Hedi Kaddour - Waltenberg

‘You were watching the skirts, Misha, there were two of you ogling the skirts, you and Briand, a revolutionary and a social-traitor, same struggle, on the look-out for skirt!’

Lilstein has grown misty-eyed, he has even recounted the episode of the shower cubicle in the swimming pool at the Waldhaus.

‘I pushed a door, she’d forgotten to bolt it, then it was gone, Max!’

Max has realised he shouldn’t have listened, Lilstein in this state had dropped his guard low enough to tell him about the business with the shower cubicle and was now on the verge of tears, Lilstein has outmanoeuvred you, you listened, he’s got you now, it’s a trade, you’re going to have to tell him something.

There was a silence, Lilstein is never as dangerous as when the line of his mouth softens, when he looks as if he has a great deal to blame life for.

‘Max, what was it like, with her?’

Max looked into Lilstein’s look:

‘You’ve been mulling over that question for forty years, young Lilstein, I won’t tell you anything.’

Surely Max isn’t going to chat about the only wedding night of his entire life to this blundering German, a hand placed on Max’s hand, in the Waldhaus, it’s getting late, all those taking part in the European Seminar have dispersed to their rooms, Hans is nowhere to be seen, there is no sign of Erna, nor of Merken, Frédérique has vanished, Stirnweiss has vanished, Lena has vanished, doors have been locked, Lilstein too has vanished, Moncel isn’t around any more, Max is in the bar, doing some serious drinking, he’s there with a group of young English girls, the barman has got out a map of Scotland and tulip glasses, the north coast, Speyside, the home of whisky.

Map laid out on the bar, they follow the route and stop for a dram at each distillery, turning names and tastes into song, glass after glass. The English girls are sporty, clean-scrubbed, brazen, built like boxers. They want Max to pronounce Craigellachie and Mannochmore, Inverboyndie, Ballindalloch. He makes them laugh, he tries to teach them to sing ‘Amélie, cache tes genous’.

The barman has just poured the umpteenth whisky, Max grabs it, a hand is placed on his, a voice asks:

‘Do you really have to?’

She’s the only woman who doesn’t interest Max, she’s beautiful, she’s the one Hans dreams of, but she is no longer just Hans’s dream, though she might as well be, the wives of my friends are sexless. Forty years ago Lena pushed his glass to one side saying:

‘Do you really have to?’

And she drank the whisky, straight.

‘Come along, Max, I don’t love you.’

Young Lilstein would very much like to know what happened forty years ago, to make love to the memory of Lena through the memories of his friend Max Goffard, if I told him he was lucky that night, the poor muddlehead would never believe me.

That night Max behaved like an idiot, he even told Lena:

‘The wives of my friends are sexless.’

To which she replied:

‘You have much too conventional an idea of sex.’

Lena was twice as strong as Max, let that be part of the detail which our blundering German friend certainly does not need to know, twice as strong as a Max Goffard who is no longer sure of anything, it was wonderful and at the same time I was like the goat who sees a very determined lady coming towards him, several ladies in that lady, or the same one in various guises, several rather determined ladies, and the goat wonders why they have started dancing, I’d drunk a lot of whisky that evening but I’ve never known what it’s like to be drunk, Lena wasn’t drunk, the pretty ladies dance and suddenly they toss the goat up in air, and the goat thinks this is strange, they catch him neatly and throw him up again even higher, and he doesn’t know what’s happening, he’s falling and at the very last moment they catch him, they throw up him again, a game, no way of stopping it, he’s airborne, he doesn’t dislike it, down he falls, up he goes again, getting into the swing of it, he falls, they catch him with their teeth, women dancing, throwing wine in each other’s faces, they toss the goat up in the air again, compare what happened with Monsieur Seguin and the wolf and it’s small beer.

Women who dance, who perspire, who glow, they shout, the goat panics, doesn’t know which way to turn, understands that it’s also a very bad time, they’re mad, they’re doing themselves harm, don’t even realise, a moonless carnival, the next person who talks to me about gentleness, intuition, affection, caring natures, I will knock his block off, frenzy, the goat has got it at last, one of the women has a scrap of goat flesh in her mouth, she’s laughing.

She holds a torch of burning pine, shakes her hair, shakes the brand like a madwoman, when you say goat it’s to get people used to the idea from the word go, but these crazy women have now begun attacking lots of other beasties, even bears, one swipe of a bear’s paw can do a crazy woman serious damage but they don’t care, these women didn’t come here to bandage anybody’s wounds, they scream, they sing, they run, stop, die, come back to life, a place where forces collide, they throw the goat up in the air once more, life at its most intense, the screams quicken the race which quickens the screams.

They do not feel the limb twist nor the claw strike, to feel that would require a bearing, they have lost their bearings, they are far away, they come back, they shake their hair, scream, throw their loins to the flames, tearing themselves open with their hands, subside, eyes wild open, splash their faces with water, vine and wine, death looms up in their midst, by way of a greeting they grab their ration of raw flesh as they pass by, wound themselves, feed themselves, plead, run away, they hurt, madness in their eyes, hands, mouth, they call, death watches them, joy of living, joy of dying, they curl up, seethe, tear themselves to pieces, fingers white from being clenched, the madness which tears itself apart, which engulfs.

They depart in a whirling cloud, roll, crash to the ground, throw down the torch, pick it up, take revenge like wounded creatures with nothing to lose, death claims his wages, the goat in a coffin of sensations, a force which persists as long as their sharp piercing cries and then tears to tatters, then it begins again, scraps of goat, a flower muscle, murmurs of chaos.

Escaped by the skin of his teeth, lucky sod.

Next morning Lena was so sweet, she sat down in front of her pier-glass, slow expansive movements, she was combing her hair, she looked in the mirror, her life she says is giving recitals or appearing in opera, the day before you mustn’t, on the day it makes the voice dull, the day after she doesn’t feel like it, she sings often.

‘Tot up what’s left, Max, and to make my condition worse I forbid you to go elsewhere, I can be an utterly demonic Carmen, jealousy is physically so demanding, I don’t allow anyone to walk over me, I stay ahead of the game, sometimes I get it wrong but at least no one laughs at me, I’m a very jealous person, didn’t used to be, but the older I get the more jealous I become.

‘Sometimes I never say anything to the man I’m with, I stay nice, and loving, and I go straight for the other woman, no altercations, I leave that to shop girls, what I do is jump in my car, then I ram her car, I yank her out by the hair, I once did that in the middle of a crossroads, in Duluth, and I swotted her with the starting handle, you don’t know Duluth, you need to if you want an idea of what sort of scandal it made, a large De Soto starting handle, a huge scandal, they didn’t dare charge me, it’s possible the judge had slept with the woman, she slept with everybody, he didn’t dare do a thing, and my lover at the time didn’t say anything either, a free action that looks free, not very subtle but effective, men are cowards.