by Phillip Rock
“Whatever happened to Wolf von Dix? … Emil Zeitzler? … The elderly couple who owned the restaurant next to the Schiffbauerdam? …”
Do not ask such things. There is nothing to be done, even if one knows, or cares.
Protests. Debates in Geneva. Committees formed and abandoned. A wringing of hands. Mute rage. Shrugged gestures of impotence. Fear.
“It’s going to be a lousy decade,” Martin Rilke says in the Schwarzenberg Café in Vienna the day Chancellor Dollfuss orders tanks and artillery to crush the Social Democrats in the Karl Marx Hof. Democracy dead in Austria. Dollfuss dead with it five months later, the Nazi gunmen pumping their Lugers into the little man and letting him bleed to death on a couch. No room for two German-speaking dictators.
“Capone would understand,” Martin says, mixing gin and vermouth for the CBC Radio team in the bar of the Hotel Crillon in Paris. “Hitler would be right at home in Cicero, Illinois.”
Martin Rilke in Paris … London … Brussels … Copenhagen … Rome … Leningrad. Anywhere at all but in Germany. Persona non grata by order of Goebbels. No CBC Radio team in Berlin. No INA … the offices on Neu Königstrasse house a travel agency featuring cheap tours of the Bavarian Alps. No point in trying to file a worthwhile story in Germany anyway. The censors go over everything. Reliable sources dry up. Gestapo informers are everywhere. “One must be so careful. My own sons … I’m sorry.”
News is where you find it. In the agony of China … bullet-whipped Shanghai and burning Chapei. The League of Nations imposes sanctions against the Japanese but they are meaningless. Rome has as much contempt for the league as Tokyo. Mussolini begins his own adventure in the wastelands beyond the borders of Italian Somaliland and Eritrea.
A hard country. The Gojam … Gondar. A boy on a camel takes the dispatches from the high desert to the Sudan. The world reads the reports of a twenty-two-year-old correspondent for London’s Daily Post and looks up Abyssinia on the map. They read of barefoot armies with spears hurling themselves against machine guns and armored cars. They read of guerrilla war … the roving bands of Haile Selassie and Ras Desta Demtu … the Fuzzy Wuzzy sword wielders bounding through the bush out of a page of Kipling.
A. E. Thaxton in Abyssinia—by wire from Khartoum.
The older correspondents, the wiser ones, travel with the accommodating Italians from the coast. They file their stories in Addis Ababa and sleep in clean sheets. It takes a young man hungry for a by-line to trail along with Ethiopian camel riders through the stony wastes and the fever trees. The stories he writes are painful and dramatic. Courage and futility. The Italians do not fight face to face any longer. They send the planes instead—the Caproni and Marchetti bombers with their loads of fragmentation bombs and mustard gas. It is the summer of the Olympic games in Berlin. The summer of Jesse Owens. Abyssinia ceases to exist. There is no news from Italian East Africa fit to print.
The teletype machines clatter away. Impersonal. Printing of beauty queens crowned and kings deposed. A revolt against the Spanish Republic by the garrisons in Burgos, Seville, and Saragossa. A General Francisco Franco flies in from Morocco to join General Emilio Mola in leading the insurgent forces. Heavy fighting in Talavera and Toledo. The Alcazar besieged … exclusive report of Madrid fighting by A. E. Thaxton. American baseball … the New York Yankees of the American League defeated the New York Giants of the National League in World Series play four games to two.
“I think nineteen thirty-six is the worst year I can remember,” says Martin Rilke following a broadcast from Barcelona that has probably been jammed. His companion in the restaurant gazes out at the Ramblas, deserted in the rain except for a few militiamen and Carabineros. “I think next year will be worse,” she says.
The machines clatter endlessly. Boys tear off the copy and deliver it to the desks. Deadlines come and go. Leaves turn brown and fall in city parks. Trees bud again. Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne warmly received by London theatergoers in Amphitryon 38 at the Lyric. Laurence Housman’s Victoria Regina has at last reached the Berlin stage, but all references to Benjamin Disraeli have been excised from the play. Will Don Budge conquer Wimbledon? Nazi triumph in Austria. Cheering millions greet Hitler in Vienna following bloodless Anschluss with German Reich. Dramatic increase in number of suicides among Austrian Jews, but report cannot be confirmed at this time …
The machines write on.
BOOK TWO
A FUTURE ARRIVED
1938–1940
7
SEPTEMBER 1938
Albert Thaxton woke at dawn, a shaft of pale light filtering through a gap in the curtains and falling across his face. Rolling onto one side he groped for the rumpled package on the nightstand and fished out the last of the French cigarettes he had bought in Port Vendres after crossing the border. It was an obligation to the men of the O’Hara Detachment of the International Brigade to whom cigarettes had been more important than cartridges for their Mausers. “Smoke some decent fags for me and the lads,” Corporal Knott had told him on the morning he had left with the pack mules and the stretcher cases for Tarragona. He smoothed the cigarette with his fingers, lit it with a match, took a few puffs, and then ground it out in a crystal ashtray. His final link with Spain snuffed out. Dead in the bowl of glass as surely as the corporal and his men were dead by now in the bomb-holed wastes along the Ebro.
A servant brought coffee in a silver pot, toast, and a newspaper on the stroke of seven. He was dressed and shaved by then, standing by the open windows and looking out on the magnificent grounds of Abingdon Pryory.
“Good morning, sir,” the man said, placing the tray on a table. “Breakfast will be served on the east terrace at eight thirty.”
“A perfect day for it.”
“It is that, sir. A good omen when September dawns fair.”
“Is it my imagination or do I hear shooting?”
“Partridge season opened today. That would be hunters out Bigham way. A fair number of birds on the heath.”
That made him feel better as he drank his coffee and munched toast. The distant popping and thud of gunfire had carried over from his dreams and touched still uneasy nerves. Reading the paper was not cheering. A Jacob Golden editorial was splashed across the front page. HITLER MUST BE STOPPED—NOW! It was Jacob at his most fervid, calling on the prime minister to order the immediate mass production of four-engine bombing planes, heavy tanks, and Spitfire fighters.
… Mr. Chamberlain must let Hitler and his henchmen know that Great Britain will back to the very hilt its commitment to the freedom and independence of Czechoslovakia. There can be no compromise with the forces of terror, no appeasement to those who would hurl mankind back a thousand years …
As persistent in his outcries as Marcus Porcius Cato crying Delenda est Carthago before the Roman senate. Though not as respected nor heeded. To many, just the Jew Golden slashing out at the Führer in a fit of pique. But the wire-service reports from Prague were not Jacob’s inventions. A.P., U.P., INA, Reuters, all reporting the same ominous stories of Nazi demonstrations in the Sudetenland and of German troop movements along the Czech borders. Hitler screaming in a radio speech his willingness to go to war in order to “protect” the Sudeten Germans from their “intolerable suppression” by the Slavic race. British negotiators in Prague urging Dr. Beneš to give in to Hitler’s demand for the Sudetenland and by so doing create a more “homogenous” Czechoslovakia—also a Czechoslovakia stripped of its mountainous borders and elaborate concrete forts and antitank barriers. A nation shorn of its defenses and left naked to its enemies. A photograph on page 3. The British ambassador in Berlin smiling toothily at Hermann Göring. The Post caption: WHY IS HENDERSON SMILING? Why indeed.
He wandered down to the terrace and strolled hands in pockets beside the carved stone balustrade. Maids were setting the table for breakfast while footmen carried chairs through the open French doors of the breakfast room. The sun was warm and a slight wind stirred the trees. At the end of the terrace, st
one steps curved down to the sunken Italian garden with its cypress and yew, roses, hyacinth, and marble statuary. He could see Lady Stanmore, a wicker basket over one arm, clipping long-stemmed blooms, and he walked down to her. “Good morning,” he said. “You’re up early.”
She gave him a warm smile from under her floppy straw hat. “Good morning, Albert. Yes, it is a bit early for me. Fact is, I woke at a heathen hour and couldn’t get back to sleep. Mind racing like an engine. So many things to do before this evening. Large parties are a trial, but I do enjoy them so.”
He nodded at the basket. “Doing the floral arrangements?”
She laughed. “A bunch for my own enjoyment.” She eyed his tall, slender frame critically. “You look as though you’ve put on some weight.”
“I’m certain I have. Feel tip-top.”
“Not too tip-top I hope, or Jacob will send you back to Spain.”
“I doubt that, Lady Stanmore. Nothing left to write there except an obituary. The storms shift.”
“The whirlwinds.” A troubled look crossed her face like a shadow. Then she brightened and turned back to a rose tree. “I’ve enjoyed having you here the past few days. I’m very glad Martin talked you into coming down. What shall I do when you leave? No one to speak German to! It’s a beautiful language.”
“Yes, it is.”
“Schiller’s Don Carlos. Heine. Rainer Maria Rilke … no relation, I’m sure, but one never knows. Such a sensitive, mystical poet.” She held a rose to her forehead. “Fühlst du die Rosen auf der Stirne sterben? Do you know, I’ve been married to Anthony for nearly fifty years and he’s never learned to speak a word of it.” She dropped the flower in the basket and moved slowly along the path from bush to bush. “We went to Germany once. Nineteen twelve … and we stayed for four months. Everyone at my cousin Friedrich’s spoke English. They took pride in that, so I suppose it wasn’t necessary for Anthony to learn a few words, but I do think it would have been a nice gesture on his part.”
“Where did your cousin live?”
“Outside Berlin … in the Grunewald. Oh, my, I thought we lived on such a grand scale here at the Pryory, but Friedrich lived like a prince … and a prewar prince at that. I think that even the servants had servants! And every one of them in their own special livery according to their task. There was even a boy whose sole function was to polish boots, dressed to the nines in a tight green jacket with brass buttons and a little pillbox hat. So long ago now. I’ve never been back. I considered going after the war, but …” She sighed, clipped a rose and laid it gently in the basket. “How could I? So much hate and bitterness. A gulf between us that seemed unbridgeable. They were in ruin and we were the victors. Though God knows, where pain is concerned there was little to choose between us. Friedrich had two sons, about the same age as Charles. Nice boys … they stayed with us one summer. Otto was killed in the war and Werner was wounded. A Nazi now, Martin tells me.”
“Yes. Minister of munitions, or something on that order.”
She smiled bitterly and clipped a dead stalk. “Ironic. A minister of the very things that destroyed his world and his body. Is it so impossible to learn something from the past? If all of us who remember the war banded together in one body we could make war impossible … sweep it onto the dust heap of history with all the other forms of human sacrifice.”
“I wish it were that simple.”
“So do I. But one can always hope.” She took his arm and they began to walk toward the steps and the terrace. “I’m sure you will be going back to work soon. The news must be reported or what would we do over our morning coffee? Try to remain objective, Albert. Jacob has become so strident lately … so bellicose … like Mr. Churchill. I trust my heart. I know there must be millions of people in Germany who are as dismayed by Hitler’s excesses as we are. The nation of Goethe, after all, as well as Nietzsche. Those people must be encouraged to add their voices to the cry for peace.”
He said nothing, holding on to her arm as they climbed the steps. She was nearly seventy, still beautiful, a light in her eyes as she talked of sterling dreams. He thought of the young Luftwaffe pilots of the Condor Legion sweeping low over the vineyards at Tamarite de Litera in their new Messerschmitts, strafing the workers just to test their guns.
Lord Stanmore was sitting down for breakfast, helped into his seat by his grandson, eighteen-year-old Colin Mackendric Ross. Colin, six-feet-three-inches of lanky height, wore faded blue jeans, a cotton check shirt, and shiny boots. A red bandanna was tied loosely around his neck.
“You look almost excessively American this morning, Colin,” Hanna said.
“Exactly what I told him,” the earl grunted.
Colin grinned broadly. With his reddish hair and tanned, freckled face he looked like an illustration in a cowboy novel. “What’s your opinion, Albert?”
“Picturesque. Gary Cooper in The Plainsman.”
He straddled a chair as though swinging into a saddle. “Thought I’d show off my new Texas boots.” He extended a foot. “Genuine Gila lizard.”
His grandfather grunted again and avoided looking at them. “Are you joining us this morning, Hanna?”
“I don’t think so, dear. I had some cocoa and toast. I’ll take the flowers now, Albert. You sit down and have your breakfast.”
“She eats like a bird,” the earl said as she walked away.
“Like Mama,” Colin said. “Always watching her figure.”
“And a figure worth watching,” the earl said, smiling for the first time that morning. “A grand old girl.”
Colin winked at Albert. “Not so much of the ‘old,’ Grandpa. She might hear you.”
Footmen brought the food on heated silver trays: kidneys, Yorkshire ham, eggs, local sausage and bacon, white bread toasted to a pale gold. Perfectly prepared and elegantly served on Meissen breakfast plates. The warm wind carried the scent of the rose garden—perfume, fertilizer, and damp earth. Different scents in Catalonia, Albert was thinking. Boiled mule meat if the men were lucky, and the perfume of the dead. He ate his breakfast without dwelling on the difference or suffering any pangs of conscience. He had just turned twenty-five, a war correspondent and as much an old campaigner as the men he wrote about. And old soldiers took their pleasures as they came and were grateful for them.
“What were you and Hanna chatting about in the garden?” the earl asked.
“Oh, one thing and another. War and peace … Hitler’s Germany.”
Colin made a wry face. “Holy Mo! What a subject on a sunny morning.” He turned his face to the sun. “Why can’t England be like this every day in the year?”
“We’re quite grateful for the odd week or two. This is not California.”
“You’re telling me, Gramps.”
“Yes, Colin, that is precisely what I am telling you. When in Rome, and all that. I trust you will change before our guests arrive. And kindly stop referring to me as gramps! It sounds like a disorder of the bowels.”
The earl picked at his food, drank a cup of tea, and then excused himself from the table.
“Talk about Grandmama eating like a bird.”
“He doesn’t look well this morning.”
“He’s okay. Just sulking. His new doctor wouldn’t permit him to get up before dawn and go tramping out with guns. I don’t understand the joy in blowing some poor old partridge to pieces anyway. But, to each his own.” He rolled a fragment of toast into crumbs between restless fingers. “How much longer are you going to be on the sick list?”
“Off of it now. My boss is coming tonight and I’ll be given an assignment I expect.”
“Where?”
Albert shrugged and took a sip of coffee. “The Berlin desk would be my first choice, but Goebbels may revoke press credentials for the Post. That’s the rumor. A Jewish, warmongering rag, he calls us. I’ll probably go to Prague, unless the crisis blows over.”
“Storm in a teacup, if you ask me.” He rolled another piece of toast into pellets and fli
cked them from the table with his thumb. “You always wanted to be a newspaperman, didn’t you?”
“Since I was sixteen.”
“Martin told me once that you had a scholarship to Balliol and turned it down. Why?”
“I didn’t feel I needed the Oxford experience. I went to London University, did odd jobs for INA … free-lanced for the Post … got a practical education and then went my merry way.”
“I feel the same about Cambridge. I dread the start of term.”
“It won’t do you any harm.”
“The only person I’ll know there is my friend Derek Ramsay, and he’ll be two years ahead of me. I’ll be odd man out.”
“You will in lizard-skin boots, that’s certain. They’ll probably call you Tom Mix.” He could tell by the somber expression on the boy’s face that this was not a laughing matter. “You really are concerned about it, aren’t you?”
“Sure. I don’t belong in Cambridge. I’m not smart enough.”
“You were smart enough to pass the examination.”
“Yeah, with a discreet pull from Uncle Charles. The bursar is a fellow classmate from Eton. My going to an English university was my mother’s idea, and I got talked into it.”
“Where did you want to go? Stanford?”
“Nothing that grand.” He tilted back in his chair, long legs stretched out, hands clasped behind his head. “I’m like you, Albert. I’ve known what I want to be since I was a kid. Mama has always wanted me to go into medicine, but I’m not cut out for it. I’d like to be a professional flier … the air races … test pilot … jockey a Clipper to Manila. Why not do what I’m good at already? Heck, I soloed before I was fifteen. I could learn to fly anything built.”
“I can’t see your mother approving of that.”
“Neither can I. She’d take a lot of persuading. But there’s more to it than being a pilot. I could start my own airline one day. Not passengers, freight. That’s where the money’s going to be. Transport everything from oil pipe to orchids.”