Herman Wouk - War and Remembrance

by War

  At the end of the day he declined a dinner with two other bachelors of the staff who had some visiting French ballet girls lined up. Telephoned at his flat by the married Swiss woman he now and then discreetly slept with, he stalled her off, too. After what he had learned in Geneva, petty sensualities seemed dirty to him. He ate some bread and cheese, " then sank into an armchair with a bottle of Scotch.

  What he had picked up about Jastrow and Natalie was only a vague third-hand report; still, it sounded plausible and cheering.

  Unfortunately, and unwillingly, he had also found out much more about the exterminations. The thought of resigning from the Foreign Service was circling in his mind, like a recurring slogan on an electric sign.

  Hard behind it there flashed the red reminder that he would at once be drafted into the Army.

  Leslie Slote found himself reviewing his ambitions, his origins, his moral values, his hopes, in an agony of selfstripping, as before a decision to try a new career, or to give up a woman or marry her. He cared nothing for the Jews. He had grown up in a Connecticut suburban town where they could not easily buy homes. His father, a quiet philosophical Wall Street lawyer, had had no close Jewish friends. At Yale Slote had kept his distance from the Jewish students, and his secret society had tapped none. Natalie Jastrow's Jewishness had once seemed to Slote a flaw about half as bad as being a Negro.

  Nor had he really changed. Now as always he was strictly out for himself, but by chance the Wannsee document had come his way. Because he knew German history and culture, what struck others as utter fantasy he believed to be true.

  Between the episode of the Minsk documents, and his stridency about the Wannsee Protocol, he was already suspect. If now he raised his voice about the new evidence, he would mark himself "Jew-lover" at the State Department for good. So Slote ruminated, sunk in his armchair, as the whiskey dwindled in the bottle.

  Yet even the new Geneva evidence, though shocking and sickening, was not irrefutable. How could it be? Where were the dead Jews?

  Nothing surely proved murder except the corpus delicti-in this case great mounds of murdered people or mass graves full of them. How could one gain access to such proof? Photographs could be faked.

  There would never be irrefutable proof of this thing until the war ended; and then, only if the Allies won. The Geneva evidence, like the Wannsee Protocol, was only words: words spoken, words written, mixed with other words that were hysterical bosh, and still others, like the story of factories making corpses into soap, that were stale atrocity propaganda from the last war.

  Slote could blame nobody for hesitating to believe in this weird gigantic massacre. Pogroms were an old story, but only a few people died in a pogrom. The Nazis did not bother to hide their persecution and looting of the Jews; still, they dismissed as Allied propaganda or Jewish ravings the evermultiplying stories of secret murders in the hundreds of thousands. Yet these murders were happening, or at least Slote believed they were. The plan in the Wannsee Protocol was simply being carried out, in a grisly world of killers and victims as inaccessible as the unseen side of the moon.

  Glass after glass of Scotch and water coursed down his throat, leaving a warm glowing trail, relaxing and comforting him, floating him above himself. Almost, he could look down like a released spirit at his skinny bespectacled self stretched on the chair and ottoman, and feel sorry for this clever chap whose future might be sacrificed for the goddamned Jews.

  How could he help it? He was a human being, and he was sane. If a sane man who knew about this insane thing didn't fight it, there was not much hope for the race of man, was there? And who could say what one man might not accomplish, if only he could find the right words to utter, to proclaim, to shout to the world? What about Karl Marx?

  What about Christ?

  When a solitary boozing session got around to Marx and Christ, Slote knew it was running down. It was time to reel off to bed. He did.

  Next morning he was in his shirt-sleeves, typing a letter to Byron Henry about what he had learned of Natalie, when his secretary came in, a flashily sexy blonde girl named Heidi.

  Heidi kept flirting with Slote, but to him she was like a cream pastry in a skirt. "Mr. Wayne Beall from the Geneva consulate says you expect him."

  "Oh, yes. Tell him to come in." He locked the letter in a drawer and donned his jacket. As Wayne Beall entered, Heidi made cow eyes at the handsome young American vice consul, a short man going very bald in front, but so straight-backed, flat-stomached, and bright-eyed that the bald brow didn't matter. He had dropped out of West Point on developing a heart murmur, but at thirty he still strode like a cadet, and kept trying to get back into the Army. Beall regarded Heidis hind parts thoughtfully as she twitched out.

  "You didn't bring your papers?" Slote closed the door.

  "Hell, no, my hair stands on end to think of losing such stuff on a train. If the minister decides to act, I'll send him everything I've got."

  "Your appointment is for ten o'clock."

  "Does he know what it's about?"

  "Certainly."

  Beall's bald brow became corrugated with worry lines.

  "I'm in way over my head on this, Les. You'll join us, won't you?"

  "Not a chance. I'm considered bankers on this subject."

  "Hell, Leslie, who considers you bonkers? You've read the files.

  You know who these informants are. You have a reputation for brilliance. I've never been suspected of that.

  Damn it, come along, Les."

  Resignedly, and with a sense of foreboding, Slote said, "You'll do the talking, though." minister wore a Palm Beach suit and well-chalked white shoes. He was going to a garden luncheon, he said, so this interview would have to be a brisk one. He dropped into his swivel chair and keenly regarded with his living eye the two men sitting side by side on the couch.

  "Sir, I appreciate your giving me this time out of your busy schedule," Beall began, somewhat overdoing the briskness in tone and gesture-The minister made a tired deprecatory hand wave. "What new information have you?"

  Wayne Beall launched into his report. Two hard separate confirmations of the massacre had come into his office from very high-level persons. From a third source, he had eyewitness affidavits of the mass murder process in action. He said this at length, with much talk about disaster, American humanitarianism, and the minister's wisdom.

  Leaning his face on one hand like a bored judge, the minister asked, "What high-level persons gave you confirmation?"

  The vice consul said that one was a well-known German industrialist, the other a top Swiss official of the International Red Cross. If the minister needed the names, he would try to get the gentlemen's consent to be identified.

  "You've talked to them yourself."

  "Oh, no, sir! Neither one would level with an American official. Not unless they knew him very, very intimately."

  "How did you get their reports, then? And how do you know they're authentic?"

  With a trace of embarrassment Beall said that Jewish sources had given him the reports: the World Jewish Congress and the Jewish Agency for Palestine. Slote perceived the fall in the minister's interest: a wandering of the live eye, a slump of the shoulders. "Indirect reports again," Tuttle said.

  "Sir," Slote spoke up, !"what other kind can there be about a secret plan of Hitler's?" He could not keep irritation out of his voice. "As to this German industrialist, I spoke to the chap at the WJC myself, and he-"

  "What's the WJC?"

  "World Jewish Congress. He all but named the man. I know who he means. This man is very high up in German industry. I also read the file of eyewitness affidavits. They're substantial and shattering.

  "And that's not the whole story yet, sir," said Beall.

  "Well, what else?" The minister took an ivory paper cutter and slapped it on his palm.

  Beall described how he and the British consul in Geneva had sent home identical coded cables about the new evidence, for confidential transmittal to Jew
ish leaders. The British Foreign Office had forwarded it at once to the designated British Jews, but the American State Department had suppressed the telegram. Now the Jewish leaders in both countries, besides being in a turmoil over the disclosures, were up in arms over the State Department's action, which had been found out.

  "That I will look into," the minister declared, throwing the paper cutter down on his desk. "You'll be hearing further from me, Wayne, and now I'd like a word with Leslie."

  "Certainly, sir."

  "See you in my office, Wayne," Slote said.

  When the door closed behind Beall, the minister said to Slote, looking at his watch and rubbing his good eye, "I've got to go. Now listen, Les, I don't like this business of suppressing cables. The Division of European Affairs puzzles me. It's already ignored two letters of mine, about the visa regulations, and about your photostats."

  "You did write about the photostats?" Slote burst out.

  "When?"

  "When the Polish government-in-exile's stuff came out.

  That gave me second thoughts. How on earth could they fabric-ate all that? The statistics, the locations, the carbon monoxide vans, the midnight raids on the ghettos? That business of searching the dead women's rectums and vaginas, for God's sake, for jewelry? How could anybody just imagine such things?" Slote stared dumbfounded at the minister. "But okay, let's assume the Poles are unreliable. Let's say they're blackening the Germans to cover their own misdeeds. What about that business in Paris? The Vichy police separating thousands of foreign Jews from their kids and shipping off the parents, God knows where! In front of news cameras, this was. Nothing secret about it.

  I got a YMCA report on the details. Just heartrending. That was when I wrote the department about your photostats, but it was like throwing a stone down a well. And the visa thing, Les, is just too much."

  "Good God I hope you mean the good conduct certificate!"

  Slote exclaimed. "I've been battling that nonsense for months."

  "Exactly. I can't look these Swiss officials in the eye anymore, Leslie. We're not fooling them, we're simply disgracing our country.

  How can an escaped Jew produce a good conduct certificate from his hometown police in Gernany? It's an obvious gimmick to keep the Jews piling up here.

  We're going to have to waive it."

  Staring pallidly at Tuttle, Slote cleared his throat. "You're making me feel human again, sir."

  The minister got up, combed his hair at a closet mirror, and fitted on his broad-brimmed straw hat. "Besides, the railroad intelligence is getting damned strange. These huge jammed trains really are hauling civilians from all over Europe to Poland, and then turning around and rattling back empty, while the German army's hurting for cars and locomotives. I know that for a, fact. Something funny is going on, Leslie. I'll tell you something entrenous. I wrote a personal letter to the President about this business, but then I tore it up. We're losing the goddamned war, and he just can't be burdened with anything else. If these Germans do win, the whole world will become one big execution yard, and not just for Jews."

  "I believe that, sir, but still-"

  "Okay. You tell Wayne Beall to pull his material together.

  Go to Geneva and help him. Get that Red Cross big shot to put what he knows in writing, if you possibly can."

  "I can try, sir, but these people are all petrified of the Germans."

  "Well, do your best. I'll send the stuff straight to Sumner Welles this time. In fact, you may be the courier." The good eye sparked appraisingly at Slote. "Hey? How does that strike you? A nice little Stateside leave?"

  Slote instantly recognized in such a mission the final ruin of his Foreign Service career. "Isn't Wayne Beall your man for that, sir?

  He's collected the stuff."

  "The specific gravity isn't there. And he hasn't mastered this subject as you have."

  "Mr. Tuttle, the car is waiting," the desk loudspeaker grated.

  Tuttle left. Returning to his office, Slote heard merry laughter as he opened the door. Wayne Beall and Heidi stood there looking sheepish, and Heidi hurried out. Slote relayed the minister's instructions to Beall. "The sooner we get at it, the better, Wayne.

  The minister's hot on this at last, so let's keep up the momentum.

  Shall we go down to Geneva on the two o'clock train?"

  "I just made a lunch date with your secretary."

  "Oh, I see."

  "In fact, Les, I thought I'd stay overnight, and -' He gave Slote a man-to-man grin. "Do you mind?"

  "Oh, be my guest. We'll go tomorrow."

  Soon Slote heard more laughter from the next room. On pretty girl on hand counted more than a million vague people suffering far away; nothing would ever change that fact of nature.

  On his desk in the morning mail lay a formal report from Dr. Hesse, summarizing the Henry-Jastrow situation. Slote dropped it into a file marked Natalie, then tore up the unfinished letter to Byron.

  Perhaps good news would come in soon from some Mediterranean consulate, or even from Lisbon. For bad news there was always time.

  PALMER FREDERICK KiRBy sat in shirt-sleeves at an old rented desk in a grimy office building near the University of Chicago campus, trying to finish a report before Rhoda's arrival by train. He was in a low mood; partly from dread of this encounter, partly because Vannevar Bush demanded facts and detested gloom in reports, and all the facts about the availability of pure graphite for a uranium reactor were gloomy. So was the weather. On this sultry gray August afternoon, opening the window admitted a gale off Lake Michigan warm as a desert sandstorm, and-ivhat with Chicago's airborne dust and detritus-perhaps half as gritty; and shutting it gave him a gasping sense of taking a steam bath with his clothes on.

  The graphite problem typified the grotesque enterprise in which Dr. Kirby was now passing his days. The languid trickling effort on uranium had become since Pearl Harbor a rising river of ideas, money, people, and problems tumbling along in murky secrecy. Kirby worked for the S-1 Section of Vannevar Bush's Office of Scientific Research and Development. To the initiated "S-1" meant uranium, but-and this was the root of his trouble-to everybody else it meant nothing. In his quest for materials and building sites, he could not beat out the tough procurement men from giant corporations and the armed forces. The Chicago scientists were blaming the repeated fizzling of their uranium reactor on the graphite, demanding purer stuff; but it was not to be had, and the large chemical firms capable of producing it were swamped with war orders from stronger bidders. This was the nub of Kirby's report to Bush, with some half-hearted optimistic suggestions to sugar the pill.

  A telephone call from Arthur Compton at the Physics Department interrupted him. The Compton brothers were two crushingly brilliant men; this one had a Nobel Prize, the other headed the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

  Kirby knew them both. He knew most of these dazzling physicists and chemists who were trying, at alarmingly wasteful cross-purposes, to make an atomic bomb before the Germans did. With some he had gone to school. They had not seemed much superior to himself at bull sessions and dances, or even in the laboratory; ambitious hardworking youngsters as fond as he of girls, beer, and raw jokes. But in achievement they had pulled away from him like racehorses from a milkwagon nag. Being on first-name terms with them gave him no illusion of equality. On the contrary, it was a chronic sore in his ego.

  "Fred, there's a Colonel Peters here." Compton, dry and direct as usual. "He'd like to come over and talk to you."

  "Colonel Harrison Peters? Army Corps of Engineers?"

  "That's the man."

  "I just sent a stack of reports to him in Washington."

  "He got them."

  Kirby looked at his desk clock; Rhoda was arriving in two hours.

  This was how everything happened in the uranium project. "Tell him to come along, Arthur."

  Soon Peters appeared, windblown and perspiring. Kirby seldom met men taller than himself, but Colonel Harrison Peters was one
. The colonel was lean and long-skulled, with heavy graying hair, broad-shouldered, very erect; his grip was hard and his blue eyes were hard, too. Kirby gestured to his oversize armchair and ottoman. With a grateful sigh, Peters sank down, stretched out his legs, dusted his khaki uniform and pulled it straight, and clasped long muscular hands behind his head. "Thanks. This feels good! I've been on the go here since dawn. I've seen a lot, but I'm so ignorant that not much penetrates. You're a physicist, aren't you?"

  "Well, I got my PhD. at call Tech. I'm an electrical engineer.

  A manufacturer, now."

  "At least that's close, electrical engineering. I'm a civil engineer, West Point and Iowa State." Peters yawned, a picture of relaxed chattiness. "Bridge-building is what I do best, but I've done a lot of general construction. Also some hydraulics, with all the harbors and rivers stuff the Corps handles. But this high-powered physics is out of my line. I don't know what the hell I'm doing on this assignment. We'll be invading Europe or Africa or the Azores in the next six months. I've been counting on a field command.