by Herman Wouk
The sunset light on the façade of the Palazzo Pubblico, the town hall, was deepening to a blood color. The rest of the piazza was in shadow, and a heavy bell was tolling in the tower. From the town hall a long fanfare sounded. The crowd fell quiet. Trumpets struck up the old Palio march that had been echoing all week in Siena’s streets. Out of the palazzo courtyard trotted the caparisoned racehorses with their flamboyantly costumed jockeys.
Natalie Jastrow’s fingers slid into Byron’s and clasped them, and for a moment she put her cheek, cool, bony, and yet soft, against his. “Idiotic, Briny?” she murmured.
He was too delighted with the contact to answer.
The starting line was directly in front of them, and behind them, above the judges’ stand, the Palio hung on its pole, stirring in a cool breeze blowing across the great amphitheatre. An ancient contraption of wood and rope controlled the start. To line up the dancing, overwrought animals inside the ropes proved almost impossible. The harried creatures capered in and out, they turned, reared, stumbled, and broke away twice in false starts. At last the ten horses went thudding off in a pack, with the jockeys clubbing wildly at the creatures and at each other. A yell rose above the steady roar, as two horses went down at the first set of mattresses. After that Byron lost track of the race. While he watched an unconscious jockey being dragged off the dirt, another wild yell of the crowd told of more mishaps, which he couldn’t see. The pack came racing by in a club-waving dirt-flying jumble, strung out over five or six lengths. A riderless horse galloped well up among them, dripping foam, its reins dangling.
“Can a riderless horse win?” Jastrow shouted at Byron.
A man in the row below him turned up a fat warty red face with pointed moustaches and popping yellow eyes. “Si, si. Riderless is scosso, meestair, scosso. Viva Bruco! Scosso!”
When the pack came past the judges’ box a second time, the riderless horse was clearly in the lead, and Byron could see its Caterpillar colors and emblems.
“Scosso!” the warty red face turned and bellowed happily at Dr. Jastrow, exhaling heavy odors of garlic and wine, and two fists waved at him. “See, meestair? Whoo! Bruco! Cater-peel-air, meestair!”
“Yes, indeed, just so,” said Jastrow, shrinking a bit against Byron.
The noise in the piazza swelled to a general mad scream as the horses went round for the third and last time, with the surviving jockeys frantically beating their nags to make them overtake the riderless Bruco horse. They came past the finish in a shower of dirt, a maze of bobbing, straining heads and flailing jockeys’ arms. The riderless horse, its eyes rolling redly, was still barely in front.
“Bruco!” screamed the warty man, leaping a couple of feet in the air. “Scosso! Scosso! Ha ha!” He turned to Jastrow with a maniacal laugh, and vividly gestured that the horse was drugged by pumping a huge imaginary hypodermic needle into his arm. “Bravissimo! WHOO!” He clattered down the narrow aisle to the track, ran on to the dirt, and vanished in the swarm boiling out of the seats and over the barriers. The track was full on the instant with people milling, yelling, waving arms, jumping and embracing in ecstasy, shaking fists, clutching their heads, beating their breasts. Here and there in the mob were the bobbing plumed heads of the horses. On the track before the judges’ stand, a dozen white-shirted young men were beating an unhelmeted jockey, on his knees in the dirt, holding up both arms in a plea for mercy. The jockey’s face was welling bright blood.
“My lord, what’s going on there?” Jastrow quavered.
“Somebody failed to doublecross,” Byron said, “or else he triple-crossed.”
“I suppose”—Jastrow put a trembling hand to his beard—“this is the part the archbishop warned us about. Perhaps we had better leave, and—”
Byron slammed an arm across his chest. “Not now. Sit right where you are, sir, and don’t move. You too, Natalie.”
A squad of young men, with yellow-and-green Caterpillar scarves around their necks, came driving through the mob straight for the judges’ stand. They trampled up the benches past Jastrow, led by a pallid youngster streaming blood from his forehead. Byron held two protecting arms in front of the girl and Jastrow as the bloody-faced one seized the pole. The whole squad roared, cheered, and came thundering back down the benches with the banner.
“Now!” Byron took the hands of the other two. “Come.”
The excited Sienese, as well as the tourists, were prudently making way for the triumphant Caterpillars. Moving right behind them, with one arm around the girl and another around Jastrow, Byron got through the archway into the main lower street of the town. But here the mob eddied in behind the Palio and its triumphant escort and engulfed them, crushing uphill toward the cathedral.
“Oh, Lord,” Natalie said. “We’re in for it now. Hang on to Aaron.”
“Dear me, I’m afraid I didn’t bargain for this,” gasped Jastrow, fumbling at his hat and his glasses with one free hand. The other was pinned in Byron’s grip. “My feet are scarcely touching the ground, Byron.”
“That’s okay. Don’t fight them, sir, just go along. At the first side street this jam will ease up. Take it easy—”
A convulsive, panicky surge of the crowd at this moment tore the professor out of Byron’s grasp. Behind them sounded the clatter of hoofs on stone, wild neighs and whinnies, and shouts of alarm. The crowd melted around Byron and Natalie, fleeing from a plunging horse. It was the winner, the Caterpillar animal. A brawny young man in green and yellow, his wig awry and sliding, was desperately trying to control the animal, but as it reared again, a flailing front hoof caught him full in the face. He fell bloodied to the ground, and the horse was free. It danced, reared, and screamed, plunging forward, and the crowd shrank away. As Byron pulled Natalie into a doorway out of the retreating mob, Aaron Jastrow emerged in the clear street without his glasses, stumbled, and fell in the horse’s path.
Without a word to Natalie, Byron ran out into the street and snatched Jastrow’s big yellow hat off his head. He waved the hat in the horse’s face, crouching, watching the hoofs. The creature neighed wildly, shied against a palazzo wall, stumbled and lost its footing, then recovered and reared, flailing its forelegs at Byron, who waved the hat again, staying watchfully just out of range. The horse pranced about on two legs, rolling bloodshot mad eyes, foaming at the mouth.
Half a dozen men in Caterpillar costumes now came running up the street, and four of them seized the reins, dragged the horse down, and began to quiet him. The others picked up their injured comrade.
People from the crowd darted out and helped Jastrow get up. Natalie ran to his side. Men surrounded Byron, slapping his shoulder and shouting in Italian as he made his way to Jastrow. “Here’s your hat, sir.”
“Oh, thank you, Byron. My glasses, you haven’t seen them, have you? I suppose they’re shattered. Well, I have another pair at the villa.” The professor was blinking blindly, but he acted rather excited and cheerful. “Goodness, what a commotion. What happened? I was pushed down, I guess. I heard a horse clattering about, but I couldn’t see a thing.”
“He’s all right,” Natalie said to Byron, with a look straight into his eyes such as she had never before given him. “Thanks.”
“Dr. Jastrow, if you’re not too shaken up,” Byron said, taking his arm again, “we should go to the Caterpillar church for the thanksgiving service.”
“Oh, not at all,” Jastrow laughed. The moment of action seemed to have cleared his nerves. “In for a penny, in for a pound. I find all this rather exhilarating. On we go. Just hang on to me a little better, Byron. You were a bit derelict there for a minute.”
A week or so later, Natalie and Byron were at work in the library, with a summer thunderstorm beating outside at the darkened windows. Byron, happening to look up from a map when lightning flashed, saw Natalie staring at him, her face sombre in the lamplight.
“Byron, have you ever been to Warsaw?”
“No. Why?”
“Would you like to come the
re with me?”
With great willpower, choking back his joy, Byron summoned up the opaque dull look with which he had resisted twenty years of his father’s probings: “What would be the point?”
“Well, it’s probably worth seeing, don’t you think? Slote even says it’s rather old-world and gay. The thing is, Aaron’s getting difficult about my trip. You know that. I could just tell him to go to hell, but I’d rather not.”
Byron had heard the discussions. In the aftermath of the Palio, on learning how close he had come to getting injured or killed, Jastrow was having a spell of nerves. The American consul in Florence had come up after the Palio for a visit; following that, Jastrow’s glum mood had worsened. He kept insisting that the Foreign Service was getting worried over the Polish situation, and that Natalie’s proposed trip was now too risky.
Byron said, “Would my going make a difference?”
“Yes. You know what Aaron calls you behind your back now? That golden lad. He can’t get over what you did at the Palio.”
“You exaggerated it.”
“I did not. You showed striking presence of mind. I was impressed, and so was Aaron when he found out. The horse might have killed him. If I can tell him you’re coming, I bet he’ll stop grumbling.”
“Your friend Slote might take a dim view of my showing up with you.”
Natalie said with a grim little smile, “I’ll handle Leslie Slote. All right?”
“I’ll think about it,” Byron said.
“If you need money, I’ll be glad to lend you some.”
“Oh, I’ve got money. As a matter of fact, Natalie, there’s not all that much to think about. I guess I’ll come along. With Jastrow off in Greece, this will be a dismal place.”
“Bless your heart.” She gave him a delighted smile. “We’ll have fun. I’ll see to that.”
“What happens after Warsaw?” Byron said. “Will you come back here?”
“I guess so, if the consul doesn’t persuade Aaron to go home meantime. He’s really working on him. And you, Briny?”
“Well, maybe I will too,” Byron said. “I’m at loose ends.”
That night at dinner, when he heard the news, Dr. Jastrow ordered up a bottle of champagne. “Byron, I can’t tell you what a load you’ve taken off my mind! This headstrong girl doesn’t know how wild and backward Poland is. I do. From what my relatives write me, it hasn’t improved one iota since I left there forty-five years ago. And the situation really is unstable. The villain with the moustache is making nasty noises, and we must look for the worst. However, there’s bound to be some warning. My mind is much more at ease now. You’re a capable young man.”
“You talk as though I were some kind of idiot,” Natalie said, sipping champagne.
“You are a girl. It’s something you have trouble remembering. You were that way as a child, climbing trees and fighting boys. Well, I’ll be here alone, then. But I won’t mind that.”
“Won’t you be in Greece, sir?” Byron said.
“I’m not so sure.” Jastrow smiled at their puzzled looks. “It’s some clumsiness about my passport. I let it lapse, and not being native-born, but naturalized through my father’s naturalization, it turns out there’s a bit of red tape involved in renewing it. Especially since I haven’t been back in nine years. The problem may or may not be unravelled by the end of August. If it isn’t, I’ll just take the trip next spring.”
“That’s something you should certainly straighten out,” Byron said.
“Oh, of course. These things used to be simple, the consul says. But since the flood of refugees from Hitler began, the rules have tightened up. Well, Briny, so you and Natalie will be off to Warsaw in a few weeks! I couldn’t be more pleased, and I’m sure she can use a chaper-one.”
“Go climb a tree, Aaron,” Natalie said, turning pink, and her uncle laughed at her, his first wholehearted laugh in a week.
“I hope you’ll manage to meet my cousin Berel,” Jastrow said to Byron. “I haven’t seen him since I left Poland, but we’ve usually exchanged three or four letters a year. Presence of mind has always been his strong point, too.”
6
PAMELA drove Commander Henry and her father to Swinemünde. The train would have been faster, but Henry wanted to see the countryside and the small towns, and the Englishman was more than agreeable. One could almost get to like Germans, he said, if one stayed out of the cities. Pug was appalled at the girl’s driving. She chauffeured the rented Mercedes around Berlin in docile conformity to the lights and the speed laws, but once on the autobahn she rocketed the needle to one hundred fifty kilometers an hour. Tudsbury chatted over the wind roar, paying little attention to the scenery blurring past.
He now thought there might be no war. The British were dealing seriously at last with the Russians about a military alliance. They were starting to turn out airplanes so much faster that regaining air parity, which they had lost in 1936, was in sight. Their pledge to Poland showed Hitler that this time Chamberlain meant business. The Nazi Party in Danzig had quieted down. Mussolini had flatly told Hitler (so Tudsbury’s inside information had it) that he was not ready to fight. The correspondent foresaw a respite of two or three years, during which the alarmed democracies would rearm faster than the Germans possibly could. The cornered dictator would eventually either fall, or start a war and be crushed, or very likely get assassinated.
“I can’t understand why somebody hasn’t shot him long ago, the way he shows himself. He bears a charm,” Tudsbury shouted, as the car careered out on the two-lane road to pass a long line of thundering trucks full of new gray-painted army tanks. Pug Henry clutched at an armrest, for another truck was approaching head on, swelling like a balloon; it went by in a howl and a screech half a second after Pamela whisked into her own lane between two trucks, brushing hair off her forehead with one relaxed little hand. “But the charm is based on success. It may lapse once he stops moving ahead. He’s murdered a lot of people on the way up. They all have relatives.”
Commander Grobke came to meet them at the base gate in a small car, which Tudsbury could barely squeeze into. Pamela roared off to a hotel, and Grobke took the two men for a long tour, by car and on foot, through the Swinemünde yard. It was a gray afternoon, with low black clouds threatening rain. The dank east wind off the Baltic felt pleasantly cool after the sultriness of Berlin. The flat, sandy, bleak seacoast base was much like New London, Victor Henry thought. If one ignored flags and signs, in fact, the naval facilities of big powers were hard to tell apart. They were all in the same business, imitating the British navy, which had first brought the industrial age to war at sea. The low black U-boats tied in clusters to the long piers or resting on blocks in dry docks; the smell of tar, hot metal, and seawater; the slow clank and screech of overhead cranes; the blaze of welding torches, the rattle of riveters; the flat or curved sections of steel, painted with yellow or red primer, swinging through the air; the gigantic open sheds; the mounds of piping, cables, timbers, and oil drums; the swarms of grease-blackened cheerful men in dirty coveralls, goggles, and hard hats; the half-finished hulls propped with timbers on rails slanting into dirty water—he might have been in Japan, France, Italy, or the United States. The differences that counted, the crucial numbers and performance characteristics, were not discernible.
He could see that the Germans were not changing the classic double hull of a submarine, and that, like the Americans, they were doing more welding. He would have liked to apply his pocket tape measure to a steel pressure hull section. The plate seemed thinner than in American submarines. If this were so, U-boats could probably not dive quite as deep, unless the Germans had developed a remarkably strong new alloy. But on such a visit one used one’s eye, not a camera or a tape measure.
A low sun broke out under the gray clouds, and the car cast an elongated shadow when Grobke stopped near the entrance gate at a dry dock where a U-boat rested on blocks. From one side of the dock a gangway with rails, and from the other a
precarious long plank, slanted down to the submarine’s deck.
“Well, that’s the tour,” said Grobke. “This is my flagship. Since I cannot have you aboard, Tudsbury, much as I would like to, I suppose we all part company here.”
Henry picked up his cue from the German’s smile. “Look, let’s not stand on ceremony. If I can come aboard, I’ll come and Tudsbury won’t.”
“Good God, yes,” said the Englishman. “I’ve no business here anyway.”
The U-boat commander spread his hands. “I don’t want to drive a wedge in Anglo-American friendship.”
A whistle blasted as they spoke, and workmen came trooping off the boats and docks, and out of the sheds. The road to the gate was soon thronged with them. They came boiling out of the U-boat, up the gangway. “The old navy yard hazard,” Henry said. “Run for your life at five o’clock, or they’ll trample you to death.”
Grobke laughed. “All civilians are the same.”
Tudsbury said, “Well, in my next broadcast I’ll have to say that the U-boat command is humming like damn all. I hope they’ll take notice in London.”
“Just tell them what you saw.” Grobke shook his hand through the car window. “We want to be friends. We know you have the greatest navy in the world. These silly little boats can do a lot of damage for their size, that’s all. One of my officers will drive you to your hotel.”
Since workmen were jamming the gangway, Grobke grinned at Henry, and pointed a thumb toward the plank on the other side of the dock. Pug nodded. The German with a gesture invited him to go first. It was a very long drop, something like seventy feet, to the greasy puddles in the concrete dock. Pug made his way around the rim and walked down the shaky paint-spotted plank, trying to look easier than he felt. Stolid eyes of side boys in white watched from below. As he set foot on deck, they snapped to attention. Grobke stepped off the rattling plank with a laugh. “Well done, for two old blokes.”
U-46 looked much like an American submarine, but the cleanliness, polish, and order were unusual. A United States ship in dry dock, with civilian workmen aboard, soon became squalid and dirty. No doubt Grobke had ordered a cleanup for the American visitor, which Pug appreciated, being himself a spit-and-polish tyrant. Even so, he had to admire the German display. The diesels looked as though they had never turned over, their red paint and brass fittings were unsullied by a grease spot, and the batteries seemed fresh from the factory. The sailors were starched pretty fellows, almost a crew for a nautical musical comedy. As for the U-boat design, when you took the essential spaces and machines of a war vessel and stuffed them into the sausage casing of one long tube, the result was the same in any country: change the instrument legends to English, move the captain’s cabin from port to starboard, add two feet to the wardroom, alter a few valve installations, and you were in the Grayling.