Hedi Kaddour - Waltenberg

‘Why? So that the pastry would be even more crumbly, but since a modicum of liquid is required and the yolks are hard, she added a spoonful of rum to the flour and butter before mixing, one spoonful, no more, just a splash, marvellous, at least the Linzer hasn’t changed, not like everything else, are you really nervous? You know, speaking for myself, I’m more than nervous, I’m sad, melancholic, this may well be the last time we’ll ever eat Linzer together, something I didn’t fully realise when I got here, I went for a short stroll, as I always do, as far as the village before taking the cable car up here, for once I’d given myself enough time to construct a little hide, I wanted to see one of those lovely little rodents who suddenly panic when they realise how visible they are against all that snow.

‘But I didn’t see anything, or rather I saw the mechanical shovels and the bulldozers, Waltenberg is expanding, a heliport, it’s an obscenity! For an annual Forum ? The forums have always managed quite well without a heliport, as general secretary of the annual forum you could have lodged an objection, I’m joking, of course I know that was out of the question, and just as well they got their heliport, even more high-flying participants, more informal discussions, more data, a better return, an even more profitable undertaking, considerable productivity gains in information output, you see I’m up with modern economic thinking and the ethos of your Forum, but no matter, I’m still saddened, those bulldozers! That was when I realised how melancholy I’d got and that Waltenberg wouldn’t lift my spirits, I look out at the Rikshorn through the window, and I feel absolutely nothing!

‘There are too many jokers now, and as for us, we were the minders but we’re turning into jokers, with one small difference between the two of us, which is that in my country they still shoot clowns, but it isn’t the risk that depresses me, besides you run no risk whatsoever, from the start there never were any records, I told you, nothing written down, so there never was a records clerk filing everything we got up to, I never found any reason to write things down in black and white, that way no defector can turn you in, except for me, that’s a joke, and if it proves necessary we’ll stop meeting here, I won’t come any more, you will say what you have to say directly to our hostess here, she’ll pass it on, it’s all very sad.’

And Lilstein adds something more depressing than sadness, more depressing than your fear, something which at a stroke cancels out all the reasons you still have for confronting depression and fear:

‘I think, young gentleman of France, that we probably no longer serve any purpose. If I say “probably”, it’s merely out of consideration for you, in truth there is no “probably” about it.’

*

Berthier, Colonel Berthier, no first name, career launched by nabbing a traitor in the HQ of French Forces in Germany, following which he had swept France’s Embassy in Rome clean of all the bugs which the Russians had accumulated there.

One morning, Lady Piddle had summoned him to her garret in the Élysée together with the Army Minister, she had told him in the presence of the Minister that from then on he would answer only to her.

A few days after the interview in the Minister’s office in the Quai d’Orsay, Berthier stepped out of de Vèze’s diplomatic bag and into the French Embassy in Moscow, he went wherever and whenever he wanted, sometimes he ordered the occupants out but most often he locked himself in with them, he was ‘extremely sorry’ but ‘all the clocks had to be reset’.

He said ‘extremely sorry’ with a measurable emphasis on the last syllable, drawing out the ‘ry’, speaking through his nose for the fraction of a second it took to say it, an edgy drawl, an indication that the syllable could well blow up in their faces if the man who talked like that did not get answers to his questions right away.

And in the way he emphasised the end of the word ‘sorry’ there was a hint of latent, uncontrollable, vicious energy which was only biding its time before being unleashed from the restraints of common politeness and threatened the worst if Berthier were not helped as quickly as possible to stop him feeling so ‘sor reee ’, such a polite word and ordinarily rendered anodyne because it figured so prominently in everyday speech, but in that edgy drawl it now regained the violence it once contained centuries ago when words meant what they said, when a man who told you he was ‘sorry’ was expressing the full extent of the ‘sorrow’ caused by the unhappy condition to which you had reduced him and at the same time gave him the power and the right to have you garrotted.

Berthier also used a thirty-page questionnaire and a ball-point pen in four colours, he spent his time clicking it, waited for the irritated reaction of people who can’t stand hearing a ball-point pen being clicked, but no one dared tell him to stop. No, someone did, once: someone dared and had been told by Berthier that he seemed nervous.

And someone else had pulled a stunt, Mazet, in despatches, unimaginative sort, in a group meeting, fit of the giggles, every time Berthier clicked his four colours, Mazet did the same with his while looking at him innocently in the eye.

Berthier didn’t stop, nor did Mazet, hence the fit of the giggles which convulsed the others, for a few days clicking ball-points was all the rage, Mazet became a star, eye more alert, voice stronger, and then Berthier told Mazet that there were irregularities in his records and took them away and kept them for three days. Mazet went back to being unimaginative.

Berthier went round repeating:

‘The clocks are being reset, all the clocks.’

He was curt with the men, polite with the women. When he spoke to the women, he looked to one side, he became the major topic of conversation in the Ladies on the second floor, I’m telling you he isn’t normal, got these cold eyes, everything about him is cold, he’s asexual, I don’t know about that, I haven’t bothered to look that hard, and I shan’t neither will you and that’s a fact, you’re just saying that, keep your hair on I was only joking, anyway it doesn’t entitle him to walk into the Ladies without knocking, yes it does, he’s already done it, twice at least, he did it yesterday, not here, on the third floor, oh excuse me he says but he barges in all the same! Into our toilets!

The nickname ‘Bantam Bum’ went round the Embassy like wildfire in competition with ‘Lofty’.

One day Berthier claimed to have found traces of cocaine in the offices of the military attachés, these officers were minded ‘to sock him on the jaw to teach him a lesson’, they hadn’t fought in the Algerian War to be treated like this, but not the naval attaché, he didn’t mention Algeria, instead he stepped out into the corridor and yelled yes, I’m an addict, hooked on kerosene, drugs, treachery, I’ve got a secret to sell to fund my kerosene habit, two thousand seven hundred and twenty-two landings on French aircraft carriers, day, night, all weathers, it’s a military secret, for sale to the Ivans, know this: French aircraft carriers are crap! the pilots on French aircraft carriers are crap! because they’re all treated like crap! I’m going to tell the Ivans!’

Berthier asked for a dog, an Alsatian, to be sent from Paris.

‘Just because you can’t find anything doesn’t mean you can do whatever you like,’ protested de Vèze.

The way Bantam Bum went about his assignment even roused in de Vèze a certain fellow-feeling for the mole he was hunting, it must be priceless to be the mole and have daily dealings with the Bantam, a real hoot knowing you’re running rings round him, you’re facing this short-arsed nosy cop, he can send you to jail for ever and a day or even have you eliminated, and you’re running rings round him, you’re like a man sentenced to death who has managed to make off with the blade of the guillotine. Or rather you’re like the invisible man, though you have an advantage over the invisible man, the invisible man is only invisible, he can see but runs no risk, that’s all right for snotty-nosed boys, but a spy is visible and present, when people deal with him they think he’s another person altogether, he makes that other person smile, a broad smile which dissembles his dissembling, he feels genuinely excited inside, you smile at people who are hunting you down to eliminate you, the tanks were hunting us too, we weren’t smiling then, not a lot, but we were spying on them, we’d felt the same way when we were in our fox-holes, in the shale of the desert, waiting for the tank to drive over the top of us, so we could take him from the rear, a grenade lobbed from behind, a gap in the turret, the panzer was only vulnerable in two places, and when you managed to get one of them you could afford to smile, but sitting there in the hole while the great brute passed over without seeing you, that gave you a strange feeling, the effect was like some powerful drug.