Hedi Kaddour - Waltenberg

‘Nabokov is often interesting,’ says Malraux, ‘but if you’re going to tell me about him, then it’s bound to be some nasty crack or an item of gossip.’

This time Malraux has spoken without looking at Max.

‘Nabokov said,’ Max ploughs on, ‘that The Human Condition , with its Chinese rain, Chinese nights, Chinese streets, Chinese crowds is the Great International Cliché Company, he suggests readers try it in Belgian: “they went out into the Belgian night”.’

De Vèze reckons Goffard won’t go on being a character in a book for much longer, no one talks like that to Malraux.

A definite bust-up, everyone goes quiet, the Consul and his wife are not there, they are fiddling with spoons in their coffee cups, decidedly they are not among those present at a bust-up which has Malraux at its centre, that sort of thing can cost you dear, if Malraux asks the Consul to throw Goffard out, Goffard knows a great many people, he survived the Hindenburg disaster, and if Goffard refuses to go then Malraux will stand up and accuse the Consul of luring him into an ambush, and this was the Consul’s last chance to have this Consulate made up to a full Embassy.

It’s the fault of the Beaujolais, light, bland, they’d drunk it like water, a bust-up, and in front of Xavier, a junior attaché maybe, but he already has the ear of the Secretary-General and the Minister, he’ll go far, with that inquisitorial look and his little monkey-arse beard, they’re fast-tracking him, it’s his private life, because they know they can get rid of him at any time, he’s a threat to nobody, he’ll go far, he’s not the sort who’ll speak up for me in Paris when what’s happened around this table gets out in a couple of hours, you can trust them, they didn’t drink too much of the Sauternes.

It’s this middling Beaujolais that did it, the Consul should have opened the last of his Gevrey-Chambertin, there would have been just three bottles on the table but at least you don’t glug Gevrey-Chambertin, if you do it hits you in the back of the throat, he should never have listened to his wife who wanted to keep those three bottles of Gevrey to celebrate his coming promotion, after all Malraux is only passing through, and he only drinks pastis, everyone knows that, and now there’s been a major incident at the consular dinner table, still the Sauternes mixed with too much Beaujolais can’t have helped much, a major incident at my table, and we’ll drink the Gevrey-Chambertin when we have to do our flit, ‘Belgian night’, that’s under the belt, and the others are in a funk too, they won’t do anything, what went through my wife’s head, nothing, nothing ever goes through her head.

She’s like that, I only had to mention the Gevrey-Chambertin for her to say no, I should have said let’s have the Beaujolais, and she’d have said no we’d better bring out the best bottles, and then Goffard would have behaved himself, she’s been saying the opposite of what I say for more than thirty years, I should have left her while there was still time, when I discussed it with Jean-Claude, he said she makes you angry because she’s always arguing, and she’ll make you angrier and angrier, but if you do leave her it’ll be worse, because you’ll still be angry but you won’t have any reasons to be, yes, but this time that’s it, an incident, I know it doesn’t sound much, old man, I wouldn’t give your little incident a second thought, everyone knows what Malraux is like, this sort of thing is quickly forgotten, but as I was reminded by the Minister who is so sorry that he cannot see you, the essence of the diplomat’s work is a capacity for avoiding incidents, recall to Paris.

No embassy, deputy in charge of a sub-department, and a three-roomed flat in the rue Vaneau, on the second floor, windows overlooking the courtyard, I prefer being on my own, she can go and mutter ‘no’ at people in the street or travellers on the métro, actually, she’ll go back to her bloody country-living, with rubber boots, rubber gloves, rubber head, and mind you change your shoes as you come in, the Consul looks at his wife, smiles to encourage her to keep smiling in the midst of all the wreckage.

De Vèze says to Malraux:

‘Nabokov is too clever by half.’

‘Why do you say that?’

Malraux has pushed his chair back, he has folded his arms, polite expression on his face, an end-of-the-friendship politeness, these were most likely the last words he would speak that evening and he even looks as if he blames de Vèze, de Vèze isn’t at all sure why he said Nabokov was too clever by half, he’d felt things were about to take a turn for the worse, so he came out with a smart remark, and now he’s landed himself in a fix, he searches for a phrase incorporating ‘destiny’ and ‘literature’.

‘A cliché,’ he says, ‘is one form of destiny.’

De Vèze has the feeling he’s not going to get anywhere.

‘I don’t follow,’ says the pink diplomat.

Shut up, thinks the Consul, just shut up.

‘I don’t understand either,’ cuts in Morel who is beginning to like de Vèze less and less.

That makes two of you, thinks de Vèze, three with the grey man who is pretending he understands, and four with me until I come up with something.

Those two make a funny pair, thinks Morel, glancing at the pink-and-grey couple, at least they’re not ogling my wife, unlike this other character who’s never succeeded in escaping from his legend, an embassy in Rangoon, a battle in 1942, he thinks it entitles him to undress other men’s wives.

Morel would like to provoke an incident, yes that would be good, an incident would make people forget all about the tension between Malraux and Goffard, Mister Ambassador, my wife’s neckline seems to interest you, once at a dinner Morel saw a woman with the courage to create an incident, are you going to sweep my husband off his feet now or can it wait? Who do these people think they are, they believe they can have anything because they are waited on at table, have a chauffeur-driven car, Morel cannot stand the breed, the title demeans, the function stultifies, he has known people who rang far truer, heroic but not self-important, who had gone back to their jobs as typesetters or pointsmen without hawking their medals around some ministry, Flaubert was right, Morel feels like hitting his wife.

‘But this destiny thing is really quite simple, children,’ says Max.

He lifts one finger and pauses.

Goffard to my rescue, thinks de Vèze, Goffard knows that these days without Malraux he is nothing more than an old man who is about to be forgotten by history, he has written thousands of newspaper articles, one occasionally worth a page of Malraux, but it’s journalism, none of it will last.

‘All our heroes die,’ continues Max, ‘victims of destiny, as they say in cheap novels.’

‘Of destiny and repetition,’ says de Vèze.

‘They die, History repeats itself,’ adds Max.

The young woman says nothing, all the guests have now raised their heads again, the Consul has finished his coffee, he plays with a pipe-cleaner, turning it between thumb and forefinger like an aeroplane propeller.

‘A cliché,’ says de Vèze carefully, though without knowing really what he’s saying, ‘is the portion of destiny in what we write.’

‘That’s clichés sorted out, then,’ says Max, ‘and that’s why in Shanghai the tension is always terrible and the rain unfailingly Chinese and Nabokov is wrong, well spotted, Monsieur de Vèze, your phrasing is a touch awkward but if you’d like to do a book of interviews with the Master you’ve cracked it, and you’ve come to my rescue.’

‘Come now, the idea that clichés are unavoidable is an old idea of Paulhan’s,’ says Malraux, who smiles again.