Peace Talks

by Tim Finch

  I will sign off now.

  THE HANNAH WÄCHTER MOMENT

  There was a time when you liked me to describe in some detail wherever in the world I happened to be at that moment. I want to be able to picture it, you used to say when we spoke on the phone. Why don’t you just fly out here? I would reply. And sometimes, in the earlier days, you would. But more often, and more frequently as the years went by, you would laugh at the idea. Not dismissively. The tone was rather: If only!

  Yet, in truth, the reason you didn’t come was not because you couldn’t. Or not entirely. Doubtless, some part of you would have liked to be with me, to visit this or that place or another, to have a break from your own frantic work schedule. But in large part you simply had no desire to get away. That frantic work schedule stemmed – branched is a better word: much sturdier – from a job you loved, you lived for. Not quite as much as you loved me or lived for us, perhaps, but not far off.

  Don’t try to dispute the point. And don’t feel bad about it. One thing we never were, was overly sentimental about our relationship. Not at the time anyway – which is the way of it with sentiment, I find. It is more a creature of dewy-eyed contemplation. It is ill-suited to the dry air of the lived present.

  And perhaps I am talking more for you than for me, but I nonetheless agree that the facts we ‘had our own professional and social lives’, ‘didn’t live in each other’s pockets or under each other’s feet’ and ‘both did jobs that meant we spent quite a bit of time apart’ were among the reasons we had such a strong bond. These circumstances allowed us to indulge in more sentimentality (which has its place in a relationship) than would otherwise have suited our natures. ‘Love you’, ‘miss you’, ‘can’t wait to see you’ are things so much more sincerely said, and truly felt, in the absence of the other, than in their always-somewhat-irksome presence. Which – I know, I know – is pretty much to rewrite, and more ponderously, a greetings-card cliché, but here’s the rub: I’m semi-permanently wobbling on the lip of all that is clichéd about bereavement. It is mainly through channelling you that I am able to reflect more rigorously – as I hope I am doing so now – on the condition.

  Had we known that one of our lives would be cut short, would we have chosen to spend more time together? Given that every second of the time I spent with you is now so precious to me, it might seem that I would wish it so. But in truth, no. For the preciousness lies partly in the scarcity, but more in the diamond-like precision: the exactitude of the amount of time we had together – both together/together and together/apart (when, after all, we always knew we would be seeing each other again soon). The reality is I cannot have a moment longer with you than I had, or to configure it differently, I don’t wish for it. I have made a hard pact with that fact. It preserves me. It honours you. It is true to the spirit of us.

  Those days – the describe-in-detail days, that is – came before the era of the Internet, of course; before you could just tap ‘this place’, ‘that place’ or ‘the other’ into a search engine and find its website, its photo gallery, its Wikipedia page; or, via Google maps, float up its streets, inspect every one of its buildings, virtually, and all but zoom in through this window, do an about-turn and look out, as I am doing right now, from this place, Klotild’s, a smart café I often visit, just to sit and read and think.

  Do I have any friends here? Anyone I can turn to or confide in? These, I fancy, are questions you want to ask of me, now that there will never again be any flying over, any phone calls, or Skype calls, or greetings at the airport, or glasses of wine and swapping of news, standing up at the island in the kitchen, on that first, that most treasured, evening home. Do not worry about that, I want to say, lip trembling slightly, imagining you in a place, a state of being, that seems to me so crushingly forsaken. Or rather, not imagining you, anywhere or in any state, except totally lost to me. I have the walking group, and there are the evenings in the Gaststube. I am constantly in the company of colleagues, many of whom I have known for years.

  But is there anyone in particular; a close friend? (You do not give up. You are determined to make this about me.)

  The answer to that is, no. Not here, and sometimes I think, not anywhere. You are the only close friend I have ever wanted or needed, which is why being apart from you, and knowing it is now for ever, is so hard for me.

  And that, I realise, sounds heartbreaking, pitiful, though really, I don’t feel sorry for myself so much as for that man, who happens to be me, who looks so sad and lonely, having a coffee and a pastry in Klotild’s on his own on a bright, crisp Saturday morning. I’d go as far as to say I feel that catch in the throat, that lurching feeling, as I contemplate this man’s solitude from … where exactly? Somewhere in that corner, where the international newspapers are arrayed on mahogany rods; just there, where that elegantly jacketed woman is sitting – though why there, why her, I couldn’t say. She doesn’t seem in the least sympathetic – hard-faced would be a better description – and isn’t even looking in my direction …

  Then suddenly she is. And I have to shoot back over here, to my table next to window, where any sense of myself as a sorry figure, a man bereft, feels plain daft. Something to do with perspective, perhaps? I am, if anything, quite content at this moment – which is to say, these little diversions aside, I am a bit lonely, but it is that type of loneliness which reflects rather well on the person so absorbed in it. One can imagine oneself, at this one remove, as the star of an arthouse film or the subject of a classic black-and-white photograph. Cast in this way, framed as if in a lens, sadness and solitude enjoy a 180-degree status change. A certain dignity is conferred. Gravitas. Another word that comes to mind – shades of elegance perhaps – is elegiac. Which is a word that has none of the ugly jagged edges of wretched. Moreover, if I do start to wallow, or indeed indulge myself in any way, I can eventually rely on a practised sense of the absurd to pull me back to the surface. Back to the moment-by-moment coordinates we all live by. The constant computing of existence.

  Have I lost you with all these convolutions? I wouldn’t blame you if I had. I suppose this is what they call a ‘coping mechanism’. And as they also say: it works for me. Whatever it takes. Not Forrester this time, but Caroline, my counsellor. It’s not often that she comes to mind. I am pleased to say I have no need of her services now.

  I am in decent spirits, then, sitting here in this café, in one corner of the main square in the nearby town, lower in the valley, looking out on the church, with its white tower and green-copper onion dome, to which I will shortly be crossing to attend a chamber-music concert. Haydn quartets.

  Then I will have some lunch somewhere and take a short walk around the elegant and expensive shops of this resort. I need – or at least, want – to buy a pair of gloves more suitable for the warming weather. I will return to the hotel for a cup of tea and to read. I may have a short nap. Then I will have an early-evening drink. There will be somebody I can drink with – if I feel the need of company. Then it will be time for dinner. I have booked a table at the best of the Italian restaurants in the town, and a couple of senior colleagues will be joining me. We will talk talks inevitably, but then the conversation will move on to wider geopolitical matters, and to books, plays, films, philosophical this and that. There might even be some more personal chatter, some asking after loved ones. But we won’t even try to get below the surface. As I say, they are colleagues. But even if they were friends …

  And there you have it: another day done. (I almost said, ticked off. Chalked up is better.) It will have been a good day in the way that unremarkable days, of leisurely pursuits and refined entertainment, generally are, I find. Though of course it will have passed without you – I mean, without half the world. (Hikmet, remember? I have been rereading him here as well. The usual tower of books by my bedside.)

  When one does supposedly important work – and I will withdraw the unnecessarily defensive ‘supposedly’ straight away … we are doing important work here: w
e are working to end a bloody civil war, for goodness’ sake – when one does important work, people imagine that a day away from it must feel like an empty day, a wasted day, not appreciating what I would have thought was obvious: that the importance of our work, and of all the important work in the world, lies in the very fact that if we succeed in it, we will all enjoy more days like the one I will enjoy today: inconsequential, unmemorable, a day in which nothing much is achieved, but no harm is done.

  First, do no harm. Primum non nocere. I have always liked this principle; a foundational principle of your profession. We would have been in the tiny kitchen of our apartment in Kungsholmen. Those early Stockholm years, so precious to us: the green dotted seascape of the archipelago; the compact cupolaed and spired mass of Gamla Stan. Our first flat, our first home together. My first love. (I forgive you Charlie!) First and last. There will never be another. (Cue violins.) You were always more ambitious for me than I was for myself. (To a large extent, that is true the other way around. Perhaps there is no surer sign of love?) I remember you qualifying, your first registrar’s job, your first consultant’s position. It really was no great sacrifice on my part to turn down certain postings because they didn’t fit around your career. I have never really wanted to be leading the delegation, chairing the talks, sitting at the top table. Such preferment came my way, I’m sure, because I didn’t chase it.

  I won’t pretend it hasn’t saved me, though. I would have surely drowned without it. (Cue the whole string section: great soaring, surging strings. Not Haydn.) But if the circumstances had been different I would happily have spent my days on my own, at a table in a café, with a book, achieving nothing much, but harming no one, not just occasionally, but every day, knowing that when I got home, you would be there, at the end of your long, busy, important working day – saving lives.

  I must pay. I must get to the concert. Haydn. Quartets 1 and 2, Opus 76. If I was telling a story with a discernible shape, with a narrative arc, I would reveal at this point that these quartets were great favourites of ours, that we had an old vinyl record which we found on a market stall and played over and over while making love on sunny afternoons when we were students. You see how effortlessly the scene is evoked? As it is, I don’t remember ever having heard these quartets. Haydn, I know, was no great favourite of yours. And if we ever made love on sunny afternoons … I’m joking; of course we did … it was more likely that Miles Davis was on the stereo. (No strings.)

  The word that comes to mind to describe the quartets – I am having lunch at a little place near the ice rink which serves an excellent Tiroler Gröstl (a favourite here) – is divertissement. The second quartet, the programme notes tell me, is known as the ‘Fifths’, after the falling perfect fifths with which it opens. I know I will remember that and will find some opportunity soon to say, ‘Ah, the Fifths’ in a way that will please me no end, despite – no, let me be honest, because – I will be picturing you rolling your eyes as I do so.

  But there is something I must tell you. I have mentioned before that there is this fellow in one of the delegations who is reading The Magic Mountain – in Arabic, though I have no doubt he could manage it perfectly well in English, perhaps even in German. His name is Noor, Dr Osman Noor, and although he is nominally the number three in his delegation, he has long seemed to us more important than this status would suggest. It could be that this is just our bias towards the more Westernised of the delegates. It is easy to slip into the assumption that they are the ones who – to use Maggie Thatcher’s phrase about President Gorbachev – we can more readily ‘do business with’; that they are more reasonable, more civilised, more decent, more ‘like us’.

  My own number three, Cruickshank, has his own way of alerting me when he thinks I am tending too far in this direction. ‘Orientalism,’ he mutters under his breath, a reminder of the Edward Said book I gave everyone to read before the talks started; a book you urged on me years ago, and which, as Cruickshank’s signalling makes clear, I haven’t internalised quite as much as I would like to think.

  But to get to the point: Noor was there, at the church. Not at the Haydn quartets, though now I come to think of it, the idea is not so outlandish. Think SS officers attending chamber concerts, within the precincts of Auschwitz-Birkenau, as the gas ovens did their infernal work. ‘Yes, indeed, Mr Behrends,’ I can hear Noor saying, ‘let us not forget the depths of barbarity into which this continent plunged not so long ago.’ He is adept at turning things back against us in such ways, which given Europe’s history is fair enough, I suppose, though he never troubles to distinguish between the various European countries, some of which have been more the victims of barbarity than the perpetrators of it. On top of which, I do take issue with the notion that all the world’s ills are the fault of the West. Colonisation/decolonisation, intervention/non-intervention, arms sales/arms embargoes, trade/sanctions: we are damned if we do/damned if we don’t. And yes, yes, I know … Orientalism.

  ‘Mr Behrends.’

  ‘Dr Noor.’

  In fact, it was in the churchyard that we bumped into each other. As in the village, every grave in this churchyard is adorned with an elaborately wrought metal cross – all floral motifs and curlicues – rising from a simple marble base. A brass plaque on the shaft of the cross records details of the deceased (often – touchingly – a married couple) and features small oval-shaped portrait photographs, generally showing husband and wife in traditional Tyrolean costume. Black carriage lamps containing red candles are attached to the base of the shaft and there are other candle holders at the foot of the grave. In the evening, all the candles are lit and create a twinkling, festive scene in the snow-quilted churchyard. In the bright sunshine of midday, the aspect is still picturesque, but the ironwork of death stands out in somewhat starker relief.

  Having greeted me without any obvious sign of unease, Noor proceeded to anticipate my questions – speaking to me more personally than he had ever done previously, though with his usual clipped formality.

  ‘You are surprised to see me in this place. You would have assumed our religion forbids it. In fact, Islamic teaching is not definitive as to whether visiting the graveyards of Christians is, as we say, haram. Some teachers suggest that it is only permissible if you pass on the tidings of hell at the graveside. I can see you find that notion as distasteful as I do. When I was in Paris as a student, many years ago, at a time when, I must admit, I was considerably less devout than I am today, I took to visiting the cemeteries there, and I have continued the practice wherever I happen to be in the world. If nothing else, it is useful to be reminded that most men pass through this life and into the next world without much disturbance to their fellow men, leaving only a small mark – a destiny I sometimes envy.’

  And with that he gestured with his leather-gloved hand towards the grave beside him, only to find when he looked down at the inscription that it read: Hannah Wächter, b.1928 d.2000.

  It was, for a moment, an awkward moment, but then Noor saved himself – and me – by laughing. Quite a guffaw, in fact. Most surprising coming from a man of such steely self-control.

  ‘My apologies to you, Fräulein Wächter,’ he continued, still with a twinkle in his eye. ‘I know nothing of you except what is recorded here. But it alone is evidence of a life well spent.’

  Eine liebende Schwester und Tante.

  We stood in silent contemplation for a moment or two and then I said: ‘I will leave you in peace.’

  I meant nothing in particular by it; it was simply the pleasantry that came to mind. Noor replied with some force, however. Not angrily, but with palpable emotion. He apparently took my words to have a wider application. ‘You must realise, Mr Behrends, that we all fervently wish for that end.’

  My initial reaction – it will not surprise you – was caution. I didn’t say anything; I simply nodded my head. I had heard him, I indicated, but I didn’t have a view. Noor directed his attention at me. It should have been the time for me to look
away. But for some reason I didn’t. Indeed, I held his gaze. More than that, my eyes were positively eloquent. I didn’t have a view, they explained, because I couldn’t have a view. He must understand that, they insisted. Consider my position, they added – the jarring note. The connection was lost. It was Noor who looked away.

  I was disappointed. Damn my caution, I thought, just for a moment. Though a moment later I was thinking, no, I am right to be cautious, it is my job, my duty, to be cautious. I was thinking, rather belatedly, about how our encounter might look: the two of us having a private – one might almost say, surreptitious – conversation in a quiet churchyard, not just outside the complex, but away from the resort. In our line of work people have a tendency, and rightly so, to view such encounters with suspicion. And while for me that could be professionally damaging, for Noor it could be personally dangerous.

  Yet that led me to this reflection: that I didn’t doubt for a moment Noor’s sincerity, or that he had spoken spontaneously. I even felt that he had meant, and wanted me to know it, that the ‘all’ included the other delegation. In other words, there was no stratagem here. No playing for advantage. He hadn’t been put up to it. He had spoken from the heart. He had simply said what he wanted to say, needed to say perhaps. Not so much to me, as to himself.

  You must remember that a negotiator at peace talks has always the mindset of a warrior. For all that the theatre of war has shifted, he is no less on the battlefield. War is his imminent default; peace only a distant prospect. If he thinks otherwise, he might as well surrender; have peace at any price. And what man stoops to that abjection? Yet peace is the prize to be seized in this theatre. And on the right terms, it is a victory of sorts. At least, it is to the type of warrior I now took Noor to be: the type that wants to win, but not to destroy, to annihilate. The man who would win the peace, amass its spoils, claim and proclaim that glory, rather than apportion obliteration. We look for these types during negotiations; they are key to any chance of success. So, perhaps, after all, there was some signalling in Noor’s words. You can work with me. Which might have been a heartfelt human plea or something more tactical. Or a bit of both.