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« on: July 07, 2024, 11:04:16 am » |
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GOING one day to consult the precedents at the chancellery, Georges found nobody there. Seeing some reference books on a shelf he picked up one and opened it. The margin of the page was covered with drawings. And what drawings! Swooning women, monstrous couples, rutting animals. Georges came into this room every day, but he had never thought of examining the books and he had not been able to see these scribblings. The Petite Larousse, which was lying open, had a drawing of the same kind opposite the word Chat. Georges looked through this dictionary, which was the Littré of the chancellery. The infernal pen had illustrated all the words which lent themselves to equivocal uses: grand, gros, petit . . . and all these illustrations had been done with so fine a point that one would have taken them for the work of a Japanese miniaturist. After seeing such work one would no longer dare to pronounce or write a single word.
Georges’s first impulse was to go and tell Redouté about his discovery. But he thought that perhaps Redouté would be too serious a person to share it with. The ideal person would be the colonel.
Both the promise he had made, and his own prudence, prevented Georges from asking the colonel for any explanation of what his ward had said to Francoise. But if the thing were to get back to him from another source, he would act differently. In the meantime, he realized, he ought to be grateful to the colonel for the effect his remarks had produced on Francoise.
The colonel was busy rubber-stamping the backs of some photographs. He showed them to his visitor: they were of sailors and evzones.
“Those are my secret agents,” he said.
“You diplomats,” he went on. “How do you get your information? From other diplomats, who make it their business never to tell the truth; from the newspapers, which publish any old thing; and from the correspondent of the Havas Agency, who gets a little rake-off for bringing news to you before he sends it by wire. It’s not very brilliant, is it?
“You cannot win peace, any more than you can win a battle, without a good information service. Napoleon lost the battle of Waterloo because the inn-keeper who was guiding him forgot to point out the sunken road at Ohain. Von Kluck lost the battle of the Marne because he gave a premature order of retreat on the strength of a faulty appreciation of the strength of our defence. Venizelos’s coup d' état failed because the telephone line to the Lycabettus battery, which the conspirators had cut, was repaired without their knowledge, and so at the first attempt of the fleet, the alert could be given to the garrison of the capital.”
The colonel put his photographs in an envelope, rose, took a bunch of keys out of his pocket, opened his safe, and put the precious collection in. He slammed the steel door: his secret agents were well guarded.
“As a relief from serious matters,” he said, “I have done some little drawings, on which I’d very much like your opinion.”
He took from a drawer some cards illustrated with pictures of the various Greek uniforms, with a legend underneath each.
“The Greek army is missing from my collection of lead soldiers. I have made these sketches, with all the details, and I shall have the figures cast in Paris. It’s only in France that you can find people who can do that work properly.”
Georges lingered long over the illustration of the evzones, thinking thus to ingratiate himself with the colonel.
“You can see,” said the colonel, “that, contrary to the belief of simple folk, the evzones do wear drawers.”
He planted himself in his arm-chair in his familiar attitude.
“But you didn’t come here to talk about all that. What brings you, eh?”
“Drawings, as a matter of fact,” said Georges. And he told the colonel what he had found.
“Well, well,” said the colonel, “so you didn’t know the Embassy’s Petite Larousse? It’s the work of a former clerk who left the Embassy some years ago; probably he’s now in an asylum. But I should be ashamed of speaking ill of a war victim, with a plate in his skull and a useless right hand. Just think what he would be if he had the use of both hands! Happily, his aberrations were restricted to graphic form. Mostly he was quite normal, but when his drawing mania was on him, he sowed phalluses even over the dispatches: a full-stop, a comma, a dash, or an acute, grave, or circumflex accent, instantly became a phallus.”
“He should have been cipher clerk to the French Regent, who used obscene words for his code.”
“Failing that, he was formerly cipher clerk in Washington. He had a grievance against his chief, so to get his own back he ciphered these words, above the signature of a telegram: ‘The buffoon who represents France in Washington’. Of course he was recalled. But he escaped the sack, being a disabled ex-serviceman, and vegetated in Paris for a while till M. Laurent took pity on his affliction and bore him off to Athens. What with the former clerk and the former secretary, the Embassy was well fitted out. In my report in favour of the suppression of ambassadors, there is a chapter of great general interest concerning erotic mania among diplomats.”
This expression set Georges laughing.
“You may laugh, young man! But I know what I’m talking about. Just lately, Giletière showed me, in strict confidence, a little bronze head found at Delos, which has a phallus stuck on to the occiput and another on the sinciput. ‘It’s a diplomat!’ I cried. ‘No,’ said our learned director, ‘it is an erotomaniac’.”
“Oh, come,” protested Georges. “I don’t feel these protuberances growing on my skull, nor do I see them growing on the Ambassador, nor on Redouté.”
“Nor could they actually be seen on the last secretary’s skull, either. The profession files them down and they grow inwards, instead. We may admit that in certain cases they atrophy. That is how we get those languid, precious, mincing, ‘repressed’ diplomats, or the other kind, the gruff and silent ones, who are always dying to go walking at night in the Allée de la Longue-Queue in the Bois de Boulogne, or in the corresponding parts of Hyde Park, Unter den Linden, the Pincio, or the Zappeion.”
“Perhaps it’s better that diplomats should go walking elsewhere.”
“No; that is not so desirable. When erotic mania is suppressed in them, it breaks out in their wives.”
“But you must admit there’s no sign of it in Mme. Laurent.”
“You may consider yourself lucky that our Ambassador’s wife is a quiet type. Your unfortunate colleague at ---- has a very different row to hoe, as I have just heard in the latest Bag. His ambassador’s wife has fallen madly, but insanely, in love with him. As he was not interested, she pursued him right into his office, throwing herself at his feet and threatening suicide. Lately, in the salon of the Embassy, she was entertaining some ladies and regaling them with stories of the cruelty of the young diplomat. Then she opened her handbag and took out her knickers, saying, ‘You see, I’m all ready for the moment when he decides to take the plunge’.”
“I think you’re entitled to the credit for that story.”
“You'll believe me when you see that your colleague has asked to be recalled. The Quai d’Orsay would do better to recall the ambassador. But they didn’t recall X, when his wife threw herself out of one of the Embassy windows after hearing of the marriage of the lover who was betraying her, nor did they recall Y, whose wife claims she has the most beautiful navel in the Service and invites all comers to inspect it.”
“Are you quite sure that there is not some tincture of erotomania in the imaginations of military attachés who circulate such tales?”
“God forbid! Unfortunately the testimony of a bookseller at the Palais-Royal is conclusive. It proves that the majority of pornographic manuscripts which he has copied for his clients come from Government departments---except one department, mark you, the Ministry of War. Our emotions are at the service of our country; those of the Quai d’Orsay, I’m sorry to have to tell you, are at the service of the Palais-Royal.”
“But even if all that is true, it does not belittle in any way the merits of these officials and the services which they perform. I need not give you the list of great generals whose dossier is to be found in the moral police department of history.”
“Great men have their own moral codes, which it is not our business to discuss. But ministries do not produce great men, and we are talking about ministries. I laugh in my beard when I walk along the railings which protect from vulgar contact the palace which Napoleon III provided for your Ministers, or when I pass the lofty facade which shelters your offices on the Esplanade des Invalides. Have you ever noticed that, whereas passers-by practically never look at the other ministries, they nearly always look at the Foreign Ministry? They imagine it is busy with grandiose plans for preventing war and maintaining peace. Yes, I laugh in my beard, I do, when I think of these more or less marble halls full of people like the former secretary and former cipher clerk hard at it.”
Georges protested: “I spent two years in the offices and corridors of the Quai d’Orsay, and I never saw anything like what you are able to see through the walls.”
“You’d have me believe that you live in blinkers. Must you be one of those people who never see anything anywhere? Just as in schools, there are masters, and even some pupils, who see nobody around them but little saints.”
“Perhaps that is better for everybody.”
“Haven't you observed that there are women at the Quai d’Orsay?”
“I do know that some of our typists have entered the Service by way of marriage and that those in the Secretariat-General are often very influential.”
“But how many others are merely your victims! It is true that when they make a fuss they are paid hush-money out of the secret funds. I’m very fond of the ritual formula which for a long time covered this class of payments: ‘To cover labour in handling filing-cabinets.’ I am well aware that you have nearly a hundred thousand filing-cabinets in the Foreign Ministry, but the typists do not shift this enormous mass of material about every day.”
“Your account of the morals of the Quai d’Orsay is about as accurate as those of the pamphleteers who denounced the morals of the court of France without ever setting foot inside Versailles.”
“Pardon me! I have seen the memorandum of a complaint which the Sureté lodged about one of the love affairs of ---- who ruled for years over your establishment. I have seen it because he is no longer there to have it destroyed as he destroyed the dossiers of the other scandals he was involved in when he was in office. It was about one of his former mistresses who had been convicted of espionage. The inquiry revealed that he had given her historic documents abstracted from the ministerial archives, among others von Schoen’s letter announcing the declaration of war in August 1914. So you see that the General Staff has good reason to be wary of the Quai d’Orsay.”
“I should say rather that diplomats should beware of military attachés.”
“The Quai d’Orsay set up a commission to inquire into the origins of the Great War: I doubt if it took account of a case of mania which, even if it was not erotic, had the gravest consequences. On the eve of the war, the French Minister in Belgrade went mad: he didn’t reply to telegrams, refused to allow the cipher tables to be used, and sat on them, flourishing a revolver.”
“Clearly, we must substitute this for the Serajevo assassination as a cause of the World War.”
“What worries me about the next war---which is just round the corner---is that the direction of French diplomacy is in the hands of a man who is afflicted with another kind of mania: poetic mania.”
“What it boils down to is that you won’t allow diplomats to make verses or to make love, either.”
“I only reproach them for making the soldiers bear the consequences of their follies and their blunders. Defeated soldiers are loaded with obloquy, but the diplomats are always winners. We are supposed to need them to patch up all the damage they have caused.”
As though in reply to Mme. Laurent’s eulogy of the title of ambassador, the colonel concluded:
“When I listen to society people babbling the words, ‘Monsieur l'Ambassadeur, I seem to hear something quite different:
‘The gun-butts rapping on the floor.’
But, alas, though some ambassadors have been arrested, imprisoned, or murdered, not one has ever been executed. I demand that M. Laurent be shot, because I know very well that he never will be shot.”
+++
Once again, Roland Redouté was groaning: the liner Guillaume Budé was making a cruise to Athens. There were to be two French cruises to Greece that year: one, smart and fashionable, distinguished by pretty women and witty men, was organized by the Greeks and chaperoned by Bedel; the other, shabby and boring, consisted mostly of intellectuals or those who claimed to be such. The first, which came in the spring, was entertained by the Ambassador; the second arrived in the dog-days and was taken care of by the chargé d’affaires. He considered it the heaviest burden that he had to bear as French representative, though it involved giving only one reception of the Fourteenth of July type. This year, to add to his misery, he had been told that a famous academician was arriving under the banner of Hellenism.
“An academician! That puts the lid on it! It means a lunch-party: a whole week’s expense allowance!”
“You're exaggerating,” said Georges. “Surely an academician hasn’t all that appetite?”
“But I shall have to invite a dozen people to meet him. You can’t give just anything to that kind of guest. They have to have an audience, to hold court. A diplomat’s idea of his own importance is nothing beside that of a man of letters. We are proud of our caste, whereas he is proud of himself. If he’s famous, he thinks the eyes of the universe are upon him. If he’s not, he parades the pretensions of unrecognized genius and is only the more touchy. They’re a terrible bunch!”
In a loud voice the chargé d’affaires re-read the last sentences of the dispatch which had just arrived:
“I am to inform you that M. André H----, Member of the Académie Goncourt, is taking part in the cruise, and that this eminent writer has offered to give a lecture under the auspices of the Franco-Hellenic League. I shall be obliged if you will do everything in your power to facilitate this project, which can only enhance our prestige in the capital of Greece. And it’s signed Léger.”
The soothing and bureaucratic formula, “I shall be obliged”, was, in fact, an order, as Redouté very well knew. It was equivalent to the phrase used in the First Republic: “Citizen, I beg you, and in so far as need may be, I require you. . . .”
“What jargon!” said Redouté. “ ‘M. André H---- has offered to give a lecture’! You’d think he was going to give us his blood, or his life, or at least a dinner. A dinner? Heaven forbid! But he wants to give us the one thing we didn’t ask him. I see the way the Quai d’Orsay works. Marx made Léger sign it himself, to flatter his taste for literature, so that he will have the feeling of patronizing the Académie Francaise, as though he were the Cardinal de Richelieu. And Léger, who I’m quite sure thinks nothing of André H----, signs with a grand flourish as though he were sending us Corneille.”
To pour oil on the troubled waters, Georges pointed out that this event, though it might be devoid of literary, was of political interest. The Left-wing Government in France did not prevent the Ministry from patronizing a Right-wing writer. This gesture would be appreciated by the Greeks, who did not like the Popular Front, and Léger’s recommendation was an act of high diplomacy.
Redouté’s frown disappeared, but not as a result of Georges’s remarks.
“We are saved! They have forgotten that it is quite impossible to give lectures in Athens in August.”
He was delighted at escaping from this additional burden and was happy enough to shoulder that of the luncheon-party. Nevertheless, for form’s sake, he notified the president of the League: thus, when replying to the Ministry he would be able to lean on an opinion which he knew would be the same as his own.
He was not mistaken: the president was surprised that, contrary to custom, the Quai d’Orsay had not taken the advice of the Embassy (that is to say, that of the League) before arranging for anyone to speak under their auspices. He thought that the choice of lecturer made the omission all the more unfortunate. In any case, no matter who the lecturer might be, the business was settled in advance because the League’s hall was closed the whole summer.
But the chargé d’affaires and the president had reckoned without their guest. The colonel, who knew all about it, came to ask, haughtily, by what right they presumed to prevent André H---- from delivering a lecture in Athens.
“For once,” he said, “we have a moral writer available. Are we not to profit by this? An academician, a Commander of the Legion of Honour: what could be better for prestige?”
“I did not know that military attachés were interested in André H----,” said Redouté.
“Military attachés are interested in everything which serves the idea of France as a sober and honourable country.”
To the practical objections urged, he retorted that there was a room available, in the French School, and that the evening would be comfortably cool. With an ill grace the chargé d’affaires gave in. The president of the League protested that his funds were exhausted. He recalled that last season’s lecturers had milked the sacred cow pretty exhaustively: one of them had considered his wife as invited in her own right; another had indented for books, flowers, aperitifs, and the tips he had given, even the very stamps and post-cards; another, less expensive, but more sordid, had indented for shoe repairs. The colonel replied that if M. André H----’s shoes were in bad repair, M. Giletière and himself would compete for the honour of having them repaired, and that if the Quai d’Orsay was not rich enough to pay for the lecture, the expenses would be borne by the departments of Education and of War.
“Gentlemen,” he concluded, “be reassured; it will cost you nothing to hear André H----”
“Actually,” replied Redouté, “we would have paid quite a lot not to have to.”
+++
There was a large gathering at the School. The gardens were illuminated and the plaster statues looked as though they were marble. On the staircase the Giletières were dancing attendance on André H----. The academician was examining Mme. Giletiére’s medals; as always on grand occasions, she was arrayed in her uniform. He lingered over the Dardanelles medal, which is not often seen on a woman’s chest.
A platform, adorned with the tricolour flag, had been erected in the great hall. The director, the colonel, and Redouté installed themselves on it. All three were smiling: M. Giletière because he was playing the part of ambassador; Redouté because he was saving so much money; the colonel because he was asserting the supremacy of the sword.
Finally, André H---- climbed on to the platform and his melodious voice was heard: “Ladies and gentlemen. . . .”
First words, first blunder, thought Georges: the illustrious academician had forgotten that he had in front of him the head of the Government, the King’s representative, and a whole floorful of ministers and ambassadors. Did he think he was talking in a parish guild or a town hall? Even so, he should have said “Reverend Father . . .” or “Mr. Mayor.”
“It is a long time, my friends of Athens, since I last saw you,” he went on, “a very long time, indeed, because it was during the Balkan wars. I was then a correspondent for a newspaper. Just before I embarked I remembered that, and I thought it would be a good idea to look out the note-books which I kept at the time, and which I have published only in part. It seemed to me that what I wrote in them, though long ago, would have a freshness which might appeal to you. It will recall a past now happily distant, and show you, I hope, that our friendship is not a recent growth.”
This time the blunder looked like being a diplomatic incident. To talk here about the wars which had ravaged the Balkans was to talk about ropes in the hanged man’s house. It was all the more ill-timed, in that six months earlier Greece had been celebrating the anniversary of the Balkan Pact, to which Turkey was a party. André H---- had never stopped to think that Greece might have other friends besides himself. Georges was sorry for the unfortunate Redouté, who had ceased to smile and was looking anxiously at the front rows of the audience. Neither the military attaché nor the director had yet woken from the trance into which the enchanting voice of the speaker seemed to have thrown them.
The latter had opened a brief-case, from which he took some note-books. He put them on the table and announced the title in a loud voice: “War Note-books.” The colonel became still more ecstatic, and abandoned himself to the music of the words “War Note-books”. So charmed was he by them that he did not think to reflect upon their meaning. M. Giletière, who was paying a little more attention to the audience, noted with slight surprise a certain restlessness among them. As for the chargé d’affaires, he could only look at the ceiling.
The lecturer shuffled his terrifying note-books. It was obvious that he had not prepared his lecture, and one might well have asked why he ever wanted to give it. He went on shuffling, and from time to time announced the title of a series of notes, then began to read, only to stop after a few sentences. “No,” he would say, “that is not interesting enough,” or, “I have already published this part.” And then he would go on shuffling. “Ah!” he said at last, “here is a chapter which will make your blood run cold, and has the advantage of being completely unpublished. The Bulgarian and Turkish Atrocities.”
This was the climax. The Prime Minister and one of his Cabinet exchanged glances. Doubtless they were wondering whether André H----’s war note-books were on the point of starting another Balkan war. But worse was to happen. The Turkish Ambassador and the Bulgarian Minister got up and left. M. Giletière stared at them wide-eyed. His innocence was enviable. Apart from him and André H----, the platform was a pitiable sight: the colonel, who had at last come to his senses, was turkey-cock red; Redouté was mopping his brow. Their attitude saved the situation; it proved that the distinguished writer had been left to his own inspiration and had no official brief. The audience entered into a tacit conspiracy to listen to this strange lecture as to a farce. The Prime Minister’s shoulders could be seen shaking. Never, perhaps, was André H---- received with more applause than on that memorable evening.
+++
Georges had not seen Rudolf for a fortnight. The German, weighed down with work and constraints, had not been able to get away for dinner, nor for an excursion, nor even for André H----. He had excused himself by telephone.
One Sunday, Georges rounded off his evening with a visit to the house in Patissia. He reflected bitterly that he was again reduced to following in the path of his less reputable colleagues. It was a way of beguiling the melancholy which sometimes overcame him when he was alone. The circle he lived in satisfied neither his mind nor his soul, and he sought escape from it by these perfunctory bodily embraces. He was like a young soldier who seeks oblivion rather than pleasure from prostitutes.
The madame divined his secret reticences and used all her art to conquer them. She spoke glowingly to him of the resources of the town in which hardly any limit was set to desire, where pleasure was dispensed while energy subsided, where from earliest youth mankind seemed to exist only for love-making. Reminding him that “green fruit” was her speciality, she urged him to taste one, or even two. It sickened him to see thus degraded the youth and grace which he had loved elsewhere in other forms.
As he was getting back into his car, he saw the door of the house open again and Rudolf come out. He saw Georges when he signed to him, and blushed vividly. He got into the car.
“I was there, too,” said Georges.
He put on a gay manner, to set Rudolf at his ease and cover up his own embarrassment.
Rudolf murmured something in German.
“What are you saying?” asked Georges.
“That I am ashamed.”
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