The Other Side of Silence

SIX

Anne French was thrilled when, the following night at her house in the hills above Villefranche, I told her that I’d been up to the Villa Mauresque to have dinner and play cards.

“How exciting. What’s it like? Is it very camp?”

“Camp” was not an English word I understood, and Anne had to explain.

“It’s very English,” she said, “although its origins are French, oddly enough. From the French term se camper, meaning ‘to pose in an exaggerated fashion.’ But in English we use it to describe anything outrageously or ostentatiously homosexual.”

“Then, yes, it’s very camp. Although I can’t fault the old man’s taste. He lives very well. Everything is the best. There’s a staff of about ten, including a butler and several gardeners. He doesn’t eat a lot and doesn’t drink much. Just talks and plays cards. Although there’s no talk allowed when we’re playing cards. He’s a ferocious player. We’re going to have to work hard to get you up to a standard where I can recommend that you take my place.”

“Until then you can be my spy. The next time you go I want detailed descriptions of everything. Especially the house and gardens. Are there naked statues? Who still comes to stay? And find out what his opinions are on writers today. Who he rates. Who he hates. And his friend, of course. Do find out about him. By all accounts, the last one, Gerald, was a complete drunk and a rotter. Tell me, were there lots of boys? Was there an orgy?”

“No. That was disappointing. Maugham’s friend and companion is a man with bad psoriasis named Alan Searle, who’s also his secretary. Not obviously queer, unlike the nephew, who I’m surprised to find that I like. He’s very genial and I think something of a war hero, on the quiet. It was all a very long way from Petronius.” I shook my head. “If it comes to that, I liked the old man, too. Felt sorry for him. He’s got all the money in the world, a beautiful house, famous friends, but he’s not happy. Turns out we have that in common.”

“You’re not happy?”

I laughed. “Next question.”

“Is he writing?”

“Essays.”

“Oh. Nobody’s interested in those. Essays are for schoolchildren. Did you get a look at his writing room?”

“No, but he told me you can see an exact reproduction of it in a television film called Quartet that was filmed in a studio three or four years ago.”

“When are you going back?”

“I don’t know. When they ask me, I suppose. If they ask me.”

“Do you think they will?”

“He’s eighty-two. At that age anything is possible.”

“I’m not sure I agree. Surely—”

“Time is short for someone like that. Chances are, yes, they’ll ask me again.”

It so happened that it was the following night when I received a call at the hotel front desk asking if I might be free that evening; I was.

This time the great man was in a more expansive mood. He talked about meeting the Queen, and the many other famous people who’d been to the villa, including Churchill and H. G. Wells.

“What was Churchill like?” I asked politely.

“Looked like an old china doll. Very pink. Very doddery. Hair like spider’s web. If you think I’m senile you should see him.” He sighed. “It’s very sad, really. Before the war—the first war—we used to play golf together. I made him laugh, you see. Lord, that must have been what—nineteen ten? Christ. Doesn’t time fly?”

I nodded, and then for no reason that I can think of except that I wanted him to know I could, I quoted Goethe, in German.

“‘Let’s plunge ourselves into the roar of time, the whirl of accident; may pain and pleasure, success and failure, shift as they will—it’s only action that can make a man.’”

“That’s Goethe, isn’t it?” said Maugham.

“Faust.” I swallowed with difficulty. “Always chokes me a little.”

Maugham nodded. “You’re still a young-looking man, Walter. With a good twenty years of action ahead of you. But don’t fuck it up, dear boy.”

“No, sir. I’ll try not to.”

“I’ve fucked and fucked up a great deal in my life.” He sighed. “Quite often of course they amount to the same thing. Seriously. I’d have been a knight of the realm by now if I hadn’t fucked quite so egregiously. But then I expect you’re used to that. You must see all kinds of egregious behavior down at the Grand Hôtel.”

“Of course. But nothing I can talk about.”

“The rich have time to fuck. But the poor only have time to read about it. They’re too busy trying to make a living to fuck a lot.”

“I expect you’re probably right.”

“And before the war, Robin tells me that you used to be the house detective at the Adlon Hotel in Berlin.”

“That’s right.”

“You must have seen some even worse behavior then. Berlin was the place to be in the twenties. Especially for someone like me. My first play was produced in Berlin. By Max Reinhardt. At the Schall und Rauch cabaret theater. Tiny place.”

“On Kantstrasse. I remember it. Sadly, I seem to remember everything. There’s so much I’d like to forget but try as I might, it just doesn’t happen. It’s like I don’t seem to be able to remember how. It’s not too much to ask in life, is it? To forget the things that cause you pain. Somehow.”

“Bitter and maudlin. I like that, too.” He lit a cigarette from the silver box on the table. We were awaiting dinner and afterward the inevitable game of bridge. “I’ve remembered now. That’s it. ‘Funes the Memorious,’” said Maugham. “It’s a story by Borges on just that very subject. A man who could not forget.”

“What happened to him?” asked Robin.

“I’ve forgotten,” said Maugham, and then laughed uproariously. “Dear old Max. He was one of the lucky ones. Jews, I mean. Got out in thirty-eight, and went to America, where he died, much too soon, in nineteen forty-three. Nearly all of my friends are gone now. Including the wonderful Adlon. My, that was a good hotel. Whatever happened to the couple who owned the place? Louis Adlon and his sweet wife, Hedda.”

“Louis was murdered by the Russians in nineteen forty-five. With his riding boots and waxed mustaches he was mistaken for a German general.” I shrugged dismissively. “Most of the Red Army were just peasants. Hedda? Well, I hate to think what happened to her. The same as the rest of the women in Berlin, I imagine. Raped. And raped again.”

Maugham nodded sadly. “Tell me, Walter, how was it that you became the house detective at the Adlon?”

“Until nineteen thirty-two, I’d been a cop with the Berlin police. My politics meant that I had to leave. I was a Social Democrat. Which for the Nazis was tantamount to being a Communist.”

“Yes, of course. And how long were you a policeman?”

“Ten years.”

“Christ. That’s a lifetime.”

“It certainly seemed that way at the time.”

After dinner and a couple of rubbers, Maugham said, “I want to talk to you in private.”

“All right.”

He took me up a wooden stair to his writing space, which was inside a freestanding structure on top of a flat roof. There was a big refectory table, a fireplace, and no windows with a view that could distract a man from the simple business of writing a novel. A bookshelf held some favorite titles and, on a coffee table, a few copies of Life magazine. Another of Jersey Joe’s Tahitian sparring partners was up on the wall, but what with the beam from the lighthouse at the southwestern end of the Cap, it was a little like being on the deck of a ship of which Maugham was the Ahab-like captain. We sat down at opposite ends of a big sofa and then he came to the point.

“You strike me as an honest man, Walter.”

“As far as it goes.”

“One imagines that you wouldn’t be working as a concierge at the Grand if you weren’t.”

“Perhaps. But good fortune rarely walks you out the door to your car. Not these days.” I shrugged. “What I mean to say is, we’re all trying to make a living, Mr. Maugham. And if we can pull off the pretense that we’re doing it honestly, then so much the better.”

“You’re an even bigger cynic than I am, Walter. I like you more and more.”

“I’m German, Mr. Maugham. I’ve had a lot more practice with cynicism. We all have. It’s the thousand-ton weight of German cynicism that caused the collapse of the Weimar Republic and gave us the thousand-year Reich.”

“I suppose so.”

“What can I do for you, sir? You didn’t bring me up here to help me confess my sins.”

“No, you’re right. I came to tell you about a few of mine. The fact is, Walter, I’m being blackmailed again.”

“Again?”

“I’m a rich old queer. I have more skeletons in my closets than the Roman catacombs. Being blackmailed is not so much an occupational hazard for a man like me as an existential condition. I fuck, therefore I am subject to demands for money, demands with menaces attached.”

“Pay him, whoever it is. You’re rich enough.”

“This one is a professional.”

“So go to the police.”

Maugham smiled thinly. “We both know that isn’t possible. Blackmailers work on the same principle as the Mafia. They prey upon a vulnerable minority of people who can’t go to the police. Their power is our silence.”

“What I meant was, why tell me?”

“Because you used to be a policeman, and because I want your help.”

“I don’t see how I can be of assistance, Mr. Maugham. I’m a concierge. My detective days are long gone. I have a hard job seeing off the merry widows at the hotel, let alone a professional blackmailer. Besides, I’m a little slow on the uptake these days. I’m still trying to work out how you know I used to be a detective.”

“You were ten years with the Berlin police. You told us yourself.”

“Yes, but it was someone else who told you I’d been the house bull at the Adlon Hotel.” I nodded. “But who? Wait, it was Hennig, wasn’t it? Harold Heinz Hennig. I saw him arguing with your nephew in front of La Voile d’Or a couple of weeks ago. So that’s his racket.”

“Never heard of him.”

“I forgot. He’s not calling himself that anymore, is he? He’s checked into the Grand under the name Harold Heinz Hebel. It was he who told you about me, wasn’t it?”

“That’s right. Hebel. He told my nephew about you. It was his idea that I should try to employ you, Walter.”

“His idea?”

“He said he knew you from the war and that you were reliable. And honest. As far as it goes.”

“That was nice of him. Not that he would know how to spell ‘reliable’ and ‘honest.’ The man is a criminal.”

“I know.”

“Well then, why take his recommendation? Why not hire a local man? A Frenchman.”

“It’s simple. You see, Walter, it’s Harold Heinz Hebel who’s blackmailing me.”

“Now I really am confused.”

“The fact is, Hebel’s asking rather a lot of money for a compromising photograph of me and some other people. He wants me to feel that I can make a deal with him in complete confidence. He said you’d be the kind of man to make sure he kept his side of the bargain. And that you’re not the type of man who would get nervous handling a large sum of money.”

“Now I’ve heard everything. Blackmailers recommending detectives. Or ex-detectives. It sounds an awful lot like a salmon recommending a good poacher.”

“It makes perfect sense when you think about it. A good deal isn’t a good deal if either party feels he’s been cheated. Hebel wants me to feel confident that I’m getting value for my money.”

“I can’t help you, Mr. Maugham. I like you. I liked my dinner. I feel sorry for you. But I’m just not able to help you.”

“He said you’d say that. Hebel.”

“He did, huh?”

“He said that I should let him know if you didn’t want to help and then he could probably persuade you himself.”

“Did he say how?”

Maugham smiled. “Oh my, yes. You’re an interesting man, Walter. Or should I say Herr Gunther? Yes, you’ve had an interesting life. A career in the SS and the SD. Working for Dr. Goebbels, among others. You must tell me all about that sometime. It sounds quite fascinating. He said to tell you that if the French Sûreté were to find out that you’re living down here under a false identity, you’d lose your job and you’d be deported back to Berlin, immediately, where the Americans would almost certainly hang you. For what reason, he didn’t say. But I must admit it does sound serious.”

“Fuck you,” I said, and stood up. “Fuck you and your queer friend and your queer nephew.”

“Actually I think we’ll all be f-fucked unless we can work something out, Herr Gunther. Sit down. And let’s talk about this s-s-sensibly.” He nodded. “You know I’m right. So just calm down and think about what you’re saying.”

“Like I said before, Hebel is a false name, too. He could be deported.” I sat down and lit a cigarette. I smoked it, too, but mostly I wanted to jam it in the old man’s bloodshot eyeball.

“Perhaps. But he’s willing to take the risk. The question is, are you willing to take the same risk, Herr Gunther? You’ve got a good job. With the prospect of making a little extra money from me. Shall we say a five percent handling fee? Why screw that just to bring him down?”

“Believe me, if you knew the man like I do, you’d know the answer to that question.”

“Oh, I can believe it. The man is a snake. But, please, it doesn’t have to be like this, Herr Gunther. All you have to do is agree to be my agent in this matter and all of this unpleasantness will go away. We can be friends. Don’t you agree?”

“Is this him who’s blackmailing me now, or you, Mr. Maugham?”

“Come now. I’m merely repeating what Hebel told me.”

“Really? It strikes me that you’ve been on the end of blackmail often enough to know exactly how to apply a bit of pressure yourself.”

“Maybe I do. For which you have my apologies, sir. But I’m a desperate man. You can take that to the casino and buy chips with it.”

“Maybe you are desperate. But you can’t trust this guy. Just because I’m the middleman doesn’t change anything. Jesus, for all you know I’m part of the same scam. You don’t know the first thing about me. How can you be sure that I’m not going to buy the photograph and then blackmail you myself? You can’t. That’s the thing about blackmail. It’s a dirty business. Everyone’s your friend right up until the moment they turn around and screw you.”

“You make a good point. But I have no choice but to take the risk.”

“Can I be blunt?”

“Be my guest.”

“Everyone in the world knows you’re queer. What of it? Does it affect anything? You’ve got your invitation to the royal wedding in Monaco. Has it crossed your mind that what you do in your bedroom really doesn’t matter to people anymore?”

“That’s true in France, perhaps. And Italy, certainly. But it matters a lot back in England. Homosexuality is a crime in my country and I should hate to be prevented from ever going back. Besides, there’s rather more to the photograph than just my being queer.”

I sat there smoking sullenly for several seconds.

“Ten percent. If I’m going to play agent I want a proper agent’s commission. Ten percent.”

“All right. Ten percent it is.”

“So tell me about the photograph.”