by Herman Wouk
She laughed, a keen look brightening her eyes, evidently pleased that he remembered. “He’s come out boldly to the effect that time will tell.”
“What do you think?”
“Me? I just type what he thinks. On a special portable with oversize print.” She gestured at three deep-breathing German matrons in tailored suits marching by. “I know that I feel queer sailing on a ship of theirs.”
“Didn’t your father just publish a book? I seem to remember reviews.”
“Yes. Just a paste-up of his broadcasts, really.”
“I’d like to read it. Writers awe me. I have a tough time putting one word down after another.”
“I saw a copy in the ship’s library. He sent me there to check,” she said, with a grin that reminded him of Madeline, catching him in self-importance or pretense. He wished Warren could meet this girl or one like her. Last night he had not paid her much mind, with the busty, half-naked, talkative blonde there. But now, especially with the fresh coloring of the morning sea air, he thought she had an English lady’s face, a heart-shaped face from a Gainsborough or a Romney: thin lips, expressive green-gray eyes set wide apart, fine straight nose, heavy brown hair. The skin of her hands and face was pearl-smooth. Just the girl for Warren, pretty and keen.
“You’re going around again? I get off here,” she said, stopping at a double door. “If you do read his book, Commander Henry, carry it under your arm. He’ll fall in love with you. It’ll make his trip.”
“How can he care? Why, he’s famous.”
“He cares. God, how they care.” With a clumsy little wave, she went inside.
After breakfasting alone, Pug went to the library. Nobody was there but a boyish steward. The shelves held many German volumes on the World War. Pug glanced at one titled U-boats: 1914-18, and settled into a leather armchair to scan the discussion of American destroyer tactics. Soon he heard the scratch of a pen. At a small desk almost within his reach, the German submarine man sat with his bristly head bent, writing. Pug had not seen him come in.
Grobke smiled, and pointed his pen at the U-boat book. “Recalling old times?”
“Well, I was in destroyers.”
“And I was down below. Maybe this is not the first time our paths cross.” Grobke spoke English with a slight, not unpleasant Teutonic accent.
“Possibly not.”
When Pug put the U-boat volume on the shelf and took down the Tudsbury book, Grobke remarked, “Perhaps we could have a drink before dinner and compare notes on the Atlantic in 1918?”
“I’d enjoy that.”
Pug intended to read Tudsbury in a deck chair for a while and then go below to work. He had brought weighty books on German industry, politics, and history, and meant to grind through the lot on the way to his post. Intelligence manuals and handbooks were all right, but he was a digger. He liked to search out the extra detail in the extra-discouraging-looking fat volume. Surprising things were recorded, but patient alert eyes were in perpetual short supply.
The bow wave was boiling away, a V of white foam on the blue sunlit sea, and the Bremen was rolling like a battleship. Wind from the northwest, Pug estimated, glancing up at the thin smoke from the stacks, and at the sea; wind speed fifteen knots, ship’s speed eighteen, number four sea on the port quarter, rain and high winds far ahead under the cumulo-nimbus. Nostalgia swept over him. Four years since he had served at sea; eleven since he had had a command! He stood by the forward rail, leaning against a lifeboat davit, sniffing the sea air. Four unmistakable Jews walked by in jolly conversation, two middle-aged couples in fine sports clothes. They went out of sight around the deckhouse. He was still looking after them when he heard Tudsbury blare, “Hello there, Commander. I hear you were out walking my Pam at the crack of dawn.”
“Hello. Did you see those people who just went by?”
“Yes. There’s no understanding Jews. I say, is that my book? How touching. How far have you got?”
“I just drew it from the library.”
Tudsbury’s moustache drooped sadly. “What! You didn’t buy it? Damn all libraries. Now you’ll read it and I won’t gain a penny by it.” He bellowed a laugh and rested one green-stockinged leg on the rail. He was wearing a baggy pepper-and-salt golfing outfit and a green tam o’shanter. “It’s a bad book, really a fake, but it’s selling in your country, luckily for me. If you didn’t happen to hear my drivelling on the air in the past year or two, there are a couple of interesting paragraphs. Footnotes to history. My thing on Hitler’s entry into Vienna is actually not too awful. Quite a time we’re living in, Commander.”
He talked about the German take-over of Austria, sounding much as he did on the air: positive, informed, full of scorn for democratic politicians, and cheerfully ominous. Tudsbury’s special note was that the world would very likely go up in flames, but that it might prove a good show. “Can you picture the bizarre and horrible triumph that we let him get away with, dear fellow? I saw it all. Something straight out of Plutarch, that was! A zero of a man, with no schooling, of no known family—at twenty a dropped-out student, a drifter and a failure—five years a dirty, seedy tramp in a Vienna doss house—did you know that, Henry? Do you know that for five years this Führer was what you call a Bowery bum, sharing a vile room with other assorted flotsam, eating in soup kitchens, and not because there was a depression—Vienna was fat and prosperous then—but because he was a dreamy, lazy, incompetent misfit? That house painter story is hogwash. He sold a few hand-painted postcards, but to the age of twenty-six he was a sidewalk-wandering vagrant, and then for four years a soldier in the German army, a lance corporal, a messenger-runner, a low job for a man of even minimum intelligence, and at thirty he was lying broke, discharged, and gassed in an army hospital. That is the background of the Führer.
“And then—” The ship’s horn blasted, drowning out Tudsbury’s voice, which was beginning to roll in his broadcasting style. He winced, laughed, and went on: “And then, what happened? Why, then this same ugly, sickly, uncouth, prejudiced, benighted, half-mad little wretch leaped out of his hospital bed, and went careering in ten years straight to the top of a German nation thirsting for a return match. The man was a foreigner, Henry! He was an Austrian. They had to fake up a citizenship proceeding for him, so he could run against Hindenburg! And I myself watched this man ride in triumph through the streets of Vienna, where he had sold postcards and gone hungry, the sole heir to the combined thrones of the Hapsburgs and the Hohenzollerns.” Victor Henry smiled, and Tudsbury’s impassioned popeyed stare gave way to a loud guffaw. “A-hawr, hawr, hawr! I suppose it is rather funny when you think about it. But this grotesque fantasy happens to be the central truth of our age.”
Henry was smiling because much of this tirade was in Tudsbury’s book, almost word for word. “Well, it’s the old story of the stitch in time,” he said. “Your politicos could have got the weird little bastard with no trouble early on, but they didn’t. Now they have problems. Incidentally, where are you headed? Berlin, too?”
Tudsbury nodded. “Our Berlin man’s prostate chose an awkward time to act up. A-hawr-hawr! Dr. Goebbels said I could come along and fill in. Amazement! I’ve been persona non grata in the Third Reich since Munich. No doubt I’ll be kicked out on my big arse in a few weeks. For some reason the Jerries are being kind to Englishmen this month. Probably so we’ll hold still while they roll over the Poles. And we will, we will. The Tories are all polite gray worms. Aristocratic funks, Lloyd George called them. Except for Churchill, who’s quite out of it.”
The American commander and the U-boat man took to meeting in the bar each evening before dinner. Henry figured that it was his job to pump Grobke, as it might well be the German’s to work on him. Grobke was a thorough professional, an engineering expert, and a real seafarer. He talked freely about the machinery in the present U-boats, and even confessed to problems with torpedoes, a topic Henry was well versed in, though he discussed it cautiously. In Grobke’s harassed disdain for po
liticians, he seemed like any American naval man. A satiric look came on his face when he spoke of the Nazis, and he said things that caused his wife, when she was with them, to give him warning glances.
Alistair Tudsbury said to Pug one evening, as they sat on a couch in the main saloon watching the dancing, “You’ve been fraternizing with Jerry.”
“In the line of business. I doubt Grobke’s a Nazi.”
“Oh, those U-boat fellows are all right, as much as any Germans are.”
“You don’t like the Germans.”
“Well. Let’s talk about that after you’ve been there a month. Assuming I haven’t been booted out.”
“Of course I don’t blame you. They gave your people hell.”
“No worse than we gave them. We won, you know.” After a pause he said, “My eyes were spoiled at Amiens, when we broke through with the tanks. I commanded a tank battalion, and was gassed. It was worth it, all in all, to see Jerry on the run. It was a long time coming.”
The captain of the Bremen, at the moment, was dancing with Rhoda. He had long capering legs, strange in a stout man. Rhoda was radiating enjoyment. Pug was glad of this. Night after night she had been dancing with a very tall young officer, a blond-eagle type, all clicking bows and glittering blue eyes, who held her a bit too close. Pug had said something about it, and Rhoda had countered with a brief snarl about his spending the trip with his nose in books, and he had let it drop. She was being so complaisant, on the whole, that he only wanted to keep things so.
The captain brought her back. Pamela Tudsbury returned from a listless effort to follow the flailing prances of an American college boy. She said, “I shall get myself a cane and a white wig. They look so shattered if I refuse, but I really can hardly dance, and as for the Lindy Hop—”
The music struck up again, and Rhoda’s tall young officer approached in spotless white and gold. An irritated look crossed Pug’s face. The captain saw it, and under the loud music, as the officer drew near, he muttered half a dozen words. The young man stopped, faded back, and darted out of the saloon. Pug never saw him again.
Rhoda, smiling and about to rise, was baffled by the young German’s peculiar exit.
“Dance, Rhoda?” Pug got to his feet.
“What?” she said crossly. “No, thanks.”
Pug extended a hand to the Tudsbury girl. “Pamela?”
She hesitated. “You don’t do the Lindy Hop?” Pug burst out laughing. “Well, one never knows with Americans.”
She danced in a heavy, inexperienced way. Pug liked her gentle manner, her helpless smile when she trod on his foot. “You can’t be enjoying this,” she said.
“I am. Do you think you’ll be going back to the United States?”
“If Father gets thrown out of Germany, which seems inevitable, I suppose we will. Why?”
“I have a son about your age with quite a fine record, and unlike me, tall and very handsome.”
Pamela made a face. “A Navy man? Never. A girl in every port.”
At the captain’s table, on the last night, there were white orchids at every lady’s place; and under these, white gold compacts. Champagne went round, and the topic of international politics finally surfaced. Everybody agreed that in this day and age war was a silly, wasteful way of settling differences, especially among advanced nations like England, France, and Germany. “We’re all of the same stock, all north Europeans,” Tudsbury said. “It’s a sad thing when brothers fall out.”
The captain nodded happily. “Exactly what I say. If we could only stick together, there would never be another war. The Bolsheviks would never move against so much power. And who else wants war?” All through the saloon people were wearing paper hats and tossing streamers, and Pug observed that the four Jews, whose table was not far away, were having as gay a time as everybody else, under the polite ministrations of smiling German waiters. The captain followed Henry’s glance, and a genial superior grin relaxed his stern fat face. “You see, Commander? They are as welcome aboard the Bremen as anybody else, and get the same service. The exaggerations on that subject are fantastic.” He turned to Tudsbury. “Between us, aren’t you journalists a wee bit responsible for making matters worse?”
“Well, Captain,” Tudsbury said, “journalism always looks for a theme, you know. One of the novel things about your government, to people outside Germany, is its policy toward the Jews. And so it keeps turning up.”
“Tudsbury is not entirely wrong, Captain,” Grobke broke in, draining his wineglass. “Outsiders think of nothing but the Jews nowadays when Germany is mentioned. That policy has been mishandled. I’ve said so many times. That and plenty of other things.” He turned to Henry. “Still, they’re so unimportant, Victor, compared to what the Führer has achieved: Germany has come back to life. That’s God’s truth. The people have work, they have food and houses, and they have spirit. What Hitler has done for our youth alone is just incredible.” (The captain’s eyes lit up and he emphatically nodded, exclaiming, “Ja, ja!”) “Under Weimar they were rioting, they were becoming communists, they were going in for sex perversions and drugs, it was just horrible. Now they’re working, or training, or serving, all of them. They’re happy! My crews are happy. You can’t imagine what navy morale was like under the Republic—I tell you what.” He struck the table. “You come visit our squadron, at the sub base in Swinemünde. You do that! you’re a man that can look at a navy yard or a ship’s crew and see what’s going on! It’ll open your eyes. Will you?”
Henry took a moment to reply, with everybody at the table turning expectantly to him. An invitation like this, if accepted, made mandatory a similar offer to the German naval attaché in Washington. Did the Navy want to trade glimpses of submarine bases with the Nazi regime? The decision was beyond Pug’s power. He had to report the invitation to Washington and act on the dictated answer.
He said, “I’d like that. Perhaps we can work it out.”
“Say yes. Forget the formalities!” Grobke waved both arms in the air. “It’s a personal invitation from me to you, from one seaman to another. The U-boat command gets damn small budgets, and we’re pretty independent chaps. You can visit us with no strings. I’ll see to that.”
“This invitation wouldn’t include me, would it?” Tudsbury said.
Grobke hesitated, then laughed. “Why not? Come along, Tudsbury. The more the British know about what we’ve got, the less likely anybody is to make a hasty mistake.”
“Well, here may be an important little step for peace,” said the captain, “transacted at my table! I feel honored, and we will have more champagne on it at once.”
And so the diners at the captain’s table on the Bremen all drank to peace a few minutes before midnight, as the great liner slowed, approaching the shore lights of Nazi Germany.
In bright sunshine, the Bremen moved like a train between low green banks of a wide river. Pug was at the rail of the sun deck, taking his old pleasure in the sight of land after a voyage. Rhoda was below in her usual fit of the snarls and the snaps. When they travelled together, Rhoda in deep martyrdom did the packing. Pug was an old hand at packing for himself, but Rhoda claimed she could never find anything he put away.
“Oh, yes, the country is charming to look at,” said Tudsbury, who had sauntered up and commenced a discourse on the scenery. “You’ll see many a pretty north German town between Bremerhaven and Berlin. The heavy half-timbered kind of thing, that looks so much like English Tudor. The fact is Germany and England have strong resemblances and links. You know of course that the Kaiser was Queen Victoria’s grandson, that our royal family for a long time spoke only German? And yet on the whole the Jerries are stranger to us than Eskimos.” He boomed a laugh and went on, sweeping a fat hand toward the shore: “Yes, here the Germans sit at the heart of Europe, Henry, these perplexing first cousins of ours, simmering and grumbling away, and every now and then they spill over in all directions, with a hideous roar. Out they pour from these lovely little towns, the
se fairy-tale landscapes, these clean handsome cities—wait till you see Cologne, Nuremberg, Munich, even Berlin and Hamburg—out they bubble, I say, these polite blue-eyed music lovers, ravening for blood. It gets a bit unnerving. And now here’s Hitler, bringing them to a boil again. You Americans may have to lend more of a hand than you did last time. We’re fairly worn out with them, you know, we and the French.”
It had not escaped Henry that Tudsbury’s talk, one way or another, usually came back to the theme of the United States fighting Germany.
“That might not be in the cards, Tudsbury. We’ve got the Japanese on our hands. They’re carving up China, and they’ve got a first-class fighting navy, growing every month. If they make the Pacific a Japanese lake and proceed to do what they want on the Asian mainland, the world will be theirs in fifty years.”
Tudsbury said, sticking his tongue out of a corner of his smiling mouth, “The Yellow Peril.”
“It’s a question of facts and numbers,” Henry said. “How many people are there in all of Europe? Couple of hundred million? Japan is now well on the way to ruling one billion people. They’re as industrious as the Germans or more so. They came out of paper houses and silk kimonos in a couple of generations to defeat Russia. They’re amazing. Compared to what faces us in Asia, this Hitler business strikes us as just more of the same old runty cat-and-dog fight in the back yard.”
Tudsbury peered at him, with a reluctant nod. “Possibly you underestimate the Germans.”
“Maybe you overestimate them. Why the devil didn’t you and the French go in when they occupied the Rhineland? They broke a treaty. You could have walked in there at that point and hung Hitler, with not much more trouble than raiding a girls’ dormitory.”
“Ah, the wisdom of hindsight,” Tudsbury said. “Don’t ask me to defend our politicians. It’s been a radical breakdown, a total failure of sense and nerve. I was talking and writing in 1936 the way you are now. At Munich I was close to suicide. I covered the whole thing. Czechoslovakia! A huge chain of strong fortifications, jutting deep into Germany’s gut. Fifty crack divisions, spoiling for a scrap. The second biggest arms factory in the world. Russia and even France ready at last to stand up and fight. All this, six short months ago! And an Englishman, an Englishman, goes crawling across Europe to Hitler and hands him Czechoslovakia!” Tudsbury laughed mechanically and puffed at a cigarette made ragged by the breeze. “I don’t know. Maybe democracy isn’t for the industrial age. If it’s to survive, I think the Americans will have to put up the show.”