Lanny had one friend who always knew what wasn’t in the capitalist press and why. That was Jesse Blackless, and now and then Lanny would drop in on him and collect items to be passed on to “Cato.” Jesse and Lanny understood each other perfectly and kept quiet about each other’s doings—for Jesse might be as much embarrassed by a bourgeois nephew as Lanny by a Red uncle. Each poked fun at the other, and now and then scolded, but they respected each other and had never had a real quarrel.
Now Lanny got news of interest to him. Uncle Jesse had met at party headquarters a young French commercial aviator, a Communist, who had volunteered for Spain and had been flying there ever since the siege of Madrid had begun. This chap had been flying what he described as a “vintage” Breguet, an old model of French plane, the best the Spanish government had been able to get hold of. They had promised him an up-to-date fighter, and he might have been sore over the misrepresentation; but he was a comrade, and understood that in their desperation the government had to get fliers by, hook or crook. Most of the men they had hired were interested only in the fifteen-hundred-dollar-a-month salary. Speaking French, that was nearly forty thousand francs, enough to make you dizzy.
This Frenchman had been at the Albacete airport with Alfy and Laury, and had argued Red versus Pink tactics with them while the other aviators had been shooting craps. He described the pair as fine fellows, who never shirked a job however dangerous. They were flying British sport-planes which had been rigged to carry a bomb underneath. The planes had no armor and not even a machine gun; the aviator carried an automatic pistol. But overhead flew the Russian fighter planes, which had proved themselves the best in the war, more than a match for Junkers and Heinkels, to say nothing of Italian Fiats. The amateur bomber would fly out and release his load, mostly by guesswork, and if there weren’t too many of the attacking planes he had a good chance to get back. Just before Uncle Jesse’s informant had left on furlough, several old transport planes, remodeled to carry bomb-loads, had showed up at the Albacete field, and the Englishmen were flying these. Lanny passed this information on to Rick, and sent a copy of the letter to his father, without any comment. For the first time in his life Lanny wanted to make his father suffer if he could!
X
Thus Lanny and his wife lived physically in Paris, and intellectually and emotionally in Germany and Spain. Trudi couldn’t meet any refugees, or even subscribe to their papers; whatever couldn’t be bought at some kiosk Lanny asked Rick to subscribe for and remail, tightly wrapped, to Lanny at his hotel. They had a radio set in Trudi’s studio, and turning it low they listened to the propaganda war. Lanny went into fashionable society only when his picture business required it. Trudi wouldn’t go to theaters or other public places, so Lanny went rarely. He spent most of his time reading and thinking about the world he lived in, what was wrong with it and what hope there might be of changing it except for the worse.
And then, one day in February, a bundle of sorrow was left upon their doorstep. It came in the form of a telegram from Rick; he had received a message from the commander of the Spanish Air Force at the Albacete headquarters, regretting to report that Alfy was “missing in action.”
There was the thing they had been dreading; feeling sure that it would happen, yet never quite facing it, since many do come out alive and sound from every war. In some ways “missing” is even worse than “killed.” It may mean so many things, and thus prepares a special kind of torment for loved ones. To each it presents a psychological problem, which each has to meet in his own way. Some believe in prayer; some live on hope; some make up their minds to the worst, so that anything less bad is good; some refuse to think about it at all and wage a battle of suppression in their minds.
Lanny had known this kind of torment many times since boyhood: first with Marcel, then with Rick, then with Marcel again; in Italy with Matteotti; in more recent unhappy years, Johannes Robin, then Freddi, then Trudi. Trudi herself had borne the anguish for four years. It was like being condemned to sit and stare at a blank wall and try to guess what lies on the other side; the wall is infinite in all directions and completely impenetrable; you simply sit and stare, and wait for it to fall down, or to develop a crack, or to dissolve and prove only a nightmare.
Lanny sent a telegram expressing his deepest sympathy, and wrote a letter saying every loving and helpful word he could think of, or that Trudi, schooled in grief, could suggest. Their cause was great; no greater had been in history. And whatever happened to Alfy, he had understood that; if he was still alive, he understood it now, and it would steel his soul to bear suffering. This letter was meant for the whole family, not merely parents but grandparents and children. Lanny added his opinion that Franco wasn’t shooting any Englishmen, and certainly not officers; he needed the support of the British government—and was getting it, as they all knew.
With snow on the roofs and chimney-pots of Paris, and a gale from the North Sea howling about the eaves of their studio, Lanny and Trudi sat in front of a little iron stove and he told her about the Pomeroy-Nielson family: how he had met Rick as a boy at Hellerau, learning delightful dances, and had visited Rick’s home on the middle reaches of the Thames; how Rick had met Nina as a war-nurse, he only nineteen and she younger still. Alfy had been born after his father’s crash in France, and Lanny had first seen him in the latter days of the Peace Conference. From then on Lanny had watched him growing up, talked to him about his problems, and helped to shape his mind.
“Do you think he would have gone to Spain if he had had Marceline?” Trudi asked.
“Nobody can say. He was disappointed, but I don’t think he was heart-broken; he was a serious lad, and politics had been a real thing to him since childhood; the family talks it all the time. I once quoted to him Napoleon’s saying that politics is fate, and it made a deep impression on him.”
Trudi thought, and said: “That is a deep saying.”
“One could argue that various other things are fate, but in these modern times politics is such a tremendous force that one is tempted to concentrate upon it entirely. You and I are doing that.”
XI
The first crack in the blank wall was a letter from Laurence Joyce to Rick, telling what he knew about his comrade’s fate. In the “stable” which the Spanish government had been able to accumulate was an old Nieuport plane, and this had been equipped with a bomb-rack and sent out to interfere with Franco’s communications and supplies. Spies had sent word concerning an ammunition dump which had been accumulated south of Toledo, and Alfy had been given precise directions and sent out with a load of bombs, accompanied by three Russian Chatos to protect him. He had started at dawn and, according to the accounts of the escort, had dropped his load directly on the target; at once the expedition had been attacked by half a dozen enemy planes, and in the resulting melee Alfy’s plane had been seen descending, undoubtedly hit. More than that the Russians couldn’t say, because when you are in a dogfight you have to watch your own plane and your enemies’ to the exclusion of everything else.
That crack let you see a little way into the wall, but not through. It only teased you with the idea that the crack might be widened. Rick had already gone into London and appealed to men he knew in Fleet Street who might be able to get information out of Franco Spain. Any newspaper man would admit that Alfy was news, for his grandfather was an English baronet and he was in the line of inheritance; his volunteering had been reported, and his fate was a matter of public interest. Reuter’s had asked its men to find out what had happened to him, but apparently they were not able to do so. Likewise Sir Alfred’s appeal to the British Foreign Office remained without results. Surely it hadn’t been possible for a combat plane to crash in battle and nobody be able to find it! The episode represented a success for the Insurgents, so why should they be keeping it secret? If they had shot the young aviator, they could assert that he had tried to escape, the customary Spanish formula; or they could say that he had been killed in the crash, and nobody wou
ld be the wiser.
There were ten days of this cruel suspense, and then one evening Rick received a telephone call from one of the London papers; a dispatch had just come from a correspondent in Seville, mentioning that Rick’s son was a prisoner in Caceres; he had been injured and was recovering. Rick telegraphed this to Lanny, and next day, in a letter, he added that the family would set to work to inquire about the possibilities of an exchange of prisoners.
That was all for several days. Lanny knew that his friends were entering a zone of entanglements composed of stiff red tape, and were liable to be wandering there for a long time. He pictured Alfy, not the toughest of human specimens, lying helpless among hatefully-disposed enemies and able to speak little of their language. If he had had any money on his person it had no doubt been taken; his food would be the coarsest—worm-eaten lentils composing the main dish, and it would be the part of wisdom to swallow the worms. Lanny thought about Nina, weeping in her heart and eating very little, as was her custom when unhappy. His own food began to lose its savor, and he said to Trudi: “I think I ought to go and see them and help work out a solution.”
One form of heroism that Trudi was resolved upon was never to object to any effort her new husband might wish to make for the cause. So now she said: “By all means.” She didn’t have to say: “What can you do?” for in the past two weeks they had canvassed the situation thoroughly, and Lanny had been able to think of various possibilities.
XII
He traveled to England by train and boat on a day of heavy storms. Nina and Rick met him in London, and he took them to a hotel room and told them: “I am thinking of going into Franco Spain, to see Alfy and find out if anything can be done.”
They were not too greatly surprised, for they, also, had been canvassing the situation. Rick said: “Do you really think you could get in?”
“It can’t hurt to try. I have a woman client who is well known to the Fascist crowd, and I’ve been keeping up a correspondence with her, partly because I foresaw this situation. I can’t see any reason why an American art expert shouldn’t travel to Seville to look at paintings and perhaps bring some of them out.”
“You think there’s any chance they don’t know about you, Lanny?”
“That’s a question over which I rack my brains every time I meet a Fascist or a Nazi. How much does Goring know about me? How much does Hitler know? And Quadratt? And Kurt? And Vittorio? And so on and on. Sometimes I decide it’s inconceivable that the Gestapo doesn’t know everything. Surely they must have learned that I have been giving money to the school at Cannes; and here in London it’s no great secret that you and I are friends. I ask myself: ‘Does Goring tolerate me because of my father? Or is it just because I amuse him? Or does he think he will get more out of me than I can get out of him? Or have I managed to convince him that I’m a tuft-hunter, proud of meeting important people?’ I can’t guess the answer to those questions. All I can do is to play my role as long as they let me and try to keep them from getting anything definite on me. There’s a reasonably good chance that I got away with what I tried to do in Spain; I mean, both my trips were business trips, and I don’t see how anyone could prove that I did anything else.”
“They’d be terribly rough with you if anything should leak, Lanny.”
“I have more than one string I can pull. I have a Fascist brother-in-law, you know, and he might be of use in a pinch.”
“You surely can’t imagine that Marceline hasn’t told him your real opinions!”
“No, but they’re both very hard up for money. Also, I suspect that Marceline has a lot more feeling for Alfy than she has ever let me know. That might help a lot.”
They discussed that situation. Lanny didn’t assume that Vittorio would sell his cause for money, but he might be led to persuade himself that it wouldn’t hurt Fascism to get Alfy released, on an agreement that the prisoner would never again aid the Spanish government. Lanny couldn’t make a guess until he had talked with both Marceline and Vittorio. Rick put in the objection he had made in the case of Freddi Robin—that it would be an immoral action to pay a ransom to the Spanish rebels. Lanny replied, as he had done in Freddi’s case, that it wouldn’t be a ransom but a bribe; the money would go not to the Franco government but to one or more individuals.
Rick said: “You can count on the pater and me to do anything in our power. We can increase the mortgage on the place—I’ve paid off a part of it, you know.”
“I have some cash at the moment,” Lanny told him. “I’ll carry a well-stuffed belt, for it won’t be possible to consult you or anybody else. I have a perfectly good excuse for that, as I always carry money when I’m buying pictures. I’ll have a portfolio full of evidence bearing on that.”
They spent a day and most of the night talking out the details of this undertaking and devising a code by which the names of painters might cover various situations. In parting, Lanny told them gravely: “Don’t key your hopes too high. I may not be able to get in at all, and even if I do, I may find myself helpless. All I can do is to keep my eyes open and take any chance that seems to hold but a promise.”
BOOK EIGHT
The World Turned Pale
29
IGNORANT ARMIES
I
It was the height of a prosperous season on the Coast of Pleasure. Not many showed signs of being troubled by the thought of armies lying out in snow and freezing cold in trenches on the Guardarrama Mountains, or of women and children being killed every night by bombs and shells in Madrid. The ladies and gentlemen of pleasure appeared to have learned the same lesson as Lanny Budd, that suffering is an old custom in Europe and that you have to concentrate on your own job—whether it be planning a reconstructed world or giving a more elegant dinner-party than your social rivals.
Beauty Budd was playing her part in this latter competition, and the bride of the Capitano was assisting. They both had lovely new costumes, and Lanny could be sure they were running into debt. But it wasn’t his role to be a kill-joy at present; on the contrary, he would submit to having his best togs unpacked and put in order, and would grace any mother’s dinner-party, entertaining the company with the delightful adventures of the Comendador Humfredo Fernando Bustamente y Bastida. Lanny had received a letter from Adella Murchison, telling how they had conducted a guessing-game over the old gentleman’s bullet-wounds and had raised several hundred dollars for the local Red Cross. It had proved so popular that it was to be done again on a bigger scale; and this provided an amusing denouement for Lanny’s tale.
The family, of course, wanted to know about Alfy, and Lanny told what he knew; the poor fellow had committed a grave indiscretion, and the penalty would be heavy. Lanny himself took an Olympian attitude: too bad, but it couldn’t be helped. While he said this he watched his half-sister with veiled attention. Would she disagree? She didn’t. Would she ask about it afterward? Again she didn’t. Surely she must be troubled to know that her girlhood sweetheart was imprisoned under such terrible circumstances; but she couldn’t help it, and must not let it interfere with dancing. Perhaps she didn’t know how bad the circumstances were; perhaps she accepted the easy assumption of the comfortable classes, that Franco was a gentleman, a preux chevalier, and would treat a gentleman knight-of-the-air according to the code of Don Quixote. Or perhaps she just didn’t think about the matter at all. Lanny wasn’t sure, and it wasn’t the time to ask.
II
What Lanny wished to do was to renew his acquaintance with the Senora Villareal. He had got very good prices for a couple of her paintings, so now she was living in the style to which she had been accustomed. She had married her elder daughter to a Frenchman, and, knowing France, Lanny could guess what dot she had provided, and that she would pretty soon be needing funds again. He had-tea with her, and of course she wanted to talk about her native land and the dreadful things happening there. Lanny told the details of what he had done for Senor Sandoval, whom she knew by reputation; he described the si
ghts he had seen in Madrid. It did no good to underestimate one’s enemies, he told her, and he feared the Iberian Peninsula was in for a long and devastating war.
Distressing news indeed for a refugee who had been reading the Rightist press, and had been told by her friends how the canaille was going to be scattered by a whiff of grapeshot, modern style. Lanny was telling no secrets when he mentioned that arms were being smuggled into Red Spain. He took the liberty of exaggerating somewhat. Not merely fanatics, but also gangsters were buying up arms and ammunition to supply the demands of the Spanish government. Seven hundred million dollars in gold was a force not easy to withstand. It was, Lanny explained in detail, the same sort of thing as had been witnessed in the United States during the Prohibition era. Smugglers and dealers in contraband who had been making money out of the Chinese arms trade and the Chaco arms trade had now turned to Spain. They bought stuff in Belgium and even in Germany, brought it into France, and hid it under loads of food and other products going to Spain; or they hid it in the launches or sailing-vessels of Basque fishermen, Greek smugglers, Turks, Algerians, every sort who knew the coves and inlets of the Spanish Mediterranean and the Biscayan shore.
And then the Russians, whose ships came from Odessa, loaded with munitions. Lanny described their planes and how skillfully they fought. They had sent not only pursuits but bombers, and before long nothing behind the Nationalist lines would be safe. Lanny mentioned this casually and left a woman refugee’s imagination to do the rest. “I am afraid this is a depressing conversation,” he remarked, giving her a chance to change it; but she said: “Pas du tout. It is much better that I should face the facts. I suppose it would be the part of wisdom to bring the rest of my paintings out of Spain.”
Wide Is the Gate (The Lanny Budd Novels) Page 72