That night he had seen the inescapable future. What had happened to lull him again? Ilse was ill, she was the merest infant then—ah, yes, his anxieties were channeled toward her. Time passed, and then in June came the purges in Berlin and everyone said this was the first real rift, the Nazi ranks would crack soon, the worst fanaticism would disappear…
The Nazi murder of Dollfuss, their seizure of the Chancellory and the radio station—that rocked him as it did all Austrians. But once again, the terrible rhythm of renewed hope. Schuschnigg and Miklas seemed to maintain control. Perhaps the coup had really failed. Austria, after all, was not Prussia; Austrians, after all, were civilized, tolerant, humane people…
Always, always, part of his mind seeing, estimating, hearing the roar of the onrushing tide. But always, always, it would ebb again, leaving enough confusion to starve the will, to nourish the dream.
February, 1938, little more than a month ago, and Schuschnigg in secret meeting with Hitler at Berchtesgaden. Ah, then the beating heart, the thrusting sense of time lost, of the inactive months and years.
Since then, only a mounting progression of anxious hours and days. Schuschnigg and Miklas surrendered to the demands of the “Berchtesgaden Agreement.” There was a new cabinet, Nazi Seyss-Inquart was Minister of the Interior. There was amnesty for all Nazi prisoners. There would be a plebiscite—free will, free choice, in the true spirit of democracy. The class of 1915 was called up. Everywhere were fearful whisperings about invasion, the German Reichswehr would march, was marching. Mobs of young Austrian Nazis sang and howled in the streets. Sieg Heil, Sieg Heil, Sieg Heil—Heil Hitler.
And then came the eleventh of March.
Dr. Vederle knew then, knew that day, that years must pass before any March 11 could become just a simple, sunny day again, rather than the bitter tombstone of Austria’s past.
On Friday, March 11, 1938, the Reichswehr marched. The plebiscite was ordered off by Berlin the master; the whole people clung to the wireless, heard rumor, report, counterreport, snatches of song, Viennese waltzes, too poignant now to be borne, heard at last that “Achtung, Achtung—an important announcement coming.”
Then for breathless seconds only the tick-tick-tick of the metronome that was Ravag’s station identification. Tick-tick-tick; gone-gone-gone—
Then Schuschnigg’s voice: “The German Government today handed President Miklas an ultimatum…we have yielded to force…God protect Austria…”
God protect Austria. The next morning sudden swastikas flew from every building, laughing, swaggering young Nazis swarmed the streets, hurled bricks and stones through the windows of Jewish shops, tossed down steins of beer in the great gulps of celebrating victors.
God protect Austria. Already on that first day, the smell of danger, of persecution and political slavery, was in the nostrils.
That same day, two Jewish families in the Vederles’ own circle of friends left: the Wolffs, bound for the safety of Holland, the Markheimers for France. Franz and Christa took them to the station. Their Auf Wiedersehen’s were hollow, full of restraint on both sides. Only little Editha Wolff, aged five, told what was in the heart to be told.
“But I don’t want to go anywhere; please let’s go home, it’s better at home than anywhere.”
The next day Franz went to a special board meeting of the Vienna Psychoanalytical Society. It was Sunday afternoon, and the meeting took place in Freud’s apartment, amid the old plush furniture of the ’90’s when he had first moved into the Berggasse. The members showed, quite realistically, tension and unease. They knew well the Nazi attitude toward psychoanalysis, the science that dealt with men’s minds, that was an hourly rebuttal of the new myths of racism and Blut. Besides, many of the members were Jews. Sigmund Freud himself—would he now, like Einstein in Germany…?
At the end of the meeting, Freud came in, old and fragile and calm. Anna Freud told him of the board’s decision, that even in migration each member of the Viennese Society would go on being a member of this Society until he were able to practice elsewhere, and join some other. She told him that the board had voted that the seat of the Society would always be wherever Freud was, and had asked him to remain its President. He agreed, and then he spoke. In his low, somewhat husky voice, he offered some final words to these men who would carry on their work in other lands.
“Immediately after the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem by Titus,” he said, his fine long hands quiet instead of moving in their usual deft gestures, “Rabbi Jochanan ben Zakkai asked for permission to open at Jabne the first school for the study of the Torah. That is what we will do with our science—we will carry it elsewhere, where there is still freedom.” He spoke on briefly, and then left the room once more. But at the door, he turned and said, “Hold fast to the truth.”
Franz, like the others, knew that it was probably the last time he would see and hear this great man, and the sounds of his final words stirred deep and warm in his heart throughout the rest of the day and night.
On Monday morning, Vienna woke to the sure feeling that the German army was near. German soldiers, German S.S. men were everywhere. Hundreds of airplanes flew low over the city, roaring through the early spring sunshine, casting incessant shadows. In the trees and bushes, the birds started up anxiously; in the streets and gardens, the children were disturbed and apprehensive.
From his office, Franz drove to the University, where he was an associate professor. Many of his printed papers were there, as well as some work in progress, still in manuscript form. They would be safer in his own study at home.
The head of the department was leaving the building.
“Heil Hitler,” the professor of psychiatry greeted Franz.
There was a pause. Men taking each other’s measures.
“Guten Abend,” Vederle replied at last. The other’s eyelids drew together. Antagonism stood instantly between them. So quickly were the lines to be drawn?
“This is a good time for you,” the professor went on. “There will be many vacancies at once. The Jew cowards will run fast. It will be easy now for you to attain a full professorship.”
“I suppose it would be.”
Shaken with anger, he went inside and speedily put his papers together. Outside again in half an hour, he found the early twilight of middle March already softening and blurring outlines of buildings, trees. The wind fell away, the daylight withdrew, quietly, patiently. Only, overhead, the sky was efficient with the steady roar of the German planes, the red and green lights on their wing tips like swift, colored meteors in some new astronomy.
Homebound, he found himself passing police headquarters. Impulsively he went in.
“Are the borders still open? I am Dr. Vederle of the University. May a citizen travel without special permission?”
“Still open, Herr Doktor. Except, naturlich, for Jews.”
At home, the children leaped upon him in all their untouched delight. They were so unaware, unknowing, free of doubt and fear.
No scenes of brutality had assaulted their young eyes as yet, no frightened whispering in the night their ears. When they went up to bed, he as well as Christa followed to say good night. He kept his voice casual, friendly, answered Paul’s incessant questions about ordinary things in his ordinary tone. Only, when he leaned down to kiss Ilse’s scrubbed, shining little girl’s face, he kissed her with a new vehemence. Some savage, determined protectiveness stirred deeply in him.
“What’s the matter, Daddy?” she asked in her sweet, high voice. “Is something the matter?”
The same sweet, high voice of little Editha Wolff at the station. “But I don’t want to go anywhere…”
“Nothing’s the matter, silly child,” he said. “Oh, with the world, yes, but not for us.” And at the reassuring sound of his love, Ilse smiled at him and cuddled herself into a drowsy crescent.
Downstairs again, Christa turned to him. Her face was grave; her blue eyes were steady and curiously stilled.
“It will be impossible for us,” he said. “Dearest, I know how you resist the idea of going—”
“Not any more,” she answered quickly. “Oh, today was a sign. I went to the Webbers’. They were there, the S.A. men. They demanded old Mr. Webber’s passport, his bankbooks. They were taking him to the new Gestapo office. For ‘examination.’ He is so old, Franz, so fine, only a few months ago he was presented by Miklas himself with the gold medal. And today—there he stood, old and tired, with these S.A. men shouting as if he were a thief. They kept saying something about his speeches against National Socialism. He refused to give over his passport—I—I was afraid, and it was I who begged him to—”
Her voice broke. He took her into his arms, patted her head as he might Ilse’s or Paul’s. In the four weeks just past, she had skillfully sidled away from any discussion about leaving Austria. She had talked more than usual of her love for the house and Döbling, busily sewed ruffly little curtains for their summer place on the clean, clear lake near the Traunstein Mountain.
He said nothing, simply waited. So one waits for the analysis and, to go on, to dredge up the hidden feelings, the deep fears, the lost memories.
“And then I went to the Brauns’,” Christa continued, “to ask if they could help Johann Webber through that uncle of theirs who’s a judge. Some of their Jewish friends were there. Suddenly the janitor flung open the door without knocking or ringing. He’s a secret Nazi, nobody knew, nobody even suspected. He ordered their Jewish friends out, ordered the Brauns not to let Jews into the apartment any more. His voice was so—so arrogant, Oh, Franz, darling, this new sudden cruelty—the streets, the windows smashed—what is to become of us all?”
He held her closer. She was seeing the small personal tragedies—God knows they are enough; if one sees and feels them deeply enough one is seeing and feeling history.
But he knew she was not relating any of it, really, to the sweep of the future. She did not know that they had already arrested many thousands, not only Jews, but also thousands of Catholics who supported Schuschnigg, hundreds of labor leaders, scores of journalists. She did not even wonder yet about the world beyond these smashed homes, these tinkling slivers of windows on pavements. She had not thought what it meant that England and France were politically shrugging their shoulders, speaking politely about “the internal affairs of other countries” as none of their business. Probably Christa did not even know yet—
“Did you listen to the radio?” he asked.
“No. I can’t bear to turn it on any more.” She leaned away from him to search his face. Her eyes opened wider. “What, Franz, anything new? Oh, tell me, is there any hope—”
“Hitler entered Vienna late this afternoon. Entered in triumphal procession, the Conqueror.”
She gasped. Her mouth made a small oblique O like a yawning baby’s.
“He will speak tomorrow from the Hofburg. From the balcony he will shout to the people that they are now a part of his glorious Reich.”
That night they cabled Ann Willis.
As in a Bach fugue, one melodic part or “voice” makes its solo entrance, establishes its theme, and engages the attention, then is followed by a second voice, crossing and mingling with it, and then duly by a third voice and finally a fourth, so the flight of humankind from Germany, from 1933 onward, was only the first major statement of the theme of the great migrations of the 1930’s.
In the summer of 1936 the second voice issued forth from Spain, swelling to fuller volume in 1937. And now in Austria, in March, 1938, still a third was coming in to join its stately and harrowing melody to the other continuing parts.
Each part or voice was played not by a dozen human beings, but by hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands, half millions. The listening ear of Europe and of the world knew by some tense and unwilling instinct that the fugue was not yet squared, that another voice was still to be heard in the tragic counterpoint. And perhaps not only one other, as in the classical fugue, but many others were yet to come, to widen the fugue form out into a world-enveloping symphony.
From the East, from Hangchow and Nanking and Shanghai, where sixteen millions were now in that other kind of flight upon their own soil, crawling through fields and along choked roads from province to province—from the East came the strident, brassy assurance that this would be so.
CHAPTER TWO
IT WAS FROM A portable radio, instrument for picnics and holiday hours, that Vera Marriner learned of Anschluss.
For a second she scarcely took in the meaning of the news. The quiet British voice went on with the Reuter’s dispatch, and a moment later she sat up violently and searched about her on the blinding white sand for the source of the hateful words.
There it rested, just one of innumerable similar portable sets, this one under a bright beach umbrella at Montego Bay, Jamaica, in the British West Indies. The innocent, indifferent box went on tossing out into the yellow sunshine its black message of calamity.
Her heart contracted, as with a purely personal pain. She didn’t know Austria, as she had once known Germany, but she had heard so much of so many people there, from Jasper, from Ann Willis, that she could not feel impersonal now.
“So here he goes, this is it, this is the real beginning,” she thought. “All that about the Ruhr and the Rhineland was just winding up…but this…now he’s really begun scooping up great chunks of Europe into his Reich. Damn him, damn him—”
For a moment she wished she were at home, where she could talk this out with people who would be as angry as she. Yet she had come alone all this way south partly at least to escape the political and social nervousness of New York and the people she knew. Remembering that, she got to her feet and started up along the curve of beach, along the shining spread of blue water. Her mind worked over the vast implications of the news.
She was hailed half a dozen times, by people she had come to know in the three weeks since she had come down. Their voices, their words, showed they had not heard, or else had heard and already dismissed the news from their thoughts. That angered her, too.
She walked on more briskly. Her body was a dark, positive brown, already impervious to the stinging sun. In the flushed dark of her tanned face, the light, clear gray of her eyes was startling and compelling. Her warmly brown hair blew about, wavy and free, springing back from the ribbon tied about her head. She was small and slim; the brief white bathing suit gave her a long-legged look that made her seem taller than she was.
For all her regular features and gray eyes, she carried in her face somewhere a slightly foreign look, the look of Magyar or Slav or Central European. It was there in the deep socketing of the wide-set eyes, in the high cheekbones; it was in the rather large mouth and the quick mobility of her expression. She was no good at dissembling what she felt; she could not act a part with any skill whatever.
Now as she strode along, she was disturbed and she looked disturbed. She wondered what Jasper felt when he had heard the news from Europe. It must have held a special prod for him, and a special meaning. Everything now was translated into the vigorous language of his own purpose. That was inevitable, she knew. She could imagine the very words he was saying this moment up there in New York.
Before the quiet British voice with the Reuter’s dispatch had broken into her thoughts, she had been lying on the busy, bright beach, lazying through thoughts and memories as they came. If a vacation alone had any special merit to recommend it, it surely lay in the opportunity to think, to browse through her mind and her memories, as if she were browsing through some dim library open only to herself, where each book on every shelf was an autobiography of some phase of her own life. As she lay on the sand, thinking, this notion struck her; it pleased her and made her smile faintly.
One such volume in this secret library was titled Jasper and I; that was the latest, the most absorbing, though it was still unfinished and Volume II still unwritten. Another was named My Marriage and Divorce; that seemed to be bound in some meaningles
s gray, and was on the whole a dull, mediocre thing, rather than a tragic one. Another was My Childhood, and another, My Success Story—Don’t Make Me Laugh.
There were many other volumes there, some short, some very long, some seemed bound in flamboyant scarlet leathers and others in the prosy cloth of schoolbooks. But one volume was missing—the restless, heated discussions of politics among her friends at home always served as a reminder of the gap. Yet this book could not be there until she herself had formulated its contents. It could never be there until she herself knew what it was she really stood for, found the continuing pattern she could live by. As yet she couldn’t even catch up this ghostly volume with any title at all, so formless was it. But someday it would be there too, and it would be a blessed book, an unquenchable book.
Until it was there, she would have a nameless unrest and searching. Neither her marriage, nor her work, nor her love affair with Jasper had quieted the one and given answer to the other.
She envied the positive ones, the devout Catholics, the ecstatic Communists, the untroubled devotees of any “cause.” They no longer were a-search. They knew; they had their purpose. But one could not simply decide, cool intellectual decision, “I will become passionately involved in this or that movement; I will devote myself to the juvenile delinquency problem; or I will crusade for better conditions for Negroes; or I will immerse myself heart and soul in the labor movement…”
Jasper never seemed to be troubled so. His own ambitions, his own determination to own the most famous network on the world’s air, were the inner drive that propelled him onward through every obstacle, through every emotion. It made him unswerving; his enemies called him “ruthless.” Many people whom he himself would call “friends” privately thought him so, too.
She herself did not know what he was. He did things differently from other people, that was true. He was unlike any other man she had ever known. In big ways, in little ways. Take so small an instance as his seeing her off on this very trip.
The Trespassers Page 2