Whether she had really learnt much from Custom I had yet to discover. She was more preoccupied by this new intrusion that disagreeably confirmed Cledon.
Andrejs Ulmanis had telephoned. Harshly implying rights of entry, he wished to visit us. Now. Immediately. No discussion. On a matter of neighbourly understanding, he insisted, costing us nothing. A brief formality.
I could only assent, Nadja mouthing annoyance. We waited, fractious, uneasy, until, an hour later, he strode in without knocking, ponderous, blue-shirted, examining new surroundings, not in admiration of paintings, books, carpets but as if suspecting a recording machine or bugging plant. He held papers, like a warrant to search the house.
Nadja, with a mutter only with some effort likely to be construed as apology, at once left us, though doubtless listening behind the door and willing me to refuse all requests. At her departure his tough, lined face minutely relaxed, reducing him from manic desperado to an old-timer lounging outside the saloon. Or an indigent peasant forced to appeal to a notorious usurer.
‘My carte de séjour needs renewal.’ This he forced out, barely moving his lips, which, thick, cracked, seemed designed to spit rather than release words. ‘The French authorities …’ the emphasis did suggest spit, ‘demand I supply a certificate of good living.’
The formula, like his French, must be inexact, ‘Signed by citizens of repute and substance …’ Crashing speech, and I feared a giggle from behind the door. ‘This I will require from you both. Your professional service. It will assist our voyage to America. The USA.’ His manner denoted no wholesale admiration for the USA. With the same intonation, matching his pale, wary eyes, he explained that two respectable signatures would suffice. A privilege undesirable but which, in conscience, could not be refused.
He laid several stamped, embossed documents on the enamelled table between us, jabbing a stubby thumb at particular paragraphs, expecting instantaneous compliance, perhaps my forging of Nadja’s signature.
Handling them cautiously, befogged by the prose style of officialdom, I made a gesture intended as conciliatory but which he understood as need for a pen. This, as additional favour, he supplied, then smiled, not in gratitude but like a fellow conspirator completing a deal. But, as one large man confronting another, I ignored the pen, fearing being outmanoeuvred like a footballer, enthusiastic but untrained. Instead, attempting the manner of repute and substance, I assured him of the honour he was doing us, yet regretting the signatures must be delayed, explaining, untruthfully, that we had no legalized status, possessed only Nansen passports, outdated, not universally recognized and viewed with barely credible suspicion by those same French authorities, unquestionably scoundrels, three of them criminals. A letter must be written, a permission obtained. Sadly, but unavoidably, he must wait.
It sounded clumsily false, inciting a blue glare as he squared as if for assault, but at this, commendably prompt, Nadja returned, amiable, hospitable, offering coffee. Stalled, he rose, giving her a cursory grunt. At the door, ‘I will allow you the time required. Now I leave. I will come back.’
‘How very kind!’ Nadja’s softness was dangerous, her expression subtly mischievous. Beast routed by Beauty, he scowled at the Juan Gris, then the door closed like a gunshot.
The garden was bright with well-seasoned flowers, August leaves tinged with brown.
‘Darling Nadja, I suppose we must sign. It will hasten their packing and delight God the Father America. Two points for us.’
Almost never predictable, she was indignant, colour touching her ovalled pallor, her eyes charred.
‘Erich, I will not sign; you should not. Even though you may be right. But you are not right. What do we know of them? How can we send them to others like a secret missile? He has the face of … anything you can imagine. A strike-leader of menace. Not a good man. She is worse. They are mixed with the strange and brutal.’
She had prosecutor’s severity.
‘Nadja, if they launder money, forge visas, sell stolen LPs, manufacture weapons and further poison Alain’s champagne … they can do it somewhere else, with more likelihood of being caught. Surely.’
But she went miserable. ‘To guarantee them risks all this.’ She motioned at green depths, lucid vistas, a bird on a statue inquisitive or waiting for crumbs. Warm ochred walls. I had nothing to say, she sighed, in relief, and, nearing Stendhal, we changed key. Head on side, she gave her throaty laugh.
‘There was a Hungarian Barbe Bleu. Of him, I can only say that in appearance he was splendidly splendid but with six hanged wives amongst his credits. A seventh arrived on schedule, but she peeped into a closet just in time …’
Intimacy could always leave sentences, moods, embraces unfinished. We sat comfortably, sunlight sliding through leaves, the air cooling, gnats on the make.
‘You are not, my darling girl, setting the best example of genial toleration.’
‘Yah!’
She did not put out her tongue, but her face rippled with pleasure, our laughter alarmed the bird and nudged us into a kiss.
Self-reproach for the Ulmanis persisted, notwithstanding, together with the awkwardness of downright refusal, an onus from which Nadja easily, too easily, absolved herself.
She was always cautious of signatures. They could trap like false witnesses, though this was an excuse likely to be considered invalid at the Villa. A bout of Rising Tide threatened, another glimpse of Claire, pleading for her brother in his need. The atmosphere of those German silent movies descended: dark streets, steeply slanted houses, haunted, distorted cemeteries, drab hotels sheltering the child-murderer and the pianist with artificial hands, personalities splitting like pines, mountains luring climbers to fatal embrace, trembling waxworks, the pale horse lying at distance from its head, the juicy young, stalked by hooded vampires moving like the deaf, all in cracked, faded blacks and whites, feeding my unassuagable hankering for ruins, damned tribes, the lost; for antique tapestries of doomed courtiers, the white, equivocal tower solitary above dark trees, for names and titles once sonorous, now mute in auctioneers’ catalogues, for renowned towns now submerged by the colossal and featureless. The Red Town, so eagerly reread in the Turret. Then the weird breath of la Terre Gaste and its invitation to love the unlovable. Once again, Danton, amid invective, blood, gristle, brooding over fields and rivers.
Oppressive meanderings, lying between me and Andrejs’s reproachful papers.
These remained unmentionable but inescapable, making days chancy. Nadja retreated to study, to write or to her piano, Haydn drifting towards me, reassuring, civilized, in a manner truthful, my misgivings finally liquefying to rhythms, then shapes, outside words.
One night I found her naked in my bed, at once was fierce then frantic with desire for her and for secrets skin-deep yet still closed. But, unusually, I failed, through very excess, quickening only after she departed, not wholly understanding but friendly, forbearing. Mischance was not catastrophe.
The Ulmanis’ documents would not wither away, but reprieve came. A note was delivered; the Latvians would be away for some days on a most serious matter. The wording conveyed a hint that the matter was due to our procrastination. ‘On our return, after signing, you will be posting, by hand only, the missives in sealed packet through our door.’
Nadja shrugged, retired to work. I strolled down to the Old Port, where Kanachen had been scrawled on the jetty, synonym for German resentment against Turkish immigrants. No Turks and fewer Germans remained here long. The word nagged, irritating me further.
August sky frayed, gloomed with spasmodic rain. Nights were chilly. Nadja was disturbed by a cracked mirror, more so than she admitted. In primitive belief, a shiny surface could kidnap the soul and, if broken entail worse.
Alarm followed. She was at the musée, and to retrieve a book I entered her room and, searching, touched something cold behind a row of Balzac. A small, delicate pocket gun. Though unloaded it startled me, like the bulge in the Herr General’s pocket.
&
nbsp; Replacing it, I decided to say nothing. It added a facet to a personality liable to veer between extremes, the riddle of others. Those who, imagining themselves unseen, gravely bow to the moon, order their shoes to dance, attempt to drink their reflection in a pool.
With two wet days we prayed to Sainte-Andrée of Sudden Tears at least to spare us a tidal wave. Rain ceased, sunlight returned. We felt smug, though Nadja was first to resume normality. ‘I will …’ she announced, her good humour untrustworthy, ‘submit. I will sign those noxious papers. I have thought. Occasionally we require not reason but nonsense. At times, danger. Even Latvians, like rich Spaniards, need beggars. One beggar informed a hidalgo that he was so mean that he did not deserve beggars. I once heard a bus driver tell a man that he was ungenerous enough not even to spare a coin to see Paul of Tarsus piss on a duck. But, my dear,’ – she came close, fingered my hair – ‘we must keep watch. Whoever has suffered is never harmless. Today’s Latvians are Greeks who bear gifts.’
The Ulmanis had scarcely brought gifts. The papers would remain undisturbed until lights reappeared in the Villa.
The Fête, almost due, signalled summer’s passing. The garden, tired, lost brilliance, blue butterflies deserted the oleander. Hazy September wound through late roses, zinnias of Cent Gardes’ rigidity, over-tall, sunflowers. Yet I could still slope into an outside chair in afternoon idleness, feeling all was suspended, sky and sea hushed for me to drowse amongst green and old-gold, a black moth twiddling around the buddleia.
A long moment brushing against Vladimir Holan’s It is Autumn which glorifies the majesty of melancholy, set against the brash optimism of spring.
Afternoon: mood of patrician ease, straw hats and racquets, bows and compliments, lawns, sparkling wine, extinct, yet, like a poet, awaiting summons, resurrection.
After lengthy retirement, I, too, almost unconsciously, had begun to wait, but for what? I was again buying newspapers, punctually listening to news, expecting unlikely invitations, glad at occasional letters from Estonian writers in North America and Scandinavia.
With Brezhnev dead, the Baltic had stirred beneath the oppression. Hunger-strikers had paralysed Tartu, communists were purging each other, social democrats re-emerging to join Red revisionists and dissidents, liberal clerics, and nationalists, often semi-fascist. The north-eastern phosphate mines had been sabotaged, conceivably by the illegal Popular Front, apparently better coordinated than the vanished Forest Brothers. Last week, the Moscow-controlled Tallinn government threatened ‘sternest measures’ against class enemies, followed by scores of arrests and ‘Protective Custody’.
From Gorbachev, new Kremlin boss, came expressions unheard for years: glasnost, perestroika – openness, reconstruction – though insufficient to lure me from the garden and enlist in a crusade, strap myself to a bomb to demolish the Berlin Wall or Party Conference, swing hammer for the infinite or impossible.
Had Wilfrid written a Secret Protocol it would have been utterly dismissive of my own, a pattern of symbols, over which initiates would quarrel, doubtless kill, in efforts to interpret.
Saturnine Andrejs eventually phoned. I must rush to the Villa, as soon as possible. Absolutely essential. Yes, but never disturbing Nadja at work, I hurried forth, leaving the papers still unsigned and concocting intricate, unanswerable excuses.
Arriving breathless, I found the Villa showing no signs of occupation. No response. Nothing. All in keeping with the Latvian aura.
‘Mr Blow Hard, No Get.’ Nadja laughed, though I had seen her make her own surreptitious trip to the Villa. Why? I said nothing. She kept her own time, reserve, sense of fitness.
Tomorrow, she reminded me, with what could pass for a groan, was Saturday. The Fête. European Unity at peak.
9
The Hôtel de Ville has staged an exhibition of Modern European Achievement: unbelievable graphs, bemusing statistics, photographs of statesmen shaking hands, giant international aeroplanes, roads, tunnels, Spain and Portugal joining the EC, NATO warships crushing the Mediterranean, multilingual transcriptions of the Single Europe Act, the London Exhibition of Contemporary European Art, posters of the Fund for Women, the Louvre Financial Accord, even a genial caricature of Mr Spender notching up another appearance, at the Congress for Cultural Co-operation.
We had deigned to attend the Fête’s opening, though contemptuous of what seemed summer-stock propaganda, a re-run of Bastille Day, papier-mâché, alarums and raucous cheers for Liberté. Today, weakly submitting to Dick Haylock, we stand on the balcony of Hôtel du Reine overlooking place de la République jammed with Fête balloons, carnival hats, bunting ribbons, bouquets, sported by what Dick calls the Native Reserve. Placards wave like demented ducks. Scrap Money, Boulez for President, Soul Responsibility, Free Brittany, Abolish Exams. Only Rabelaisian mirth suggests unity.
I am always repelled by crowds. Captious as children, they too swiftly become mobs, baying for Liberté and imagining free wine, free sex. On one terrible afternoon a seething mass of soldiery had auctioned the Roman Empire.
‘We may very probably survive,’ Nadja murmurs, ‘by drinking long, drinking deep, and – miracles have occurred – at least once, at Dick’s expense.’ Advice I am strictly obeying, so that the charades below are already hazy, in gaudy, constant dabs of pirouetting and waving. Peasant skirts, Hollywood singlets, coal-scuttle bonnets, cheap head-scarves, streamers and flags, national and departmental, flutter and, to a hush uncomfortably ambiguous, the Stars and Stripes. Once Upon a Time in the West.
Wheeled floats are huge, to military music, operatic music, rock music, tussling with shouts, whistles, shrieks. On stage are near-naked girls upholding commercial logos, fairyland animals, fanciful emblems of Common Market, World Health, Exchange Rate Mechanism. Monetary Union is represented by a dwarf cackling atop a giant rolling franc: children in striped trousers and top hats display inflated yellow envelopes, ‘European Commission’, attracting cat-calls. Uproar dwindles again at a cardboard banner, Groupement de Recherches et d’Etudes pour La Civilisation Européene. Likewise unpopular is Brussels, an inflated Rubber Stamp. Geniality is restored by a huge walking toothpaste tube (Sweden), a pyramid of spaghetti (Italy), German tankard, gilded Belgian chocolate box, carried by six chocolate cuirassiers, followed by a traipsing question mark, tall, red and white, attached to a donkey dangling milk bottles and controlled by a scarlet Foreign Legionnaire. To hilarious curses, surging cheers, raised fists, the Fête panorama is unflagging. JFK with teeth columned as the Parthenon; Margaret Thatcher with elegant hair and furious eyes dangling a handbag marked Michelin, then Mon Général, greeted less fervently than Le Maréchal, whose white gleaming moustaches advertise soap powder. To groans and whistles, Pierre Laval, smirking in some obscure pun, exhibited the Pill on his vast white bowtie. Much applauded is Elizabeth II, with lustred crown and wide pillar-box smile. Pol Pot, mouth dripping blood, evokes another hush, from nerves bruised by French defeat in Asia. Foliage of red-tipped barbed wire precedes la Bombe Americaine, surrounded by more children, sedate, in communion white, holding hyacinths. From roof gardens, windows, pavements, Gastons and Anne-Maries cheer as they would for Nero, Mirabeau, ‘Charlot’, for La Bohème and Carmen. The past was now, a guitar strummed by Dr Miracle. A new tableau struck frenzy, live effigies of Jeanne Moreau, Françoise Sagan, a clothed Bardot, Montand, Loren, Mickey la Sourise, Johnny Hallyday, Cary Grant, M. Hulot, Jackie O and moonwalkers chatting with hairless, glassy Space Aliens. Riotous acclaim for an unclassifiable hat inscribed with red, white and blue V, over a suet-pudding face, a cigar like a pier, a brandy bottle, comic, yet formidable as a tank in a lane. Applause, too, for children beneath UNICEF pennants. A man-sized sieve, Common Agricultural Policy, was hooted more good-humouredly than a fleshy, hook-nosed, frock-coated manikin astride a bulging chest labelled, in blinking lights, International Monetary Fund. Artificial birds whirring on poles are Air Bus Industrie, a lurid Thieves’ Kitchen, the Council of Europe. Through the haze is a display of the
colours of centuries – the alcohol is working – metallic greys and browns of Richelieu’s and Wallenstein’s troopers, blacks and crimsons of the Great Wrath, nuanced blues and pinks of Versailles satins, scarlet of Revolution, tropical blaze of Empire, soot-black of factory and railway.
Beside me, in long maroon outfit, Nadja is alarmingly gracious, as though comforting Daisy for morning rudeness from a lapwing or commiserating Ray Phelps for accusation of unnatural offences, and prepared to stroke Alain on news that he has incurable disease. Better that the Ulmanis had been engulfed by a landslip.
Dick nudges me, pointing at an excited young couple on the adjoining balcony. ‘Free spirits. Plighting their troth with a eucalyptus for witness. Fair blossoms in a dark world.’ He pats Nadja’s arm. ‘Well, there you are. As indeed are we all, dowsed in champagne, cigarette fumes, some of us probably on smack.’ Then, nudging Dick aside, Ray, baldness worn like a helmet, risks linguistics. ‘Pourquoi?’ and gurgles into his glass, Dick resuming behind us. ‘Flying Scots at Twickers’, telling a boring story, promising one ‘still funnier’, then motioning at clowns below.
Drink, uproar, darting flushes of colour further blur my vision. Another face, perspiring ham, swims at me. Voice treacly. ‘If one hears aright, Erich, you’ve penetrated the mysteries of la belle Florentine.’ Nadja’s amused. ‘He thinks you are a Sûreté inspector, which I am almost certain you are not.’
Phelps asks Haylock if he could get him a brioche. ‘Ray, I could, but I won’t.’
‘OK, old chap. Each man for himself. Women and children nowhere.’ Manly grin, confidential wink.
Children in white, flossy as egrets, scamper in and out of lavish sheen of movement. Three-legged teams scuttle like crabs. Mauve shorts, black berets. Elvis gyrations, flames in high wind. Kites jigging, soaring, swerving, with purity free of dust and clamour. The Herr General had controlled my demented box-kite like an army manoeuvre, convincing me of eternal comradeship dedicated to mighty deeds. More children, twirling hula-hoops, dangling yoyos; sharp sprigs of Europe glistening before harvest. The masked and caped lurch forward on stilts, caricatures, perhaps, of British foreign policy. A champion bull, beflowered, bemedalled, led by a bare-torsoed, velveteen-breeched matador stamped with purple artificial bruises. Youths, or would-be youths, doubtless Matelots du Roi, march in poor step, yell ringside expletives, matched from the streets by a chant of ‘Ho Chi Minh’. Bikinied girls move daintily, each displaying a letter collectivized into ‘Dubonnet’. From Dick, ‘Tartlets!’ Others, frilled in damson, on a wheeled, beflowered terrace, perform cancan. Southern frolic.
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