Hedi Kaddour - Waltenberg

‘She was holding him by his right hand, eating with her left hand, that’s the advantage of Asian restaurants and Norwegian omelettes, you can eat without ever letting go of the hand of the person you’re with, the patron said champagne on the house, the other tables grew more animated, everyone clinked glasses, heads spun, they drank head-spinningly like in the old days, when there was a wedding, then the young people left, through the window I watched them go for a moment, they were heading for the Seine playing leap-frog, it was eleven o’clock, they hadn’t used up a tenth of their energy yet.

‘It won’t be any ordinary recruitment exercise. Recruiting them on whose behalf? I’ll tell them the story of the Histoire des Treize, and no one will ever again be able to make them believe that they are here to serve a sentence.

‘They’ll go off to the United States, Yale, Columbia, the whole nine yards, they’ll make new friends, they’ll come back, they’ll circulate, some might run a think tank, people are obsessed with working in small groups behind the scenes, the Bilderberg Group, the Institut Montaigne, the Boston Thinking Group, the Fondation Jean-Jaurès, the Schiller Gesellschaft, even the Russians are at it, the Stolypine Society, people who tell each other everything, you’ve got to know how to glean, these young people will be a quick study, they’ll meet up on the ski slopes or in Martinique, Brussels, San Francisco, they’ll go round and round the world whereas we used to spend just a few hours in a train.

‘It’s getting late, Misha, let’s try to be something once again, let’s introduce these young people to the recipe for a good Linzer, those young people are seeking, they want to know, they want to reshape the world, they want to be empowered, and let’s not forget the most important thing of all, the thing that for so long enabled us to get up in the morning because it dispersed the melancholy which makes you look at things as they are, let’s not forget the risk, Misha, you know they don’t look as if they would but sometimes these youngsters do get depressed, they believe that there are no forbidden pleasures, we’ll show them that there is at least one, that it comes with a risk every morning.

‘Your friend Kappler was like you, but he didn’t play, he was a puritan, and that’s why he spent all his life shuttling to and fro between two worlds and why he killed himself, he neither got to the forbidden fruit nor what you called the third shore.

‘We’ll invite some of these young people to step right into the wizards’ lair, in Washington, I’m sure the girl who studies political science will appeal to Maisie, then we’ll send one or two to earnest old Walker to give him something to do in his retirement, the bitterness, the coarseness, the disagreements, he’ll get them hooked, he’ll tell them about Lena, that’s right, Misha, I’ve also met Walker in private, Walker’s last visit to the old lady, a chalet by a lake in Vermont, she feels weary, she’s shrinking more and more into herself, “FT, I’m so glad to see you, it’s so sweet”, the stroll along the lake shore, Misha, Lena walking slowly on the arm of a man she knew first as a baby, Lena’s great big eyes looking into Walker’s, “FT, why did you come?” — “Lena, we’ve got a problem”.

‘Will you help me to envisage the scene, Misha? March 1969, Lena has heart problems, Walker has come to suggest ways she can get a whiff of springtime in her nostrils again, a trip with him, it’s vital we give a voice to what happened that day, Misha, it cannot be allowed to die, Walker came to ask Lena something, the lakeside is so beautiful, they walk slowly, when he told me about it Walker was sitting in his kitchen, he spoke slowly, he tried to describe the shore of the lake, he tried not to omit any of the words she had spoken, slowly he repeated the suggestion he’d made to her, on 12 March 1969, “Lena there’s someone in Paris someone who does for the Russians what you’ve been doing for us for fifty years, you’re the only one who can pick up on this, we’re chasing a tone, Lena, scattered notes, maybe you can find the key, and the signature for the key”, that’s what Walker said, Misha, this is happening in the time of Nixon and Brezhnev, you once called them mangy sheepdogs, Lena Hellström was set on the trail of the mole, seven hours in a plane, she has heart trouble, happy as Larry, she looks out the window, the ocean, the clouds, cathedrals of clouds under the wings of the Boeing.

‘She watches out for Europe, to Walker she says in confidence “I’m going to make the most of this, I’m going to meet up with a man I should never have stopped loving, I should have married him before the war, the First War, an argument, he wanted to go and play soldiers, we could have stayed in Switzerland, a life without troubles, I tried to persuade him, he left”.

‘Misha, Walker told me that this story mustn’t be allowed to turn to dust, Lena had met up again with Hans Kappler between the wars, at a time when they might have picked up the pieces, 1929, the Waltenberg Seminar, remember? How you used to bend my ear about that damned Seminar! In ’29 Kappler told Lena that he’d gone off to fight in that abomination that was the First World War because she’d slapped his face, it was the most painful of his memories, but Lena didn’t remember any of that, no doubt Kappler was making up painful memories to justify walking out on her at the time, “FT, I never slapped him, he swore I did, apparently that day he tried to kiss me but I wanted an argument, he said he’d told me he hadn’t come to argue, I know him, he would never have said anything as vulgar, according to him that was when I slapped him, I stayed very cool, I slapped him and off he went to the war, it’s all so long ago, FT, I can’t remember anything, maybe the slap was intended to gain time.” ‘Walker related all that as though he was the one who’d been slapped, Misha, his chin was resting in the palm of his right hand, he was talking about two lovers who meet up again fifteen years later at the Waldhaus, I told him you were there too, Lena thought that Kappler had made up the slap to justify himself, because in 1929 he was in love again, not with Lena but with a much younger girl, all he was really interested in was the girl whereas Lena wanted to live with him again, “I skied, I sang, I was beautiful, FT, my best years, he didn’t want to, I don’t think the girl wanted to either, it was too late”, in the plane from Paris Lena was happy, she said “We had plenty of time to calm down, I’ll help you, FT, and then I’m going to join him in Geneva, I’ve written to him”.

‘Max blamed Walker, he said the trip killed Lena, her last mission. In Paris they’d had to open the files for her so she could see the extent of the damage done by the mole, she knew a lot of things and she died in that city, without seeing Kappler again, Kappler died six months later.

‘In Paris she didn’t come up with anything on the mole, or if she did she didn’t say, Misha. At the time you didn’t warn me, never even put me on my guard, why? Was there really no danger? Would she find nothing? Did she die in Paris without unmasking anyone? With a smile on her face?

‘Heart failure, Misha, she didn’t like Nixon any more than you liked Brezhnev. Did you manage some readjustment with her? Will you tell me about it? Arlington, that wreath from the ‘Friends of the Winter Journey , who sent it? Was it Max? What happened to Max? You don’t know? Disappeared? De Vèze told me that the last time he saw Max was in a garden, a cat jumped into Max’s arms and Max said ‘‘Orpheus, the time’s come!” He vanished along with the cat, no one ever saw him again.