Hedi Kaddour - Waltenberg

Marie-Thérèse almost fell off her bike twice, she had to lower the saddle, she wasn’t at all pleased, Hans told her you mustn’t have it too high, it’s the wind that does it, the wind resistance, so funny, I didn’t say anything and no one mentioned her little legs. After that Hans held her bike, one hand under the saddle and the other on the handlebars, Marie-Thérèse laughed, she was wearing trousers, apparently where she comes from women aren’t allowed to wear trousers except for riding a horse or a bike, but at home she never rode a bike, she laughed but she was trying it on, Hans had his hand under her saddle, and there was nothing I could say. She could blush at will, she knew how to make the most of her blushes, I’ve always been told I thought too much about love, Hans had shapely hands, smooth skin, every time I thought of it I’d tell myself that woman is going to find out what Hans’s skin tastes like, that hand has no business being under her saddle. People say that being jealous can make you fall in love, it made me feel awkward, when she looked at him I thought he seemed so conceited. One evening, on the main staircase in the Waldhaus, he was telling me all about cycling, he’d read that bicycles spelled death for book sales, because people spent so much time riding them, cycling two or three hours every day, which was time taken away from reading, it was a real threat, he stopped one floor too soon, I couldn’t keep it to myself, I said ‘this is only Marie-Thérèse’s floor’.

That sad-looking Frenchman with the big ears just now in the restaurant, Frenchmen stare at women a lot and just carry on talking to their companions, a woman like Marie-Thérèse would have got up.

Max knocks over the books on the table, returns the menu to the waiter, retrieves his coins and ring, empties his glass, the truth needs to be believed before it can be understood, the real culprit was the summer, the straw boaters we gaily tossed towards the enemy, the quick-tempered heat of that glorious summer when Jean Bouin ran the fearsome distance of nine kilometres seven hundred and twenty-one metres in thirty minutes, which was some going, we even hunted rats: identical hunting scenes on both sides of the front, rats hanging by their tails from wires strung between poles, the cook claimed he could make rat jam, we laughed, he’s a real card, the style they called Charm, said the cook, I remember it well, I was head sales assistant, the skirt fitted very closely over the hips, swelled out in the shape of a bell and reached down to the ground with a train at the back, scooped-out necklines with satin-stitch, go on, cook, tell us more, some rats are as big as 75 mm shells, the.75 is the expression in metallic form of the marvellous qualities of our race, flooding brings the rats out, they swim among us at knee level, the general said we had to stay in the water, the CO said, ‘Don’t knock your brains out over it’, and a voice piped up: ‘The bullets will do that for us.’ And on the role of the African infantry and the Moroccan cavalry one general would write one autumn day: ‘Use before winter.’

And sometimes there’s too much water, in one night at Neuville-Saint-Vaast, the trenches of both sides were flooded to the top, all the men climbed out and faced each other a hundred metres apart, and for hours and hours no one fired a gun, no one killed anybody, a wag said, ‘If it goes on like this, they’ll soon be building an Ark.’

At other times, much later on, there are men who don’t want to kill or die any more, but they die pleading, wetting their trousers, their comrades dragging them to the stake, others stink even more, they struggle, they have to be tied to a chair while they scream, the colonel said, like women.

Bastards! screams one of the condemned men, you go on and on killing — that’s why you’ll always be slaves, the chair tips over, lash that chair to the stake says the colonel, the officers are forced to put more and more men out of their misery, some mutineers have been hit by only three bullets and none of them well placed, an officer yells at the firing squad he commands, every man who shoots wide is a coward, you ought to be ashamed, look at him, he’s still moving.

Other mutineers die standing up, spitting defiance.

Two men different from the rest: they face the firing squad and sing the ‘Marseillaise’ and the ‘Chant du départ’; first they embraced the officer commanding the squad, that’s it, refused to obey the order to attack, found guilty at the double, a priest and a socialist MP had talked to them all through the night, an honourable death, you must do the decent thing, you say you’re sorry and you face the firing squad and sing so that your comrades may still have enough strength to snatch victory from the shadows, the priest’s cross and the MP’s hands, you will set us all an example, we all want peace through victory.

Also a woman, who comes and speaks in the cell, what about our two daughters, daughters of a hero or a traitor, they said that if you say you’re sorry, if you sing the ‘Marseillaise’, they’ll just write ‘killed in action’ in the book, the officer said:

‘What chance will a coward’s daughter have of finding a husband?’ The daughter is two years old, not for eleven years will a friend tell her the truth, when Poincaré has become the man who laughs in cemeteries, yes, one of the two men sentenced to death was that schoolteacher, Robert, the one with the holiday cottage and the month’s rent, the ‘Marseillaise’ and the ‘Chant du départ’, everyone could believe again, they embraced, they stood at the stake and wept.

Eight Tauben lined up, a plane of exactly this type and make has just set a new altitude record at 6,200 metres, the world spread out below is a marvel. The machine guns defend these dreams, they continue to cut down French dragoons, they decimate the fourth troop which charged in support, but one section of the dragoons succeeds in breaking through the line of fire, and others in position at the far end of the clearing also come riding up, one of the planes has had time to begin moving, it gains speed, waddles like an exasperated chicken on the churned-up grass. Two or three dragoons try to give chase, the horses take fright, still needs another three hundred, two hundred revs to reach the 65 kilometres an hour needed for take-off, in the bottom of his ditch Hans hears the signs, a hundred and fifty revs, he calculates the plane’s chances, he knows each of the six in-line cylinders in each of his eight aircraft while the plane bumps along with increasing speed over the uneven surface.

Already its pilot has stopped thinking of anything except those trees dead ahead. The observer in the rear seat has a large repeating rifle and takes aim at the dragoons, keep thinking of what you love.

Hans hears the noise of the engine, a woman glides on to a frozen lake, why? The sound of the engine, death, he takes the woman’s hand, puts his arm around her waist, a picture, a lake in the mountains, keep thinking of what you love, the sound of an aeroplane exasperated because it cannot take off, it battles with every tussock, never volunteer for anything, the engine is getting too much fuel, the pilot’s going to flood the carburettor, pound to a penny it’s Klaus, he never could do it right, and the second piece of advice, think, a village at one end of the mountain lake, a waterfall at the other, is this really the moment to think about what you love? Early winter keen-cold, sound of an engine, revs almost there, the sleeve now, robins panicking in the frost, early-morning skaters, light from a red disc, pale and austere, the same actions in unison, Hans and the young woman move out across the ice each leaning on the other, in turn.

Hans is not a very good skater, she smiles, you look like someone wading through mud, at first he put his right hand on Lena’s waist but it was really she who wedged her hip against his, he dares not make too much of this, she has put her hand on Hans’s right hand, the hand that holds her waist, and again she presses, presses herself against Hans as is required when two people skate together, around them are other couples, they brush past each other with a smile, the birches drop fine ash, Hans and the young woman are gliding, each leaning upon the other, the increasingly regular hiss of skates.