Waltenberg

by Hedi Kaddour

  ‘I met Herrr Kappler not long ago, we talked about her.’

  Max asked Lilstein to excuse him, he went off to one side with the man, Lilstein remained sitting at their table, after a moment Max came back, Max didn’t explain but he forced Lilstein to listen to his account of Stalin’s death, the Party leaders waited a very long time indeed before they called in the doctors, a big drinking session, five of them, correct me if I start talking nonsense, young Lilstein, anyway Stalin, Beria, Malenkov, Bulganin, Khrushchev, the night of the first and second of March 1953, around four or five in the morning the guests leave. Stalin goes off to bed, by noon not a peep, the domestic staff start to worry but a ban on entering the boss’s room without being summoned, that evening, around eleven, someone at last goes in, no one knows exactly who, people vacillate between an old cleaning woman, Matrena Butussova, and Captain Lozgachev, his job is to bring the mail from the Kremlin, he or she discovers Stalin lying on the floor, conscious but unable to speak, that same evening Stalin got one hundred per cent of the votes cast in the eight constituencies of the local soviets where he had been a candidate, at three in the morning, 3 March, the little gang of Khrushchev, Beria, Malenkov and co. returns, they learn that Stalin has urinated in his trousers, they decide not to go in, a matter of propriety, says Khrushchev.

  Max paused, looked over Lilstein’s shoulder, de Vèze was coming towards them, Max got to his feet, Lilstein did the same, de Vèze said hello to Max.

  ‘Ambassador, let me introduce you to Monsieur Lilstein, Monsieur Lilstein first met Hans forty years ago, Hans was very fond of him, he used to say Michael Lilstein would be the salt of the earth if he didn’t make too many mistakes.’

  ‘I’ve made lots,’ says Lilstein, ‘my respects, Ambassador, I am most grateful to you for not avoiding me, although many people assume I am a trafficker in living souls.’

  ‘My dear Monsieur Lilstein, I don’t give a damn, as long as it lets me get up the noses of the informers and low-life who forced de Gaulle out, and I am very, very pleased to meet you.’

  De Vèze has frozen, Max has looked in the direction de Vèze is looking, he has recognised Philippe Morel, the historian, he has just been elected to the Collège de France, unusual for one so young, he’s in his forties but it’s still very young for the Collège, Max knows why de Vèze has frozen, Morel is coming over, he is alone, surprising that Morel should come over, or maybe he intends to cause an incident, the cuckolded husband who slaps his rival across the face at a funeral, the rival is the Ambassador, a very French scandal, this is going to look bad, de Vèze isn’t the sort who’ll let himself be slapped across the face without reacting, he’s perfectly capable of forestalling Morel, a punch, no, he can’t, he’ll have to wait for the slap, so he can block it? Is Morel worth all the fuss? Max could step forward, that’s it, I’m stepping forward, on with the tomfoolery, Professor! This is a surprise! you know Hans was telling me all about you just recently, no, Morel has executed a quarter turn to his left, he walks off towards the terrace, from a distance Max sees him shaking hands with Poirgade.

  Among the watchers gathered around Colonel Sebald and the head of the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution, some had reached the end of their tether, others hadn’t, no point getting all worked up, if we haven’t got the green light now, we’ll lift the suspect when he travels back, before he crosses the frontier, on the road, that’ll make less of a splash than if we do it at the funeral, we’ve got thirty agents around him, the Minister only has to give us the nod and we’ll be on him, I’m sure he won’t try to get away, with people like that they’re often relieved when it’s all over, if the Minister gives the green light we’ll be on him within three seconds.’

  ‘Big Loaf calling,’ said the radio, ‘Blanchot stuck in a bunch, it’s getting difficult, he’s with the French Ambassador and an American journalist.’

  It was at that moment that the cat was set among the pigeons. When it was announced that the suspect had left with the French Ambassador at Berne.

  Walker blanched. Radio again:

  ‘The French Ambassador has driven off with our client in a DS.’

  It was de Vèze who suggested it. He was with Lilstein, Max and the correspondent of the Washington News, Linus Mosberger. Mosberger is a top-notch interviewer, he tries to get de Vèze to talk, departure of de Gaulle, Pompidou’s speech in Rome, before the referendum, saying he was ready to undertake great tasks if the opportunity presented itself, that is if de Gaulle lost the elections. Getting an old Gaullist to talk, persuading him to say what he thinks of Pompidou, checking what he says, Pompidou has betrayed his own side, he is assumed to have betrayed his own side because his wife had been insulted.

  ‘Is there any truth in what they say, Ambassador? that Pompidou dropped the Gaullists because certain Gaullists had slandered his wife?’

  De Vèze reckons the American is very direct.

  ‘I’m sure, Monsieur Mosberger, that certain services of the American government could tell you far more about it than I can.’

  And suddenly de Vèze:

  ‘Goffard, I’ll give you a lift.’

  Mosberger and Lilstein took their leave.

  It was Max who got into the DS with de Vèze.

  The CIA man, Walker, asked wasn’t there anything they could do while they were on the road? He had a quiet voice:

  ‘We could blow a tyre with a rifle with telescopic sights, I’ll take the shot myself if you don’t want to, or we could stage an accident along their route, they stop, get out, take a look, and we can hold Goffard as a witness.’

  Everyone started coming out with theories better suited to the pages of crime thrillers, Walker is now in charge of operations, an incident on the road taken by the French Ambassador, he’s returning to Berne, the best spot would be around Winzig, an hour’s drive away, that would allow enough time to set it all up, they’ve decided to go for it, mad rush to get away before de Vèze, maybe ten vehicles, Walker in one of them, Winzig here we come!

  The Ambassador’s DS drove out of Grindisheim and two kilometres further on dropped de Vèze and Max at a small flying club on the banks of the Rhine, setting them down by a twin-engined aircraft, high wings, metallic grey with a red stripe along the fuselage.

  ‘Max, if you promise not to go round telling everybody I use an air taxi instead of tooling around in a DS, I’ll take you to Basle.’

  De Vèze stroked the nose of the plane.

  ‘Same model as Eisenhower had, an Aerocommander, the 680, no, I’m not in that much of a hurry, actually it’s so I can fly a plane. An Ambassador isn’t allowed to pilot his own plane, so I hire a taxiplane, always the same one, an Aerocommander, high wing, gives you the best view of the landscape. And now and then the pilot lets me have the double controls. But that stays between the two of us! Climb aboard, we can talk, Grindisheim—Basle, we fly over the Rhine, beauty, legends.’

  In the plane, de Vèze has given Max a big surprise.

  Max assumes that de Vèze would start where they’d left off in a conversation they’d both had four years earlier when, a month after that evening in Singapore, he’d visited de Vèze in the Embassy in Rangoon. They’d sat in de Vèze’s office, Max had looked upon the Ambassador with an affection he couldn’t explain and had started telling him about a trip through Haute-Savoie, it happened a long time ago.

  A trip taken in 1929, Max on Alpine roads in the company of a lady, a very great lady, a journey that took them from Waltenberg to the French Alps, a road rimmed by precipices but negotiated without mishap, Max had come to see de Vèze’s parents with this lady.

  ‘She’d agreed to come with me, as friends, we set out from Waltenberg, I’d told her everything, she knew how your mother was. When we got to Araches she sang for your mother, a capella, in German and in French, your mother cried and held Lena close in her arms, you were five, Ambassador, Lena had brought you a present, a big wooden roundabout, fully working, we’d bought it from Weber’s in
Zurich, the Blue Dwarf there, you loved it. A two-tier Limonaire, wooden horses. In those days you had an Irish setter who was jealous of your merry-go-round and wanted to play with you, I had long talks with your father and Lena sang for your mother, later your father wrote to me saying that for years afterwards your mother went on singing what Lena had sung to her.’

  De Vèze could have talked about all that with Max as a preliminary to more important business, and then tell him how sad he’d been for never having seen Lena again and for not being there when she was buried, he could also have talked about Hans, the way he’d finally met up with him in Geneva, they’d had dinner together, on a boat which sailed round the lake, de Vèze never mentioned a word of all that, in the cabin of the plane he had given Max a big surprise, came straight out with it:

  ‘How was Arlington?’

  ‘Terrifying, Ambassador.’

  That’s what Lena’s funeral at Arlington was, terrifying, respond at once with something forceful, don’t behave like someone who’s caught off balance and hides behind anodyne comments, move smartly to a point beyond where de Vèze expects Max to be.

  ‘Terrifying, I wept, in the middle of a military cemetery, I didn’t last out, they folded the flag and they gave it to me, to me, Goffard, a foreigner. And Leone Trice sang “Voi che sapete”, terrifying, much more terrifying than today’s proceedings, Arlington, Americans in full dress uniform, three salvos and bagpipes, military funeral though she hadn’t asked for anything.

  ‘Two or three top officials had pulled every string in the CIA, the Pentagon, the White House, can you imagine who was there? Music lovers, spooks, generals, aesthetes, patricians, liberals, singers and blackmailers, all clustered round the coffin of Lena Hellström, star-spangled banner, it was mainly the CIA who organised the show, important for them to show that she was one of theirs, that they don’t only work with schmucks and finks, everybody there was wondering how long it was since the CIA recruited her.

  ‘No one can possibly say they’d never recruited her, she was grandmother to the lot of them, she’d watched them cut their teeth, and before the CIA she’d been in at the birth of the outfit that came before it, the OSS, she’d started before all that, she sang, she had lots of useful contacts among the Germans, the English, they loved her in Berlin, eternal youth, Belle Époque, the great eagle above a frozen lake, she started with the war, in ’14, pre-dated even the OSS, as it happened, she was living in Switzerland with Hans, he left her to go off and play heroes, or rather she walked out on him when she realised he was going to leave her, that he wouldn’t desert just to please her, she felt it was like being at the opera, she left him without saying where she was going, or rather they left each other, Hans always said “over a stupid thing”.

  ‘She wasn’t all that anxious to see him again but on the off-chance she decided to go to Berlin and take a few singing lessons before returning to the United States, to improve her command of music, the world goes up in flames and she decides to improve her singing.’

  Max had gradually pieced together Lena’s story, he felt he could tell it to de Vèze but he didn’t tell all of it, he was afraid to say too much that was definitive, to be too careful about choosing a particular way of putting the events together, the sequences, afraid of suddenly finding he’d gone out on a limb because he’d said too much, he relived Lena’s story as he had relived it in his seat, in the front row at Arlington, in flashes, with clear moments, brief scenes, snatches of dialogue.

  He didn’t tell de Vèze everything, he remained the low-voiced enunciator of Lena’s past, enunciating because he had to, but keeping unvoiced the things that were important to him alone, de Vèze catching only what Max allowed to go in his direction, and being happy with that because the last thing he wanted was to have to ask Max to be more specific, letting Max bask in his low murmur, with occasional glances down at the course of the Rhine, everything on the west bank made golden in the sunshine, Lena in 1914, in Berlin, received by her father’s business contacts, rich people, who know titled people who also invite her, she sings well, listens well, she is refreshing say the hostesses, she understands what’s being said, her father made her sit at the dinner table as soon as she was ten, he had many Europeans come to the house.

  She knows exactly what expression to put on her face when a man starts talking politics, the pupil who is bored and the pupil who listens, that’s how she learned, her big eyes slow and bored or wide and alert depending on what people tell her, and the men who talk to her have only one desire which is to see her eyes change from bored to bright, they stop caring about what they say and only about the way she listens to them, she never hesitates to interrupt, switching from one subject to another, the content is of no interest to her.

  It pleases the Germans to see an American woman who is not hostile, she even goes so far as to pull her hair back behind her right ear, they admire her right ear and her fine head of red hair, they don’t dare admit to themselves what they would like to do to that right ear, they talk and talk just to see her smile and do that again, her hair, the lobe which reappears, can you imagine, a woman who dares touch her body in public, she doesn’t care, she’s American, when she gets bored with a man it’s painful, you’re there with your suit or your uniform, your titles, respected, and this American looks at you as though you were an old tin can.

  Mademoiselle Hellström is a test, when you speak in front of other people, the other people listen to you, out of respect, she’s the only one among them who focuses solely on your face and your intelligence, with all the others it’s just manners, so when you’re with her you talk, sometimes she smiles at you and does that thing with her hair, apparently her perfume is French, she tells everyone that her perfume comes from America but in fact it’s more likely to be some bergamot-based French aphrodisiac perfume, no, I’ve not worn ‘Jicky’ since the war, seems in it there’s plum-tree evernia, vetiver and a hint of leather, an American woman, in Berlin, who touches her hair and her ear in the company of men and once a week takes tea at the American Embassy.

  She tells her German friends she doesn’t much like going, but that she has to because of her exit-visa from the USA, as a matter of fact the Ambassador is a friend of her father and President Wilson, all three graduates of Princeton, the Ambassador finds his chats with Lena very enlightening, he sends regular cables to the White House, in time Lena found out a great many things, about the politics of the Reich, about the blockade, about forthcoming changes in the Imperial General Staff, they say Americans are slow on the uptake, maybe Lena does not fully understand everything she repeats to the Ambassador but it’s pure gold, she sings in German drawing rooms for their pleasure, and one day for her pleasure, they tip her off.

  She must go, without delay, leave the Reich, things are going to get worse and worse, she goes back to Switzerland in 1917 on the eve of America’s entry into the war, she stays in Switzerland, she is unhappy, she continues to move in diplomatic circles, complains about the stupid war, she maintains a level of nostalgia for the Belle Époque, she rarely sees Germans these days, but lots of Swedes and a few Brazilians who do see Germans, and she also sees the United States Ambassador at Berne, she stays in Switzerland until the end of the war.

  At the time of the Armistice she goes back to America, once more calls herself Hellström, she has agreeable discussions with presidential advisers, begins to appreciate exactly what she’s doing, and she does it better and better, she also sings better and better, throaty voice, strange, her drawing-room conversation is more or less unremarkable, large mouth, large eyes, but when she sings it is as though that voice has been touched by the sorrows of the whole wide world, in Washington another of her father’s friends asks her if she wouldn’t like to return to Europe, go back to France, Paris, Versailles.

  She sets sail, she is invited into the salons of French ladies, the ladies who love to play ducks and drakes with politics through their ministerial lovers, she also runs across German friends wh
o tell her things in confidence, a group of young Englishmen around an economist, an eccentric, name of Maynes, he disapproves of the fact that the French and the English insist on making Germany pay exorbitant war reparations, he’s brilliant, it’s so pleasant to go out with you, dear Lena, you attract them, he’s homosexual, she’s very fond of him.

  In the end she gets to know all about the in-fighting within each delegation, French, English, German, she passes it all on to Wilson, when he comes to France they think he’s very naive but he knows everything, you’re doing a terrific job, dear Lena, I’d like you to do me a favour, it’s not Lena who is asking for something in return for all she does for the United States, but her President who is asking her for a favour, let me come to one or two of your rehearsals, that’s Lena’s reward, in Paris: a President who sits in a corner and makes himself very small while she works on her singing, that’s all.

  Max doling out a part of all this to de Vèze, voice low, lingering occasionally upon a desire, he would like to write a piece on that celebrated Congress of Versailles, Lena in implausible hats, her expertise in any discussion about frontiers, the rights of people and the payment of war debts.

  In the twenties it seems she put a temporary stop to these little parallel activities, she doesn’t like the Republicans, Coolidge, Harding, Hoover, she comes from a Democrat background, the new Europe scares her a little, she re-immerses herself in things American, concentrates on her singing, she was present at the great Waltenberg Seminar of 1929, but only in her capacity as a singer.

  Max says to de Vèze:

  ‘One of these days you must ask our good friend Lilstein to tell you about Lena, Hans was her lover for a year, Lilstein never was, neither of them ever got over it.’