by Herman Wouk
Napoleon forced liberty and equality on the Germans. From the outset they gagged on it. With cannon and tramping boots, he invaded a patchwork of absolutist states hardly out of feudalism. He ground the faces of the Germans in the brotherhood of man. Freeing the Jews was part of this new liberal humanism. It was not natural to the Germans, but they conformed.
Alas, we Jews believed in the change, but the Germans in their hearts never did. It was the conqueror’s creed. It swept Europe, but not Germany. Their Romantic philosophers inveighed against the un-German Enlightenment, their anti-Semitic political parties sprouted, while Germany grew and grew to an industrial giant, never convinced of the “Western” ideas.
Their defeat under the Kaiser, and the great inflation and crash, generated in them a terrible frustrated anger. The communists threatened chaos and overthrow. Weimar was falling apart. When Hitler rose from this witches’ brew, like an oracular spook in Macbeth, and pointed at the Jews in the department stores and the opera promenades; when he thundered that not only were they the visible beneficiaries of Germany’s wrongs, but the actual cause of them; when that frenzied historical formula rolled forth, as mendaciously simple as the Marxist slogans, but more candidly bloodthirsty; then the German rage was released in an explosion of national energy and joy, and the plausible maniac who had released it had his murder weapon in hand. Bottomless lack of compunction in the Germans peculiarly fitted the weapon to the man. Awareness of this baffling trait had to be kicked into me. I am still puzzling over it.
Does my work on Luther shed light on it? Only Luther, before Hitler, ever so wholly spoke with the national voice to release plugged-up national rage; in his case, against a corrupt Latin-droning popery. The resemblances in the forceful, coarse, sarcastic rhetoric of the two men gave me anxious pause even when I was Luther’s admiring biographer. Luther’s Protestantism is a grand theology, a sonorous earnest hardheaded Christianity, well worthy of the Christ whom Luther claimed to be rescuing from the Whore of Babylon. But even this homegrown product sat hard on the German stomach, did it not?
The German has never been quite at home in Christian Europe, has never quite made up his mind whether he is Vandal or Roman, the destroyer from the north or the comme it faut Western man. He oscillates, vacillates, plays the one or the other role, as historic circumstances change. To the Vandal in him, Christian compunction and British and French liberalism are nonsense; the reason and logic of the Enlightenment are a veneer over real human nature; destruction and dominance are the thing; slaughter is an ancient joy. After centuries of Lutheran restraint, the rude rough German voice bellowed forth once again, in Nietzsche, radical revulsion from Christianity’s meek tenets. Quite accurately Nietzsche blamed all this kindness and compunction on Judaism. Quite accurately he foretold the coming death of the Christian God. What he failed to foresee was that the freed Vandal, in lunatic industrialized vengeance, would set out to nail eleven million Christs to the cross.
Oh, scribble, scribble, scribble! I look back over these hastily pencilled pages and my heart sinks. No wonder I have neglected the diary; my small mind cannot cope with what I now know. How can one move on this theme without a general theory of nationalism? Without tracing socialism to its sources, and demonstrating how the two movements converge in Hitler? Without giving the menace of the Russian Revolution its due weight?
Have I made any contact whatever with the German in all this glib scrawling? Am I, the stinking Jew Jastrow, putting on phylacteries in Theresienstadt, and he, striking out all over Europe with clanking armies and roaring air fleets, really following the same human impulse, to preserve a threatened identity? Is that why he wants to kill me, because the Jew and Judaism are the everlasting challenge, reproach, and hobble to primitive Germanism? Or is all this an empty conceit, the vaporings of the tired and overwrought brain of a lifelong liberal, trying to find one shred of sense in Oswiecim and in the Beautification, trying to bridge the gulf between myself and Karl Rahm, because the truth is that though he slay me we are brothers, in Darwinian taxonomy if not under God?
Here is Natalie!
NEXT MORNING.
It is even graver than I thought. She is in very deep. She came back weary, but in a glow. These Zionist meetings have been debating ways and means to defeat the Beautification, to signal the truth about Theresienstadt to the Red Cross visitors, without alerting the SS. She thinks they have hit on something. At each of the stops, a Jew in charge will be primed to say one and the same sentence, in response to any Red Cross comment: “Oh yes, it is all very, very new. And there is much more to see.”
They worked this out, I gather, with great wrangling and revisions. They voted on words. These exact repetitions, they believe, will strike the visitors as a signal. The Jews will speak the sentence casually, with meaningful looks, if possible beyond SS earshot. The hope, or rather the fantasy, is that the visitors will catch on that they are seeing brand-new faked installations, and will push beyond the planned route, because of the “much more to see.”
I listened patiently. Then I told her that she was slipping into the endemic ghetto dreaminess, and endangering her life and Louis’s. The Germans are trained wary prison guards. The visitors will be soft polite welfare executives. The Beautification is a major German effort, and the most obvious thing to guard against is just such Jewish schemes to tip off the visitors. So I argued, but she retorted that one way or another the Jews must fight back. Since we have no weapons but our brains, we must use them.
Then I took the drastic step of disclosing Berel’s revelations about Oswiecim. My intent was to shock her into greater awareness of her danger of being transported. She was, of course, badly shocked; not quite flabbergasted, since such stories do float around. But she took it the wrong way. All the more reason, she said, to waken the suspicions of the Red Cross; anyway, Berel’s story must be exaggerated, because Udam had received postcards from his wife in Oswiecim, and her friends were getting cards now from relatives in the February transport.
I repeated what Berel told me: that the Oswiecim SS keeps up a “Theresienstadt family camp,” in case the Red Cross ever manages to negotiate a visit to that terrible place; that on arrival in Oswiecim everyone must write postcards dated months ahead; and that the Theresienstadt camp is periodically cleared of the sick, the weak, the elderly, and the children, all gassed in a body, to make room for further Theresienstadt transports. Udam was undoubtedly getting mail from a cremated woman.
Next she asserted that her group has heard, via their grapevine to Prague, that according to German military intelligence, the Americans will definitely land in France on May 15. This may well touch off uprisings all over Europe, and lead to the rapid collapse of the Nazi empire. In any case, the SS officers will begin worrying about their own necks, and so further transports are unlikely.
Against such wishful thinking hardened into delusion there is no arguing. I urged her, if she meant to go on with this business, at least to send word to Berel to get Louis out. She wouldn’t hear of it; denied that she was putting Louis in any greater danger than he already faced; turned decidedly snappish, and went off to bed.
That was only a few hours ago. She was in a better mood when she awoke, and apologized before she left for her display of short temper. She said nothing more about Louis. Nor did I.
Far from objecting to her newfound Zionism, I am glad of it. It seems to be for her the assertion of threatened identity that I have found in my old religion. One needs some such spiritual stiffening to survive in the ghetto, if one is not a conniver or a black marketeer. But suppose her circle is penetrated by an informer? With scurrilous puppetry already on record in her SS dossier, that will be the end of her.
I myself was never a Zionist. I remain enormously skeptical of the notion of returning the Jews to that desolate patch of the Middle East inhabited by unfriendly Arabs. True, the Zionists did foresee this European catastrophe, when it was a cloud no bigger than a man’s hand. But does it follow that th
eir visionary solution was a possible or correct one? Hardly. Only a handful of dreamers ever went to Palestine before Hitler. Even they were driven there by pogroms, rather than drawn by the desiccated Holy Land.
I am no longer sure about this, I confess, or about any of my former notions. Certainly Jewish nationalism is a powerful means of identity, but I regard nationalism as the curse of modern times. I simply cannot believe that we poor Jews are ever meant to have an army and a navy, a parliament and ministers, boundaries, harbors, airports, universities, on Mediterranean sands. What a sweet and hollow dream! Let Natalie dream it, if it helps her get through Theresienstadt. She says that if a Jewish state the size of Liechtenstein had existed, all these horrors wouldn’t be happening; and that such a state must arise to prevent their happening again. Messianic rhetoric; my fear is only that this new febrile enthusiasm, overcoming her usual tough good sense, may lead her into rashness that will destroy her and Louis.
79
THROUGH the closed bedroom door it sounded like crying, but Rhoda cried so seldom that Victor Henry shrugged and passed on to the guest room where he now slept. It was very late. He had sat up for hours in the library after dinner, working on landing craft documents for his meeting with Colonel Peters; something he was not looking forward to, but a priorities conflict was forcing it. He undressed, showered, drank off his nightcap of bourbon and water, and before turning in stopped to listen at Rhoda’s door. The sounds had become unmistakable: keening moans, broken by sobs.
“Rhoda?”
No answer. The sounds ceased as though switched off.
“Rho! Come on, what is it?”
Muffled sad voice: “Oh, I’m all right. Go to sleep.”
“Let me in.”
“The door’s not locked, Pug.”
The room was dark. When he turned on the light Rhoda sat up in an oyster-white satiny nightdress, blinking and dabbing a tissue at swollen red eyes. “Was I making a racket? I tried to keep it low.”
“What’s up?”
“Oh, Pug, I’m done for. Everything’s in ruins. You’re well rid of me.”
“I think you can use a drink.”
“I must look !GRUESOME. Don’t I?” She put her hands to her tumbled hair.
“Want to come down to the library and talk?”
“You’re an angel. Scotch and soda. Be right there.” She thrust shapely white legs and thighs out of bed. Pug went to the library and mixed drinks at the movable bar. She soon appeared in a peignoir over her nightgown, brushing her hair in familiar charming gestures he had not seen since moving to the guest room. She was lightly made-up and she had done something to her eyes, for they were bright and clear.
“I washed my face and FLUNG myself into bed hours and hours ago, then I couldn’t sleep.”
“But why? Because I have to see Colonel Peters? It’s just a business meeting, Rhoda. I told you that.” He handed her the drink. “Maybe I shouldn’t have mentioned it, but I won’t make any trouble for you.”
“Pug, I’m in such distress!” She took a deep gulp of her drink. “Somebody’s been writing Hack anonymous letters. He’s received, oh, five or six. He tore up the first ones, but he showed me two. With abject apologies, but he showed them. They’ve gotten under his skin.”
Rhoda gave her husband one of her most melting, appealing looks. He thought of mentioning the anonymous letters he too had received, but saw no purpose in that. Pamela might have told Rhoda about them; in any case, no use stirring up that mud. He did not comment.
She burst out, “It’s so unfair! I didn’t even KNOW Hack, then, did I? Talk about your double standard! Why, he’s slept with all KINDS of women, to hear him talk. Single, married, divorced, he makes no bones about it, even reminisces, and the point always is how different I am. And I am too, I am! There was only Palmer Kirby. I still don’t know how or why THAT happened. I’m not one of those cheap flirts he’s run around with all his life. But these letters are wrecking everything. He seems so unhappy, so CRUSHED. Of course I denied everything. I had to, for HIS sake. For such an experienced man, he’s strangely NAIVE.”
What surprised Pug most was that this casual outright admission of her adultery — “There was only Palmer Kirby” — could give him pain; not the agony of the first shock, her letter asking for a divorce, but still, real pain. Rhoda had skirted a specific admission until this very moment. Her habit of silence had served her well, but the words had slipped out because Peters was now the man who mattered. This was the real end, thought Pug. He, like Kirby, was part of her past. She could be careless with him.
“The man loves you, Rhoda. Hell believe you, and forget about the letters.”
“Oh, will he? And suppose he asks you about them tomorrow?”
“That’s unthinkable.”
“Not so unthinkable. You’re meeting for the first time since all this happened.”
“Rhoda, we’ve got a very urgent priorities problem to thrash out. He won’t bring up personal matters. Certainly not those anonymous letters. Not to me. His skin would crawl at the idea.”
She looked both amused and miserable. “Male pride, you mean.”
“Call it that. Forget it. Go to sleep, and pleasant dreams.”
“May I have another drink?”
“Sure.”
“Will you tell me afterward what happened? I mean, what you talked about?”
“Not the business part.”
“I’m not interested in the business part.”
“If anything personal comes up, I’ll tell you, yes.” He handed her the drink. “Any idea who’s writing the letters?”
“No. It’s a woman. Some vicious bitch or other. Oh, they abound, Pug, they abound. She uses green ink, writes in a funny up-and-down hand on little tan sheets. Her facts are all cockeyed, but she does mention Palmer Kirby. Very nastily. Dates, places, all that. Disgusting.”
“Where’s Kirby now?”
“I don’t know. I last saw him in Chicago when I was coming back from California, right after — after Midway. I stopped there for a few hours to break it off once for all. Funnily enough, that’s how I met Hack.”
As she drank, Rhoda described the encounter in the Pump Room, and finding Colonel Peters afterward on the train to New York.
“I’ll never know why he took a fancy to me, Pug. I was very distant in the club car that night. Actually, I FROZE him. I was feeling wretched about Palmer, and you, and the whole mess, and I was by no means over Warren. I wouldn’t accept a drink. Wouldn’t get into conversation. I mean, he was so OBVIOUSLY fresh from a roll in the hay with that creature in green! He still had that glint in his eye, and I wasn’t about to give him IDEAS. Then next morning in the dining car the steward seated him at my table. It was crowded for breakfast, so I couldn’t object, although I don’t know, maybe he SLIPPED that steward something. Anyway, that was it. He said Palmer had told him about me, and he admired my brave spirit so much, and all that. I still kept my distance. I always have. He really PURSUED me, in a gentlemanly way, showing up at church, and Navy affairs, and Bundles for Britain, and so on. It was a very gradual business. It was MONTHS before I even agreed to go to the theatre with him. Maybe that’s what intrigued Hack, the sheer novelty of it all. It couldn’t have been my girlish charm. But when he thinks back to when we met, there I WAS, after all, visiting Palmer Kirby. It makes those horrid letters so PLAUSIBLE.”
This was more than Rhoda had said about her romance in all the months that Pug had been back. She was being positively chatty. Pug said, “Feeling better now, aren’t you?”
“Heaps. You’re sweet to be so reassuring. I’m not a crybaby, Pug, you know that, but I am in a STATE about those letters. When you told me you were meeting him tomorrow, I panicked. I mean, Hack can’t possibly ever ask Palmer. That’s not done. Palmer wouldn’t tell, anyway. You’re the only other one who knows. You’re the aggrieved husband, and, well, I just got to thinking of all kinds of awful possibilities.” She had finished her drink and was
slipping pink mules back on her bare feet.
“I really didn’t know anything, anyway, Rhoda. Not until tonight.”
She went rigid, staring at him, one mule in her hand, her mind obviously racing back over the conversation. “Oh, nuts.” She slammed the slipper down on the floor. “Of course you knew. Don’t be like that, Pug. How could you NOT know? What was it ever all about?”
Pug was sitting at the desk where the big leather-bound Warren album still lay, beside a pile of his file folders. “I’m sort of waked up now,” he said, picking up a folder. “I’ll do a little more work.”
MANHATTAN ENGINEER DISTRICT
Brig. Gen. Leslie R. Groves, U.S.A., Chief
Colonel Harrison Peters, Deputy Chief
The signs on the two adjoining doors, on an upper floor in the State Department building, were so inconspicuous that Pug walked by them and had to backtrack. Colonel Peters strode from behind his desk to shake hands. “Well! High time we met again.”
Pug had forgotten how tall the man was, perhaps six feet three, and how handsome: brilliant blue eyes, healthily colored long bony face, straight body in a sharply tailored uniform, no trace of a bulge at the middle. Despite the gray hair the general effect was youthful, manly, and altogether impressive, except for an uncertain quality in his broad smile. No doubt he was embarrassed. Yet Pug felt very little resentment toward the Army man. It helped a lot that the fellow had not cuckolded him. Pug did believe he hadn’t, mainly because that had been the only way for Rhoda to play this particular fish.
The small desk was bare. The only other furniture was an armchair. There were no pictures on the wall, no files, no window, no bookcase, no secretary; a low-level operation, one would think, assigned to a run-of-the-mill colonel. Pug declined coffee, and sat in the armchair.