Secret Protocols

by Peter Vansittart

  Nadja was talking, as so often, as if not to myself alone.

  ‘Orinoco, Tashkent, Cathay. Exotic and elusive as Sappho. They were maps of quest and discovery. Hindu Kush, Lands of the Golden Horde, Dome of Mohammed Abdin. Sonorous as orchestras. And Cities of the Dead, empty but with spirits drifting like veils. Bluebeard’s castle was more real than Cracow.’

  She herself was more real than these. She tapped my plate, as if to awaken me. ‘I have walked on mountains named the Sorrows of the Retired Ladies. Do not think that I am yet one of them.’

  In this sleepy, lolling afternoon, she was still emphatic. ‘I never wanted to know too much. The Exarchate of Ravenna … could this be a ruler, a place, an anthem? I did not care to know, it was exciting as a locked casket. Like Steppes of Central Asia, caravan out of mists, pausing, in sunlight waiting on dull dusty plains, then moving on. But today …’ she shook her head, repentant, ‘I want to know everything. The recesses and confusions of mind. That’s my Fall. Not exactly from Paradise.’

  She went into the sadness of last week when, tearful, confessional, she told me of having read of the death of the last of Europe’s court fools, 1763. She had choked in desolation. ‘Once he would have been allowed total immunity. Capering, joking, jeering at great ones. But then, old, exhausted, banished from splendours, coughing life away in a horrid attic. Forgotten. Clutching bells that never sounded.’

  Distress had crushed her to trembling eyes, weakened shoulders, before she regained composure, assumed indifference. ‘Enough of this. But cruelty … whaling, circuses …’

  Despite the heat and our déjeuner, I was chilled, almost in darkness, until from the farmhouse a man began singing an old Midi melody. Surely not Pierre, whose tone was a tavern growl. The notion restored our buoyancy, as if Laurel and Hardy had surfaced in Wagner.

  High and firm, the voice changed to Parisian cabaret, ‘Si tu veux dormir’, then ceased in mid-phrase, a door slammed, a figure slid away, a blur already lost amid poplars, shadows, barns. However, we were facing each other, wavering between doubt and hilarity.

  ‘It can’t be.’

  ‘It’s impossible. But it is.’

  Despite swiftness, the squarish, tousled head, broad torso, soiled cap were irrefutable, the haystack man, a tiny mystery adding spice to a day almost satiate with gifts.

  The singing had recalled Tolstoy and happiness. ‘If there are no games, what is left?’ I hummed:

  Fetching water, clear and sweet,

  Stop, dear maiden, I entreat.

  Over emptied bottles, plundered bowls, black smudges of flies, Nadja lifted her head in some remote satisfaction, musing, ‘I, too, can … someone I knew. He flushed whenever he spoke the truth, red as a stork’s leg. Not often.’

  Her gesture as apologetic, fluffy, as if having bumped against a stranger.

  We paid, gave and received lavish compliments, a strain on our French, then set face for home. The sun was past its peak. Disliking exact repetition of the morning’s walk, feigning mistrust of the haystack, and choosing a parched mule track, curling over small mounds to the sea. All was mute in afternoon stupor, sheep by a spindly hedge standing like carved, weathered blocks. Still elated, weswung arms like soldiers, parting at a bog, at thistles, rejoining with humorous, ceremonious courtesy. We risked a shaky bridge over a pebbly, dried-up streambed. Occasionally, at a bend, the sea glittered. To the left the white mountains had slightly receded, as if for shade. An Estonian labourer, I told her, had likened mountains, which he had never seen, to a broken, gap-toothed comb. Then Father, comparing irregularly ranked mountains, to his view of history, the constant ascent and decline of civility.

  ‘You remember so much, Erich. Like a lawyer. But what have I said! Multitudes of apologies. Yet it can alarm.’

  She was affectionate, herself remembering perhaps too much.

  We are making a short detour, attracted by a grey blob alone in a treeless dip, promising a cool rest. A little chapel, hunched, lichened, without tower or steeple, threatened by ivy, the porch crumbling, cobwebbed, a few gravestones protruding from dock and dandelion, memento of a community long departed.

  She hesitates, almost deterred by the cobwebs. A bird croaks, without movement.

  I am masterful. ‘We must go inside. A risk but not a grave one. We might, do you think, pray for rain?’

  ‘But rain is not yet very much needed.’ Good comrade, she echoes my casual manner, adding, ‘We might be interfering. The commune, half swamped, might consider it an offence.’

  ‘But the garden. One thick soak. Do consider it.’

  Her small flourish, quiver of eyes and mouth, make this sound delectably outrageous. ‘At your orders, Erich …’ Determined, she pulls at the knobbed door, eventually triumphant.

  All is shadowy, abode of bats, sickly with warmth hanging like a blanket, light squeezing through lunettes and squint-holes. I feel the tinge of lost presences: the hush of the Rose Room, the damp stillness of the Conciergerie. The stone altar is bare save for mouldy droppings and a withered flower. Benches have been torn away; only the base is left of the font. No power remains but blotched traces of a fresco, a hell-wain trundling the dead, all teeth and shrieks. No soul, only extinction and airlessness, in a squalid stone shed.

  Nadja, by the door, is abstracted, in some small trance. She may be craning for pre-Christian, Saracenic or Albigensian emblem, mason’s signs, a grinning face on a cornice, a Templar mark. I wait until she steps towards me, slender, almost fragile in the uneven shadow, her face hollowed, though a raised eyebrow invites a question, scholarly or facetious. I can contrive neither, only point at the ruined fresco. She gazes at it, then touches my hand, her own surprisingly cold. ‘A Youngest Son found Hell not a departure from life but a return to it.’

  We both need release from this dankness, a foetid cell withstanding summer radiance, in which Sinclair would have been at home, his smile sidelong, his stare eerie, his interest unclean.

  Closing eyes, I see a violet haze, then realize that Nadja is at the altar, head bowed, hieratic, hair massed like a black halo in the wispy light. Turning, her high, ridged features have softened to youth. Her shrug is characteristic, when I ask whether she has prayed for rain. Then she laughs, in assumed wonder. ‘Naturally. You demanded, I obeyed. What else?’ In another voice, serious, reflective, ‘I do sometimes pray. No one hears, only myself. But it matters. Concentration. Compression of will. Sometimes answered, usually sarcastically.’

  She implies a mild rebuke at whatever scepticism I have left unuttered. Despite my glance at the door she refuses to move. As if affected by the lowering, indistinct decay, she is momentarily childlike, uncertain whether to laugh or cry, in need to admit what adults might scorn.

  Of her deepest beliefs I am still ignorant and can now only remember her refusal to travel on the ninth of the month, explaining nothing, seemingly instinctive as a bird’s recoil from an inhabited dwelling.

  ‘There may be something, Erich, which, for want of the more concrete, I can call divine. But inert, unless I contact it. Like music waiting release from the page. Or electricity still to be switched on. Muddle of wires, then Bang! Or else, we speak messages into a silent pool. If we really care, the water stirs.’

  She frowns, analytical, on the scent but dissatisfied with data. ‘There’s an Orphic hymn, Erich: For all things Zeus has hidden within him and reveals them again in joyous Light. That flash of light unites Sky and Underworld. Like dancing. In a Gnostic text, Christ is a dancer. In a Vedic tradition, initiates Dance the God.’

  I indulge in thoughts of her, masked, feathered, gyrating in a Mayan circle or Left Bank revue. ‘Oh!’ she interrupts, ‘There’s something else …’ but it eludes her, she looks around at the worn pillars, the drabness. ‘People imagined spirits trapped in buildings, in ships, by some curse, sin, mistake, and straining towards us, Merlin trapped in a tree, old people imprisoned in rest homes.’

  Her voice tightens, is harsh, between the stone wal
ls. ‘One day was dark as this place, with thunder lurking. Gypsies had vanished, like cattle during drought. Their tents, horses, zithers, pots, their hats, rings, great bracelets, their bears … all gone. They were very foreign; they frightened me but were part of our lives, like Jews. Like seasons and the wind. Strays from history, forgotten empires. From legend.’

  Despite the warmth, she shivers, is stricken. ‘That terrible word, Resettlement.’ At last, back in the porch, she recovers. ‘If none of it were true, I would always believe it.’

  Renewed by sunlight, we were glad of high air in spaces minutely deranged by heat. Far-off pastures gleamed, blinked under a passing cloud, then went clear as children’s cut-outs, the sea like a blue sash, a lorry fiery on a slice of road. Until reaching the cliffs, we were content to stay silent.

  The sun lay on the horizon like a wounded dragon, as the Chinese might say, and must too often have done so. Golden florins were scattered over the wide, liquid mass.

  ‘I suppose,’ she was slow, musing, ‘we really do have to meet them.’

  I looked towards the shuttered Villa Florentine. Had this been occupying her silence? Then I said, ‘We can protect ourselves with your scissors.’

  Holding hands, we saw roofs below, now red, now purple, in the thickening sunset. ‘Erich, it could be the test of faith. To jump from this cliff, perfectly confident that we would at once grow wings.’

  This I was reluctant to risk, and we were soon at Alain’s, hearing his praise of Americans in Vietnam. ‘We needed such boys in Algeria. During my Resistance days …’ After he resumed duties we drank well, outside, above the darkened but twinkling sea, enjoying the shuffle of waves, coastal lights, occasional glimpses of the movie behind the bar, young Alain leaping to horse, swiping the Cardinal’s Guards, receiving thanks from His Majesty.

  ‘I was reading, Nadja, of two French dukes, stranded in a wretched inn. Only one bed. But who should claim it?’

  ‘Why ask? He with the longest pedigree.’

  ‘Yes. So they disputed. One traced his descent from Philip the Fair, the other to Philip Augustus. Citations of Montmorencys, Condés, Longuevilles, Alençons, were countered like fireworks by Valois, Rohans, Talleyrand-Périgords, then back to Charlemagne, to Pepin le Bref. Solomon was mentioned, Adam invoked …’

  ‘Such are dukes! And so? But do not tell me. By dawn, unable to agree, they must both have slept on the floor, the bed empty between them.’

  Affection kept pace with the wine. Within, regulars were arriving, Alain in foreground, filling glasses, in background, receiving not dukes’ expostulations but insolence from a Palais Royal pastry cook.

  That night, rain fell, unpredicted, blowing in from the sea, falling in noisy gushes. Refusing credit, Nadja ascribed it to André of Sudden Tears, local saint, with a flair for responding to popular woes, often clumsily; once, when a village pump cracked, sending a catastrophic flood.

  6

  ‘Don’t you think it is time … ?’

  ‘Whenever is it not?’

  We had for too long shirked decision, the Villa suspended above us, foreboding, as if a wolf might grin at our window. Simply by existing, the Latvians threatened our peace, whether or not they were, in truth, part of the dim, frontierless trade in lives, identities, turncoat deals with nameless surveillance committees, alternative regimes. Once more, I pondered the possibility, scientific or self-induced, of fate.

  ‘We are,’ Nadja spoke as if to a seminar, ‘about to go. I cannot imagine why you wait around.’

  So, in early evening, our nonchalance unconvincing, we sauntered up the white, warm road, expecting the Villa’s gates to be triple locked, safeguarding a midget fortress with mantraps and Cocteau deceptions. Disappointingly, they opened at a touch.

  ‘You have not been correctly right.’ Stress always dislocated her syntax.

  Safely penetrating a garden as if sterilized by some malign sorcerer, we lost bravado, were children risking a dare. The Villa, off-white, pinkish, was stained, flaking, soundless and, with its tight shutters and curtains, as if blind, though eyes must be watching, weapons greased. Birds, leaves, even a cloud, were in suspense, that in which the western hero and villain stare each other down, throwing long, sharp shadows, hands hovering for the final shot.

  At the door I stepped aside, eyes averted but with marked graciousness allowing her rights of leadership. She bowed, then imperiously pointed from me to the knocker, and, outstaged, I intended a tentative tap, though producing a bang emphatic as a declamation. This induced from Nadja a chortle, subdued, misplaced, but nothing more. Another attempt, less tempestuous, again unavailing, and, relieved, duty done, we turned to depart, only, wrong-footed, to confront a man who had silently stalked us. Without resemblance to the haystack uitlander, he was middle-aged, stocky, with bleached, untidy wisps of hair, high forehead, a face wide and creased, small pale-blue eyes, one of which, in the Herr General’s term, lazy, not blind but loose, probably focusing incorrectly. In denim and clean cotton shirt, he appeared Baltic in appearance and lack of spontaneous, uproarious welcome, though more enquiring than threatening, and his small smile made foolish our expectations of uncontrolled ferocity.

  Nadja, in her ruthless mood, left me to introduce ourselves as neighbours anxious to be, well, neighbourly. It sounded grotesquely, insultingly false. The smile opposite relapsed into suspicion, suggesting he was not hearing but smelling my words, testing them for health precautions, preliminary to an unfavourable verdict, until in harsh, cracked French he jerked an arm, like a traffic cop, and delivered sentence.

  ‘You may enter.’

  Meekly, we followed him into a large, unshuttered, frowsty, all-purpose back room, with stove and sink, overlooking a protective shrubbery. No trace of our former friends, their framed reproductions, cheerful records, colourful cushions. Instead, a Monet was replaced by a dirty mirror from which a fragment of sky accosted us like a warrant. Also, it would reveal anyone approaching the house from behind. Overall, a fortification of books, heavy table and lamps, boxes, plates, bottles, overseen by a big, lumpy woman, fair, straggle-haired, without make-up, muddy brown eyes unmistakably hostile. In coarse green jacket and trousers, she was motionless for a minute, before moving to her man’s side, so that we were facing each other in pairs, as if for a square dance.

  Nadja, captious, freakish, would be an unsatisfactory partner. As though in a joke intended only for me, she feigned immediate fascination in a dictionary of Finnish slang, open at a caricature of perhaps a human face, perhaps a diagram of some transport scheme. Perched on a pile of shabby notebooks was a wooden bowl of fruits-des-bois.

  The silence was awkward, that of bare forbearance of householders awaiting explanations or excuses, while I scanned the dishevelled room for evidence of conspiracy, dangerous information, prejudice, even looking for my own Secret Protocol amongst the many volumes, not from vanity but for confirmation that the couple were at very least political.

  We were still standing. My hopes of a strawberry were, so to speak, fruitless, but the woman, with a minute intimation of thaw, did then indicate two stools, from which Nadja, mouth set against outward humour, waited for me to remove papers. The man stayed on his feet, in authority; the stools were low, so that we crouched beneath him. Nadja, at last deciding that some courtesy was due, told them in a slow French calculated to appease infants that Monsieur Alain had expressed much pleasure and very considerable eloquence about their arrival, the honour dispensed to our community, our own anxiety to be of all possible service. While respecting her strategy, I judged such extravagance maladroit, she herself afterwards admitting that it would have sounded well only to cretins.

  The woman had withdrawn nearer the sink and was apparently deaf, but the man was scowling, his hands, deeply scratched, over-large. Neither face showed signs of suffering, fear, cruelty, only granite patience or sullenness. Both figures, statuesque, almost monumental, implied powers considerable but imprecise. In some abrupt non-sequitur I remem
bered Alex’s account of the gift of levitation granted to St Teresa of Avila, though frequently on occasions demanding utmost decorum.

  Nadja uncaged her largest, most devious smile, crinkling into facial embrace, prompting the two to veer towards the human, the host deigning to seat himself.

  From curt, wrenched-off sentences we learnt that they were Andrejs and Margarita Ulmanis, himself cousin to a pre-war Latvian statesman, though whether hero, crook or nonentity was unascertainable. Thus these relatives could be targets or agents of the vengeful and implacable.

  Nadja, in her way, sociable, was also unhelpful, speaking of the general untrustworthiness of French and foreigners alike, while in some stutter of nerves I fingered another book, cheaply printed, coffee-stained, though I adopted a mien of reverence, interpreted by her as nauseating fulsomeness. But, noticing, Andrejs exclaimed gruffly, then clapped hands in resounding thud. Margarita shook herself into life, an undoubted smile cracked surface, her eyes gave faint glow to skin gone tight, slightly fungoid. Her voice was unexpectedly mild, her French agreeable as she explained that new territory made her shy. Andrejs concurred, with some pride. Carefully, as if it were sacramental, she touched the book I was holding. ‘Linards Tauns. One of our people. A great, a very great poet. He saw the shapes hovering between flowers and eyes.’This attributing to me a specialized connoisseurship was unlikely to awe Nadja and I feared a giggle, while also recalling that, in the Miscellany, from the bastion of inadequate research, I had recommended the work of the outstanding Latvian, Tauns.

  Andrejs’ silence had been that of a prosecutor awaiting his turn, unlikely to overflow with what Alex called chitter-chat. He did, however, relent sufficiently to command coffee, which Margarita obeyed with an alacrity unjustified by the drink’s quality.