The Return of Lanny Budd

by Upton Sinclair

  They brushed the snow from a flat boulder and sat on it, looking up and down the river. The New York Central Railroad ran along the opposite shore, and there were houses here and there, but the hills above were mostly forest-clad and as nature made them. Nature was beautiful—at least it appeared so on a mild and bright winter day; but man tormented himself and his fellows, and this fact made nature-love seem like idleness and futility.

  Hansi took the occasion to become confidential about the strange love-life he was having. He had been rapturously in love with Bess and had all these old impulses, these memories of happiness; but they were in conflict with everthing that was now in his mind—his ideas, his judgment, his intellectual being. ‘It’s a terrible thing to say, Lanny, but the plain truth is that I don’t like Bess any more. Can you imagine that?’

  ‘I can imagine it very easily, Hansi. I have the same feeling toward her’.

  ‘She is dogmatic. She has taken up a set of notions and clings to them and will not face any facts that seem to oppose them. Russia is everything right and America is everything wrong. If you try to show her something that is wrong in Russia she evades the issue by showing you something that is wrong with America. It is a question of proportion, and she has lost that sense. She talks about how happy we were during our two years there; but that was in the early days of the war, and the Soviet leaders were frightened and needed help and were grateful. We were there to help them, and they idolised us’.

  ‘I imagine you met mostly the people of the art world, the cultured classes’.

  ‘Yes, of course. And if Bess went back there today as a political person she would find it entirely different. The men who rule the Soviet Union don’t trust Americans any more, and they might give her orders she wouldn’t like. But there’s no use trying to tell her anything like that’.

  Lanny chuckled. ‘Not when you’re trying to be a help to the F.B.I.’.

  ‘I believe everthing she tells me, I do everything she tells me to do. I make a success—like giving that concert and making money for her group—and then she is radiantly happy. She comes to me and I have to take her in my arms—and it seems like a sort of prostitution’.

  Lanny answered, ‘Tell yourself you’re taking a leaf out of the party book’. Then, after a little thought, he added, ‘I’m afraid, Hansi, you’re going to have to make up your mind to break with Bess’.

  ‘I am forcing myself to face that fact’.

  ‘You’ll find it a relief in the end’.

  ‘Sometimes I think so. I think it will be safer to be alone. Then I think about you and Laurel, and I realise how pleasant it might be to have a wife I could agree with. Tell me, Lanny, are you as happy as you appear?’

  Lanny smiled. ‘There was a German philosopher, Count Keyserling, who came over here before the war and lectured to us. I didn’t like him, but I remember one thing. He said, “Marriage is a tension”. Laurel is a person of very decided views, and she sometimes tells me things I already know, and it wouldn’t be polite to interrupt her. She sometimes has an idea for the Peace Programme that I don’t agree with; and if it turns out that she was right, that makes it no easier. I have decided that the two most important things in marriage are kindness and loyalty’. Lanny thought for a bit and then said, ‘Tell me, are they going to arrest Bess?’

  ‘They have promised to the best they can for her, but you can see it would make a bad smell if they were to arrest half-a-dozen poor devils who are implicated and let off the daughter of a great capitalist. They don’t tell me any more than they have to, but I know enough to be sure it’s going to make a sensational case. It has some of those picturesque features that the newspapers delight in’.

  ‘And you don’t know when it’s going to break?’

  ‘I haven’t an idea in the world, Lanny. For all I know they may be arresting the people at this very moment. They have a number of men working on the case, I know, and they will act when they are satisfied they have enough evidence’.

  ‘And what about you? Are you going to have to testify?’

  ‘That is one of the things that have to be decided. They want me to go on with the work, but I don’t know whether I can stand it. If they put Bess out of business, what could I do in the party? Certainly I don’t propose to pick up some Communist girl and do that kind of spying. I’m too well known to go underground, and what else is there except to play music and raise money for the cause?’

  VIII

  The sun was sinking behind the tops of the fir trees, and they got up and went down to the car and drove toward the city.

  On the way Hansi said, ‘I have an idea how to cover my absence. There’s a young fellow named Benny Stultz whom I taught for a while, and this season he has found a place with the Philharmonic. The last time I saw him he told me he had a composition he wanted very much for me to hear, and I promised I’d try to make an appointment. I’ll phone him, and if he’s at home I’ll go there; then I can phone my home, and if Bess is there I have a perfect explanation of my absence. If she isn’t home yet I’ll have a convincing story to tell her when she comes. She might take the trouble to check on it, you know; she might call Benny and congratulate him on his composition, or ask if I left my umbrella there, or something of that sort. You understand, I am married to the party line’.

  When they got near the city Hansi got out at a drugstore and telephoned and came back and reported that his friend was at home and would be delighted to see him. So when they got near a subway entrance the car stopped. Hansi said, ‘Thanks for the pleasantest day in a long time. It has done me a world of good’.

  He stepped out and walked away—and not toward the subway entrance until the car had passed on. No wandering comrade must see him and spoil his perfect alibi! When you have had your picture featured in the Daily Worker every month or so, and when only two nights ago you have stood for a couple of hours before an audience of a thousand, you can’t expect to go wandering around the streets of New York and not have somebody turn and look at you and then go home and say, ‘What do you think? I saw Hansi Robin going into the subway! I wanted to speak to him but I didn’t have the nerve’.

  IX

  The twenty-fifth of December came; it had been Christmas day precisely sixteen hundred and two times, ever since the Church decided that it was a mistake to celebrate it in the spring, when it coincided with the birthday of Mithras, the god of a rival religion. Once more the important Budd clan would assemble at the home of its oldest male member; once more they would smile and exchange friendly greetings, no matter how much envy, hatred, malice, and uncharitableness they might have in their hearts; once more they would eat too much and afterward wish they hadn’t.

  The left-wing branch of the family in New Jersey would be packed in the car and transported round by the way of the George Washington Bridge and the parkways. All four of them would have to go, for it was unthinkable that the clan should not have an opportunity to see and greet the almost-year-old baby. It would be the first time that precious mite had been taken outside the fence that enclosed the grounds of its Edgemere shelter. It was the most hygienically brought up baby to be found inside the populous state of New Jersey. It had been perfectly fed, perfectly trained, perfectly guarded, and if it had ever been kissed or dandled it had been without the knowledge of its mother. It was still slightly ahead of the Gesell schedule and was toddling around on tottery legs. Now it was going where there were people who might have colds or might have just had ’flu, and at the cost of whatever unpopularity, its mother and its conscientious nurse were going to see that nobody implanted any germs upon its lips, cheeks, or forehead.

  Lanny drove, and Laurel sat beside him and once in a while made suggestions. The nurse and the baby sat in the back seat in one corner, and Junior had the rest of the car to himself and a whole window to look out through. He couldn’t keep still for a moment and was beside himself with delight at the wonders of the American highway. In truth there had been nothing like it since
the start of the world; cars of all sizes and colours and shapes went flying by in an endless string, and every time one passed close, the youngster would cry. ‘Woosh!’ It was a white Christmas, and children were out with their sleds and skating on the ponds; you could see your breath in the cold, but inside the magical car it was warm. The world was endlessly mysterious and delightful. The only way you could find out about it was by asking questions. Junior did.

  And then at the end of the journey was that magnificent big house and a crowd of people, old and young, many of whom Junior remembered. There was a tree and there were presents, and a dinner, at a separate table and in a separate room for the children. They were all dressed up, and they all had names, and they chattered about their families and the schools they went to and the games they played. Lanny Junior was going to kindergarten, but soon he would be ready for school, and he listened and learned about it with eager curiosity.

  X

  Frances and Scrubbie had followed in their car. Lanny’s daughter of course rated as a member of the tribe, and the younger son of an English titled family rated not so low in America as at home. Frances had been the guest of Robbie and Esther in the past, and now she would renew her acquaintance with the younger members of the family, exchange news with them and play table tennis.

  Meantime Laurel heard what the ladies thought about the Peace Programme, and the gentlemen heard about what Lanny had seen in Germany and France. They all knew that Robbie’s son had been born out of wedlock, and they also knew that he had been a Pinko; but he had made good, and they gathered round to ask what he thought about the prospects of our being driven out of Berlin, and about the Red strike which had come so near to taking possession of France. Was there any hope whatever for Europe, or were we just pouring our money into a bottomless hole? They thought Lanny wasn’t much different from a Red himself, but somehow he had managed to meet all the important people and to know the inside of affairs. Lanny was probably the only Democrat in this mansion, unless perhaps there were some among the servants. But the world was going his way, and there seemed to be nothing you could do about it any more.

  Lanny had been planning to drive his family home that night; but Robbie said the roads would be full of drunks and anyhow he wanted to have a quiet talk with his son. So the little family stayed over, and in the morning Lanny was closeted in his father’s study, which was full of books the old man had been intending to read all his life. First of all he wanted to know about Bess and the awful thing that was hanging over the family. Lanny had to tell him that he didn’t know anything new.

  Robbie had, of course, not been told of Hansi’s dealing with the F.B.I., and Lanny had to be very careful not to drop an inadvertent hint. He said that he had not seen Mr Post of the F.B.I. and had no knowledge of what the organisation might have learned or might be intending to do. From his general knowledge of their techniques he could guess that they were giving the conspirators rope to hang themselves with. One thing could be taken as certain, the government would not drop the matter, so Robbie must be prepared for something serious. He hadn’t said a word about it to his wife.

  Then there was Paris and Lanny’s visit to the de Bruyne family. Robbie knew that his old-time business associate Denis pére had died, but he was interested to hear about the son and heir and his attitude toward Budd-Erling and toward his country’s politics and prospects. It would be a terrible thing indeed if the Reds were to get France; the rest of Europe would fall like a house of cards. It amused Lanny to tell his father about Irving Brown and his efforts to aid the Marshall Plan all over the Continent. Robbie had no enthusiasm for the Marshall Plan and certainly not for the A.F.L. He had always taken it for granted that the labour unionists were more or less camouflaged Reds; to learn that they were spending their good money to fight the Cocos in France opened up new vistas in the mind of a staunch Republican industrialist.

  XI

  The family was stowed in the car and they set out westward. Lanny had telephoned Johannes Robin and agreed to stop by for a visit; it would have been a cruelty to neglect those friends. They too had had a Christmas party, because it was the custom of the country; it gave delight to the children and did no harm. A sad party for Mama Robin, because of the great gap in the family. Hansi and Bess hadn’t come; they were off on some of their party affairs.

  Hansi came to see her very seldom now, she said; it was because she couldn’t keep the tears from her eyes in his presence; she had them in her eyes now when she told Lanny and Laurel about it. She adored Lanny and wouldn’t for the world have said anything to hurt his feelings, but he knew that she blamed the Budd family in her heart. They were goyim, and Hansi should have married some good Jewish girl; she might even have been willing to employ a shadchen, a marriage broker. Lanny might have pointed out to her that it was not unknown for Jewish girls to turn into Reds; but he did not pursue that painful subject.

  The two Hansibess boys, as Lanny called them, were spending the holidays here. They were very nice boys, ten and twelve, and were outside happily building a snowman; inside, their grandmother lamented their sad lot. They were practically orphans. Their parents were engaged in activities about which they wouldn’t tell anyone. The boys were half Jewish and half Christian, but they were really neither—they hardly knew what the word God meant. Every night Mama told them tales out of the old Jewish holy books, to arm them against the day when the wicked Communist party would try to get possession of their minds.

  Laurel showed off her two children and kept them from being kissed, while Lanny talked with old Johannes, now failing in health, and told him what he had seen in Berlin and Paris. Gott sei Dank that the family was living on the peaceful shore of Long Island Sound! The more you watched affairs in the old world the more glad you were to be living in the new. Johannes declared that half the people in Europe and Asia would come to the United States if they were able to gain admission.

  He gave it as his expert opinion that Western Europe was through; it would be on the downgrade from this time on. A shrewd and intelligent man who had made a great fortune in Germany and lost it to the Nazis, Johannes knew how things had been in the old days, and refugees kept him informed as to how things were now. He had been reading about the downfall of ancient Greek civilisation; those little states had destroyed one another and themselves by incessant wars, and in the end the more primitive Macedonians from the north had taken them over. In the case of Western Europe it would be the more primitive Russians from the north. There was no possibility of saving the border states; country after country was being devoured, and you could hear the crunching of the bones.

  On the previous evening Lanny had listened to his half-brother Percy Budd, who had just returned from big-game hunting in Africa. He had described how it felt to be sitting in a seat built in the crutch of a tree, waiting at night for the approach of a great lion. A goat blatting with fear had been staked out under the tree in a clear spot, and the lion had leaped upon it and broken its neck with a single stroke of his paw. Percy had given a vivid account of the sounds as the lion tore the creature to pieces, snarling in the meantime at the hyenas, or jackals, or whatever lesser creatures were waiting at a distance for the remnants of the feast. Johannes said that was a good image, only in this case it was not a lion but a bear. Listen over the radio and you could hear the crunching of the bones of Czechoslovakia and Poland, Hungary and Rumania. Pretty soon it would be Greece and Iran—and at the opposite end of of the heartland the small far-off pensilsula of Korea.

  XII

  Lanny went home and did as Johannes had suggested; his job required him to listen to news broadcasts and to read several newspapers and magazines. Rick, having a lame knee, did even more reading; he would mark passages for Lanny, and once or twice a week they would get together for a conference on the state of the world and what the Peace Programme should say about it. During the month of January Pravda announced that the Soviet government had forbidden Dimitrov to carry out his plan for a B
alkan Federation. This Dimitrov had been one of the revolutionary heroes; he had been accused by the Nazis of starting the Reichstag fire and had defied them in a sensational public trial in Leipzig. But now the Soviet sat down on him hard. Nations that were to be devoured separately must not be permitted to get together.

  And in that same month the Communist party of France served the demand that their parliamentary deputy Jacques Duclos should be permitted to become the first vice-president of that nation. It was this Duclos whose pronouncement in a French magazine had turned the American Communist party upside down and put Foster in the place of Browder. His request now meant that France was to consent to her own slow death. In that same month the value of the franc in relation to the dollar was officially reduced from a hundred and nineteen to two hundred and fourteen. Lanny should have waited to pay for that Rembrandt!

  In the month of February the Soviet government protested to the government of Iran against its receiving aid from the United States; and in the same month the Czech government brought on a crisis by protesting against Communist infiltration of the police. Four days later a so-called Communist Action Committee took over all the public offices of Czechoslovakia, all departments, newspapers, and radio stations. In vain did the United States, Britain, and France denounce this setting up of a new dictatorship. If the big-game hunter in the tree had denounced the lion he might have frightened it away from its prey, but not so with the Russian bear—he would only snarl more loudly.