Between Two Worlds (The Lanny Budd Novels)

by Upton Sinclair

  Heinrich Jung was there, and he was the lad that could tell you how the getting back into the fold was to be done. Adolf Hitler Schicklgruber, having had a whole year out of prison, had reorganized his movement and was carrying on his propaganda without rest. Had Lanny read that book which Heinrich had sent him? Yes, Lanny had read it. And what did he think of it? Lanny answered as politely as he could that it seemed to him to convey Herr Hitler’s ideas successfully; it was unusual for a public man to outline in such detail a series of events which he intended to bring about. That satisfied the young forester, who couldn’t imagine anybody’s failing to honor the inspired leader of the coming new Germany. His sky-blue eyes shone as he informed Lanny that the great man was now in retirement, writing the second part of his master-work. That too would be sent to Juan when it was published.

  The truth was that Lanny had found the first portion of Adi’s book extremely hard reading. It was called Mein Kampf—that is to say, My Fight, or if you wished to take it symbolically, My Struggle. But its author had no idea of taking it that way; his book was a declaration of implacable and unceasing war upon the world as at present organized and run. Mein Hass would have been a better title, it seemed to Lanny, or perhaps Meine Hassen, for Hitler had so many hates that if you read off the list of them it became a joke. Lanny saw him as Rick had explained him: the poor odd-jobs man, the artist manqué, the dweller in flophouses who craved ideas and read all sorts of stuff; it was jumbled up in his head, the true and the false hopelessly confused, but everything believed with a fury of passion that came close to the borderline of insanity. Lanny was no psychiatrist, but it seemed to him that here was an indivisible combination of genius and crackpot. Lanny had never before encountered such a mind, but he accepted Rick’s statement that you could find them in every refuge for the derelict, or hear them by the dozens in Hyde Park, London, on any Sunday afternoon.

  The author of Mein Kampf had a dream of a tall, long-headed, long-limbed, vigorous man with blond hair and blue eyes whom he called “the Aryan.” This seemed funny, because Hitler himself was an average-sized dark man of the round-headed Alpine type. His dream Aryans didn’t exist in Europe; for the Germans, like all the other tribes, were mixed as thoroughly as a broth which has been stewing on a hot fire for a thousand years. Hitler had got his emotions out of Wagner’s Siegfried mythology, plus a bit of Nietzsche, who had gone insane, and of Houston Stewart Chamberlain, who didn’t have to go. This provided him with reasons for hating all the other varieties of mankind. He hated the yellow ones as a kind of evil gnomes; he hated the Russians, calling them sub-human; he hated the French because they were lewd and decadent; he hated the British because they ruled the seas and blockaded Germany; he hated the Americans because they believed in democracy. Most of all he reviled the Jews, obscene caricatures of human beings who had crept into Germany and corrupted her heart and brain, and had got so much of her property away from her, and filled so large a share of the professions, crowding out the noble blond Aryans.

  The Jews must be driven from the Fatherland and ultimately from the world. The Jews were the international bankers who had a stranglehold upon the poor; the Jews were Marxist revolutionists who wanted to destroy all Aryan institutions. That they could be both these things at the same time didn’t surprise Adi because he himself could believe and be all sorts of opposite and incompatible things. He loathed the Marxists because they laughed at his Aryan myth and all others. He hated the people with money because he had never had any. He hated the department stores because they took the trade away from the little merchants, his kind of people. He hated the Catholics because they were internationalists and not German; he hated the Protestants because they taught the Christian ideals of brotherhood and mercy instead of the noble Aryan ideals of racial supremacy and world domination.

  Lanny could picture this frustrated genius-pyschopath, this great wit to madness near allied, shut up in a fortress because he had caused the deaths of sixteen of his noble Aryans in an effort to overthrow the republic which he hated because it had accepted the treaty of Versailles. His twenty comrades in confinement couldn’t stand his oratory, so he had sat off in another room, dictating his frenzies to one patient and devoted disciple. Because he was a patriot in spite of being cracked, the prison authorities permitted him to keep a light until midnight, and there he sat, pouring out such venom as should have caused the pen to curl up and the paper to burst into flames. From April Fools’ Day to a week before Christmas he spouted, and then he had a book, and one of his friends, a Catholic priest, straightened out the sentences and made what sense he could of them, after which an edition of five hundred copies was printed. Lanny Budd had honestly tried to read it, all the time thinking: “My God, what would the world be like if this fellow should break loose!”

  IX

  The strangest thing was the effect of Mein Kampf upon the person who for a matter of twelve years had stood in Lanny’s mind as the representative of all that was best and noblest in Germany. Lanny had passed the book on to Kurt because Heinrich had asked him to, and because he thought that Kurt would be interested in it as a sample of mental aberration. But he found that the former artillery officer read the work with absorbed interest. While he agreed with many of Lanny’s criticisms, he agreed only half-way and made so many qualifications that it amounted to a defense of both Hitler and his ideas. The man might be adnormal, but he was a German and it appeared that German abnormality was only for Germans to understand. Kurt didn’t say that, and Lanny didn’t say it either, for he dreaded to wound his friend; but that was the impression he carried away from their discussions of the National Socialist movement and its newly printed bible.

  Hitler hated the Poles, and Lanny could understand that Kurt should be especially aware of their defects, since they had taken his chunk of homeland and were governing it incompetently. Lanny could understand that Kurt should distrust the French, at whom he had shot many thousands of artillery shells, and against whom he had carried on a deadly secret intrigue. He could understand Kurt’s being humiliated by the arrogance of the British ruling class—Lanny had learned that from his father in boyhood, and was now acquiring from his Socialist friends a new dislike of “brass hats” and “stuffed shirts” of whatever nation. But these feelings were internationalist, based upon a dream of a humanity to be helped and perfected. Adi, on the other hand, abhorred internationalism as a betrayal of the German spirit; he was for his Aryans and none others, and his words were incitements to all Germans to get together and compel the other races to submit to German domination.

  This book provided a kind of litmus paper with which to test Germans and find out how German they were. “You can’t deny that it is a forceful book,” asserted Kurt, and Lanny answered: “Yes, but one can say that about a maniac who hurls half a dozen men about until they get him into a straitjacket. Force has to be combined with judgment if it’s to be of any use in the world.” That sounded reasonable, but Lanny saw that it hurt his friend, and they couldn’t go on arguing in that manner. No use to quarrel with people; they were what they were, and would remain that; all you could do was to observe them, and understand what made them so.

  Lanny retired into himself and faced some painful facts. Kurt hated Jews; no use trying to deny that any longer. Lanny had observed that Kurt always found some other reason for disapproving of Jews, but it was always about Jews that he gave these reasons. Year after year Kurt had refused to go to the home of a Schieber who was profiting out of the sufferings of the German people. All right, Lanny could understand that feeling; but what about his cousin of the Meissners who showed up for the Weihnachtsfest and mentioned casually in the course of the meal that he had had the forethought to sell marks all through the inflation? “Foreigners were losing money,” he said, “and why shouldn’t a German get some?” Kurt didn’t leave the table or show any diminution of cordiality to this blond Nordic Schieber. Lanny said nothing; he was a guest and not a censor of Nordic morality.

/>   X

  Kurt talked about the new party and its affairs with the young forester, and Lanny sat by and absorbed information. Heinrich was the incarnation of the Aryan dream, and Lanny could understand his enthusiasm for a movement made to his order. Heinrich reported that the leader, the Führer, had been released from arrest upon a pledge to conduct his party as a legal one; the leader had adjusted himself to this idea, but it had greatly displeased some of his followers, for it meant going into democratic politics, which they had been taught to despise. There had been a lot of dissension, and some schisms, but all Adi had to do was to get them together and orate to them, and he could sweep all opposition before him; none of them could withstand the fervor of his eloquence, the contagion of his faith in the Fatherland.

  Making all allowances for Heinrich’s optimism, it was plain that this dangerous movement was growing, and that imprisonment had only served to increase the prestige of its founder. You could see this right here in Stubendorf, a German-owned estate governed by Polish officials and worked in large part by Polish peasants. The blond student of forestry had come home for vacations and distributed Nazi tracts among his German friends, especially the younger ones; he had invited them to his home and taught them the formulas, and now Stubendorf was a vigorous and active Gau, with Heinrich as proud and exultant Gauleiter, or district captain.

  “Aren’t you afraid of the government officials?” asked Lanny.

  “What can they do?” challenged Heinrich. “We aren’t breaking any laws.”

  “You’re getting ready to break them, aren’t you?”

  The other smiled. “How are they going to prove that?”

  “But it’s all here in the book,” argued Lanny, pointing to Heinrich’s copy.

  “They don’t read books; and anyhow they wouldn’t believe it.”

  “You expect the movement to grow, and if it does, people will certainly read the book. Does Hitler expect to convert the masses with a book in which he explains his contempt for them and shows how easy it is to fool them? He says it’s all right to tell them a lie if it’s a big enough one, for they will think you wouldn’t have nerve enough for that. To me it just doesn’t make sense.”

  “That’s because you’re intelligent,” replied Heinrich. “You’re an Aryan, and you ought to join our movement and become one of our leaders.”

  Lanny said no more, for he had made up his mind that it would be poor taste for him to get into a dispute with Kurt or his friends while on a Christmas visit to his home. He would wait until they were in Lanny’s home, and perhaps they would take a walk up to the heights of Notre-Dame-de-Bon-Port, which had so much meaning for them both, and then Lanny would ask his friend how he, a disciple of Beethoven and Goethe, could make excuses for a political movement which repudiated every notion of honor and fair dealing, both among individuals and among nations.

  XI

  Lanny had learned of some pictures in Dresden, and more in Munich, so they would take in these cities on their way home. Kurt was glad to do this, because it gave him a chance to become acquainted with the musical life of Germany. Zoltan met them in Dresden, and while Kurt went to a symphony concert, Lanny brought out the photos of the new Robins’ nest, the plan of the rooms, and the ideas he had jotted down. Because Johannes had begun his career in Rotterdam and his children had been born there, Lanny had suggested that he put Dutch masters in the principal downstairs rooms, and Johannes had been pleased with this. He wanted no imitations of anything; he was prepared to invest several million marks in old masters, and then he would feel safe against any blows of fate. “Funny thing, how much it takes,” commented Zoltan. “Doubtless he used to feel safe on his mud floor, and was glad if he had one ragged shirt.”

  They made purchases, and then went on to Munich. The distressed nobleman there had had time to incur new debts, and so they bought more paintings from him, and went scouting for others. Meanwhile Kurt went to the headquarters of the National Socialist party and talked with men whom he had met previously. Adi was scheduled to speak at a public meeting, and Kurt wanted to hear him: did Lanny care to come along? Lanny said he had too much work on hand; Kurt could tell him about it. Lanny had thought it over and realized that he was in a delicate position, for Kurt was not merely his friend, but his mother’s lover, and if they got to disagreeing about politics it might have an effect on both relationships. Let Kurt believe what he pleased and let Lanny keep out of it!

  The former officer came home late, with a moderate amount of good Munich beer in him and a large amount of bad Nazi eloquence. He said that he didn’t like the type of men whom Hitler had got around him; they were adventurers, some of them no better than American gangsters. But the Fuhrer himself was another matter; a complex and bewildering man. Almost impossible to resist him when he became inspired; he was simple and unaffected, but then something would rise up and take possession of him and he would become the very soul of the Fatherland. “At least that’s the way it seems to a German,” Kurt added, in an effort to be fair.

  Lanny said: “Yes; but we’re all trying to get peace right now, and surely Hitler isn’t going to make it any easier.”

  “It’s no good fooling ourselves,” replied his friend. “If they really want peace with Germany, they’ll have to make it possible for our people outside the Fatherland to get back in.”

  It made Lanny a little sick to hear that. He knew the answers, having heard every possible point of view threshed out during six months of the Peace Conference. If you returned Stubendorf to Germany, what about the Poles who lived in that district? For the most part these were poor, so they didn’t count for very much, at least not in the estimation of the Germans. But if you made the transfer, then right away the Polish agitators would start working among them, and you would have the same old fight in reverse; it would be Hitler versus Korfanty to the end of time.

  Lanny had definitely made up his mind not to argue. He said: “I don’t know the solution, Kurt. But let’s try to approach it in the spirit of open-mindedness, not of fanaticism.” He wanted to add “like Adi,” but he withheld the words.

  In his heart Lanny was thinking: “Kurt is turning into a Nazi! And what is that going to mean?” The American remembered how vigorously his father had warned him, after their misadventure in Paris, that Kurt couldn’t stay in Bienvenu and go on with his activities as a German agent. For years Kurt hadn’t met any of his countrymen in France, but now he was beginning again, and would they be trying to use him as they had done before? Maybe it was snobbery on Lanny’s part, but it seemed to him that agents of Hitler would be far worse than agents of the Kaiser! Lanny had seen enough troubles by now so that he was able to foresee them; and that has its advantages, yet also disadvantages, for one may take to seeing more troubles than ever eventuate. But Lanny couldn’t help thinking: “Poor Beauty! What sort of Nazi is she going to make!”

  25

  Backward into Shadow

  I

  Another season on the Riviera. People piling in from all over the world, until the hotels and pensions were stuffed, and you couldn’t get so much as a cot. It was fantastic, the prices which were offered for the rent of the tiniest cottage; some owners couldn’t stand the temptation, they leased and went elsewhere. And still the trains and steamers came with fresh loads of passengers; they slept in the chairs in lobbies, or rented rooms in workingmen’s quarters or the homes of peasants.

  There was a building boom, and the soul of Beauty Budd was kept in torment by real estate agents who called and begged the privilege of seeing her; they had figured out a scheme whereby a little corner could be spared from her property without doing the slightest harm; they wanted to cut this up into lotissements, and they offered such sums as made Beauty turn pale. When she said no, they would come back with a doubled offer. For an acre they would pay ten times what Robbie Budd had paid for the entire estate twenty years ago! They argued that it was cruel to keep all that land idle when it might be having a dozen cottages on i
t, filled with happy people who would come to the village to shop and thus build up prosperity for everybody. The agents put it before Madame Detaze as a public duty.

  To Madame it became a cause of distress to be so wealthy and yet unable to touch the wealth. The villa and the lodge and the two studios seemed to shrink to smaller proportions, and became unworthy of the immensely valuable tract which they occupied. Why, it was almost as if you were living in a garage! But it made no difference how many millions or tens of millions of francs were offered, nobody could buy a square millimeter of this estate; Robbie had fixed it so, declaring that Bienvenu was Beauty’s home, and the home of her children and her grandchildren if and when. Accordingly Beauty had to get her happiness out of telling her friends how rich she might become if she didn’t love this old home so greatly.

  Rick and his family came for their customary sojourn. Nobody mentioned to them the prices which had been offered for the rental of the lodge, but they could guess, and were embarrassed to be taking so much from their friends. Rick’s play had been produced in London, and had done the same as the first one; that is, it had won esteem but practically no money. And of course what a journalist could earn by miscellaneous writing wasn’t enough for a family which had rich friends. Nina was game, and stuck by her husband in his determination to write, but that didn’t keep her from having regrets. Beauty tried tactfully to help her without seeming to do so. Whenever the Pomeroy-Nielsons had visitors who could be entertained, Beauty would beg to do it; if they needed a car, Lanny would offer to drive them. “Friendship is more than money,” he would say, and of course it is, but the fashionable world isn’t always run on that basis.