He was balancing a frown against a heap of well-grained rice, with engineer’s precision. I wished that Nadja could have been with me, with scholarly questions about Herr Wulf’s qualifications.
‘You must have met Hitler?’
‘Never. We might not have suited each other. One may need to summon the plumber, pay him more than well but go no further. He had read sufficiently to start interesting topics – mountaineering, Catharism, Roman slavery, race, Shakespeare, Venice – but was woefully inadequate to contribute anything of value. I dare say this compares well enough with the conversation in the Kremlin, the Elysée, Downing Street, but it would lose itself in dogmatic rant. If anyone is to monopolize proceedings I prefer it to be myself. But in the latest Reich the war is unmentionable. The old put up shutters, declaring they were somewhere else; the young merely shrug and attend to their own well-being. Politics, you know more than most, massages short memories. And, most of the world…’ refilling my glass, disregarding his own, treating most of the world to a forbearing sigh, ‘still inhabits the mental dimension represented by Herr Wulf.’
Wine placed me in an uneasy complicity. The hum and clink were tireless, waiters moved as if on rollers, women’s laughs were like fountains.
The lines on his face deepened. His voice, very steady, was determined to please.
‘There was some notion of arraigning me at Nuremburg, but I knew too much. Disagreeable facts about the Soviet invasion of Finland, the Pact, British plans to invade Norway before Hitler. British behaviour to the Shah and Farouk. American occupation of Iceland and its luring Japan into the war. Today, I move between intelligent, scarcely élitist groups scattered throughout the Weltwirtschaft. I like to think we are in part kin with the Stoics, so honoured in your old home, recognizing each other not by passports, language, tribal emblems – the Flag, ah, the Flag! – but by values, manner, allusions, appropriate to this new Roman Empire and its satellites. You might agree that one test of the coming century is whether it will consider history relevant. The old empires decayed, not through war, a secondary cause, but from governments becoming too remote from the governed. Charging more, giving less. Possibly, though not probably, technology, having abolished distance, will render my diagnosis outdated.’
He had leant forward, adding to his brief. ‘Consider your opportunities in these puny countries. I am seldom resident here but have a nose for projects more or less respectable. Some areas of Poland and Romania have reason to be grateful. There are areas I suggest you avoid. In democratic Russia, violence and corruption spread on a Hollywood scale, worse even than French export concerns, particularly, you may know, in titanium. I scarcely see you selling plutonium from Pakistan to Afghans. But you must look further than this hole-in-the-corner. My consortium assists financing peaceful nuclear projects favoured by Gorbachev. Only the delightful Raisa can be tempted to call him Gorby.
‘We have Middle East oil interests to protect, though, unostentatiously, I am withdrawing my private stakes. I see no hope there. Summits, Camp David handshake, lamentations, signatures by mediocrities, will settle nothing between Arab and Jew. People of the Book, though a book ill designed for peace. You ask my solution…’ I had not. ‘It will be unpopular, dangerous. Denounced as fascistic. But I can place hope only in some charismatic prophet… a Mr Mandela, Dr Luther King, a Roosevelt, a Gandhi. Someone to rouse people above lunacy, tradition, above history. Still, we are not planning to remould the world but to invest in your future. Extraordinary creatures are on the loose, laundering their stacks in Swiss and Cypriot banks. Their rings and counter-rings will soon stretch along the Baltic. The Russians have left vast deposits in Estonian finance houses, which will not be allowed to rot. Much is available to intelligent outsiders like yourself.’
Signalling for liqueurs, seen through tremors of wine and thickly spiced food, he had simian grins. I was marooned in cloudy bubble-wrap, the hubbub swelling, though he was distinct, persuasive as an adept seducer.
‘Erich, I am not, as far as I know, God. I lack the deformity of obsession. I never luxuriate in giving orders but am often compelled by default, by other’s inadequacies. Many, perhaps most, for whom each day threatens emergency, enjoy orders as they do sex or this very passable brandy. Enveloped in the Gestalt, they enjoy the trumpet. A certain freedom exists in slavery. I admit sometimes desiring escape to simplicity, not only to quiet libraries but to graceless brigands. You remember Marinetti? So let them come, the cheerful arsonists with charred fingers. Though he ended licking the Duce’s boots. I am, of course, no arsonist and was horribly bored by Nietzsche’s dictum that great ends justify the most frightful means. My ends are merely to ensure survival, yours and mine. I do not trust other people, remembering the fate of Aristides the Just, exiled not for crimes, vainglory, incompetence but merely from people tiring of hearing him called the Just. Socrates and, I suppose, Christ, certainly Robespierre, though you know more of him than I do, held that crime results from ignorance. Forgive them, Father… though surely a forgery. I have seen no evidence for this. Well-informed extremists share identical psychology, the Stalin–Hitler Pact the most obvious example.’
He was appeasing, inviting trust, though at times his eyes lost clarity, stumbling, doubting my reaction, his face, though granite, showing more cracks.
Squaring shoulders, he was back on the square, cheered by his own orders. ‘Have you recently reread The Brothers Karamazov? One character believes that if two are genuinely righteous the third can never become criminal. Another questionable thesis. The reverse may often, almost inevitably, be true. The third may scupper the others from sheer delight at being different.’
The brandy, doubtless strategically ordered, was further weakening me while I forked into a creamy bombe, multi-layered as the Päts Car Park. Overloaded, I was grateful for a jug of dazzling water, then for black coffee, attempting to rally, realizing he was again talking of myself.
‘Some of your writings came my way.’ The face again tightened, almost to ugliness. ‘You compared the Führer to a mad oboe. Just so.’ He deliberated, withholding full approval. ‘I, too, once contemplated a literary career. In 1915, I saw a gigantic wooden statue of Hindenburg, like a medieval father-figure giant, guarding the Volk. People were paying a mark, for war bonds, to buy a nail to hammer into it. Herr Doktor Freud would have found this confirming one of his central beliefs. For me, it suggested a novel or epic. But, alas…’
He dismissed such folly as he might a delinquent sergeant or deprecate the White Rose. ‘Survival depends on fresh starts. Do not the Gospels teach just this? Now, to return to the Baltic States. There is no reason for you to avoid local politics, which can actually be advantageous. But more than the extravagant finances of the EU will be needed. Estonians are a perverse breed. You will remember their tedious hero, Starkad, always wavering between living in dull, prolonged virtue or dying splendidly, if uselessly, but doing neither. They have consented, with few words and less thought, to our purchasing the Soviet Military Hospital at Narva, at bargain rates. Underworked metals, aluminium, titanium, all await attention. Particular exports will be chemical cerement and textiles. More pointedly, my position in European Pharmaceutical Federation allows me to co-opt anyone I choose.’