by Herman Wouk
At last Jastrow said, “Look here, is our organizing principle democracy or authority? If it’s authority, you decide.”
Castelnuovo sourly laughed, waving off the suggestion.
“Well, then, I vote for the ore boat.”
Anna Castelnuovo said, “Two votes.”
“You’re a mule,” her husband said, but the tone was wryly affectionate. He turned to Natalie. “Well?”
“The ore boat.”
Castelnuovo pursed his mouth, lightly struck the table, and stood up. “Settled.”
On a gray cool afternoon, coming back from an eight-mile walk, Natalie noticed from a distance a parked car near the house. There were few private cars in Follonica. Her steps quickened, and something like a prayer flitted through her mind: “Let it not be trouble.” As she drew nearer she recognized the Mercedes. In the house Jastrow and Werner Beck sat at the dining table over tea and a platter of cakes. Yellow typescripts of Jastrow’s broadcasts lay scattered on the bare table.
Werner Beck got up, smiling and bowing. “Delighted. It’s been so long!” She could barely choke out a civil response. He glanced down at his SS uniform with an apologetic little laugh. “Ah, yes. Never mind my for midable masquerade. I’m on a tour of the western ports, Mrs. Henry, in connection with an unaccountable shortage of fuel oil, which my country has to supply to Italy one hundred percent. We’re sure the black market is draining it off Italians are more forthcoming with the truth when they see this uniform. My SS commission is purely honorary, but they don’t know that. Well, now, the sea air has done wonders for you. And the baby? How is he? I’d love to see him.”
Natalie said in as normal a tone as she could muster, “Shall I fetch him? How long can you stay?”
“Regrettably, not long. I have business in Piombino. Follonica’s only a short way off the main road, so I thought I’d drop by and pay my respects.”
“Let me get him, then.”
On the second floor the Castelnuovos, their faces pallid and strained, sat in their bedroom with the door wide open. The doctor beckoned to her and whispered, “Is that the man?”
“Yes.”
“I heard him mention Piombino.”
“He’s on an inspection tour.”
In the other room Miriam was amusing Louis with a ragged toy bear. She looked up like a worried grown woman when Natalie lifted him from his crib. “Where are you taking him?”
“Downstairs, just for a moment.”
“But downstairs there is a German.”
Natalie put a finger to her lips and bore off the yawning Louis. She halted on the staircase, hearing Beck raise his voice. “But Dr. Jastrow, all four broadcasts are fine as they stand. Why, they’re gemlike essays. You can’t change a word. Why not record them now? At least the first two?”
Jastrow’s voice, quietly serene: “Werner, a publisher once urged the poet A. E. Housman to print some essays he was discarding. Housman cut him off with these words: ‘I did not say they were not good. I said they were not good enough for me.’”
“That’s all very fine, but for us time is a key factor. If you could not polish these talks to your taste before the war was over, it would all be pretty pointless, hm?”
Jastrow’s chuckle was appreciative and jolly. “Very neat, Werner.”
“But I’m absolutely serious! I’m shielding you from painful harassment. You told me that a week or two by the sea was all you’d need. If this matter is ever taken out of my hands, Dr. Jastrow, you’ll be extremely sorry.”
Silence.
Natalie hurried down the stairs and into the dining room. Beck stood up, beaming at the child. “My goodness, but he has grown!” He slipped his glasses into a breast pocket and extended his arms. “May I take him? If you knew how I miss my Klaus, my youngest!”
Putting her son into the hands of this uniformed man gave Natalie a sick qualm, but Dr. Beck’s manner of handling the baby was knowing and gentle. Louis smiled beautifully at him. Dr. Beck’s eyes moistened, and he spoke in an artificial little voice. “Well, hello there! Hello, little happy boy! We’re friends, aren’t we? No politics between us, hm? — Well! Want my glasses, do you?” He pried the frames out of Louis’s tiny clutch. “Let’s hope you never need glasses. Here, your mother looks anxious, go back to her. Tell her I’ve never dropped a baby yet.”
Natalie clasped Louis with relief and sat down. Resuming his seat, Beck donned his glasses, and his face took on a severe cast. “Now then. I shall be returning from my tour in five days, and I propose to take you both with me to Rome. Dr. Jastrow, you must be ready to record the broadcasts. I’ve already made hotel arrangements, and I am going to be very firm about this.”
With a resigned mock-humble gesture of bowed shoulders and outstretched arms, Jastrow exclaimed, “Five days! Well, I can try to do something. But the second two scripts are out of the question, Werner. They’re simply scattered notes. I can attempt to cobble up the first one or two, dear fellow, but if you insist on all four, I shall simply lie down in my traces like the overloaded horse.”
Beck patted the old man’s knee. “Just have the first two ready when I return. Then we’ll see.”
“Is it really necessary for me to come to Rome, too?” Natalie asked.
“Yes.”
“Will we return to Siena afterward?”
“As you wish,” Beck said absently, glancing at his wristwatch and standing up. Aaron walked outside with him.
Down the stairs came the Castelnuovos, with Miriam tiptoeing behind her mother’s skirts. She poked out her head at Natalie and stage-whispered, “Did the German go away?”
“Yes, he’s gone.”
“Did he hurt Louis?”
“No, no, Louis is fine.” Natalie was clutching the baby as though picking him up after a fall. “Suppose I put you two out on the porch.”
“Can he have a cake?”
“All right.”
The four adults held a quick conclave in the dining room. That this was a crisis, that Jastrow had to move on, they took for granted. Castelnuovo had to consult Frankenthal, they decided, but not over the telephone. The afternoon bus was leaving in half an hour. The doctor clapped on his hat and departed. A grim evening followed. He returned early the next morning, to the immense relief of his wife, who had not slept. Frankenthal’s advice was that they had better go on to the islands after all, for an ore boat had sailed only last week. The next ferry to Elba was day after tomorrow.
“It’s off to Corsica, then,” said Natalie, covering the thumping of her heart with dogged gaiety.
“Off to Elba,” said the doctor. “There we’ll have to wait. Nothing is organized for Corsica as yet.”
“Well,” said Jastrow. “Napoleon made it off Elba, and so shall we.”
It rained and blew hard the morning they left. Waves were breaking high over the sea wall of the Piombino waterfront when the passengers began straggling aboard the small ferryboat pitching in its slip. Far off under a shed three waterfront customs guards, dry and snug, sat smoking pipes and drinking wine. Frankenthal had excursion permits ready, as well as tickets; the permits were required because of the prison on Elba. But there was no checking of papers. The fugitives boarded the ferry among other travellers under umbrellas; chains rattled, the diesel coughed stinking smoke, the ferry pulled unsteadily away from the slip, Frankenthal waved at them and shouted a casual good-bye, and they were out!
Looking back at the mainland veiled by the downpour and by smoke from the Piombino blast furnaces, Natalie recalled how, the night before, the red flaming mouths of the furnaces outside the train window had scared Louis into a screaming fit, attracting an inspector examining passengers’ papers. Miriam had distracted both Louis and the official by chattering Italian baby talk in her bell-clear Tuscan accent, and he had laughed and walked off without giving them trouble. For all her nightmarish fears, that had been the only narrow moment in leaving Italy.
A slow nauseating trip over stormy waters, and Elba lo
omed through the drizzle, a broad mist-shrouded hump of green. They disembarked on a windy U-shaped waterfront lined with old houses under a long frowning old fortress. On Frankenthal’s instructions, Anna wore a white shawl and Natalie a blue one, and Aaron had a pipe in his mouth. A mule-drawn carriage driven by a gnarled old man drew up. He gestured at them to climb in, and he closed the carriage with very dirty canvas rain curtains. A long, long uphill ride ensued, with much bumping and sliding. Seen through isinglass panels, the hilly vineyards and farms were green blurs in fog. The air inside the canvas curtains was mildewy and close, the mule smell chokingly strong. The driver never spoke. Louis slept all the way. At last the carriage halted, the driver pulled back the curtains, and Natalie stiffly stepped down into a puddle, gulping the sweet damp country air. They were in the stone square of a sloping mountain village. There was nobody else in sight; not so much as a dog. Twilight was falling, the rain had stopped, the wet stone front of the old church looked violet, and the stillness was almost shocking.
“Where are we?” Natalie asked the driver in Italian. Her ordinary voice sounded like a shout.
He uttered his first word, “Marciana.”
35
STABLEHANDS were grooming many neighing, stamping horses in the Bel Air Canyon Riding Academy, but no other riders were about except Madeline and Byron. Madeline’s habit was bandbox-new: fawn jodhpurs, softly gleaming brown boots, mannish feathered hat. Byron wore Warren’s Annapolis blazer with faded dungarees and sneakers. A withered groom in very dirty clothes, appraising him at a glance, brought out a large coal-black steed called Jack Frost. Byron adjusted the stirrups and mounted; whereupon Jack Frost, flattening his ears and redly rolling his eyes, took off up the canyon like a lunatic. He was a powerful animal with a smooth gallop, and Byron let him run free. Passing a white rag lying on the trail, Jack Frost reared, bucked, neighed, and snorted in a Hollywood enactment of acute panic. With some effort Byron stayed in the saddle. The horse, apparently concluding that he could ride, calmed down and glanced around at him inquiringly. Byron saw Madeline trotting along, far back on the trail, through Jack Frost’s settling dust. “Okay, this was your idea, horse,” he said with a kick. “Keep going.”
Jack Frost lit out again, darted into a steep narrow switchback trail, and thundered up the side of the canyon in a hair-raising run to the summit, where he stopped short, head down, blowing like a whale. Shaken up and exhilarated, Byron got off, tied him to a tree, and perched on a rock. After a while he heard hooves scrambling below, and Madeline came in sight coated with dust. “What’s with your horse?” she called.
“I think he wanted some exercise.”
She giggled as he helped her off her mount. “I thought maybe he had a breakfast date in San Francisco.”
They sat side by side on a wide flat rock, looking out over the canyon at sunlit wild hills. Lizards rustled on the rocks, and in the air below them vultures wheeled screaming. The horses stamped and puffed, jingling their harness. These sounds only heightened the prevailing hush.
Byron waited for her to speak. She had begged him to come on this ride, giving no reason. After a while he said, “Everything okay, Maddy?”
“Oh, Briny, I’m in a peck of trouble. But no! No!” She burst out laughing. “Your face! It’s like a teletype, sweetie. Christ, did I ever get off on the wrong foot that time! I’m not pregnant, Briny. Put down that shotgun.”
He scratched his head and managed a grin.
She shook a roguish finger at him. “Such evil thoughts about your own sister! No, it’s a question of changing jobs, and”— she quickly lit a cigarette with a gold lighter —“it’s something I can’t discuss when Mom’s around.”
“Can you smoke here? I saw a sign about fire hazard in this canyon.”
She shrugged, heavily inhaling. “You remember Lenny Spreregen?”
“I sure do.”
“Universal’s making him a producer. He wants me as an assistant.”
“What about Cleveland?”
“Furious! Having kittens.” She smiled at Byron. Her face was flushed, her eyes zestfully sparkled. “But I’ve got to consider it, don’t I? Two hundred a week is a beeg jump from one fifty, you know.”
“Why, that’s munificent, Mad. And getting away from Cleveland sounds great.”
Her face remained sweetly amiable, but the hard Henry note began to ring. “Oh, you’ve always underestimated Hugh, haven’t you? The public loves him. Of course, making films beats selling soap and laxatives, but I have a sure thing where I am. Hugh’s even given me a little stock ownership in his company. It’s a really tough choice.”
“Madeline, grab the job at Universal.”
“Tell me one thing. Did Hugh ever do something to offend you? If so, it had to be unintentional. He thinks you’re terrific.”
“He doesn’t know me.”
“You know what? I bet it’s that kiss he gave me in Janice’s house. Isn’t it?” She archly grinned. “I bet that still rankles. My God, when you told me you’d seen us, you had murder in your eye.”
It was a memory Byron still preferred to blot out: the soft plump married man clutching Madeline to him, her skirt riding up behind, uncovering pink thighs and white garters. “Look, you asked for my advice. I gave it.”
“Briny”— her voice softened—“Hugh Cleveland wants to marry me.” Byron’s face showed no reaction. She hurried on, blushing, “That’s the complication. That’s why I’ve got to talk to somebody. Mom’s so straitlaced, she’d just fall over dead at the idea. Anyway, she has enough problems and — my, that’s a grim silence, darling! But you don’t know Hughie. He’s our kind, honey, he’s really a very intelligent, vulnerable, and lonesome man.”
“Wife and three kids aren’t that much company, eh?”
Madeline bitterly laughed. “That had to come, I guess.”
“He’s proposed to you?”
“Oh, darling, people don’t propose nowadays.” She waved a scornful hand. “Did you propose to Natalie?”
“I did, in so many words.”
“Well, you’re a weird old-fashioned type. All us Henrys are. Hugh’s already working on his divorce.”
“He is?” Byron got up and paced on the pebbly dirt with loud crunches. “You should be talking to Dad.”
“Dad? Perish the thought. He’d visit Hugh with a horsewhip.”
“Is he divorcing his wife because of you?”
“Oh, Claire, that’s the wife, is just a horror, a total paranoid, a stupid woman he married when he was twenty-one. She’s insanely afraid of losing him, yet she treats him like dirt. She’s always running to psychoanalysts. She spends money like a duchess. Why, a year ago she was throwing fits about me, threatening I don’t know what. He had to placate her with a sable coat. She is one unholy mess, Briny, take my word for it. And of course, she’s turned his kids against him.”
“Listen to me. Call Universal today.” He halted and stood over her. “Tell the fellow you’ll go to work for him Monday.”
“I figured you’d say that.” She looked up at him solemnly and her voice faltered. “I’m just not sure I can do it.”
Feeling a wave of sickened, poignant sympathy for his sister, Byron said, “It’s serious.”
“Yes.”
He spoke low. “How serious?”
“I told you.” Her voice turned testy. “It’s not a matter for horsewhips and shotguns. But it’s serious.”
He scanned her face, and heavily sighed. The gentle open look of the girl was as opaque as a leather mask. “How old is he?”
“Thirty-four.” She glanced at her watch. “Honey, you have to pick up Mom and meet us in the Warner Brothers commissary at noon. Let’s finish our ride.”
“Maybe I’ll talk to him at the studio.”
The pretty leather mask faintly suggested wistful relief. “You? Whatever about?”
“About this.”
Her mouth curled. “Shotgun in hand, sweetie?”
“No. If
he wants to marry you, he should be glad to talk to me.”
“I can’t stop you. Do as you please.” She put her foot in the stirrup. “Give me a leg up, Briny, we’re late.”
In the large, crowded, sunny cafeteria on the Warner Brothers lot, Rhoda gawked about, round-eyed, scarcely eating, saying things like, “Why, Maddy dear, isn’t that Humphrey BOGART? — My stars, and there’s Bette Davis! She looks so YOUNG off the screen.”
Hugh Cleveland explained that though the stars had their own posh dining rooms, they liked to drop into the commissary now and then for a sandwich and a glass of milk. Like the stars, Cleveland was lunching in a dressing gown, his face painted up for filming. Byron disliked him again at sight, but his whimsical rumblings and chucklings clearly amused Rhoda, and his sleek happy air of success impressed her. Two radio shows — the old Amateur Hour and the military Happy Hour — were going strong, and the film shorts promised still more revenue. Madeline’s hundred fifty a week was about twice Byron’s submarine pay; and if she took the Universal offer she would be out-earning her own father, the captain of a heavy cruiser.
And for what? Watching the filming of a Happy Hour short after lunch, Byron was disgusted. The soldiers and sailors were the merest butts for Cleveland’s supposedly spontaneous jokes, which were held up off camera on large printed placards. There was no audience. Later, Madeline explained, the director would splice in shots of attentive, laughing, or applauding onlookers. Byron couldn’t believe that the films would be entertaining even if the fraud came off. Nothing was there but a radio announcer with I a calculated folksy manner, poking condescending fun at untalented kids in uniform. The sights and sounds of show business, however low-grade, obviously enchanted his mother, and he was glad she had this distraction from grief; but as for him, he yawned and yawned until his jaws hurt, in an agony of irritated tedium.