Waltenberg Read online

  HÉDI KADDOUR

  Waltenberg

  Translated from the French by David Coward

  VINTAGE BOOKS

  London

  Published by Vintage 2009 2468 10 9753

  Copyright © Éditions Gallimard, Paris 2005

  English translation copyright © David Coward 2008

  Hédi Kaddour has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work

  First published with the title Waltenberg in 2008 by Éditions Gallimard, Paris

  First published in Great Britain in 2008 by Harvill Seeker Vintage

  Random House

  This book is supported by the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs as part of the Burgess programme run by the Cultural Department of the French Embassy in London

  /'

  For Lucienne and Habib Kaddour

  Table Of Contents

  Chapter 1 1914 The Charge

  In which the French cavalry is observed launching an assault on German dreams.

  In which Hans Kappler remembers Lena Hotspur and the time when she took singing lessons with Madame Nietnagel.

  In which Max Goffard defers his entrance and denounces toy machine guns.

  In which a French commanding officer begins to speak of Africa and tells of a duel.

  In which Alain-Fournier dies.

  Monfaubert, 4 September 1914

  Chapter 2 1914 The Lake

  In which the intensity of the French cavalry charge reaches new heights. In u/hich the achievement of President Poincaré is compared with that of the Pieds Nickelés.

  In which we learn how Lena Hotspur fell in love with Hans Kappler.

  In which questions are asked about the true death of Alain-Fournier.

  In which Hans and Lena suddenly hear cracking coming from the lake on which they are skating.

  Monfaubert, 4 September 1914

  Chapter 3 1956 A Remarkable Symmetry

  In which Michael Lilstein remembers Hans Kappler and offers you a job as a Paris spy.

  In which we learn what Lena owed to an easy-going American named Walker.

  In which Lena disappears in the middle of Budapest.

  In which Max tells several stories including the one which ends: ‘We already know

  In which Michael Lilstein unveils his theory of twin souls and introduces you to Linzer Torte.

  Waltenberg/Paris, early December 1956

  Chapter 4 1956 The Childhood of a Mole

  In which you are invited by a friend of Michael Lilstein to eat lobster in a Paris brasserie.

  In which you descend a considerable way into the bowels of the Gare de l’Est.

  In which you meet a beautiful woman dressed in red in a first-class railway compartment.

  In which Lilstein tells you why you should work with him.

  Paris/Waltenberg, early December 1956

  Chapter 5 1978 Rumours and a Pair of Braces

  In which a man named Berthier goes hunting for moles inside, no less, the French Embassy in Moscow, in a manner prejudicial to the interests of Henri de Veze, whose love life is rocky, and also of Madame de Cramilly, who is bringing up a papyrus on her own

  In which de Veze remembers a voice crying ‘The Great Adventure is buggered!’

  In which it becomes obvious that you’ve been Lilstein’s mole in Paris for a very long time and that you have the ear of the President of the French Republic.

  In which it becomes clear that Michael Lilstein is in melancholy mood and has almost stopped believing in socialism.

  Paris, 4 June 1978

  Chapter 6 1978 Four or Five Lilsteins

  In which de Veze takes a ride on a merry-go-round near the Palais de Chaillot.

  In which, despite your age, Lilstein continues to address you as 'young gentleman of France’.

  Ln which we are present at the very first meeting of de Veze and the niece of a Soviet marshal.

  In which, in the presence of a lady, you have a reaction which might well compromise your activities as a mole.

  Moscow, June 1978

  Chapter 7 1965 The Uses of Croquet

  In which Max Goffard meets up once more with his author in Singapore and recalls the Riff wars.

  In which de Vèze speaks ofBir Hakeim and decides to seduce a young woman who reads novels.

  In which you rejoin Lilstein at the Waldhaus Hotel so that you might share with him the scruples of a Paris-based spy.

  In which Lilstein reassures you by relating the history ofTukhachevsky.

  Singapore, July 1965

  Chapter 8 1965 The Locomotive and the Kangaroo

  In which it is noticeable to what extent the Riff war is an obsession for Max Goffard.

  In which Lilstein tells you the story ofSelifane the coachman and asks you to continue thinking your own thoughts.

  In which we are introduced to cyanide and soft-centred chocolates.

  In which Lilstein attempts to translate for you what he understands by the word Menschheit.

  In which the conversation between Max Goffard and his author takes a disagreeable turn.

  In which de Vèze decides to play footsie under the table with the woman opposite him at the dinner table.

  Singapore, July 1965

  Chapter 9 1928 Flaubert’s Bust

  In which Hans Kappler dreams of Lena Hotspur and has a conversation with his friend Max Goffard.

  In which Max Goffard tries his hand at erotic writing and suggests that Hans Kappler might care to become a landscape painter.

  In which Max Goffard finally gets on a train for Waltenberg and the European Seminar.

  In which we learn how Max Goffard became a great reporter and is now a sports enthusiast.

  Paris, September 1928

  Chapter 10 1929 An Artichoke Heart

  In which we observe many philosophers, economists, politicians, artists, and. even young Lilstein, as they meet in the Swiss Grisons to help make Truth manifest.

  In which Hans Kappler feels diwy as he hears a Lied being sung in the Waldhaus Hotel.

  In which the Swiss Army suddenly looms.

  In which young Lilstein gets drunk on French cognac.

  In which Max Goffard spends his one and only wedding night.

  Waltenberg, March 1929

  Chapter 11 1969 A Funeral and an Ambush

  In which a great writer is buried and no stone is left unturned to capture a spy who is present among the mourners.

  In which Henri de Vèze reads aloud a passage from Le Grand Meaulnes.

  In which we learn what transpired long ago at Waltenberg between a boar and a young woman.

  In which Lilstein warns you against the fine sentiments which can be so prejudicial to good moles.

  Grindisheim, October 1969

  Chapter 12 1969 Twice as Strong

  In which Lilstein tries to worm out of Max secrets ofhis private life.

  In which the net tightens around the spy who is there at the funeral.

  In which the man named Walker comes up with a muscular plan to capture the spy.

  In which Max pieces together the life of his friend Lena in the years between the two wars and during a short period after it.

  In which Lilstein again warns you to beware of noble sentiments.

  In which a clear idea emerges of Lena’s talents as a singer of Lieder.

  Grindisheim, October 1969

  Chapter 13 1991 Is Reason Historical?

  In which Lilstein finds himself once more in a trap and we discover the identity of the mole.

  In which a young bookseller’s assistant keeps an eye on her customers while attempting to answer a philosophical question.

  In which Lilstein realises that The Adventures of Gédéon is a mos
t instructive book.

  In which we also learn how the story of the bear ends.

  Paris, Passage Marceau, September 1991

  Chapter 14 1991 We Never Suspected You for One Moment!

  In which we learn the reasons that motivated the mole after the fall of the Berlin Wall.

  In which we hear final revelations concerning the life of Lena and the death of Hans.

  In which the question arises of who should serve the tea in the White House.

  In which young people have a great time without giving a second thought to what old persons think.

  Paris, the quais of the Seine, September 1991

  Waltenberg

  Chapter 1

  1914

  The Charge

  In which the French cavalry is observed launching an assault on German dreams.

  In which Hans Kappler remembers Lena Hotspur and the time when she took singing lessons with Madame Nietnagel.

  In which Max Goffard defers his entrance and denounces toy machine guns.

  In which a French commanding officer begins to speak of Africa and tells of a duel.

  In which Alain-Fournier dies.

  Monfaubert, 4 September 1914

  Our dreams come to grief on the reef of dusk

  When the dogs of day and the wolves of night

  Do bloody battle for the light.

  Robert Marteau

  The jay has stopped its screeching. Hans has the tip of a sabre against his belly, a lightly curved sabre. The man who holds the sabre has a very pale, young face.

  The blade trembles. There are other men behind him, on horseback, also young, red breeches, dark blue tunics, crested helmets: French dragoons.

  Here in this wood?

  But the front is fifty kilometres south.

  The rabbits.

  Hans does not cry out, he is ashamed of not crying out. Standing, arms raised, filled with such fear as he never felt before, he sees the rabbits he was watching only moments ago flee in the evening air, about fifteen grey rabbits which had rolled on the ground and climbed all over each other, with a hop and skip and a flash of white bobtail, coupling casually, all happening too far away to be able to tell male from female. ‘Anyway, according to Saint Maxence,’ Johann had just told him, ‘they are incorrigible sodomites.’

  Johann had slid to the ground, his neck half severed by a French dragoon.

  Hans and Johann had stumbled into an enemy ambush at the edge of a wide clearing while they were out on evening patrol, or more precisely out for a stroll, pipes filled with Virginia tobacco, swallows overhead, earnestly arguing in the still-warm air fragrant with the scent of mown grass.

  Hans was watching the clouds, seeing shapes in them, and he began talking about a woman he had loved. Breasts as soft as turtle doves, he kept glancing down at them as she sat in front of him drinking her bowl of chocolate. She had disappeared, I was even told she was dead, it’s not true, she can’t be, the first time I saw her she’d just let the door slam behind her as she walked into the dining room of a large hotel, not out of carelessness or bad manners, it was the unaffected action of an American, utterly straightforward, a German girl wouldn’t have dared, nor even a French girl, she’d just let it slam, she didn’t need to do that to attract attention, no, it was done very simply, because if the door wasn’t capable of closing itself quiedy, hotel porters or no hotel porters, it was nothing to do with her, she had enough on her plate being a beautiful woman obliged to walk into a full dining room unescorted, and she had absolutely no wish to wait for some man to come along who would make the most of his opportunity to smile at her.

  She was wearing a dark blue dress, shoulders held very straight, I never understood why she disappeared, one evening I came back from an outing, and she’d gone, left no address, I couldn’t make it out but I should have known, something stupid had happened, I’ll tell you about it if I have the energy.

  White shoulders, long red hair, contralto voice, she was studying singing, she wanted to sing the The Lovely Miller Girl and Winter Journey, I told her they were both written for male voices, but that didn’t bother her, musically it could be very interesting, a woman’s voice singing a man’s pain, the effect could be even more powerful, less expressive was how she put it, pure music and beyond the music, emotion, purified; it was all a bit complicated to follow but when she started singing Das Wandern, it was superb, it was anything but a march, you can’t march to it, too many silences in the melody, if you take it at strict march tempo you drown out the silences, if you try it trippingly on the quavers you’ll jounce, and if you do it with crotchets it’s too heavy, no, not really a march at all, more like a draft outline of a march. But I won’t bore you with the details.

  It’s the song a young miller sings as he sets out to meet life, as he goes forward to meet the girl from the mill, he’s marching along, it’s delightful, a repeating round, a new element, the gurgle of the stream, even the stones are part of the round, the piano pushes on ahead, starting the round again each time, and each time there’s a fresh energy, all right, I’ll leave it there.

  O Wandern, Wandern, meine Lust, a real pleasure, you should have heard Lena say Lust, that’s why she wanted to sing a man’s song, so she could say Lust in her woman’s voice: pleasure. It was superb, O Wandern, meine Lust.

  Hans sings, rather off key, flattening the notes and the intervals between them, she said that lust is much stronger in English, almost crude, at least it is when a woman says it, she loved it, singing a man’s word in German which in her own language was almost crude, lust, she jumbled all this up and laughed and then untangled it all again when she sang. I’ll stop now, I’m positive she isn’t dead, she’s gone to the other side of the ocean, gone home.

  Johannn listened, paid the white shoulders, breasts soft as turtle doves and red hair the measured tribute that a man owes to his friend’s girl. They were at war, this was men’s talk and it grew stronger and more direct as the distance increased between them and the kind of life where a man needed to be discreet about what was called the inner self, that inner life which these days tended to be spread out for all to see, blood, guts and all, at the first salvo from the enemy’s cannon.

  Their talk deepened as the regiment moved from one staging post to the next, Namur, Charleroi, Saint-Quentin, Landrecies, Chauny, Fontenoy, Monfaubert, they talked about women with decreasing coyness but were never foul-mouthed, each making it clear that, however desirable his friend’s girl was, he was not about to pat her on the behind.

  The friend feels a growing urge to tell him she has an attractive behind, and on occasions his hand might even trace a curve in the pink and blue air of the clearing. Then, the friend being Johann, he acquiesces as he tracks the hand with his eyes, says a dreamy oof! even if the movements of his own hands over a woman’s hindquarters are normally much more specific, more exploratory, more decisive than the graceful curves which Hans draws against the sky; he says oof! in passing acknowledgement of the girl’s beauty, even if he’s never seen her, as was the case with Johann who in peacetime would never have got friendly with this girl Hans kept telling him about for hours on end, until he was dreaming of her with his eyes open, tracing curves in the air with his hand.

  And Johann would indicate that he had a very clear picture of the girl’s shoulders, hips, buttocks, legs, that he understood exactly how exquisite it all was, and the swell of her breasts, soft as a dove’s; he didn’t agree about the turtle doves, he thought of them as being grey but he wasn’t going to upset his friend, and anyway white doves do exist, a delicate white, he could see the girl clearly if he opened his eyes wide and then raised them to the sky, where the world regains something of its innocence.

  Hans feels hot, Johann looks admiring, dreamy, he is one whom destiny has kept and will forever keep well away from the breasts and hindquarters of Madame Lena Hotspur, his friend’s girl who has disappeared, and disappeared in the most mysterious circumstances.

  But Hans mig
ht have suspected something, seen a warning in Lena’s incomprehensible gesture; and, being his friend, Johann even found himself quizzing Hans. Were her shoulders really that straight? Yes, that’s the first thing that struck me, usually women’s shoulders are less prominent, more rounded, Lena’s shoulders are like a boy’s, her body is – how shall I put it? – very firm, she could wear any sort of dress, a dress on her hung as perfectly as in a fashion designer’s illustrations, and yet you could see all her curves, everywhere, she must have gone back to live on the other side of the ocean.

  Then the two men talked about rabbits and the place occupied by rabbits in mythology.

  By way of defences, vehicles were simply parked in a circle, a large circle, more or less, with the vehicles well spaced out, a rough and ready arrangement, the clearing covered an area of more than fifty hectares, so it would have taken a lot of men.

  They were still at war but the hardest battles were over and there was nothing to fear now.

  Within a few weeks, following the plan laid down by the general staff, the Kaiser’s army had penetrated deep into French territory, a brilliant strategic breakthrough in the form of a great scything movement through Belgium; four German armies, marshalled as though they were on manoeuvres, had come to a halt and regrouped on the banks of the Marne, which they would cross at any time now, their comrades had not died for nothing, it was the same situation as in 1870, the French forces routed and their President, Poincaré, already falling back on Bordeaux.

  You could walk across the fields as if you were back home, wait for the moment when clouds and memories began to invent a woman, while observing the frolicking of frisky rabbits.

  Johann talked endlessly about Easter bunnies, the descendants of the rabbits which according to our pagan ancestors escorted the goddess of spring, rabbits with giant testicles, creatures a metre high like pink granite, guarded by priestesses, with sterile women bringing them offerings though I’ve no idea of what, nowadays in my country women bring the healer a pound of butter, a bottle of schnapps and a pair of knickers, and the healer hangs the knickers on a hook in his barn and then proceeds to his fumigations, I’ve no idea if the wives of our pagan ancestors wore knickers or not, the Christian Church burned the priestesses at the stake, but it couldn’t get rid of the rabbits, so it kept them but removed their bollocks and now we send children off to look for them under bushes, not the rabbits, stupid! chocolate rabbits.