Whatever his actual self, if any, he attracted anecdotes like income. Asked his opinion of Roosevelt, he enquired whether he was the Yank who rejected Ezra Pound’s advice to avert war by surrendering Wake Island to Japan in return for some haiku translated by Pound. On a radio chat show, he considered the second most interesting character in the New Testament was undeniably Jesus.
My home address I never divulged to strangers, I soon doubted whether we would meet up again, but one Saturday the landlady summoned me to the telephone. Mr Tortoise with a discovery. But no. ‘Alex here. I got your number by the usual method. Café Royal, second floor, 7.30. OK?’
Drinkers, luminous, affluent, were reflected in sham-baroque mirrors so that the saloon appeared larger, more crowded than reality. Brassey, lounging on crimson banquette, a bottle on the suet-pale table, was unmistakably amongst the slick and polished, the bald and fluffy, endlessly repeated in the florid mirrors and reduced to microscopic flashes in the massed chandelier cubes.
‘Milk? Probably not.’ Whisky glimmered. Again, the raunchy face, teeth like irregular italics, the chuckle, like the eyes, impetuous or calculating.
‘Louise couldn’t come. She’s not altogether weatherproof. Raised in LA. Her brother lost his bearings and wanted to be an air-hostess.’ His patter, sound without substance, suited the plush theatrical décor and gabble and was unlikely to cease. ‘Her first husband, a trifle mean, left her only an owl, a chauffeur and foul memories.’ Alarming me, he reached to touch my face. ‘Those rampant cheek-bones! Shield-bosses noosed by light between your scowls. Ajax of the Tundra. They don’t suggest you get yourself to sleep by counting cricketers beginning with C. Compton, Cowdrey, Close… You can look like Baldur von Shirach, a dreadful thing to say, even to Baldur von Shirach. Now, I must repeat that you mustn’t take seriously my nonsense about Europe. I spend whole weeks admiring Finnish architecture – Erick Brygman, Alva Aalto – far livelier than that pretentious heave-up Corbusier. Danish-folk high schools, admirable chunks of proper living. Even Bulgaria resisted the armpit Jew-hunters more valiantly than sniffy France. But instinct tells me that you, too, like me, often contemplate the world as metaphor.’
While speaking, he was acknowledging short greetings, affected deference. ‘Alex, old boy…’ ‘We revelled in your fracas with Julian…’
I was more interested in the portrait, above us, of Empress Eugénie, crowned, in pearl collar and purple velvet train, one hand resting on a gilded chair. Sadness in her sapphire-blue gaze haunted, very understandably, by Marie-Antoinette.
‘I’m watching Africa.’ He spoke as if of someone within reach. ‘Now that the Brits are absconding, the new Canoodle Dums won’t despise privilege and, to put it so, loot. It’s nice to see Ghana’s forbidden magic for use at elections.’
My grunts did not discourage him, though he quietened; surprisingly was almost shy.
‘I enjoy playing solo and baiting the marshmallows, all begging for celebrity, if only as sugarplum fairies. Reading each other, to discover what next to think. We enjoy playing our Third Eleven. Giving Blues for the latest thesis on Henry James’s laundry bills or the vibrations of turbots. Over there is a poet who’s tipped himself as the next Poet Laureate, though Masefield doesn’t believe in death. If you look closer, you’ll see the plaque on his forehead. The real genius was his mother, actress in early Sheridan, who rested so long she became a sofa. In the war, he volunteered for the Rifle Corps, so as to face things lying down.’
His foxy scruff, urgency to convince, entertain or merely pass time, promised little, while having the appeal of a tune, frivolous yet nagging.
‘My attitudes, good sir, are almost always provisional. Like love or political conscience. With a sunny morning, all paintings, except Bacons of course, are exciting. On wet mornings, they droop from the canvas. I usually find Hamlet rivalled only by Mill’s On Liberty. Though Cicero once remarked, not to me, that there’s nothing so absurd that some philosopher hasn’t already said it. He hadn’t much small talk, would discuss fish sauce as he might political crisis. I myself, your look confirms it, have little else but small talk. God…’ His alarm, theatrical, could have benefited Hamlet: ‘I see approaching Jacob Silverson, art critic. He once reproached Cézanne for being false to nature, though in Dolly’s garden he confused a lime with a poplar.’
A new act. London ghouls simpered and departed. The empty car in the mews, the repellent stalker on the escalator, were phantoms, though Alex, calmly assured as a movie naval officer, offered me one of his closest friends, a highly experienced bloodhound. Alex was what Father called a Querkopf, odd head, though possibly one of the Herr General’s Ten Per Cents. He claimed my weekends. We drank at a Soho nacht-lokal, at a South Bank gig, at a Hampstead Heath pub. I at last found voice and we argued about Europe, the French Revolution, J.F. Kennedy. He ridiculed my enthusiasm for the Nuremburg Trials. ‘With Soviet judges on the bench, moral centre was kicked into mid-Caspian, as you were the first to know. I’m happy about spontaneous retribution, but don’t call it justice. I’d like to believe that I’d copy that young Yank officer liberating Dachau, so crazed by what he found that he lined up all SS in sight and personally machine-gunned them. At once. Without remorse. Indefensible, but I’d at least cheer him on.’ So, I supposed, would I. He, moreover, had actually fought, then covered some Nuremburg Trials, hearing Ribbentrop complain that his collar was becoming too tight. ‘Nevertheless…’ I heard myself protest, with some mutter about legalities.
He showed those unhealthy teeth, chuckled like an emptying siphon. ‘Sometimes, old lad, I’m uncertain whether you need a thumping kiss or a Bavarian wallop. Your forebear, Pahlen, knew when to wield the hammer, didn’t suffer the English disease, fear of winning. Don’t catch it. Over here, die Helden sind müde.’
Meinnenberg interested him. Skeleton predators, the slashed body in the ditch, the mute orphan whistling Mozart, the improvised leadership, Vello, my teaching efforts. Those stories. Baba Yaga riding the sky in pestle and mortar, evilly cackling in her hut that moved on chickens’ legs, the boy dead on the Tuileries throne, Robespierre’s fall.
‘I’m apt to think, Erich, of your Robespierre as the licensed buffoon of the Committees, while they attended to the really serious. Still…’
Our talks helped my self-belief, my sense of having stepped towards the frontiers of history. I had sudden vision of my pamphlets scattered like wings over the Baltic: an anthem, silent but stinging. True, vision, like the sublime, is too often followed by the pompous or silly.
Alex surprised me by knowing that Wilfrid was a vice-president of UNICEF, collecting millions for children around the world. He had also criticized the July Plotters’ determination to retain many of Hitler’s conquests after destroying him. Of Wilfrid’s oriental figurines, Alex considered the Bodhisattva’s smile looked like that of a man after winning a substantial bet.