Peter Vansittart - Secret Protocols

Her eyes, dark brown or black, beneath emphatic brows, iris and pupil barely distinguishable, were ominously reserved, unlikely to be irresolute, but were quickly merry. ‘Quel tedium!’ She spoke in what she must have assumed to be a whisper, though it made several look gratefully across at her. Not pausing to acknowledge them, she grabbed my hand, and while Anna dealt uncompromisingly with the Texan we slunk through the window into cold darkness.

‘We leave them to rebirth.’ Her rather hoarse accent made this sound obscene, and I chuckled, mightily relieved. Shadowed by damp, oblong leaves in the moonless night, she was imprecise, her earlier luminosity only an unreliable memory. The traitor, she had gone. I was deserted. But no. Already she was back, with our coats, and we were soon scuttling over the North Bridge towards the lemonish, floodlit City Hall. Traffic, brisk diners-out, chatting groups, revoked all twinges of Mon Plaisir . In our laughter, hers was humorously malicious, matching what I judged her: opinionated, resolute, with experiences as varied as my own, possibly similar.

Trams passed, flashy as liners. We were striding into the glitter of Djurgården, aiming at whatever she had already decided, to be accepted without protest.

‘Anna’s probably a dear.’ Her husky tone expressed doubt, as she might at a drawing bold but displeasing.

Above hoots and shrills from receding steamers, we flung each other sentences, mostly in French. Many small words she mispronounced or overstressed, so that her feelings, her intentions, were elusive. Like the impact of the darkness of her hair and eyes. Black can contain blue.

Anna, she considered, like many of life’s choicest gifts, was best avoided. Her swinging gait, determined chin, suggested that much else should also be avoided. This pleased me, I felt myself in the hush before curtain-rise, but, at the Hotel Luxor, she left me as abruptly as she had Anna’s apartment. ‘I have…’ she spoke as if settling an argument, ‘an invisible limp,’ clearly convinced that this explained all. I was ready to wait, prepared for a contest of challenging pitfalls, enthralling rebuffs, possibly, just possibly, a marvellous curtain line.

Nadja, student of mythology, was happy with instances of sacred kingship, sacrificial rites, mazes, water-horses, mysterious deaths, chroniclers’ euphemisms, tree-worship, widow-burning – Anna, she reflected, would have been gravely at risk – a Northern Trinity: High, Just as High, Third. ‘When I can positively unravel Third, I can complete a paragraph.’ She saw ancient swastikas of stylized suns, found drawings of a Swedish Isis, tales of Jesus dying in India of Mexican self-sacrificial gods.

She herself was protean: the dark hair could suddenly show golds; once she appeared in a grey wig; she would laugh, then go tearful at what I thought commonplace. Tiny wrinkles, now visible, now not, gave me confidence I never felt with the very young.

We dined at the Vasa, Gilded Elk, Top Gaudy, Richard Widmark. She had the self-preserving resilience of a hard-tested survivor, sometimes disappearing without warning, then, a few days later, seating herself opposite me as if we had parted that morning. Such waywardness gave us space to manoeuvre, though, more clock-bound, I had much nervous perplexity. A chance might have been missed, a crucial move overlooked. A dazzle of alternatives. A difficult moment could be arrested by a glance, stifled by a pause, inflamed by a chuckle unexpected, irreverent, explained by a silence. Chance meetings at parties enhanced our drama, with dialogue to mislead others and sometimes ourselves, while within bland deceits, social subterfuges our eyes, mouths, hands contained hints and jokes almost, but not quite, fully intimate. A tiny gesture could be retreat, rally, truce. Silences could be relaxed, almost sensual. The long Swedish winter passed in a shower of light, though already, her researches concluding, she was desiring the South.

We were not callow two-centers wanting our hotel half-hour, but experienced, expecting no-wonders; we proceeded unhurriedly, reaching a further stage when she invited me to dine, not in a restaurant but in her small flat, severely functional, hung not with paintings but diagrams, mostly tree-shaped, each branch a different colour, the variations and parallels stemming from a central ritual, custom, belief.

She moved unfussily, presenting salmon, salads, filling tall goblets which, candle-lit, glowed like green flame, reflected deep in the glass table. Afterwards, a wide mat between our chairs, we watched a Swedish movie in which the father of a boy raped then drowned, very eloquently and unconvincingly pleaded for mature understanding of the killer.

Nadja’s reserve, natural or acquired, broke harness. ‘Horse shit.’ She was near to tears, not weak but wrathful, the film concluding with a commercial for tinned reindeer. ‘Tell me, Erich. When you were little… did you often cry? You cannot have done so since.’

This might be rebuke. I explained that, while I seldom wept outright, my eyes had moistened at a dead badger, at a maid’s dismissal. Other incidents I did not declare: the Herr General’s promised arrival postponed; Danton, at the end, brooding on fields and rivers; Robespierre, shattered and bleeding, on a table. ‘Much later, cinemas taught me to weep.’

She nodded, satisfied. ‘As for me, mécontent . I seemed never to stop. My tears could fill the bath. Though I also found it necessary to be tough. Perhaps many murderers are weepers. But, outside cinemas, of course, you appear so often on the verge.’

She had pierced more deeply than perhaps she intended. On the verge. M. Half and Half, Herr Hither and Yon, Mr Neither This Nor That. But, discounting it, she had risen, moving into the bedroom. My nerve trembled, my loins ‘on the verge’, while I fretted, uncertain whether this was her mode of farewell or an invitation to storm her bed. Timing was vital, though the cue was inaudible. Tactlessly, treacherously, a recollection stung me, of dripping with desire for Suzie, on a night of bravado or defeat, penis straining at its moorings.

From within, she was offhand. ‘You can come now.’

Naked, in mild lamplight, against scarlet sheets, she was somehow ritualistic, holding two full glasses, waiting, appreciative but not wholly serious as I rushed at my clothes, fumbling as if in anxiety dream, until at last we could drink, pledging each other before opening arms, not flirtatious but hoping for love.

Her hands scattered over me, my need forced me to spurt prematurely, as it had done years before. She was not angry but laughing. Had not Hephaestus, in similar breach of manners, likewise bespattered Aphrodite’s golden thigh? ‘And, look, Erich… mine is of false gold. Forgive me… sallow!’

Companionable, she fondled me to a wry smile, quiet sigh, then renewal. At morning, she gravely demanded I soon buy her a shoe. ‘One shoe. Difficult. Not impossible.’ Not in allusion to that invisible limp but to the primitive token of fidelity, underlying the Cinderella cycle.

I had grown attentive to women’s bedroom idiosyncrasies. The misleadingly bashful, enticingly demure, the flaunting, businesslike, agitated, exposed by make-believe reluctance, resignation, ways of stripping. Some motioned me to avert my gaze but glowered if I complied. One insisted her peke witnessed the action. Humour could be absurd, incomprehensible, more often absent.

Nadja’s humour was that of understated partnership, sly but affectionate. At the bed, as if unaware of her nakedness, she retained style.

‘Your Nordic smoothness…’ She caressed my flanks as, in an off-moment, she might a cushion. ‘You have kept the lines.’ I felt ennobled.

In lovemaking, she was sturmfreie : coaxing, curious, versatile, quickly discerning my preferences and indicating her own, usually unorthodox, surprising, then rousing me with a small movement, a kiss in an unexpected place. Bed vocabulary – ‘Wait… Please… Don’t… Now’ – familiar but never stale, wedded us. Her depths of excitement had wit.