Gossip from the Forest (18 page)

Matthias himself was being watched by Lord Wemyss, who noticed his pained mouth and the way that, at each clause, his eyes slewed up and down the table. Wemyss thought, he believes he's in control, but in fact is well under, two-thirds gone. I ought to be pleased.…

Clause V, the army had twenty-eight days to get out of the Rhineland. Clause VI, no one was to be harmed by the evacuating armies and no food or other stores destroyed.

There won't be time for any vandalisms or other barbarities, Erzberger could have promised. They'll be all trying to get out by mule or bike or even by catching a train. Even the notorious Death's Head Hussars, featured Herod-style in the American press as baby-roasters. No time for a single baby barbecue for the hussars this November.

Clause VII, five thousand locomotives and one hundred and fifty thousand wagons in good repair to be delivered to the Associated Powers within thirty-one days.

Surely I can depend on Maiberling now to turn earthy and scream: famine-mongers! Dealers in scrofula!

But Maiberling stayed cool and businesslike.

Clause VII brought forward its other surprises. Ten thousand trucks to be delivered inside a month.

Innocuous Clause VIII. The German Command shall be responsible for revealing within forty-eight hours all mines or delayed-action fuses disposed on territories evacuated by German troops.…

Genial Clause IX. In the east, all German troops to withdraw inside the frontiers of Germany as they existed on 1 August 1914.

It was possible to breathe amongst such clauses.

Vanselow had now got himself under control and packed away his handkerchief.

Financial clauses: Reparation for damage done. Return of the cash deposit in the Bank of Belgium, return of Romanian and Russian gold.…

Such a gambling race we are. Now all the bills will be called up at the one time.

Naval clauses.

Don't go to pieces again, my captain.

Vanselow listened mutely.

“Immediate cessation [read Weygand] of all hostilities at sea and definite information to be given as to the position and movements of all German ships.… To surrender at the ports specified by the Allies and the United States all submarines at present in existence (including all submarine cruisers and mine layers), with armament and equipment complete.… The following German surface warships which shall be designated by the Allies and the U.S.A., shall forthwith be disarmed and thereafter interned in neutral ports, or, failing them, Allied ports, and placed under surveillance of the Allies and the U.S.A., only caretakers being left on board, namely:

6 battle cruisers

10 battle ships

8 light cruisers

50 destroyers of the most modern style.

“All other surface warships (including river craft) to be concentrated in German naval bases to be designated by the Allies and the U.S.A., completely disarmed and placed under the supervision of the Allies and the U.S.A. All vessels of the auxiliary fleet are to be disarmed.”

Matthias watched the captain's hand skid across his note paper, leaving deft shorthand in its wake.

THE KILLING AND NUMBING CLAUSE

Clause XXVI was the killing and numbing clause. In fact Erzberger heard very little of Clause XXVII onward after Clause XXVI fell on him.

The existing blockade conditions set up by the Allied and Associated Powers are to remain unchanged, and all German merchant ships found at sea are to remain liable to capture.

Erzberger found himself dipping his pen into ink and writing according to his futile Reichstag rhetoric on the virgin paper set for him. “We will let you [he wrote] render the army helpless, destroy the fleet. The Rhine can be your sewer. But you want to strike at the grocers' shops and soup kitchens.”

He noticed that Admiral Wemyss, who had gone on tampering with his spectacles all through the army, territorial, and financial clauses, kept his hands emphatically still throughout the reading of the naval terms. Lest anyone think he didn't mean to impose them.

It was one of those special moments, Erzberger realized, when the diluted emotions a politician
(this
politician, Matthias Erzberger) takes with him to any conference table are reduced to unity and all he wants to do is scream across the table, “Murderer!” For he finds, in spite of all the self-doubts and secret pride that drove him to the hustings, that he is one with the apolitical others—the people with ration books.

When he was conscious of the men at the table again he found he was being watched, though the Marshal's face was clamped down tight over the Marshal's curiosity.

He saw too that he had covered the page with feverish writing. There were a lot of exclamation marks.

He sat upright, turned the littered page face down.

Weygand finished reading and dropped the armistice document to the table. Erzberger could see across the table that there were typing errors in it, many words X-ed out.

Helldorf reported that the duration of the Armistice was to be thirty-six days. With the option to extend.

THE MARSHAL AS EXEGETE

The Marshal:
Well?

Erzberger thought, I'm the one who has to speak. What do I say that will show up against those mountainous propositions? As an outsider and with disbelief he heard his own speech.

Erzberger:
We wish to appeal for an immediate cease-fire while the terms are considered. Our request is not a military stratagem, Marshal. I can tell you only that our armies are in a state of Bolshevik anarchy. We had such difficulty crossing our own lines. I could certainly provide the Allied plenipotentiaries with a list of cities where Bolshevik revolutionaries have taken control of local affairs. We ask for a cease-fire not only for Germany's sake but for the sake of Western Europe as a whole.

Wemyss sighted the white paper with his right eye and wrote,
A little late to go pan-European
.

The Marshal:
Rebellion is quite normal in defeated armies. Western Europe can look after itself.

Von Winterfeldt begged to read a memorandum He had been given in Spa. He read it in his smooth French and between sentences looked up at the Marshal and Weygand as if inviting approval of his accent. It spoke of those who would die during the consideration of the terms who would otherwise be restored to their families.

The Marshal:
There will be a cease-fire when the terms are accepted. That is the whole rationale of the terms.

Erzberger's ears still rang.

Erzberger:
I appeal to your President.

The Marshal:
There's no sense in such an appeal. The terms are strategic matters and the business of soldiers. Therefore you are here as military deputies. You cannot appeal to a President.

The count advanced a well-ordered face in front of von Winterfeldt and stared Matthias in the eyes. I'm with you, said the eyes. Matthias thought without comfort, so you are.

Erzberger:
I must of course seek your permission to radio the terms to the imperial Chancellor and to OHL in Spa.

Foch:
The terms can be transmitted by radio in code. If you are worried about revolution in your army we can't very well send them
en clair
. Any radio operator who picked them up could pass them on to other soldiers or even suppress them. If you don't wish to use coded radio you may send a courier, one of the German officers you have in your party.

From the table in the corner Captain Blauert had risen and dropped a slip of paper onto Erzberger's blotter. It said,
Impossible for us to encode such detailed clauses. Possess no cipher books
.

Erzberger:
Our departure was so hurried we could not gather the requisite cipher books to encode the terms. On the other hand it will take a courier at least twelve hours to reach OHL at Spa. Therefore I request an extension of one day to the deadline for acceptance of terms.

The Marshal:
I have no authority to do that. The deadline stands. Seventy-two hours from conclusion of this meeting, say eleven
A
.
M
. That makes the final hour for acceptance eleven
A
.
M
. on Monday.

Everybody at the table, except the Marshal and the interpreters, wrote it down: eleven
A
.
M
., Monday.

The Marshal:
My staff will arrange for your courier's safe-conduct and provide him with maps that indicate our requirements in the Rhineland. You yourself are free to inform Spa and your Chancellor that the courier is on his way. You should present any messages to my staff who will be on duty in this carriage.

Weygand:
You may seek further general or individual meetings with members of our mission.

The Marshal:
I do not advise you to look for any softening of terms as they now stand.

DO THEY TAKE IN WUPPERTAL?

He stood. Can I stand? Erzberger wondered. Have they left us our legs?

The British admirals, the French generals abandoned the table. Climbing down to the duckboards Erzberger felt his calves tremble as if he had had a hard day's walk with hills and some rock climbing. Not looking back: some staff officer had no doubt been set to watch them and behold them fall into a terrified knot of strangers bickering amongst the low elms. He heard Maiberling whisper
Jesus
and the nearly devout word blew over his shoulder as a short puff of vapor.

They sought the deep chairs in the saloon and wallowed, panting; they had gained the summit of the German defeat. Four climbers from seventy million. Von Helldorf and Blauert, who had had their work to do in 2417D and were in any case young, stood by, lithe, ancillary, remotely sympathetic. General von Winterfeldt, having got his breath back, went statuesque again. Captain Vanselow called for paper, wrote a proposition or two for use in the face of the British admirals, lifted his pen after a few lines and spilled tears onto what he had written.

Maiberling:
Are you a Bavarian, Captain? A Rhinelander?

Vanselow made a gesture with his hand that said, it doesn't matter, I beg you to believe me brave. And not to report my behavior to historians.

Erzberger thought, yes, how disastrous for a professional naval officer. To be known for having wept in front of the Marshal in the forest of Compiègne.

An orderly crept in and asked them if they wanted coffee.

Maiberling:
Cognac. Cognac, gentlemen?

Von Winterfeldt:
These bridgeheads they want? Do they take in Wuppertal?

Erzberger:
I don't know. They'll send us maps.

Von Winterfeldt:
I knew a very fine family once. In Wuppertal.

Major Bourbon-Busset entered from the direction of the dining car. They glanced at him, he nodded, sat, took account of their misery whose symptoms he must strictly report to the Marshal. As yet more fuel and staple for the Marshal's theory of will.

RADIO FLIMSIES

In the Marshal's saloon they needed no stimulants other than the offered morning coffee.

Hope spoke quietly in English, privately to Wemyss.

Hope:
That naval chap crying …

The Marshal hammered his pipe riotously on a metal smoking stand. You got the impression his short legs had been drawn gnomishly off the ground and that he might hug himself.

Reidinger brought him a radio flimsy. He read it, nodded, held it face out to the admirals, though they could not read it from the place they were sitting. A new degree of brotherhood, he implied by this gesture. Nothing to hide.

The Marshal:
From the War Ministry. The Italian government insists that Bavarian troops evacuate the Tyrol.

Wemyss laughed. The modesty of the request! He too was suddenly full of blatant gaiety.

The Marshal threw an order over his shoulder.

The Marshal:
Mark it on the agenda.

At a quarter past eleven maps were brought to the German delegates' train. In one envelope maps for the information of Erzberger, Maiberling, von Winterfeldt, Vanselow. In the other, sealed, copies to be carried by von Helldorf to Spa.

Erzberger was first to inspect the maps. The others sat about a small console, pens in hands. Expecting to be shown, as they would have to be. But Erzberger hesitated to hand them their copies. What would it produce? Gunplay from Maiberling, tears from Vanselow, inane and gentlemanly hurt in von Winterfeldt?

The crosshatching on the maps covered the Rhineland and crossed the Rhine and swelled, three neat goiters thirty kilometers deep, eastward. At least Wuppertal's nice family did not fall inside these ruinous bridgeheads.

When he handed out the maps the others considered them indolently; directors well into a routine board meeting. Von Winterfeldt delivered some statistics evenly, like a clerk recording mortgaged land.

Von Winterfeldt:
So they take our Rhineland. Twelve thousand square miles. Five million people. German since 1814. So they take it.

Von Helldorf, recent translator but courier now, had already begun packing his satchel.

Seeing him, Erzberger spoke to the others, saying they couldn't wait a day or more for answers from Spa and Berlin whenever a courier was sent through the line. The only quick method was to send a radio message. In it, to ask if Max and the generals believe that the terms must be accepted, they should authorize their men in the forest,
us
that is, to sign at once. Getting what concessions we can; from that old man.

The others would not answer, their hands ran over the maps like mice. At last, the general.

Von Winterfeldt:
Could we code such a message?

Erzberger:
Blauert says not.

Vanselow:
No. It would be too hard. And finish full of mistakes.

Von Winterfeldt:
The Marshal would read it before it was sent. He would know we're willing to accept his terms. In principle, as they say.