Peter Vansittart - Secret Protocols

We were solitary under the thick pillars, the air hung with pungent damp, the Manor in and out of mist, enclosed by Forest and its secret lives. The dead were around, I remained in uncertain paralysis, as if seeing a footprint almost but not quite human.

With some brusqueness, as though I had impertinently interrupted, he said, ‘Your mother was English in many things but not in her intuitive and engaging disregard of what lesser imaginations consider reality. I reproach myself for not having been more effective in restraining that charming but careless tongue.’

‘But my father…’

He shook aside my sudden urgency. My heightened nerves gave his head under shadowy branches an impression of antlers. ‘My dear boy…’ One hand on the car handle, he was enquiring, as if concerned for my choice of cigar or liqueur, yet with an uncharacteristic complacency, approaching a smirk. His deep voice affected surprise, as he asked whom, in truth, I thought my father was.

The week had cloyed and died. National flags were sodden, wind blew litter down pavements. Mass elation had descended to the industrious and businesslike, the onus of reconstruction, maybe retribution. Discontent began.

Barely aware of events, my thoughts were shapes without edge, vague, slippery. Only the Gulf dispersed mental upheavals, fantasies of breathless races, to win which would be fatal. Chasms lurked beneath obdurate silence. Pahlen’s dry, pointed face changed to a frozen Alpine peak. Not assassins, but Loki stalked, his grin transforming life to mirthless jokes. Without despair, exhilaration, hope, I had no clear emotions, though could too easily ascribe my more unpleasant traits – irritability with the aged and slow, prolonged introspection – to the Herr General’s salesman’s fluency, High Folk humour. In all, he was superior, lacking priggishness, grabbing opportunities with some style. I remembered an old German tale of a giant without a heart.

Some current beneath ice was grateful affection for the quiet gentleman, despised by the Herr General as impractical, whom I would always acknowledge as Father. Shy, unpossessive, more lonely that I had supposed, he had loved me.

Some words of Mother’s, spoken to herself, but audible, then puzzling, were now painfully comprehensible, ‘Where is the man I thought I had married?’ My impulse was to seek solace alone, by cliff and wave, though, involuntarily, I blurted a little to Eeva. Sensible, no-nonsense, asking few questions, she was like a new colleague in a firm small but solvent. We preserved considerable formality. It helped that, to her artists, journalists, students, I was the Cold War Hercules, Voice of Estonia. I appreciated her stride, moderate laughter, disdain of emotional wiles, her backing. ‘I see in my sky, Erich, that you will be prominent amongst us.’

Spring was launched in fanfare of green and pink, eagerness of birds and lovers, radiant water, good humour in shops, bars, Viru street markets. Shadowed by tall, weathered frontages and towers, the populace, competitive, agog for the main chance, was also generous.

Gradually, my confusion abated. Eeva’s predictions were confirmed by a government offer as senior consultant to the Education Ministry. ‘That will be the earthworks,’ Eeva pronounced, more complimentary than it sounded. Less clear cut was the Herr General’s invitation to lunch at Independence, the new international restaurant near Parliament, frequented by diplomats, politicians, carteliers. Despite conflicting responses, I did not consider refusal.

Independence was no ménage of sawdust, spittoons, high stools. A long vaulted space, ashine with gilt and glass, candelabra, a spread, central chandelier, was filled with the ‘maggot developers’, as Eeva’s group called them, fast-talking, swilling, choking, at crimson tables, reflected in sham-baroque, false-gold mirrors, their frames glutted with sickly cupids and trumpets, aspirant European millionaires receding into an infinity of multinational enterprise, advertising deals, idyllic prospectuses, equivocal handshakes, punning on Baltic freedom in hectic ostentation, a hurry to gobble the wild-boar stew, grilled pork, mounts of tiered, creamy pastry, explosive draughts of Rhenish wine, goblets of raw spirit, upheaval of pleasurable expectations.

The row of mirrors briefly detained me: invitations to vanity lightly smeared by my plain jacket and gimcrack trousers, at odds with the polished hair, glistening suits, artist-designed ties. Hamlet, I guessed, must have cherished a mirror, Lady Macbeth spied from bright surfaces. The sheen of electric lamps, cutlery, the latest shirt was fumed by cigars, heavy breath, liquor.

The head waiter, rotund Storm Prince, braided, sashed, waylaid me with the suave hostility of a traffic cop, offended by my disobligation to wear a tie, until mention of my host startled him almost into parade attention. The name was passport to eternity. He drew breath, he bent, he melted, escorting me down the resplendent avenue of tables, his formal coat wagging behind like a horse’s tail, to the best station of all, beneath a plastic Gothic canopy, with blue, cushioned chairs, perquisite of republican royalty, in a recess windowed with a view of sumptuous gardens, astir with pink-and-white blossom, like daintily torn coloured umbrellas.

The Herr General awaited me, in full regimentals: dark, double-breasted suit, cold blue tie, his air of authority reinforced by a half-circle of waiters, satraps awaiting his nod. My own award was a cursory handshake, delivered without him rising, then permission to be seated, before announcing, as if from a court circular, that he had allowed himself the privilege of ordering the luncheon. Then he frowned, not at me but at the sound of pager, which at once ceased.

Though courses were finely cooked, deftly served, I barely noticed them, though drinking imprudently.

He resumed advice, brusque apologetics, confidential asides as though we had never parted. His eyes, caught between the sunlit window and artificial glare, were watchful, perhaps expecting me to escape. Eeva would have distrusted him on sight. To the voracious feeders, I must merely have been his tame aide or stand-in.

‘We may both be vain, Erich. Neither of us is conceited. Politics, minefield, enforce continuous readjustments, Umsturze . My soul is not tormented nor my zest abated. We are not mentally deranged because our grandmothers ate rats in 1917 or from failing to save a plough-boy from a watermill wheel.’

He murmured to a waiter, lifted a hand twinkling with a chunky ring. His words, measured as a thesis, yet reached me intermittently, as if in a damaged movie, for, eating well, he was constantly ordering different wines, while drinking sparingly with connoisseur’s appreciation, leaving me to gulp unmanneredly.

‘Life’, he was saying, ‘is susceptible to false moves, for which we must pay but can also be set to work. Imprisoned at Kharkov, I studied books on the Chechenets, those Ingush peoples of North Caucasus, and indeed contributed an article, doubtless long superseded, not for inaccuracy but from policy, for the Soviet Encyclopaedia. In 1941, encouraged by the Reich Abwehr , they attempted revolt, led by a young, very passable poet, Kharsam Israelov. Misjudging the Pact, mistiming their plan, they suffered. Survivors were dispatched east, to hard labour. Fatally hard. This was not my concern, but their customs, language, art had interest, and I was regretful when changed circumstances provided offers from the KGB – many German scientists were already suitably, and gainfully, employed. After the war, I eventually graduated to a commission from the Washington State Department. I was one of the first to realize that Stalin’s agents had given, or sold, him the date of the Normandy landings. Thus he could win salient Berlin approaches, outfacing the Allies. We were all tardy in discovering the top Soviet dupes in England, though I knew and respected Professor Blunt, despite his rather unwelcoming manner. He needed someone, not myself, to share his fears. He reminded me of a deep-sea diver, highly skilled but uncertain of his locale. His witticisms were like Nero’s, shrewd but not funny. He despised cowards, but may have been one. Very profitably for myself, we discussed Poussin and Claude Lorraine. Disappointing for him, I fear.’