a tyrant who has the backing of the Church and is protected by a German garrison, and on the other side the people resisting them talk too much or behave without thinking, incompetents, think about it, Max, three hours of incompetent resistance, the stuff of cock-ups or cowardice, and it’s barely half a dozen years that France has been free, and the audience cheers, power wielded by bastards, resistance mounted by morons, the only character to carry out a plan to the end is the effeminate one who’s so handy with a knife, and the regime which follows is presented as being rotten to the core, as rotten as the one before, it orders students to be fired on, and everyone applauds, the right, the left, the moderates in between, the activists, the wait-and-sees, the collaborators, the resisters, everybody anxious to get their snout in the trough, Max, I don’t like this method of being in agreement!”’

  Lilstein has quickened his pace, deliberately, right, so she’s put her hand on my arm but that’s no reason for saying I have to do what the grown-ups say, she said it so she could put her hand on my arm, or else she put her hand on my arm so that she could say it, and the
n she smiles, it’s true that it’s only at me that she smiles like that. A hand once again on Lilstein’s arm, just a little muttered tsk tsk, she’s not talking about grown-ups now, she’s not saying anything, so agreeable, headache’s gone. She adds:

  ‘You’ll get a telling off.’

  They’ve been going for an hour and a half already, heartbeat normal, Waltenberg looks very small down in the valley below, all that can be made out is the bulk of the Waldhaus and the annexe, a few street lights outside the hotel, a wisp of hair has escaped from under Lena’s hat, flutters on the nape of her neck, I would like to be that wisp of hair.

  Then the halt, a col from where at last they can see another valley, about eight in the morning, no village, they are right on top of the col, they can see both valleys, day is breaking in earnest now, it is still very cold, thermos and flacket of schnapps do the rounds.

  The guide points to another col, much higher, the sealskins, everyone ski-shod, one behind the other, one of the men branches off, starts climbing splay-footed, the guide says no, you wouldn’t last half an hour, he puts Lena at the head, Fräulein Hotspur, sorry, Hellström, will set the pace, Lilstein is just behind Lena, from time to time the guide says ‘halt!’ He moves up to the front, ropes up, gives the other end to three men, he moves across the slope stamping with his skis as he goes, once a small layer breaks away, just one, the guide doesn’t even fall over, Lena gives Lilstein a running commentary and points to a number of clouds which are beginning to come together.

  They are on the terrace of the Palais de Chaillot, Hans wanted to see the Eiffel Tower, the view down the Champs-de-Mars, terraces like this are good for the spirits, if it wasn’t for those dreadful buildings…