Peter Vansittart
SECRET PROTOCOLS
To Mark Valentine
‘I had never before then dreamed that I would become interested in Estonia or bourgeois democracy. Nevertheless, I kept listening to his loving tales of twenty free years of that unsensational, work-loving small people. I heard about the principles of the Estonian Constitution, modelled on the best European examples and how their One-House Parliament of one hundred members had worked.’
NOTE
Modern Estonian poems quoted here are from The Literary Review Quarterly, edited by Clarence R. Decker and Charles Angoff (Fair-leigh Dickinson University, 1965). For more ancient verses I am indebted to The Great Bear, edited by L. Honko, S. Timonen, M. Branch and K. Bosley (Finnish Literary Society, 1993), given me in kindness by Robin Ashenden. I am indebted to Estonia (Allen and Unwin, 1938), by my former history teacher, J. Hampden Jackson; to Ian Thomson’s Sailing to Tallinn (London Magazine, edited by Alan Ross, 1989); and to Stefan George: Poems, translated by Carol North Valhope and Ernst Morwitz (Kegan Paul, 1944). For Rilke, I owe much to the translations by J. B. Leishman, published by the Hogarth Press. Ogygia, several times mentioned, is, of course, Calypso’s island in the Odyssey, Calypso herself mentioned in Aleksis Rannit’s poem ‘On the Island of Ogygia’, quoted in the text. Every effort has been made to contact copyright holders. If any who have not been acknowledged wish to get in touch they may contact me care of my publishers.
PROLOGUE
Wilfrid’s hands were soothing, as though caressing a bird, while containing skills in calligraphy and sculpture. In the extremity of winter 1944 he had no time for either.
Amongst the incalculable inmates of Meinnenberg language had largely dwindled to brusque signs and animal grunts for food and sexual bargaining. Song could be more common than speech – raucous, often wordless hymn tunes and ditties popular throughout Europe. They would begin, then subside to vague hummings, left unfinished like so much else. Discussion had become useless or incriminating, though in sudden disputes almost forgotten words reappeared – Crocodile, Hannibal, Jesuit – yelled with barbaric vehemence otherwise lacking in the listless, undernourished, cunning and scared. Some rages seemed a disguise for those with several languages, though risking none of them, while occasionally someone whistled a fragment of Mozart or exhibited a graceful gesture, unable to resist impulses from former days.
At times Wilfrid could be likened to the shaman, revered in the North long into the Christian Era, advising, healing, confronting demons, exorcizing omens. His authority, more assiduous than assertive, made him appear taller than he really was. His slender physique looked deceptively fragile, for he worked longer than any, while, within grime and shabbiness, retaining a certain elegance with carelessly worn scarves and clean overalls. Fastidious, gently enquiring, he possessed courtesy without condescension. Listening to suggestions, more often to complaints, debating rudimentary morals with bully or thief, he almost always appeared to be withholding a smile only out of respect for the occasion.
Such restraint could nevertheless entrap. Once, a Griefer, the Grabber, tried to ingratiate by insinuating that one couple were secret Jews. At the next communal meeting, Wilfrid, his smile breaking free, praised the two for their honourable lineage, casually adding that the Grabber might disagree. He was heard in silence, but, after a night scuffle, the Grabber vanished.
Sometimes, as if to himself, Wilfrid would quote some poem, in one of which statues began to hear, stillness soften to its own music, grotesquely at odds with the pared-down Meinnenberg existence. Though at ease even with the most degenerate, he was intimate only with himself.
The intake remained constant: deaths from disease, exhaustion, gangrene, suicide were replaced by fugitives, deserters, unclassifiables. Over a million Poles and Balts had been deported to the USSR, but, after Stalingrad, the Red counter-attack somewhat loosened civilian grip. Here, polyglots of diverse backgrounds were equally unshaven, soiled, ageing prematurely. Children withered most quickly, and were culled by malnutrition and tuberculosis. Germans had been trained by: Don’t think. The Führer will think for you. A French child’s presence was inexplicable, for though he worked willingly he never spoke, until dying, when he uttered very distinctly, ‘C’est évidemment un personage d’importance’, finally murmuring, ‘J’espère.’
Most were ground down to a beaten, almost witless blur, evolving into another Europe, a reluctant, suspicious unity. They breathed an atmosphere of an aimless, monotonous holiday, raw fact and wavering fantasy inextricably competing, a continual babble suggesting a slum in the last days of imperial Rome. The failure of Count von Stauffenberg’s attempt to kill Hitler in the July Plot, though known, interested very few, so numbed were curiosity and hope.
A girl had been sold by her father for a sack of potatoes; a man, almost blinded by noxious liquor from a secret still, unexpectedly boasted that he had founded a bank. Meanwhile, battles still demolished East Prussia, though Berlin must soon fall. ‘I intend to plunder,’ the Reichsmarschall had declared in his glory, ‘and plunder thoroughly’, though plunder was the least atrocity we awaited. Simultaneously, we heard rumours of a glittering, phantasmagorical festival for his birthday, extravagance unlimited, medieval costumes, blaring music, courtly dances, streams of wine, grandiose roasts from days and nights of hunting, while alien bombers flew over regions left undefended.
We ourselves lingered in furtive paralysis, Displaced Persons in a nether world where colours, laughter, juicy food were ill-remembered romance, while frontiers toppled and eastern hordes returned.
The monotony was occasionally relieved by extra rations, dubiously procured, even by a ‘ball’, the dancers more intent on propping each other up than in risking free movement, accompanied by a mouth-organ and a drum improvised from old tin.
Clawing for survival, all must learn the tricks. To dither might ensure starvation or assault. At food doles, the experienced waited, the last drops of soup being thicker. Details, once small, were magnified: a ribbon, dirty crust, stick, had the richness once held by coins. A spasm of pain or fatigue could be as menacing as a stranger. As if in a fairy-tale, everything was something else: talisman, omen, warning. Like artists, we studied others’ bodies, the language of eyes, mouths, hands. A limp, groan, scar, twitch signalled a threat or appeal. Our own faces we forgot. Before fleeing, the SS had forbidden mirrors and confiscated forks, knives, spectacles. A face with remnants of beauty was a perilous target.
ONE:
ESTONIAN TURRET
A child imagines himself special, the universe fining down to his whims. At mirrors, I slowly, ceremoniously, put fingers to my lips, hiding the extraordinary from those I most loved. A precaution against losing that love, which would hurt like a whip or iodine.
Like a fox, I had my domain, jealously guarded, a turret perched above the large, rambling Manor, its thick, ochred chimneys narrowing towards the top. From there, like an Emperor Earth, I surveyed the neat, disciplined park encircled by pasture bordered by Lake – ‘the Lady’ – and Forest both spread under huge skies to lonely farms and, across flat marsh, to the Sound.