Hedi Kaddour - Waltenberg

‘I could do even better than that, Max, know what a woman can do to keep her lover? To get him to marry her? You’re jealous of the wife, you want marriage, you corner your lover in the kitchen, a good talk, you feel he wants to break it off, go home, you’re not going to let him get away with it, it starts in the kitchen and it stays in the kitchen, the man has qualified as a pharmacist, he tries to speak calmly, he’s about to set himself up, buy a dispensary, in Linz, the town’s leading pharmacy, he starts building his case, a turning point in his life, he has children, twins, just starting school, they’re going to need him home every evening, so you don’t mess with the children’s education, but you can mess with a mistress? The man is making the most tactless case imaginable.

‘In any case, a man who is ending a relationship and insists on talking is always tactless, there’s an explosion, one word is all it takes, he actually dared to say I don’t deserve you, that’s the point when you explode, a bastard, a man who wants to end an affair is essentially a bastard, the storm breaks very quickly, in a kitchen it’s very bad, table suddenly cleared with a backhand swipe from the woman, tears in her voice, in her eyes, on her cheeks, the woman’s hands held out in front of her, ready for battle, out of control, though not really, not really out of control those hands, one hand which opens the top of the stove, the ceramic stove, one hot plate open, the biggest.

‘The crazy woman is about to do something stupid, hurt herself, put her right hand in, she’s yelling, the man keeps a close eye on her right hand, the roar of the fire in the stove, how hot can it get inside a ceramic stove? the intake of air, how do you treat burns? the flames burn higher, a thousand degrees? If the wood’s really dry, eight hundred, eleven hundred degrees? The fire roars, burning hotter and hotter, her hand, not the right hand, the left, she holds her left hand over the hole in the top of the stove.

‘What is the man’s academic and professional file doing in that left hand? The originals of the documents in his file, the woman screams, on your knees! It’s an order, the kind of order that can be given by a woman in a rage who knows that without the originals of his diplomas the man might just about be able to open a grocery but not a pharmacy, especially not in Linz, and it’s not only his file, there are bearer bonds, half the capital he needs is being dangled over the flames, in the hand of this mad woman, the woman is not threatening to throw his papers into a fire in a fireplace, they should have stayed in the living room, papers thrown into a fire in a fireplace can be rescued, here, the central hole of the stove, a thousand degrees, final, vocal cords ready to snap, the woman screeches, you’ll swear on the heads of your children, you swear on the Bible!

‘On the Bible, Max, absurd! But in the end he stays with her. He divorced. He married her. Men love being loved like this, a woman who would not hesitate to reduce you to a state of administrative nonexistence in Austria fully deserves to earn her marriage, an utterly harmonious marriage, a blast of jealous rage, the originals of diplomas and bearer bonds, that’s not a matter of small importance, they married.

‘Later the woman divorced the man, she discovered he had a weak character. She said I’d married my bad self. I refer to dear Elisabeth, Max, sweet, fair-haired Elisabeth Stirnweiss.

‘Let’s stay friends, Max, with the life I lead I need to talk without what I say turning into love or loathing.’

At Grindisheim, in the hotel, people have started taking their leave of each other, they came to say goodbye to Max, still sitting with Lilstein, at one point he loses his temper:

‘Look here, I’m not Kappler’s widow!’

People said farewell looking somewhat abashed and he laughed. One man came up and Max stopped laughing, the man had only one arm, a German, he said to Max:

‘I met Herrr Kappler not long ago, we talked about her.’

Max asked Lilstein to excuse him, he went off to one side with the man, Lilstein remained sitting at their table, after a moment Max came back, Max didn’t explain but he forced Lilstein to listen to his account of Stalin’s death, the Party leaders waited a very long time indeed before they called in the doctors, a big drinking session, five of them, correct me if I start talking nonsense, young Lilstein, anyway Stalin, Beria, Malenkov, Bulganin, Khrushchev, the night of the first and second of March 1953, around four or five in the morning the guests leave. Stalin goes off to bed, by noon not a peep, the domestic staff start to worry but a ban on entering the boss’s room without being summoned, that evening, around eleven, someone at last goes in, no one knows exactly who, people vacillate between an old cleaning woman, Matrena Butussova, and Captain Lozgachev, his job is to bring the mail from the Kremlin, he or she discovers Stalin lying on the floor, conscious but unable to speak, that same evening Stalin got one hundred per cent of the votes cast in the eight constituencies of the local soviets where he had been a candidate, at three in the morning, 3 March, the little gang of Khrushchev, Beria, Malenkov and co. returns, they learn that Stalin has urinated in his trousers, they decide not to go in, a matter of propriety, says Khrushchev.

Max paused, looked over Lilstein’s shoulder, de Vèze was coming towards them, Max got to his feet, Lilstein did the same, de Vèze said hello to Max.

‘Ambassador, let me introduce you to Monsieur Lilstein, Monsieur Lilstein first met Hans forty years ago, Hans was very fond of him, he used to say Michael Lilstein would be the salt of the earth if he didn’t make too many mistakes.’

‘I’ve made lots,’ says Lilstein, ‘my respects, Ambassador, I am most grateful to you for not avoiding me, although many people assume I am a trafficker in living souls.’

‘My dear Monsieur Lilstein, I don’t give a damn, as long as it lets me get up the noses of the informers and low-life who forced de Gaulle out, and I am very, very pleased to meet you.’

De Vèze has frozen, Max has looked in the direction de Vèze is looking, he has recognised Philippe Morel, the historian, he has just been elected to the Collège de France, unusual for one so young, he’s in his forties but it’s still very young for the Collège, Max knows why de Vèze has frozen, Morel is coming over, he is alone, surprising that Morel should come over, or maybe he intends to cause an incident, the cuckolded husband who slaps his rival across the face at a funeral, the rival is the Ambassador, a very French scandal, this is going to look bad, de Vèze isn’t the sort who’ll let himself be slapped across the face without reacting, he’s perfectly capable of forestalling Morel, a punch, no, he can’t, he’ll have to wait for the slap, so he can block it? Is Morel worth all the fuss? Max could step forward, that’s it, I’m stepping forward, on with the tomfoolery, Professor! This is a surprise! you know Hans was telling me all about you just recently, no, Morel has executed a quarter turn to his left, he walks off towards the terrace, from a distance Max sees him shaking hands with Poirgade.

Among the watchers gathered around Colonel Sebald and the head of the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution, some had reached the end of their tether, others hadn’t, no point getting all worked up, if we haven’t got the green light now, we’ll lift the suspect when he travels back, before he crosses the frontier, on the road, that’ll make less of a splash than if we do it at the funeral, we’ve got thirty agents around him, the Minister only has to give us the nod and we’ll be on him, I’m sure he won’t try to get away, with people like that they’re often relieved when it’s all over, if the Minister gives the green light we’ll be on him within three seconds.’