by Susan Hertog
As the Lindberghs descend from their “Olympian heights” to the wind-swept waters surrounding Cape Verde, Anne’s narrative vision constricts and, with it, her sense of space and time. In the blazing heat of the African sun, Anne, like Dante, meets her counterpart in the world of the damned. Again, Anne the narrator “doubles” her characters as they approach a girl standing with a man on the pier. In spite of their race, age, and culture, they are mirror images of Charles and her.
But immediately Anne feels the presence of death. The man and the girl are thin, sick, reeking of decay. The man is a skeleton in an elegant suit; his child-wife is a phantomlike creature of burden. Like Anne, the girl is dressed in men’s gear, too heavy for her delicate form. Her masquerade threatens to destroy her. Ruling the island with demonic force, sheathed in the grace of French hospitality, the man and the girl are instruments of evil, satanic creatures intent upon seducing Anne and Charles. While Anne resists, she knows she is no more righteous than they. She feels like a leper in the Bible, unclean—as though no amount of washing could remove her sins.
While Anne the narrator penetrates beneath the surface of the characters and events, Charles merely squirms in discomfort. Immediately, he distinguishes himself from the hosts, whose decadence he is forced to confront. Like Dante, Charles protests that he is just a pilgrim in a foreign land.
Charles is a shadowy, one-dimensional character, a thin figure of inflated stature, physically and morally absent. Unlike the “Charles” in North to the Orient, he is no longer the superior moral being, the contrast to Anne’s inadequacy and weakness. In Listen! The Wind, they are partners in sin, roaming aimlessly in the land of the damned. Charles, the pilot, has the power to liberate them through flight; Anne, the narrator, has the vision to distill the meaning.
Time stops as life rushes like the wind above their heads. The wind, like a chorus, is a relentless presence that presages their actions and imbues them with meaning. The wind becomes the measure of their physical and spiritual vitality, the determining force of their salvation. It is the same wind that howled in Hopewell, obscuring the sounds that might have saved Charlie.
The wind dwindles to a distant roar, and Anne continues her struggle. As with the wave in her dream after Charlie was kidnapped, and the voice that taunted her during the birth of Jon, Anne is caught in a moment of terror. She can run, but she cannot be free. Their only hope is to get off the island—to radio Bathurst and get permission to land.
Released from the force that governs the island, the plane rises easily above the sea. But as they approach the coast of Africa, Anne the narrator lulls the reader into delusion. They are safe, she writes, in British territory—safe from the barrenness and decay of French colonialism. They are connected again to life and to time, to the running of the clock and to the rhythm of ordinary moral perception. People bustle and then stop to rest, policemen patrol the sunny streets of Bathurst in tropical attire, and the British flag waves in the soft wind.
But it is hot, Anne writes, incredibly hot; the seductive heat permeates their bodies and forces them to surrender. In spite of its veneer of civility, Bathurst, Anne implies, is just another ring of Hell. At least the French man and the girl on Cape Verde had succumbed to evil. The English people of Bathurst, numbed by convention and affluence, lack even the pretense of moral struggle.
Like Jacob, Anne does not know whether she wrestles with God or Man. The Almighty, she writes, can see everything. He has the vision and he has the power. Human perception is both partial and feeble. But the mention of God embarrasses her; she must pretend that Charles is still in control. She must help Charles harness and outwit the wind.
Systematically, they lighten their plane, stripping themselves of supplies and clothing and the aircraft of maps and charts. They discard the anchor and thirty miles’ worth of fuel. Retaining only what they’ll need for safety in the tropics, they prepare to leave with the morning wind.
That morning, an attempt at take-off fails, as do their efforts later in the day. In one of the most lyrical passages, Anne describes their surrender to the power of the elements:
The cliff below us fell abruptly to the sea. The sea poured out, a great wide circle to the smooth expanse, rolled out like heavy corded silk to the edge of the world … Here there was no struggle. Earth, sea, and sky—we had been in them this morning fight against them. Why, I wondered? … If only you could have your point of balance the sky! With such a pivot you could hold the world on your shoulders, another Atlas. In such an armor you could meet anything.
A point of balance, the faith to surrender—these are the keys to salvation. They harness God’s power and bridge the gap between man and the divine.
That night, as the wind rises with the moon, they take off into the “fathoms” of the night. Wrapped in layers of darkness, they plunge through the night with only the stars to guide them. Now stripped of all illusion, Anne the protagonist merges with Anne the narrator. The wind, as if in accord with Anne’s self-knowledge, rises to lift them over the sea. They sail at daybreak, thanking God “as if we had been living in eternal night, as if this were the first sun that had ever rose out of the sea.”
But Anne the narrator, powerful and visionary, must hide her journey through the rings of Hell, both from the reader and from her husband. As in the beginning, she affirms their heroism. Their visibility is unlimited, she declares, and her husband remains indomitable. Like Odysseus, they are sailing home. As though winking at the reader through her metaphor, Anne ends her story with a quote from Homer: “The men are sailing home from Troy and all the lamps are lit.” But beyond the pretense, Anne’s message is clear. Like Dante, she has made her pilgrimage through Hell. She has humbled herself in the face of God and is deemed worthy of salvation.
21
After the Fall
Anne on Illiec, 1938.
(Lindbergh Picture Collection, Manuscripts And Archives, Yale University Library)
WINTER TREE1
… The troubled mind
After the fall’s deception reassured—
After the wind, after the winter storm—
By deep return to discipline of form.
—ANNE MORROW LINDBERGH
SUMMER 1937, LONG BARN, SEVENOAKS, ENGLAND
While Anne sought salvation, Charles sought immortality. Three times in five weeks, in July and August, Charles flew to Brittany to work with Carrel.2 Behind closed doors, they wrote their book, The Culture of Organs.3 Carrel’s vision had expanded beyond the mere sustenance of life. He prophesied a time when organs could be removed and healed at hospitals, when human life could be frozen and revived at will, when organs could be transplanted and reconfigured to create superior animal species, and when medical techniques could carry physicians into the realm of the living dead. Lindbergh’s task was to develop the technological apparatus to support Carrel’s theories of a new human breed. Labeled modern “Frankensteins” by the press, sea-locked on a wind-swept island, Carrel and Lindbergh tried to turn fiction into scientific reality.
Their flurry of activity elicited the unceasing interest of the press. The more secretive they were, the more the press intruded, until Carrel became enraged. In a letter to the Associated Press, he wrote, “You know that for scientific work, peace is a requisite. The attention of the public should not be attracted to this spot where we are working and on us.”4
Europe was on the brink of war, and Lindbergh and Carrel knew that victory would be won on the battlefield, not in the laboratory. The spoils would belong to those who could master military technology. In a letter to Ambassador Robert Bingham, the English envoy to Germany, Charles wrote that one must “cost” devise such effective forms of counterattack as to make an offensive by the enemy prohibitive. One must deal with the enemy aggressively. “As civilization progresses, safety lies more in the ability to attack than in the ability to defend.”5
In the middle of August, Charles planned his fourth visit to Saint-Gildas. This time Anne d
ecided to go with him, but, discouraged by the thought of traveling with two children, she took the baby and left Jon behind. It was the first time she had left the serenity of Long Barn since the trip to India, before the baby was born. Sadly, she wrote, Charles had chosen to go during the week of Jon’s birthday.6
In mid-September, when they were home, and Britain was condemning the Japanese attack on the Chinese cities of Nanking and Canton,7 Kay and Truman Smith came to visit at Long Barn. In her diaries, Kay noted that the Lindbergh home was less than harmonious. She detected a sadism in Charles that extended even to his friendship with Truman. He once set Truman’s newspaper on fire as they sat together reading in the car. Most obvious was his harsh treatment of Jon, who, at the age of four, was expected to behave like an adult. His meals and activities mimicked his parents’; if he did not follow their schedule, he was punished. In a bizarre reflection of Charles’s life as the only child of an estranged marriage, alone with his mother in his father’s absence, Charles compelled Jon to undertake the responsibilities of a man.8 By intimidating him with adult standards, Charles expected to make Jon confident and self-sufficient. As a consequence, Jon developed the pose of maturity while hiding his fears in silence.
Kay also noted Charles’s paranoia. The Lindberghs’ German shepherd, Thor, policed the garden as the baby slept, alerting Anne and Charles to people who wandered in and out of his purview. When the dog barked, Charles would take his gun from the closet with eerie nonchalance.
In spite of their differences, Charles and Truman had work to do together. Since the Reich ministers had confidence in Charles, Truman wanted him to return to Berlin and inspect more engine and aircraft factories. Within a week the Lindberghs, with the Smiths, were in Germany; Jon and Land were at home. They arrived in Frankfurt on October 10 and in Munich on the eleventh. In an effort to shelter Anne and Charles from Nazi Party politics, the Smiths arranged for them to stay in the mountains of Bavaria, miles away from Berlin, at the home of Baron Cramer-Klett.9 As Charles was shuttled to and from Munich by official car to attend meetings of the Lilienthal Aviation Society and to tour aircraft factories, Anne hiked through the mountains with the “ageless” baron, speaking of human frailty and the divinity of truth.10 For Anne, this was a journey into the Middle Ages, a beautiful fairyland, insulated from the political turmoil of the German cities. Yet she found the atmosphere unsettling, as if something she could not discern lingered beneath the surface.
While Anne was charmed by the baron’s manner, Kay investigated his political status. She found that he was in danger of being arrested by the Reich. A devout Catholic with a papal title, Cramer-Klett was passionately anti-Nazi. He had agreed to house and court the Lindberghs in exchange for his continued freedom.11
Minister Udet, eager to show Lindbergh his country’s progress, took him to the testing bases of all the major aircraft—bombers, fighters, and training planes. He allowed him to fly the Storch, which Charles found comparable to American planes. For the second time, Lindbergh helped Smith write a formal report for the War Department, a general estimate of German air power as of November 1, 1937. Smith later admitted that they had dramatized their data, hoping to capture high-level attention. They reported that
Germany is once more a world power in the air. Her air force and her air industry have emerged from the kindergarten state … They would reach “full manhood” in years … it is one of the most important world events of our time. What it portends for Europe is something no one today can tell … The vision of Goering is fantastically large, but their humbleness of spirit has made them work harder.12
As Charles was being shown through factories and fields and military air installations, Hitler was planning to take over Europe. In a reversal of policy, he now announced that Lebensraum, “living space” for his people, could be gained only by force. And he made clear his plans to annex Austria. When Italy and Japan joined Germany in a pact to annihilate communism, the military triangle—the Axis—evoked alarm in some quarters, but appeasement still reigned in Britain. That gave Hitler the confidence to proceed.13
Home once again, Anne busied herself. Delighting in the beauty and nearness of her children, she charged through her mornings writing at her desk, only to fall into breathless afternoons, racing Jon, wild with joy, through the mist and mud of the English autumn.
At night, she and Charles and Thor walked miles in the moonlight through open fields. In the soft light, with trees laced against the sky, they sat on the gate and looked through the tangled oaks toward the moon. When their reverie was disturbed by the roar of planes, it mattered little; they trudged toward the bright lights of Long Barn, tingling with excitement.14
As Britain and France announced a joint pact of neutrality, the Lindberghs traveled to the States for Christmas. The trip was hastily conceived, and it confused and mystified those around them. Charles had business in New York with Pan Am and experiments to complete at the Rockefeller Institute with Carrel.15 But he left England, after two years there, with an air of urgency, as though it were time to accelerate his work.
It was terrible for Anne to leave Jon for Christmas, but Charles was intent on going, and she would not refuse.16 She bought the Christmas tree early, and seating Jon on her knee, told the boy the story of the birth of Christ. Did the wise men go fast when they followed the star, he asked? They went by camel, not by car, Anne explained.
On December 1, Anne and Charles left Long Barn and the children, and boarded a ship bound for New York. Even though they were registered under the name “Gregory,” they made no attempt to hide their identity.17 In contrast to their crossing two years earlier, they appeared relaxed and comfortable. They lounged on the deck in the morning sun and sat at the captain’s table at dinner.18 And while they kept to themselves in the afternoon, it was clear, even to the press, that something new was in the air. Charles was re-entering the public arena, with a strong sense of personal influence. One magazine reported, “Lindbergh landed with probably more complete information of Europe’s airways than any individual on this side of the Atlantic.”19
Anne found life in New York crude. Having been moved by the bucolic life of Long Barn and the reserve of London, she felt out of place in the frenzied, acquisitive culture of New York society.20 Its pace left her no room to breathe, and seemed to lack any trace of the spiritual.21 Shopping on Fifth Avenue and living in the luxury of Next Day Hill, she had little cognizance of life on the street.22 In fact, the economy was beginning to lose the early gains of the New Deal. In the first half of 1938, industrial production would drop precipitously, and by the end of the year two million people would lose their jobs.23 But what Anne saw was magazines and shops full of luxurious clothes, furs, and jewels. It was all she could do not to be swept away by the mindless opulence.24
Meanwhile, the tension abroad was rising. Italy withdrew from the League of Nations, and on December 12 the Japanese bombed British and American gunboats on the Yangzte River. One day later, the Japanese staged the “rape” of Nanking, in which 200,000 civilians were slaughtered and 20,000 women were raped and murdered.25
The British foreign secretary, Anthony Eden, dissuaded an irate League of Nations from imposing sanctions. The British cabinet, however, overruled the aviation experts by approving a shift from the building of bombers to fighter aircraft. That dramatic change would later prove pivotal in Britain’s defense.26
As preparations for war intensified, Carrel deepened his commitment to “civilization.” In a bold attempt to sustain human organs in his laboratory, he used the pump designed by Charles to perfuse tissue with insulin, adrenaline, and other glandular extracts so that he could study the morphology and activities of the organs.27 In a speech to an audience of Phi Beta Kappa members at Dartmouth, he called for the establishment of eugenics institutes throughout the world, for the express purpose of developing a higher breed of “civilized man.”28 Through December and January, Lindbergh worked at the Rockefeller Institute to further their exp
eriments. Simultaneously, Carrel arranged to educate doctors in Italy and Germany in the techniques that he and Lindbergh were perfecting.29
By the turn of the year, Anne was eager to return to Long Barn. On January 17, she wrote in her diary that once again the pendulum of her life had swung too far. The visit to the States had been a frenetic attempt to see everyone and do everything. This hurried life was as numbing as the isolation of domesticity. As Anne would later write in Gift from the Sea, one must learn to navigate the sea between solitude and society.30
But Anne was about to get more than her share of isolation. At Carrel’s suggestion, Charles had consented to buy an island near to St. Gildas called Illiec. From the moment Charles saw the tiny, four-acre slip of land, washed by tides and flooded by light, he wanted to own it. And the Carrels were eager to have him join them. In spite of its wild beauty, reminiscent of Maine, Illiec seemed to Anne little more than a pile of rocks with a house set in a grove of pine trees.
She must have remembered she hadn’t married for happiness. Although she would have to leave Long Barn and the beauty and safety of its walled gardens and paths and the life they had carved in the small country village with Jon and Land, Anne knew she had to go. In spite of the fact that she disdained the Carrels and their racist views, Anne deluded herself that living on Illiec was what she should do.31
22
The Crossed Eagle
Hermann Goering with Anne and Charles in Berlin, 1938.