Meanwhile the radio told him that the armies of Franco had begun their all-out assault on the Manzanares River line. According to where you turned the dial you could learn that the bridges had been blown up and that the International Brigade was standing firm, or else that the Nationalists were sweeping everything before them. “Nationalists” was the term that Franco had selected for his Moors and Foreign Legion, reinforced by Italian and German artillery, planes, and tanks; or perhaps it was a name which the capitalist press outside had invented for him; anyhow, he required all correspondents to use it, and threatened with dire punishment anyone who called his troops “rebels” or whose paper might insert that word in the correspondent’s dispatches.
Listening to the civil war of the air, and finding it much more pleasant to be in the audience than on the stage, Lanny drove to the border and re-entered France. At Perpignan he went to a hotel and had a bath with carbolic soap, and sent telegrams to his mother and to Rick, also one to Senor Sandoval, saying that he was mailing a check. He and Trudi had agreed that it wasn’t wise for her to receive telegrams, so he wrote her a note saying that he was well and successful, but tired, after a six-hundred-mile drive without sleep.
He slept, and dreamed all night that he was hearing a dozen thunderstorms at once. In the morning he gave his clothing a thorough search and himself another soaping, and had breakfast, his first regular meal since leaving Paris. Then he arranged for the quick developing of his film, and with all the photographs before him he sent a night cablegram to his father, in a sort of code:
“Your friend Mister Obese who desired to lease patents has stolen them as I predicted have observed his phony in action obtained complete set photographs data including engine number forwarding registered mail retaining duplicates expect commission remember previous request do I get it proceeding Bienvenu. Lanny.”
27
THE WAY TO DUSTY DEATH
I
It would have been cruelty for Lanny to be so near his mother and not go and tell her his adventures. Moreover, there were business records he wanted to get, and Zoltan wanted a couple of Detazes to show to a client. So Lanny proceeded to Bienvenu, and the first thing was to have his clothing sent to the cleaners, and put some formaldehyde in a wash-basin on the floor of his car and lock it in to burn all night. Beauty was horrified by his entomological misadventures and made more fuss over them than over the bombs and shells. “Nom de dieu!” she exclaimed. “Don’t let anybody know about it!” The fact that Spanish peasants lived with fleas, bedbugs, and lice all their lives seemed to her a definite proof of the futility of trying to lift them in the social scale. It ought to cause Lanny to drop his alarming Pink notions once for all.
“Old darling,” he said, “don’t you think that if you paid them enough money so that they could buy insecticides, they might be glad to do what you and I have always done?”
So mother and son were launched on one of their arguments. Who was to blame for the war in the Iberian Peninsula, and who ought to win? Beauty agreed with her son’s father that Alfy’s mixing himself into the mess was an unmitigated horror. Beauty had heard the stories of outrages from her fashionable friends, and was not to be persuaded when Lanny said: “No, dear, there have been no nuns burned in Spain; they have merely been deprived of the right to teach superstition to Spanish children.” The most he could do by his arguments was to force her back to her old position, that war is wicked and that she was against it always and everywhere. “All right,” he said. “Tell that to General Franco, who is invading Spain with an army composed almost entirely of foreigners.”
“Lanny, you know I have no way to reach General Franco.”
“Bless your heart, you aren’t really that dumb—you just put it on when you don’t want to face the facts. The Fascists are spreading their propaganda all over the world, and you are swallowing it because it’s too much trouble to think for yourself and it’s socially advantageous to believe what your rich and important friends tell you. But don’t waste my time making me listen to their shabby second-hand tales, because I make it my business to know the facts, and when I tell them to you, you ought to have the sense to listen.”
That sobered her somewhat, and she said: “You mean, Lanny, that the Reds haven’t been killing their opponents all over Spain?”
“I mean nothing of the sort. There have been many killings, just as there were in the French Revolution and the Russian, and there always will be whenever you oppress and degrade human beings and force them to win their freedom by insurrection. Right now Madrid is under siege, and the city is filled with spies and traitors who have hidden arms and are waiting for the signal to rise. I haven’t the slightest doubt that the Red militia is hunting them out and executing them, exactly as every army in the world always does with spies and traitors. It would be done in London or New York under the same circumstances. What we have to do is to judge which side stands for freedom and enlightenment and which for medievalism and superstition.”
“Lanny, it’s all too much for me!” exclaimed the mother.
He answered: “That’s the first sensible thing you have said on the subject. So let’s leave it there.”
II
Beauty Budd had been first the amie and then the wife of a painter for a decade, and prior to that she had been a model and had lived among painters and listened to their talk. Also, ever since Lanny’s birth she had known collectors of art and what was considered good taste in the decorating of homes. Now Lanny hung up the treasures he had brought out from under the bombs, and Beauty called in her friend Sophie and other rich ladies who chanced to be on the Cote d’Azur this early in the season. Lanny didn’t tell what he had paid for the works, which had the effect of stimulating their curiosity. When the lively and somewhat loud Sophie inquired: “What do you expect to get for them?” he answered: “I don’t want to plunder my friends, old dear.” When she persisted, he said: “If anybody takes all six, he can have them for thirty thousand.” She exclaimed: “Gee whiz!” and asked if he meant francs, but of course knowing better. Lanny was content to pass it off with a grin.
The price he had paid, three hundred thousand francs, represented approximately twelve thousand dollars. He wanted to get as much as he could for his cause, but of course he had his reputation to think about, and must not overcharge. He had in mind several persons who might take the lot, and he picked out the most likely and drafted a cablegram giving for each work the name of the painter, the subject, and the size, and adding an adjective which he felt would satisfy the purchaser when he came to unpack and examine what he had got. If it seemed to Lanny splendid and brilliant he said that; if it was representative and typical, he said that; if it was poor or commonplace, Lanny wasn’t handling it.
He was on the point of filing that cablegram when Sophie called up and asked him to wait. She and her husband had been talking about the collection and now she wanted to discuss the matter. When Lanny turned from the telephone his mother said: “She is a shark for bargaining; but she’s lousy with money right now, so don’t let her beat you down.”
Sophie Timmons, of the hardware family of Cincinnati, once Baroness de la Tourette and now Mrs. Rodney Armitage, had just passed her fifty-eighth birthday, but hadn’t celebrated it; her henna-dyed hair was getting thin, and she had wrinkles impossible to hide. All the old kinds of glory were gone, the old pleasures no longer brought any thrills. For many years she had been watching Lanny’s profession and hearing him talk about great art in lofty tones. From anybody else she would have taken it for a racket, but she knew that Lanny meant it and that he lived a dignified and comfortable life on the basis of his knowledge and taste. She had become acquainted with the idea that old masters represent a form of investment which is not affected by inflation or panics—at least, not permanently. She had seen perfectly commonplace people buy paintings and win consideration by showing them to their friends. With the exception of the Detazes, everything she had bought on her own hook had turned o
ut to be a “dud”; but here suddenly was what looked like the real thing. In any case it would be something new to talk about—and, oh, God, how bored you do get when you have nothing to do but entertain yourself and have brains enough to see through the pretenses of other people.
She had come with the intention of offering twenty-five thousand dollars for Lanny’s collection. He told her: “I don’t bargain with anybody, and least of all with my friends. I believe that I could get thirty-five or forty thousand by offering these paintings separately, and when I say thirty thousand for the lot it’s to save time and bother. I have a client who I believe will send the money by cable. I am telling him that his is an exclusive offer, and the first. You know I didn’t offer them to you—I just answered a friend’s question as to what I expected to get.”
It is a matter of prestige in France to get something off a price, and Sophie was disappointed and disconcerted. This was a new Lanny Budd; the little boy she had once known had turned into a firm and decided man of business. She hesitated for a while, frowned, hemmed and hawed, looked at the paintings some more, and finally went to the desk and wrote a check for thirty thousand dollars. “So much for business,” she said, with relief; “now let’s put them in the car and you show me how to hang them, and that will be fun.”
That is the sort of thing that happens to you when you live in the rich world and cultivate the right sort of people. Beauty Budd had done it as a matter of business ever since she had known Robbie. He had taught her, and she had profited, and had done her best to teach her son. By these methods she had got him the most desirable of wives, but he had gone and thrown that treasure away. Now the mother couldn’t resist the impulse to say: “You see, you do find it convenient once in a while to know some plutocrats.”
“Yes, old dear,” he responded, and kissed her on her soft and warm and well-padded neck. “I will sell them all the pictures they want, but I won’t sell them either my brains or my conscience.”
III
Lanny said: “I must be getting along. I have a date in Paris.” Beauty knew he meant “that woman,” and she plied him with questions, and had her feelings hurt because he no longer trusted his mother. Imagine, he hadn’t even told her the woman’s name! He wouldn’t show the woman’s letters, and swore that he had never taken even a snapshot of her. It was mysterious and a bit frightening; Beauty even wondered if this might be a sort of Marjorie Daw, a woman whom Lanny had created for the purpose of keeping his mother and her friends from trying to find him another rich wife.
He said No, she was a real woman; but he had promised to keep her secret and he was keeping the promise. “Doesn’t she want to meet your mother? Doesn’t she care to have your mother’s respect?” To this Lanny replied: “I’ll tell her what you say, and the next time you come to Paris, maybe I’ll bring her to you.”
Beauty wanted to know: “Why don’t you bring her here?” She meant to be generous, as she had been in the case of Marie de Bruyne.
Lanny smiled. “There wouldn’t be much of a secret after that, dear!”
Another problem for a motherly soul: Marceline and Vittorio, having spent several months at Shore Acres, with a motor-trip to California for diversion, were now on the way to Bienvenu by way of London. They would probably stop in Paris, and what was Lanny going to do? He mustn’t be rude to Vittorio, especially if he didn’t want Vittorio to know he was a Pink or a Red. Family amenities must be maintained, and Marceline must not have to think that her half-brother disliked her husband.
“I’ll always be polite to him,” Lanny promised. “If he makes Marceline happy, I’ll surely not interfere.”
“You ought to talk to him, Lanny. You’d be surprised how many things you agree on.”
“I was quite generous in the loan of my ears at Shore Acres; but if there was anything we agreed on, I fail to recall it.”
“Have you ever heard him talk about Hitler?”
“No, but I know that Hitler and Mussolini have patched up a deal over Austria, and they are fighting side by side in Spain; if the Capitano had his two arms, he’d be helping his Nazi buddies there now.”
“All the same, Vittorio says that the Italians dislike the Germans intensely, and that their aims are utterly divergent. He thinks that to let Hitler get to the Adriatic would be a calamity for Europe.”
“For Il Duce’s would-be empire, no doubt.”
“More than that. He insists that Hitler is utterly irresponsible and cannot be trusted to keep any agreement.”
Lanny couldn’t help laughing. “So they start a war that will give the moral lunatic possession of the iron ore of the Basque country and the Rio Tinto copper! No, no, darling, if I’m going to get along with my Fascist brother-in-law I’ll have to take my stand in an ivory tower and mantain a lofty contempt for the sordid subject of empire-building.”
IV
Franco’s four columns hadn’t got into Madrid. The International Brigade had stopped them at the river, and was holding that line through day after day of bitter fighting. The rebel general, who had expected to sweep everything before him, was greatly annoyed, and his backers, who had expected to get a lot for almost nothing, raised a frantic clamor, charging that the Reds were keeping a cruel war going. The Reds, on the other hand, maintained that if it weren’t for the Italians and Germans there wouldn’t have been any war, and that now, if their aid were stopped, the fighting would be over in a week. It was obvious to all disinterested persons that the great majority of the Spanish people wanted the government they had peacefully elected. The war which was being forced upon them was a world civil war, at least in its propaganda, and nobody could tell at what moment it might flame into a conflict worse than the one which was supposed to have ended eighteen years ago.
Driving to Paris, Lanny listened to the battle of words on the air. All news was propaganda now; you had to learn the special slant of each station and discount its brand of falsification or suppression. The little nations were afraid of the big ones, the fat and prosperous nations were afraid of the lean and hungry ones. The Catholics were afraid of the Nazis, but still more afraid of the Reds. Labor couldn’t make up its mind which it feared more, Nazi-Fascism or war; which it loved more, freedom or peace. There was an endless complexity of party opinion, class opinion, sect opinion, all fanned to white heat by the pressure of a desperate emergency. Whatever you believed, you believed with passion; whatever you wanted done had to be done instantly or else it would be too late. Under such conditions, those who have their way are those who know what they want and grab it; and unfortunately these were Lanny’s enemies, never his friends.
In a world thus drifting to destruction he had found one firm place of anchorage, and that was Trudi’s heart and mind. With her he would never have to argue, from her he would never have to conceal anything; the one-room studio on the Left Bank had become the place to which his thoughts turned whenever he had a moment’s leisure. When he was trying to make money it was for Trudi to spend, and when he succeeded he thought what fun it would be to tell her. Lanny had been brought up by women, and as a result he was strongly inclined to admire them and to be influenced by them; he had been what was called a ladies’ man—and here was a new type of lady, one who wouldn’t be easily recognized as such, for she lacked the conventional arts and graces. But Lanny decided that the real way to be a lady was to have self-possession and moral firmness, no pretenses, and a mind which penetrated to the heart of a problem and separated the true from the false. Whatever name you gave to that sort of companion, it was most convenient to know where she lived and to be sure that she would open her door to you.
V
What, precisely, is the etiquette of love with a saint? How do you approach a woman who is so concerned about the woes of the world that she forgets her own existence? Lanny wasn’t sure, but he knew at once when he saw her standing in the doorway with a look of gladness upon her face. He came in, shut the door, and asked no questions about either her or the world; he
put his arms about her, kissed her, and said: “I love you.” He kept his arms there, and said: “I love you” a number of times. It would have seemed unoriginal and monotonous to anybody else, but it answered every purpose; she was happy, which was what he aspired to make her, and had promised to try. It was really quite easy; and if to go away is to die a little, to come back is to be revivified more than a little.
Later they sat upon the couch, still with one arm about the other—to make up for lost time—and he told his adventures. She shuddered at the military details but not at the entomological; she was a different kind of lady, and said: “That goes with poverty all over the world. We found it among the children of the laboring classes in Berlin.” She was much excited about the imitation Budd-Erling, taking seriously Lanny’s suggestion that Robbie might reward him with a plane. But the son of the great establishment smiled wistfully and said: “Don’t count on that. If Robbie gets anything out of it, he’ll buy some Budd-Erling stock for me—but no airplanes for Spain!”
When he told about Beauty’s desire to meet her she was troubled. “Oh, Lanny, I couldn’t do that! What on earth would I say to your mother?” He replied: “That’s easy. Talk about my mother’s son!”
He had got more money; and what were they going to do with it? Trudi had two loves, and found it hard to choose. Spain or Germany? Lanny reminded her: “Anything that is going to be done for Spain has to be done quickly.”
She answered: “Yes; but if we can make the German workers realize what is happening, they will refuse to make arms for Franco or to ship them.” She was still clinging to the idea that there was a strong movement of class-conscious workers in Hitlerland who might be aroused to action. Lanny believed it no longer, but couldn’t bear to tell her so. She had written another tiny pamphlet, explaining the siege of Madrid to the German people, and he said: “Go ahead with it. We’ll same some money for that.”
Wide Is the Gate (The Lanny Budd Novels) Page 67