‘John, we could listen to you for hours, you have such a wonderful flair for economics, but you must excuse us, there is someone Hans and I positively must see.’
‘I haven’t forgotten,’ says Hans, ‘why don’t you come with us, we’re going to see Madame Stirnweiss.’
The Baroness decides this is an excellent idea, they will bear Maynes off with them just as far as the end of the corridor, Stirnweiss will be delighted, but I know for certain that you’ll never dare set foot in Stirnweiss’s suite without your wife, you miserable economic worm, you’d like to but you’re scared of your lady wife, you’d do anything rather than come with us, she repeats the invitation:
‘Come along then, John.’
Again the voice in the corridor, Nun hast du mir, you first made my heart ache, la re re re, she repeats the first bars, the ache, more rubato than ever, but no tremolo, Hans has the impression that the voice at times comes perilously near to a tremolo, you’re not being fair, if there’s a tremolo it’s in your own voice, whereas she is actually singing, she has changed, a stage name, but it’s her, Maynes has disappeared, Hans and the Baroness are just a few steps from the door, Hans asks: ‘How does the end of this corridor relate to the rest of the building? It’s the end of one wing, is that right? The north wing? I seem to recall that the north wing extends outward over a precipice, twenty metres of building projecting over nothing, a crazy idea.’
‘I’ve no idea, Hans, but twenty metres is an exaggeration, it’s all supported on steel girders sunk into the granite, they’re a great deal more solid than the Eiffel Tower, and the views are stunning, it’s not the neatly tended kind of landscape but then we are in the heart of the high Alps after all, young mountains.’
‘I am convinced. Baroness, that these rooms here look out over a void.’
From the start, in the hotel, everything has been going round and round at high speed, ideas, glances, forces, words, around the rooms and through the corridors, out on to the terraces, over the dance floor, down the gravel walks outside, in the rooms, even as far as the village to which you sometimes went down by the only permanent means of access when snow blocked the new road, the cable-railway, with its yellow-and-black cars, forces and rhythms, people don’t talk over aperitifs the way they do in the formal sessions, over drinks or in the lounge it’s speed that counts, words are tossed around to tickle up thoughts, no time is given for thoughts to develop, they’re shot at like guinea-fowl, what we want is the abolition of private property, the communism you’re so fond of means misery all round plus watch-towers, have you seen that photo of Venice on the front page? All the canals frozen solid, that’s crazy, you get watchtowers because of war and wars are caused by you and your steel, in the world weather conference in Prague they’re talking about global cooling, what happened about that colonel who was arrested in London charged with being a crook? A hero in the Great War, an Australian, the times we live in are a disgrace, Europe must get back to the ethnic superiority which made it great, the Neuville system is the key to the way the world will be organised, a system which will be neither capitalist nor socialist.
It will be simply scientific, it’s a crisis of culture, nothing will be achieved without a return to God, if we are to end the current crisis we must invest in public works, the idea of God is the sign of a lazy mind, oppression comes from the state, if the state withers away so will oppression, and meanwhile what are you doing? As certain men talk they eye some young girl who they believe would be ready for anything because she’s wearing long eyelashes, fascism is the absolute form of democracy, others look at the hands of young men, a clash of concepts, never pure concepts, concepts connected with power, money, jobs, red dawns, vested interests, profits, even dedication yields a dividend, it’s when passions are roused that terror enters the fray, a great deal of blood needs to be shed before men return to their habitual indifference, that’s an expression of Édouard’s, a little further off you hear ‘is Spinoza relevant in today’s world?’
Sometimes a quieter group, after dinner, with Maynes again, one of the stars of the Waldhaus, always surrounded by people, a famous book on the economic consequences of the 1919 treaties, catastrophic consequences, he is rich, he defends capitalism, a wily defence, young Lilstein puts this to him ‘communism means the Soviets plus electricity’, to which he replies by quoting Edison’s ‘I’ll make electricity so cheap that only the rich will be able to afford candles’, he told Lilstein this is a game where you’ll always lose.
None of which prevents Maynes from hating gold, the gold standard, received ideas, received values, he is in friendly disagreement with those he calls the neighbourhood bakers of laissez-faire economics, it’s true, they don’t like public expenditure, the creative deficit, they want a market of the pristine kind, the fox to be free in a free chicken-run.
‘Why bakers?’
‘Bakers,’ says Maynes with an amused glance at Lilstein, ‘because they make bread, liberals are always talking about bread, it’s not labour that creates value, you’re hungry you’re willing to pay a hefty price for your first loaf, wonderful golden crust outside, soft inside, warm, but the fuller you get the less you are prepared to pay, so you reach the margin, the marginal usefulness of the loaf,’ continues Maynes, ‘is what defines its value, a relative value, the value which clashes with the usefulness of another commodity, your newspaper for example which until now you have refused to buy because you were thinking of your stomach, now that is what for the bakers constitutes the value of a commodity, it’s a trifle strong but it allows them to express value in equations.’
It’s at this point that Lilstein loses his temper, swindlers’ equations, true value is the work of the producer, that is, of the worker, and one of Van Ryssel’s aides calls him a Bolshevik, equality in slavery. Young Lilstein is clumsy and rude but the ladies love him, a cherub standing one metre ninety in his socks. Do you really think so? Cherub? He’s not so bad, darling, but he’s an overgrown colt, a tall bony colt. Lilstein is very sharp-tongued, categorical, your relative value is a mask for exploitation.
Eventually Maynes takes Lilstein to one side and says:
‘I share a good many of your ideas on the exploitation of workers, but if there is a real intra-social war as happened in Russia, that war will find me on the side of the cultured middle class.’
He pictures himself baring his chest to receive young Lilstein’s bullets or alternatively imagines himself taking aim, this image makes him fall even more deeply in love with the adolescent and he becomes aware that another man is also watching Lilstein, it’s Édouard, he was there, Cadio is watching Edouard.
Édouard is also watching young Tellheim, who is there at the personal invitation of Madame de Valréas, a discreet individual, quiet voice, unhurried gestures, middling height, fleshy, a disciple of Einstein.
Madame de Valréas welcomed him saying my dear Tellheim it’s time my guests learned all about relativity, I loved your articles in The Globe, when you explain it, it all seems so simple, your armoured train, for example, with the guns mounted in the same turret, one facing forward and the other facing the rear, which fire simultaneously at targets the same distance away, have I got that right? And men with stop-watches under each target, Madame de Valréas slows her rate of speech, you see I’ve remembered it all, she puts one finger to the right, the shell fired forwards will take less time to hit the target, the other finger to the left, than the shell fired backwards, it’s amazing, you must also tell us about the lifts, but not this evening, not just before bedtime, it scares me.