‘To start with, the figures for their real losses, undoctored, you’ll see, or rather it’s your friend the Minister who’ll see, so funny the expression on the face of an American Secretary of State when you toss the real figures at him, maybe he doesn’t have them, perhaps he needs people like you to get the figures which his boss has given orders to be withheld from him, but you’ll have them, it will be assumed that you’ve estimated them, I’ll tell you how, a great commentator on international affairs, they need only give you your head, you will become an acute political analyst, your friend the Minister is already extremely taken with you.
‘I want you to have the freedom to think,’ Lilstein had told you, ‘I want you to bring me contradiction, the freedom of a man who thinks differently, you’ll be free, and you will convince, your friend the Minister will shine in Cabinet meetings in front of de Gaulle, and you will help me to be convincing in my meetings, I’m also on the side of the hawks, but I’m not shrill, I’m no warmonger, and the information I give is the kind that makes a majority of the Central Committee think that the enemy isn’t as strong as all that, so that we don’t need to tighten the screws too much.’
*
‘You still haven’t told us what a Pied-Nickelés-type canticle is, Monsieur Goffard,’ the young woman said.
‘The discordant canticle,’ replies Max, ‘it occurs just before the death of Kyo, “he would have fought”, but I don’t fight, to get out of Shanghai I sling a matelot’s broom over my shoulder, I stow away on board a fine ship, O memory! and my favourite author makes me tell a canticle story to a passenger who happens to be lurking nearby, it’s set in South America, about how the bishop’s flock learns a canticle of praise in readiness for his visit, six months of rehearsals in the open air, and the great day arrives, my flock line up in front of the mission, under the lofty trees, it’s just like here, only less planned, not an English garden-style jungle planted with lots of different species, “one, two three” says the missionary who is leading the choir, and the flock are so tense, so nervous that no sound issues from their mouths, not a peep, but notwithstanding the hymn of praise still soars miraculously, old man, a miracle!’
And Malraux, imitating the voice of Clappique, something between Mr Punch and Scapin:
‘A miracle!’
Malraux with a Clappique-like gesture, hands extended to the young woman, palms out, fingers spread very wide:
‘A miracle!’
It suddenly dawns on de Vèze that Max’s outrageous behaviour is a caricature of Malraux’s, it always was, so much so that Clappique plays Malraux and Malraux plays a caricature of himself, as if he were a clown in a hilarious film where the images are even jerkier than the clown’s gags, Malraux roars with laughter:
‘A miracle! and all because over those six months the parrots in the trees had plenty of time to learn the words!’
‘You’re spoiling it for him,’ the young woman said with a nod in de Vèze’s direction.
She thinks him rather handsome, he was a hero once, he is very careful about what he eats, says no to bread though he helps himself to more mayonnaise, but eventually stretches out one hand for a crust, without looking at his hand, he’s probably a bit fat in the wrong places and doesn’t like being looked at when he’s undressing; he’d be a good man to have in a tight corner, what would he do in the grass, in the clearing, when the gamekeeper turns up and tells us to hop it? And me, lying face down on a towel and I can’t get up because I’ve taken my bra off to sunbathe, and the gamekeeper refuses to go away until we’re both on our feet, this happens on the banks of the Rhine, it’s warm and humid, the sap drips from the leaves.
De Veze’s mind is elsewhere, he watches the young woman, thinks about the way she recites, steady voice, precise, as the dusk settles, when the colours fade from things, removes their mask. He turns to Malraux:
‘I really liked the death of Kyo, but now the canticle turns out to be a psittacism.’
‘If you want drama, you still have the gift of the cyanide and the death of Katow,’ the young woman said to de Vèze.
De Vèze does not answer, the young woman’s backside, he is sorry now that he hadn’t tried to get a good look at it before sitting down to dinner, he’d seen her legs, and all this time he’s forgotten all about her backside, you’re getting old, not legs from some hard-boiled crime novel, but neatly turned ankles, instep strongly arched, black shoes, heel just the right height, all that is now under the table, legs not too long but not coarse, given a little tenderness you could live with those legs. Immediately de Vèze regrets the turn of phrase, it undermines the kind of feelings he would like to have for her, rediscover the urge he’d had to kiss her breasts, your sex-drive does rather come and go, a woman had told him not so long ago, buttocks, they’d ideally be firm but yielding, he is surprised to hear himself say winsome.
Max, raising his voice:
‘Cyanide, cyanide, there’s more to life than cyanide!’
‘But it’s the high point of the whole novel,’ says the grey diplomat, ‘Katow who decides not to take his cyanide and offers it to two young men, both condemned to death, who are afraid of being fed to the boiler.’
The grey diplomat shuts up, swallows a mouthful of camembert, he is very fond of this scene where the young man who has been sentenced to death shakes Katow’s hand, young men, well-built, disoriented, take your hand in theirs, and at last a spark of humanity passes between men, it’s something very different from male squalidness, packs of males, and worst of all, those middle-class kids aping working-class violence, by the sea, when they’d hauled him out of the water, at Nice, after they’d pulled his swimming-trunks off, ‘let the air get to it’, with girls watching, one half of the boys chanted: ‘Xav-i-er, new-boy, poof!’ while the other half mimicked a choir of virgins, ‘he don’t use it, he can’t use it!’, they’d tied a little ribbon round it, and instead of handing out punishments the grown-ups in charge just laughed, and during his national service it was even worse, initiation rites, the only thing those swine deserved was a good thrashing, the grey diplomat adds:
‘That handshake is very fine.’
Ah! He’s waking up! de Vèze doesn’t like friend Poirgade, charcoal grey, uses big words, podgy, weasel-faced, moustache and small beard fringing his mouth, like a monkey’s arse, inquisitive, a pillow-biter, expert in strategy or not, well-connected or not, he can’t stand him, a straight look to make sure he’s got the message. Why does the Consul fuss over him so much?
‘A compelling display of charity,’ says the pink diplomat.
Well, you obviously find it more exciting than swishing your houseboys with a cane, thinks de Vèze, who can’t remember the name of the hep cat in the pink shirt.
‘Men, their death throes, charity which is all transcending, it’s magnificent, pure Pascal,’ says the grey diplomat holding de Vèze’s gaze.
‘It’s exactly what they tell Boy Scouts round camp fires or in tents,’ replies Max with his eyes fixed on the grey diplomat, ‘away with you, death throes and charity my foot!’
Silence around the table, Max makes no effort to break it, gobbets of lung tissue, they have another game, Monsieur Goffard, with white beans and black beans, the agent for Native Affairs had said, it’s played in the souk, while the women and the old men are selling or bartering, the kids play with beans or small stones, I’ll explain later, but now we have to go, I don’t like being here, I don’t like it, it’s orders, it’s HQ that decides, they say the bombing is strategic, the Spaniards do a lot worse, they look at photos of dead or wounded comrades, then they get in their planes and give it all they’ve got, they forget everything, Pétain and Franco say it’s strategic.