Chapter 2

Well, we survived seventeen centuries of that. We have a lot of wisdom and doctrine for coping with it." Slote shook his head. "You love to spin such talk, I know, but I wish you would do it on the next boat home." "But I'm quite serious, Leslie," Jastrow said with a faintly puckish smile. "you rang wild alarms when Mussolini passed the anti-Jewish laws. They proved a joke." If the Germans ever press him to use them -neyre on the books, i 'qbe Italians loathe and fear the Germans to a man. Even if by some mischance there is a war, Italy won't fight. Siena may well be as safe a place as any." "I doubt that Natalie's parents think so." she finds Siena slightly more 'She can go home tomorrow. Perhaps attractive than NUami Beach. use I'm afraid Of "I'M thinking of going," the girl said. 'But not beca war or of Hitler- There are things that bother me more." "I daresay," Jastrow said. Slote's face turned astonishingly red. His pipe lay smoking on an trash ay, and he was playing with a yellow pencil he had taken from a vest pocket. The pencil stopped turning. turning it in one ri Jastrow stood. "Byron, come along." man at the table, glowering They left the girl and the scarlet-faced at each other. Books filled the shelves of a small wood-panelled library, and stood Over a white marble fireplace a stiff in Piles on the desk and on the floor ai Sienese madonna and child hung, blue and pink on gold; a ny p n ng in a large ornate gilded frame. "Berenson says it's a Duccio," Jastrow observed, th tti the painting, "and that's good enough for me. will the wave at e It's not authenticated. Now then. You sit there, in the light, so that I can see you. Just Put those magazines on the floor. Good. Is that a comfortable chair? Fine." He sighed and laid a thumb against his lower lip. "Now, Byron, why didn't You go to the Naval Academy? Aren't you proud of your father?" Byron sat up in his chair. "I think my father may be Chief of Naval Operations one day." "Isn't he worth emulating?" "My brother Warren's doing that. I'm just not interested." a commission." "Dr. Milano wrote that you took a naval reserve course and obtained "It made my father feel good." "And you've had no second thoughts about the Navy? It's not too late yet."Byron shook his head, smiling. Jastrow lit a cigarette, studying Byron's face. The young man said, "Do you really like living in Italy, sir?" "well, I was ordered to a warm climate. I did first visit Florida, Arizona, southern California, and the French Riviera." The professor spoke these place-names with an irony that wrote them off, one by one, as ridiculous or disagreeable. "Italy is beautiful, quiet, and cheap." "You don't mind making your home in a Fascist country?" Jastrow's smile was indulgent. "There are good and bad things in all political systems." "How did you ever come to write A Jew's Jesus, sir? Did you write it here?" "Oh, no, but it got me here." Jastrow spoke somewhat smugly. "I was using the Bible in a course on ancient history, you see. And as a boy in Poland I'd been a Talmud scholar, so in teaching the New Testament I tended to stress the rabbinic sources that Jesus and Paul used. This novelty seemed to fascinate Yale juniors. I cobbled up a book, with the working tide Talmudic Themes in Early Christianity, and then at the last minute I'thought of A jew's Jesus. The Book-of-the-Month Club selected it." Jastrow made a soft gesture with both hands all around the room, smiling. "And here I am. The club payment bought this place. Now, then, Byron, what are your plans? Are you going to return to the United States?" 'I don't know. I couldn't be more up in the air." "Do you want a job?" Byron was taken aback. "Well, I guess maybe I do, sir." Jastrow ambled to his desk and searched through a pile of books, taking off his glasses and holding the titles very close to his face. "I had a fine researcher, a boy from Yale, but his parents called him home, afraid of a war-ah, here we are. Can I interest you, for twenty dollars a week, in the Emperor Constantine? This is a good general biography to start with." "Sir, I've flunked more history courses-" "I see. You don't want the job." The young man took the thick book and turned it dubiously in his hands. "No. I'h try iL Thank you." "Oh, you will, will you? When you say you have no aptitude? Why?" "Well, for the money, and to be around you." This was true enough, though it omitted a third good reason: Natalie Jastrow. Jastrow looked stern, and then burst out laughing. "We'll give it a try." The letter his parents received from him some time later about the girl-which elicited VictorHenry's strong answer-was unintentionally misleading. There was a love affair going on, but Natalie's lover was Leslie Slote. His letters came two or three times a week: long fat white Foreign Service envelopes, addressed in an elongated stiff hand, in brown ink, with stamps stuck over the government frank. Byron hated the sight of them. He was spending hours every day with her in the huge second-floor room that was Jastrow's main library. Her desk was there. She answered letters, typed manuscripts, and with the Italian woman managed the household. Byron worked at the long library table, reading up on Constantine, checking facts, and drawing maps of the emperor's military campaigns. Whenever he raised his eyes he saw the smooth face bent over the desk, the shapely bones highlighted by sunshine, or on dark days by a lamp. There was also the ever-present view of her long pretty legs in a sheen of silk. Natalie dressed in dun wool, and was all business with him; she used almost no paint once Slote left, combed her hair back in a heavy bun, and talked to Byron with offhand dryness. Still, his infatuation took quick root and grew rankly. She was the first American girl he had spoken to in months; and they were thrown together for many hours every day, just the two of them in the book-lined room. This was reason enough for him to feel attracted to her. But she impressed him, too. Natalie Jastrow talked to her famous uncle as to a mental equal. Her range of knowledge and ideas humiliated Byron, and yet there was nothing bookish about her. Girls in his experience were lightweights, fools for a smile and a bit of flattery. They had doted on him at college, and in Florence too. Byron was something of an Adonis, indolent and not hotly interested; and unlike Warren, he had absorbed some of his father's straitlaced ideas. He thought Natalie was a dark jewel of intellect and loveliness, blazing away all unnoticed here in the Italian back hills. As for her indifference to him, it seemed in order. He had no thought of trying to break it down. He did things he had never done before. He stole a little pale blue handkerchief of hers and sat at night in his hotel room in town, sniffing it. Once he ate half a cake she had left on her desk, because it bore the mark of her teeth. when she missed the cake, he calmly lied about it. Altogether he was in a bad way. Natalie Jastrow seemed to sense nothing of this. Byron had a hard shell of inscrutability, grown in boyhood to protect his laziness and school failures from his exacting father. They chatted a lot, of course, and sometimes drove out in the hills for a picnic lunch, when she would slightly warm to him over a bottle of wine, treating him more like a younger brother. He soon got at the main facts of her romance. She had gone to the Sorbonne for graduate work in sociology. Jastrow had written about her to Slote, a former pupil. A fulminating love affair had ensued, and Natalie had stormily quit Paris, and lived for a while with her parents inFlorida. Then she had come back to Europe to work for her uncle; also, Byron surmised, to be near Slote for another try. The Rhodes Scholar had now received orders to Warsaw, and Natalie was planning to visit him there in July while Jastrow took his summer holiday in the Greek islands. On one of their picnics, as he poured the last of the wine into her glass, Byron ventured a direct probe. 'Natalie, do you like your job?" She sat on a blanket, hugging her legs in a heavy checked skirt, looking out over a valley of brown wintry vineyards. With an arch questioning look, cocking her head, she said, 'Oh, it's a job. Why?" "It seems to me you're wasting away here." "Well, I'll tell you, Byron. You do peculiar things when you're in love." His response to this was a dull unfocussed expression. She went on: 'That's one thing. Besides, frankly, I think Aaron's rather wonderful. Don't you? Horribly crotchety and self-preoccupied and all that, but this Constantine book is good. My father is a warm, clever, good-hearted man, but he's the president of his temple and he manufactures sweaters. Aaron's a famous author, and he's my uncle. I suppose I bask in his glory. What's wrong with that? And I certainly enjoy typing the new pages, just watching the way his mind works. It's an excellent mind, and his style is admirable." She gave him another quizzical look. "Now why you're doing this, I'm far less sure." "Me?" Byron said. "I'm broke." Early in March Jastrow accepted an offer from an American magazine for an article about the upcoming Palio races. It meant he would have to put off his trip to Greece, for the race was run in July and again in August; but the fee was too absurdly fat, he said, to decline. If Natalie would watch the races and do the research, he told her, he would give her half the money. Natalie jumped at this, not perceiving-so Byron thought-that her uncle was trying to stop, or at least delay, her trip to Warsaw. Jastrow had once flatly said that Natalie's pursuit of Slote was unladylike conduct and bad tactics. Byron had gathered that Slote did not want to marry Natalie, and he could see why. For a Foreign Service man, a Jewish wife at this time would be disastrous; though Byron thought that in Slote's place he would cheerfully give up the Foreign Service for her. Natalie wrote to Slote that same day, postponing her visit until after the August Palio. Watching her bang out the letter, Byron tried to keep joy off his face. She might go, he was thinking, and then again she might not! Maybe a war would come along meantime and stopher. Byron hoped that Hitler, if he was going to invade Poland, would do it soon. When she finished, he went to the same typewriter and rattled off the famous letter to his parents. He intended to write one sheet, and wrote seven. It was his first letter to them in months. He had no idea that he was picturing himself as an infatuated young man. He was, he thought, just describing his job, his employer, and the charming girl he worked with. And so Pug Henry got needlessly worked up, and wrote the solemn reply, which startled and amused Byron when it came; for he was no more thinking of marrying Natalie Jastrow than of turning Mohammedan. He was just head over ears in love, with a young woman as near as his hand and as remote as a star; and for the moment it was enough to be where she was. He wrote again to set his father straight, but this letter arrived in Washington after the Henrys had left for Germany. N all her years as a Navy wife, Rhoda had never become reconciled to packing and moving. She could do it well enough, compiling long lists, remembering tiny details, waking in the middle of the night to scrawl notes, but she became a termagant. The angry voice rang in the house from dawn to midnight. Pug spent the days in the office of Naval Intelligence, boning up on Germany, and ate most of his meals at the Army and Navy Club. Still, on the short notice given her, Rhoda accomplished everything: stored the furniture, closed the house and put it up for rent, paid the bills, packed her clothes and Pug's heavy double wardrobe of civilian dress and uniforms, and moved Madeline to the home of her sister. The gold letters B R B M E N stretched across the curved black stern of the steamship, high over the cobbled waterfront street. Above the letters, an immense red flag rippled in the cool fishy breeze off the Hudson, showing at its center a big black swastika circled in white. "Glory be, it all really exists," Madeline said to Warren as she got out of the taxicab. "What really exists?" Warren said. "Oh, this whole Hitler business. The Nazis, the Sieg Hells, the bookburnings-when you read about it in the papers, it all seems too ridiculous and crazy to be real. But there's the swastika." Victor Henry glanced up at the Nazi flag, wrinkling his whole face. Rhoda was briskly giving the porter orders about the luggage. "I had to get special permission to ride this bucket. Let's hope the German language practice proves to be worth it. Come aboard With us and have a look at the ship." In a first-class stateroom panelled in gloomy carved wood, they sat making melancholy small talk amid piled suitcases and trunks, until Rhoda restlessly jumped up and took Warren with her for a walk around the Bremen-Madeline chose the moment to jolt her father with the news that she wanted to drop out of college. The prospect of living with her dull aunt and duller uncle and twin cousins for two years was unbearable, she said. "But what can you do? Two years of college, and you keep failing courses," Victor Henrysaid. "You can't just lie around and read Vogue till you get married." "I'd find a job, Dad. I can work. I'm just bored at school. I hate studying. I always have. I'm not like you, or Warren. I'm more like Byron, I guess. I can't help it." "I never liked studying," Commander Henry returned. "Nobody does. You do what you must, and get it done." Perched on the edge of a deep armchair, the girl said with her most winning smile, "Please! Let me take just one year off. I'll prove I can do it. There are lots of jobs for girls at the radio networks in New York. If I don't make good, I promise I'll trot back to college, and-" "What! New York? Nineteen, and alone in New York? Are you nuts?" "Let me just try it this summer." "No. You'll go with Aunt Augusta to Newport, the way it's been planned. You've always enjoyed Newport." "For a week, yes. A whole summer will be a perishing bore." "That's where you'll go. In the fall I'll expect regular letters from you, reporting unproved performance in college." Madeline, slumping back in the armchair, bit noisily into an apple from a heaping bon voyage basket of fresh fruit, sent by Kip Tollever. Staring straight ahead, except for brief mutinous glares at her father, she gnawed at the apple until her mother and brother returned. Pug did his best to ignore the glares, reading a book on German steel-making. He did not like parting from his daughter on such terms, but her proposal seemed to him unthinkable. The Breimn sailed at noon. As Warren and Madeline left the pier, a band thumped out a merry German waltz. They took a taxi uptown, saying little to each other. Henry had set the uncommunicative pattern of the family; the children, after romping and chattering through their early years, had from adolescence onward lived separate, largely undiscussed lives. Warren dropped Madeline at Radio City, not inquiring what she intended to do there. They agreed to meet for dinner, go to a show, and take a midnight train to Washington. Madeline poked here and there in the huge lobby of the RCA bldlding, gawking at the Sert murals and ceiling paintings. She found herself at the bank of elevators for NBC entertainers and employees. Many of these people, she noticed, showed no pass to the uniformed page, but smiled, waved, or just walked busily past the roped entrance. She sailed past too, trying to look twenty-five and employed.
Squinting at her, the page held out an arresting hand. She dived into a crowded elevator. For an hour she wandered the inner halls of the broadcasting company, relishing the thick maroon carpets, the immense round black pillars, the passing trucks of spotlights and broadcast equipment, the Hashing red lights outside of studios, the pretty girls and handsome young men hurrying in and out of doors. She came on the employment office and hung outside, peering through the open double doors like a child at a candy counter. Then she left, and spent the day shopping in department stores. As for Warren, the taxi took him a few blocks further uptown. In Rumpelmayer's, he met a good-looking woman of thirty or so with large sad eyes, a cloud of ash-blonde hair, and a clever soulful way of talking about novels, paintings, and music, subjects which did not greatly interest him. His majors had been history and the sciences. After an early lunch, he spent the day with her in a hotel bedroom. That did interest him. When he dined with his sister that evening, Madeline helped herself to a cigarette from his pack on the table, and lit and smoked it inexpertly. Her defiant, self-satisfied, somewhat pathetic air made Warren laugh. "When the cat's away, hey?" he said. "Oh, I've,been smoking for years," Madeline said. The three blasts of the ship's horn, the pier girders moving outside the porthole, the band far below crashing out "The Star-Spangled Banner," touched a spring in Rhoda. She turned to her husband with a smile such as he had not seen on her face for weeks, threw her arms around him, and gave him an aroused kiss, opening her soft familiar lips. "Well! We made it, Pug, didn't we? Off to Deutschland. Second honeymoon and all THAT! MMM!" This mild interlude of sex in his hitherto preoccupied and cross wife was like a birthday present to the monogamous Pug. It augured well for the crossing, and possibly for the entire sojourn in Berlin. He pulled her close. "Well!" Rhoda broke free, with a husky laugh and shiny eyes. "Not so fast, young fellow. I want a drink, that's what I want, and I don't care if the sun isn't over the yardarm. And I know just what I want. Champagne cocktail, or two, or three." "Sure. Let's have it right here. I'll order a bottle." "Nothing doing, Pug. This will be a nice long crossing. We're getting out of here and going to the bar." The ship was clearing the dock and hooting tugs were turning it deck started to vibrate underfoot. A crowd of tired-looking south, as the jocund voyagers already fiLlIed the bar, making a great noise.
"i thought there was a war scare," Rhoda said. "Nobody here seems to be worried.". Rhoda said, holding up her chamThey found two stools at the bar pagne cocktail, "Well, to whom?" "The kids," Pug said. All right, to the kids." As she "Ah, yes. Our abandoned nestlings. ut the fine acpolished off the champagne, Rhoda talked excitedly abo commodation of the Bremen. She felt very adventurous, she said, sailing on a German ship these clays. "Pug, I wonder if there are any Nazis right here in this bar?" she prattled. shifted his glance to The fat red-faced man sitting next to Rhoda her. He wore a feathered green hat and he was drinking from a stein. "Let's take a walk on deck," Pug said. "See the Statue of Liberty." "No, sir. I want another drink. I've seen the Statue of Liberty." Pug made a slight peremptory move of a thumb, and Rhoda got off the stool. When anything touched his Navy work, Pug could treat her like a deckhand. He held open a door for her, and in a whipping wind they walked to the stern, where gulls swooped and screeched, and passengers clustered at the rails, watching the Manhattan buildings drift past in brown haze. Pug said quietly, leaning on a patch of clear rail, "Look, unless we're assume anything we say on this ship will in the open air like this, you can be recorded, one way or another. At the bar, at the table, or even in our stateroom. Have you thought of that?" "Well, sort of, but-in our stateroom tool Really?" Pug nodded. Rhoda looked thoughtful, then burst out laughing. "You you don't mean day and night? Pug? Always?" "That's what this job is. If they didn't do it, they'd be sloppy. The Germans aren't a sloppy people." Her mouth curled in female amusement. "Well, then, mister, keep your DISTANCE on this boat, that's all I can say. "lell be no different in Berlin." 'Won't we have our own house?" He shrugged. "Kip says you get used to it and don't think about it. I mean the loss of privacy. You're just a fish in a glass bowl and that's that.
You can never stop thinking about what you say or do, however." "Honestly!" A peculiar look, half-vexed, half-titillated, was on her face. "I can't imagine why I didn't think of that. Well! They say love will find a way, but-oh hell. It really couldn't be this important, could it? Can I have my other drink?" An engraved card, slid under their cabin door shortly before dinner, invited them to the captain's table. They debated whether Pug should wear a uniform, and decided against it. The guess turned out to be correct. A German submarine officer at the table, a man as short and as taciturn as Victor Henry, wore a brown business suit. The captain, a paunchy stiff man in gold-buttoned blue, heavily joshed the ladies in slow English or clear German, blue eyes twinkling in his weathered fat face. Now and then he flicked a finger, and a steward in full dress jumped to his side. The captain would crackle a few words, and off the steward would bustle with a terrified face, gesturing at the waiters, long tailcoat flapping. The food was abundant and exquisite, the bowl of white and purple orchids spectacular. The parade of wines worried Pug, for when Rhoda was excited she could drink too much. But she ate heartily, drank normally, and delighted the captain by bantering with him in fluent German. The submarine man's wife sat on Henry's left, a blonde in green low-cut chiffon that lavishly showed big creamy breasts. Pug surprised her into warm laughter by asking if she had ever worked in films. At his right sat a small English girl in gray tweed, the daughter of Alistair Tudsbury. Tudsbury was the only real celebrity at the table, a British broadcaster and correspondndent, about six feet, with a big belly, a huge brown mustache, bulging eyes, a heavy veined nose, thick glasses, bearish eyebrows, booming voice, and an enormous appetite. He had arrived at the table laughing, and laughed at whatever was said to him, and at almost everything he said himself. He was a very ugly man, and his clothes did little to mitigate the ugliness: a rust-brown fuzzy suit, a tattersall shirt and a copious green bow tie. He smoked cigarettes, tiny in his sausage-fat fingers; one expected a pipe or a long black cigar, but the cigarette was always smoldering in his hand, except when he was plying a knife and fork. For all the forced badinage, it was an awkward -meal. Nobody menhoned politics, war, or the Nazis. Even books and plays were risky. In long silences, the slow-rolling ship squeaked and groaned. Victor Henry and the submariner exchanged several appraising glances, but no words. Pug tried once or twice to amuse Tudsbury's daughter at his right, eliciting only a shy smile. Over the dessert, turning away from the blondewho kept telling him how good his stumbling German was-he made one more effort. "I suppose you're on vacation from school?" "Well, sort of permanently. I'm twenty-eight." "You are? Hell!
Sorry. I thought you were about in my daughter's class. She's nineteen." The Tudsbury girl said nothing, so he kept talking. "I hope you took my stupidity as a compliment. Don't women like to be thought younger than they are?" "Oh, many people make that mistake, Commander. It comes of my travelling with my father. His eyes aren't very good. I help him with his work." "That must be interesting." "Depending on the subject matter. Nowadays it's a sort of a broken record. Will the little tramp go, or won't he?" She took a sip of wine. Commander Henry was brought up short. The "little tramv' was Charlie Chaplin, of course, and by ready transfer, Hitler. She was saying that Tudsbury's one topic was whether Hitler would start a war. By not dropping her voice, by using a phrase which a German ear would be unlikely to catch, by keeping her face placid, she had managed not only to touch the forbidden subject, but to express a world of contempt, at the captain's table on the Bremn, for the dictator of Germany. Half a dozen early-morning walkers were swinging along, looking preoccupied and virtuous, when Pug Henry came out on the cool sunlit deck, after a happy night of second honeymooning. He had calculated that five turns would make a mile, and he meant to do fifteen or twenty turns. Rounding the bow to the port side he saw, far down the long deck, the Tudsbury girl coming toward him, pumping her arms and rolling her hips. She wore the same gray suit. "Good morning." They passed each other with nods and smiles, then on the other side of the ship repeated this ritual. At the third encounter he said, reversing his direction, "Let me join you." "Oh, thank you, yes. I feel stupid, preparing to smile forty feet away." "Doesn't your father like to walk before breakfast?" "He hates all forms of exercise. He's strong as a bull and nothing he does makes much difference. Anyway, right now poor Talky has a touch of gout. It's his curse." 'Talky?" Pamela Tudsbury laughed. "His middle name is Talcott. Since schoolboy days, he's been 'Talky' to his friends. Guess why!" She was moving quite fast. In flat shoes she was very short. She glanced up at him. "Commander, where's your wife? Also not a walker?" "Late sleeper. Not that she'll walk to the corner drugstore if she can drive or hail a cab. Well, what does your father really think? Will the little tramp go?" She laughed, a keen look brightening her eyes, evidently pleased that he remembered. "He'scome out boldly to the effect that time will tell." "What do you think?" "Me? I just type what he thinks. On a special portable with oversize print." She gestured at three deep-breathing German matrons in tailored suits marching by. "I know that I feel queer sailing on a ship of theirs." "Didn't your father just publish a book? I seem to remember reviews. "Yes. just a paste-up of his broadcasts, really." "I'd like to read it. Writers awe me. I have a tough time putting one word down after another." "I saw a copy in the ship's library. He sent me there to check," she said, with a grin that reminded him of Madeline, catching him in selfimportance or pretense. He wished Warren could meet this girl or one like her. Last night he had not paid her much mind, with the busty, halfnaked, talkative blonde there. But now, especially with the fresh coloring of the morning sea air, he thought she had an English lady's face, a heartshaped face from a Gainsborough or a Romney: thin lips, expressive greengray eyes set wide apart, fine straight nose, heavy brown hair. The skin of her hands and face was pearl-smooth. just the girl for Warren, pretty and keen. "You're going around again? I get off here," she said, stopping at a double door. "If you do read his book, Commander Henry, carry it under your arm. He'll fall in love with you. It'll make his trip." "How can he care? Why, he's famous." "He cares. God, how they care." With a clumsy little wave, she went inside. After breakfasting alone, Pug went to the library. Nobody was there but a boyish steward. The shelves held many German volumes on the World War. Pug glanced at one tided U-boats: l9z4-z8, and settled into a leather armchair to scan the discussion of American destroyer tactics' Soon he heard the scratch of a pen. At a small desk almost within his reach, the German submarine man sat with his bristly head bent, writing. Pug had not seen him come in. Grohke smiled, and pointed his pen at the U-boat book. "Recalling old times?" "Well, I was in destroyers." "And I was down below. Maybe this is not the first time our paths cross." Grohke spoke English with a slight, not unpleasant Teutonic accent. "Possibly not." When Pug put the U-boat volume on the shelf and took down the Tudsbury book, Grohke remarked, "Perhaps we could have a drink before dinner and compare notes on the Atlantic in 1918?" 'I'd enjoy that."Pug intended to read Tudsbury in a deck chair for a while and then go below to work. He had brought weighty books on German industry, politics, and history, and meant to grind through the lot on the way to his post. Intelligence manuals and handbooks were all right, but he was a digger. He liked to search out the extra detail in the extra-discouraginglooking fat volume. Surprising things were recorded, but patient alert eyes were in perpetual short supply. The bow wave was boiling away, a V of white foam on the blue sunlit sea, and the Bremen was rolling like a battleship. Wind from the northwest, Pug estimated, glancing up at the thin smoke from the stacks, and at the sea; wind speed fifteen knots, ship's speed eighteen, number four sea on the port quarter, rain and high winds far ahead under the cumulonimbus. Nostalgia swept over him. Four years since he had served at sea; eleven since he had had a command! He stood by the forward rail, leaning against a lifeboat davit, sniffing the sea air. Four unmistakable Jews walked by in jolly conversation, two middle-aged couples in fine sports clothes. They went out of sight around the deckhouse. He was still looking after them when he heard Tudsbury blare, "Hello there, Commander. I hear you were out walking my Pam at the crack of dawn." "Hello. Did you see those people who just went by?" "Yes. There's no understanding Jews. I say, is that my book? How touching. How far have you got?" "I just drew it from the library." Tudsbury's mustache drooped sadly. "What! You didn't buy it? Damn all libraries. Now you'll read it and I won't gain a penny by it." He bellowed a laugh and rested one green-stockinged leg on the rail. He was wearing a baggy pepper-and-salt golfing outfit and a green tam o'shanter. 'It's a bad book, really a fake, but it's selling in your country, luckily for me. If you didn't happen to hear my drivelling on the air in the past year or two, there are a couple of interesting paragraphs. Footnotes to history. My thing on Hitler's entry into Vienna is actually not too awful. Quite a time we're living in, Commander." He talked about the German take-over of Austria, sounding much as he did on the air: positive, informed, full of scorn for democratic politicians, and cheerfully ominous. Tudsbury's special note was that the world would very likely go up in flames, but that it might prove a good show. "Can you picture the bizarre and horrible triumph that we let him get away with, dear fellow? I saw it all. Something straight out of Plutarch, that was! A zero of a man, with no schooling, of no known family -at twenty a dropped-out student, a drifter and a failure-five years a dirty, seedy tramp in a Vienna doss housed you know that, Henry? Do you know that for five years this Fuhrer was what you call a Bowery bum, sharing a vile room with other assorted flotsam, eating in soup kitchens, and not because there depression-Vienna was fat and prosperous then-but because he was a dreamy, lazy,(wasa) incompetent misfit? That house painter story is hogwash. He sold a few hand-painted postcards, but to the age of twenty-six he was a sidewalk-wandering vagrant, and then for four years a soldier in theGerman army, a lance corporal, a messenger-runner, a low job for a man of even rrainimum intelligence, and at thirty he was lying broke, discharged, and gassed in an army hospital. That is the background of the Fuhrer. "And then-" The ship's horn blasted, drowning out Tudsbury's voice, which was beginning to roll in his broadcasting style. He winced, laughed, and'went on: 'And then, what happened? Why, then this same ugly, sickly, uncouth, prejudiced, benighted, half-mad little wretch leaped out of his hospital bed, and went careering in ten years straight to the top of a German nation thirsting for a return match. The man was a foreigner, Henry! He was an Austrian. They had to fake up a citizenship proceeding for him, so he could run against Hindenburg! And I myself watched this man ride in triumph through the streets of Vienna, where he had sold postcards and gone hungry, the sole their to the combined thrones of the Hapsburgs and the Hohenzellerns." Victor Henry smiled, and Tudsbury's impassioned popeyed stare gave way to a loud guffaw. "A-bawr, haws hawr! I suppose it is rather funny when you think about it. But this grotesque fantasy happens to be the central truth of our age." Henry was smiling because much of this tirade was in Tudsbury's book, almost word for word. "Well, it's the old story of the stitch in time," he said. "Your politicos could have got the weird little bastard with no trouble early on, but they didn't. Now they have problems. Incidentally, where are you headed? Berlin, too?" Tudsbury nodded. "Our Berlin man's prostate chose an awkward time to act up. A-bawrhawr! Dr. Goebbels said I could come along and fill in. Amazement! I've been persona non grata in the Third Reich since Munich. No doubt I'll be kicked out on my big arse in a few weeks. For some reason the Jerries are being kind to Englishmen this month. Probably so we'fl hold still wire they roll over the Poles. And we will, we will. The Tories are all polite gray worms. Aristocratic funks, Iloyd George called them. Except for Churchill, who's quite out of it." The American commander and the U-boat man took to meeting in the bar each evening before dinner. Henry figured that it was his job to pump Grohke, as it might well be the German's to work on him. Grohke was a thorough professional, an engineering expert, and a real seafarer. He talked freely about the machinery in the present U-boats, and even confessed to problems with torpedoes, a topic Henry was well versed in, though he discussed it cautiously. In Grohke's harassed disdain for politicians, he seemed like any American naval man. A satiric look came on his face when he spoke of the Nazis, and he said things that caused his wife, when she was with them, to give him warning glances. Alistair Tudsbury said to Pug one evening, as they sat on a couch in the main saloon watching the dancing, "You've been fraternizing with Jerry." 'In the line of business. I doubt Grohke's a Nazi.""Oh, those U-boat fellows are all right, as much as any Germans are." "You don't like the Germans." "Well. Let's talk about that after you've been there a month. Assuming I haven't been booted out." 'Of course I don't blame you. They gave your people hell." "No worse than we gave them. We won, you know." After a pause he said, "My eyes were spoiled at Amiens, when we broke through with the tanks. I commanded a tank battalion, and was gassed. It was worth it, all in all, to see Jerry on the run. It was a long time coming." The captain of the Bremen, at the moment, was dancing with Rhoda. He had long capering legs, strange in a stout man. Rhoda was radiating enjoyment. Pug was glad of this. Night after night she had been dancing with a very tall young officer, a blond-eagle type, all clicking bows and glittering blue eyes, who held her a bit too close. Pug had said something about it, and Rhoda had countered with a brief snarl about his spending the trip with his nose in books, and he had let it drop. She was being so complaisant, on the whole, that he only wanted to keep things so. The captain brought her back. Pamela Tudsbury returned from a listless effort to follow the Hailing prances of an American college boy. She said, "I shall get myself a cane and a white wig. They look so shattered if I refuse, but I really can hardly dance, and as for the Lindy Hop-" The music struck up again, and Rhoda's tag young officer approached in spotless white and gold. An irritated look crossed Pug's face. The captain saw it, and under the loud music, as the officer drew near, he muttered half a dozen words. The young man stopped, faded back, and darted out of the saloon. Pug never saw him again. Rhoda, smiling and about to rise, was baffled by the young German's peculiar exit. 'Dance, Rhoda?" Pug got to his feet "What?" she said crossly. 'No, thanks." Pug extended a hand to the Tudsbury girl. 'Pamela?" She hesitated. 'You don't do the Lindy Hop?" Pug burst out laughing. "Well, one never knows with Americans." She danced in a heavy, inexperienced way. Pug liked her gentle manner, her helpless smile when she trod on his foot. "You can't be enjoying this," she said. 'I am. Do you think you'll be going back to the United States?" 'If Father gets thrown out of Germany, which seems inevitable, I suppose we. Why?" "I have a son about your age with quite a fine record, and unlike me, tall and very handsome." Pamela made a face. "A Navy man? Never.
A girl in every port." At the captain's table, on the last night, there were white orchids at every lades place; and under these, white gold compacts. Champagne went round, and the topic of international politics finally surfaced. Everybody agreed that in this day and age war was a silly, wasteful way of settling differences, especially among advanced nations like England, France, and Germany. 'We're all of the same stock, all north Europeans," Tudsbury said. it's a sad thing when brothers fall out." The captain nodded happily. 'Exactly what I say. If we could only stick together, there would never be another war. The Bolsheviks would never move against so much power. And who else wants war?" All through the saloon people were wearing paper hats and tossing streamers, and Pug observed that the four Jews, whose table was not far away, were having as gay a time as everybody else, under the polite ministrations of smiling German waiters. The captain followed Henry's glance, and a genial superior grin relaxed his stern fat face. "You see, Commander? They are as welcome aboard the Bremen as anybody else, and get the same service. The exaggerations on that subject are fantastic." He turned to Tudsbury. 'Between us, aren't you journalists a wee bit responsible for making matters worse?" "Well, Captain," Tudsbury said, "journalism always looks for a theme, you know. One of the novel things about your government, to people " outside Germany, is its policy toward the Jews. And so it keeps turning up. "Tudsbury is not entirely wrong, Captain," Grohke broke in, draining his wineglass. "Outsiders think of nothing but the Jews nowadays when Germany is mentioned. That policy has been mishandled. I've said so many times. That and plenty of other things." He turned to Henry"Still, they're so unimportant, Victor, compared to what the Fuhrer has achieved: Germany has come back to life. That's God's truth. The people have work, they have food and houses, and they have spirit. What Hitler has done for our youth alone is just incredible." (The captain's eyes lit up and he emphatically nodded, exclaiming, "ja, ia!") "Under Weimar they were rioting, they were becoming communists, they were going in for sex perversions and drugs, it was just horrible. Now they're working, or training, or serving, all of them. They're happy! My crews are happy. You can't imagine what navy morale was like under the Republic-I tell you what." He struck the table. "You come visit our squadron, at the sub base in Swinemonde. You do that!
you're a man that can look at a navy yard or a ship's crew and see what's going on! It'll open your eyes. Will you?" Henry took a moment to reply, with everybody at the table turning expectantly to him. An invitation like this, if accepted, made mandatory a similar offer to the German naval attache in Washington. Did the navy want to trade glimpses of submarine bases with the Nazi regime? The decision was beyond Pug's power. He had to report the invitation to Washington and act on the dictated answer. He said, "I'd like that. Perhaps we can work it out." "Say yes. Forget the formalities!" Grohke waved both arms in the air. "It's a personal invitation from me to you, from one seaman to another. The U-boat command gets damn small budgets, and we're pretty iiidependent chaps. You can visit us with no strings. I'll see to that." "His invitation wouldn't include me, would it?" Tudsbury said. Grohke hesitated, then laughed. "Why not? Come along, Tudsbury. The more the British know about what we've got, the less likely anybody is to make a hasty mistake." "Well, here may be an important little step for peace," said the captain, "transacted at my table! I feel honored, and we will have more champagne on it at once." And so the diners at the captain's table on the Bremen all drank to peace a few minutes before midnight, as the great liner slowed, approaching the shore lights of Nazi Germany. In bright sunshine, the Bremen moved like a train between low green banks of a wide river. Pug was at the rail of the sun deck, taking his old pleasure in the sight of land after a voyage. Rhoda was below in her usual fit of the snarls and the snaps. when they travelled together, Rhoda in deep martyrdom did the packing. Pug was an old hand at packing for himself, but Rhoda claimed she could never find anything he put away. "Oh, yes, the country is charming to look at," said Tudsbury, who had sauntered up and commenced a discourse on the scenery. "You'll see many a pretty north German town between Bremerhaven and Berlin. The heavy half-timbered kind of thing, that looks so much like English Tudor. "The fact is Germany and England have strong resemblances and links. You know of course that the Kaiser was Queen Victoria's grandson, that our royal family for a long time spoke only German? And yet on the whole the Jerries are stranger to us than Eskimos." He boomed a laugh and went on, sweeping a fat hand toward the shore: 'Yes, herethe Germans sit at the hart of Europe, Henry, these people being first cousins of ours, simmering and grumbling away, and every now and then they spill over in all directions, with a hideous roar. Out they pour from these lovely little towns, these fairy-tale landscapes, these clean handsome cities-wait till you Cologne, Nuremberg, Munich, even Berlin and Hamburgut they bubble, I say, these polite (see) blue-eyed music lovers, ravening for blood. It gets a bit unnerving. And now here's Hitler, bringing them to a boil again. You Americans may have to lend more of a hand than you did last time. We're fairly worn out with them, you know, we and the French." it had not escaped Henry that Tudsbury's talk, one way or another, usually came back to the theme of the United States fighting Germany. "That might not be in the cards, Tudsbury. We've got the Japanese on our hands. They're carving up China, and they've got a first-class fighting navy, growing every month. If they make the Pacific a Japanese lake and proceed to do what they want on the Asian mainland, the world will be theirs in fifty years." Tudsbury said, sticking his tongue out of a corner of his smiling mouth, "The Yellow Peril." "It's a question of facts and numbers," Henry said. "How many people are there in all of Europe? Couple of hundred million? japan is now well on the way to ruling one billion people. They're as industrious as the Germans or more so. They came out of paper houses and silk kimonos in a couple of generations to defeat Russia. They're amazing. Compared to what faces us in Asia, this Hitler business strikes us as just more of the same old runty cat-and-dog fight in the back yard." Tudsbury peered at him, with a reluctant nod. "Possibly you underestimate the Germans." "Maybe you overestimate them. Why the devil didn't you and the French go in when they occupied the Rhineland? They broke a treaty. You could have walked in there at that point and hung Hitler, with not much more trouble than raiding a girls' dormitory." "Ah, the wisdom of hindsight," Tudsbury said. "Don't ask me to defend our politicians. It's been a radical breakdown, a total failure of sen and nerve. I was talking and writing in 1936 the way you are now. At Munich I was close to suicide. I covered the whole thing. Czechoslovakia! A huge chain of strong fortifications, jutting deep into Germany's gut. Fifty crack divisions, spoiling for a scrap. The second biggest arms factory in the world. Russia and even France ready at last to stand up and fight. All this, six short months ago! And an Englishman, an Englishman, goes crawling across Europe to Hitler and hands him Czechoslovakia!"Tudsbury laughed mechanically and puffed at a cigarette made ragged by the breeze. 'I don't know. Maybe democracy isn't for the industrial age. If it's to survive, I think the Americans will have to put up the show." 'Why? why do you keep saying that? On paper you and the French still have the Germans badly licked. Don't you realize that? Manpower, firepower, steel, oil, coal, industrial plant, any way you add it up. They've got a small temporary lead in the air, but they've also got the Soviet union at their backs. It's not the walkover it was last year and two years ago, but you still figure to win." "Alas, they've got the leadership." A strong hand clapped Henry's shoulder, and a voice tinged with irony said, 'Hell Hitler' Ernst Grohke stood there in a worn, creased navy uniform; with it he had put on a severe face and an erect posture. "Well, gentlemen, here we are. Victor, in case I don't see you again in the confusion, where do I get in touch with you? The embassy?" 'Sure. Office of the Naval Attache." "Ah!" said Tudsbury. "Our little trip to Swinemilnde! So glad you haven't forgotten." 'I'll do my best to include you," said Grohke coldly. He shook hands with both of them, bowing and clicking his heels, and he left. "Come and say good-bye to Pamela," Tudsbury said. "She's below, packing." "I'll do that." Pug walked down the deck with the correspondent, who limped on a cane. "I have notions of matching her up with a son of mine." "Oh, have you?" Tudsbury gave him a waggish glance through his thick spectacles. "I warn you, she's a handful." "What? Why, I've never met a gentler or pleasanter girl." "Still waters," said Tudsbury. "I warn you." The Henrys had only just arrived in Berlin when they were invited Tto meet Hitler-It was a rare piece of luck, the embassy people told them. Chancellery receptions big enough to include military attaches were none too common. The Fuhrer was staying away from Berlin in order to damp down the war talk, but a visit of the Bulgarian prime minister had brought him back to the capital. WMIe Commander Henry studied the protocol of Nazi receptions in moments snatched from his piled-up office work, Rhoda flew into a twoday frenzy over her clothing, and over her hair, which she asserted had been ruined forever by the imbecile hairdresser of the Adlon Hotel (pug thought the hair looked more or less the same as always). She had brought no dresses in the least suitable for a formal afternoon reception in the spring. Why hadn't somebody warnedher? Three hours before the event Rhoda was still whirling in an embassy car from one Berlin dress shop to another. She burst into their hotel room clad in a pink silk suit with gold buttons and a gold net blouse. "How's this?" she barked. "Sally Forrest says Hitler likes pink." "Perfect!" Her husband thought the suit was terrible, and decidedly big on Rhoda, but it was no time for truth-telling. "Gad, where did you ever find it?" Outside the hotel, long vertical red banners of almost transparent cheesecloth, with the black swastika in a white circle at their center, were swaying all along the breezy street, alternated with gaudy Bulgarian flags. The way to the chancellery was lined with more flags, a river of fluttering red, interspersed with dozens of Nazi standards in the style of Roman legion emblems-long poles topped by stylized gilt eagles perching on wreathed swastikas-and underneath, in place of the Roman SPQR, the letterS NSDAP. "What on earth does NSDAP stand for?" Rhoda said, peering out of the window of the embassy car at the multitudinous gilded poles. 'National Socialist German Workers Party," said Pug. "Is that the name of the Nazis? How funny. Sounds sort of Commie when you spell it all out." Pug said, "Sure. Hitler got in on a red-hot radical program." "Did he? I never knew that. I thought he was against all that stuff. Well, it couldn't be more confusing, I mean European politics, but I do think all this is terribly exciting. Makes Washington seem dull and tame, doesn't it?" When Victor Henry first came into Hitler's new chancellery, he was incongruously reminded of Radio City Music Hall in New York. The opulent stretch of carpet, the long line of waiting people, the high ceiling, the great expanses of shiny marble, the inordinate length and height of the huge space, the gaudily uniformed men ushering the guests along, all added up to much the same theatrical, vulgar, strained effort to be grand; but this was the seat of a major government, not a movie house. It seemed peculiar. An officer in blue took his name, and the slow-moving line carried the couple toward the Fuhrer, far down the hall. The SS guards were alike as chorus boys with their black-and-silver uniforms, black boots, square shoulders, blond waved hair, white teeth, bronzed skin, and blue eyes. Some shepherded the guests with careful smiles, others stood along the walls, blank-faced and stiff. Hitler was no taller than Henry himself; a small man with a prison haircut, leaning forward and bowing as he shook hands, his head to one side, hair falling on his forehead. This was Henry's flash impression, as he caught his first full-length look at the Fuhrer beside the burly muchmedalled Bulgarian, but in another moment it changed. Hitler had a remarkable smile. His down-curved mouth was rigid and tense, his eyes sternly self-confident, but when he smiled this fanatic look vanished; the whole face brightened up, showing a strong hint ofhumor, and a curious, almost boyish, shyness. Sometimes he held a guest's hand and conversed. When he was particularly amused he laughed and made an odd sudden Move with his right knee: he lifted i-t and jerked it a little inward. His greeting to the two American couples ahead of the Henrys was casual. He did not smile, and his restless eyes wandered away from them and back again as he shook hands. A protocol officer in a sky-blue, gold-crusted Foreign Service uniform intoned in German: "The naval attache to the embassy of the United States of America, Commander Victor Henry!" The hand of the Fuhrer was dry, rough, and it seemed a bit swollen. The clasp was firm as he scanned Henry's face. Seen this close the deepsunk eyes were pale blue, puffy, and somewhat glassy. Hitler appeared fatigued; his pasty face had streaks of sunburn on his forehead, nose, and cheekbones, as though he had been persuaded to leave his desk in Berchtesgaden and come outside for a few hours. To be looking into this famous face with its hanging hair, thrusting nose, zealot's remote eyes, and small mustache was the strangest sensation of Henry's life. Hitler said, "Willkomnwn in Deutschland," and dropped his hand. Surprised that Hitler should be aware of his recent arrival, Pug stammered, "Danke, Herr Reichskanzler." "Frau Henry!" Rhoda, her eyes gleaming, shook hands with Adolf Hitler. He said, in German, "I hope you are comfortable in Berlin." His voice was low, almost folksy; another surprise to Henry, who had only heard him shouting hoarsely on the radio or in the newsreels. "Well, Herr Reichskanzler, to tell the truth I've just begun looking for a house," Rhoda said breathlessly, too overcome to make a polite reply and move on. 'You will have no difficulty." Hitler's eyes softened and warmed at her clear German speech. Evidently he found Rhoda pretty. He kept her hand, faintly smiling. "But there are so many charming neighborhoods in Berlin that I'm bewildered. That's the real problem." This pleased or amused Hitler. He laughed, kicked his knee inward, and turning to an aide behind him, said a few words. The aide bowed. Hitler held out his hand to the next guest. The Henrys moved on to the Bulgarian. The reception did not last long. Colonel Forrest, the military attache, a fat Army Air officer from Idaho who had been in Germany for two years, introduced the Henrys to foreign attaches and Nazi leaders, including Goebbels and Ribbentrop, who looked just like their newsreel pictures, but oddly diminished. These two, with their perfunctory fast handshakes, madeHenry feel like the small fry he was; Hitler had not done that. Pug kept trying to watch Hitler. The Fuhrer wore black trousers, a gray double-breasted coat with an eagle emblem on one arm, and a small Iron Cross on his left breast. By American styles the clothes were cut much too full. This gave the leader of Germany the appearance of wearing secondhand, ill-fitting garments. Hitler from moment to moment looked restless, tired, or bored, or else he flashed into winning charm. He was seldom still. He shifted his feet, turned his head here and there, clasped his hands before him, folded them, gestured with them, spoke absently to most people and intensely to a few, and every so often did the little knee kick. Once Pug saw him eating small iced cakes from a plate, shoving them toward visitor. Shortly thereafter he left, and the gathering started to disperse. his mouth with snatching greedy fingers while he talked to a bemedalled It was drizzling outside; the massed red flags were drooping, and from the helmets of the erect guards water ran unheeded down their faces. The women clustered in the entrance while Pug, Colonel Forrest, and the charge daffaires went out to hail the embassy cars. The charge, a tall moustached man with a pale clever face full of wrinkles, and a weary air, ran the embassy. After the Crystal Night, President Roosevelt had recalled the ambassador, and had not yet sent him back. Everybody in the embassy disliked this policy. It cut the Americans off from some official channels, and hampered their ability to conduct business, even the business of interceding for Jews. The staff thought the President had made a political gesture toward the New York Jews that, in Germany, seemed ineffectual and laughable. The charge said to Henry, "Well, what did you think of the Fuhrer?" "I was impressed. He knew I'd just arrived." "Really? Well, now you've seen German thoroughness. Somebody checked, and briefed him." "But he remembered. In that long line." The charge smiled. "Politician's memory." Colonel Forrest rubbed his broad flat nose, smashed years ago in a plane crash, and said to the charge: "The Fuhrer had quite a chat with Mrs. Henry. What was it about, Pug?" "Nothing. just a word or two about house-hunting." "You have a beautiful wife," the charge said. "Hitler likes pretty women. And that's quite a striking suit she's wearing. They say Hitler likes pink." Two days later, Henry was working at the embassy at a morning pile of mail, in an office not unlike his old cubicle in War Plans-small, crowded with steel files, and piled with technical books and reports. This one had a window, and the view of Hitler's chancellery slightly jarred him each morning when he got there. His yeoman buzzed from a tiny anteroom smelling of mimeograph ink,cigarette smoke, and overbrewed coffee, like yeomen's anterooms everywhere. "Mrs. Henry, sir." It was early for Rhoda to be up. She said grumpily that a man named Knetiler, a renting agent for furnished homes, had sent his card to their hotel room, with a note saying he had been advised they were looking for a house. He was waiting in the lobby for an answer. "well, what can you lose?" Henry said. 'Go and look at his houses." "It seems so odd. You don't suppose Hitler sent him?" Pug laughed. 'Maybe his aide did." Rhoda called back at three-thirty in the afternoon. He had just ' returned from lunch. "Yes?" he yawned. "What now?" The long heavy minebibbing meal of the diplomats was still too much for him. "There's this wonderful house in the Grunewald section, right on a lake. It even has a tennis court! The price is ridiculously cheap, it doesn't come to a hundred dollars a month. Can you come right away and look at it?" Pug went. It was a heavily built gray stone mansion roofed in red tile, set amid tall old trees on a smooth lawn sloping to the water's edge. The tennis court was in back, beside a formal garden with flower beds in bloom around a marble fountain swarming with large goldfish. Inside the house were Oriental carpets, large gilt-framed old paintings, a walnut dining table with sixteen blue silk-upholstered chairs, and a long living room cluttered with elegant French pieces. The place had five upstairs bedrooms and three marbled baths. The agent, a plump matter-of-fact man of thirty or so, with straight brown hair and rimless glasses, might have been an American real estate broker. Indeed he said that his brother was a realtor in Chicago and that he had once worked in his office. Pug asked him why the price was so low. The agent cheerfully explained in good English that the ovmer, Herr Rosenthal, was a Jewish manufacturer, and that the house was vacant because of a new ruling affecting Jews. So he badly needed a tenant. "What's this new ruling?" Henry asked. 'I'm not too clear on it. Something related to their owning real estate." Knetiler spoke in an entirely offhand tone, as though he were discussing a zoning regulation in Chicago.
"Does this man know you're offering the house to us, and at what price?" Pug said. "Naturally." "When can I meet him?" "Any time you say." Next day Pug used his lunch hour for an appointment with the owner. After introducing them in the doorway of the house, the agent went and sat in his car. Herr Rosenthal, a gray-headed, paunchy, highly dignified individual, clad in a dark suit of excellent English cut, invited Henry inside. 'It's a beautiful house," Henry said in German. Rosenthal glanced around with wistful affection, gestured to a chair, and sat down. "Thank you. We're fond of it, and have spent a lot of time and money on it." "Mrs. Henry and I feel awkward about leasing the place." "Why?" The Jew looked surprised. "You're desirable tenants. If a lower rent would help-" "Good lord, no! It's an incredibly low rent. But will you actually receive the money?" "Of course. Who else? It's my house." Rosenthal spoke firmly and proudly. "With the agent's commission deducted, and certain municipal fees, I'll receive every penny." Pug pointed a thumb at the front door. "Knetler told me that some new ruling compels you to rent it." "That won't affect you as tenant, I assure you. Are you thinking of a two-year lease? I myself would prefer that." "But what's this ruling?" Though they were alone in an unoccupied house, Rosenthal glanced over one shoulder and then the other, and dropped his voice. "Well-it's an emergency decree, you understand; I am sure it will eventually be cancelled. In fact I have been assured of that by people in high places. Meantime this property can be placed under a trusteeship and sold at any time without my consent. However, if there's a tenant in residence with diplomatic immunity, that can't be done." Rosenthal smiled. "Hence the modest rent, Herr Commandant! You see, I'm not hiding anything." "May I ask you a question? Why don't you sell out and leave Germany?" The Jew blinked. His face remained debonair and imposing. "My family has a business here more than one hundred years old. We refine sugar. My children are at school in England, but my wife and I are comfortable enough in Berlin. We are both native Berliners." He sighed, looked around at the snug rosewood-panelled library in which they sat, and went on: "Thingsare not as bad as they were in 1938. That was the worst. If there is no war, they'll improve quickly. I've been told this seriously by some high officials. Old friends of mine." Rosenthal hesitated, and added, "The Fuhrer has done remarkable things for the country. It would be foolish to deny that. I have lived through other bad times. I was shot through a lung in Belgium in 1914. A man goes through a lot in a lifetime." He spread his hands in a graceful resigned gesture. Victor Henry said, "Well, Mrs. Henry loves the house, but I don't want to take advantage of anybody's misfortune." "You'll be doing just the opposite. You know that now. Two years?" "How about one year, with an option to renew?" At once Rosenthal stood and held out his hand. Henry rose and shook it. "We should have a drink on it perhaps," said Rosenthal, "but we emptied the liquor closet when we left. Liquor doesn't last long in a vacant house." It felt odd the first night, sleeping in the Rosenthals' broad soft bed with its exquisite French petit-point footboard and headboard. But within a few days, the Henrys were at home in the mansion and busy with a new life. From an employment agency suggested by the agent came a maid, a cook, and a houseman-chauffeur, all first-rate servants, and-Henry assumed-all planted informers. He checked the electric mitring of the house for listening devices. The German equipment and circuits were strange to him, and he found nothing. Still, he and Rhoda walked on the lawn to discuss touchy matters. A whirling couple of weeks passed. They saw Hitler once more at an opera gala, this time at a distance, up in a crimson damask-lined box. His white tie and tails were again too big, emphasizing his Charlie Chaplin air of a dressed-up vagrant, despite his severe stiff saluting and the cheers and applause of beautiful women and important-looking men, all stretching their necks to stare worshipfully. At two receptions arranged for the Henrys, one at the home of the charge and one at Colonel Foffest's house, they met many foreign diplomats and prominent German industrialists, artists, politicians, and military men. Rhoda made a quick hit. Notwithstanding her panic before the chancellery reception, she had brought a large costly wardrobe. She sparkled in her new clothes. Her German kept improving. She liked Berlin and its people. The Germans sensed this and warmed to her, though some embassy people who detested the regime were taken aback by her cordiality to Nazis. Pug was something of a bear at these parties, standing silent unless spoken to. But Rhoda's success covered for him.