No, Madame Cramilly doesn’t have conversations with the papyrus, she just talks to it, while she waters it, yes, she has also arranged for a watering-can to be sent via the diplomatic bag, with a proper permit naturally, you know, in Moscow, watering-cans are poor quality, they weigh a ton and shoot water in heavy showers which leave holes in the soil and wash the best of it to the bottom, she talks to the papyrus so that it feels good, papyruses are social plants, all the encyclopaedias, all the specialist books on botany say so, and Madame Cramilly has read them all, at least all the chapters devoted to the papyrus, they are social plants, and when you force a papyrus to live in isolation, like the one on the second floor of the Embassy, you have to make it feel that it’s not alone, that someone’s looking out for it, which is why you’ve got to talk to it.
In her dealings with the papyrus, Madame Cramilly does the talking and has always been happy to do the talking, the rest of it, the stories about her having conversations with it, all the guff about Madame Cramilly actually imagining that a papyrus can answer her back, well, it’s slander spread by Mademoiselle Legeais and her clan, they want to make Madame Cramilly look mad, but if they carry on like that it won’t ever happen, everyone knows that papyruses can’t talk, the papyrus has never once thanked Madame Cramilly for her kind words, no, Madame Cramilly is thanked by vibrations, the ones she hears of an evening at home, through the walls, they thank her for talking to the papyrus and taking care of it.
At first, Madame Cramilly hadn’t believed in the vibrations, only in her own voice, and then one day she had made an astral contact when she was with some Muscovite friends, the Kipreievs, a lovely couple, both elderly, Madame Kipreiev was very fond of Madame Cramilly, they used to invite her round with a few of their friends, retired people, Madame Cramilly asked for authorisation to accept, séances are very entertaining, one evening, a series of rappings, a spirit came to the Kipreievs’ table, it thanked Madame Cramilly several times but without saying for what.
It was not until six months later, in another round-table séance that the spirit had mentioned the papyrus, and the same spirit came back on another occasion, thanking her again, yes, quiet evenings, a small parlour, a mahogany table and a samovar placed not on the table but on a low chest behind the lady of the house, a most comforting samovar, deliciously pot-bellied, on the table was an embroidered cloth, little cakes still warm when Madame Kipreiev handed them round, aniseed cakes, very nice people who still remembered to hold their cakes over their cups before crumbling them.
Then Madame Kipreiev died, her husband became very depressed, no more evenings, no more rapping, no more spirits, Madame Cramilly continued to talk to the papyrus, she talked to it about the séances she had attended, about the spirit who had spoken to her on its behalf, and about her Moscow friends she now saw no more.
Then one day, not in her office but at home, Madame Cramilly thought she heard the echo of a voice, no rapping this time, not a spirit, a real voice, or an echo, then nothing, and two months later the voice returned, passing as a vibration through the walls of Madame Cramilly’s flat, a clear voice this time, again it spoke of the papyrus and thanked Madame Cramilly, it was a vibration, and the vibration told her many other things. But now, with all this fuss in the Embassy, with all these questions, Madame Cramilly does not dare say anything, she doesn’t even dare walk up to the second floor to speak to her papyrus as she used to, discreetly, but even so, remember, some people still poked gentle fun:
‘And how’s the papyrus today, Madame Cramilly? You know, we water it too, regularly.’
‘Ah, how kind. But it’s not enough, you know.’
‘How do you mean?’
‘Well, last week, I couldn’t understand it, it was swimming in water, plenty of light, all it needed to thrive, the watering rota is fine, very well organised, but last week it started to droop, looked limp and drab, though it was swimming in water, but I spoke to it for longer than usual, the flowers perked up, it must have been depressed, papyruses must get depressed too, I’m like you, I find it hard to believe, but can you see any other explanation when everything is as it should be, water, the rota, and the papyrus starts to wither, then I talk to it and its lovely flowers brighten up again?’
Anyway until Berthier arrived, the papyrus had flourished, thanks to the watering rota in which all departments participated, plus Madame Cramilly’s little chats, but now Madame Cramilly has lost heart, she no longer talks to the papyrus on the second floor, she doesn’t dare walk up the stairs to water it, and no one does it in her stead, and certainly not Berthier, so with each passing day the papyrus is an increasingly sorry sight, and people have stopped speaking to each other, you know human beings, they have to talk, even Madame Cramilly, she even feels like talking to Berthier who is preventing people from talking to each other, if she talks to him, he’ll go away and she can get back to normal and start talking to her papyrus again.
*
Lilstein has aged, we all get older, but for such a long time now you have thought of him as impervious to change, those clear eyes, the pale skin, he is tall, he used to hold himself very straight. Today, in your room at the Waldhaus, he slumps, there is less of him above the table, his shoulders have dropped, his eyes are dull, and he snaps:
‘We no longer serve a useful purpose, young gentleman of France, our trade has become a melancholy one.’
Lilstein’s hands dither, uncertain of what gestures to make, he syllogises, he rewrites history, he goes back ten years, he wants so much to be wrong, he struggles with a morsel of tart which refuses to be cut up with his small spoon, he gives up, points the spoon at you and says:
‘Ten years ago, we fought against a stupid war in Vietnam, against the hawks who waved the star-spangled banner, it was a fine thing to do, and today in my camp there are fools waving the red flag who’d also love to have a war, one of their own, in the east, they’re not proper soldiers or real politicians or even genuine fools.
‘Shakespeare’s fools have bells and a cap like a cock’s crest, but there’s great sense in their folly, they say “if you do not smile the way the wind blows you’ll soon catch cold” or “let go when the great wheel rolls down the hill lest it break your neck”.
‘My fools are cretinous apparatchiks, high-hat Russians, Marxists who are still not done with the faith, holy writ, orthodoxy, they want to play at war, a real war, in some small country, far away, to close up the ranks and revive the faith, and in my part of the world, East Berlin as you call it, there are other cretins who give their backing to the dim comrades in Moscow, patriotic faith dressed up as a “proletarian intervention”, imagine, one of them had the nerve to tell me that “proletarian intervention” is a “scientifically sacred” task, I’m still reeling with the shock of it, the same mistake as the Americans made, squared.’