Nothing So Strange

by James Hilton

  I gathered up the few personal things that were in my own laboratory and then went down the slow elevator for the last time. And I never saw Framm again.

  But an odd thing happened that same afternoon as I was leaving the American Express office. I ran into a biochemist named Muller, whom I had sometimes chatted with in the corridors of the Institut—a quiet decent fellow who disliked Framm and had often expressed surprise that I apparently got on so well with him. I told him I was leaving Germany and he said: “I’m very glad— for your sake. It will save you a good deal of trouble.” He then told me that the war crisis had generated a good deal of feeling against foreigners working on scientific projects, and Framm, he added, had recently thrown out hints that he considered me not altogether “reliable,” and that he had been “watching” me for some time.

  This threw me into a mood of near-panic, coming when it did; and for a moment it seemed to me an example of special villainy on Framm’s part, until I reminded myself that my own behavior and intentions, if he had suspected them, would have amply justified him. Actually, however, though I did not decide this till long after I had left Germany, I don’t think Framm suspected me at all, ever, or of anything. I think he trusted me—personally as well as professionally. I think he found me a willing and occasionally able slave, and was ready to use me as long as possible, but he was also preparing an alibi for himself, in case the antiforeign feeling should increase. All this would have been exactly like him, for I had seen him do the same sort of thing to others far more innocent than I was….

  * * * * *

  “So it was a good thing you didn’t kill him,” I said.

  “Well, I wouldn’t have had much chance to get away with it if what Muller said was true.”

  “I think you got away with quite enough, if it prevented his success in whatever it was he was trying to do.”

  “Don’t exaggerate. In itself it was a very minor piece of sabotage. What, if anything, it prevented or delayed, nobody can ever say exactly. Perhaps very little. The Germans were often so stupid that no outside assistance could have made them blunder more than they did.” He added, as if eager to leave the issue: “There’s an ironic little anticlimax to file away with the rest. Just before I left Berlin I went to the bank to close my account. My weekly salary had come that morning and though I couldn’t take money out of Germany I thought it might buy something on the train trip. But when I tried to cash it I found it had already been stopped…. Now that’s what I call attention to detail. It must have been one of the first things he did after I left … perhaps the veryfirst. I couldn’t help laughing, right there at the bank counter. To think that after the wrong figures I’d given Framm the wrong one he gave me was only on a check!”

  * * * * *

  That was the night, after the talk, when I was wakened by hearing a scream; I sat up in bed to listen and it came again. It didn’t sound like Brad, but immediately I thought of him, and when I got outside his door he screamed again, so I knew. But it still didn’t sound much like him. I went in and shook him; he was in a state of complete nervous terror; I had never seen anything quite like it. When he was properly awake he mastered himself and began to apologize, but the sweat still gathered beads on his face. I told him it didn’t matter, nobody else had been disturbed, and only I because I was a light sleeper.

  He kept on saying he was sorry.

  “Brad, will you forget it?… I don’t mind a bit. Is there anything you’d like? Some coffee?… I could go down and make it…. Or would you like me to get a book and read here till you go to sleep again?”

  He said if I would just stay for a little while without a book or bothering with coffee…. “I’ll be all right. It’s happened before. It’s not important provided nobody else thinks it’s important…. Did I sayanything?”

  “Say anything?”

  “Was I talking … when you came in?”

  “No.”

  He eyed me sharply. “But you’d say that even if I had been, wouldn’t you?”

  He saw me wondering if I would have; that made him laugh a little.

  “Never mind,” he went on. “It’s just one of the things I’m up against. The feeling that everybody’s watching me all the time, listening to me when I’m asleep … hoping I’ll have a nightmare and spill something.”

  “Was it a nightmare, Brad?”

  “Sort of.”

  “About flying?”

  “No.”

  “What then? Or don’t you want to tell me?”

  “I’d tell you if I could. Maybe it was too much of that wonderful fish chowder at dinner.”

  “Or too much Framm after dinner.”

  He smiled nervously. “We’re through with him now, anyway…. So he was killed at Peenemünde.”

  “You said you knew.”

  “We … I … yes, I had that information. But one couldn’t be sure. I suppose they got proof after Germany collapsed.”

  “Maybe.”

  He was silent for a moment; then he said thoughtfully: “I wonder if the bastard was brave … at the end. Probably. But physical bravery’s a swindle. The worst people can have it—yet you like them for it … more than you like screamers in the middle of the night.”

  “You know what you’re asking for when you say that.”

  “What?”

  “An argument, Brad. If bravery’s the opposite of screaming in the night, then what is it you’re afraid of?”

  He answered moodily: “I’m not afraid of anything. I’m afraid forsomething. I’m afraid for the whole bloody world.”

  I waited for him to add to that, but he shook his head in what I took to be an advance refusal of any of the possible questions I hadn’t yet asked. I said at length, cheerfully: “Anyhow, it wasn’t about flying.”

  “No, not this time. And I’ve an idea about that—or rather it was your idea. Maybe I should go up again?”

  “You would? Oh, that would be fine—when would you like to? There ought to be a place where we could rent something.”

  “Not so easy these days.”

  “We’ll find out.”

  “You mean you’d go up with me?”

  “Why not if you can fly? You said you could.”

  He hugged me as much as he could in the positions we were in; he was leaning up in bed, I was sitting on the edge of it. “You’d trust me as much as that?”

  “That isn’t so much.”

  “Oh, but surely….”

  “No,” I answered. “I’d hate you to think me too trusting. I fly a bit myself. I think I could land a dual-control if you got scared.”

  “Of course that spoils it all.” But he was smiling again.

  “Oh no, it just makes it sensible. I’m quite serious about it if you are.”

  There was a book on his bedside table that had a map of California; we measured a rough line a hundred and fifty miles inland, for the seaward side of that was forbidden to private flying in wartime. We figured it could not be more than fifty or sixty miles from where we were to the nearest likely flying ground we could use; that would be in the desert somewhere. “Or the mountains,” he said, studying the map.

  “Except that it wouldn’t be too safe over mountains. Those small planes don’t go higher than eight or nine thousand. And there are downdrafts.”

  “You’ve done some real flying, then?”

  “A few hours solo—in the East.”

  He began to talk technicalities, and if anyone had been listening at the door it must have sounded a rather teen-age conversation. I left him after about half an hour; we were both sleepy by then.

  * * * * *

  The days that followed had a degree of eventfulness that made them timeless. I suppose there are only a few weeks in every century when the accumulated stresses of years break through to absolute flash point. July of 1945 was like that. The Okinawa battle was over; the great fire raids on Japanese cities had begun. A total end of the war looked near, and then nearer.

 
In my own life the pattern of California sun and sky slipped over the days. They were not without happenings. My father had another slight stroke— not more serious than the first, but cumulative in its effect. He did not now leave his room, and there were nurses in attendance; he regained part of the lost ground but it was clear he would never recover completely. I did what I could to cheer him up, but it was little enough. He spoke with a slur, like someone at pains to conceal the effects of drink; and he was sad about himself, with moods of reminiscence that took him back to old times and places. He pondered a great deal about his will, in which (he said) I was the chief legatee. There were relatives of my mother’s in England (he also said) to whom he had left less than he had once intended, because now he didn’t want much of his money to go out of America. (Could this be patriotism?) But surely, I argued, with lend-lease at the rate of millions a day what difference could it make? But no, it wasn’t that; it was the new English Labour government. He didn’t like them. He remembered once meeting Attlee—he hadn’t thought much of him. And as for that fellow Strachey whom they had made Food Minister—a most peculiar person, he had met him also once, and there was a portrait of him in the Tate Gallery with a beard and very long legs lolling in a wicker chair. Fancy a man like that being given a ministry!

  “You’re thinking of Lytton Strachey,” I said. “He’s dead. The Food Minister’s another Strachey….” I had to convince him of that.

  “Well, anyhow,” he said, “England’s changing. They wouldn’t like me there any more. I remember poor old Neville Chamberlain saying the last time I saw him, that was in January 1939….”

  He was always poor old Neville Chamberlain to my father, perhaps because he too had been disappointed….

  * * * * *

  Mr. Small telephoned once. What was happening? Anything? Was it worth while yet for us to have another meeting? How was he? Had I anything special I wanted to convey?

  I said no; he was all right; we were taking walks; there was no need for a meeting yet.

  “You think you’re getting anything out of him?”

  “Well, I don’t know quite what you’re expecting….”

  “Get all you can, whether it’s what we expect or not.”

  I didn’t like the way he said that, or maybe it was the telephone voice that sounded more strident than it really was. Yet I couldn’t think of any sufficiently challenging reply, so I just waited in silence till he exclaimed: “Hello … hello … what’s the matter? Are you there?”

  “Yes,” I answered. “I’m still here.”

  I was childish enough to think that would confuse him but seemingly it didn’t. He merely said: “Well, I’m not going to bother you, but do remember he’s not simply on holiday. Taking long walks and climbing mountains is all right, but … oh well, never mind. We’ll give you a bit more time, but if nothing happens we’ll have to have him back.”

  “Back?”

  “Sure. He’s not well yet by any means. Newby wanted a lot of convincing before he’d agree to the experiment, and if it doesn’t work—”

  I interrupted: “I think it will work. Give me another week. I’ll call you then.”

  “No, I’ll call you. Or else one of us will come up and see him….

  “Okay, then. Good-by.”

  As I hung up the receiver one decision was already made in my mind. Brad must get discharged from that hospital. I hadn’t an idea how I could expedite this, but there were doubtless things I could do or help him do for himself.

  As I walked away from the library table something else occurred to me, quite icily. I didn’t think I had ever said anything at all to Mr. Small about mountain climbing. Or had I? And if I hadn’t, how had he known? And had his slip, if it were one, been accidental, or deliberately to intimidate?

  I told myself that the spy business was catching, that the imagined eye and ear at every keyhole was the most diabolical softener-up of everything gutlike in one’s brain and personality; all the more reason, then, why Brad should free himself.

  * * * * *

  And I lunched again with Paul Chandos. This time it was I who noticed that he was preoccupied. I asked if he were worrying about the picture.

  He said no.

  “That’s good. I hate to ask you, because you never mention it—but of course I’m a bit interested in how it’s coming along.”

  “Fine. I’m halfway through.”

  “What?”

  “The writing, I mean. I’m what they call a writer-producer.”

  “But—but—you mean—you’ve already got a story?”

  “A sort of one, though I may change it. The main thing is, I’ve got a character.”

  “Who?”

  “You.”

  He went on hastily: “I didn’t intend to tell you yet, but I don’t suppose it matters. I think you’re a rather remarkable person. Your whole book is really about you—not egotistically, that’s what’s so good—but because you’re real. You’re real in the book. And now that I know you actually, I know that you’re really real.”

  “I don’t quite get it. You mean that these meetings we’ve been having have been just to study me, as it were … like sittings for a portrait painter?”

  “At first I thought they were, but I’ve enjoyed them so much that….” And he suddenly leaned forward across the table. “I don’t know how you feel—I don’t know if you even like me, though I know we look at things the same way … so many things…. Incidentally, are you—by any chance—engaged—or tied up to anyone?”

  “No,” I said, doubtfully. And because I wanted to spare him whatever he might be risking, I added: “I like you very much—perhaps as much as any man I’ve ever met, with one exception.”

  “Ah,” he replied. And then, quite briskly after a pause: “You know, Jane, you are the part. What a pity you can’t act!”

  “How do you know I can’t? I can when I’m nervous enough. I’m acting a bit now…. Shall we break a rule and have a drink before lunch? I feel like it….”

  “Sure, but it’s no rule. I hate rules, anyway.” He summoned the waiter and ordered two martinis. “How’s your scientist getting on? Recovering?”

  “I hope so. It’s mental more than physical. He’s staying with us—with my father and me. I’m trying to set him right. He’s the man in my book—on page 117—the man in the Burggarten in Vienna.”

  “The one who thought the Binomial Theorem would survive along with Beethoven?”

  I nodded. The sweetest compliment he could have paid me was to know that so instantly.

  He said: “Now I would like to meet him. When can you arrange it?”

  “Soon. You might be able to help him too—by talking and arguing. I think he’s your kind of person. Perhaps we both are.”

  * * * * *

  And one morning I drove eastward towards the desert. Dan had found there was an airfield at a place called Lost Water, used by the C.A.P. since the war, but owned by a certain Mr. Murdoch who sometimes rented out a plane if he knew who you were. Because of the gas shortage you weren’t supposed to fly for pleasure, so it was all very chancy; I should just have to go there and see what it was like, or perhaps let Mr. Murdoch see what I was like. The distance was over eighty miles, but the last thirty were arrow-straight, so that far ahead one saw where Lost Water must be. It had an elevation of twenty-two hundred and lay in a shallow saucer with gritty hills rimming it on all sides. A plume of smoke on the horizon indicated a small town that from the map was half a dozen miles further on.

  The “airfield” turned out to be nothing but a T-shaped patch cleared of scrub, but not of stones, sand, and weeds. A tumble-down hut surmounted by a windsock was the only likely sign of habitation; a few rough sheds housed planes. When I drove up a grizzled dust-gray character came out of the hut to introduce himself as Murdoch. He looked like an old-style sheriff who had somehow switched from the horse to the air age without anything in between. He scratched his head and stroked his chin when I asked if ther
e was any chance of going up. He wasn’t supposed to do it, he answered; he would get into trouble; there were so many government regulations nowadays. But even as he said all this I could see he was the kind of man who resents government regulations enough to break them now and again out of sheer nostalgia for pioneer freedom. All he asked after we had talked for a while was which plane I preferred; I chose the newer-looking red-painted Porterfield. Quite efficiently then he checked the oil and gas, warmed up the machine, and climbed inside. “Now show me what you can do,” he said. I removed the chocks, got inside with him and took off. After about ten minutes in the air he told me to land, which I did. He made no comment, except to warn me of prohibited military areas near by, so I flew on my own for an hour or so, made several near-landings, then came in finally because of approaching dust storms. The warm air and the ground altitude were conditions new in my experience and I was glad to have had some practice with them.

  When I paid Mr. Murdoch I asked if he had any suggestions for a full day’s excursion somewhere. You couldn’t do it, he answered promptly, because of wartime restrictions and gas shortage and one darned thing and another. But presently he said that the real trouble was too few landing grounds near enough; except for one at Giant’s Pass there wasn’t any that a civilian could use.

  I told him I wasn’t asking on my own account, but for an Air Force friend who had crashed and wanted to get rid of a fear-neurosis about flying. But he wasn’t impressed by that either. “What’s he got? We didn’t have it when I started flying—that was in nineteen-oh-four. Not much good then if we’d been scared of a few crashes…. I’ve crashed a heap of times—never got hurt, though—not to speak of.”