Sleepy, I would have been glad of the Radetsky March and, should he still be awake, was astonished at Malraux’s patience. Great orator, he remained in wintry silence, his cigarette alone showing life. And then… speeches still sounded stylized, over-rhetorical, or were read from manuscript, very monotonously. Beautiful feelings, Gide had once said, make bad art. The dull drop of words would have withered butterflies. An Argentine advocated Spanish as universal language. Outside, Paris lingered on the tremulous frontier between blue afternoon and violet dusk. Despite the soft light, I was aware of a slight gleam on Wilfrid’s face, distinct from his dark formal coat and cravat. Impatience? Yet I had never known the extent of his expectations. Determination to speak? Horror, as Suzie would say. I had never heard him address a crowd, had often heard his indulgent disdain of those who did so. We had already endured the pontifical, judicial, indignant, abject and absurd. Trilling was glancing at his watch, Mr Spender was writing in a tiny book, perhaps audaciously rhyming a satire. A Toute Vie surgeon cited Aristotle on inferior races, the Canadian bishop stuttered that God finds intolerable Good Works performed without Faith, thereby insulting Nansen’s father, agnostic, whose good works were massive. Perhaps only the Hero of Gravelines could wake us into Walpurgis extravagance, quicken Mrs Meier, Dr Flake, His Finnish Excellency, into a Dionysiac can-can. The Belgian, despite his bloodshot rant, was another Storm Prince: he had once almost drowned in the Meuse, rescuing a homosexual whom he loathed, personally and on principle.
And then… A stir jerked, then alarmed me. Wilfrid had left his chair, was already centre stage, fingering the mike with patient forbearance, almost comic helplessness, and touched by the last splendours of sunset piercing the heavy, classical windows. My throat tightened as it had done when, very gently but firmly, Father had contradicted the Herr General. Trembling, I had awaited an anger that did not come. In this fumed density of fatigue, impatience, incipient hostility, a Wilfrid was least needed. His audience was not of dolts, gullible Wolf’s Lair freebooters but a salon of trained minds, and I wanted to step past Trilling and flee.
Wilfrid, still adjusting the machine, looked apologetic, incompetent, too diffident, unconvinced of his right to stand aloft and demand attention. I was certain that his style would be too opaque, his personality too elusive, his text lumbered with the unnecessary – tyche, feng-shui. Could he but ration his regard for Eckhart and Tolstoy.
His tone, never javelin sharp, was conversational, edged with the humour that overcame by not noticing dissent. Malraux, barometer at zero, now recovered, gained height, so that he forwent cigarettes and sugar, and Spender, haloed in a sun-shaft, pocketed his pocket-book.
‘I am not, or not yet, religious and confess, rather shame-facedly, that I do not love my enemies, though managing to respect strangers. I have no difficulty in preferring instant retribution to slow, even-handed justice. Aristophanes…’ he raised a deprecatory finger against any accusation of pedantry, or the glare of Aristophanes, while I remembered the Herr General’s zest for duelling, ‘did tell us that the sun bestows glory on all mindful of the sacred obligation due to strangers and neighbours. Some of you may object that the glory is also bestowed on the wicked and unneighbourly. Well, there are hopes even for them. Some of them!’
Though he did not laugh, he appeared to have done so, and reassurance rippled over the large, tensed gathering. Slight, not appeasing, but as equal amongst equals, he was measured, fluent, clear as the bell of the Palace of Justice.
‘To do the right thing for unorthodox reasons has never much troubled me. To discover the right thing is sufficiently arduous. The rest I leave to the learned and philosophical. The highest of all German voices, already mentioned, long ago told us that in the beginning was the Deed. Better to act, perhaps unwisely, than do nothing. Here in France, the Revolution, of which I admit to some reservations, considered humanity’s chief enemies were the indifferent. Those who existed only on paper. Yet enemies, the wicked, survive very close…’ At this, Golda Meier looked around, eyebrows black, almost in accusation, a nervous titter sounded, though Malraux nodded, Trilling flickered assent, and, behind Wilfrid, Buber nodded encouragement.
‘Herr Flake has generously reminded us of the qualities of Internal Emigration, though this unlocks no prisons, halts no deaths, leaves freedom only to the wicked. What a plain, wholesome word that is!’ He halted briefly, to savour it, connoisseur over a new arte-fact. ‘Still, few of our enemies are visible, they are more insidious. You may remember that a great socialist, his nationality, by definition, is immaterial, wrote that the lie had become a European Great Power. It had, of course, always been so. Who does not remember Odysseus, Virgil and at least three Popes? This afternoon, we have heard no lies but insufficient truth, though I fear you will not hear much more from me. At best, some reminders, against the bland. We are, we like to think, the righteous, proud of ideals, we despise expediency. We desire not news but wisdom, and truth is forgivable. Yet we have seen our betters, majestic writers, marvellously bearded thinkers, declare, “I do not mind if it is a lie, I believe it.”’
The hush wavered between degrees of unease, and I gripped my knees. As if acknowledging a sententious priggishness, Wilfrid quickened his delivery, was lighter, bantering. ‘My own favourite writers were mostly moral hooligans. I read them with gratitude, of course, with awe, but their hospitality would stir up misgivings. To play cards with Dostoevsky, hire a bed from Rimbaud, spend a week deafened by Luther…’ Some chuckles, a long wide curve of pleasure, before he continued. ‘We have been advised to erase the past, start anew, all sins forgotten. Finely intentioned amnesia. An attractive prospect, but attractive only because it is impossible. The dead have powers, too easily overlooked. For myself, I treasure the past, its display of diversities, personalities, encounters, achievements, for which Paris remains so unforgettable.’
Shadows around his eyes and mouth were familiar: conciliatory, temporizing, questioning, they suggesting not a professor but a quiet fellow student. The sunset glow faded, the great room was darkening, as though management was reluctant to jolt us with sudden lights while he continued.
‘We need not dispense with a past still largely travestied by the Lie, nor with a future, doubtless disreputable. There is always today. To collect evidence, then use it. However…’ In the fractured light, encroaching obscurities, he appeared taller, sterner. ‘I am imposing too many abstractions on you, masquerading as a preacher, evading urgency and necessity. We are in Cold War, which may heat up. Our Spanish, Polish and Baltic delegates are exiles. Thousands crouch in sewers. In one country, unrepresented here, men still in power, for their own motives promoted famine, then decreed that eating corpses was uncouth. Such a regime will not collapse from whatever we ourselves decree. Absurdity may one day become the more effective. I have lately been in Spain, and there I read an exhortation from the Generalísimo, no less: “Let us go Straight Forward Together.” And, do you know’ – God, he seemed about to discharge that cracked, over-noisy laugh, but instead was very casual – ‘they’d posted it on a hair-pin bend!’