by Allan Massie
There was no trial. There was not even one of those speedy executions after a mockery of a trial which were characteristic of that phase of the épuration. Lucien was discovered hanged in his cell. They called it suicide.
Guy was absent the night it happened. I verified that. I could not hold him directly responsible. Indeed he expressed his anger to me: he had wanted Lucien to stand trial.
‘I disliked your brother,’ he said to me. ‘I disapproved of him fundamentally, of his political position, and of his actions during the war. But I had a certain respect for him. That’s why I thought it so essential he should be put on trial. If we only tried the scoundrels, I argued, the full guilt of Vichy would never be revealed, or at least accepted. I was furious when I returned and discovered he had been left with the means of hanging himself.’
That was what Guy told me. You will wonder that we were able to remain on friendly terms. Perhaps you will blame me for this, and indeed of course in terms of your own life you have all the more reason to blame me. Berthe has never ceased to insist that you were wounded, severely damaged, by the abortion of your love affair with Freddie – I call it abortion, because it was just like that: the extinction of life, a sort of murder. And of course you might never have met Freddie if …
If, if, if: life is difficult enough without taking count of unfulfilled conditionals. (I’m bad at this sort of reflection, I’ve never been philosophical in my life before …)
But: there was so much between us, and I blamed myself for the death of his wife, and then we were, Guy and I, on the same side. We’d risked our lives in the same cause, while Lucien had been opposed to us. And, finally, it wasn’t Guy’s fault.
I checked up on that. Of course I did. He certainly wasn’t there, and he equally certainly instituted an inquiry into the circumstances of Lucien’s death. I don’t believe there was any cover-up. I believed then he had reason for suicide: Rupert von Hülenberg’s murder, his own complete failure, the grey waste of the future.
So, for years, I accepted it.
We got on with living. Lucien was, I’m ashamed to say it, our private shame; when people mentioned him in print, they associated his name with Laval’s. Only a few rare indulgent spirits conceded that each was in his way a patriot.
Patriotism is like Christianity, you know: what evil has been committed in the name of France, Germany, or Christ!
Then, ten years ago, Guy died. He left me a letter. In it he confessed that he had never believed in Lucien’s suicide. ‘I talked to him,’ he said, ‘at great length the night before I left for Paris. I don’t know why. I had never found him sympathetic. Yet, waking in the night, missing my poor Danielle, in search of whose body my hand nightly found itself patting a cold unoccupied sheet, I rose and woke him in his cell.’
They had talked, he said, till dawn, ranging over their whole lives, their philosophies, their consciousness that failure corrupts any human success. For the first time Guy had felt in accord with him. As they parted, Lucien said he was glad they had been intercepted. He could not have borne to live on in Spain and had only consented to flight in a moment of weakness, to please Anne. But he knew he had to stand trial, not in the hope of justifying himself, personally, but to defend the memory of 1940. Those were his exact words: ‘to defend the memory of 1940’. They impressed themselves on Guy’s memory.
So, when Guy returned from Paris to find Lucien dead, he could not believe it was suicide. Yet all the evidence pointed that way. His investigation yielded no new cause of suspicion. There was no way of finding out what happened. He was compelled to accept that interpretation of his death, which then became official.
‘There was no obvious suspect,’ he wrote. ‘There was no one there who had any personal motive that I could discover. So there it was. Another suicide – and there were so many in ’44–’45. Nevertheless, Armand, I have never believed it, and my incredulity has grown stronger with the years. You see, I remember that last conversation so well.’
I destroyed that letter, Etienne. I thought it could only add yet another link in the long chain of misery, betrayal, revenge. I thought never to tell you about it. Yet, in the end, I can’t die without informing you, even though Berthe has tried to dissuade me.
Let us, at least, expunge the lie.
Don’t come to see me. I’m a miserable scarecrow, and can’t bear any company but that of Berthe and the girls. And my spaniel. We’ve always had spaniels, remember? But you have my blessing – for whatever the blessing of a freethinker and financier may be worth.
Not much, eh?
A. de B.
PART FOUR
1986–7
CHAPTER ONE
SO, I HAVE reached my fog-bound and murky Ithaca, and find my own Penelope still beset by importunate suitors.
I sent all this to Hugh, and, having on a whim had copies made, to Polly and Sarah also. I thought that when I had rid myself of it all I might experience a sense of liberation. No such luck; I am more restless than ever.
I went from the post office to the café where I have been accustomed to meet my Ukrainian chess-player. He wasn’t there. The proprietor said he believed he was ill, but didn’t know where he lived, or had been called away, but didn’t know where he had gone. I ordered brandy and lit a cigar, for all anyone might guess a prosperous bourgeois, which I am, at peace with the world, which I am not.
Instead waiting. Without knowing what I am waiting for.
The other night there was a disturbance in the hotel. I was woken by the sound of a woman screaming. The place seemed like a madhouse – I thought of Jane Eyre. Well, I said, it’s nothing to do with me, and turned over. In the morning the manager apologised. It was the Baroness, he said; she had finally gone off her head, absolutely right off, he had never seen anything like it. She had had to be straitjacketed and removed. He was very sorry.
‘Yes, it’s sad,’ I said.
‘I do hope you weren’t too disturbed,’ he said. ‘The Americans in the adjoining suite say they got no sleep at all.’
Do you know, I feel envious? There would be an enormous release if one could go absolutely and spectacularly nuts. There are happy madmen, after all, and once she has stopped screaming, and been given a few calming drugs, the Baroness may be perfectly content inhabiting her fantasy of Old Europe.
Her husband, or ex-husband, the press lord, arrived here to pick up the pieces. We met in the little bar of the hotel.
‘It’s difficult to believe,’ he said, ‘how charming she was once. And now …’ he shook his head. ‘As I get older, Monsieur de Balafré, I find it harder to accept the pain of life. Did my poor wife speak to you about the photo-girls in my magazines? I’m sure she did, for I know from her letters – oh she was a voluminous and impassioned letter-writer – how she admired you and confided in you. But do you know what it is that touches me in those girls: it’s their utter silliness, their expectations, and their ignorance. When I look at those beautiful rounded legs, at that lovely skin, at their untouched smiles, I am intoxicated by the realisation that they are absolutely new, that they have just this moment sprung into being – for of course a girl who suddenly finds herself desirable is an altogether new creature, she has no connection with the child from which she has emerged, any more than the butterfly recalls the caterpillar; and at the same time I know what they don’t: that it won’t last. I’m sure you understand that …’
He sipped his gin and tonic, and crumbled a cheese biscuit between his well-tended fingers. He shone with health and hygiene, and smiled, and adjusted the glass he wore in his left eye.
‘I am aware of autumn in spring,’ he said, ‘of the charm of evanescence and corruption. I couldn’t be a newspaper publisher otherwise.’
He smiled at me.
‘So much of life is a matter of coming to terms with the way things are, isn’t it? It’s tempting to refuse to do so, of course. My poor Reineke found the effort beyond her. Instead of welcoming evanescence, accepting cor
ruption, she tried to deny and defy them. Poor woman, I’m sorry for her. We’ve a choice between disillusion and madness, and she chose the latter. I suppose it’s gallant in its way. Tell me, Monsieur de Balfré, why do you live in Switzerland?’
‘Because my home is in South Africa and Switzerland is as unlike South Africa as anywhere can be.’
I spoke without thinking. I saw where his success lay: he had the ability, on account perhaps of his easy and confiding cynicism, to make one reveal oneself to him: to say more than one intended, and what, at heart, one meant.
‘We must have some more gin,’ he said. ‘I’ve long wanted to meet you. And not only because of Reineke. We have more in common than my poor deranged wife.’
I was about to protest that we didn’t in any real sense have the poor woman in common; but his smile stopped me; it was both mocking and trusting.
‘Do you know,’ he said, ‘I have extensive interests, not only in Germany and indeed throughout Western Europe, but in your own country too, and, which is more to the point, I am trying to develop them in Eastern Europe also. It’s a vast empire, though naturally only a paper one of course. But then paper empires do so much less harm, don’t they? People inveigh against the power of us press lords, accuse us of all sorts of corruption, but none of it matters, you know. The opium we peddle is the gentlest drug. Oh, we’re a bit sleazy, but no worse than any music-hall comic. Shall we take a walk?’
There was a grey, cold sky, heralding snow. We stepped out by the lake, swinging walking-sticks. The Baron marched, big and blond, in a teddy-bear coat.
‘I do like to walk in a comfortable city,’ he said.
As for me, I was entranced by his assurance. He had come to Geneva on an unpleasant mission. He was aware of pain and suffering – his conversation had convinced me of that – but it didn’t disturb his complacence. I envied him his affirmative nature.
‘You don’t read my magazines, I suppose,’ he said. He hummed a snatch of Rossini. ‘No, you wouldn’t. Proust and Stendhal, they will be more in your line. You’re an intellectual. I’m one myself, though you mightn’t think it. I adore Chekhov, you know. But most people don’t; pictures and pap and a bit of gossip, that’s what they like, and that’s what I give them. It’s better than politics, you know.’
‘It’s a form of politics though, isn’t it?’
‘Absolutely, my dear chap, everything’s politics in the end. But my form of conservatism doesn’t stir people up, that’s the great thing. It’s getting cold. What about a spot of Scotch in that bar there?’
When we were settled at a little zinc-topped table, with glasses of whisky and puffing at our cigars, he adjusted his monocle.
‘I’ve long wanted to meet you,’ he said. ‘I’ve a story to tell, and a warning to give. Let me take my time about it, there’s a good chap. I say, waiter, bring us the bottle, will you?
‘It’s my life story,’ the Baron said, ‘I hope you don’t mind. We’re from the East, you know. Generations ago my ancestors settled in Pomerania and East Prussia where we had extensive estates. I expect Reineke has told you about lavish and extravagant behaviour: she’s quite right, except that they were my family, not hers, she’s from Hanover, in fact, and a nice gemütlich bourgeois background. But we were great landowners, with serfs, and wolf-hunts, and sleighs, and furs, and all the trappings. I never experienced any of this myself of course: it was all gone when I was an infant. I’m seventy-five this year, you know, though I’m aware I don’t look it. Actually, though we continued to live like great princes up to the Great War, we were feeling the strain long before then. All our estates were mortgaged to the hilt, to the Jews of course. And then came disaster, double, treble, oh multiple disaster.’ The Baron paused, beamed, puffed at his Romeo y Julietta. ‘My poor father, who had the reputation of being the best game-shot in Pomerania, was unfortunately a coward, poor chap. In 1916 he was cashiered for cowardice in face of the enemy, and would have been shot, if his noble blood hadn’t saved him. As it was, he was only disgraced. Then, 1917, ’18, we lost everything. One estate was left us in East Prussia, but the Jews foreclosed. We were destitute, like millions of other Germans. My father was in despair. He was fit for nothing but playing cards and shooting duck, and those days were over for him. He lay huddled in the single-room apartment we had acquired in the Hallesches Tor district of Berlin – the Wasser-torstrasse to be exact. It was indescribably sordid, and he felt the shame of having reduced his family to that sort of living. Felt it acutely, poor chap. Not that it was entirely his fault. Politics and economics had done for him. They were at least as responsible as his disgrace. Anyway, he had just enough money to kill himself with rotgut brandy, which he did in 1921. My poor mother, a Baroness in her own right, went out charring. Most of the family were dead, and she had too much pride to appeal to the few friends who might have tried to help her. She felt my father’s disgrace even more than he did; she had been brought up with an unquestioning sense of honour, you see. Anyway, she soon followed him – malnutrition encouraging cancer, I have always thought – because, dear woman, she always saw to it that when there was any food in the house I got most of it. I was her beacon of hope, you see, the boy who would restore the family honour and fortune. Well, she died when I was fourteen, and I was all alone in the world. What did I do? What could I do in the Berlin of the twenties? I went on the streets, of course. Fortunately I was pretty. Despite our appalling lung hash and potatoes, I had a smooth pearly skin. I was a blond waif, very appealing, I assure you, and within a couple of years, I was as accomplished a whore as you could find on Unter den Linden.’
He chuckled at the memory, and leaned forward and topped up our glasses.
‘Are you enjoying this? It’s interesting. I’ve surprised you, haven’t I? But you won’t guess what happened next. I fell in love. Really. I broke the golden rule of whores. And it did me no harm. Or perhaps it did. Who can tell what my life would have been otherwise?
‘He was an Englishman. He called himself a writer. I don’t think he was any good but some of his friends were. Isherwood and so on. Ah, you’re wondering if Isherwood was my lover too, aren’t you? Well, he wasn’t. That ought to prove to you that my story is true. It would be so easy to say he was. But no. I told you I was in love with George. I was in love with him, romantically, as only a German boy or perhaps an English boy can be in love. I don’t know, perhaps that’s nonsense. But that’s what we believed then. And he was good to me, and for me. He opened my eyes. He made me see that the world needn’t simply be a matter of exploit or be exploited, that there was room for tenderness. Naturally I see now that he was also a father to me. He was a Communist of course, so I became a Communist too. He really believed in a new dawn, and he inspired me with the same belief, so that I was even ready to forgive the Bolsheviks for seizing some of our family estates. He adored me, and it’s good to be adored. He called me Bubi. For four years we were together, and those were the years of my first education. We were idealists, I won’t bore you with our leather-shorted wanderings in the Schwarzwald, I’m sure you can imagine it all. But, even now, the memory … you know, the memory is lovely.’
He took out a paisley pattern handkerchief and blew his nose.
‘And then the Nazis came to power. George was beaten up in the street – he was half-Jewish, you see, as well as being a corrupter of German youth. I was arrested, put in a camp, to be re-educated. The high-minded guards all had their way with me, and, for the first time in my life, something in me said no. But I didn’t let on. Then I was picked up, and out, by a captain in the SA, one of Röhm’s boys. That didn’t last, as you can imagine. But I saw which way the wind was blowing, got myself a girlfriend and joined the Party. Do you blame me? It’s scarcely relevant, is it? I did just enough to keep out of trouble, and all the time hated myself. Hated that poor girl eventually too, if it comes to that. ‘Then the war. I joined up, still trying to keep out of trouble, and became an officer’s servant. I had acquired ways
which made me suitable, you see. I knew how to please, and I knew how things should be done. Then, in May 1941, I had my second stroke of luck. I was assigned as servant to one Rupprecht von Hülenberg.’
He smiled at my surprise.
‘Which is where you come in, isn’t it?’ he said. ‘Rupert had a photograph, of a girl, standing always by his bedside,’ he sighed. ‘You’ve probably guessed it was your mother. “She’s the only woman I’ve ever loved,” he said to me, “the only one, Bubi” – for he called me that too, at my suggestion, it made me feel good to be called “Bubi” again – “and she’s the wife of my best friend.”
He talked so much about your father and mother that I came to feel I knew them too. He insisted that your father was the best man, the only altogether honourable man, he had ever met. I thought you would like to know that.’ He sighed again, and looked at me as if he expected some response, but I only shook my head and drank some whisky. I was touched of course by this revelation, by the thought that somehow or other this polished and cynical libertine had carried the memory of my father with him these forty years, as a sort of talisman perhaps. And I was sorry yet again to remember so little of Rupert von Hülenberg, my godfather and the man who had, in a sense, redeemed my father. I had long thought of them like that, as if his involvement in the July plot exculpated Lucien.
‘I owe so much to Rupert,’ the Baron said. ‘Of course he was in love with me, though he could never admit it, and, though by that time I was mad for girls, I suppose I was a little in love with him too and would certainly have let him do whatever he wanted. And taught him a thing or two in the process. But though he wanted me, he didn’t want that. Yet in a way he came to rely on me.
‘He saved me from being a real Nazi, you know. The temptation was there, in those years of success. Don’t believe anyone who tells you the German people weren’t mad for Hitler. There were only a few sane ones left among us.
