“Will he be willing to go to war to end it?”
“Social forces do not operate with clear-cut programs. ‘Issues’ will arise, one after another, and Robbie will always be sure that he is right. He will hire propagandists to defend his cause, and he will believe his own propaganda. Some day there will be an issue which he will call one of ‘principle,’ and which therefore cannot be compromised. Fighting will start over some border, and Robbie will be absolutely certain that the Communists have started it; he will also be certain that anybody who opposes him is a hireling in the service of the Reds.”
“A pretty bleak prospect you are holding out for your unborn child, Lanny!”
“I don’t pretend to know what is coming, dear. It is what H. G. Wells has called ‘a race between education and catastrophe.’ If the American people can be brought to understand the nature of exploitation and the competitive wage system, they may put their economy on a basis where they can live without paying tribute to Robbie, and without lending money to foreigners to enable them to buy our goods. But I don’t know who’s going to win that race.”
XI
There came a cablegram from the afore-mentioned capitalist exploiter. Lanny had expected to hear from him first, because he was a prompt and business-like person, and he didn’t have to consult anybody else, as would be the case with Alston. The message said: “Congratulations and best love from all to you both stop please advise concerning your plans stop do you need money stop no news whatever from yacht Oriole stop family greatly distressed wire any information Robert Budd.”
When Laurel read that message she broke down and wept, the first time Lanny had seen her do that. It was dreadful news, and he couldn’t think of any word to comfort her. More than three months had passed since the Oriole had sailed, and in that time she would surely have reached some harbor and reported. Of course there was a chance that she might have been wrecked, and that those on board were hiding from the Japs, or perhaps trying to make their way to civilization. But Laurel took her psychic message as settling the matter. “Something tells me it is true.”
Lanny could only remind her that since this war had started many tens of thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands, had gone out to sea and never come back. That would go on—who could guess how many years more? But none of those persons happened to be known to Laurel Creston, and she had not entered into their lives and the secrets of their hearts as she had done with her uncle and her cousin. “They had their weaknesses, but they were kind people, Lanny.”
“I know,” he said. “But Reverdy had no great desire to live, and it didn’t seem to me that Lizbeth was headed for a happy life. Anyhow, you can take this comfort—if your message is true, they aren’t suffering now. That is the one answer to grief.” He put his arms about her and held her tightly. “Life is for the living, dear. We have our work to do, and perhaps we may be able to leave the world a tiny bit better than we found it. We cannot end death, but we may help to stop wholesale murder.”
He knew that by her uncle’s death she had come into possession of a considerable amount of money. He didn’t know how large the Holdenhurst fortune was, but he knew what share of it Laurel would possess, because he had inspected the list of persons who received a share of Reverdy’s Budd-Erling investments, under the strange tax-dodging scheme he had devised. Lanny wouldn’t mention this until some time later. Now he was the lover trying to share her sorrow, and to diminish it by transferring her thoughts to himself. He was not unacquainted with that most futile of human emotions called grief; he had wept for Rick when he had thought Rick was dead, and for Marcel Detaze, and then for Marie de Bruyne, and for Freddi Robin, and for Trudi. Worst of all had been those last two cases, where he had known that the persons were undergoing torture and that their deaths were to be desired. Laurel should hope that her psychic message was veridical, and that nobody on the Oriole was in the hands of the Japs.
XII
Experienced in love as well as in sorrow, Lanny told his wife that he needed her, and that she had given him the most complete happiness he had ever known. She answered that he had loved so many women, and could she take the place of them all? He put in his plea that five women in a matter of twenty-six years wasn’t such a bad record—considering that it had been made on the Coast of Pleasure, and in the smart society of Paris and London and Berlin and New York. In those places the record might pass as equivalent to a celibate life.
“Never forget, darling,” he told her, “two of those women died, and the other three left me, so I haven’t been exactly a Don Juan. Only one of the five—that was Trudi—understood and sympathized with my ideas; and she didn’t know my world, and would never have been able to help me as you can. She knew that, and it troubled all her thoughts of me.”
“Didn’t Marie understand your ideas?”
“Marie was a conventional lady of the French provinces, Catholic and conservative. She loved me, but she was always afraid of our love and looked upon it as sin. Also, she was shocked beyond words when I caused us to be put out of Italy by trying to help Matteotti; she broke with me, and wouldn’t see me for months afterwards.”
He told these old stories, as a way to divert her mind. He told her that from this time on there would be only one woman in the world for him; if he ever looked at any other, it would be as a subject for her fiction, and he would report it to her promptly. He knew that this would have to be true if she was ever to enjoy peace, for that had been her upbringing. He was tireless in telling her so, and trying to wipe out his European past. He assured her that he meant every word of the Episcopalian formula he had recited: “to love and to cherish, till death us do part.” They had already had some trials together; he hoped he had stood them acceptably, and he was certain that she had. Now they had work to do; they couldn’t stay indefinitely in Soviet Russia, and must make the most of their days. So the lady from Baltimore dried her eyes and wiped the shine off her nose—here, as in Yenan, there was neither powder nor rouge to be had.
Such are the quirks of human nature—Lanny would catch himself thinking about Lizbeth and her father and the other people on the Oriole, and doing just what he had forbidden his wife to do. He had been more fond of Lizbeth than he had been willing to admit, even to himself. He had been, say one-quarter in love with her; he had thought of her intimately, and studied her closely. She had done her best according to her lights; certainly she had never knowingly done harm to anybody. And what a horrid ending to a young life, so full of hope and expectation! What a blindly cruel thing nature could be—and men, who were nature’s product. How difficult to imagine reason or purpose in what they did!
And then Reverdy: he had been Lanny’s friend, as much as he could be any man’s friend. His wilfulness had been a reaction against his own weakness, his inadequacy to the tasks the world had set him. He had been determined to assert himself, to prove himself to others and to himself. He had tried so hard to take care of his precious person, and of his precious fortune—and how inadequate his judgment had been to that task! Looking back, Lanny could see it; but who is there, looking back, that cannot see blunders—whole storerooms full of them—memory storerooms!
And all those other people on the yacht; the three women guests, the officers and the crew—persons with whom Lanny had lived in daily contact for more than a month, and whose lives had been entrusted to Reverdy’s fallible judgment! What had their thoughts been, and their feelings, when the shell had struck—assuming that there had been a shell—and when they had found themselves thrown into the dark engulfing water? Lanny could form an idea, all-too-vivid, having been in the same plight so recently. It was something he hadn’t told Laurel in detail; but he could never get the memories out of his own mind, and the world would never seem to him quite the same bright and cheerful place.
28
Fifty-Year Plan
I
The second cablegram arrived a couple of days later. “Lanning Prescott Budd Continental Hotel Kuibyshe
v retel delighted important service awaits your return notify when ready will arrange air transportation yourself and wife no news concerning Oriole sorry regards Charles T. Alston.”
Lanny said: “My six months’ furlough is up. What do you say?” His wife answered: “Let’s have two or three days to look around in Moscow. Then we can go.”
He took the cablegram to his Red uncle. Having been in New York and read the newspapers, Jesse knew the name of this “fixer” for the administration. “Lanny,” he said, “you know that I have never asked questions about your political or diplomatic job, whatever you call it. But I was sure you had one and I couldn’t help guessing. It may be you will feel more free to talk now.”
“I haven’t been formally released from my promise, Uncle Jesse, but since there’s no chance of my going back into Germany, I can talk a bit more freely.”
“I have had the idea that you have access to Roosevelt.”
“That is true.”
“You will probably see him on your return?”
“I have every expectation of it.”
“The head of my department in Narkomindel was interested in what you had to tell about Yenan. I took the liberty of giving him the idea that you were one of the President’s confidants, and he suggested that it might be worth while for Stalin to have a talk with you. Would that interest you?”
“I can’t think of anything that would interest me more, Uncle Jesse.”
“You understand, it would have to be strictly on the QT.”
“You ought to know by now that I am not a loose talker. I assume that I would be free to tell F.D. about it.”
“Stalin would probably give you messages for him. There has been some talk of their meeting, you know.”
“They ought to meet, and soon. I am sure that Stalin would be surprised by F.D.’s grasp of the world situation, and by his desire for friendship between the two nations.”
“The surprise might be mutual, Lanny.”
“So much the better. I will go to Moscow as soon as you can arrange the trip, and I’ll wait there until you find out if the meeting is to take place.”
Lanny had observed that the Russians he met seldom brought up the name of the head of their government, and when others brought it up they spoke with reserve. He was not surprised to find even his free-spoken uncle displaying anxiety now. “You understand, Lanny, this is a great honor which is being suggested for you. Stalin almost never sees foreigners, with the exception of specially accredited diplomats.”
“I appreciate that, Uncle Jesse.” Lanny kept his smile to himself. “I will do my best not to damage your position here.”
“It isn’t that, my boy; I am an old man, and don’t expect to be holding my present job very long. But I am deeply concerned about stopping this spring’s German drive. Our position is desperate, and we need American help the worst way.”
“I agree, Uncle Jesse. I will report what I have learned here, and anything that your Chief sees fit to entrust to me.”
“Will you feel free to talk to him about Roosevelt?”
“I can’t imagine any reason why I shouldn’t. I am sure that if I had a chance to ask F.D. he would bid me tell everything I know.”
“All right,” said the old Red warhorse, reassured, “I will see what can be done.”
“Make it plain, that I am not seeking the interview,” suggested the P.A. “I imagine I’ll be more apt to get it that way.”
“You wouldn’t have a chance to get it the other way,” replied the uncle.
II
The plane to Moscow was a fast one; it flew late in the day, and four hours later it set them down on the airport in darkness. They would be under the bombs again, as they had been in Hongkong, ten thousand miles away. Their fellow-passengers on the ride were officials, mostly in uniform—no others rode in planes at present. They offered no sociability, and the Americans sat with their own thoughts.
They were taken to the Guest House of Narkomindel, which meant that they had been raised to the top of the social ladder. It is a onetime bourgeois mansion in the street called “Dead Alley.” They were escorted to an elegant suite, and discovered to their satisfaction that here everything worked—not merely toilets and hot-water faucets, but bells and doorlocks and bureau drawers; the inkwells had ink and the pens did not scratch. One of their first adventures was the very grave major-domo, who presented a list of foods occupying four mimeograph pages and requested them to study it and mark those items which represented their preference.
They were extremely modest in their demands; they were judging the Soviet revolution by the standards of Yenan—but they discovered that a revolution a quarter of a century later may be something else again. All the articles of diet they asked for were provided, and the establishment insisted on adding a number of extras, enough to make four meals per them, three of them of four courses each. They had great difficulty in persuading the old-style major-domo that they could not drink champagne with their breakfast. Russian hospitality, of which they had heard so much, threatened to overwhelm them after two or three months’ of rice and turnips.
The climax came when their hosts discovered that they proposed to walk out and inspect the scenery of Moscow clad in sheepskin coats which they had purchased in Hengyang and worn in all sorts of weather, riding on donkeys and sleeping on k’angs. The gracious and cultivated young lady who had been assigned as their escort informed them that they were to be taken to one of the warehouses where the Soviets stored their furs and provided with proper coats and hats for the month of March in latitude 56 degrees north. When they protested that they had never owned such luxuries and could not afford them, they were told in a shocked voice that they were to receive them as gifts. When they said that they could not possibly accept such gifts, they were told that if they did not do it they would greatly hurt the feelings of their hosts. When they asked what they had done to deserve such bounty, the reply was: “You have been our friends; and you will be going out by the Archangel route, which is very cold.” It appeared that they must have not merely coats but hats and felt boots; and when they tried to take the less expensive sorts they were told that these were “reserved” and that they must have the better kind.
When they were alone, Lanny said to his wife: “There is a possibility that I may be asked to talk with an especially important person. I had to give my word not to name him, except to another important person in Washington. You will have to forgive me.”
“I will always forgive you,” she answered—and then with a twinkle in her bright brown eyes: “Provided I am certain the important persons are of your own sex, not mine.”
Lanny assured her: “So far they have all been. The only exception was the mistress of Premier Paul Reynaud—and she, poor distracted soul, was killed in an automobile wreck. She was going to send me to the King of the Belgians to stop the Blitzkrieg, but we were too late. It was a suspicious-looking assignation, but old Pétain was present, so that made it respectable.”
III
On the little river called Moskva which flows into the upper Volga, the ancient tsars of Muscovy had built their capital. It had started with a fortress village called the Kremlin, fronting the river; its shape is that of an isosceles triangle, and inside are crowded many government buildings, and, since the ancient rulers were all pious killers, several churches with domes in the shape of onions turned upside down. These had been covered with gold leaf that shone splendidly in the sun, but now everything was camouflage. Outside the walls was the great Red Square, with the tomb in which the body of Lenin had been preserved—but now it had been spirited away to a hiding place where the bombs could not get it. The tomb had been made to look like a dacha, or country house; the Kremlin walls were painted to resemble blocks of houses with shrubbery; there were huge nets across the Moscow River, with camouflage to turn it into houses and groves of trees.
Everywhere you looked were anti-aircraft guns mounted, for this was one of the most fortifie
d places in the world, and the box barrage that went up when enemy planes were reported at night was the most tremendous that had ever assailed the ears of Lanny Budd. The Guest House had a cellar, and when the sirens gave their long wails the guests dived into it, along with the major-domo and all his staff. It was the democracy of fear.
Moscow is a sprawling city, and its notable buildings are scattered, so that it has no show streets like Fifth Avenue or the boulevards of Paris. Now it had been half emptied of its population. Its art treasures had been removed, and some of its buildings, like the famed Bolshoi theater, had been blasted with bombs. Soldiers were everywhere, fresh ones going toward the west in trucks, and wounded coming back. Long lines of carts carried supplies to the vast armies which had been attacking or retreating with very few intervals for eight or nine months.
The military defenses of the capital were secret and the visitors did not ask anything about them. They were taken to the only theater that was going—most of the shows were with the troops. They inspected the beautiful subway stations, of which all Muscovites were so proud; but now they were air-raid shelters and very dirty. They were driven through the Park of Culture and Rest—covered with snow and closed to the public. If they had asked to see the great Stalin truck factory, the favor might have been granted, even in wartime; but the son of Budd-Erling had seen all the factories he wanted in one life.
IV
What they liked best was to go out and wander about the streets of Moscow under siege. These streets were snow-piled and litter-strewn, and the people in them were shivering, ill-clad and unwashed; yet there was about them an atmosphere of quiet endurance, of firm patience, of determination you could feel without understanding a word they spoke. “I wish I could get at their souls,” Laurel said—but of course that was not possible. When you talked to them through an interpreter they would be thinking about that third person, and saying what that person would expect; if they didn’t say it, the interpreter might put it in anyhow.
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