Not far away in terms of intervals, but far in terms of tonal systems; so to have a D flat in the signature there must be at least four flats, in the key of D minor there’s only one flat, here B flat minor, ears disoriented, embryonic cadence on the fifth, and this D flat is resolved only in the C which follows, for the voice this resolution is achieved after the piano, the cadence will not end, I’m lost, Lena, I want you to tell me what you were doing standing pressed against the wall that day, they are in a car driving up to a village in Haute-Savoie, I was loosening up the small of my back, Max, by straightening my spine I was loosening the small of my back, it’s crucial if you want ringing, free-flowing high notes, to express unhappiness, the lounge in the Waldhaus.
Previously, the other songs, Stirnweiss, altogether more lively, the ring, the wedding, the child, and the last Lied for Lena, my first pain, a break with the whole cycle.
Then she sang, another tempo begins, in the cycle and for the public, something is happening, she had begun at the limits of recitative, neither tune nor melody, diction foregrounded, in advance of the melodic line, then the D flat, leer, and for the voice the resolution comes after the piano, a tension, friction of a half-tone, delay in the resolution of the note, for the voice the descent from D flat to C occurs only on the second quaver of the fourth beat, whereas on the piano it occurs on the third, a very powerful dissonance, and that’s what music is.
She sang, leaving her soul where she stood, with the dross of the world, none of the emotions they had been prepared to feel, it was cold, not cold exactly, the song brought you face to face with death, said plainly I’m not here to spoon-feed you emotion, to hold your emotion by the hand, they had simply been confronted by a song of death, all the work was left for them to do.
The purpose of music is not to redeem the life you live so badly.
Max hasn’t answered de Vèze, and de Vèze has respected his silence, then he pointed out divers landscapes for Max to admire. In the distance, in the gathering autumnal gloom, they made out Strasbourg cathedral. They flew on, following the course of the river. At one point, de Vèze got excited:
‘Look, magnificent!’
He gestured to the right bank of the Rhine.
‘Not allowed to go anywhere near.’
Max couldn’t see anything.
‘Look, on the bank of the canal, that big construction site, soon two revolutionary hyperboles, two pure forms reaching heavenward, exuding water vapour. Matter in the service of two revolutionary hyperboles, coming soon. Two towers, each almost a hundred metres tall. Not allowed to go anywhere near them. They’ll emit billions of droplets and people have the gall to say that they’ll be a blot on the landscape, I wouldn’t exchange them for all the cathedrals built during their wars of religion!’
‘Is that Fessenheim?’
‘Yes, they’ve begun work on the site, designed to produce nine hundred megawatts.’
‘Then I fear I must disappoint you, Ambassador, there won’t be any cooling towers, the Rhine will do the cooling, old Vater Rhein. River-cooled nuclear, no hyperboles there!’
De Vèze has sulked for a few minutes, Max asks him to tell him about his meeting with Hans in Geneva.
‘You knew?’
‘I always do.’
‘Kappler was on top form. We went out on the lake in a boat.’
‘Did he give you the Winterthur turbine routine?’
Hans had shown de Vèze the boat’s splendid mechanism; they’d also managed to see Coppet, the tall willows, Hans had perked up, he’d talked about the tomb of Madame de Staël and especially about the pages in which Chateaubriand evokes the soul of his dead fellow toiler.
‘Oh yes, Max, Hans greatly admired those pages, the thought of Chateaubriand, devout Catholic, showing the soul of Madame de Staël the way to Paradise via Byron, Voltaire and Rousseau! Sound values, but enough to ensure she was refused admittance for all eternity!’
‘Kappler was very fond of the grotesque side of the Mémoires.’
‘I think, my dear Ambassador, that he thought of Chateaubriand as essentially a sylph, anyone who could write a book like that while dreaming of a creature of cloud reassured him, justified the unproductive hours.’
Walker failed to get authorisation to force de Vèze’s plane to land.
Next day, in the CIA Boeing which was flying him back to Washington, he cursed Europe one or twice then reviewed the situation with Garrick, his deputy:
‘We’re not even sure Goffard’s the goddam French mole or even the guy who acts as decoy.’
Garrick asked him if Lena Hellström had come up with anything at the beginning of the year and Walker answered quietly:
‘She died before she could find out anything at all, it’s an irreparable loss.’
Chapter 13. 1991, Is Reason Historical?
In which Lilstein finds himself once more in a trap and we discover the identity of the mole.
In which a young bookseller’s assistant keeps an eye on her customers while attempting to answer a philosophical question.
In which Lilstein realises that The Adventures of Gédéon is a most instructive book.
In which we also learn how the story of the bear ends.
If reason ruled the world, nothing would ever happen.
Paris, Passage Marceau, September 1991
It’s very quiet, the untroubled quiet of bookshops, there is a young woman at the cash desk, dark auburn hair, square face, dark eyes, slightly turned-up nose, she has glanced up at Lilstein then looked back down at her notes.
Lilstein’s Paris friend is already there, beige overcoat, he nods a greeting but does not come over to him, never act as if you didn’t know each other, when people know each other it’s always obvious, it’s barely noticeable but no one is ever taken in, we’ll behave as if we already knew each other vaguely, young gentleman of France, a nod of the head, a gesture of the hand, whichever, we know each other but each refrains from bothering the other, it gives an opportunity to scout out the terrain, assess the atmosphere.
Lilstein is perusing a large illustrated volume, my young friend assured me there was no risk, but I’m not too keen, a passageway debouching into the Grands Boulevards, block up both ends and you’ve got a trap, they locate me in the bookshop and they pick me up at one of the exits from the passage, a car waiting at each end, an effective trap, it’s what I’d have done myself, I’m making too much of this, everything’s quiet enough, that beige coat is new, he didn’t have it last year, makes him look younger, these illustrated books are rather entertaining, a collection of drawings, rabbits, three rabbits and a duck, the edge of a wood, Sunnyside Woods, the duck has one thought and one thought only: ‘to protect the weak against the strong, no more and no less’.
Lilstein turns the pages of the book, lingers over the drawings, a story about a duck and some rabbits, I too was a duck, the strong, the weak, a decent enough aim. Escorted by the rabbits the duck does the rounds of the animals in the woods, ‘I will take you to a place of delights, the best paradise of all’, that yellow is just right for the duck, not yellow, ochre, light ochre, I like ochre, the colour of completed things, when the redundant shine has been rubbed off them, someone said that to me one day, the village has tiled roofs, a sort of rusty red, and the grass in full sunlight, the dream of people from northern climes, the duck looks out of the side of his eyes the way sweet-talkers do, ‘you will be rid of your most implacable enemies’, the animals listen to him.