Waltenberg

by Hedi Kaddour

  ‘But sitting at our table was another man, well-dressed, relaxed, tweed jacket, handkerchief in his breast pocket, corduroy trousers, Maisie’s real boss this time, you’re going to meet him very soon now, you’re going to have fascinating conversations at the highest level, the man’s name is Walker, they refer to him as Richard F. T. Walker, the American mania for initials, F. T. is for flame-thrower, Richard Flame-Thrower Walker, I don’t know why, but it says what it means, with you he’s promised not to go any further than the lie-detector, he’ll keep his word, after all you’re going to be one of his colleagues, he gets on very well with Maisie, he’s deputy-director of the CIA, he’s Maisie’s boss, but it’s more complicated than that, sometimes he talks to her as if she’s a subordinate, at others as if he’s talking to someone who could one day be giving him orders, their relationship is very ambiguous.

  ‘I explained my assessments of Gorbachev for Maisie and Walker, the imminent failure of perestroika, the absence of genuine material conditions, they said “you’re talking Marx but that’s our kind of Marxism”.

  ‘It’s given them an edge, over the State Department and even the British, thanks to me, for once, the CIA got it right before everyone else did, they got it right for their president when Thatcher was giving him a hard time over her beloved Gorby, a desperate survivor hanging on to power, he misses his footing and to save himself reaches out and grabs a nest of vipers.

  ‘Maisie and Walker are both very pleased with me, Thatcher said “we must make cash payments to Gorby, we mustn’t let the West Germans absorb the GDR, we didn’t win the war for nothing”, she went off and told Gorbachev “don’t let go of the GDR”, the French also had the wind up them, no one wanted a greater Germany, not straight away, not for fifteen, twenty years.

  ‘I told the Americans Gorbachev is just a doctor who makes dying last longer, I also told them that German reunification was a done thing, it was unfortunate, but it was all settled, I sold them a slice of the future, think of what comes next, strengthen the ties with Poland, the Czechs, the Hungarians, in the old days they called them reverse alliances, I told them that my assessments came in part from you, don’t look like that, Misha, I really needed to embed you in the business, you’ll see why soon, I also said about you “there’s a man you could rescue”.’

  By now Lilstein and Morel are no longer in the rue Saint-Honoré, they have walked under the colonnades of the Louvre, they emerge into the Place du Carrousel. Lilstein is happy to have put some distance between himself and the road and the cars which brush past pedestrians, he heads off to the Pei pyramid. Morel trails meekly behind him, takes up his thread:

  ‘The Americans found our friendship very touching, they want it to continue, with them as a third party, and I need your help to go on with my work, you may perhaps have wronged some innocent people, my dear scapegoat, but don’t give way to romantic impulse and turn yourself in to restore the order that’s been upset, though we must go on believing in order…

  ‘I know, Misha, you’d like the German police to arrest you, your new compatriots, they can only do that for your pre-war activities against Hitler, and you want to force them to do it, it would be droll, a great moral victory, but then what? A short spell in jail, slopping out in your cell, officially there’s no blood on your hands, officially, they’d be forced to release you fairly quickly, you’d be just a guilty man with no ideals left, a senile Cassandra, paid less and less handsomely by newspapers that become more and more vulgar.

  ‘Misha, I don’t want to see you eating up your days in melancholy, I’m offering you a hand in the big game until the end, a chance to go out in style, you’re holding a file out to a secretary and at that very moment, curtains, your arm drops, heart attack halfway through a file, better, ruptured aneurysm, a death like de Gaulle’s but when you’re still working, truly a gift, that’s what I’m offering you, you were born to die in harness, tempting, no? Yes, you’re right, I’m reversing the roles, today the tempter, the Devil, is me, the world turned inside out? The reverse of Goethe’s world? No, the world isn’t Goethean, we don’t need to turn it inside out, you’re wrong, I’m going to let you in on a secret, there’s no need to turn the world inside out.

  ‘The world never has had a right side except in the eyes of those who are paid to make us believe that it has, a world without God or the Devil, temptation rushing round and round in a whirlwind, and that’s it, you just never had the bottle to be honest with yourself.

  ‘The Americans, at least the ones I know, my new friends, believe in their God, they grapple with the Devil, and keep their end up by resorting to a theory of the necessary lie, since they believe truth has no opposite they are forced to lie, they sit in the Devil’s seat, they’re convinced they can get up off it whenever they like, with a prayer.

  ‘They haven’t even asked me to align myself with their point of view, they’ve got enough ostensible allies, I’m going to write an article about the war in Iraq, about the bombing of the motorway just outside Kuwait City, all the cars incinerated by United States Airforce napalm, though the victims were civilians. They’re perfectly willing for me to express my reservations, the role of the man who asks himself questions, just a ploy to suit the people who will want to answer my questions.

  ‘It’s what they call luring the wolf out of the forest, the idea is to go on getting myself invited to places where it’s important, then tell them what goes on there, my little entrées into grand houses, I’ve got the taste for it.

  ‘Are you coming, Misha? Penny for your thoughts? Looking at the water? Remember, you can’t swim twice in the same river.’

  They are now on the Quai du Louvre, at the entrance to the Pont du Carrousel. How stupid, being afraid this was going to be a lift, Lilstein stares down at the Seine. He has allowed a small gap to open up between him and Morel. The same river! Morel turns, comes back towards him, tells him to stop watching the water flow by, it numbs the brain, never twice in the same river, Morel is mocking him, Morel is invulnerable, because he no longer has a Marguerite, his own wife dumped him though she was no Marguerite, Morel is alone, that’s his strength, this man has never felt the cold, he’d lost hope momentarily in ’56, he’d almost become a penny-plain bourgeois, and it was Lilstein who offered him meaning, and when that meaning had unravelled Lilstein offered him a game. Today, Morel mocks both the game and the meaning, he shoves Lilstein’s head under the water and laughs, saying ‘never twice in the same river’.

  ‘Come out of the river, Misha, Gorby has dumped you, if it’s any consolation he won’t last much longer, this you already know but you’ve got out of the habit of believing anything that might do you some good.

  ‘There isn’t even a river any more. Let’s get to the point, why we’re both here, why you won’t go to Berlin but to Washington: my new friends don’t know the right way to make a Linzer, they’d like to try but they’ll never acquire the knack, all they’re asking from you is a few files, not many names, no one’s going to ask you to foul your own nest, not important, all in the past, you can even keep the agents you’ve been running and arrange a meet with them now and then over a couple of drinks, to sing the “Chant des marais” and such like.

  ‘What my new friends need is whatever you’ve got on your opponents: the Christian-democrats, the socio-democrats, the pluto-democrats, the eco-democrats, the liberal-democrats, any and all the groups that have claimed the moral high ground and would like to see you in jail, we want to know exactly what the new Germany is planning to do in Europe, in Poland, Austria, Hungary, Bohemia, Mittel-Europa, all that stuff.

  ‘When Herr Kohl says “in this country of ours”, we watch his hand, the one that sweeps up the space in front of him, we want to know how far it intends to reach, you can help us, when the old Warsaw Pact countries gain entry to Europe, the Germans will have the right to buy all the land they want, in Poland, Bohemia, Danzig, the Sudetenland, it will cost them much less than a world war, we’ll need to keep an eye
on that, and moreover you know the Russians pretty well, the Evil Empire is dead but Russia is still an empire.

  ‘That’s what they’ll want of you. Say yes, there’s no point any more in always saying no. I know, it’s not a very attractive prospect, lackeys of the CIA, if that was all I’d be embarrassed suggesting it to you, Misha.’

  They are now at the middle of the Pont du Carrousel, leaning on the parapet. Lilstein can’t stop looking eastwards. The air is cool. The city is beautiful in the breeze. Lilstein has deliberately not responded to Morel’s last remark, he allows him to continue.

  ‘I’d blush. You suspect there’s more to it than that, crumbs of information for the CIA, everything you taught me to despise, which has its importance, on a daily basis, we’ll do our duty, but we must have a good time, Misha, my new friends have given me to understand that we’ll have the wherewithal to have us a whale of a time, they didn’t agree to that willingly, it wasn’t cynicism, they are cynics but it was when they were being most frank with me that they taught me things, had they but known it.

  ‘Walker, for example, one day he mentioned the name of Lena Hellström, Walker had tears in his eyes, he said she was his godmother, that she’d cuddled him when he was a babe in arms, Maisie laughed saying, “FT, if you’re going to go all dewy-eyed on us we’ll bounce you out of your job as director of operations.” Ever since that day, Walker has not said another word about Lena Hellström. You like it when I talk about Lena, Misha?

  ‘It was Maisie who brought her name up again, in the restaurant, Maisie gave the impression she’d fallen in love with Lena, I had a lot of discussions with her, we talked about heavy stuff, and in the end, to unwind, she’d ask me to tell her about Lena. And to make me talk she’d talk about herself, and she let her own friends talk about her, Maisie said I can skate on ice too, and ski, and play Beethoven. It’s true, Maisie doesn’t sing but she can play piano sonatas, high standard, top amateur level, and chamber music too, plays with colleagues, they call themselves the “National Security Chamber Orchestra”, they give concerts two or three times a year, Maisie is a great lady.

  ‘In the good years, when you could still say that civil rights were something which communists demanded, an eminent professor declared in a seminar that the white race was gifted with superior abilities, Maisie was there, she let him have it, deathly silence, important seminar, forty or so students, and colleagues of the professor, assistants, the kind of place where you find a lot of future leaders, clear careful minds, the prof is a little out of touch in his philosophical views but he’s the top man for international law, you let him say his piece even if you don’t agree with him, Maisie didn’t stand up, sat right there in her seat to speak, very calm, seminar voice, she looked at her pen all the time, they looked her, she said “you study philosophy and you don’t read German, I do, you study international law and you don’t know Russian, I can speak it, I can read it and I can write it, along with German, French and Spanish, these are things any human being can learn, you like to think you’re a man of culture, but I’m the one who plays Beethoven sonatas”.

  ‘Up to this point, you could say that Maisie’s comments were brave, fine role for a woman, she bore witness, birth of a new muse of civil rights, I am the exception but I refuse to prove your rule, it’s just a question of being out of sync, just a question of catching up, she was right, you can guess the rest, and the big finish on “I have a dream”, she had a fine job ready and waiting for her in the farce that is politics, queen of civil rights, positive discrimination, etc. But there was something else.

  ‘And the people around her felt that Maisie had taken her first step along a very long road, that she wouldn’t just be playing the role of representative of the Blacks.

  ‘To be sure she said “I’m the only black person here”, it was enough to get her looked at with a mix of sympathy, a trace of shame and a guilty conscience prepared to do whatever it took to atone, they were going to make it easier for her, recognise all the talents she’d talked about, defend her against the professor if they had to.

  ‘Looking up and including the other students present she added “you use the fact that Blacks have a way to go as a lesson to white students that all they have to do is be white, your ideas encourage laziness; but Blacks have got the message, only real work should count, this country doesn’t need easygoing ways, ten years from now being an easygoing White won’t be enough”.

  ‘She also spoke about the strength of the individual, about personal will and the help of God which is offered to all, they didn’t clap, not with the professor sitting there, but you could hear “yeah” and “hear hear” like in the House of Commons, all very discreet, it made its impression on people’s minds and the professor didn’t like it one little bit.

  ‘At the end of the year, for her oral exam, the Dean of the Faculty and a couple other members of the Board sat in the public seats, she performed brilliantly, passed with the highest honours, summa cum laude’

  They crossed the Seine, and bore left along the Quai towards Notre-Dame. Lilstein tries to think while listening to Morel. If the people in Berlin have put out a warrant for him, he’s going to need the Americans to get out of Europe. Who would make the best jailers? Morel says he needs Lilstein, but if that’s not true he’ll drop Lilstein like a hot potato the moment he confirms his statements to the Americans. And then the Americans will drop Lilstein. They’ll send him back to Berlin. Lilstein will have allowed himself to be caught in a trap consisting of a story about an American woman and some cassoulet, Morel has turned out to be an excellent pupil.

  ‘That said, Misha, Maisie may very well be a woman, but she has a man’s weakness, she works for the CIA but she wants better than that, she wants to be a politician, today she listens but some day she’ll only want to hear what she chooses to hear, she’ll insist on it, she’ll be our friend, first she’ll try to catch us out, we’ll look as if we’re in the wrong, so inferior to her! We’ll give her what she wants, Misha, she has a little weakness: masculine ambition.

  ‘She defended the United States to my face, she doesn’t like my scepticism, it’s the land of “just do it”, when she was young her father told her over and over “this is the country where they can refuse to let you into a diner but you can also get to be President of the whole country”.

  ‘Only once did she ever remind me of that to my face, the presidency, “just do it”, that’s why she’s settled into the role of unlikeliest republican, with a faultless European culture, consistent stance, rights of the individual, “I’d rather be ignored than helped”, Lena fascinates her, she wonders if she lived alone, did she have a man in her life? Did she like women? American questions, Misha you must have lots to tell her on that subject.

  ‘Maisie ate her profiteroles and went right on drinking the Madiran, putting off the moment when she’d ask her bodyguard for a cigarette, amazing woman, not at all the type of African-American you get in magazines, more the feminist who specialises in the folk-tales of Zimbabwe, her thing is the history of the USSR, the Komintern, and Europe, from Talleyrand to Bismarck, and Schubert, yes, “like Madame Hellström, but I can’t play Schubert’s sonatas, just the accompaniment to some of the Lieder”.

  ‘She’s a Presbyterian, so was Lena, in the Toulouse restaurant in Washington she ate her profiteroles with a mixture of hunger and gluttony, you should have seen her, especially after the hole she’d made in the cheese board, never mind, forget the gym we’ll go and listen to her play the piano.

  ‘Her father thought, if you’re black you got to be twice as good, the same thing old man Hellström must have said to his daughter, he was white, from the South, a Presbyterian democrat from the South, “when you’ve got a name like Hellström you’ve got to be twice as good”, and those good little girls with ribbons in their hair, one Black and one White, start doing their very best, piano, singing, giving twice their best, sixty years apart, and with big, big differences, in the sixties Maisie was still a
nigger, in a school for niggers.

  ‘Nigger part of town, with buses for niggers, restrooms ditto, that said there are niggers and niggers, the father for example was a teacher and a Presbyterian minister, there were also Baptists, one day in the Baptist church an explosion, four little girls died, KKK, never did find out who did it, one of the girls was Maisie’s best friend at school.’

  Morel has stopped. He has grabbed Lilstein’s arm. He looks him in the eye, tells him there’ll be no trap, that there’ll be no car to lift him, Lilstein must trust him because it’s the only way out for both of them, because the solution is called Maisie, whether Lilstein likes it or not.

  ‘Maisie’s father isn’t a democrat, Misha, he’s a republican, a black man registered as a republican voter in the deep south of the United States, because the first time he tried to get his name on the electoral roll he came across a good southern-thinking democrat who made him sit an aptitude test for Blacks, a great big salad bowl full of dry beans, to get your name on to the electoral roll they had to guess how many beans there were in that bowl.

  ‘The father walked out, went back another day and came across a republican who said he’d register him but only if he could register him as a republican voter, one long childhood, for a little African-American girl, of being told “you can get to be President”, Maisie told me she’d like to have met Lena, that she was fascinated, an American fascinated by Europe now that’s fascinating, “Europe” Maisie would say, “interests me, but it doesn’t fascinate me”, Maisie with this very methodical approach to the profiteroles, didn’t pour all the hot chocolate sauce at once, poured it on the first one to begin with, sheeny black topping, Maisie brings her nose down real close so she won’t miss any of the chocolate aromas, she laughs, starts telling a story, “in Toulouse there was this other pâtisserie, it was called ‘Au Bon Nègre’, I used to make a point of going there.”