Waltenberg

by Hedi Kaddour

  ‘What about you, Max?’

  De Vèze could not contain himself, he has made the mistake of interrupting Max, he regrets it immediately.

  ‘If you had a half-decent intelligence service, Ambassador, you’d know, it’s as if I were to ask you whether Madame Morel said yes in the end, what would you reply?’

  De Vèze got off lightly, a crude mention of Muriel, he does not take offence, the main thing is that Max should go on with his tale, de Vèze takes particular care not to make Max take up where he left off, he concentrates on flying the plane, then hands the controls back to the pilot but doesn’t dare turn round to look at Max, who gazes down at the landscape lost in his thoughts and slowly resumes because he’d feel bad now if he failed to make the most of the opportunity to relive those years, no doubt it was Roosevelt who asked Lena to go back to Europe, in 1933, to Germany primarily, the moment Hitler took over, she is very much in favour at court, as they say, not the innermost circle maybe, not always, but she works prodigiously hard.

  In Berlin a radio operator has been placed at her disposal, an Australian, that’s right, an Aussie who works for the Intelligence Service, it was the English who supplied the radio operator, because Roosevelt did not trust his own services, people reluctant to intercept German or Japanese communications, a gentleman simply doesn’t do that, it was the English who taught them to be gentlemen but they at least have no qualms about spying, Lena regularly contacts her radio man, nothing ever written down, she gives him a few sentences, off he goes, encodes, transmits.

  It is thought she even ran across Lilstein in about 1937, nothing definite, spring of ’37, could be coincidence, Berlin, music shop, a man she can’t quite place at first, except the voice, and also his large build, the light-coloured eyes, close-cropped hair, small moustache, a good-looking young man of about twenty-five, a splendid advert for Aryan propaganda, instinctively both behaved as if they did not know each other, the man came up to her talking about the recital she’d given the previous evening, Beethoven, arias from Fidelio, she autographed a score for him, a fan encountered by chance.

  Obviously an army officer in civvies, the mark left on the back of his neck by an officer’s cap, tall, hair short, arrogant manner, pure chance, although meeting a fan in a shop which sold romantic sheet music wasn’t really that much of a coincidence, he told her he played the piano, she answered I hope you always keep a fire burning at home because it’s going to get very cold soon, and that’s not very good for pianos.

  She held out her hand to him, great lady, aloof, I was happy to sign a score for you, exchange a few words, now that’s an end to it, a smile like a Greek statue, the smile of the omniscient blind seer, she knew many things, maybe a dignitary in the Gestapo had just asked her to postpone a private recital, maybe on the same day another dignitary had just had her informed that he couldn’t make it this week, perhaps a sign, or even other indications no one will ever know about, something big was brewing, the tall man left.

  Two cops had walked into the shop behind Lena, with faces blank and big feet, one of them was about to follow the tall man, she thrust her parcels into his hands, since you’ve now taken to following me into shops, you can take these and put them in my car, the men probably hadn’t dared report the incident, though it was interesting, the lady had spoken to a man she didn’t seem to know, in a specialist music shop, they exchanged a few words about falling temperatures and then she’d said goodbye, the men with blank faces and big feet couldn’t have filed a report, didn’t want to explain why they hadn’t followed the man with the slow movements, arrogant manner and light-coloured eyes.

  If this is true, it gave the big man a breathing space, and if the man really is Lilstein the Gestapo won’t pick him up until the end of 1937.

  Two weeks after the business in the music shop, Lena spoke to Goebbels, an excellent evening, he had just listened to her singing, they were in a window recess, covert looks directed at them, respectful of their privacy, they spoke about Goethe, Goebbels was paying attention, he was just realising that she knew Goethe better than he did, yes, I also acted in Schiller, The Brigands, while I was still at school, Minister, and in German, I learned German when I was very young, it’s very easy for us northern peoples, Lena was almost one metre eighty tall, just by standing next to him she was saying to him I at least am a true Aryan, he asked if she would come on a visit to a new motor-car factory.

  He was then in the process of organising a grand occasion, present would be the Prince of Wales, Herr Neuville, Herr Lindberg, the aristocratic old guard, capitalist success, airborne audacity, the German people, its leaders, a vehicle for the people, the participation of Fraülein Hellström would impress on the day the seal of art, surely you’re not short of fine singers in the Reich, Minister, women whom I think of as examples, in the end she accepted, they’d started discussing what she’d sing, something by Wolf, a setting to a poem by Goethe, and something by Wagner, she was very keen to do the song of Mignon, as to the Wagner, she left the Minister free to choose, she hummed a few arias, Goebbels in seventh heaven.

  In the middle of an aria she broke off, which would you rather, Minister, a friend of Germany whom one does not have followed by morons, or a singer who returns suddenly to New York saying Berlin is becoming intolerable? I can also have the question put to the Führer by one of my friends, or ask him myself next week.

  Goebbels knew full well why she wanted to be rid of her guardian angels, mature woman, the bourgeois women of the Third Reich do not like her, imagine, she has lovers but no husband.

  The greedy forties, the age for large-scale consumption of airmen, classically handsome lieutenants not eager to continue consorting with a woman watched by the Gestapo, nor attracted by the idea of having one fine morning to write a report which would include everything they’d done with the lady.

  Also hint of a smoke-screen. You know how diplomats hate this kind of complication, de Vèze. Well, to relieve the pressure, she resumed her routine activities, boldness, cool head, professionalism, Washington recognises that she is doing great work and she makes the most of the situation to idolise aviators, a passion for airborne encounters, the new production models, sometimes she disappears for two days with an airman, in the country, once I was in Berlin, she’d just returned from one such fling, I said to her these are the days of your youth, she understood and said I had a mind like a sewer, we laughed a lot.

  Until one night when it all goes very wrong, she’s at the wheel of her big Mercedes, road between Stuttgart and Tübingen, late ’37, on the back seat a man, asleep, smelling of whisky, actually it wasn’t a Mercedes, those big Mercedes had Nazi written all over them, she had a more unusual car, more aristocratic, superb wire wheels, the man on the back seat is wearing a dinner jacket, but next to him is the cap and tunic of a Luftwaffe officer, Lena is driving fast, too fast, her passion, night-driving, headlights of approaching vehicles visible from afar, sporty driving style, double-declutch, avoid braking, she can throw a twelve-cylinder beast into a bend, a controlled skid.

  Star-filled night, she hums a tune and has to stop at a large security road-block, not road police but a mixture of gendarmes and SS, papers please, American passport, the voices of the men as metallic as ever but less brutal, they’re not going to bother her, smell of whisky, torch shining on the back seat, the sleeper is in an ethylic stupor, silence all round, the soldiers tense up, an NCO has gone to get an officer, who sends for another officer, Lena caught something like Oberst or Oberstleutnant, she never understood about ranks, must be a commanding officer.

  When he comes the soldiers stand to attention, he walks with a limp, more torch waving, the tunic on the back seat, commanding officer’s voice, a soft fashionable drawl, may I ask the identity of your passenger, Madame? she gets out of the car, opens the back door, pushing a soldier out of her way: his name’s Ulrich, he’s my lover.

  She lights a cigarette to calm her rising fury, throws it down after the second drag on
it, my lover is drunk as a skunk, a session with his colleagues, he’s not in the mood for love, I can’t stand it, I leave him to you, write a report and take him back to his field-marshal, he should have been back on duty by this time, let this be a lesson to him.

  Around her half a dozen SS have suddenly replaced the gendarmes, one of the SS men is holding a lantern, the commanding officer has burn scars over all his face, he has recognised Lena, he is sinister, he too peers into the back of the car, the triage at the gates of hell, deliberate movements, the deliberation of the sadist, eyes boring into Lena’s eyes, anything but a fool, a man in this state at your side Madame is, to say the least, surprising, at this hour, on this road? Will you allow me another question? another glance inside the car, at the cap and the tunic, you said Ulrich, is that Flugleutnant Ulrich? And the conclusion comes: by your side, in this state, is he not sufficiently punished? He is a warrior, flying is an extremely dangerous occupation, he is already sufficiently punished, you may go, Madame, solid drinking with comrades is a tradition of the German people and her warriors, sometimes we have to drink to forget and to be the better man the next day, a man is a man, forgive him on this occasion, in this state, by your side, sufficiently punished, dangerous occupation.

  The commanding officer gives a sign to an SS man who steps forward, chalks a mark on the inside of the windscreen, my regards, Madame, and my unalloyed admiration, he clicks his heels, points to the chalk mark, that will ensure you won’t be bothered again, he then limps back towards the next vehicle, Lena sets off again.

  Two days later Ulrich is sent for by Goering, three generals are there, Goering curtly: Lieutenant Ulrich, when an officer of my Luftwaffe has his eye on one of the most alluring weapons in the enemy’s arsenal what should he do? Ulrich standing to attention, voice metallic, impeccable: fire all guns, quick bursts, direct hits, Marshal – laughs all round which bounce back off the marble walls of the huge office, quick bursts!

  Goering laughs until the tears come, he resumes, slow and serious voice, the killer, in future if ever your inveterate drinking prevents you from carrying out the mission of an officer of the Reich you will get six months’ latrine fatigues and be banned from flying, dismiss, and get yourself married fast to some good young German girl, we need children. Ulrich does not understand everything Goering tells him but he does not try to defend himself, he does drink a lot, he is let off lightly, usually an order to appear before the fat man turns out rather more painfully, he reckons he’s been fortunate, he’ll follow the Marshal’s recommendation, get married.

  That is how Lena succeeded in ferrying her radio operator as far as the Swiss frontier, with whisky sprinkled over a Flugleutnant's uniform, a seamstress at the opera house in Stuttgart had brought her a shawl one evening where there was no performance, to her hotel, for you, tonight also it’s going to turn very cold, very quickly.

  Instead of keeping out of sight, Lena makes a few arrangements and speeds off in her car to pick up her radio operator before he can set foot in the street where they’re waiting for him, she was lucky, a good tip about the cold, and for a while in London an Australian transmissions instructor repeated to students training to be spies, this is a very interesting business to be in, take me for example, it gave me an opportunity to be the lover of a great singer, for one night only, in a car, somewhere in Europe, a very fine motor, a Maybach Zeppelin.

  Lena had given herself a real fright, anyone else would have fled Germany after pulling a stunt like that, would have taken a harmless little trip for example to Lucerne, in fact she did go to Lucerne, a visit to a very old girlfriend, but she went back to Germany immediately afterwards, not the sort who gave up easily, and whatever she might say she loved the atmosphere, the uniforms against which her dress could positively shine, she loved the parties, the last time I met her in Berlin was at the Opera, a gala for the Wehrmacht, in 1938, at the time of the Munich talks.

  She was radiant surrounded by all those uniforms, I pointed this out to her, she got angry, she said, ‘Goffard, you’re just a footling Frenchman’, she bawled me out in front of everyone, said I was small-minded, I thought she was going to slap my face, I beat a retreat, I felt quite ill for the rest of the evening, I was aware that she had just shattered our friendship, it was my fault, I watched out for an opportunity to have another word with her, she saw me coming, she withered me with a look, the people around us, Nazi dignitaries and generals in full dress uniform, the swine were waiting for her to slap my face, she spat a few words in my direction, she spoke through gritted teeth, white-hot fury, I hardly heard what she said, I walked out of the Opera, got into my car, left Berlin, I was weeping, I took the Munich road, Lena had just said to me ‘Max, you see the company I keep these days, go back to your poker-playing friends, tell them not to sign, they are to be told not to sign, you see the company I keep?’

  I ran the errand, told the English and the French, but in Munich sign they did, they weren’t interested in knowing what German generals were telling them not to do.

  In the cockpit of the plane, Max’s voice has grown louder, more articulate, anxious to hide nothing from de Vèze:

  ‘I spent nearly twenty years, de Vèze, twenty years adding it all up, sifting through it, then it all became perfectly clear one evening in Paris in the early fifties, in the Officers’ Club, the room for Senior Men and special guests, a dinner for Allied Generals, with Marlene Dietrich and other luminaries, press barons who were being honoured for their efforts on behalf of the cause of freedom, when Lena came in there was a ripple of interest which took in Marlene too, they’d both sung that afternoon in support of the charitable work of the Allied armies, Lena was magnificent, very handsome at fifty, figure like a model but with talents and ideas, the most important man there that evening was Gruenther, the NATO boss, he was first to get to his feet, he went over to her.

  ‘He gave a military salute, saluted a woman, a civilian, the farm-boy from Nebraska, a yokel, instead of bringing his heels together smartly and lowering his head to kiss her hand he gave a soldier’s salute, very snappy, parade-ground stuff, the other men all stood up, she was their guest, clicking of heels, bows, hand-kissing, only Gruenther blundered, he saluted military fashion, everyone thought it was a bloomer, and then he compounded his mistake, proud to be standing next to her, not the way a man is when he has swept a beautiful woman off her feet, proud as if he’d been standing next to Patton.

  ‘At that moment I more or less got it, in London I’d seen French officers salute sober family men in grey suits who wore a small ribbon in their buttonhole, a shot-silk ribbon, green, black edging, you know, the sort of men who derail trains using only a mackintosh, she wasn’t wearing a ribbon, the other officers did not salute, she responded by offering Gruenther her hand, smiled like a lady of fashion, it was perfect.

  ‘Other things came back to me, in the end I knew all of it, just had to get the right angle, in 1947 she sang with Stirnweiss, Elisabeth Stirnweiss, no one protested, picture it, Madame Stirnweiss, once a card-carrying member of the Nazi Party, not one of the top names, nothing terrible against her, Austrian, with a big heart, but even so, she’d sung for the Führer, she’d dined with him, Stirnweiss wasn’t a Nazi but she had an NSDAP card, during the post-war years it was enough to limit her to giving private lessons to middle-class Viennese citizens for ten years, long enough for her to lose her voice.

  ‘And dear scatterbrained Lena agrees to sing with her, yes, in ’47 the request came directly from Stirnweiss, or indirectly, and Lena did not respond indirectly, she came to Stirnweiss, tears in Stirnweiss’s eyes, their paths had crossed in Berlin and Vienna, in the thirties, two friends, Stirnweiss had given her an entrée to the best salons, the best society, and Lena loved that, once she’d turned up with Lindbergh, she saw the Prince of Wales and Mrs Simpson, but Lena never went as far as those people, she loved a party but she got angry every time the Nazis tried to exploit her presence, and the Nazis back-pedalled because she knew a few
personal telephone numbers and because she wasn’t afraid to give people a roasting.

  ‘So in ’47 she reopened doors closed to Stirnweiss, from friendship, with no second thoughts, out of artistic preference, but there was also something else, she must have discussed it with Washington before leaving, people from the East should not be allowed to deliver Persil-white certificates of cleanliness to wayward talents, with or without NSDAP cards, like Furtwängler or Stirnweiss, or Karajan, people like that should not be allowed to scoot off to Dresden or East Berlin, the Soviets had just reopened the Staatsoper, with Orpheus, Eugene Onegin, Rigoletto, to which add a magnificent Arts Centre on Unter den Linden, the cold war was just beginning, shifting alliances, one side salvaged von Braun, the other von Whoever, Lena whisked Stirnweiss off to Salzburg, for the festival, and no one turned a hair.

  ‘My old friend Linus Mosberger told me that a newspaper columnist in New York had decided to get the knives out for Lena and her taste for ex-Nazis, he was called in, he shut up, she was very protected, she handled the whole Stirnweiss business with panache.

  ‘No one knows why but there was not one West German who could say no to Lena, no one ever said anything, but the great and the good were at each other’s throats to get her round their dinner tables or into their drawing rooms, to hear her talking about Toscanini or the Waltenberg Seminar or the Congress of Versailles from which so much evil had flowed, they trusted her implicitly, told her everything, and as the evening drew to a close people would start saying how they’d secretly opposed Hitler, Lena would listen, one day she’d remarked “many Germans opposed Hitler, such a shame they never got together”.

  ‘She always had a slightly mad streak, in 1956 I was in West Berlin, everywhere things were getting tense, the Poles, the Hungarians especially, summer of ’56. One of Berlin’s main shopping streets, I bump into a man, he drops his parcels, I apologise, I give him a hand, he raises his hat, old-style polite gesture, I respond in kind, we spend as long as is required by Berlin courtesy, we go our separate ways, I never saw him again, I’d just had time to hear a few words “she’s in Budapest, hasn’t got a diplomatic passport, it’s going to turn extremely cold”.