Hedi Kaddour - Waltenberg

‘Probably working girls,’ says Max.

‘What sort of working girls?’

‘Girls in the rag trade, it’s their midday break, an apple instead of lunch, helps them keep their figures, a spot of exercise here before they go back to their Saint-Sulpice workshops, I wrote a piece about them a couple of months back, the girls working for Mavillon were on strike, furs, big patriotic firm, their employers say they are the elves of the fashion business, eighteen francs a day for ten hours’ work and a canny technique for keeping them up to the mark: they give them all the same job to do at the same time, the last three to finish get the sack and the time taken by the first becomes the standard for the job.’

‘Did you publish that?’

‘Don’t be silly, it’s Bolshevik stuff, I just told one of the girls to write a few lines for L'Humanité. But let’s get on, Hans, thirty villagers are gathered outside Hélène’s house, the factory-owner’s daughter has spread the word that this stranger is a witch who casts spells, people believe her, the same people who get work from her father.’

‘They are factory workers?’

‘Locals who work on the land, during the winter in Haute-Savoie they make moving parts for watches and turn out screws for the industries in the valley, it represents half their income.’

‘Will you let me describe the machines, the way they work? the screw-making will have my special screw-tiny.’

‘What has made the daughter so furious is that she’s been told that Thomas doesn’t actually sleep with the nurse, rumour has it that “he respects her”.’

‘Whereas he didn’t waste any time having his wicked way with your young, Protestant factory-owner’s daughter, as though she were a farm-girl.’

‘She didn’t put up much of a fight, and Thomas wasn’t the first. She wouldn’t have minded if he’d actually slept with another girl, she’d have got herself another boy, but it was the “respect” that stuck in her craw.’

‘And elsewhere.’

‘Max, you’ve got a dirty mind.’

‘So did Thomas go to bed with Hélène in the end?’

‘It was she who decided that’s how things had to be. He was perfect, behaved like a beaten dog. He atoned for the faults of the other man, back in Switzerland, the married man, the one she walked out on so dramatically.’

‘And probably an abortion, with uterine scrape. Have a care, Max! this is turning into melodrama.’

‘You want to describe the uterine scrape?’

‘Absolutely not! What’s next?’

‘Eventually she is melted by Thomas’s impeccable manner.’

‘Will you let me do the crucial scene, Max? I never dared write one.’

‘I’ve already written it.’

‘In that case you can let me have Thomas’s chalet, I’ve always wanted to do a large chalet, such a play of stresses in the timber frame of a chalet.’

‘Thomas’s isn’t all that big, people in those parts don’t like big chalets, too hard to heat.’

‘Mustn’t worry about that,’ says Hans, ‘a large chalet built of dark wood, which creaks in the wind, just as you enter the village, a large family chalet, in fact two families of schoolteachers could live in it but your schoolteacher lives there by himself, you go in by a small door, under a rather fine lintel, with a date carved on it a full century ago, a corridor, a coat stand, door on the left, the main living room, it opens into two others, you return to the corridor, on the right are a kitchen and three other rooms, at the far end there are stairs, not a staircase actually, steps without a banister, you have to hang on to the risers, you reach a sort of mezzanine, then more steps, no a ladder, long and warped, when you get to the top a huge cross beam blocks your way across the whole width of the loft, thirty centimetres from the floor, you have to climb over it, there are two others exactly like it in the middle and at the far end of the loft, they’re called tie-beams, in the middle of these beams is a vertical beam, like a thick mast, the whole attic looks like a three-masted ship without the sails, another beam is aligned along the top of the three masts, it marks the apex of the roof, the ridge, a huge loft, it’s very solid, more than solid, it’s intelligent, the weight of the roof ridge, the weight of the roof, all that weight flows down through the three masts,’ Hans holds his clenched hands out in front of him, makes a movement which sweeps downwards along imaginary poles, ‘a force which sweeps down the entire length of the masts, along the tie-beams, it pushes down, trying to bend them, to snap them in the middle, but simultaneously it is opposed by the collective resistance of the tie-beams which strain with every fibre, and there is yet another pressure which arcs diagonally from the ridge and follows the sloping sides of the roof, then along the rafters, forces which run slantwise down the sides of a triangle, placing huge strains on its base at both ends and pushing them outwards,’ Hans’s hands have flowed slantwise down the side of the triangle, ‘the three crossbeams are as taut as hawsers, and the forces cancel each other, the forces which drop vertically along the masts are cancelled out by the resistance of each of the tie-beams and the forces which flow slantwise down the sloping roof and bear down on each end,’ Hans holds his hands apart horizontally, ‘the weight becomes weightless, interplay of forces, the three stout masts are technically speaking crown-posts, or king-posts, Max, let me tell it, the details will be forgotten, what will stay in the mind will be cement, tie-beams, rafters, crown-posts, a ship, a set of beams, of interlocking forces, when the wind blows it creaks like a glorious sailing ship, I’d love to live in a place like that, I’d turn it into a library, make it my study.’

‘Mainly you’d be cold,’ says Max.

Hans and Max are again walking past Bacchus and his nymphs, a large bronze, the god, pot-belly to the fore, riding his donkey, lithe Maenads writhing around Bacchus, one has fallen flat on her back, arms and legs pointing in all directions, Hans stops:

‘It’s not as vivid as Flaubert.’

‘True, but they’re highly sexed, he’s rather a fright but they’re trying to do all sorts to him.’

They move off, walk down the steps leading to the middle of the gardens, take a turn around the boating pond, a little boy is crying, his boat has got trapped in the middle of the pond, at the base of the fountain, where the wind does not reach, where the falling water creates a gentle vortex, where sails droop; the boat cannot escape, its fate is certain, it’s doomed, the little boy’s mother tells him, serves him right, what he deserves, else they’ll come and pinch it off of him, so stop that row, you’re a big boy now, the mother gives the boy a slap on the hand.

Two weeks ago all the boats on the lake were stolen, for a laugh, vandals broke into the shed in the central avenue, the whole flotilla was found a week later, nonetheless, a boat can vanish, especially a sailing boat, the boy who’s crying knows a legend about a boat that vanished, it’s what is about to happen to his boat now, it will disappear beneath the central fountain, answering the call of all the sailing boats which have already disappeared down all the years, it will go to join them on the great ocean, an armada of sailing boats on the mighty main, the boy will command his boat, next in line to the admiral’s ship, huge waves, captains courageous, he looks up towards the façade of the Senate.

Waves as high as buildings, the ships do battle with the storm, the last battle, but the man who owns the sailing boats and his assistant come with a thin rope which they hold across the pond, they loop the rope over the mast of the foundering sailing boat, haul it into more navigable waters, the wind blowing over the surface of the small pond can now swell the sails, the sun laughs in the playing fountain, the child has to go, no, you can’t have another turn, you do it on purpose, you do it every time I’m nice, never content, you always manage to blame me and cry, you were told one turn, a turn is a quarter of an hour, not longer, you agreed, and now you’re crying, you’re a naughty boy, every time I let you have your way you take advantage and ask for something else and start crying, if you don’t stop you’ll never get anything ever again!