Gossip from the Forest (6 page)

Berlin, November 6, 1918

(signed)
MAX, PRINCE VON BADEN

There was another thick official page.

2. As additional plenipotentiary, Captain Vanselow of the Imperial German Navy is appointed and the name of General Erich von Gundell is removed.…

On a third sheet, typing paper this time, was written:

The general and Vanselow are at OHL. Obtain what mercy you can, Matthias, but for God's sake make peace.

MAX

Erzberger found himself shivering and … what?… weeping. He tore this last message into halves, quarters, eighths, and so on, all the time hiding at the end of the carriage. Then he lowered the window and the fierce November air buffeted him. He let Max's little message flutter back down the length of the train, and saw, half-blinded, the elegant suburb of Tiergarten. He felt sure that as soon as it withdrew from his vision it would re-form itself into a new pattern of evocations. The same bricks would have a different meaning for a returning Matthias Erzberger. Who had always wanted to be rich enough to live there.

THE MARSHAL MEETS SOME SAILORS

Late in the morning of 7 November a black limousine flying a wet British naval pennon drew up at the Château of Senlis.

From it stepped a rather fleshy British admiral in a topcoat, and three aides. When the chasseurs presented arms at the door the tremendous slap of boots, and of butts on palms, dislodged his monocle and he turned and laughed with his aides after putting it back in his eye socket. In his office Marshal Foch heard the barking laugh
that
race emits and knew the British naval plenipotentiaries had arrived.

Though he made a face he was reminded of his good friend Henry Wilson,
Double-Vay
. But
Double-Vay
was an exceptional Briton, half-Irish for leavening; accused of being a frog-lover for bringing some of the Marshal's teaching techniques into the lecture halls at Camberley.
If there's any frog I love it's you, you little bastard. Double-Vay
was the Marshal's one Englishman. So it was hopeless to look for any lasting remembrances from the laughter of British admirals.

At the moment
Double-Vay
sat with the Welsh lecher in Versailles. The Marshal thought it would have been more pleasant if the British, instead of trying him with sailors he did not know, had empowered dear old
Double-Vay
to travel with him to the forest.

The Marshal told Major Ferrason to fetch the arrivals into the office.

He thought, if I speak to them in English I won't have to tell them as much. I can be ambiguous.

When they came in he was standing with his hip hitched on his desk. He extended his hand flatly, as if for licking, to the monocled admiral.

The Marshal:
First Sea Lord Veems. Very happy.

Wemyss:
Sir. We have glimpsed each other over the conference table at Quai d'Orsay. Also …

The Marshal:
… at Le Trianon. I have not forgot Introduce me if you will to your staff.

Wemyss took on the stance for it.

Wemyss:
Admiral George Hope … Captain Marriott … Bagot here.

The Marshal:
There. Yes. Bagot.

Admiral Hope and the two juniors had those amazingly
mens sana
faces the English are capable of carrying into middle age. I wonder, thought the Marshal, were they artfully chosen to demonstrate the racial pretensions of the British?

Lord Wemyss wore a beefy and more complex face.

Wemyss:
We can all speak French, sir. In fact we've been rather looking forward to having scope to use it …

The Marshal:
Your generals have little gift for the same.…

Wemyss:
An unhappy imbalance.

The Marshal:
No, no, let this old man do the better he can with your jewel language. Some cognac first. For the coldness.

His mustache quivered at one corner and Ferrason poured five cognacs. Wemyss smiled a little, secretly. A these-French-are-like-head-waiters smile. Or so the Marshal read it.

Wemyss:
Too kind.

They received and held their glasses till the Marshal had been served. Then the Marshal bowed to them and they began sipping.

The Marshal:
A long way from the sea, gentlemen.

The First Sea Lord wagged his finger.

Wemyss:
Still, the sea is there.

The Marshal:
I did not mean argumentative. I just remarked. Have you any hunger?

Wemyss:
We had a picnic basket in the back of the car, Monsieur Marshal.

The Marshal:
How jolly.

Wemyss:
Quite pleasant.

The First Sea Lord composed his face roguishly. The glint in his monocle threatened, two more sips and then we start talking about the German fleet. There was a theatricality, a straining in the new tone of the features. The Marshal resented it and was bored. He decided he'd get rid of them till train departure. Wemyss had none of the ease of wit of old
Double-Vay
, his dear British general. Who would have loped into the room saying, “Here comes the ugliest man in the British Army. And how's the little Frenchman today, how's little Monsieur Foch, where is the little bastard, is he hiding from me?… There he is, behind the third paper clip on the left!”

Maxime Weygand came in. Neat as a pin for the journey. Neat as a jockey in silks. Able to tell from the way the Marshal's eyes were shifting that he was to take away, entertain, buffer his Marshal from the Royal Navy.

The Marshal:
My General Weygand, these are my dear brothers in
victoire
from the fleet of the British Navy. Will you please look to them with all care for me.

Weygand bowed and took an ushering-out stance at the office door. The First Sea Lord could tell he was being dismissed.

Wemyss:
A second, Monsieur Marshal.

The Marshal spun and rushed to him, the manager of a first-class hotel rushing to an aggrieved celebrity.

Wemyss:
I have to impress on you the seriousness of the naval demands.

The Marshal:
I have the copy of what your Mr. Lloyd George wants. Therefore it is serious enough for me. I will push the terms to the Germans.

The First Sea Lord's mouth hung a little agape; a wince of bellicose amusement.

Wemyss:
It's the spirit in which they're put, my Marshal. Not that I …

The Marshal:
I will not put it to them for the fun, Lord Veems. I will put nothing to them for the fun.

Wemyss:
Quite. However, I must say I would be quite happy to undertake the bulk of the debate on the naval terms. Under your chairmanship.

The Marshal:
Yes, yes. You are the one who knows boats. Excuse me now. If you hope to rest, write letters, use some telephone, General Weygand will be happy …

General Weygand stirred at then flank. For some reason his decorum reminded the Marshal for the first time in months of the rumor that Maxime was the bastard of the Empress of Mexico, a lady still alive in Brussels but in bad mental health. In four years the Marshal had never had the ill grace to ask General Weygand was it true.

From this daydream of Carlotta's widowhood (soon to be recaptured by the British Army bearing up the road from Tournai) Lord Wemyss distracted him.

Wemyss:
We haven't been told where the meetings will be held.

The Marshal:
The place for the armistice isn't here. This town of Senlis is taken by our enemy for small whiles in 1914. While they are here they executed the mayor and numbers of hostage, you understand. So the place for the armistice isn't here.

Wemyss:
I see. Might I ask where?

The Marshal:
In a forest.

Wemyss:
I say, this just isn't good enough, sir. We
are
plenipotentiaries, you know.

The Marshal acknowledged how reasonable the First Sea Lord's aggression was by shaking his hands contritely before his face.

The Marshal:
The language slowness! The place is la Forêt de l'Aigle. Seven kilometers on the other side from Compiègne. The railway siding called Rethondes. It is private and every comfort for our British brothers.

Admiral Hope spoke—a lean one, sun-tanned, perhaps from service in the Indian Ocean. A long way from the great bloodletting.

Hope:
Sir. What time are the German plenipotentiaries due at Rethondes?

The Marshal:
Nine o'clock. Midnight. They have difficult travel, roads all over with holes. From Tergnier they travel by the train. The saloon car for them to sit in is saloon car belonged to Napoleon the Third. Eh? Eh?

But the admiral's eyes remained blank before the niceness of this arrangement. If Wemyss answered at all it was only for the sake of tact.

Wemyss:
Excellent.

The Marshal:
You will wish to know what people are their delegates. My Chief of Staff will tell you their names. I am forgotten them myself. They are nobody I hear of.

But when the naval men had been taken out by Weygand, his Anglophobia ran through him as a tremor and he indulged himself by repeating all four names to himself. Erzberger, he said. Herr Matthias. Maiberling, Count Alfred. Von Winterfeldt, Major General Detlev. Vanselow, Christian name not supplied, humble naval man.

Come oh you Holy Spirit and fill the hearts of your believers.…

ERZBERGER ORDERS A TRUCK

A little earlier that same morning a general and three junior staff officers, Herr Matthias Erzberger, and Count Alfred Maiberling stood amongst wrought-iron fragilities that held up the station awning in the bijou Belgian town of Spa and looked about for the staff cars that should meet dignitaries at any time, let alone a morning of downpour. The young general seemed to want to exculpate OHL.

General:
We were delayed by all those troop trains. Then the railway people probably told them we wouldn't be in till noon say. Something like that.

Maiberling still retained his semihysterical holiday posture, a little strengthened, it seemed, by a hangover. It was all a poor mask for his infectious terror. But when he spoke he sounded rosy, gratified.

Maiberling:
All over Germany the timetables are coming unstapled, they're blowing out the window, leaf by bloody leaf. The rule books are coming unglued.

General:
Not at the Grand Hôtel Britannique.

Erzberger himself had caught a dose of Maiberling's new insanity. In his brain and diaphragm the machines of urgency were burring without cease or mercy. Maiberling's indulgence in metaphor, the general's threadbare pride, made him itch with fury.

He began raking his chest with an ungloved hand.

Erzberger:
There are three army trucks in the freight yard. I can see them from here. Get one immediately please, General.

The general frowned.

General:
There's no room in a truck. For the other gentlemen.

Maiberling:
They could just hang on. They're soldiers, aren't they?

General:
As you say.

Maiberling:
You know, I've never driven in a truck before.

Erzberger wanted to speak to him, straighten him up. But not in front of the general.

Now the two young staff officers marched across the railway square toward the freight yard. Rain swallowed up the authoritative clop of their boots. The general squinted upward through the downpour. It seemed that the matt ceiling of storm cloud wasn't much higher than the roofs of the offices across the square.

General:
You don't have a good day for travel, gentlemen.

He began to wander about the railway entrance, taking different sightings on the weather, as if for the benefit of the plenipotentiaries. Maiberling called to him. Amicably.

Maiberling:
You're in charge of the weather office?

The general coughed and did not look at them.

General:
Chemical warfare, sir. Much the same thing.

Maiberling whispered to Erzberger.

Maiberling:
Christ, a barbarian.

Erzberger wondered at the count for allowing himself such luxuries: once we are through the French lines
we
shall be the monsters and we will be liable for the mustard-gassed and the torpedoed corpses. Whether or not we feel spasms of righteousness in the drenched railway square of Spa, no one will credit us with it.

DEAD-EYE MAIBERLING

Maiberling wouldn't be quiet, trembling a little, pointing toward the general.

Maiberling:
How would you like to have a son who …?

Erzberger:
Shut up, Alfred.

Maiberling:
Listen, in the past, when I felt better … I wrote letters to the Red Cross on the question of …

Erzberger:
I know. Of gas.

Maiberling:
Of gas.

Erzberger:
Alfred, you aren't yourself. Why did you come?

Maiberling whispered.

Maiberling:
I hate the Reds. I hate the war.

Erzberger:
Yes. But the generals. There aren't even cars to meet us. We have to be careful they don't treat us with contempt.

Maiberling:
Don't worry.

The count put his arm around Erzberger's shoulder and pulled him close—overcoat against overcoat. From the left-hand inside of his own great overcoat he hauled a vast service revolver. He turned it about in the wet air, as if saying
“our
secret.”

Erzberger:
Why, in God's name?

The unexpected appearance of weapons always frightened Matthias Erzberger. The faint oil-and-cordite odor of the count's revolver stretched his nostrils wide. Did Maiberling know something—that plenipotentiaries would be ambushed in corridor or street or forest? By the unappeasable young officers who didn't want a bargained end to war, whose taste was Götterdämmerung?

Maiberling:
I've heard nothing. But these bastards … OHL … they're a different race. (He shook the weapon.) Go armed amongst strangers.