‘1917, your best period, there was some wavering in the ranks.’
‘In yours too,’ says Max. ‘Hélène was working in an armaments factory in the valley, she was discreet but well-informed, when Thomas came home she starting talking to people: Zimmerwald, Kienthal, the conferences supporting revolutionary peace, she took part in strikes.’
‘Was she arrested?’
‘Don’t be silly! In France, my dear fellow, you don’t touch the wives of heroes.’
‘They gave her her head?’
‘They took good care of her, but that too is a long story.’
Hans and Max are sitting on two metal chairs, a woman in a dark anthracite uniform appears behind them, they didn’t see her coming, she has a small metal cylinder hanging from her waist, a cylinder with a handle, like the ones bus conductors have, we were just leaving, I can’t help that, two turns of the handle, she holds out two tickets, ten sous please, she moves off in the direction of a small boy who has just sat down and leaps up the moment he spots her, hey you there, the boy runs off.
Max and Hans have stood up, they have walked on for another hour among the flâneurs, the children, the gardeners, they watch the women walking and try to spot feet that might stumble, with her it’s the left one, you lost, it was the right, they never agree, they lingered to watch the chess players, Max took Hans by the arm when he sensed that his friend fancied a game, they went on their way until they came across the croquet players and there it was Hans’s turn to make Max walk on, Max laughed saying that for once I have a temptation which is easy to resist! They passed quite near the cluster of hives just by the gate that opens into the rue d’Assas, bees were still busying around, flashes of brown and gold.
They spoke of the not-too-distant future, for once they would be spending a longer time together, a meeting in the mountains, intellectuals, politicians, artists, economists, scholars, philosophers, neutral ground, an obscure mountain fastness, in Switzerland, Max is to go there for his paper, Hans because he is a member of the ‘Committee for the United States of Europe’, it will take place in six months, right at the beginning of spring.
Max has asked Hans if he’d have time to accompany him to Brussels, I’ve promised a young writer I know that I’d take him, Brussels and Antwerp, we’re doing a tour of the paintings of James Ensor, Skeletons Fighting over a Herring, King Plague, he’s been mad about the artist for ages, he wants to see the originals again, the great Belgian orgy, delicate doesn’t come into it, The Exception Giving the Rule a Kick up the Backside. Do you know Ensor’s work?’
‘Not really. Who’s the young writer?’
‘Shows real promise of becoming a great writer, we met half a dozen years ago, he ducked out of school to write, he’s already knocked about the world a bit, he was in Indochina when I was in the Riff, we used to tell each other about the things we’d seen, he was braver than I was, war reporter, anticolonialist, slap-bang in the middle of Saigon, now he publishes art books, he has already written a novel, it’s a very ambitious novel, East v. West no holds barred, and on the side he publishes short, funny tales, I’ll introduce you and one of these days too I’ll take you too to see Ensor’s paintings, the truth of the century, Christ entering Brussels, terrific, Christ riding a donkey, banners saying ‘Long Live the Social State’, honest wives being groped in the procession, foaming glasses of beer and Jesus, three sheets to the wind, delivering a blessing on the whole shebang.
‘He’s a painter of great character, if you don’t want to buy one of his paintings he takes it off its nail and puts it on the floor, like a mat, he’s also got a gift for turning a brilliant insult, “demolition man with a sucking mouthpart” for instance is not at all bad to describe a critic.
My young writer friend loves it. Ensor also does small drawings from life, the beach at Ostend, men playing croquet on the sand, and girls too, Indian ink, three strokes of a brush, and it’s all there, the nine hoops, the mallet swinging like a pendulum between the legs, and the wind blowing among the players, the air is the hardest to do, did I ever tell you I played croquet with Lyautey? It was in Rabat, at the Residence, two years ago, just before Pétain had Lyautey turfed out of Morocco, look, some people never see anything coming!’
Max shows Hans a young woman sitting on the knee of the young man she’s with, the chair lady comes up, the man laughs.
‘Hang on,’ says Max, ‘just watch.’
Hans and Max stand stock still.
The young woman has stayed sitting on the man’s knee, both of them snigger at the chair lady who goes off and comes back almost immediately with a policeman, the man and woman get to their feet, move off, blast on a whistle, the forefinger of the gendarme points in their direction, the couple turn, freeze, everyone is staring at them, the policeman’s finger bends into a hook, reels them in with an imaginary line, the couple walk back to the policeman who marches them off to one of the police boxes outside the Senate. Max takes Hans by the elbow once more.
‘Amusing, don’t you think? Yes, Ensor also does pastiches of Rembrandt, Doctors Pouffamatus and Transmouffe examining the stools of King Darius after the battle of Gaugamela, to determine if the defeat can be attributed to the disorders of the royal intestine, which is quite an undertaking! The Belgians reckon him to be a great painter, but they can’t control him, the burghers lose sleep over him, he paints a strike and demonstration, he has this man with his skull split open by a rifle butt, people living on a second floor spew their dinner over police underneath, while on the top floor a man with a pig’s head kisses a woman who makes a face, I’m going to take another look at all that with my boy genius, sure you won’t come to Brussels with us?’
Hans has run out of time, at least that’s what he tells Max, what he doesn’t say is that he wants to call in at the Paris office of Cunard, information about transatlantic crossings, perhaps even cross on the Queen Mary from Le Havre to Southampton, just to see what it’s like to stride around the decks thinking of Lena, Hans makes up a story about having to be in Berlin in two days, shall they meet up again at Waltenberg, at the Waldhaus, in March?
Sure, says Max. It’s not that he’s that terribly keen to make the trip to Waltenberg in March, but his boss wants him to go. Max would much rather cover some sporting event, yes, write a novel and report on a sports event, lend his support to the French rugby team which is going through a bad patch, that’s what I need, creativity, play, it would make a change from the Riff and Shanghai, you know what I’ll miss by going to Waltenberg? I’m going to miss the Six Days, I’ll miss the France-Portugal football match, France-England at rugby at the Stade Colombes, and I shall also miss, here Max does a shuffle with his legs, jabs the air with his fists, a child stares at him, Battalina v. Genscher, the world light-heavyweight title fight, because I’m also going to have to report on a session of the council of the League of Nations before travelling up that mountain, I’m quite happy, long live Waltenberg and its yahoos! And meanwhile I shall continue to beaver away at my story set in Savoie, I’ll leave blanks for you to add landscapes and objects.
Max stops, grabs Hans by the sleeve and brings him to a halt, an affectionate look:
‘Hans, wouldn’t you like the both of us to go to America and look for her? Mérien would find me an assignment. You could tell me why you’re afraid to find her, why you’re such a difficult man. What happened up there, all those years ago?’