Hedi Kaddour - Waltenberg

The Consul’s wife is a tiny lady with a downcast mouth, a flat chest, ‘Consuless’ has not gone down at all well with her, Madame Morel, Max went on, you keep your husband who likes history, but let’s have no domestic scenes, croquet is a less bloodthirsty game than conjugal tennis but can also have its moments, and the two inseparable great diplomatists of tomorrow, the pink and the grey, can stay together, I shall supervise, he surveys the scene and smiles, the first plays take place against a background of trees, the fan-palms, the Perrier bottleshaped palm trees topped with thornless branches, and other successively taller palms which lift the whole space up towards the sky, why does Singapore look so small today? Nothing like what it was back then, maybe because I was younger? The same hoops, maybe not the bottle-shaped trees, but the same wooden balls, the same mallets, Rabat, lawn and gravel, same game, but it feels so cramped today.

Even the gravel in the paths doesn’t seem of the same standard as in ’25, you aren’t up to the same standard either, the chippings are less uniform, not as well maintained, six small stones and a bigger one, a full-scale revolt, six small stones, we left the Residence at Rabat with its perfectly raked gravel, and the jacaranda trees, I’ve not seen any jacarandas here in Singapore, did four hundred kilometres of twisting roads, and then we were in the high jebel, confronted by more small stones, and you do not understand.

It’s a game, explained the agent for Native Affairs who accompanies Max to the Riffian village, six small stones in one hand, with the other the little girl tosses the big one in the air, and before she catches it she has to put one of the small stones on the ground, and so on, I throw the big one up, I grab a small one, I put it down, I catch the big one before it hits the ground, I throw it up again, I grab a small one and put it next to the first one, when she gets to the end she starts again, she tosses the big stone in the air but this time she puts two little ones down, not together, one after the other, quickly, while the big stone stays aloft you look up, you keep your eye on it so it doesn’t bang you on the nose, and the girls who manage twos can go on to throw the big stone up again and pick up and set down three little stones one after the other every time they throw the big stone up, the longer they go on the harder it gets, the likelier it is that they’ll get hit in the face, no, I never saw it played myself, the agent for Native Affairs described it to me because on two occasions I’d seen little heaps of stones on the ground, at the entrance to a village that had been bombed, there were also traces of hopscotch and rain maidens.

An ideal husband, murmurs de Vèze as he observes Morel, worse than Moine, worse than a guard dog, a full back, a very close marker, never a moment to get anything going with the wife.

It’s Morel’s turn first, he hits his ball very quickly, rejoins his wife, Morel, you hit it too hard, cries Max, you’ve gone through the second hoop without going through the first, you’ll have to come back through hoop two the other way, before you can go through hoop one, then you’ll go through two again, the right way this time, otherwise it doesn’t count, Morel protests, the rules mean he’ll have to negotiate the second hoop three times, and de Vèze has stayed close to his wife; it’s quite usual, says Max, you have to clear the backlog, you’ve racked up a number of errors, you’re allowed to clear them, this is a very honest game, especially if you strike the ball properly instead of poking it cautiously with the mallet like our friend here! Max nods towards the grey diplomat, you’re pushing not hitting, it’s against the rules, foul stroke, you’ve got to make a noise, old man, a recognisable sound, wooden mallet against wooden ball, a distinctive ‘clack’, you went through the hoop in the right direction, but it wasn’t a legal stroke, naughty naughty, you were seen, so you’ll have to play the hoop again from the other side, so back you go!

De Vèze watches the young woman, her breasts move a little when she leans forward to play her shot but stay pretty firmly in place, that’s the good thing about girls with fuller figures, young flesh, elastic, on a plate, a woman to spend a siesta with, the woman is lying naked on de Vèze, she straddles him, he takes her breasts in his hands, she smiles, arches her back, and Max, who has observed what de Vèze is up to and the husband who keeps getting in his way, finds the spectacle hugely entertaining; Monsieur Morel there’s something I wanted to ask you, he gives the husband no option, don’t you think there’s a peculiar smell, comes in waves, acidic, it’s not coming from the town, de Vèze tries to use the opportunity to make a masterly approach to the wife, and then Max, with one hand on Morel’s shoulder, calls to de Vèze, can’t you see it’s your strike next, whatever are you thinking of?

De Vèze hits a ball, just goes through the motions, to be free of it, but Max detains him: tell Morel here how it works, contemporary history, events we have lived through, that’ll get him out of his precious seventeenth century, but not now, good, now listen to me everybody, all you’ve had up to this point are the basic rules, they define a game suitable for morons, but there’s more to croquet than that!

Croquet is a noun but also a verb, and ‘croqueting’ is precisely what makes the game human, aggressive, vicious, with its alliances, reprisals, betrayals, double-dealing, reconciliations, yes, patching things up, what does ‘to croquet’ mean, ladies and gentlemen? It means you are entitled to hit your opponent’s ball into the sky-blue yonder, using his, as in pétanque, your opponent thinks he’s nearly home then thwack, it’s into the long grass with him, you’re already past the turning post and making for home, you meet a player who’s been held up, a dawdler, an innocent and thwack! the innocent knocks your ball all the way to Pétaouchnok, and you wonder if his innocence was really innocence, so, on with the game, it’s all about strategy, shush! no talking, play’s started, I’ll be keeping an eye open.

Max smiles as he watches the first efforts of his pupils, in the end it’s all about innocence, mustn’t let anyone anticipate your next move, a clear look in the eye, a smooth lawn, Pétain’s air of innocence, at Rabat.

Lyautey never saw it coming, the hero of Verdun disembarks, inspection visit to Morocco, because Abd el-Krim’s Riffians have started to harass our lines of defence on the Ouergha, and the great leader of Verdun knocks his ball gently so that it rolls to a stop touching Lyautey’s, which gives him the right to croquet, first touch then you can croquet, innocent smiles, may I, Marshal? Be my guest, Marshal! Pétain tight-croquets and Lyautey ends up in Pétaouchnok, semi-retirement, return to France, no one there to meet him off the boat, makes for Paris, the only thing waiting for me in the rue des Saints-Pères was a letter from the inland revenue, a demand for unpaid taxes.

Later a consolation prize, chair of the Colonial Exhibition committee, at the time I didn’t see it coming, no one saw it, Lyautey didn’t want a war in the Riff, you negotiate, you play for time, you divide and isolate and win back hearts and minds, I do note that the building of the Arabo-Berber School has fallen further behind schedule, so I’m asking you to take a personal interest in the work, you will report to me direcdy every two weeks.

A school for the sons of chiefs, the rebels want the Riff to be a republic, we won’t give it to them, but we can negotiate a form of autonomy with allegiance to the Sultan of Rabat, ceremony, white cloak, parasols, black slaves, Abd el-Krim will kiss his hand, it’s negotiable, he’d go to kiss the hand, and the Sultan would take back his hand, no he must actually kiss his hand, and then the Sultan will confer the accolade on him.