Chapter 12

She couldn't have enrolled any more." "She damn well could have tried." "Anyway, Madeline will be all right. She's a good girl. She's as straitlaced as you." "It's this war," Pug said. "The world's coming apart at the seams by the day. What can that girl do that's worth fifty-five dollars a week? That's what a senior, grade lieutenant makes, after ten years in the service. It's absurd." Rhoda said, "You've always babied Madeline. I think she's showed you up, and that's what really annoys you." "I wish I were back there. I'd have a damn good look around." Rhoda drummed the fingers of both hands on the table. "Do you want me to go home and be with her?" "That would cost a fortune. It's one thing when you travel on government allowance, but-' Pug turned to Byron. "You'll be going back, won't you? Maybe you could find a job in New York." "As a matter of fact, I wanted to talk about that. I got a letter too. From Dr. Jastrow. I'm going to Siena." "You are?" "Yes." 'Who says so?" "I do." Silence. Rhoda said, "That's something we should all discuss, isn't it, Briny'r" "Is that girl there?" Pug said. "No." 'She's gone back to the States?" "No. She's trying to get there from England." 'How do you propose to go?" 'Train. They're running regularly to Nhlan and Florence." 'And what will you use for money'r 'I have enough to get there. I saved nearly all I made." town 'And you'll do what? literary research up in an Italian mountain — with a war on?" "If I get called to active duty, I'll go." nlat's damned bighearted, seeing that if you didn't, the Navy would track you down and put you in the brig for a few years. Well, I'm proud of you, Briny. Do as you please." Victor Henry coughed, rolled up his napkin, and left the table. Byron sat with his head thrust down and forward, his face white, the muscles in his jaw working.
Rhoda saw that talking to her son would be useless. She went upstairs to her dressing room, took out a letter she had put in a drawer beneath her underwear, read it once, then tore it into very small pieces. (from WORLD EMPIRE LOST) The "Phony" War The quiescent half year between the fall of Warsaw and the Norway episode became known in the West as the "phony" war, a phrase attributed to an American Senator. We called it the Sitzkrieg, or "sitting war," a play on Blitzkrieg. On the British and French side the name was perhaps justified. During this lull they in fact cad unbelievably little to improve their military posture, besides sit on their backsides and predict our collapse. Early in this strange twilight period, the Fuhrer delivered his "outstretched hand" peace speech to the Reichstag. Like most of his political moves, it was cleverly concdived. Had the Allies swallowed it, we might have achieved surprise in the west with a November attack, which Hitler had ordered when Warsaw fell, and which we were feverishly planning. But by now the Western statesmen had developed a certain wariness toward our Fuhrer, and their response was disappointing. In the event this did not matter. A combination of bad weather and insoluble supply problems forced one postponement after another on the impatient Fuhrer. The intent to attack France was never Ot issue, but the date and the strategy kept changing. In all, the attack day was postponed twenty-nine times. Meanwhile preparations went forward at an evermounting tempo. Our staff's favorite comic reading as we worked on Fall Gelb-"Cose Yellow," the attack on France-came to be the long, learned articles in French newspapers and military journals, proving that we were about to cave in under economic pressure. In Point of fact, for the first time our economy was really getting moving. Life in Paris, we gathered, was gayer and more relaxed than before the war. The British Prime Minister Chamberlain epitomized the Western frame of mind by stating, "Hitler has missed the bus." In this enforced half-year delay German industrial war production began to rise andespite the neverending confusion and interference in the Fuhrer's headquarters-a new and excellent strategy for the assault on France was at last hammered out. Distraction in Finland The sitzkrieg lull was temporarily enlivened when the Soviet union attacked Finland. Stalin's unvarying policy after signing the Ribbentrop pact was to seize whatever territory he could, while we were at war with the democracies, to strengthen his position for an eventual showdown with us. Hitler had already given him huge concessions in the Baltic states and in Poland, to buy a free hand against the West. But like all Russian rulers, Czarist or Bolshevik, Stalin had a big appetite. This was his chance to take over the Karelian Isthmus and dominate the Gulf of Finland. When his emissaries failed to get these concessions from the proud Finns by threats, Stalin set out to take them by force. The rights of Finland were, as a matter of course, to be trampled upon.
But to the world's surprise, the Russian dictator got in trouble, for the attack went badly. The vaunted Red Army covered itself with disgrace, revealing itself in Finland as an ill-equipped, ill-trained, miserably led rabble, unable to crush a small well-drilled foe. Whether this was due to Stalin's purges of his officer force in the late thirties, or to the traditional Russian inefficiency added to the depressant effect of Bolshevism, or to the use of inferior troops, remained unclear. But from November 1939 to March 1940, Finland did bravely fight off the Slav horde. Nor did the Russians ever really defeat them militarily. In the classic manner of Russian combat, the handful of Finnish defenders was finally drowned in a rain of artillery shells and a bath of Slav blood. Thus Stalin's goal was achieved, at ruthless cost, of shaping up the Leningrad front by pushing back our Finnish friends on the Karelian Isthmus. This move, it must be confessed, probably saved Leningrad in 1941. After the Finnish victory during Christmas-the classic battle of Suomussalmi in which nearly thirty thousand Russians were killed or frozen to death, at a cost of about nine hundred Finnish dead-it was impossible to regard the Soviet army as a competent modern adversary. Much later, Hermann Goering was to call the Finnish campaign "the greatest camouflage action in history," implying that the Russians in Finland had pretended to be weak in order to mask their potential. This was just an absurd excuse for the failures of his Luftwaffe in the east. In point of fact, Stalin's Russia in 1939 was militarily feeble. What happened between that time and our final debacle on the eastern front at Russian hands is the subject of a later section, but their performance in Finland certainly misled us in our planning. Sitzkrieg Ends: Norway Much vociferous propaganda went on in the Western democracies about the attack on Finland, and about sending the Finns military aid. In the end they did nothing. However, the opening of the Finnish front did force Hitler to face up to a genuine threat in the north: the British plot to seize Norway. Of this we had hard intelligence. Unlike many of the "plots" and "conspiracies" of which our German armed forces were accused at the Nuremberg trials, this British plot certainly existed. Winston Churchill openly describes it in his memoirs. He acknowledges that the British invasion was laid on for 0 date ahead of ours, and then put off, so that we beat the British into Norway by the merest luck, by a matter of days. The Russo-Finnish war made the problem of Norway acute, because England and France could use "aid to Finland" as a perfect pretext for landing in Norway and driving across Scandinavia. This would have been disastrous for us. The North Sea, bracketed by British bases on both sides, would have been closed to our U-boats, choking off our main thrust at sea. Even more important, the winter route for ships bringing us Swedish iron ore lay along the Norwegiancoast. Deprived of that iron ore, we could not have gone on fighting for long. When the High Command convinced Hitler of these risks, he issued the order for "Weser Exercise," the occupation of Norway, and postponed Case Yellow once again. It is a sad commentary that Admiral Raeder, at the Nuremberg trials, was convicted of "a plot to occupy neutral Norway," when the British who sat in judgment had plotted the same thing themselves. Such paradoxes have enabled me to bear with honor my own experience at Nuremberg, and to regard it as not a disgrace at all, but rather as a political consequence of defeat. Had the war gone the other way, and had we hanged Churchill for plotting to occupy Norway, what would the world have said? Yet what is sauce for the goose should be sauce for the gander. Our occupation of Norway, a surprise overwater move virtually under the guns of a highly superior British fleet, was a great success; not, however, because of Hitler's readership, but in spite of it. We took heavy losses at sea, especially of destroyers that we sorely missed when the invasion of England was later planned. But the price was small compared to the gain. We forestalled the British, opened up a much wider coastline to counter the blockade, and secured the Swedish iron ore supply for the rest of the war. Mistakes in Norway Hitler's amateurishness showed up badly in Norway. It cropped up again cind again in every campaign, tending only to get grosser as time went on. The mark of the amateur in any field is to lose one's head when the going gets hard. What marks the professional is his competence in an emergency, and almost the whole art of the soldier is to make sound judgments in the fog of war. Hitler's propensity to lose his head took two forms: calling a panicky halt to operations when they were gathering momentum, and changing the objective in mid-campaign. Both these failings appeared in Weser Exercise. I give details in my Norway operational analysis, of his hysterical insistence day after day that we abandon Narvik, the real key to the position; his wild sudden scheme to capture the port of Trondheim with the luxury liner Bremen, and so forth. Why then was the occupation of Scandinavia a success? Simply because General Falkenhorst, once in Norway, ignored the Fuhrer's interference, and did a fine professional job with good troops and a sound plan. This interference from above, incidentally, was to haunt operations to the end. Adolf Hitler had used all his political shrewdness over many years to gain control of the armed forces, not stopping at strong-arm methods. There is no question that this man's lust for power was insatiable, and it is certainly regrettable that the German people did not understand his true nature until it was too late. The background of this usurpation will be sketched here, as it significantly affected the whole course of the six-year war.
How Hitler Usurped Control of the Army In 1938, he and his Nazi minions did not scruple to frame grave charges of sexual misconduct against revered generals of the top command. Also, they took advantage of a few actual unfortunate lapses of this nature; the details need not be raked over in this account. Suffice it that the Nazis managed to topple the professional leadership in a bold underhanded coup based on such accusations. Hitler with sudden stunning arrogance then assumed supreme command himself! And he exacted an oath of loyalty to himself throughout the Wehrmacht, from foot soldier to general. In this act he showed his knowledge of the German character, which is the soul of honor, and takes such an oath as binding to the death. Our staff, muted and disorganized by the disgusting revelations and pseudorevelations abovt honored leaders, offered no coherent resistance to this usurpation. So the strict inde(our) pendence of the German army from German politics, which for generations had kept the Wehrmacht a strong stabilizing force in the Fatherland, came to an end; and the drive wheel of the world's strongest military machine was grasped by an Austrian street agitator. In itself this was not a catastrophic turn. Hitler was far from a military ignoramus. He had had four years in the field as a foot soldier, and there are worse ways to learn war. He was a voracious reader of history and of military writings. His memory for technical facts was unusual. Above all, he did have the ability to get to the root of a large problem. He had almost a woman's intuition for the nub of a matter. This is a fine leadership trait in war, always providing that the politician listens to the soldiers for the execution of his ideas. The combination of a bold political adventurer, a Charles XII personality risen from the streets to weld Germany into a solid driving force, and our General Staff, the world's best military leadership, might well have brought us ultimate success. But Hitler was incapable of listening to anybody. This undid him and ruined Germany. Grand strategy and incredibly petty detail were equally his preoccupations. The overruling axiom of our war effort was that Hitler gave the orders. In a brutal speech to our staff in November 1939, prompted by our efforts to discourage a premature attack on France, he warned us that he would ruthlessly crush any of us who opposed his will. Like so many of his other threats, he made this one good. By the end of the war most of our staff had been dismissed in disgrace. Many had been shot. All of us would have been shot sooner or later, had he not lost his nerve and shot himself first. Thus it happened that the strength of the great German people, and the valor of the peerless German soldier, became passive tools in Hitler's amateur hands. Hitler and Churchill: A Comparison Winston Churchill, in a revealing passage of his memoirs on the functioning of his chiefs ofstaff, expresses his envy of Hitler, who could get his decisions acted upon without submitting them to the discouragement and pulling apart of hidebound professional soldiers. In fact, this was what saved England and won the war. Churchill was exactly the kind of brilliant amateur meddler in military affairs that Hitler was. Both rose to power from the depths of political rejection. Both relied chiefly on oratory to sway the multitude. Both somehow expressed the spirit of their peoples, and so won loyalty that outlasted any number of mistakes, defeats, and disasters. Both thought in grandiose terms, knew little about economic and logistical realities, and cared less. Both were iron men In defeat. Above all, both men had overwhelming personalities that could silence rational OPPosition while they talked. Of this strange phenomenon, I had ample and bitter experience with Hitler. The crucial difference was that in the end Churchill had to listen to the professionals, whereas the German people had committed itself to the fatcil Fuhrerprinzip. Had Churchill possessed the power Adolf Hitler managed to arrogate to himself, the Allied armies would have bled to death in 1944, invading the "soft underbelly of the Axis," as Churchill called the fearful mountains and water obstacles of the Balkan peninsula. There we would have slaughtered them. The Italian campaign proved that. Only on the flat plains of Normandy did the Ford-production style of American warfare, using immense masses of inferior, cheaply made machinery, have a chance of working. The Balkans would have been a colossal Thermopylae, won by the defenders. It would have been a Churchill defeat compared to which Gailipoli would have been a schoolboy picnic. With a Fuhrer's authority, Churchill would also have frittered away the Allied landing craft, always a critical supply problem, in witless attempts to recapture the Greek islands and to storm Rhodes. In 1944 he nagged Eisenhower and Roosevelt to commit these wild follies until they both stopped talking to him. Churchill was a Hitler restrained by democracy. If the German nation ever rises again, let it remember the different ends of these two men. I am not arguing for the goose gobble of parliamentarians. By conviction I have always been a conservative monarchist. But whatever the civilian structure, let our people hereafter entrust military affairs to its trained generals, and insist that politicians keep hands off the war machine. TRANSLATOR'S NOTE: This very jarring and distorted comparison of Hitler and Churchill omits the crucial difference, of course. By the common verdict of historians, even most German ones, Hitler was a ruthless adventurer bent on conquest and plunder, while Churchill was a great defender of human liberty, dignity, and law. it is true that Churchill tended to interfere in military matters. Politicians find that temptation hard to resist.
Roon's assertion about the British plan to land in Norway is correct. His conclusions, again, are a different matter, showing how slippery the issues at Nuremberg were. England was the sole protector and hope of small neutral countries like Norway and Denmark. The purpose of a British landing would have been to defend Norway, not to occupy and dominate it. In a war, both sides may well try to take the same neutral objective for strategic reasons, which does not prove that both sides are equally guilty of aggression. That is the fallacy in Roon's argument. I would not recommend trying to persuade a German staff officer of this.-V.H. N HENRY and his fiancee Janice were set straight about WRussia's invasion of Finland by an unexpected person: Madeline's new boyfriend, a trombone player and student of public affairs named Sewell Bozeman. Early in December the engaged couple came to New York and visited Madeline in her new apartment. Finding the boyfriend there was a surprise. The news of her move to her own apartment had enraged Pug Henry, but had he known her reason, he would have been pleased. Madeline had come to despise the two girls with whom she had shared a flat. Both were having affairs-one with a joke writer, the other with an actor working as a bellhop. Madeline had found herself being asked to skulk around, stay out late, or remain in her room while one or another pair copulated. The walls in the shabby apartment were thin. She had no way of even pretending unawareness. She was disgusted. Both girls had good jobs, both dressed with taste, both were college graduates. Yet they behaved like sluts, as Madeline understood the word. She was a Henry, with her father's outlook. Give or take a few details of Methodist doctrine, Madeline believed in what she had learned at home and at church. Unmarried girls of good character didn't sleep with men; to her, that was almost a law of nature. Men had more leeway; she knew, for instance, that Warren had been something of a hellion before his engagement. She liked Byron better because he seemed, in this respect, more like her upright father. To Madeline sex was a derightful matter of playing with fire, but enjoying the blaze from a safe distance, until she could leap into the hallowed white conflagration of a bridal night. She was a middle-class good girl, and not in the least ashamed of it. She thought her room-mates were gross fools. As soon as hugh Cleveland gave her a raise, she got out. "I don't know," she said, stirring a pot over a tiny stove behind a screen, "maybe this dinner was a mistake. We all could have gone to a restaurant." She was addressing the boyfriend, Sewell Bozeman, called Bozey by y in September. Bozey was a thin, long, the world. They had met at a part hair and thoughtful brown pale, tractable fellow with thick straight brown s that bulged behind rimless glasses. He always dressed in brown, to eye ties, and even brown shirts; he was always reading brown shoes, brown economics and politics and had a generally enormous brown books on doomed society, brown outlook on life, believing that America was a rapidly going under. Madeline found him a piquant and intriguing talking her small dining table, wearing novelty. At the moment, he was seti over his brown array the pink apron he had put on to peel onionsfor the stew. e said. "You can save the stew for another (Well, it's not too late,h night, and we can take your brother and his girl to Julio's." tNo, I told Warren I was cooking the dinner. That girls rolling in idn't like an Italian dive. And they have to rush off to the money, she would theatre." Madeline came out, patting her hot face with a handkerchief, "That's fine. Thanks, Bozey. I'm going to change." the table. and took out and looked at g white paint She opened a closet door crusted with yellowin -sided bay and the small room. With a three a dress and slip, glancing arou as the whole window looking out on back yards and drying laundry, it w f blue the kitchenette and a tiny bath. Large pieces of apartment, exce for van under yellow PaPer Patterns-'Dam it. Cloth jay on the threadbare finish cutting that t. Maybe I'll have time to That divan is such a rat's nes dress, if I hurry. "I can finish cutting it," Bozey said. a dress. Don't try." A doorbell "Nonsense, Bomey, you can't cut ready. That's good." She went to wheezily rang. iwell, the wine's here al seti the tall POPopen the door. Warren and Janice walked in and surpri his pink apron, holding shears in one hand and a sleeve eyed man in ew, and Madeline pattern in the other. What with the smell of the hot toast was a strikingly in a housecoat with a dress and a lacy slip on her arm, it domestic scene. "My gosh, Warren, you're tan!" Madeline was "oh, hi. You're early. M cur to her to be embarrassed. so sure of her own rectitude that it didn't oc ozeman, a friend of mine." "This is Sewell B ; he was embarrassed, and in Bozey waved the shears feebly at them his fluster be started to cut a ragged blue rayon sleeve. Madeline said, "Bozey, will you stop cutting that dress!" She turned to Janice. "Imagine, he actually thinks he can do it." "it'more than I can," Janice Lacouture said, staring incredulously at Bozeman. Bozey drop(s) ped the shears and took off his apron with a giggle. Warren said just to say something and cover his stupefaction, "Your dinner smells great, Madeline." After completing introductions, Madeline went off into what she called her boudoir, a grimy toilet about four feet square. "If you'd like to freshen up first-" she said to Janice as she opened the door, gesturing at the few cubic feet of yellow space crammed with rusty plumbing. "It's a bit cosy in there for two." "Oh, no, no I'm just fine," Janice exclaimed. 'Go ahead." A halting conversation ensued while Bozey donned his jacket and tie. Soon Madeline put out her head and one naked shoulder and arm.
"Bozey, I don't want that beef stew to boil over. Turn down the gas." "Sure thing." As he went behind the screen, Janice Lacouture and Warren exchanged appalled looks. "Do you play with the New York Philharmonic, Mr. Bozeman?" Janice raised her voice. 'No, I'm with Ziggy Frechtel's orchestra. We play the Feenamint Hour," he called back. 'I'm working on getting up my own band." He returned and sat in an armchair, or rather lay in it, with his head propped against the back and the rest of him projecting forward and down, sloping to the floor. Warren, something of a sloucher himself, regarded this spectacular slouch by the limp long brown bulging-eyed trombonist with incredulity. In a way the strangest feature was his costume. Warren had never in his life seen a brown tic on a brown irt. a the issued from the bathroom smoothing her dress. "Oh, come on, Bozey, mix some drinks," she carolled. Bozey hauled himself erect and made drinks, talking on about the problems of assembling a band. A shy, awkward fellow, he honestly believed that the best way to put other people at their ease was to keep talking, and the one subject that usually occurred to him was himself. He disclosed that he was the son of a minister in Montana; that the local doctor had cured him of religion at sixteen, by feeding him the works of IngersoU and Haeckel while treating him less successfully for thyroid trouble; and that in rebellion against his father he had taken up the trombone. Soon he was on the topic of the war, which, he explained, was nothing but an imperialist struggle for markets. This was apropos of a remark by Warren that he was a naval fighter pilot in training. Bozey proceeded to set forth the Marxist analysis of war, beginning with the labor theory of value. Madeline meanwhile, finishing angi with d serving up the dinner, was glad to let him entertain her company. She knew Bozey was talkative, but she found him interesting and she thought Warren and Janice might, too. They seemed oddly silent. Perhaps, she thought, they had just had a little spat. Under capitalism, Bozey pointed out, workers never were paid what they really earned. The capitalist merely gave them the lowest wages possible. Since he owned the means of production, he had them at his mercy. Profit was the difference between what the worker produced and what he got. This had to lead to war sooner or later. In each country the capitalists piled up big surpluses because the workers weren't paid enough to buy back what they produced. The capitalists, to realize their profits, had to sell off those surpluses in other countries. This struggle for foreign markets, when it got hot enough, inevitably turned into war. That was what was happening now. "But Hitler has no surpluses," Janice Lacouture mildly observed.
An economics student, she knew these Marxist bromides, but was willing to let the boyfriend, or lover-she wasn't yet sure which-of Warren's sister run on for a while. "Germany's a land of shortages." 'The war is a struggle for foreign markets, all the same," Bozey insisted serenely, back in his deep slouch. 'How about cameras, just at random? Germany still exports cameras. Warren said, 'As I understand you, then, the Germans invaded Poland to sell Leicas." "Making jokes about economic laws is easy, but irrelevant." Bozey smiled. "I'm fairly serious," Warren said. "Obviously Hitler's reason for attacking Poland was conquest and loot, as in most wars." "Hitler is a figurehead," said Bozey comfortably. "Have you ever heard of Fritz Thyssen? He and the Krupps and a few other German capitalists put him in power. They could put someone else in tomorrow if they chose, by making a few telephone calls. Of course there's no reason why they should, He's a usem and obedient lackey in their struggle for foreign markets." 'I"at you're saying is the straight Conununist line, you know," Janice said. "Oh, Bozey's a Communist," Madeline said, emerging from behind the screen with a wooden bowl of salad. "Dinner's ready. Will you dress the salad, Bozey?" "Sure thing." Bozey took the bowl to a rickety little side table, and made expert motions with oil, vinegar, and condiments. "I'm not sure I've ever met a Communist before," Warren said, peering at the long brown man. "My gosh, you haven't?" said Madeline. "Why, the radio business swarms with them." "That's a slight xaggerafion," Bozey saidy rubbing garlic on the salad bowl, and filling the close, warm flat with the pungent aroma. "Oh, come on, Bozey. Who isn't a Communist in our crowd?") "Well, Peter isn't. I don't think Myra is. Anyway, that's just our gang.-He added to Warren, "It dates from the Spanish Civil War days. We Put on all kinds of shows for the benefit of the LoYalists." Bozey brought the salad bowl to the table, where the others were already seated. "Of course there', just a few of us left now. A lot of the crowd dropped away after Stalin made the pact with Hitler. They had no fundamental convictions." "Didn't that pact bother YOu?" Warren said. "Bother me? Why? It was a move. The capitalist powers wantto snuff out socii in the S ' sen oviet union. If they bleed themselves white beforehand, fighting each other, the final a(a) ttack on socialism will be that much weaker. Stalin's peace policy is very wise." Warren said, "Suppose Hitler polishes off England and France in a one-front war, and the tun n ms and smashes Russia? That may well happen. Stalin could have made a deal with the Allies, and all of them together would have had a far better chance of stopping the Nazis." "But don't you see, there's no reason for a socialist country to take part in an imperialist struggle for foreign markets," 'Socialism doesn't need foreign Plained to the benighted naval aviator. Bozey patiently e,markets, since the worker gets all he creates." "Bozey, will you bring the stew?" Madeline said. 'Sure thing." JaWce Lacouture said, speaking louder as he went behind the screen, "B,t surely you know that a Russian worker gets less than a worker in any capitalist country." "Of course-There are two reasons for that. Socialism triumphed first in a feudal country," Bozey said, reappearing with the stew, 'and had a big industrial gap to close. Also, because of the imperialist threat, socialmn had to divert a lot of Production to arms. When socialism triumphs everywhere, arms will become useless, and they'll all be thrown in the sea. "But even if that happens, which I doubt, it seems to me," said Janice, "that when the state owns the means Of Production, the workers will get less than if capitalists own them. You know how inefficient and tyannical government bureaucracies are." "Yes," interjected Madeline, ('but as soon as socialism triumphs everybody will need a central rywhere the state will wither away, because nobod e wine Then the workers will get it all. Pass the government any more, around) Bozey."-"Sure thing-2) mowing his eyes at her, "Do you believe Warren said to his sister, na that? "Me?" Madeline said, giggling. "Well, that's how the argument goes ds with Communists? For "Wouldn't Dad die if he knew I'd made frien heaven's sake don't write and tell him-' "that about Finland?" "Have no fear." Warren turned to Bozey. country was then about a The Russian invasion of the tiny northern week old, and already looking like a disaster. "Okay. What about it?" "Well, you know Russia claims that Finland attacked her, the way Hitler claimed Poland attacked Germany. Do you believe that?" "It's ridiculous to think that Poland attacked Germany," Bozey said calmly, "but it's highlylikely that Finland attacked the Soviet union. It was probably a provocation engineered by others to embroil socialism the imperialist war." in "The Soviet union is fifty times as big as Finland," Janice Lacou ture said. "I'm not saying the Finns did something wise," said Bozey-'They were egged on into making a bad mistake. Anyway, Finland just used to be a duchy of Czarist Russia. It's not an invasion exactly, it's a rectification." "Oh, come on, Bozey, Madeline said. "Stalin's simply making hay while the sun shines, slamming his way in there to improve his strategic position against Germany. "Of course " , Warren said and that's a damned prudent move in his situation, whatever the morality of it may be." Bozey smiled cunningly, his eyes starting from his head. "Well, it's lift their hands in holy horror when a socialist government does something realistic. They think that's their exclusive privilege." quite true he wasn't born yesterday. The imperialists liny do you suppose the invasion's flopping on its face?" Warren said. "Oh, do you believe the capitalist newspapers?" said Bozey, with a broad wink "Yuu think the Russians are really winning?" "Why, all this nonsense about the Finnish sid troops in white unifomis makes me ill," Bozey said. "Don't you suppose the Russians have I - m Lskis and white uniforms too? But catch the New York Times saying so." "This is a lovely stew," Janice said. "I used too many cloves," Madeline said. 'Don't bite into one." Warren and Janice left right after dinner to go to the theatre. He was on a seventy-two-hour pass from Pensacola, and Janice had come up from Washington to meet him; dinner with Madeline had been a lastminute arrangement by long-distance telephone. when they left, Madeline was cutting out her dress and Bozey was washing the dishes. 'What do I do now?" Warren said, out in the street. The theatre was only a few blocks away. It was snowing and cabs were unobtainable , so they walked. "Get myself a shotgun? "What for? To put Bozey out of his misery?""TO get him to marry her, was my idea." Janice laughed, a-d hugged his arm. "There's nothing doing between those two, honey." "You don't think so? "Not a chance. that's quite a gal, your little sister. note I say?" "Jesus Christ, Yes. The Red Flame of Manhattan. That's a hell of a And I Wrote my folks I was going to ('YOu just tell your parents that everything's cause it is." v's' do They walked with heads bent, the snow whirling on the wind into their faces. "y are you so quiet?" said Janice. 'Don't worry about your sister. Really, you don't have to." us vice family and "I'M thinking how this war's blown ourWfaem'rielyaaspeart- I mean, we we're used to that, but it's different no said ed to scatter here and there," Warrenw. Id.don't feel there's a base any more- And we're a changin gether again." 11 9. I don't know if we'll ever pull back to-Sooner or later all la mil et change and scatter," said Janice Lacouture, "and out of the pieces new families t n fl ' She Put her face to his for a moment, a d snow akes fell on the two warm cheeks. and a very lovely arrangement it is, too start up. That's how it goes, phat! I hope she's rid of that one by t e time Dad gets back. "The imperialist struggle for foreign markets," said Warren. jehoe he'll lay waste to Radio City.- h therwise peachy with her. Be t her-Now hat YRON!" ut the name and stared. He sat as usual on the BDr, Jastrow gasped o his legs, the ay shawl around his shoulders, terrace, the blue blanket over grad on his lap. A cold breeze blowing across the writing board an'd Yellow P s. In the translucent air the the valley from Siena fluttered Jastrow's Page d cathedral atop the vineack-and-white stripe Id red-walled town, with its bl like the medieval Siena in o hills, looked hauntingly yard-checkered frescoes. "Hello, A.J." declare I'll be a week recovering from the start or me, Byron! I about you only at breakfast. We were you've given me! We were talking both absolutely certain you'd be in the State "She's here?" "of course. She's up in the library." u"Sir, will You eric se me?p onect myself-oh, and Byron, tell Maria I'd '-Yes, go ahead, let me c g tea right awaylike some stron a time and walked into the 00 three at Byron t k the center hall steps black skirt, pale and library. She stood at the desk in a gray sweater, a It is you. NobodY else galumphs up those wide-eyed. -It is, by God! stairs like that." "It's me. "Why the devil did you come back?" "I have to make a living." y didn't you let us know you were coming?" ni an tretched out a hand uncertai Y, d Put it She approached him, s you look rested, to his face. The long fingers felt dry and cold. "AnYwaY, kwardly and weight She backed off aw you seem to have put on some beastly that day in K6rugs abruptlY. it! owe you an apology. I was feeling from him and l,m sDrry.-She walked away surprises like berg, and if I was rude to YOu we can use YOu here, but sank into her desk chair. "Well s by now.)t "You're an little. Wi lveu, I thought I'd better just come-y# this are never pleasant. Don't you know that yet?" As though he had returned from an errand in town, she resumed clattering at the typewriter. That was all his welcome. Jastrow put him back to work, and within a few days the old routines were restored. It was as though the Polish experience had never occurred, as though neither of them had left the hilltop. The traces of the war in these quiet hills were few. Only sporadic shortages of gasoline created any difficulty, The Milan and Florence newspapers that reached them played down the war. Even on the BBC broadcasts there was little combat news. The Russian attack on Finland seemed as remote as a Chinese earthquake. Because the buses had become unreliable, Dr. Jastrow gave Byron a lodging on the third floor of the villa: a cramped little maid's room with cracking plaster walls, and a stained ceiling that leaked in hard rains. Natalie lived directly below Byron in a second-floor bedroom looking out on Siena. Her peculiar manner to him persisted. At mealtimes, and generally in Jastrow's presence, she was distantly cordw. In the library she was almost uncivil, working away in long silences, and giving terse cool answers to questions. Byron had a modest opinion of himself and his attractions, and he took his treatment as probably his due, though he missed the comradeship of their days in Poland and wondered why she never talked about them. He thought he had probably annoyed her by following her here. He was with her now and that was why he had come; so, for all the brusque treatment, he was as content as a dog reunited with an irritablemaster. When Byron arrived in Siena, the Constantine book was on the shelf for the moment, in favor of an expanded magazine article, "The Last Palio." In describing the race, Jastrow had evoked a gloom-filled image of Europe plunging again toward war. A piece startling in its foresight, it had arrived on the editor's desk on the first of September, the day of the invasion. The magazine printed it, and Jastrow's pubjisher cabled him a frantic request to work it up into a short book, preferably containing a note of optimism (however slight) on the outcome of the war. The cable mentioned a large advance against royalties. This was the task in hand. In this brief book, Jastrow was striking an Olympian, farseeing, forgiving note. The Germans would probably be beaten to the ground again, he wrote; and even if they gained the rule of the earth, they would in the end be tamed and subdued by their subject peoples, as their ancestors, the Goths and Vandals, had been tamed to turn Christian. Fanatic or barbaric despotism had only its hour. It was a recurring human fever fated to cool and pass. Reason and freedom were what all human history eternally moved toward. The Germans were the bad children of Europe, Jastrow argued: egotistic, willful, romantic, always poised to break up faltering patterns of order. Anninius had set the ax to the Par Romana; Martin Luther had broken the back of the universal Church; now Hitler was challenging Europe's unsteady regime of liberal capitalism, based on an obsolete patchwork structure of nations. The "PalioP of Europe, wrote Jastrow, the contest of hot little nationalisms in a tiny crowded cockpit of a continent, a larger Siena with the sea for three walls and Asia for a fourth, was worn out. As Siena had y one water company and one power company, one telephone system only and one mayor, instead of seventeen of these in the seventeen make-believe sovereignties called Goose, Caterpillar, Giraffe, and so forth, so Europe was ripe for the same conunonsense unification. Hitler, a bad-boy genius, had perceived this. He was going about the breakup of the old order cruelly, wrongly, with Teutonic fury, but what mattered was that he was t. The Second World War was the last Palio. Europe essentially correc would emerge less colorful but more of a rational and solid structure, whichever side won the idiotic and gory horse race. Perhaps this painful but healthy process would become global, and the whole earth would be unified at last. As for Hitler, the villain of the melodrama, he would either be hunted down and bloodily destroyed like Macbeth, or he would have his triumph and then he would fall or die. The stars would remain, so would the earth, so would the human quest for freedom, understanding, and love among brothers. As he typed repeated drafts of these ideas, Byron wondered whether Jastrow would have written such a tolerant and hopeful book had he spent September under bombardment in Warsaw, instead of in his villa overlooking Siena. He thought "The Last Palio' was a lot of high-flown irrelevant gab. But he didn't say so. Letters were coming to Natalie from Leslie Slote, one or two a week. She seemed less excited over them than she had been in the spring, when she would rush off toher bedroom to read them, and return looking sometimes radiant, sometimes tearfw. Now she casually skimmed the singlespace typed pages at her desk, then shoved them in a drawer. One rainy day she was reading such a letter when Byron, typing away at the Palio book, heard her say, "Good God!" He looked up. 'Something the matter?" "No, no," she said, very red in the face, waving an agitated hand and flipping over a page. "Sorry. It's nothing at all." EL Byron resumed work, struggling with one of Jastrow's bad sentences. The Professor wrote in a spiky burned hand, often leaving out letters or words. He seldom clod his s's an se d o's. It was anywy's guess what words some Of these strings of blue spikes represented. Natalie could puzzle them out, but Byron disked her pained condesc ding "Well!" Natalie sat " en way of doing it. back in her chair with a thump, staring at the letter. "Briny-" "Yes?" She hesitated, chewing her full lower lip. "Oh, hell, I can't help it. I've got to tell someone, and you're handy. Guess what I hold here in my hot little hand?" She rustled the pages. "I see what you're holding." "You 0 y think you do." 4 n' She laughed in a wicked way. 'I'm going to tell you. it's a proposal of marriage from a gentleman named Leslie Manson Slote, Rhodes Scholar, rising diplomat, and elusive bachelor. And what do you think of that, Byron Henry?" "Congratulations," Byron said. The buzzer on Natalieps desk rang. "Oh, lord. Briny, please go and see what A.J. wants. I'm in a fog." She tossed the letter on the desk and thrust long white hands in her hair. Dr. Jastrow sat blanketed in the downstairs study on the chaise I.we by the fire, his usual place in rainy weather. Facing him in an armchair, a fat pale Italian official, in a green and yellow uniform and black halfboots, was drinking coffee. Byron had never seen the man or the uniform before. -Oh, Byron, a,k Natalie for my resident status file, will you? She knows where it is." Jastrow turned to the official. Will you want to see their papers toO?" -Not 'oday, PrOfessore- Only yours."Natalie looked up with an embarrassed grin from rearranging the letsse i fr di Byron told her. Her face sobering, she took a key from Iler purse and unlocked a small steel file by the desk. "Here." She gave him a mnila folder tied with red tape. "Does it look like trouble? Shall I come down?" "Better wait till you're asked." As he descended the stairs he heard laughter from the study, and rapid jovial talk. "Oh, that. Thank you, Byron," Jastrow said, breaking into English as he entered, 'just leave it here on the table." He resumed his anecdote in Italian about the donkey that had gotten into the grounds the previous week, laid waste to a vegetable patch, and chewed up a whole ter- "oh, hi. What's doing?" 00 wier chapter of manuscript. The official's belted belly sh k th aught In the library Natalie was typing again. The Slote letter was out Of sight. it seem to be much of a problem," Byron said. "There doesn "That's good," she said pladdlyAt dinner that night Dr. Jastrow hardly spoke, ate less than usual, and drank two extra glasses of wine. in this household, where things were so monotonously the same day after day, night after night, the first extra glass was an event, the second a bombshell. Natalie finally said, "Aaron, what was that visit about today?" Jastrow came out of an abstracted stare with a little headshake. Strangely enough, Giuseppe again." t gardener, whom he had recently disGiuseppe was the a charged: a scrawny, lazy, stupid old drunkard with wiry black hairs on e nose. Giuseppe had left open the gate through which the donkey ha, entered. He was always committing such misdemeanors. Jastrow had lost his temper over the destroyed chapter and the ravaged vegetable beds, had been unable to write for two days, and had suffered bad indigestion. 'How does that officer know Giuseppe?" Byron said. That's the odd part. He's from the alien registration bureau in Florence, yet he mentioned Giuseppe's nine children, the difficulty of finding work nowadays, and so forth. When I said I'd rehire him, that ended it. He just handed me the registration papers with a victorious grin." Jastrow sighed and laid ws napkin on the table. 'I've put up with Giuseppe all these years, I really don't mind. I'm rather tired. Tell Maria I'll have my fruit and cheese in the study." Natalie said when the professor was gone, Let's bring the coffee to my room." "Sure. Great." Never before had she invited him there. Sometimes in his room above he could hear her moving about, a tantdwng, faint, lovely noise.
He followed her upstairs with a jumping pulse. "I live in a big candy box," she said with a self-conscious look, opening a heavy door. 'Aaron bought the place furnished, you know, and left it just the way the lady of the house had it. Ridiculous for me, but-' She snapped on a light. It was an enormous room, painted pink, with pink and gilt furniture, pink painted cupids on a blue and gold ceiling, pink silk draperies, and a huge double bed covered in frilly pink satin. Dark Natalie, in the old brown wool dress she wore on chilly evenings, looked decidedly odd in this Watteau setting. But Byron found the con his big knobby EL trast as exciting as everything else about her. She lit the log fire in the marble fireplace carved with Roman figures, and they sat in facing armchairs, taking coffee from the low table been them. "Why do you suppose Aaron's so upset?" Natalie said, settling comfortably in the large chair and pulling the long pleated skirt far down over her beautiful legs, 'Giuseppe's an old story. Actually it was a mistake to fire him. He knows all about the water connections and the electric lines, much more than Tomaso. And he's really good at the topiary work, even if he is a dirty old drunk," "A.J. was coerced, Natalie." She bit her lip, nodding. Byron added, "We're at the mercy of these people, A.J, even more than you and me. He ovens property, he's stuck here." "Oh, the Italians are all right. They're not Germans." "Mussolini's no bargain. Berel gave A.J. the right advice. Get out!" Natalie smiled. "Lekh lekha. My God, how far off that all seems. I wonder how he is." Her smile faded. "I)ve shut Warsaw from my mind. Or tried to." "I don't blame you." "How about you, Briny? Do you ever think about it?" "Some. I keep dreaming about it." "Oh, God, so do I. That hospital-I go round and round in it, night after night-" 'When Warsaw fell," Byron said, "it hit me hard." He told Natalie about the Wannsee episode. At his description of the waiter's sudden turnabout, she laughed bitterly. "Your father sounds superb." "He's all right."He must think I'm a vampire who all but lured you to your death." "We haven't talked about you." Sudden gloom shadowed Natalie's face. She poured morecoffee for both of them. "Stir the fire, Briny. I'm cold. Giuseppe's brought in green wood, as usual." He made the fire flare, and threw on it a light log from a blighted tree, which quickly blazed. 'Ah, that's good!" She j"-peti up, turned off the electric chandelier, and stood by the fire, looking at the flames. "That moment in the railroad station," she nervously burst out, "when they took away the Jews! I still can't face it. That was one reason I was so nasty at K,5,igsberg. I was in torture. I kept thinking that I could have done some thing. Sup rw pose I'd stepped lo and, ,aid I was Jewish, forced the issue? St'PPose we'd all created a scandal? It might have made a difference. But we calmly went to the train, and they trudged off the other way." lost you and Mark Hartley. The thing Byron said, "We might have was touch and go. vented that. He stood his ground, at least, "Yes, I know. Leslie pre though he was shaking like a leaf. He did his plain duty. But those other ambassadors and charges-well-"-e. "And my fan-dly in Medzicel When I Natalie had begun to pac picture those kind, good people in the clutches of the Germans-but what's the use? It's futile, it's sickening, to dwell on that." She threw up her hand in a despairing gesture and dropped in her chair, sitting on her legs with her skirt spread over them. Nothing of her was visible in the firelight but her face and her tensely clasped hands. She stared at the fire. "Speaking of old Slote," she said after a long pause, in an entirely different tone, what do you think of his proposal to make an honest woman of me?" "I'm not surprised." Y-P) "You're not? I'm stunned. I never thought I'd live to see the da "He told me in Berlin he might marry you. He'd be crazy not to, if he could." "Well, he's had that option open to him for a hell of a long time, dear." She poured coffee and sipped, looking darkly at him over the rim of the cup. "Had a big discussion about me in Berlin, you two gentlemen, did you?" "Not a big discussion. He mentioned that you were just as surly to him that last day in Kenigsberg as you 'd been to me." "I was feeling absolutely horrible that day, Briny." -Well, that's all right. I thought I might have off how, so I asked him." ended you somese did Slote say about me?" 'This is getting interesting. What el The low, vibrant voice, the amused glinting of her eyes in the firelight, stirred Byron. That you were no girl for me to get involved with, and that he hadn't known an hour's peace of mind since he first laid eyes on you. She uttered a low gloating laugh. "Two accurate statements, my pet.
Tell me more." "That's about it. It was the same conversation in which he gave me the reading list." "Yes, and wasn't that pure Slote? Coming it over you with his book learning! An illuminating little incident, that. Didn't he really tell you all about us? About him and me?" Byron shook his head. Natalie said, 'You wouldn't go and get us some brandy, would you? I think I'd like a little brandy." EL He raced down the stairs and up again, returning with a bottle and two shimmering snifters. Swirling the brandy round and round in her hands, looking into the balloon glass and rarely raising her eyes at him, Natalie broke loose with a SUrprising rush of words about her affair with Leslie Slote. It took her a long time. Byron said little, interrupting only to throw more wood on the fire. It was a familiar tale of a clever older man having fun with a girl and getting snared into a real passion. Resolving to marry him, she had made his life a nlisery-He didn't want to marry her, she said, simply because she was Jewish and it would be awkward for his career. That was all his clouds of words had ever come to. At last, with this letter, after thir months, she had him where she wanted him. tY Byron hated every word of the story, yet he was fascinated, and grateful. The closemouthed girl was taking him into her life. These word" which couldn't be unsaid, were ending the strange tension between them since Warsaw, their own little phony war-the long hostile silences in the library, her holing up in her room, her odd snappish condescension. As she talked, they were growing intimate as they never had become in a month of adventuring through Poland, Everything about this girl interested him. If it was the account of and this was what he had her affair with another man, let it be that! At least Byron was talking about Natalie Jastrow with Natalie ja trow, been starved for. He was hearing this sweet rough voice with its occaali tai s sional New Yorkisms, and he could watch the play of her free gesturing hand in the firelight, the swoop and sudden stop in the air of flat palm and fingers, her visible signature. Natalie Jastrow was the one person he had ever met who meant as much to him as his father did. In the same way, almost, he hungered to talk to his father, to listen to him, to be with him, even though he had to most every conversation be either offended or disappointed Victor Henry. His mother he took resist and withdraw, even though he knew that in a] for granted, a warm presence, cloying in her affection, annoying in her kittenish changeability. His father was terrific, and in that way Natalie wa, terrific, entirely aside from being a tall dark girl whom he had hopelessly craved to seize in his arms since the first hour they had met. "Well, there you have it," Natalie said. "This mess has been endless, b"t that's the general idea. How about some more of Aaron's brandy?
Wouldn't you like some? It's awfully good brandy. Funny, I usually don't care for it." Byron poured more for both of them, though his glass wasn't empty. "What I've been puzzling about all day," she said after a sip, "is why Leslie is throwing in the towel now. The trouble is, I think I know." "He's lonesome for you," Byron said. Natalie shook her head. "Leslie Slote behaved disgustingly on the Praha road. I despised him for it, and I let him know I did. That was the turnaround. He's been chasing me ever since. I guess in a way I've been running, too. I haven't even answered half his letters." Byron said, "You've always exaggerated that whole thing. All he did-"-"Shut up, Byron. Don't be mealymouthed with me. All he did was turn yellow and use me as an excuse. He hid behind my skirts. The Swedish ambassador all but laughed in his face." She tossed off most of her brandy. "Look, physical courage isn't something you can help. It isn't even important nowadays. You can be a world leader and a cringing sneak. That's what Hitler probably is. Still, it happened. It happened. I'm not saying I won't marry Leslie Slote because shellfire made him panic. After all, he behaved well enough at the railroad station. But I do say that's why he's proposing to me. This is his way of apologizing and being a man. it's not quite the answer to my maidenly prayers." it's what you want." "Well, I don't know. There are complications. There's my family. My parents had wild fits when I told them I was in love with a Christian. My father took to his bed for a week, though that bit of melodrama left me unmoved. Well, now there's that whole fight again. And Leslie's proposal is odd. It's not very specific as to time and place. If I wrote him back yes, he might well get on his bicycle again. "If he's really that kind of fool, which I doubt very much," Byron said, "you could just let him bicycle away." "Then there's Aaron." "He's not your problem. He ought to get out of Italy in any case." "He's very reluctant to go." "Well, he survived while we were away. 'Oh, that's what you think. You should have seen the library and study when I got back. Chaos. And he hadn't written anything in weeks. Aaron should have gotten married ages ago. He didn't, and he needs a lot of fussing andpetting. He can't even sharpen a pendl properly." Byron wondered whether Natalie's irritable garrulity was due to the brandy. She was gesturing broadly, talking breathlessly, and her eyes were wild. "And there's still another complication, you know. The biggest.l "What's that?" A She stared at him. "Don't you know what it is, Briny? Haven't you any idea? Not the faintest inkling? Come on now. Stop it." He said or rather stammered, because the sudden penetrating sexuality in Natalie Jastrow's glance made him drunk, 'I don't think I do." "All right then, I'll tell You. You've done it, you devil, and you know it. You've done what you've wanted to do from the first day you came here. I'm in love with you." She peered at him, her eyes shining and enormous. "Ye gods, what a dumb stunned face. Don't you believe me?)' Very hoarsely he said, "I just hope it's true." He got out of his chair, and went to her. She jumped up and they embraced. "Oh God," she said, clinging to him, and she kissed him and kissed him. "You have such a Marvelous mouth," she muttered. She thrust her hands in his hair, she caressed his face. "Such a nice smile. Such fine hands. I love to watch your hands. I love the way you move. You're so sweet." It was like a hundred daydreams Byron had had, but far more intense and confusing and delicious. She was rubbing against him in c rude sensual delight, almost like a cat. The brown wool dress was scratchy in his hands. The perfume of her hair couldn't be daydreamed, nor the moist warm sweet breath of her mouth. Above all gleamed the inconceivable wonder that all this was happening. They stood embraced by the crackling flames, kissing, saying broken foolish sentences, whispering, laughing, kissing, and kissing again. Natalie pulled away. She ran a few steps and faced him, her eyes blazing. "WeE, right. all I had to do that or die. I've never felt anything like this in my life, Byron, this maddening pull to you. I've been fighting it off and fighting it off because it's no daum good, you know. You're a boy. I won't have it. Not a Christian. Not again. And besides-"she put both hands over her face. "Oh. Oh! Don't look at me like that, Briny! Go out of my bedroom." Byron turned to go, on legs almost caving under him. He wanted to please her. She said in the next breath, "Christ, you're a gentleman. It's one of the unbelievable things about You. Would you rather stay? My darling, MY love, I don't w t put you 0 an to u I want to talk some more, but I want to make some sense, that's all. And I don't want to make any false moves. I)II do anything you say. I absolutely adore you." He looked at her standing in the firelight in the long wool dress with her arms crossed, one leg out to a side, one hip thrust out, a typicalNatalie Pose. He was dazed with happiness beyond imagining, and flooded with gratitude for being alive. "Listen-would you think of marrying me?" Byron said. Natalie's eyes popped wide open and her mouth dropped. Byron could not help it; he burst out laughing at the comic change of her face, and that made her laugh crazily too. She came to him, almost flung herself at him laughing so uproariously that she could hardly manage to kiss him. "God in heaven," she gasped, twining him in her arms, "you're incredible. That's two proposals in one day for la Jastrow! It never rains but it pours, eh?" "I'm serious," he said. "I don't know why we're laughing. I want to marry you. It's always seemed preposterous, but if you really do love me-" "It is preposterous"-Natalie spoke with her lips to his cheek-"preposterous beyond words, but where you're concerned I appear to be quite mindless, and perhaps-well! Nobody can say you're a beardless boy, anyway! Quite sandpapery, aren't you?" She kissed him once more, hard, and loosened her arms. "The first idea was right. You leave. Goodnight, darling. I know you're serious, and I'm terribly touched. One thing we've got in this godforsaken place is time, all the time in the world." In the darkness, on his narrow bed in the tiny attic room, Byron lay wide awake. For a while he heard her moving about below, then the house was silent. He could still taste Natalie's lips. His hands smelled of her perfume. Outside in the valley donkeys bee-hawed to each other across the echoing slopes, a misguided rooster hailed a dawn hours away, and dogs barked. There came a rush of wind and a long drumming of rain on the tiles, and after a while water dripped into the pail near his bed, under the worst leak. The rain passed, moonlight shafted faint and blue through the little round window, the pattering in the pail ceased, and still Byron lay with open eyes, trying to believe it, trying to separate his dreams and fantasies of half a year from the real hour when Natalie Jastrow had overwhelmed him with endearments. Now his feverish mind ran on what he must do next. The window was turning violet when he fell asleep in a jumble of ideas and resolves, ranging from medical school and short-story writing to the banking business in Washington. Some distant cousins of his mother did control a bank. Hi, Natalie." "Oh, hi there. Sleep well?" It was almost eleven when he hurried into the library. Byron was a hardened slugabed, but he had not come down this late before. Three books lay open on Natalie's desk, and she was typing away. She gave him one ardent glance and went on with her work. Byron found on his desk a mass of first-draft pages heavily scribbled with jastrov/s corrections, to which was clipped a note in red crayon: Let nw have this material at lunch, please. 'A.J. looked in here ten minutes ago," Natalie said, 'and made vile noises."Byron counted the pages. "He's going to make viler ones at lunch. I'm sorry, but I didn't close my eyes till dawn." "Didn't you?" she said, with a secret little smile. "I slept exceedingly well." With a quick shuffling of papers and carbon he began to type, straining his eyes at Jastrow's scrawl. A hand ran through his hair and rested warmly on his neck. "Let's see." She stood over him, looking down at him with affectionate amusement. Pinned on the old brown dress over her left breast was the gold brooch with purple stones from Warsaw. She had never before worn it. She glanced through the pages and took a few. "Poor Briny, why couldn't you sleep? Never mind, type your head off, and so Will I." They did not finish the work before lunch, but by then, as it turned out, Dr. Jastrow had other things on his mind. At noon, an enormous white Lancia rattled the gravel outside the villa. Byron and Natalie could hear the rich voice of Tom Searle and the warm hard laugh of his wife. Celebrated American actors, the Searles had been living off and on for fifteen years in a hilltop villa not far from Jastrow's. The woman painted and gardened, while the man built brick walls and did the cooking. Endlessly they read old plays, new plays, and novels that might become plays. Other celebrities to Siena just to see them. Tlrough them Jastrow had met and entertainedMaugham,B(came) erenson, Gertrude Lawrence, and Picasso. A retired college professor would have been a minnow among these big fish; but the success of A Jew's Jesus had put him fairly in their company. He loved being part of the celebrities' group, though he grumbled about the interference with his work. He often drove down to Florence with the Searles to meet their friends, and Natalie and Byron thought the actors might be passing by now to fetch him off. But coming down for lunch, they found A.J. alone in the drawing room, sneezing, red-nosed, and waving an emptied sherry glass. He complained that they were late. In fact they were a bit early. "The Searles are leaving," he said when lunch was over, having sneezed and blown his nose all through the meal without uttenng a word. "Just like that. They came to say good-bye." "Oh? Are they doing a new play?" said Natalie. "They're getting out. Lock, stock, and barrel. They're moving every stick back to the States." "But doesn't their lease run for-how many more years? Five?" "Seven. They're abandoning the lease. They can't afford to get stuck here, they say, if the war spreads." Jastrow morosely fingered his beard.