Presidential Mission

by Upton Sinclair

  “Very clever,” said Lanny.

  “How much is there?”

  “I didn’t count it, but it must be over a couple of million francs.”

  “Whew!” he exclaimed. “Pirate’s treasure!”

  “I put my jewels in, too. There’s no use having them nowadays because I don’t go anywhere. I haven’t told anybody else about it; it’ll be yours if I go. You will remember the place. Yellow stands for gold.”

  Lanny, amused, recited:

  Bright and yellow, hard and cold,

  Molten, graven, hammer’d, and roll’d;

  Heavy to get, and light to hold;

  Hoarded, barter’d, bought, and sold,

  Stolen, borrow’d, squander’d, doled:

  Spurn’d by the young, but hugg’d by the old

  To the very verge of the churchyard mould;

  Price of many a crime untold:

  Gold! Gold! Gold! Gold!

  His mother said: “Wait until you get to be as old as I am!”

  III

  While Baby Marcel chased the butterflies in the court and in turn was chased by the dogs, the two learned elders sat in canvas chairs in the sunshine, discussing the profoundest problems which engage the mind of man. What are we, really; and how do we come to be, and for what purpose are we placed here, and what becomes of us when we depart? Above all, what is the origin of that strange faculty in us which we call conscience? Why do we have a sense of duty, and what is the basis of its validity, and of our assurance concerning it? If we are as the beasts of the field that perish, why do we owe any obligation to the world, or to our fellow men, or to ourselves? Even the Communists, who spurn the idea of God, owe loyalty to their Party! Even the Nazis, who despise the mass of mankind, are slaves to their own racial ideal!

  A retired real estate man from Iowa had found his retreat across half a continent and a wide ocean, and had instituted a monastery with one monk, a psychical research society with one member and one medium. Parsifal Dingle asserted that there was a Spirit in the universe, and that it created and maintained those illusions which we know as the material world. He asserted that it was possible to maintain communion with this Spirit, and he did so, day and night. “God is all and God is love,” he would say. “God is alive and God is real.” He would prove it by healing the sick and by setting to all men an example of a harmless life. He asserted that everything that ever existed exists always, and he proved this by exchanging daily communications with persons who claimed to have lived long ago.

  For years Parsifal had been getting messages from the old-time monks of a monastery in Ceylon known as Dodanduwa, and he had accumulated a mass of notes concerning their ideas and way of life. Now he informed Lanny that these monks had given place to a representative of a rival sect, the Jains, who claimed to be even more ancient than the Hindus, and who worshiped their tirthankaras, or saints, as gods. Parsifal Dingle declared that he had never known anything about the Jains and couldn’t say whether they were Hindu, Persian, or Arab; but here was this “spirit,” a grave and dignified personality, avowing that he had been a holy man of the Jain shrine of Chitaral—the “Rock Temple,” it was called—in South Travancore; it had been founded in the ninth century, and he had been present at the ceremonies. Stranger yet, this ancient one declared himself to be a previous incarnation of Parsifal and spoke as if in solilquy—“we” have done this and “we” have done that. It was fascinating, but at the same time a bit uncanny.

  Lanny read the notes which his stepfather had carefully written out. It appeared that the Jains, heretics themselves, had spawned numerous other varieties of heresy. The holy man, whose name was Chandragupta, belonged to the sect called Digambaras, and warned his later self concerning the rival Swetambaras, explaining in detail what was wrong with their beliefs. The Jains all held the strictest ascetic views and disputed over such questions as to whether women could attain Nirvana, and whether it was permissible to wear white costumes or no costumes at all. Chandragupta brought various authorities to converse with his latest reincarnation; one of them was introduced as Siddharaja, King of Guzerat, who had been the first monarch to be converted to the Jain religion, an event something like the conversion of the Emperor Constantine to Christianity. Parsifal Dingle, ex-realtor from Iowa, had never conversed with a monarch before and had striven to keep his democratic balance.

  He had learned much about the Rock Temple and the life there. The original structure on top of the rock was in ruins, but the sculptures on the rock itself were intact. There were thirty figures, all formal and rigid, each representing a saint absorbed in contemplation which would continue to the end of time; each saint was bald-headed, smooth-shaven, narrow-waisted, and wore no garments, not even “holy threads,” and each had three tiers of umbrellas carved over his head. Parsifal wondered, he said, what “holy threads” might be; he had been afraid to interrupt with questions, and he did not have access to a large library. Chandragupta was distressed because, some three hundred years after his departure from this life, the temple had been converted into a Hindu shrine, and an image of the goddess Sree Bagavathi had been installed. He scorned this interloper and would talk only about the Jain saints and the inscriptions in the language called Vattezuthu which he had spoken in those days. He had no way of reproducing the script, but had spoken some of the words, and Parsifal had written down the way they sounded to him. All very curious, and some day it might be possible to check on the details.

  What did these communications mean? To Lanny’s stepfather they could mean only one thing, which was what they claimed to mean. Parsifal was positive that he had never read anything about the Jains; but Lanny wondered if he could not have done this long ago and forgotten. Parsifal read everything he could get hold of about religions, old and new; and what could be more likely than that he might have read a few paragraphs about the Rock Temple? The subconscious mind never forgets, and apparently it has the same impulse toward imaginative creation that has filled the libraries of the world with works of fiction. Of course that left unexplained the problem of how these matters had got into the mind of Madame Zyszynski. The phenomena made it certain that at some level her mind and Parsifal’s mind were one, or had some way of becoming one for a time; and that seemed a startling discovery, enough to keep the professors of psychology busy for a long time.

  Lanny tried experiments with Madame, as he always did. There came “Tecumseh,” the Amerindian control, but he seemed an old and tired Tecumseh, not full of “ginger” as in the old days. He produced “spirits” whom Lanny didn’t know, also the same old stock figures, who had nothing new to say. Lanny had been hoping that he might get Laurel Creston’s grandmother, or possibly some member of the Holdenhurst family; but no such luck. He had to tell Madame that it had been a good session, otherwise she would have been greatly depressed. He went away wondering why Parsifal continued to have success, while for himself the phenomena seemed to be fading? Was it because of his skepticism, his continued dalliance with what Tecumseh called “that old telepathy”? Did that deprive Madame’s subconscious mind of its impulse? Lanny could imagine a child who began to invent stories or to make drawings; if the child’s parents said they were good, the child would go on working with delight, but if the parents said that it was all foolishness and a waste of time, what talent the child had might die of inanition.

  IV

  Lanny awaited a letter from Toulon, and in due course it arrived. “Bruges” said that the painting was still available, but that on account of the decrease in the value of the franc it might be well to bring a little more money. He said that he, Bruges, would be at the usual place, but not to let anybody there know about the painting, as this might cause an increase in the price. “Do not talk about it to anybody but me,” said the letter and Lanny understood that this was a warning of danger. He hardly needed it.

  He went into Cannes and withdrew more money in small-denomination bills; and he told his friend Jerry that he wanted a train ticket to T
oulon, and a seat, if such a miracle were possible. Jerry, who also knew about pourboires, said that it would be possible to anyone who had dollars. A wonderful land was America, and more and more French men and women were wishing they could get to it.

  The P.A. came back and told his mother that he was going to take a run to Toulon, he had word of a promising painting. There was nothing she could do but believe him, for he might actually show up with a painting, and she could hardly believe that he had done it just to impress her. She had to be content with his promise: “I’ll be back soon.”

  Beauty drove him into town next morning, and on the road they met the postman. There was a letter for Beauty from a village not far from Berlin. That was Marceline, and the mother, driving, handed it to Lanny, who read it aloud. The daughter wrote that she had left Berlin to get away from the bombs, she had been taking care of Oskar, who had been wounded. Soon he would be well enough to return to the front, and then Marceline was going to try to get permission to visit Juan. “I cannot stand to be away from my baby any longer,” she wrote. “Kiss him many times for me, and tell him every day that he has a mother.”

  That was all. Doubtless Marceline knew that a letter to Unoccupied France would be censored, and perhaps she thought that a brief one would stand a better chance. “She doesn’t write often,” complained Beauty. “You know that she is not a demonstrative person, and she does not tell me much about her affairs.”

  “Is she happy with Oskar?” the half-brother inquired.

  “If she were not, she would be too proud to say so. She has made her own bed. You know what a quietly self-willed person she is, Lanny. She would listen to what I had to say, and give me some vague answer, and then go ahead and do what she pleased.”

  “I didn’t think she would like the attitude of the Nazis to their women, any more than she liked the attitude of the Italians to theirs.”

  “Oskar von Herzenberg is hardly a typical Nazi, I should think; he is a Prussian aristocrat.”

  “His father has been hiring his services to the Nazis, and I never saw any signs of disapproval on the part of the son. If she is happy with him, I’ll be surprised.”

  “It makes quite a problem for me,” said Beauty. “That my daughter should become the mistress of a Wehrmacht officer and should take to dancing in a Berlin night club won’t leave me many friends among the English or the Americans when they return here. But I can’t refuse my home to my daughter, and it would break my heart if she were to take the baby away.”

  “I think your true friends will forgive you, old darling; and you don’t have to worry about the rest.” He spoke more cheerfully than he felt, for he had warned Marceline that she would have a hard time with the Allies if she committed herself to the Germans. But there was no use worrying Beauty in advance. He added: “She has not troubled to give me her address. If you write, tell her that I wrote to her the last time I was here. Give her my love and tell her that I hope we can meet.” He had not seen his half-sister for three years, and he had been out of sympathy with her for longer than that. But he would never get over his old fondness for her; and he was not forgetting the fact that she might have information about Naziland which would be of use to a P.A.

  V

  The train to Toulon was in need of paint, and possibly also of coal; it took three hours to cover about seventy-five miles along the coast. Lanny got himself a room at a small, obscure hotel, and then presented himself at the police station. He reported his business as art expert and exhibited the permit to “circulate” with which his Vichy friends had favored him. Those formalities attended to, he strolled to the Mercier bookstore where, a year ago, he had tried in vain to find his friend Raoul. This time he hoped for better luck, and surely meant to do his best to avoid the troubles into which he had then stumbled.

  After the French fashion, the store had stands out in front, loaded with secondhand books, and Lanny stopped in front of these and began looking over the titles. He didn’t even raise his eyes to the interior of the place; he just picked up one book after another. After a few minutes a man came out from the store, a man several years younger than Lanny, a slender figure, with black hair and finely chiseled, sensitive features, rather pale; the face of an idealist, perhaps an ascetic. When he smiled, you saw that he had even white teeth, and that his dark eyes were alert and attentive. He asked politely: “Can I help you, Monsieur?”

  Lanny looked up, but gave no sign of recognition; he looked at the books again, and Raoul Palma’s quick eyes glanced one way and the other to be sure there was no one near enough to hear. Then, in a low voice: “In front of the Hôtel de Ville, eight o’clock this evening.”

  “Right,” murmured Lanny, and that was all. The clerk went into the store again, and the book browser moved on down the street.

  It was getting late in the afternoon, closing time for dockyards and shops of the arsenal. The streets were thronged with workers carrying their dinner pails, women shoppers with baskets and bundles, and blue-jackets from the Fleet with their little round flat hats with a red pompon on top. Lanny, his pockets stuffed with money, stayed in the well-frequented streets, keeping his distance from all comers. He was taking every precaution; when it was time for dinner he resisted the impulse to go to some workingmen’s café, where he could enter into conversation and find out what they were thinking; he chose the Grand Hotel, where he would have a table to himself and never be spoken to.

  So he reckoned, but, as the saying goes, without his host. Entering by the main doorway, he almost ran into a lady, and there resulted one of those incidents in which both step to the same side and then to the other side. Suddenly he stopped and stared at the lady, who was rather tall and slender, a brunette in her twenties, simply but tastefully clad. “Mademoiselle Richard!” he exclaimed. And the lady, almost speechless, managed to whisper: “Monsieur Budd!”

  Lanny, man of the world who had been in many embarrassing situations in his life, was the first to recover his savoir-faire. “Enchanté, Mademoiselle!” he said. “I have been wondering if I should ever have the pleasure of seeing your collection of paintings.”

  Amusement spread over his face, and confusion over hers. He had her at a hopeless disadvantage, and it pleased him to make the most of it. It was in the lobby of this same hotel that he had encountered her, something like a year and a half ago, when she had lured him into her car and driven him up into the hills, where the partisans, the enemies of the Vichy government, had stepped out in the guise of bandits and taken possession of a supposed collaborateur and the funds he was carrying. Now he had another load of funds, but he was surely not going for any more drives with strange ladies, no matter how refined in appearance and gracious in manner. Here he had caught her in a situation where he was safe and she was far from safe; it was what is known as a “social situation,” and more than that, a political situation. It appealed to his sense of humor, and he could see no harm in having a little fun with her, here in the lobby of a luxury hotel where tout le monde surrounded them, and everything was proper and expensive.

  The “bandits” up in the hills had gone through a little farce comedy with the lady driver, pretending to frighten her; they had turned her car around and ordered her to drive away and keep silent, upon penalty of death for herself and her family. That hadn’t fooled Lanny for very long; he was clear in his mind that “Marie Jeanne Richard” was herself a member of the rebel group. This meant that she was a friend of the cause Lanny was serving, and a very brave and determined person. But he wasn’t in a position to tell her so—not yet.

  “I trust no harm came to you, Mademoiselle,” he said. “I have been intending to look you up and ask about the paintings.”

  Relief dawned upon her features. Incredible as it must seem, he had really believed her story! She had described herself as the secretary of a wealthy, eccentric “Madame Latour,” who owned a collection of fine paintings and kept them up in the wild country behind Toulon, and who had sent her secretary to inform
him that some of these paintings were for sale. All right, if Americans were that naïve, Mlle. Richard would play the game with one of them. “A dreadful night, M. Budd! I have never ceased to worry about it. I had no way of finding out what happened to you.”

  “You did not report the matter to the police?”

  “I did not dare to. I thought that if you survived, you would do it.”

  “I decided that it was not an ordinary crime, that it had a political aspect, and I was afraid it might cause unpleasant publicity for yourself and your employer.”

  “That was certainly considerate of you, Monsieur. How can I thank you?”

  “Very easily, chère Mademoiselle. I was about to dine alone, and that is a waste of opportunity. Will you favor me with your company, and tell me a little about life in a great French naval base?”

  “Really, Monsieur Budd—” she began.

  He saw that she was groping for an excuse. “If,” argued he, “I was unconventional enough to go for a motor ride with a strange lady, surely you can risk sitting in the dining-room of a respectable hotel with a strange gentleman. I have an engagement immediately after dinner, so you will be free.”

  Was it a command? She couldn’t be sure. He was a strange gentleman in more than one sense of the word; and she must have reflected that he had only to go to the telephone and call the police to land her in jail upon a charge that would involve the penalty of death for her and her friends. She was completely in his hands. If he had smiled politely and invited her to go up to his room with him, she would have had to obey. But he only wanted her to eat a meal with him!