Peter Vansittart - Secret Protocols

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.

I praised Tauns, with an eye still for the strawberries, Nadja rhapsodized the coffee, while leaving it almost untasted, and, with renewed offers of assistance, hospitality, advice, we escaped.

For several days, Nadja avoided discussion of this petty escapade, during which I found some liking for Andrejs, his tired eyes, worn hands, reminding me of Greg, obdurate as weed under cities, dry-eyed in calamity.

Eventually, she announced that Margarita possessed jettura , evil eye, linking her with Alain’s account of Alfonso XIII emptying sophisticated salons by such a possession. Even suave croupiers and brutal footballers, she declared, extended figures in the cornu , repelling malign influences obvious to whoever could ‘verily see’.

We knew one remote village where strong or talented children were nicknamed Insignificant, Jug, You, to avert jealousy of saints. Occasionally, we passed the Ulmanis, gestured politely, but did not linger, feigning some urgent appointment. Without admitting it we maintained watch on the Villa. Once a limousine, smoke-glassed, presumably bulletproof, stopped outside it, no one leaving it or stepping from the house.

We wagered on who would first induce Andrejs to utter more than ten consecutive words.

More than ever, I was grateful to the garden, its constant changes within perfection. With trees and flowers, I was unperturbed by a report of Herr Doktor Gust, commandant of Buchenwald Camp, now a Stasi colonel, evading Israeli vengeance squads and, this week, cruising on the Black Sea. A wink from old times.

Drinking at Alain’s, I was more disturbed, not by balletic guns or suspicious-looking strangers but by Zimmer-frame crocks disputing at a beach kiosk below. Without warning a jet plane screamed over, cutting the sky with dead-white streak, unpleasant surgery.

‘Selfish buggers!’ Dick Haylock settled beside me, with empty glass. Knowing he preferred whisky I poured him wine.

‘Cheers, Erich! Or should I say prosit ? Anyway, as I’ve been saying to everyone, there are things around I don’t care for. Incidentally,’ – a small awkwardness did not escape me – ‘we hear that you’ve been hobnobbing with the Letts. No offence. But, as poets say, they’re scarcely pukka. Mind,’ – he looked at the waves, dissatisfied by their performance – ‘I’ve not yet met them. Daisy thinks them club-footed. Bad luck, of course. But I’m sorry not to see your lady. A lily. But deep. Very deep.’

Too markedly glad of Nadja’s absence, he continued, ‘Aloofness can inspire. Like a cellist. So I wish her joy of the morning. Gates of Paradise. I should say, Portals.’

Was she, too, being called club-footed? He was looking serious, he should say, philosophical. ‘We don’t necessarily understand her, like so-called modern art. But some of us attempt to.’ The brown, weathered face twitched with doubt. ‘She has this effect on men, indeed on women. None of us would be surprised if one day she surprised us by doing something utterly unexpected!’

Surprised myself, I imagined horns, ribs, rotting carcasses as the wagons roll west, guarded by Wayne, Stewart, Fonda, though Dick’s greedy eyes had the leer, the bar-room joke, men, indeed women, imagining Nadja’s curves, dark crevices, the limitless majesty of nakedness.

He let me wave for another bottle. Alain responded at once, but the bar was crowded and he stayed only for one drink, time to inform us that Fred Astaire’s daughter told him that, at twelve, her closet friends were Clark Gable and David Niven. ‘They would not have been my choice, but…’

He darted away. Dick shook his head, showing wrinkled neck, dirty vest. ‘That fellow’s too French. He wouldn’t be passing the port in my mess. Always has to go one better. Tell him goats have chewed up the vines and he’ll know who bred the goats.’ His thin mouth sagged. ‘Thank God, the one thing that can’t be said of me is that I’m oily.’

He mistook my mutter for agreement, though ‘oily’ was the word with which Nadja frequently summarized him.

‘He can tell you where to find VAT 69 or that blasted Slivovitz.’ His thoughts rushed, a cistern refilling. ‘Or Mitterand’s private number. Both of them have war records steamy as Goering’s gumboots. But you’re waiting to hear my own choice of female.’ I was not but heard it. ‘I’ll stick to Daisy, with her blessed birds. For English roast chicken and bread sauce. But… your new friends. Up at the Villa, as somebody wrote. My opinion, my considered opinion, is that they’re on the run. That Iranian shindy. You’ll see.’

His prescience depressed him. ‘But what’s our own place in the world? Back home, it’s not set fair. Teachers with rings through their noses. Not Shakespeare but Bengali folksongs. Brussels, the menagerie’s backbone. Only Anthony Eden got things right. As for America, too much smut.’

Nadja reckoned Dick too helpless to insult. ‘Helpless’ was approximate, the original, she said, too obscene to translate.

‘I spy with my little eye…’ Dick thought, mistakenly, he could not be overheard, ‘that fellow in the tie. He bought a Moroccan for ten thousand new francs. She’d been in prison, where they first met.’ Music from the promenade intervened. Under the tall, garish lamps, drums and bugles, some dozen were marching, in black shorts, black-and-white tunics, with thick sticks and white banners. ‘The Matelots. Merchants of Shit.’ Dick swallowed wine as if washing his teeth.

Les Matelots du Roi, neo-fascists, were more arsonists, thugs, sexual prowlers than pledged royalists. At movie festivals, political congresses, concerts, they demonstrated against townie effetism and immigrants. Now, ignored by tourists and automobiles, though not by jeering children, their swagger was pitiful, a march to nothing.

Dick appeared inclined to spit, desisting only at the last minute.

‘I don’t mind telling you this, Erich, now that the smell’s gone and the dust has settled. I couldn’t, at first, give my consent to Britain entering the war. For Poland, of all places.’ He coughed, resumed very hastily. ‘It would destroy the Empire, encourage Irish and wops. Now, this ruddy Custom’s almost due. I call it a case of history unable to shed its skin, as your Madam would say. I take it that you’ll keep carefully away.’

Dark as a volcano god, la Terre Gaste irregularly performed Custom, unpublicized in brochures, avoided both on hygienic grounds and for its inaccessibility, now that cars had replaced legs. Distinct from the annual Civic Fête, this year dedicated to European Unity, Custom was reputedly no parade of golden-hatted lovers and opulent models staged for tourists’ money. We would discover no shining sprites, mindlessly happy, tossing the ball of pleasure and for whom death itself was only a pose. Whatever the year, it always occurred on 13 August in the week not only of the Assumption of the Virgin but of the goddess Diana.