Dragon's Teeth

by Sinclair, Upton;

  To Irma they seemed much nicer-looking people than those she had seen at the other two meetings. The black-and-silver uniforms of the Schutzstaffel, who acted as ushers and guards, were new and quite elegant; these young men showed alertness and efficiency. Twenty or thirty thousand people singing with fervor were impressive, and Irma didn’t know that the songs were full of hatred for Frenchmen and Poles. She knew that the Nazis hated the Jews, and this she deplored. She had learned to be very fond of one Jewish family, but she feared there must be something wrong with the others—so many people said it. In any case, the Germans had to decide about their own country.

  Singing and speech-making went on for an hour or so; then came a roll of drums and a blast of trumpets in the main entrance, and all the men and women in the huge place leaped to their feet. Der Führer kommt! A regiment of Stormtroopers in solemn march, carrying flags with spearpoints or bayonets at the tips of the poles. The bands playing the magnificent open chords to which the gods march across the rainbow bridge into Valhalla at the close of Das Rheingold. Then the party leaders, military and magnificent, marching in the form of a hollow square, protecting their one and only leader. Someone with a sense of drama has planned all this; someone who has learned from Wagner how to combine music, scenery, and action so as to symbolize the fundamental aspirations of the human soul, to make real to the common man his own inmost longing.

  Who was that genius? Everyone in the hall, with the possible exception of a few Lanny Budds, believed that it was the little man who marched in the center of that guard of honor; the simple man with the old tan raincoat, the one whom honors could not spoil, the one consecrated to the service of the Fatherland; one born of the common people, son of an obscure Austrian customs official; a corporal of the World War wounded and gassed; an obscure workingman, a dreamer of a mighty dream, of Germany freed and restored to her place among the nations, or perhaps above them.

  He wore no hat, and his dark hair, long and brushed to one side, fell now and then across his pale forehead and had to be swept away. No fashion here, a plain man, just like you and me; one whose hand you can shake, who smiles in a friendly way at those who greet him. A storm of cheering arises, the Heils become like raindrops falling in a cloudburst—so many that you cannot hear the individual ones, the sounds become a union like the National Socialist German Workingmen’s Party.

  Lanny has never attended an old-fashioned American revival meeting, but his friend Jerry Pendleton from Kansas has told him about one, and here is another. Has someone from the American South or Middle West come over and taught these arts of stirring the souls of primitive people, of letting them take part in what is being done to them? Or is it something that rises out of the primitive soul in every part of the world? The speakers on this platform ask questions, and twenty thousand throats shout the answers. Only they do not shout: “Glory Hallelujah!” and “Bless the Lord!”; theirs are secular cries: “Down with Versailles!” “Juda verrecke!” and “Deutschland erwache!”

  IX

  Seven years since Lanny watched Charlie Chaplin come out upon the stage of a great beerhall in Munich; and here he is again, the same foolish little dark mustache, the same shy manner, humble, deprecating. But now he is stouter, he gets better food. Now, also, there are a score of spotlights centered upon him, telling everybody that appearances are deceptive, and that this is a special One. Banners and symbols, slogans and rituals, hopes and resolves, all have come out of his soul; he is the Messiah, the One appointed and sent to save the Fatherland in its hour of greatest trial.

  He begins to speak, and Lanny knows every tone. Quiet at first, and the vast hall as still as the universe must have been before God created it. But soon the man of visions begins to warm up to his theme. The slogans which he has taught to all Germany work upon himself as upon others; they dominate his entire being; they are sparks from a white-hot flame which burns day and night within him. The flame of “Adi’s” hatred of his miserable and thwarted life! Hatred of his father, the dumb petty bureaucrat who wanted to make his son like himself and wouldn’t let him become an artist; hatred of the critics and dealers who wouldn’t recognize his pitiful attempts at painting; hatred of the bums and wastrels in the flophouses who wouldn’t listen to his inspired ravings; hatred of the Russians and the French and the British and the Americans who wouldn’t let an obscure corporal win his war; hatred of Marxists who betrayed Germany by a stab in the back; hatred of the Jews who made money out of her misery; hatred of all who now stood in the way of her destiny, who opposed Adi’s party which was to save her from humiliation. All these hatreds had flamed forth from one thwarted soul and had set fire to the tinder-box which Germany had become—and here it was, blazing, blazing!

  The Führer possessed no gleam of humor, no trace of charm. He was an uneducated man, and spoke with an Austrian country accent, not always grammatically. His voice was hoarse from a thousand speeches, but he forced it without mercy. He raved and shrieked; he waved his arms, he shook his clenched fists in the face of Germany’s enemies. Perspiration poured from his pasty and rather lumpy countenance; his heavy hair fell down over his eyes and had to be flung back.

  Lanny knew every gesture, every word. Adi hadn’t learned a thing, hadn’t changed a thing in seven years; he had merely said the same things a million times. His two-part book which Lanny had read with mingled dismay and laughter had become the bible of a new religion. Millions of copies had been sold, and extracts from it and reiterations of it had been printed in who could guess how many pamphlets, leaflets, and newspapers? Certainly well up in the billions; for some of the Nazi newspapers had circulations of hundreds of thousands every day, and in the course of years that mounts up. Heinrich told Lanny that they had held nearly thirty-five thousand meetings in Germany during the present campaign and quantities of literature had been sold at every one of them. Lanny, listening and watching the frenzied throng, remembered some lines from his poetry anthology, lines which had sounded melodious and exciting, but which he hadn’t understood when he had read them as a boy:

  One man with a dream, at pleasure,

  Shall go forth and conquer a crown;

  And three with a new song’s measure

  Can trample an empire down.

  X

  There had been an election to the Reichstag less than two and a half years before, and at that election the Social-Democrats had polled more than nine million votes, the Communists more than three million, and the Nazis less than one million. The two last-named parties had been active since then, and everyone agreed that conditions favored the extremists. The business collapse in America had made farm products unsalable there, and this had caused an immediate reaction in Germany; the peasants had their year’s harvest to sell at a heavy loss. As for the workers, there were four million unemployed, and fear in the hearts of all the rest. These groups were sure to vote for a change—but of what sort?

  Impossible to spend a week in a nation so wrought up and not come to share the excitement. It became a sort of sporting proposition; you chose sides and made bets to back yourself. After the fashion of humans, you believed what you hoped. Lanny became sure that the cautious, phlegmatic German people would prefer the carefully thought-out program of the Socialists and give them an actual majority so that they could put it into effect. But Johannes Robin, who thrived on pessimism, expected the worst—by which he meant that the Communists would come out on top. Red Berlin would become scarlet, or crimson, or whatever is the most glaring of shades.

  The results astounded them all—save possibly Heinrich Jung and his party comrades. The Social-Democrats lost more than half a million votes; the Communists gained more than a million and a quarter; while the Nazis increased their vote from eight hundred thousand to nearly six and a half million: a gain of seven hundred per cent in twenty-eight months! The score in millions stood roughly, Social-Democrats eight and a half, Nazis six and a half, and Communists four and a half.

  The news hit the rest
of the world like a high-explosive shell. The statesmen of the one-time Allied lands who were so certain that they had Germany bound in chains; the international bankers who had lent her five billion dollars; the negotiators who, early in this year of 1930, had secured her signature to the Young Plan, whereby she bound herself to pay reparations over a period of fifty-eight years—all these now suddenly discovered that they had driven six and a half million of their victims crazy! War gains were to be confiscated, trusts nationalized, department stores communalized, speculation in land prevented, and usurers and profiteers to suffer the death penalty! Such was the Nazi program for the inside of Germany; while for the outside, the Versailles treaty was to be denounced, the Young Plan abrogated, and Germany was to go to war, if need be, in order to set her free from the “Jewish-dominated plutocracies” of France, Britain, and America!

  Lanny’s host was unpleasantly surprised by these returns, but, after thinking matters over, he decided not to worry too much. He said that no soup is ever eaten as hot as it is cooked. He said that the wild talk of the Nazis was perhaps the only way to get votes just now. He had his private sources of information, and knew that the responsible leaders were embarrassed by the recklessness of their young followers. If you studied the Nazi program carefully you would see that it was full of all sorts of “jokers” and escape clauses. The campaign orators of Berlin had been promising the rabble “confiscation without compensation” of the great estates of the Junkers; but meanwhile, in East Prussia, they had got the support of the Junkers by pointing to the wording of the program: the land to be confiscated must be “socially necessary.” And how easy to decide that the land of your friends and supporters didn’t come within that category!

  But all the same Johannes decided to move some more funds to Amsterdam and London, and to consult Robbie Budd about making more investments in America. Hundreds of other German capitalists took similar steps; and of course the Nazis found it out, and their press began to cry that these “traitor plutocrats” should be punished by the death penalty.

  XI

  The rich did not give up their pleasures on account of elections, nor yet of election results. The fashionable dressmakers, the milliners, the jewelers came clamoring for appointments with the famous Frau Lanny Budd, geborene Irma Barnes. They displayed their choicest wares, and skilled workers sat up all night and labored with flying fingers to meet her whims. When she was properly arrayed she sallied forth, and the contents of her trunks which Feathers had brought from Juan were placed at the disposal of the elder Frau Budd, who dived into them with cries of delight, for they had barely been worn at all and had cost more than anything she had ever been able to afford in her life. A few alterations, to allow for embonpoint attributable to the too rich fare of the yacht, and a blond and blooming Beauty was ready to stand before kings—whether of steel, coal, or chemicals, potash, potatoes, or Rentenmarks.

  She did not feel humiliated to play second fiddle in the family, for after all she was a grandmother; also, she had not forgotten the lesson of the Wall Street collapse. Let Irma go on paying the family bills and nursing the family infant, and her mother-in-law would do everything in the power of a highly skilled social intriguer to promote her fortunes, put her in a good light, see that she met the right people and made the right impressions. Beauty would even write to Irma’s mother and urge her to come to Berlin and help in this task; there must never be any rivalry or jealousy between them; on the contrary, they must be partners in the duty of seeing that Irma got everything to which her elegance, charm, and social position—Beauty didn’t say wealth—entitled her.

  Lanny, of course, had to play up to this role; he had asked for it, and now couldn’t back out. He had to let the tailors come and measure him for new clothes, and stand patiently while they made a perfect fit. No matter how bored he was, no matter how much he would have preferred trying some of Hindemith’s new compositions! His mother scolded him, and taught his wife to scold him; such is the sad fate of kind-hearted men. When he and Irma were invited to a dinner-party by the Prinz Ilsaburg zu Schwarzadler or to a ball at the palace of the Baron von Friedrichsbrunn, it would have been unthinkable to deprive Irma of such honors and a scandal to let some other man escort her.

  It wasn’t exactly a scandal for Johannes Robin to escort the elder Frau Budd, for it was known that he had a wife who was ill-adapted to a fashionable career. Beauty, on the other hand, had taken such care of her charms that you couldn’t guess her years; she was a gorgeous pink rose, now fully unfolded. Fashionable society was mistaken in its assumptions concerning her host and herself, for both this strangely assorted pair were happy with their respective spouses, and both spouses preferred staying at home—Mama Robin to watch over the two infants whom she adored equally, and Parsifal Dingle to read his New Thought publications and say those prayers which he was firmly assured were influencing the souls of all the persons he knew, keeping them free from envy, hatred, malice, and all uncharitableness. Parsifal himself had so little of these worldly defects that he didn’t even know that it was a humiliation to have his wife referred to as the elder Frau Budd.

  The Jew who had been born in a hut with a mud floor in the realm of the Tsar was proud to escort the Budd ladies about die grosse Welt of Berlin. He told them so with a frankness touched with humor and untouched with servility. He said that when he was with them his blood was pure and his fortune untainted. He said that many a newly arrived Schieber was paying millions of marks for social introductions which he, the cunning one, was getting practically free. He could say such things, not merely because Bess and Hansi had made their families one, but because he knew that Robbie Budd needed Johannes in a business way as much as Johannes needed Robbie’s ladies in a social way. A fair deal, and all parties concerned understood it.

  So the former Jascha Rabinowich of Lodz gave a grand reception and ball in honor of the two Damen Budd. Decorations were planned, a list of guests carefully studied, and the chefs labored for a week preparing fantastical foods; the reception-rooms of the marble palace which looked like a railway station came suddenly to resemble a movie director’s dream of Bali or Brazil. Anyhow, it was a colossal event, and Johannes said that the magnates who came wouldn’t be exclusively his own business associates, the statesmen wouldn’t be exclusively those who had got campaign funds from him, and the members of the aristocracy wouldn’t be exclusively those who owed him money. “Moreover,” added the shrewd observer, “they will bring their wives and daughters.”

  XII

  Lanny Budd, in his best bib and tucker, wandering about in this dazzling assemblage, helping to do the honors, helping to make people feel at home; dancing with any overgrown Prussian Backfisch who appeared to be suffering from neglect; steering the servitors of food toward any dowager whose stomach capacity hadn’t been entirely met. Dowagers with large pink bosoms, no shoulder-straps, and perfectly incredible naked backs; servitors in pink-and-green uniforms with gold buttons, white silk gloves and stockings, and pumps having rosettes. Lanny has dutifully studied the list of important personages, so that he will know whom he is greeting and commit no faux pas. He has helped to educate his wife, so that she can live up to the majesty of her fortune. Never think that a social career is for an idler!

  “Do you know General Graf Stubendorf?” inquires one of the enormous elderly Valkyries.

  “I have never had the honor,” replies the American. “But I have visited Seine Hochgeboren’s home on many occasions.”

  “Indeed?” says Seine Hochgeboren. He is tall and stiff as a ramrod, with sharp, deeply lined features, gray hair not more than a quarter of an inch in length, a very bright new uniform with orders and decorations which he has earned during four years of never-to-be-forgotten war.

  Lanny explains: “I have been for most of my life a friend of Kurt Meissner.”

  “Indeed?” replies the General Graf. “We consider him a great musician, and are proud of him at Stubendorf.”

  “I have spe
nt many Christmases at the Meissner home,” continues the young American. “I had the pleasure of listening to you address your people each year; also I heard your honored father, before the war.”

  “Indeed?” says Seine Hochgeboren, again. “I cannot live there any longer, but I go back two or three times a year, out of loyalty to my people.” The gray-haired warrior is conveying to a former foe: “I cannot bear to live in my ancestral home because it has become a part of Poland, and is governed by persons whom I consider almost subhuman. You and your armies did it, by meddling without warrant in the affairs of Germany and snatching her hard-won victory from her grasp. Then you went off and left us to be plundered by the rapacious French and the shopkeeping British.”

  It is not a subject to be explored, so Lanny says some polite words of no special significance and passes on, reflecting: “If Johannes thinks he is winning that gentleman, he is surely fooling himself!”

  XIII

  But Lanny was making a mistake, as he discovered later in the evening. The stiff aristocrat approached him and spoke again, in a more cordial tone. “Mr. Budd, I have been realizing, I remember you in Stubendorf. Also I have heard Meissner speak of you.”