There was more. On the beach, lying as if in wait, was a damp copy of Combat, containing a denunciation of the gross profits of Wiesbaden, once supplier of gas ovens to the camps. Named amongst its executives was the Herr General. Though for Nadja he was ignoble war criminal, for me he had never entirely lost elder-brother comradeship. I could see him dancing with Mother, reading, shooting, attending reviews, joining in the Reichsmarschall’s toy-soldier games.
The Reichsmarschall, swollen, toga’d, broad face drugged and painted, lion cub at his feet, in the phantasmagoria of medieval-style hunts, huge curled horns and bottle-green verderers. Or, in English plus-fours, talking with Paul Klee and raggle-taggle Munich ‘bohemians’.
Europe had long shivered with interconnections. Combat continued that, before the war the Herr General had been Vice-Chairman of the Riga Commercial Bank, investing heavily in Britain and America, in Baltic and North German steel. With Goering, Hess, Ley, he had helped integrate German heavy industry, operating mainly through I.G. Farben and subsidizing pro-Nazi elements in thirty-seven countries, in parliaments, business, sport, the press, universities. Farben had been prosecuted at Nuremburg for slave labour, but most sentences had been nominal.
Combat added that, after Stalingrad, the Herr General had initiated treasonable correspondence with Eisenhower, Eden and de Gaulle and, as I knew, Bernadotte. Captured near Budapest by the Russians, he had been released, probably ransomed, in 1948. In an unsubstantiated report, he had warned Tito against a staff-officers’ conspiracy. The piece closed with news that his flight to Washington with Prince Louis Ferdinand, the Kaiser’s grandson, had been postponed.
I needed to tell Nadja. She was curt. ‘He appears very like an all-purpose district official I once had to beg from. So clever in giving and receiving, enjoying placing the pauper’s cloak on the millionaire’s back.’ She reflected. ‘Retribution is healthy. Very. But this …’
Could mere greed be sufficient diagnosis of a Hagen de nos jours? Another comfortable turncoat now staffing Third World charities and covertly supplying landmines to dictators, small arms to African children. Flamboyant skater on thin ice, whom Nadja ranked with Storm Princes quoting Rilke and Goethe, who fondled horses, while underling killers complained of headaches, moments of depression, overwork. He and the Reichsmarschall were night-ogres dodging sunrise that would destroy them.
Alone again, by the wide, murmuring sea, I held dubious communion with the man who had saved me not from sunrise or White Rose martyrdom but from the Eastern Front.
After this, I was certain that Nadja, too, was oppressed by the Latvians, without directly referring to them.
‘I suppose, Erich, that we, too, are suspect. Not needing others. Reading. Yet so much is worth it. Ask children to look at the night sky. They see only a mess, like a dustbin kicked over. Nonsensical names: Pleiades, Uranus, Orion’s Belt.’ Her hands traced constellations. ‘It would not matter, but they replace them with a screen thick with guns and blood. Ask even Dick the day, and he will say Thursday. But ask him about Thor or Saturn, and he will go on the blink. Well …’ she relented, was gay as a hostess. ‘How snobbish I am! I must invite retribution!’
To an imaginary seminar, in little more than a whisper, she said. ‘Does it matter? It does matter. When Brussels replaces language to digital signs, knobs, tubes, and makes watching football compulsory …’ An actress opening a scene, she was emphatic, commanding. ‘Some skeleton of real mind must be defended. Resisting order, regulations, directives.’
Responding, I managed to quote St Augustine, learnt from Wilfrid: ‘From the depths that we do not see comes all we do see.’
‘Yes. My thanks, truly. Augustine can be very wicked, but sometimes unbelievably wise. And even here, Erich, in our pleasure-domes and anchorages, Prometheus refuses submission to Zeus, at the risk of terrible beaks. Until Heracles brings light. Yet he, so brave, can be stupid as Siegfried. Dangerous.’
‘A most disputable analogy. Nevertheless …’
I did not continue; she already knew my direction. Analogy, however disputable, banal, misapplied, is yet Earth at its best, attempting to identify then name the truth.
That week we decided to call on the Latvians but did not do so.
‘We are patient, Erich, like books.’
‘Like eggs.’
We smiled, selected a bottle, drifted into the garden, at risk of aggrieving the cat. Afternoon heat was weakening, the owl was preoccupied, leaves hung very still. We were in sanctuary. Dick’s half-drunken apprehensions, my own qualms, were superstitious as fears of a tidal wave, plague, red frogs; improbable as a legacy from an unknown or free champagne from Alain. We had love, like genius unattainable by prayer, guile, labour, like a chance stumble into a glistening Otherworld.
Chance, mystery were vital to existence, were pungent as mackerel. I enjoyed plots and oddities being left unsatisfactorily explained. Earlier, sober folk vowed they had seen riders in golden helmets, crimson boots, riding from dusty hills, vanishing into more dust. Hallucination? Time warp? Movie actors? Fête rehearsal? No matter they were merely appropriate to the region and its past. One story, unbelievable from an American police chief, sounded almost convincing from Alex: a London editor, transformed to a camel by an astral hermeticist of vicious reputation, was exhibited for eighteen months in an Alexandrian zoo.
Nadja, professionally sceptical of oral tradition, had yet pondered over a Paraguayan herb, which, crushed and boiled, gave speech in purest Latin to a sick villager.
Enjoying wine, she shook her head. ‘My friend, these people will never wave a broomstick and compel us to dance. Life is too good.’
‘Let’s …’
5
Neither of us was as unconcerned as we outwardly showed. Our new neighbours might be refugees, but few who survived hatreds and oppression entirely escaped them. They were scarred into queer twists of character and motive.
Under continued silence from Villa Florentine, I could feel, as in childhood sickness, that patterns were shifting: ceiling cracks, wall bulges, familiar pictures suggesting strange secrets. Today, homely sounds – a gate opening, birds scattering, a car halting – seemed unnaturally loud, while the Villa’s balcony stayed empty, its shutters closed, the garden a morass of seeding sunflower and marigold.
Phelps’s assertion that he had seen a nondescript couple burning papers in the backyard suggested the discarding of incriminating archives, forged documents, counterfeit banknotes, and, Ray imagined, his smile hideously dividing his face, photographs of abstruse sexual practices. ‘Funderland, of a sort. Very foreign.’ A Peruvian doctor, flashing his rings, was convinced that the Latvians were artists. ‘Art, you should both understand, is apt to produce creatures of doubtful identity.’
Jungle messages, common in small communities, then agreed that the new arrivals were not from distant Latvia but only from Montpellier – Nostradamus’ birthplace, Nadja mused – possessed immaculate references, paid huge advance rent, could be trusted unreservedly.
Very unconvincing, we agreed, deprived of drama, fantasy jokes, until these revived at news that their telephone had been disconnected. ‘Ah!’ Nadja’s exclamation was almost a giggle. ‘Taking cover.’ But, alas, the news was false. The Latvians, Ray Phelps concluded, should not be shot but quietly drowned.
Nadja, however, was soon delighted by a letter from Robert Graves, detailing elicio, Roman technique for discovering the secret names of enemies’ gods, exploiting this to cajole or threaten them to desert or betray; I matched this with a tale of Louis XI bribing the patron saint of his rival, Charles the Rash, who soon died, atrociously, in battle. We laughed further when, on the hottest day of the year, Dick Haylock demanded curry, which he hated, to commemorate some victory in British India. He could not, we agreed, afford to bribe Krishna. Merriment resumed at a new rumour that a Brussels commission, lavishly funded, was debating whether ‘Black Comedy’ and ‘Cinéma Noir’ infringed race-relations regulations, and the ruler of t
he USSR had awarded himself the Lenin Prize for Literature.
Still exhilarated by Mr Graves, Nadja looked up from rereading his letter.
‘Let’s take a holiday. All day.’ Her impetuosity made it thrilling as bed. She hurried upstairs, swiftly reappearing in yellow beach shirt, black slacks, a hat vaguely cowboy. Eyes and voice were those of a student in love with the morning.
The blue was perfect, distant mountains clear, nothing was yet hardened by sun of Aztec ferocity. We wanted no crepuscular Terre Gaste, derelict Venusbergs, smitten heaths, only outdoor energy, happy fatigue, open vistas, spendthrift pasture.
Before moving inland we took the upper cliff walk, savouring fresh Mediterranean sparkle, blue and green whorls like magnified thumbprints, white frizzle barely knocking the pebbles. Nadja loved water, claiming visions of fata morgana, pale mirage of columns edged with turquoise, wreathed in sea-mist. Of this I kept silent; any doubt of her honesty, especially from Robert Graves, distressed or enraged her.
On our right, gently slanted fields were sparsely dotted with pink farms, oak coppices, stunted and pollarded from over-cutting. Dry light was smooth against rocky scarps, then a boulder high and grooved as an elephant. No one was about, the landscape tight as a drum, now sun-baked rinds of vineyard, now green, now reddish earth. Soon, the old sarcophagus, popularly identified, without evidence, with King Arthur’s Lancelot, in this region discredited as perjurious seducer. Raw, sweet smells of hay, nettle, dung, occasionally salty, were warming. Far below, continuous traffic, glinting, metallic, streamed through coloured roofs, promenades, neat plane trees, bleached squares.
The sea, dense, molten, was starting to glare, and we left the coast for the grassy steppe and tangled blue-purple growth, which stretched to the foothills, mild preliminaries to mountains blocking the horizon.
‘Flax.’ She pointed to a bluish tinge some way ahead, always liking to name species, sometimes erroneously. We took shade at a doorless cabin, where I put hands on her shoulders, and at once she looked worried, as though our contentment hazarded too much, risking what she called the evil eye of the universe.
‘Erich … You like it here? With me?’
‘But of course. Especially with you.’
‘You don’t sometimes think …?’
‘I never think – not once.’
She at once reclaimed the day’s promises, laying her head on my shoulder. ‘Monsieur Here and There.’
‘By no means. Monsieur Hermes. Guide of Souls.’
Looking up, she shone. ‘I do not enjoy saying this, but he was also lover of secret messages and underhand dealings, even thieves.’
Back in sunlight, we breathed in the free expanse, where the mountains seemed about to move, trampling the little hills. About half a kilometre ahead a man was leaning against a sallow haystack, bare-armed, in jeans and singlet. Seen nearer, flat cheeks and narrow eyes. Mongolian? Latvian? Movies often used haystacks for hideaways for arms caches, fugitives, murderous trysts, but we gave him friendly greeting. His expression remained fixed, he said nothing, his silence like a smack, so we offered no more. Refusing to quicken our step, we soon braced ourselves to look back but could see no one.
‘A M. Cunning Fox.’ Nadja was unperturbed. ‘Or, perhaps a Paraiyan who has been eating beef, thus polluting any Brahmin at sixty-four paces. He must have a lair under the hay.’
Fox or Paraiyan, he had matched no pastoral serenity but older unsettled Badlands, though unable to spoil our delight in the day and each other.
By noon we were hungry. Objecting to carrying picnic paraphernalia on a hot day, Nadja would trust, sometimes woefully, to a good fortune. We knew, however, a trustworthy farm, already visible, shambling, whitewashed, in the folds of lesser hills. Now hot, we skirted a beef-red landslip, glowered at a board, Acquired for Development, hastened on, eager for lunch, while continuing exchanges not serious but seldom altogether stock. She considered my soul pale grey streaked with black. I retorted that hers was dark crimson and saw her, years back, small, dark, not scared but angered, wandering lost between village shacks and a treeless plain.
She comprehended something of this. ‘Some people made me feel important but never free.’
Around the farm, the light melted, shredded by trees. A silence was unpropitious, the yard and its few crude tables deserted. Where was bearded Pierre, where burly, gurgling Marcelline? A neigh would now startle, like a voice from the sky. My spirit groaned at the note on the gate. Fermé.
At once resigned, about to retreat, I should have been more sapient. Nadja was already thrusting open the gate, glancing at the notice, then shrugging as if at a joke in poor taste. Her knock was aggressive, so that I was about to warn, with Stendhal, the door remaining intact.
More knocks. I quailed with embarrassment as a window opened and Marcelline peered out, swart, brigandish, under a red kerchief, wrathful and, I judged, powerful.
Nadja’s versatility was very seldom repressed. She could, within instants, be pert, flirtatious, pleading, disdainful, head nicely lifted, eyes about to moisten, a smile promised in return for agreement. A smile I coveted. She was now the fine lady in distress. ‘Madame … chère madame … we would …’
She faltered, wearied, despairing, her bright clothes and trim legs suddenly pitiful. The bristly face at the window somewhat relaxed ‘But, madame, but, monsieur …’ My bulk, if not my personality, could register. ‘We are not able today. You must realize …’
Where I would stutter or gabble Nadja was resolute. ‘Of course you are not able. What an idea!’ Her expression was incredulous, shocked, though she spoke as if to a refractory child. ‘But we need a few moments’ rest. And know so well that your repute is so justly earned. We have tramped so far to reach you …’ Touching her foot, she implied torn muscles, bleeding soles, agonized veins, while I reconsidered the Silk Road, the Santa Fe Trail. ‘On so beautiful a day, madame, a day for a festival. Yet so exhausting. But, horror, the very thought of troubling you …’ Unscrupulous, she hesitated, as if groping for a handle. She was famished, perhaps stricken, certainly ready to faint, her sign surely over-melodramatic. But no. Marcelline’s smile was a broad caress, the door swung, her rough voice as if released on a spring.
‘Oh, madame!’ Nadja was already critically surveying the sorry tables, before changing to the businesslike, commanding, though seeming to ask questions.
‘Some of your admired vin de passage. A few crumbs and, could you but manage it, possibly a scrap of butter. Your cheese is, of course, widely esteemed. And should you, by merest chance … seafood …’
The list lengthened, Marcelline joined us, shirt, blouse, black crumpled hat clearly intended for an occasion more formal. Nadja’s smile, back at me, was a virtual leer, though I managed to halt her before she added canard à l’orange, crème brûlée, my intervention nevertheless provoking a look from Marcelline suggesting I had uttered an obscenity.
With a flourish just short of an embrace, Nadja concluded. She scorned one table, deigned to accept another, waited for a chair to be wiped, Marcelline calling, ‘Pierre, Pierre … it’s Madame,’ while, feeling myself a second-class convict, we sat and waited, haystacks and Latvians forgotten, the surroundings luxuriant as Muslim Paradise, naked houris tactfully in abeyance.
‘There!’ Nadja watched chickens strolling around the yard pump. ‘These things matter.’
‘Indeed they matter.’
We were shaded by eucalyptus, shabby but still fibrous and sticky. Pierre lurched out, heavy, clean, in black Sunday suit, bowing like an ill-constructed robot, then, from a stone jug striped yellow and scarlet, brimming with green wine which, Nadja reminded me, very distinctly, was internationally famous, a laudation delivered with a private wink, for, though deliciously cool, it was sourer than Alain’s notorious vin du maison.
Scrub oak drowsed on slopes behind the barns, dark amongst a yellow spread of charlock. A convoy of crows flew through unclouded blue.
‘How good it is, Monsie
ur Erich. Just as if …’
Her brows contracted, not in pleasure but as if at an untoward memory, then, hastily, she took her glass, gulped wine like a stevedore and, recovering, gazed appreciatively at inquisitive chickens; a dog, almost hairless, like worn carpet, slunk forward, blearily examined us, but we failed his requirements and he subsided near dusty nettles and marigolds. Undismayed, we listened to murmurs, kitchen clatter, a cork popping. A butterfly, velvety tropical orange, sank me into jungle fantasies. Basking pumas, abnormally swollen trees, drums pounding acclaim or fear.
Nadja spoke, impersonal, dropping her usual, rather hurried manner.
‘I was thinking of an old lady, dwelling in a place of shades and torments, though dressed in jewels, in grandeur. And, Erich … she was allowed no calendars, behind the bars and shutters, all seasons were alike. But once a year, always on the same date, she called for traveller’s clothes, a carriage, servants and, very orderly and calm, announced to the nurses that she must leave, to visit her son.’
A story at odds with the setting, disturbed only by flies, though, whatever its promptings, not unexpected from Nadja, always unpredictable, oblivious to the demands of setting, propriety, social decorum. But Pierre and Marcelline were upon us, with cutlery, napkins, fresh glasses, plates. Daisies covered baguettes, olives were heaped on a black saucer, a wad of creamy butter lay in glass. There followed a stash of prawns, cold trout on lettuce, endives, circlets of radish, beetroot, tomato, sliced egg, crisp tangy chicory, criss-crossed with rivulets of farm mayonnaise. Lastly, a Figaro without guile, Pierre presented a damp luscious brie, a second bottle, a flask of fin.
We exclaimed, we praised, we gloated and we ate. ‘Une Partie de campagne’, if not quite Déjeuner sur l’herbe. I remembered a day on the Surrey hills that had led to so little and hastened to wave a radish and mentioned that our Estonian cook called it Apple of Youth. Dreamily, Nadja was virtually purring, my least action – passing butter, refilling her glass, allowing her the last tomato – eliciting deathless gratitude, my most trivial remark considered witty as Haydn. We were both sunk in exquisite well-being, beguiled by colours, slightly unreal, noises of a horse, an unseen cart, cows theatrical in an amplitude encouraged by the young, strong liquor. A bird, of barely credible blue and red, white tufts at the eyes, alighted on a mossy roof, preened itself as one grossly over-privileged, unfolded, fluttered, squawked some complaint, was gone.
Secret Protocols Page 31
