When Byron arrived in Siena, the Constantine book was on the shelf for the moment, in favor of an expanded magazine article, "The Last Palio." In describing the race, Jastrow had evoked a gloom-filled image of Europe plunging again toward war. A piece startling in its foresight, it had arrived on the editor's desk on the first of September, the day of the invasion. The magazine printed it, and Jastrow's pubjisher cabled him a frantic request to work it up into a short book, preferably containing a note of optimism (however slight) on the outcome of the war. The cable mentioned a large advance against royalties. This was the task in hand.
In this brief book, Jastrow was striking an Olympian, farseeing, forgiving note. The Germans would probably be beaten to the ground again, he wrote; and even if they gained the rule of the earth, they would in the end be tamed and subdued by their subject peoples, as their ancestors, the Goths and Vandals, had been tamed to turn Christian. Fanatic or barbaric despotism had only its hour. It was a recurring human fever fated to cool and pass. Reason and freedom were what all human history eternally moved toward. The Germans were the bad children of Europe, Jastrow argued: egotistic, willful, romantic, always poised to break up faltering patterns of order. Anninius had set the ax to the Par Romana; Martin Luther had broken the back of the universal Church; now Hitler was challenging Europe's unsteady regime of liberal capitalism, based on an obsolete
patchwork structure of nations.
The "PalioP of Europe, wrote Jastrow, the contest of hot little nationalisms in a tiny crowded cockpit of a continent, a larger Siena with the sea for three walls and Asia for a fourth, was worn out. As Siena had y one water company and one power company, one telephone system only and one mayor, instead of seventeen of these in the seventeen make-believe sovereignties called Goose, Caterpillar, Giraffe, and so forth, so Europe was ripe for the same conunonsense unification. Hitler, a bad-boy genius, had perceived this. He was going about the breakup of the old order cruelly, wrongly, with Teutonic fury, but what mattered was that he was t. The Second World War was the last Palio. Europe essentially correc would emerge less colorful but more of a rational and solid structure, whichever side won the idiotic and gory horse race. Perhaps this painful but healthy process would become global, and the whole earth would be unified at last. As for Hitler, the villain of the melodrama, he would either be hunted down and bloodily destroyed like Macbeth, or he would have his triumph and then he would fall or die. The stars would remain, so would the earth, so would the human quest for freedom, understanding, and love among brothers.
As he typed repeated drafts of these ideas, Byron wondered whether Jastrow would have written such a tolerant and hopeful book had he spent September under bombardment in Warsaw, instead of in his villa overlooking Siena. He thought "The Last Palio' was a lot of high-flown irrelevant gab. But he didn't say so.
Letters were coming to Natalie from Leslie Slote, one or two a week.
She seemed less excited over them than she had been in the spring, when she would rush off to her bedroom to read them, and return looking sometimes radiant, sometimes tearfw. Now she casually skimmed the singlespace typed pages at her desk, then shoved them in a drawer. One rainy day she was reading such a letter when Byron, typing away at the Palio book, heard her say, "Good God!" He looked up. 'Something the matter?"
"No, no," she said, very red in the face, waving an agitated hand and flipping over a page. "Sorry. It's nothing at all."
EL
Byron resumed work, struggling with one of Jastrow's bad sentences.
The Professor wrote in a spiky burned hand, often leaving out letters or words. He seldom clod his s's an se d o's. It was anywy's guess what words some Of these strings of blue spikes represented. Natalie could puzzle
them out, but Byron disked her pained condesc ding
"Well!" Natalie sat " en way of doing it. back in her chair with a thump, staring at the letter. "Briny-"
"Yes?"
She hesitated, chewing her full lower lip. "Oh, hell, I can't help it.
I've got to tell someone, and you're handy. Guess what I hold here in my hot little hand?" She rustled the pages.
"I see what you're holding."
"You 0 y think you do." 4
n' She laughed in a wicked way. 'I'm going to tell you. it's a proposal of marriage from a gentleman named Leslie Manson Slote, Rhodes Scholar, rising diplomat, and elusive bachelor.
And what do you think of that, Byron Henry?" "Congratulations," Byron said.
The buzzer on Natalieps desk rang. "Oh, lord. Briny, please go and see what A.J. wants. I'm in a fog." She tossed the letter on the desk and thrust long white hands in her hair.
Dr. Jastrow sat blanketed in the downstairs study on the chaise I.we by the fire, his usual place in rainy weather. Facing him in an armchair, a fat pale Italian official, in a green and yellow uniform and black halfboots, was drinking coffee. Byron had never seen the man or the uniform before.
-Oh, Byron, a,k Natalie for my resident status file, will you?
She knows where it is." Jastrow turned to the official. Will you want to see their papers toO?" -Not 'oday, PrOfessore- Only yours."
Natalie looked up with an embarrassed grin from rearranging the letsse i fr di Byron told her. Her face sobering, she took a key from Iler purse and unlocked a small steel file by the desk. "Here." She gave him a mnila folder tied with red tape. "Does it look like trouble?
Shall I come down?" "Better wait till you're asked." As he descended the stairs he heard laughter from the study, and rapid jovial talk. "Oh, that. Thank you, Byron," Jastrow said, breaking into English as he entered, 'just leave it here on the table." He resumed his anecdote in Italian about the donkey that had gotten into the grounds the previous week, laid waste to a vegetable patch, and chewed up a whole ter- "oh, hi. What's doing?"
00 wier chapter of manuscript. The official's belted belly sh k th aught In the library Natalie was typing again. The Slote letter was out Of sight. it seem to be much of a problem," Byron said.
"There doesn "That's good," she said pladdlyAt dinner that night Dr. Jastrow hardly spoke, ate less than usual, and drank two extra glasses of wine. in this household, where things were so monotonously the same day after day, night after night, the first extra glass was an event, the second a bombshell. Natalie finally said, "Aaron, what was that visit about today?"
Jastrow came out of an abstracted stare with a little headshake.
Strangely enough, Giuseppe again."
t gardener, whom he had recently disGiuseppe was the a charged: a scrawny, lazy, stupid old drunkard with wiry black hairs on e nose.
Giuseppe had left open the gate through which the donkey ha, entered.
He was always committing such misdemeanors. Jastrow had lost his temper over the destroyed chapter and the ravaged vegetable beds, had been unable to write for two days, and had suffered bad indigestion.
'How does that officer know Giuseppe?" Byron said.
That's the odd part. He's from the alien registration bureau in Florence, yet he mentioned Giuseppe's nine children, the difficulty of finding work nowadays, and so forth. When I said I'd rehire him, that ended it. He just handed me the registration papers with a victorious grin." Jastrow sighed and laid ws napkin on the table. 'I've put up with Giuseppe all these years, I really don't mind. I'm rather tired. Tell Maria
I'll have my fruit and cheese in the study."
Natalie said when the professor was gone, Let's bring the coffee to my room."
"Sure. Great."
Never before had she invited him there. Sometimes in his room above he could hear her moving about, a tantdwng, faint, lovely noise.
He followed her upstairs with a jumping pulse.
"I live in a big candy box," she said with a self-conscious look, opening a heavy door. 'Aaron bought the place furnished, you know, and left it just the way the lady of the house had it. Ridiculous for me, but-' She snapped on a light. It was an enormous room, painted pink, with pink and gilt furniture, pink
painted cupids on a blue and gold ceiling, pink silk draperies, and a huge double bed covered in frilly pink satin. Dark Natalie, in the old brown wool dress she wore on chilly evenings, looked decidedly odd in this Watteau setting. But Byron found the con his big knobby
EL
trast as exciting as everything else about her. She lit the log fire in the marble fireplace carved with Roman figures, and they sat in facing armchairs, taking coffee from the low table been them.
"Why do you suppose Aaron's so upset?" Natalie said, settling comfortably in the large chair and pulling the long pleated skirt far down over her beautiful legs, 'Giuseppe's an old story. Actually it was a mistake to fire him. He knows all about the water connections and the electric lines, much more than Tomaso. And he's really good at the topiary work, even if he is a dirty old drunk,"
"A.J. was coerced, Natalie." She bit her lip, nodding. Byron added, "We're at the mercy of these people, A.J, even more than you and me. He ovens property, he's stuck here."
"Oh, the Italians are all right. They're not Germans."
"Mussolini's no bargain. Berel gave A.J. the right advice. Get out!"
Natalie smiled. "Lekh lekha. My God, how far off that all seems.
I wonder how he is." Her smile faded. "I)ve shut Warsaw from my mind.
Or tried to."
"I don't blame you."
"How about you, Briny? Do you ever think about it?"
"Some. I keep dreaming about it."
"Oh, God, so do I. That hospital-I go round and round in it, night after night-" 'When Warsaw fell," Byron said, "it hit me hard." He told Natalie about the Wannsee episode. At his description of the waiter's sudden turnabout, she laughed bitterly. "Your father sounds superb."
"He's all right."He must think I'm a vampire who all but lured you to your death."
"We haven't talked about you." Sudden gloom shadowed Natalie's face. She poured more coffee for both of them. "Stir the fire, Briny.
I'm cold. Giuseppe's brought in green wood, as usual." He made the fire flare, and threw on it a light log from a blighted tree, which quickly blazed. 'Ah, that's good!" She j"-peti up, turned off the electric chandelier, and stood by the fire, looking at the flames.
"That moment in the railroad station," she nervously burst out, "when they took away the Jews! I still can't face it. That was one reason I was so nasty at K,5,igsberg. I was in torture. I kept thinking that I could have done some thing. Sup rw pose I'd stepped lo and, ,aid I was Jewish, forced the issue?
St'PPose we'd all created a scandal? It might have made a difference. But we calmly went to the train, and they trudged off the other way."
lost you and Mark Hartley. The thing Byron said, "We might have was touch and go. vented that. He stood his ground, at least, "Yes, I know. Leslie pre though he was shaking like a leaf. He did his plain duty. But those other ambassadors and charges-well-"- e. "And my fan-dly in Medzicel When I Natalie had begun to pac picture those kind, good people in the clutches of the Germans-but what's the use? It's futile, it's sickening, to dwell on that." She threw up her hand in a despairing gesture and dropped in her chair, sitting on her legs with her skirt spread over them.
Nothing of her was visible in the firelight but her face and her tensely clasped hands. She stared at the fire. "Speaking of old Slote," she said after a long pause, in an entirely different tone, what do you think of his proposal to make an honest woman of me?"
"I'm not surprised." Y-P) "You're not? I'm stunned. I never thought I'd live to see the da "He told me in Berlin he might marry you. He'd be crazy not to, if he could."
"Well, he's had that option open to him for a hell of a long time, dear." She poured coffee and sipped, looking darkly at him over the rim of the cup. "Had a big discussion about me in Berlin, you two gentlemen, did you?"
"Not a big discussion. He mentioned that you were just as surly to him that last day in Kenigsberg as you 'd been to me."
"I was feeling absolutely horrible that day, Briny." -Well, that's all right. I thought I might have off
how, so I asked him."
ended you somese did Slote say about me?"
'This is getting interesting. What el The low, vibrant voice, the amused glinting of her eyes in the firelight, stirred Byron. That you were no girl for me to get involved with, and that he hadn't known an hour's peace of mind since he first laid eyes on you.
She uttered a low gloating laugh. "Two accurate statements, my pet.
Tell me more."
"That's about it. It was the same conversation in which he gave me the reading list."
"Yes, and wasn't that pure Slote? Coming it over you with his book learning! An illuminating little incident, that. Didn't he really tell you all about us? About him and me?" Byron shook his head.
Natalie said, 'You wouldn't go and get us some brandy, would you?
I think I'd like a little brandy."
EL He raced down the stairs and up again, returning with a bottle and two shimmering snifters. Swirling the brandy round and round in her hands, looking into the balloon glass and rarely raising her eyes at him, Natalie broke loose with a SUrprising rush of words about her affair with Leslie Slote. It took her a long time. Byron said little, interrupting only to throw more wood on the fire. It was a familiar tale of a clever older man having fun with a girl and getting snared into a real passion. Resolving to marry him, she had made his life a nlisery- He didn't want to marry her, she said, simply because she was Jewish and it would be awkward for his career. That was all his clouds of words had ever come to. At last, with this letter, after thir months, she had him where she wanted
him. tY
Byron hated every word of the story, yet he was fascinated, and grateful. The closemouthed girl was taking him into her life. These word" which couldn't be unsaid, were ending the strange tension between them since Warsaw, their own little phony war-the long hostile silences in the library, her holing up in her room, her odd snappish condescension.
As she talked, they were growing intimate as they never had become in a month of adventuring through Poland, Everything about this girl interested him. If it was the account of and this was what he had her affair with another man, let it be that! At least Byron was talking about Natalie Jastrow with Natalie ja trow, been starved for. He was hearing this sweet rough voice with its occaali tai s sional New Yorkisms, and he could watch the play of her free gesturing hand in the firelight, the swoop and sudden stop in the air of flat palm and fingers, her visible signature.
Natalie Jastrow was the one person he had ever met who meant as much to him as his father did. In the same way, almost, he hungered to talk to his father, to listen to him, to be with him, even though he had to most every conversation be either offended or disappointed Victor Henry. His mother he took resist and withdraw, even though he knew that in a] for granted, a warm presence, cloying in her affection, annoying in her kittenish changeability. His father was terrific, and in that way Natalie wa, terrific, entirely aside from being a tall dark girl whom he had hopelessly craved to seize in his arms since the first hour they had met.
"Well, there you have it," Natalie said. "This mess has been endless, b"t that's the general idea. How about some more of Aaron's brandy?
Wouldn't you like some? It's awfully good brandy. Funny, I usually don't care for it."
Byron poured more for both of them, though his glass wasn't empty.
"What I've been puzzling about all day," she said after a sip, "is why Leslie is throwing in the towel now. The trouble is, I think I know." "He's lonesome for you," Byron said.
Natalie shook her head. "Leslie Slote behaved disgustingly on the Praha road. I despised him for it, and I let him know I did. That was the turnaround. He's been chasing me ever since. I guess in a way I've been running, too. I haven't even answered half his letters."
Byron said, "You've always exaggerated that whole thing. All he did-"- "Shut up, Byron. Don't be mealymouthed with me. All he did was turn yellow and use me as an excuse. He h
id behind my skirts. The Swedish ambassador all but laughed in his face." She tossed off most of her brandy. "Look, physical courage isn't something you can help.
It isn't even important nowadays. You can be a world leader and a cringing sneak. That's what Hitler probably is. Still, it happened.
It happened.
I'm not saying I won't marry Leslie Slote because shellfire made him panic.
After all, he behaved well enough at the railroad station. But I do say that's why he's proposing to me. This is his way of apologizing and being a man. it's not quite the answer to my maidenly prayers."
it's what you want." "Well, I don't know. There are complications.
There's my family.
My parents had wild fits when I told them I was in love with a Christian. My father took to his bed for a week, though that bit of melodrama left me unmoved. Well, now there's that whole fight again.
Herman Wouk - The Winds Of War Page 36