Secret Protocols

by Peter Vansittart

  When a dinner guest mentioned Aktion Sühnezeichen, young German Christians spending vacations in expiating German guilt in helping in bomb-devastated cities, I professed indifference with only a tinge of insincerity. I was not Christian, I had renounced Germanhood, I had nothing to expiate.

  England remained more attractive than a Fourth Reich or the communist-policed East. Thousands had wept, sung English songs, cheered, when a red London bus toured wretched Europe as symbol of normality restored. Today, in cafés and cabarets, I was provoked by hearing the English, unforgiven for deserting France in 1940, ridiculed as philistine, pretentious, hypocritical.

  English cousins might await me, antique doors wide open, on their tough island, with its northern stoicism, farmyard humour, its writers, its stiff gentlemen so easily parodied, less easily embarrassed or outwitted. A people immune to the rhetoric that had convulsed Italy, rotted much of France, destroyed Germany.

  Wilfrid easily scented my preoccupations. ‘I have heard, though it may be untrue – history too often being at the mercy of literary men and a number of women – that, defeated in France, London under bombs, your Mr Churchill ordered the construction of landing craft, for eventual return to Europe. Some of his more intellectual colleagues, we hear, were ready to accept Hitler’s word and ponder his peace terms. Hitler’s word!’ He himself pondered. ‘Churchill, so often mistaken, his detractors not invariably right.’

  That ‘your’, though unemphatic, was unpleasantly distinct, perhaps prelude to my dismissal to England.Yet it also recalled a day surely unsullied by the ulterior and suspect. We had visited a quiet mansion at Saint-Germain-en-Laye, once residence of an exiled English king.We lazed by a pool canopied by willows, gold-fish flicking between broad white lilies. As if from nothing, Wilfrid murmured, ‘Looking-glass Wonderland’. This, though in keeping with his ruminative mood, yet also chimed from far beyond this heightened pastoral afternoon, into my own dreaminess. Goal posts melted to lilies, tank-like dowagers transformed to redcoats and white smoke, dukes and committees coalesced into dense puddings under Sherlock’s terrible lens. Vast club armchairs and leathery books metamorphosed into pallid cliffs and lawnmowers, and I saw my grandmother as a shy girl watching from behind a fan the caustic old Queen.

  Unaware of my self-satisfying visions, Wilfrid, beaky, like some allegorical bird in a missal, resumed the everyday, again rousing my very faint disquiet. ‘You might be respectfully astonished by their public schools, a misnomer, like so much in England. Quite possibly it was in this very garden of delights that Talleyrand declared that the best schools in the world were English public schools, and that they were dreadful.’

  The thought of Lisette made that afternoon no longer innocuous, as though a calm, classical face abruptly showed in ugly profile.

  Meanwhile, Paris itself was restless. Summer greens and golds, delicate morning haze, resplendent sunsets, children’s cries were unchanged, but political cat-calls had restarted. After a respite from denouncing Marshall Aid, Dollar Imperialism, the Bomb, and applauding Soviet support for small nations, the Left and Right were excited by a new movie, compendium of newsreels illustrating Jünger’s Diary of a German Officer, memoirs of Occupied Paris, in which French personalities famed and loved – Chevalier, Borotra, Arletty, Guitry, Luchaire – shining, complacent, were seen at a lavish Nazi reception, toadying to Ambassador Abetz. Riots rocked the cinema and spread throughout Paris, Lyons, Marseilles. Three bodies, dead, handcuffed together, were discovered at Saint-Cloud, a Jewish cemetery was desecrated, Vive le Maréchal stridently painted on the Column. Debonair Hotel Meurice, former Wehrmacht HQ, was picketed, and a lorry tipped a mass of dung on to rue de Saussies, beneath which had been Gestapo torture cells. A famous woman couturier was pushed from a balcony, almost fatally. Germany’s most celebrated operatic Isolde, interviewed on Radio Paris, was both hysterically applauded and attacked when, asked why she so zealously performed for the Führer’s court, replied with disdainful incredulity, ‘You should know that the artist is above society.’ The Left suffered minor reverse when Brother Jean-Luc, long-established Resistance martyr, was exposed as having been transported to Treblinka for seducing boys, 1943.

  ‘Good!’ Marc-Henri was at last stirred. ‘Very good.’

  I now noticed, for the first time, that, eating in public places, Wilfrid always sat facing the door and street. It gave me a Draufgängertum, a creepy delight in danger.

  Bastille Day was frenzied as always. On walls, pavements, vehicles, plinths, appeared stickers of a cross within a circle, insignia of an illegal anti-Arabic military cabal, whose plastic bombs had already shattered a street, blinding five children and killing three teachers outside a lycée. On boulevard de la Chapelle, I had to dodge a fight between rival pieds noir. That evening, attempting to wrest poetry from the infinite, I watched fireworks over Versailles, sapphires splintering, fiery diamonds encircling the zodiac, my verbal shots dead on reaching paper.

  No poet, I was enveloped in a story, the plot not yet discernable and with either too many themes or none.

  More urgent than bombs and Algerians, my body was protesting against sexual frustration. I was reluctant to consult Wilfrid, though I assumed he could have recommended a select maison. I could only dawdle on streets with the need but no courage to follow the inviting glance or ambiguous nod.

  Could Wilfrid once have encountered some Medusa or luscious Ganymede, then covering wounds with irony and flippancy, while secreting passions he refused to fulfil? Once he made as if to touch my arm, then sharply desisted, as if remembering a dangerous current. Such restraint made the Herr General boisterous, almost ragtime, in his affections.

  Our home was urbane, luxuriant, but chaste, and despite his multifarious acquaintances, Wilfrid seemed without intimacies. Lisette and Marc-Henri might know more but could scarcely be cross-examined. In contrast was his pleasure at the welcome always received from children. ‘Wilfrid’s come!’ He handled them, deftly, amiably, as he had done with everyone at Meinnenberg, once defusing a suspicious ten-year-old by enquiring whether he was still at school.With children, I myself was only ‘le Herr’.With them, as with animals, even flowers, he was gravely considerate, without flattery or condescension, aware of their desires for reassurance and equality.

  I was embarrassed when he saw me, like Marc-Henri, before a mirror.

  ‘Your looks, Erich, could procure you at least a petit Trianon.’

  My looks! Manifestly devoid of sexual appeal, eyes blue-green and humourless, face too northern, raw, high-boned, squarish under light hair. Under French scrutiny, I could have modelled for a Hitler Youth leader.

  He often used words as though, for real communication, they were second best. His Bodhisattva suggested a religious temperament, his manner a lack of formal beliefs. His bedroom, very austere, had many books, including Homer and Lucretius, the Bible, Koran, Rig-Veda, Upanishads, the Tao Te Ching, alongside works by Albert Schweitzer, Romain Rolland, Fridtjof Nansen, Jean Jaurès, mighty humanists.We disputed over a Taoist text: The Sage sees everything without looking, accomplishes everything without doing.

  I objected that the Sage would not have benefited the White Rose or July Plot. He surprised and disarmed me by retreating, then assenting, though not altogether convincing me of his sincerity as he smiled, ‘Love–fifteen!’

  His attitude displeased Marc-Henri, resolute atheist. ‘Possibly,’ Wilfrid replied to the other’s aggressive assertion that religion was criminal fraud, ‘God does not exist, being employed elsewhere on matters more urgent. Conceivably, being can have existence without life.’ Marc-Henri’s expression, and perhaps my own, sternly denied this;Wilfrid bowed his head in sham humility, then turned to me. ‘Certainly the gods were dilettantes, they built nothing, save Valhalla, itself a confession of weakness. They made an art of completing very little, were creatures only of promises, poses, atmosphere. As for God …’ he regarded Marc-Henri as he might a dog, much respected but needing a bone, ‘I met her only onc
e, in her small flat at Malmaison.’

  I laughed obediently. Marc-Henri did not. When we were alone, a rash of sunlight gave Wilfrid an effect of nonsensical transfiguration, glistening, taller, but vague, though when he spoke he was coolly unspiritual. ‘You and I, Erich, might share something with your namesake, Erik Satie, who once folded his umbrella during a thunderstorm, to save it from getting wet.’

  This left me wondering whether this was complimentary, though I later made a weak joke at which Wilfrid rose and lowered his head in salutation, murmuring, ‘Love–thirty!’

  Wilfrid would introduce me as his secretary, to the chagrin of Marc-Henri, who, though, usually included in the invitations, seldom obliged by accepting them. An actual secretary, Ursule, arrived each morning, to work with Wilfrid in what he called the shakes of routine. That he was involved in UN committees was divulged by his brief speech at an Elysée reception for Trygve Lie, Secretary-General, and Dr Julian Huxley, Unesco Director. A function not very useful, he told Marc-Henri, of his speech, though, I reflected, he might say the same of his death. One newspaper account included his reference to Jewish children, not those protégés of M. Bousquet but Roman, rounded up in buses for the train to Auschwitz and, passing St Peter’s, screaming for the Pope to save them.

  I suspected that he might have had part in the idealist German Kreisau Circle and knew that he had had some dealings with von Moltke, Stauffenberg, Adam von Trott and perhaps Pastor Bonhöffer. His reticence perplexed but was also a relief, a sign that he was not really expecting me to emigrate to West Germany.

  As if contradicting this, I found, left open and unavoidable, an architectural blueprint surmounted by a stylized flower and stamped White Rose. It delineated low, glassy buildings, uncluttered lines, of an international college, humanistic, independent, sited amongst woods and meadows near Munich, as memorial to those students, rather few, conspiring for peace, hanged for treason. For this project, Wilfrid admitting helping in a most minor capacity, extracting funds from German industrialists, some of whom had been indicted at Nuremburg for employing slave-labour, and indeed suffering an undignified but brief imprisonment, and were now back at their desks.

  Undeniably I could expect work there, as teacher or interpreter but knew I would never apply. Its attractions were countered by images best symbolized not by obvious wartime atrocities but by the early German films I had been seeing: absorbing, haunting, with mountains beautiful but fearsome films, inducing images of suicide, uncanny fairgrounds, malignant puppets, a murderer of children chuckling in a quiet, respectable hotel, a slanted, empty street. No linden blossom.

  Such thoughts were removed by Wilfrid announcing that, as always, in an insignificant, even microscopic way, he had been co-opted on to the committee arranging a September International Conference to discuss European cultural opportunities just possible now that the USSR might be expecting a regime fumbling and perhaps more liberal. ‘We must try to assume that the Cold War may diminish, though opposition can be anticipated from quarters mostly at odds with themselves.’

  Marc-Henri was uninterested, nor was I much more concerned. ‘Conference’ rang dully. Munich, Wannsee, Teheran, Yalta … the League, the Axis. I foresaw disruption of our easy existence, feared being recruited to man a telephone, assess mail, run errands, endure asphyxiating speeches from a congress of fat Ten Per Centers, verbose, self-satisfied and wheedling for treacly compassion and hard cash.

  Wilfrid could usually apprehend my feelings. ‘I agree …’ as though I had uttered a challenge, ‘that there will be danger of too much what the English like to call jabber.’

  The Press was already buzzing. Malenkov proclaimed the Conference a further proof of Anglo-American aggression, and East European participation was forbidden. Einstein declared support, Winston Churchill was donating a painting for auction and had accepted honorary presidency, together with Albert Schweitzer, Pandit Nehru and Jean Monnet, prophet of United Europe.

  None of this reassured me, and I was soothed only by Wilfrid driving me to a Longchamp tennis club, not sententious or high-minded but ostentatiously fashionable and frivolous. I was swiftly inserted into a foursome – sweaty, hard-hitting Americans and a Frenchman, a skilled though reckless volleyer. I performed well enough to be invited for a return match next week.

  On another court Wilfrid was distinct in long, cool whites amid coloured shorts and hairy legs, his play an elegant repertoire of shots, not fierce but adroitly slanted, impishly witty in their timing as they wrong-footed opponents or left them reaching a shade too wide. Afterwards, exhilarated, hot and sticky from more muscular efforts, I found him sitting, as though he had yet to play, drinking champagne with several men and girls attired in the latest, and briefest, sporting modes.

  ‘Ah!’ Wilfrid rose to introduce me, then, with an air of possessing momentous and specialized information, said that I would grieve to hear that Miss Marlene Dietrich might have broken her leg. Showing considerable mournfulness, I lay back, very content, hearing only stray words. ‘Godard … Kinsey …’ and, drowsily, my glass assiduously refilled, watching swift white movements on green and white surfaces, balls rising, falling, in a scene from Renoir or Proust and promoting more international harmonies than any expensive, ill-tempered conference. Girls were dainty and evanes-cent as ballet and as much beyond reach.For this instant, no matter.

  When the others departed, Wilfrid lingered. ‘Tolstoy, did he not, remarked about the impossibility of describing happiness. He forgot that he had already done so. You remember the young Rostovs’ evening with delightful and disreputable “Uncle”? The smell of fresh apples, the spontaneous laughter, the darkening countryside, the lamps, Natasha thinking of fairyland. And Uncle’s Cossack coat, his fat mistress.’ Upholding his shimmering glass, Wilfrid adopted a slight, foreign intonation and I at once heard Uncle, amongst fireflies, cherry brandy, honey, mirth. ‘This, you see, dear friends … is how I am ending my days. Death will drive up. That’s it. Come on. Nothing will remain. So why harm anyone?’

  More normally, he remarked, ‘Uncle at his guitar …’ I was able to join with him, chanting under our breath:

  Fetching water clear and sweet,

  Stop, dear maiden, I entreat.

  We were on pleasure island, indolent, dandyesque, complete. The bottle finished, Wilfrid made farewells, collected racquets, lifted a hand, irony discarded, the agreeable club member.

  ‘Tonight, Erich, there’s a concert. It might, do you think, round off the day.’

  No gilded auditorium or perfumed salon but a murky tavern beneath Montmartre, where a chanteuse hoarsely intoned:

  I, who was never young

  Was once, they tell me, desirable.

  5

  Candelabras and buffets, shirt fronts, crimson sashes and rosettes, pearls, diamonds, bare shoulders and the latest coiffures. Young breasts, indistinct smiles, ambiguous pouts, metropolitan allusions. Galerie Maeght, an exhibition at Paul Facchetti’s, de Stäel’s suicide, some scandal about Céline uttered with bored languor, a glimpse of Cocteau, echoes of his purr that none of the battles of 1917 had been more violent than that over his ballet Parade, chatter about Camus and the lustrous Maria Casarès, then repetition of his epigram that he preferred Committed People to Committee Literature. His novel La Peste had cast a chilly glance at my own lack of commitment.

  This quai d’Orsay soirée was honouring instigators – Swiss, French, German – of the Conférence du Monde. More sashes, tiaras, insignia, the front rank of the Légion: the deferential, the lofty, the polished, the creamy, some like distinguished hyenas, some like swans on dry land, some dignified as cranes. De Gaulle had been silent but Free French generals, Liberation heroes, were present, with the Banque Governor, the Ambassador to the UN, François Mauriac, Georges Pompidou, Jean Borotra, Malraux, Raymond Aron, Denis Saurat, André Maurois … rebelling the Protest Manifesto of Aragon, Joliot-Curie, Jean Genet, de Beauvoir, Sartre, Thorez, the secretary of the Trades Union Federation … indictin
g the Conference as a Zionist, anti-Soviet, anti-Peace conspiracy, in the pay of American capitalists and Swiss fascists who had profiteered by refusing Jewish refugees access to their own funds and, at Hitler’s behest, closing the frontier.

  Laughter was noisy, if mechanical, out of bald heads, painted mouths, faces like confectionery, smart but fragile, endangered by emotions too lively. Many shared degrees of resemblance, cousinhood, like melodious puns, and exuding the nostalgic, lulling as hay. ‘The Countess did her best …’ ‘That year the harvest was so rich that …’ ‘When carriages arrived …’

  Wilfrid had immediately attracted a circle, so that, thankfully, I could wander at will, surely unobserved. There was theme – the Conference – but presumably no story. Then, from within scintillas of the white-fronted, black-tailed and invisibly plumed, I overheard, sharp, and in this affluent mêlée unalluring as gripe to the guts, a reference to the Herr General.

  I was still immobilized when one of this group, French, bearded, with the crisp white mane of a butler or senator in an American musical, detached himself and, formal but affable, nodding me into a windowrecess. I felt obscurely grateful. Less so, however, when he found it natural to speak to me in German, at which several turned around, candidly inquisitive or assuming unnatural impassivity.

  ‘You must forgive my intrusion, but I almost know you. I have seen you at La Gasconade with the good Wilfrid. You must be of very considerable help in his designs. Despite your youth, estimable, enviable, you must be one of us.’

  Gratitude vanished down the drain. Contradicting the affability, the eyes within stained, waxy pouches were too shrewd, his words, each one counterfeit, warned me of a trap, a trace of espionage. He murmured his name, indistinct under the hubbub, resembling, improbably, ‘Dr Miracle’, one of those marginal theatrical characters appearing within scenes of stress or impasse. Whatever the stranger’s name and title, Dr Miracle might be appropriate, making him older than himself, a perennial ingredient in French politics, European plots, dangerous liaisons. He was offering me a cigar, which I hurriedly refused and pretended to be concerned with the star wine. He selected one for himself, from a gold case elaborately chased, with the studied care of a professional performer, then began his aria, pitched to the Herr General.