Peter Vansittart - Secret Protocols

More immediate were symptoms of typhus and diphtheria, and mouths were rotting from scurvy, dropping from swollen gums. Dark patches discoloured hands and necks. Survival required the abnormal: selfishness, altruism, apathy, animal need to keep one move ahead. A harassed Polish doctor spoke of more violence, over a jug of milk, a single pfennig, an empty aspirin bottle; a boy had died, fighting for a girl raddled by sickness.

The White Rose had no presence here, and sexual desires poisoned thought. In a climax of nerves, shortages or Russian arrival, Vello would probably resume power. Evidently, belief was vital for survival, for, the same doctor assured me, Christians, communists and other zealots lasted longer than the disillusioned and faithless. Without politics or religion, unpleasantly naked, I could put trust only in Wilfrid.

He managed by persuasive improvisations rather than direct orders or appeals to good sense and public spirit and had lately recruited, without dissent, a Waffen SS colonel on the run, almost tenderly capable with adolescent thieves. Old hatreds, political antagonisms had to be suspended to avert total disarray, people allowed to cherish or forget pasts best kept hidden.

Wilfrid advised me to step carefully, observe, take stock. Stalwart-looking men could slump into drooling infantilism. ‘Would you like to spin my top?’ a hunched figure croaked, holding a mouldy turnip, from a swing he was too weak to move. Another, with beard long as a rhubarb stick, extended a claw-like hand. ‘Young man, in my thesis on the Romantic Inheritance…’ then relapsing to babble.

Wilfrid began lending me books, of which he had a surprising store. This, once again, made me conscious of a protection scarcely supernatural yet as random and undeserved as Calvinist predestination. Chance, luck, coincidence, though evident, appeared to obey no human rules or, if they did, rules not yet evident. The books were passports to escape from unremitting shouts, grumbles, wails, slithery whispers. I could enter solid mercantile towns, gabled mansions leaning confidentially together over cobbled lanes; family prayers and music, a child racing from a demon and finding it grinning on the bed; handsome lovers and sad wives.

Wilfrid’s activities suggested virtuosity without genius, but, washed up in dissolution and torment, many could have thought that dictators’ genius had intoxicated, then ruined them. They craved either the miraculous or a plate of meat. At all times, however, he possessed a singular calm, a distinction of manner and behaviour, treating alike the hostile and disruptive, the helpful and admiring, as acquaintance of unusual attractions. Already I could not imagine him haggling or counting the change, though sometimes allowing himself a rueful smile, as at a poor joke. He achieved some mastery by seeking no votes, expecting no privilege: the mastery was informal yet certain, its consequences unforeseeable. It made the Acrobats’ conquistador strength slightly absurd, archaic as flintlock or harquebus. He might have been guest conductor of a barely trained orchestra. Unlike Vello, he lacked coercive powers but, by a glance, apologetic gesture or laugh, could trap the aggressive or lazy into joining him to repair a table, clean a latrine, erect a tent. A handshake, grumble, outright compliance he accepted as a favour graciously awarded, inadequately earned. He eased the alarm caused by a huge, unexplained heap of earth appearing overnight and blocking the main gate, by murmuring that extravagance was the prerogative of moles. Complaints, threats he studied with the seriousness due to guests always welcome but apt to prolong their visit.

Once, in a voice like a rusty saw, Vello had demanded that ‘certain ones’ should be denied the cheese he had ‘salvaged’, Wilfrid mildly remonstrated, unconcernedly proposing that the entire cheese-ration be denied to everyone save Vello himself, in gratitude and to fortify him for further public-spirited enterprise. Many laughed, some applauded, the bruiser stood puzzled, calculating, then, accepting the acclaim for himself almost, but not quite, smiled, then stamped away, leaving the cheese to be distributed in the usual manner.

I doubtless exaggerated Wilfrid’s merits, overlooking his failures, though, in Europe, 1945, anything was believable, drastic changes of fortune commonplace, even the miraculous might become typical. To encourage or reprove, he might feign incomprehension of the workings of a stolen watch, the meaning of some dialect, some obscenity, the identity of a coin dubiously acquired, the explanations, patiently endured, establishing a relationship. On his feet for hours, he seldom showed fatigue, as he stooped to examine some nauseating pile, as if it were not only interesting but refreshing, or stepped over filth without seeming to notice it, while, beneath his overalls, remaining almost debonair in blue linen tunic and well-pressed trousers. I would move alongside him, amongst fetid cabins, shelters constructed from branches, rotten coats, Red Cross blankets and the tinted umbrellas of forgotten summers. Constantly pausing, greeted by waves, frowns, small coughs or with smouldering resentment, he would praise, comfort, enquire, promise, salute an urchin squatting beneath another umbrella. On such occasions he could look younger than he probably was, an illusion strengthened by his delight at an ancient jest or picturesque curse. His laugh could be noisy, adolescent, his smile much older, subtle, not altogether trustworthy.

‘We live,’ he was anxious to subdue any hint of superiority, ‘in comedy. You might say farce. Trapdoors, caricaturing mirrors, straightforward deceit.’ As so often, he seemed about to reveal something further, though always holding back.

Adopted on to Wilfrid’s staff, I first worked in the sorry hospital, an old sports pavilion, fumbling with bandages, misapplying a syringe, diffidently stroking a Latvian girl lamenting not her dead baby but a stolen bracelet, itself useful currency in a barter economy, flesh the highest asset. One discovery was of peasant mothers refusing to wash infants’ hands lest they become thieves. This, Wilfrid at last said, very apologetic, did not markedly justify my presence, and he then requested, as a favour, that I should try my hand, no, tax my patience, at teaching. ‘It might amuse you…’

Several volunteers gave lessons in a dilapidated summer-house, ill-attended yet oddly resilient. Wilfrid himself gave language instruction, in German, French, more rarely English, sometimes attending other classes like a pupil, sitting on packing-case or floor with others of all ages, curious, care-nothing, at times eager.

I began awkwardly, to a circle of adults and children, some prepared to jeer, disrupt, slink away. I read aloud or recited half-remembered poems, anecdotes, flakes of history, inviting questions, often insolent, over-simple: did angels fart; was Jesus left-handed; were Greenlanders green? Later, I encouraged them to speak, about personal habits, memories, Utopian fancies, factual accounts of work, trees, wheels. I found myself accepted, less for this than from making a football, irregularly sphered, from tarred strings and broken boot-soles.Wilfrid did not stimulate me by disclosing Tolstoy’s confession that, when seeing school children, dirty, ragged but sometimes angelic, he was filled with restlessness and terror, as though at people drowning. I saw no angels, only the scrawny, suspicious, puzzled, some as if already drowned, staring and indecipherable. Nevertheless, numbers increased. Wilfrid was appreciative. ‘But tell them more stories.’ Some I had less to teach words than help recover them. Speech could be dangerous.

I, too, was learning. These children and parents would once have known gardens, hotels, steamboats, mountains, had dreamt of becoming foresters, naturalists, pirates, doctors. Like my new associates, I myself expected little, so gained more.