Herman Wouk - War and Remembrance

by War

  "BY the bye, there's a letterfrom Byron, " Rhoda had said, and he had felt the same sort of relief, because they had not heard from him in months. It had been the first letter about Natalie.

  That day, Warren had announced he was putting in for flight training.

  That day, Madeline had tried to go to New York during the school week, and he had stopped her with difficulty. In hindsight, quite a turning point, that day.

  "Rhoda, I said I'd report any personal talk I had with Peters."

  "Yes?" Rhoda sat up.

  ."There was some."

  She gulped brandy. "Go ahead."

  Pug narrated the conversation in the dark train compartment.

  Rhoda kept taking nervous sips of her brandy. She sighed when he described Peters's subsiding into snores.

  "Well! You were very, very gallant," she said. "It's no more than I expected of you, Pug. Thank you, and God bless you."

  "That wasn't the end of it, Rho."

  She stared at her husband, her face white and strained in the gloom. "He went to sleep, you said."

  "He did. I woke early, and slid out of there for some breakfast.

  The waiter was bringing me orange juice when your colonel showed up, all shaved and spruce, and sat down with me. We were the only two people in the diner. He asked for coffee, and right off he said-in a very sober and calm way "I take it you preferred not to give me a straight answer last night about Dr. Kirby."

  "Oh, God. What did you say?"

  "Well, he caught me off guard, you realize. I said, "How could I have been any straighter?" Something like that. Then here's what he answered-and I'm trying for his exact words-'I'm not about to cross-examine you, Pug. And I'm not about to throw over Rhoda. But I think I should know the truth. A marriage shouldn't start with a lie.

  If you get a chance to tell Rhoda that, please do. It may help clear the air."

  "And what did you say to that?" Her voice shook, and her hand shook as she poured her glass full.

  "I said, "There's no air to clear, except in your mind. If poison-pen letters can get to you, you don't deserve any woman's love, let alone Rhoda's."

  "Beautiful, darling. Beautiful."

  "I'm not sure. He looked me in the eye. and just said, "Okay, Pug." He changed the subject and talked business. He never referred to you again."

  Rhoda drank deeply. "I'm lost. You're not a good liar, Pug, though God knows you tried."

  "Rhoda, I can lie, and on occasion I do it damned well."

  "In the line of duty,!" She flipped her hand in scorn. "That's not what I'm talking about." She drank, and poured more, saying, "I'm sunk, that's all. That accursed woman! Whoever she is, I really, could kill her-oops!" The glass was overflowing.

  "You'll be blotto."

  "Why not?"

  "Rhoda, he said he's not throwing you over."

  "Oh, no. He'll go through with it. Soul of honor, and all that.

  I'll probably have to let him, What's my alternative?

  Still, it's all ruined."

  "Why don't you just tell him, Rhoda?"

  Rhoda sat and peered at him without replying.

  "I mean that. Look at Madeline and Sime. She told him.

  They couldn't be happier."

  )with some of her old feminine sarcasm she said, "Pug, my dear dumb love, what kind of comparison is THAT? For God's sake, I'm a HAG.

  Sime's not thirty years old, and Madeline's a luscious girl.

  Hack's fastened on to the and it's all been terribly charming, but at our-age it's mostly mental. Now I'm CORNERED. I'm damned if I do and damned if I don't. I'm a good wife, you know I am, and I know I could make him happy. But he had to have this perfect Picture of me.

  It's GONE."

  "It was an illusion, Rho."

  "What's WRONG with illusions?" Rhoda's voice strained and broke.

  "Sorry. I'm going to bed. Thank you, darling. Thank you for trying.

  You're a grand man, and I love you for it."

  They stood up. Rhoda took a lithe step or two, put her arms around him and gave him a sensuous brandy-soaked kiss, pressing her body to his. They had not kissed like this in a year. So far as it went, it still worked. Pug could not help pulling her close and responding.

  With a husky laugh, she broke half-free. "Save it for Pamela, honey."

  "Pamela turned me down."

  Rhoda went rigid in his arms, opening eyes like saucers. "Is THAT what was in that letter last weilk? She DIDN'T!"

  "My God, you're close-mouthed. Why? How could she? Is she marrying Burne-Wilke?"

  "She hadn't yet. Burne-Wilke was wounded in India.

  They're back in England. She's been nursing him and-well, Rhoda, she said no. That's it."

  Rhoda uttered a coarse chuckle. "You accepted that?"

  "How do I not accept it?"

  "Honeybunch, I'm potted enough to TELL you how. Woo her! That's all she wants."

  "I don't think she's like that. The letter was pretty final."

  "We're ALL like that. I declare, I am STONE drunk. You may have to help me up the stairs."

  "Okay, let's go."

  "Just fooling." She patted his arm. "Finish your brandy, dear, and enjoy that gorgeous moon. I can navigate."

  "You're sure?"

  "Sure. Night, love."

  A cool gentle kiss on the mouth, and Rhoda walked unsteadily inside.

  When Pug came upstairs almost an hour later, Rhoda's door was wide open. The bedroom was dark. The door had not been open since his return from Tchran.

  "Pug, is that you?"

  "Well, good-night again, darling."

  It was all in the tone. Rhoda was a signaller, not a talker, and Pug read the signal, loud and clear. Clearly she had weighed her chances again, in the light of Peters's suspicions, Pam's refusal, and the family glow of Madeline's happiness.

  Here was his old marriage, asking him back in. It was Rhoda's last try. "They play a desperate game, " Peters had said. True enough. It was a powerful game, too. He had only to step through the doorway, into the remembered sweet odors of that dark room.

  He walked by the door, his eyes moistening. "Good-night, Rhoda.

  PAST MIDNIGHT. OVERHEAD the full moon rides, silvering the deserted streets; silvering too the long, long freight ttain that comes clanking and squealing into the Bahnhofstrasse and jars to a halt outside the Hamburg barracks. Reverberating through the straight streets, the noises awaken the restless sleepers. "Did you hear that?"

  In many languages these words are whispered through the crowded rows of three-tier bunks.

  There has not been a transport in a long time. The train could be bringing more materials for the crazy Beautification.

  Or perhaps it has come to take away the products of the factories.

  So the worried whispers go, though trucks and horse-drawn wagons, not trains, usually haul in and out everything but human beings. Of course it could be an arriving transport, but those usually come by day.

  Aaron Jastrow, poring over the Talmud in his preposterously well-furnished ground floor apartment on the Seestrasse (it is to be a stop for the Red Cross visitors) hears the train.

  Natalie does not wake. Just as well! The Council of Elders has been wrestling for days with the transport order. The controlling figures are burned in Jastrow's brain: All Jews now in Theresienstadt 35,000 Protected by Germans (Prominente, halfJews, Danes, medal bearers, wounded war veterans and their families) 9,500 Protected by the Central Secretariat (officials bureaucrats, staff artists, war factory workers) 6,500 Total protected 16,000 Available for transport 19,000 Seven thousand, five hundred persons must go-almost haIL' of the "available," one-fifth of the whole ghetto. The grating irony of the dates! The expectation of an Allied landing on May 15 has swept Theresienstadt. People have been waiting and praying for that day.

  Now the Transport Section is frantically shuffling and reshuffling index cards for the first shipment on May 15 of twenty-five hundred; the transport will go in three trains
on three successive days.

  This transport will badly disrupt the Beautification. The' Technical Department will lose much of the work force that is repainting the town, laying out flower beds, putting down turf, building and renovating. The orchestras, the choruses, the drama and opera casts, will be cut to pieces. But the SS is unconcerned. Rahm has warned that the work will be done and the performances will shape up, or those in charge will be sorry. The Beautification is the cause of the transport. As the Red Cross visit draws nearer, the commander is getting nervous about his ability to steer it along a restricted route.

  The whole ghetto is being cleaned up, and to relieve the overcrowding, the sluice to the east has once more been opened.

  Jastrow is heartsick over the general tragedy, and over a private bereavement. Headquarters has ordered all orphans in the town shipped off. Red Cross visitors asking a child about its parents must not hear that they are dead orforbidden word-"transported." Half of his Talmud class are orphans. His star student, Shmuel Horovitz, is one: a shy gaunt lad of sixteen with long hair, a silky beard, huge infinitely sad eyes, and a lightning mind. How can he bear to lose Shmuel? If only the Allies will indeed land! If only the shock will delay or cancel this transport! Saving seven thousand, five hundred Jews out of the massacre would be a miracle. Saving Shmuel alone would be a miracle.

  In Jastrow's fond view, the blaze of this boy's brain could light up the future of the whole Jewish people. He could be a Maimonides, a Rashi. To lose such a mind in a brief horrible flare over Oswiecim!

  Natalie departs for the mica factory in the morning, unaware of the waiting train. Jastrow goes to the newly located, superbly equipped library, which would not disgrace a small college: whole rooms full of new steel book stacks, bright lighting, polished reading tables, good chairs, even carpeting; and a richly varied collection of books in the major European languages, as well as the stunning Judaica collection, all smartly indexed and catalogued. Of course nobody is using this luxurious facility. Readers and borrowers will be suitably rehearsed in due time, to make it all look natural for the Danish visitors.

  Nobody on Jastrow's staff mentions the train. The day fades into late afternoon. Nothing has happened, and he begins to hope that all will be well. But they come, after all: two shabby Jews from the Transport Commission, a big fellow with wavy red hair carrying the bundle of summons cards, and a yellow-faced gnome with the roster to be signed.

  Their expressions are bitter. They know they move in an aura of hatred. They plod about the rooms, hunting down each transport recruit, serving him with his card, and getting his signature. The library is badly hit; out of seven staff workers Jastrow loses five, including Shmuel Horovitz. With the gray card on the desk before him, Shmuel strokes his youthful beard and looks to Jastrow. Slowly he turns his palms up and outward, his dark eyes wide, black-rimmed, and grieving as the eyes of Jesus in a Byzantine mosaic.

  When Jastrow returns to the apartment, Natalie is there.

  Regarding him with eyes like Shmuel Horovitz's, she holds, out two gray cards to him. She and Louis are assigned to the third train, departing on the seventeenth "for resettlement in the direction of Dresden." Their transport numbers are on the cards. She must report with Louis to the Hamburg barracks on the sixteenth, bringing light luggage, one change of linen, and food for twenty-four hours.

  "This is a mistake," says Jastrow. "I'll go to Eppstein."

  Natalie's face is as gray as the card. "You think so?"

  "No doubt of it. You're a Prominent, a mica worker, and the headmistress of the children's pavilion. The Transport Commission is a madhouse. Somebody pulled the wrong card. I shall be back within the hour. Be cheerful."

  Outside the Magdeburg barracks, there is a riotous crush Cursing ghetto guards are trying to shove the people into A queue, using fists, shoulders, and here and there rubber clubs. Jastrow passes through a privileged entrance. From the far end of the main hallway comes the angry anxious tumult of petitioners jamming the transport office.

  Outside Eppstein's suite there is also a line. Jastrow recognizes high officials of the Economic and Technical Departments. This transport is biting deep! Jastrow does not get in line. The rank of Elder is a wretched burden, but at least it gives one access to the big shots, and even-if one has real business with them-to the SS.

  Eppstein's pretty Berlin secretary, looking cross and worn, manages a smile at Jastrow, and passes him in.

  Eppstein sits with hands clasped on his handsome new mahogany desk. The office would suit a Prague banker now, for furnishings and decoration; a long briefing for the Red Cross is scheduled here. He looks surprised to see Jastrow, and is cordial and sympathetic about Natalie. Yes, a mistake is not at all unlikely. Those poor devils in transport have been running arouad without heads. He will look into it. Has Jastrow's niece been up to any mischief, by chance? Jastrow says, "Nothing of the kind, certainly not," and he tries to give Eppstein the gray cards.

  The High Elder shrinks from them. "No, no, no, let her keep them, don't confuse things. When the error is corrected she'll be notified to Turn the cards in."

  For three days no further word comes from Eppstein.

  Jastrow tries over and over to see him, but the Berlin secretary turns cold, formal, and mean. Pestering her is useless, she says. The High Elder will send word when he has news. Meantime Natalie learns, and reports to Jastrow, that every member of her Zionist circle has received a transport card. Sullenly she acknowledges that Jastrow was prescient; an informer must have betrayed them, and they are being gotten rid of. They include the hospital's head of surgery, the deputy manager of the food administration, and the former president of the Jewish War Veterans of Germany. No protection avails this group, obviously.

  The first two trains leave. Natalie's little cabal, except for herself, are all shipped off. A third long string of cattle cars squeals into the Bahnhofstrasse. All over Theresienstadt, transportees trudge toward the Hamburg barracks in bright afternoon sunshine, carrying luggage, food, and small children.

  Jastrow returns to the apartment from a last try to see Eppstein.

  He has failed, but there is a ray of hope. One of his students, who works in the Central Secretariat, has whispered news to him. Gross errors were made by the Transport Commission. Over eight thousand summonses went out, but the SS has contracted with the Rcichsbahn, the German railroad company, for exactly seven thousand five hundred transportees. The Reichsbahn calls the transports Sonderziige, "special trains," charging the SS reduced thirdclass group fares.

  There are cars for only seventy-five hundred in all. So at least five hundred summonses may be cancelled; five hundred transportees reprieved!

  Natalie sits on the couch sewing, with Louis beside her, as Jastrow pours out this news. She does not react with joy.

  She hardly reacts at all. Natalie has withdrawn into the old shell of narrow-focused numbness that protects her in bad times.

  Right now she is wondering, she tells Jastrow, what to wear. She has dressed Louis up like Little Lord Fauntleroy, buying or borrowing clothes from families who are not going.

  With calm, dreamy, almost schizoid logic, she explains that their appearance will be important, since she will no longer be ;hielded by a famous uncle. She will be on her own. She must ook her best. If only she can find instant favor in the eye's of the SS men where she is going, identify herself as an American and a Prominent, then her sex appeal and Louis's charm, and sympathy for a young mother, can all work for her. Shall she wear her rather seductive purple dress for the journey? She is sewing a yellow star on the dress as they talk.

  In this warm weather, she says, it might just do for the trip.

  What does Aaron think?

  He gently falls in with her frame of mind. No, the purple dress might provoke liberties from the Germans, or even from low Jews. The tailored gray suit is elegant, Germanic, and it sets off her figure.

  She and Louis will stand out when they arrive. Solemnly nodding as he talks,
she agrees, and folds away the starred dress in her suitcase, saying it may come in handy yet. She continues fussing at her packing, talking half to herself about the choices she must make.

  Aaron unlocks a desk drawer, takes out a knife, and severs a couple of stitches in the stout walking shoe on his right foot.

  Numb as she is, this strikes her as strange. "What are you doing?" The shoe is too tight, he says, going off into his own room.

  When he comes out, he is wearing his best uit and his old fedora.

  He looks rather like a transportee. His face is very grave, or upset, or scared, she cannot tell which.