Hedi Kaddour - Waltenberg

And off he runs. All the jackals pull so hard that their tails come off, the lion catches our jackal, you made me fall, I pulled your tail off, our jackal says that all jackals are tail-less, send for them, they all come, now which one will you recognise?

The pulled-off tail is a political fable, Monsieur Goffard, here, as soon as a jackal loses his tail he does everything he can to ensure that he’s not the only one it happens to, that’s how you get them exactly where you want them.

Max rejoins the young woman, takes her by the elbow with the familiarity that is allowed to men of his age, he brushes Morel to one side.

‘We must talk rags.’

He whisks her off from under de Vèze’s nose and just as de Vèze is about to say something, Max steers her towards the Consul’s wife, leaves her there, I amuse her, I’m the person she feels most at ease with this evening, I’m the oldest but I’m not that old, how old is Chaplin? The girl’s bored, we could see each other again in town, between four walls, I wouldn’t be a nuisance to have around, true, but I’m not Chaplin, this convolvulus is lovely, that blue, the faded hues of burnt sienna, you don’t often come across convolvulus in those colours, it’s unreal, in the Chefchaouen region they had a song that went something like ‘might as well try to separate me from you as to disentangle the poppy from the bindweed’, it was a war fought thicket to thicket, rock to rock, pursuits over scree hanging on to branches of juniper, at dawn along jackal trails, they know the terrain like the back of their hands, God help those who abandoned their fields and went to live in towns, magnificent clumps of oleander in the beds of wadis which hadn’t seen real rain for years, some roots would burrow down fifteen, twenty, thirty metres looking for water, Abd el-Krim’s lieutenants said that after they’d won the war they’d rebuild Al Andalûs and its fountains, but their men hated towns.

The pink diplomat walks over to de Vèze, asks him what he thinks of Monsieur Goffard who is so keen to be called Clappique, rather provocative, don’t you think? don’t you feel he’s trying to create an incident? the way he looked at the main gate saying I’ll get even, yes, he passes through here once or twice a year, the Consul cultivates him for what he knows, we don’t like him much, and tonight he seems even more out of control than usual.

De Vèze gives the impression that he’s listening to the pink diplomat though he’s really watching the historian’s wife just a few metres away who is standing in front of a bank of green leaves and convolvulus.

‘The garden is superb,’ says the pink diplomat, ‘you don’t know anything about plants? I’ll soon put that right, I won’t say anything about orchids, they’re all over the island, but have you seen the trees, the arboretum?’

De Vèze can’t see it.

‘I’ll show you, not the coconut trees nor the palms or the bamboos, look there, clove-trees, and behind them, in the distance, on the left, that strange object that looks like a tangle, at the sea-edge, it gives off a rather acrid smell, like ammonia, decomposition, you must have heard of it? A speciality of the region, the man who used to own the property insisted on having one in his garden and it did so well that we’ve never managed to get rid of it, you need to keep an eye on virtually a daily basis, or just keep it dry, too much work, so we leave it to its own devices, it’s not unpleasant to look at and it doesn’t smell unless the weather gets too hot, it’s a complete world of unlikely shapes, an underworld, larvae, transparent crabs, fish which breathe with lungs, tadpoles, globules of what looks like snot, all fermenting, sucking, roots reaching up and grabbing the air, water-spiders in the matted branches, I’m boring you, did you see? Something moved, you know sometimes you can see monkeys up in the leaves, real ones, on the lawn it’s all so very different,’ palm to the sky the hand of the pink diplomat gestures towards the croquet players only a few metres away, he gives the impression that he is sizing them up, he murmurs: ‘This is what we fought two world wars to defend!’

De Vèze does not rise to this, the young woman’s face is quite charming, dimples, pointed nose, lips not too big nor too small, teeth a tad rabbity, de Vèze watches for the moment when he’ll get her profile, then abandons her face to catch the way the light behind her shows her legs through the material of her dress, they are almost sturdy, not exactly what he goes for, I prefer long legs, ah! the aristocracy of long legs! but hers have style, are muscular and cope very nicely without high heels, enough for an evening’s entertainment but not worth ruining your whole life for.

And finally Malraux makes his appearance in the garden of the villa, charcoal-grey suit, white handkerchief in the breast pocket, dark tie, quick stepping, he no longer has that rebellious flop of hair over one eye, his baldness is spreading in all directions over his scalp from a central patch of stubbornly resistant hair, he emits a thin smile, he looks in better health than rumour has it:

‘Please don’t stop whatever you’re doing! Croquet! I insist you finish your game, I didn’t even know playing it was still allowed, fear not, Consul, I won’t tell the General that his diplomats are in the habit of playing such a quintessentially English game, good to see you again, de Vèze, it’s twenty years since the last time! Actually I think I’ll join in the game, that way I shall be as guilty as you, oh just an ordinary pastis, Pernod if you have it, not too much water, one ice cube, thank you.’

Malraux with a magisterial flourish reaches for a mallet:

‘You know, I played here in 1925, not at this villa, in the hotel, the Raffles, the English called croquet “the lord of lawn games”.’

‘“Lord, lord”,’ said Max in the wings, ‘as well they might, croquet was invented by French peasants and it was passed on to the English via Ireland, the lord of lawn games has a whiff of the potato about it, anyway, this particular lord is on the point of extinction, killed off by baseball, ultimately the Yanks will kill off everything, except in out-of-the-way places like Singapore, the last gasp of empire, which will stagger on for just a wee while longer, though it’s soon to be an independent republic.’

Max turns towards Malraux:

‘My dear author, if you don’t mind being my partner I shall be an active participant, as a matter of fact I was in the middle of explaining to these young people the rule of tight croqueting, to recap, a tight croquet is allowed when I have succeeded in hitting another player’s ball with mine, this entitles me to a second shot, using considerably more force but still within the rules of the game, shush! don’t say a word, I shall now fetch the ball which I hit with mine, watch carefully, I place it so that it touches mine but without moving it by so much as a hair’s breadth, I put one foot on my ball, then thwack! I strike my own nice ball with my mallet and out shoots the other nasty ball, I can either hit it as far as I can or alternatively take careful aim and knock it through an illegal hoop, which is very much like diplomacy since it means pushing your opponent into making mistakes, which means the nasty ball has to be thwacked. You can peel as much as you like, but you’ll not thwack everything into the long grass.’

They played on for some time while the daylight drained from the town and the ocean, from time to time Max would drift off into his thoughts, Rabat, his youth, barely thirty years old, in my head I’ve never got beyond thirty, I still feel that’s how old I am, how I got around in those days! you could tell that young woman all about it, not sure if she’d listen, she speaks very well, very clipped, you’re older than Chaplin was when he married his wife, she’s not really paying any attention to you, she’s watching the Ambassador from Rangoon, he’s not aware of it, he’s happy to strut and swagger for her benefit, he hasn’t noticed that she’s observing him back, there weren’t any women like her in Rabat, this one can talk, has the voice of someone who isn’t dependent on the way men look at her, she knows things, she can answer back, that ‘didn’t you?’ to the Consul’s wife just now was spunky stuff, in Rabat there were women who had a certain style but the minute they opened their mouths they ruined it, Lyautey just couldn’t pick them, and Max was only interesting when he was talking, he got his best ideas from looking into the eyes of women, a friend once told him that a woman’s look can sometimes be better than sex, he made conquests, today you’re just an old story-teller who needs to be holding forth, I’ll have to tell them about the rain maidens.