VII
The door opened suddenly, and there stepped forth a young woman carrying a large paper bundle. Lanny’s heart gave a jump, and he handed the almost empty Tüte to one of his little friends, and started in the same direction as the woman. She was slender, not so tall as Lanny, and dressed in a poor-looking, badly-faded brown coat, with a shawl over her head and shoulders. He couldn’t see her hair, and being somewhat behind her he couldn’t see her face, but he thought he knew her walk. He followed for a block or so, then crossed over and came up behind her and to her side. Her face was paler and thinner than when he had last seen her; she appeared an older woman; but there was no mistaking the finely chiseled, sensitive features, which had so impressed him as revealing intelligence and character. “Wie geht’s, Trudi?” he said.
She started violently, then glanced at him; one glance, and she turned her face to the front and walked steadily on. “I am sorry, mein Herr. You are making a mistake.”
“But Trudi!” he exclaimed. “I am Lanny Budd.”
“My name is not Trudi and I do not know you, sir.”
If Lanny had had any doubt as to her face, he would have been sure of her voice. It had rather deep tones, and gave an impression of intense feelings which the calm features seemed trying to repress. Of course it was Trudi Schultz. But she didn’t want to know him, or be known.
It was the first time Lanny had met a Socialist since he set out to save the Robin family. He had kept away from them on purpose; Rick had warned him what he might be doing to his own reputation, and now here he saw it! He walked by this devoted comrade’s side, and spoke quickly—for she might come to her destination and slam a door in his face, or turn away and forbid him to follow her. “Trudi, please hear what I have to say. I came to Germany to try to save the Robins. First I got Johannes out of jail, and I took him and his wife with Rahel and the baby, out to France. Now I have come back to try to find Freddi and get him free.”
“You are mistaken, sir,” repeated the young woman. “I am not the person you think.”
“You must understand that I have had to deal with people in authority here, and I couldn’t do it unless I took an attitude acceptable to them. I have no right to speak of that, but I know I can trust you, and you ought to trust me, because I may need your help—I am a long way from succeeding with poor Freddi. I have tried my best to find some of his old friends, but I can’t get a contact anywhere. Surely you must realize that I wouldn’t be dropping my own affairs and coming here unless I was loyal to him and to his cause. I have to trust somebody, and I put you on your honor not to mention what I am telling you. I have just learned that Freddi is in Dachau—”
She stopped in her tracks and gasped: “In Dachau!”
“He has been there for several months.”
“How do you know it?”
“I am not free to say. But I am fairly certain.”
She started to walk again, but he thought she was unsteady on her feet. “It means so much to me,” she said, “because Ludi and Freddi were arrested together.”
“I didn’t know that Ludi had been arrested. What has happened to him?”
“I have heard nothing from him or concerning him since the Nazis came and dragged them both away from our home.”
“What was Freddi doing there?”
“He came because he had been taken ill, and had to have some place to lie down. I knew it was dangerous for him, but I couldn’t send him away.”
“The Nazis were looking for Ludi?”
“We had gone into hiding and were doing illegal work. I happened to be away from home at the time and a neighbor warned me. The Nazis tore everything in the place to pieces, as if they were maniacs. Why do you suppose they took Freddi to Dachau?”
“It’s a long story. Freddi is a special case, on account of being a Jew, and a rich man’s son.”
It seemed to Lanny that the young woman was weak, perhaps from this shock, perhaps from worry and fear, and not getting enough to eat. He couldn’t suggest that they sit on some step, because it would make them conspicuous. He said: “Let me carry that bundle.”
“No, no,” she replied. “It’s all right.”
But he knew that it wasn’t, and in the land of his forefathers men did not let women carry the loads. He said: “I insist,” and thought that he was being polite when he took it out of her arms.
Then right away he saw why she hadn’t wanted him to have it. It was wrapped like a bundle of clothing, and was soft like such a bundle, but its weight was beyond that of any clothing ever made. He tried to guess: did the bundle contain arms of some sort, or was it what the comrades called “literature”? The latter was more in accord with Trudi’s nature, but Irma had pointed out that one couldn’t count upon that. A small quantity of weapons might weigh the same as a larger quantity of printed matter. Both would be equally dangerous in these times; and here was Lanny with an armful of either or both!
VIII
They must keep on walking and keep on talking. He asked: “How far do you have to go?”
“Many blocks.”
“I have a car, and I could get it and drive you.”
“A car must not stop there, nor can I let you go to the place.”
“But we ought to have a talk. Will you let Irma and me meet you somewhere and take you for a drive? That way we can talk safely.”
She walked for a space without speaking. Then she said: “Your wife is not sympathetic to our ideas, Genosse Budd.”
“She does not agree with us altogether,” he admitted; “but she is loyal to me and to the Robins.”
“Nobody will be loyal in a time like this except those who believe in the class struggle.” They walked again in silence; then the young artist continued: “It is hard for me to say, but it is not only my life that is at stake, but that of others to whom I am pledged. I would be bound to tell them the situation, and I know they would not consent for me to meet your wife, or to let her know about our affairs.”
He was a bit shocked to discover what the comrades had been thinking about his marriage; but he couldn’t deny Trudi’s right to decide this matter. “All right,” he said. “I won’t mention you, and don’t you mention me. There might be a spy among your group, I suppose.”
“It’s not very likely, because our enemies don’t wait long when they get information. They are efficient, and take no chances. It is dangerous for you to be walking with me.”
“I doubt if it could make serious trouble for an American; but it might cost me my chance to save Freddi if it became known that I was in touch with Socialists.”
“It is certainly unwise for us to meet.”
“It depends upon what may happen. How can we find each other in case of need?”
“It would not do for you to come where I am. If I need to see you, I’ll send you an unsigned note. I read in the papers that you were staying at the Adlon.”
“Yes, but I’m leaving tomorrow or the next day for Munich, where I’ll be at the Vier Jahreszeiten. Letters will be forwarded, however.”
“Tell me, Genosse Lanny,” she exclaimed, in a tense voice; “do you suppose there could be any chance for you to find if Ludi is in Dachau?”
“I can’t think of any way now; but something might turn up. I must have some way to get word to you.”
“Notice this corner ahead of us; remember it, and if you have any news for me, walk by here on Sunday, exactly at noon. I’ll be watching for you, and I’ll follow you to your car. But don’t come unless you have something urgent.”
“You mean you will come to this corner every Sunday?”
“So long as there’s any chance of your coming. When you leave Germany, I can write you to Juan-les-Pins.”
“All right,” he said; and then, as a sudden though came to him: “Do you need money?”
“I’m getting along all right.”
But he knew that propagandists can always use money. He didn’t take out his billfold, that being a conspicuou
s action; he reached under his coat, and worked several bills into a roll, and slipped them into the pocket of that well-worn brown coat. He was becoming expert in the art of distributing illicit funds. What he gave her would be a fortune for Social-Democrats, underground or above. He would leave it for her to explain how she had got it.
When he returned to the hotel, Irma said: “Well! You must have found some paintings that interested you!”
He answered: “A couple of Menzels that I think are worth Zoltan’s looking at. But the works by the Maris brothers were rather a disappointment.”
IX
The period of the Detaze show in Berlin corresponded with an election campaign throughout the German Reich; assuredly the strangest election campaign since that contrivance had been born of the human brain. Hitler had wiped out all other political parties and all the legislative bodies of the twenty-two German states; by his methods of murder and imprisonment he had destroyed democracy and representative government, religious toleration and all civil rights; but being still the victim of a “legality complex,” he insisted upon having the German people endorse what he had done. A vote to say that votes had no meaning! A Reichstag to declare that a Reichstag was without power! A completely democratic repudiation of democracy! Lanny thought: “Has there ever been such a madman since the world began? Has it ever before happened that a whole nation has gone mad?”
Living in the midst of this enormous institute of lunacy, Lanny Budd tried to keep his balance and not be permanently stood upon his head. If there was anything he couldn’t comprehend, his Nazi friends were eager to explain it, but there wasn’t a single German from whom he could hear a sane word. Even Hugo Behr and his friends who were planning the “Second Revolution” were all loyal Hitlerites, co-operating in what they considered a sublime demonstration of patriotic fervor. Even the members of smart society dared give no greater sign of rationality than a slight smile, or the flicker of an eyelash so faint that you couldn’t be sure if you had seen it. The danger was real, even to important persons. Only a few days later they would see Herzog Philip Albert of Württemberg imprisoned for failing to cast his vote in this sublime national referendum.
Hitler had raised the issue in the middle of October when the British at Geneva had dared to propose a four years’ “trial period” before permitting Germany to rearm. The Führer’s reply was to withdraw the German delegates from both the League of Nations and the Conference for Arms Limitation. In so doing he issued to the German people one of those eloquent manifestoes which he delighted to compose; he told them how much he loved peace and how eager he was to disarm when the other nations would do the same. He talked to them about “honor”—he, the author of Mein Kampf—and they believed him, thus proving that they were exactly what he had said they were. He proclaimed that what the German people wanted was “equal rights”; and, having just deprived them of all rights, he put to them in the name of the government this solemn question:
“Does the German people accept the policy of its National Cabinet as enunciated here and is it willing to declare this to be the expression of its own view and its own will and to give it holy support?”
Such was the “referendum” to be voted on a month later. In addition, there was to be a new Reichstag election, with only one slate of candidates, 686 of them, all selected by the Führer, and headed by the leading Nazis: Hitler, Göring, Goebbels, Hess, Röhm, and so on. One party, one list—and one circle in which you could mark your cross to indicate “yes.” There was no place for you to vote “no,” and blank ballots were declared invalid.
For that sort of “election” the Fatherland was kept in a turmoil for four weeks, and more money was spent than had ever been spent by all the forty-five parties in any previous Reichstag election. The shows and spectacles, the marching and singing, the carrying of the “blood banners,” the ceremonies in honor of the Nazi martyrs; the posters and proclamations, the torchlight processions, the standing at attention and saluting, the radio orations with the people assembled in the public squares to listen to loud-speakers—and a few sent to concentration camps for failing to listen. Hitherto the business of standing silent had been reserved as an honor for the war dead; but now all over Germany the traffic came to a halt and people stood in silence with bared heads; all the factories ceased work and thirty million workers stood to listen to the voice of Adolf Hitler, speaking in the dynamo hall of the enormous Siemens-Schuckert Electrical Works in Berlin. Afterward they stayed and worked an hour overtime, so that they and not their employers might have the honor and glory of making a sacrifice for the Fatherland!
X
On a bright and pleasant Sunday in mid-November, great masses of the German Volk lined up in front of polling-places all over the land, and even in foreign lands, and in ships upon the high seas. They voted in prisons and even in concentration camps. Late in the day the Stormtroopers rounded up the lazy and careless ones; and so more than forty-three million ballots were cast, and more than ninety-five per cent voted for the Hitler Reichstag and for the solemn referendum in favor of their own peace and freedom. Irma read about it, the next day and the days thereafter, and was tremendously impressed. She said: “You see, Lanny, the Germans really believe in Hitler. He is what they want.” When she read that the internees of Dachau had voted twenty to one for the man who had shut them up there, she said: “That seems to show that things can’t he so very bad.”
The husband replied: “It seems to me to show that they are a lot worse.”
But he knew there was no use trying to explain that. It would only mean an argument. He was learning to keep his unhappiness locked up in his soul. His wife was having a very good time in Berlin, meeting brilliant and distinguished personalities; and Lanny was going about tormenting himself over the activities and the probable fates of a little group of secret conspirators in a Berlin slum!
He could guess pretty well what they were doing; he imagined a small hand-press in the back of the tailor shop, and they were printing leaflets, perhaps about the Brown Book and its revelations concerning the Reichstag fire, perhaps quoting opinions of the outside world, so as to keep up the courage of the comrades in a time of dreadful anguish. Probably Trudi was carrying some of this “literature” to others who would see to its distribution. All of them were working in hourly peril of their lives; and Lanny thought: “I ought to be helping them; I am the one who could really accomplish something, because I could get money, and bring them information from outside, and carry messages to their comrades in France and England.”
But then he would think: “If I did that, I’d ruin the happiness of my mother and my wife and most of my friends. In the end I’d probably wreck my marriage.”
24
Die Juden Sind Schuld
I
A pleasant thing to leave the flat windy plain of Prussia at the beginning of winter and motor into the forests and snug valleys of South Germany. Pleasant to arrive in a beautiful and comparatively modern city and to find a warm welcome awaiting you in an establishment called the “Four Seasons of the Year” so as to let you know that it was always ready. Munich was a “Four Seasons of the Year” city; its life was a series of festivals, and the drinking of beer out of Masskrügen was a civic duty.
The devoted Zoltan had come in advance and made all arrangements for the show. The Herr Privatdozent Doktor der Philosophie Aloysius Winckler zu Sturmschatten had applied his arts, and the intellectuals of Munich were informed as to the merits of the new school of representational painting; also the social brilliance of the young couple who were conferring this bounty upon them.
In the morning came the reporters by appointment. They had been provided with extracts from what the Berlin press had said about Detaze, and with information as to the Barnes fortune and the importance of Budd Gunmakers; also the fact that Lanny had been on a shooting trip with General Göring and had once had tea with the Führer. The young couple exhibited that affability which is expected from the land of c
owboys and movies. Lanny said yes, he knew Munich very well; he had purchased several old masters here—he named them, and told in what new world collections they had found havens. He had happened to be in the city on a certain historic day ten years ago and had witnessed scenes which would make the name of Munich forever famous. Flashlight bulbs went off while he talked, reminding him of those scenes on the Marienplatz when the Nazi martyrs had been shot down.
The interviews appeared in due course, and when the exhibition opened on the following afternoon the crowds came. An old story now, but the people were new, and those who love greatness and glory never tire of meeting Herzog und Herzogin Überall und Prinz und Prinzessin Undsoweiter. A great thing for art when ladies of the highest social position take their stand in a public gallery to pay tribute to genius, even though dead. While Parsifal Dingle went off to ask the spirit of the dead painter if he was pleased with the show, and while Lanny went to inspect older masters and dicker over prices, Beauty Budd and her incomparable daughter-in-law were introduced to important personages, accepted invitations to lunches and dinners, and collected anecdotes which they would retail to their spouses and later to their relatives and friends.
There was only one thing wrong between this pair; the fact that Marcel Detaze had died when Irma was a child and had never had an opportunity to paint a picture of her. Thus Beauty got more than her proper share of glory, and there was no way to redistribute it. The mother-in-law would be humble, and try not to talk about herself and her portraits while Irma was standing by; but others would insist upon doing so, and it was a dangerous situation. Beauty said to her son: “Who is the best portrait painter living?”
“Why?” he asked, surprised.
“Because, you ought to have him do Irma right away. It would be a sensation, and help to keep her interested in art.”
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