The Trespassers (33 page)

In Switzerland, in a summer chalet at Erlenbach, Franz Vederle and his family listened to the radio as they sat together at breakfast. Even the children were grave, Ilse infected by the voices and faces of the others, Paul speaking with an even deeper maturity than he usually showed when he talked with his parents about his expanding world of daily history.

The children finally went outdoors and left them alone. Christa turned to Franz, her eyes asking her question.

“Yes, this will make it harder,” he said quietly. “It is terrible to think of ourselves in a time like this, but it’s impossible not to.” He remained silent for many minutes. Then he went to the telephone. He put in a call for London.

“I wrote him last week how Huebchen ignores our cables,” he explained to her. “Perhaps he has learned something to explain it. I have even wondered whether he could be one of those visa shysters who promise anything to lead one on.”

They sat in silence for the call to go through.

The maid Thilde arrived. She had stopped for the mail, and laid two letters down before Franz. The one on top bore a Paris postmark; the address was in a hand that was slightly familiar. He opened it.

“It’s from Dr. Huebchen,” he said in astonishment. “From Paris.” Christa came around to see, and they read it together. He trusted that they would not feel that he had promised more than he could deliver, but now it was a momentary chagrin to inform them that some time would have to pass before he could announce the inevitable success of his mission on their behalf.

“This Huebchen
must
be a fraud or a fake,” Franz said, “I felt it all along,” and returned to the reading. Before he had left Cape Town on the fifteenth, to go by boat and air to most important responsibilities in Paris, the new war scare was already so tense in the Union that he had abandoned, for the time being only, his efforts on their behalf. With emotions so aroused in government circles, it was clear that no entry permits would be quickly issued to any further German or Austrian settlers, even such distinguished ones as they. Perhaps when he returned in December, or at the latest in January, he could approach the high authorities once more.

Without a word, Franz put the letter down, lit a cigarette, drew on it with careful breaths, and crossed the room to the telephone. “Cancel that call to London, please,” he said. Then he slammed the receiver into place as if he would smash it right through the metal box.

He turned around to see Christa holding the second letter out to him. “It’s from South Africa,” she said.

He tore it open.

It was on official stationery, but it was a mimeographed form.

SIR,

I have to inform you that the applications by…you and your family…for permanent residence in the Union have been rejected by the Immigrations Selection Board.

I have the honor to be, Sir,

Your obedient Servant,

It was signed only by a scrawled initial, under which was the legend
ACTING SECRETARY FOR THE INTERIOR.

For one moment, he stared at it. He stood there, staring, motionless. Christa came to his side, read it, sat down in the nearest chair.

The cigarette in Franz’ hand sent smoke up into his eyes. He glanced at it and then hurled it with all his might at the wall. It exploded into a tiny shower of sparks and Christa ran to stamp them out.

“Damn them, God damn them all, not even one word, not one explanation,” Franz shouted. She turned to him in alarm. His shoulders were clenched high, his hands knotted themselves into fists. “It’s a barbarism—the new barbarism. Damn these formal, careful officials—these heartless laws. Everywhere we turn they treat us as if we were trespassing on the earth itself. I want to kill them, because they would rather kill us than let us in.”

She ran to him, put her arms around him, leaned against him.

“Dearest, Franz, my darling—don’t, don’t—” There was nothing muted about her now. She cried out to him, to him alone, her voice vibrating with her pleading, with her love. “Don’t give up—don’t give in to them—to any of them, not you, not you—”

When at last he spoke, he seemed to be coming back to her from a long way. His voice was tired, and he kept shaking his head slowly as if he had seen the insoluble and were puzzling over it still.

“No, we won’t give in to them, Christl. It’s better to fight.”

Almost at that very moment, in the city of Karlsbad, an old woman carefully locked the door to the two-room, flat that had been her home since she had left Germany. She turned in the keys to the landlord and went out upon the street. She had heard the bitter news from the neighbors an hour ago. But it could scarcely crowd out her joy that at last she was on her way to Bronya in America.

She started for the station. It was not far and her suitcase was not heavy.

She had grown to love this lovely resort city, although she had been so wrong to trust its safety. Now as she walked, she felt a sadness at losing it forever; the narrow valley was so beautiful with the Tepl River running through it; the great park was magnificent, and the tourists were always so gay to watch. She sighed.

She approached the station. There were soldiers—but she need not be afraid of them now. Her arm, holding her black pocketbook, tightened inward toward her body. She need not be afraid. She had the magic to make her fearless—the passport with the page for America, the railroad ticket and the steamship ticket the Refugee Agency had provided, paid for in America by Bronya’s friends. No, she was afraid of no one now.

“
Halt.
”

One of them had stepped out from a doorway; she had not seen him there. She stopped. This hated uniform—

“Where are you going, you dirty old Jew pig?” He spat on the sidewalk.”

“I have my American papers; they are arranged. I am going to the station.”

“Give here.” He thrust out his hand.

But she was not afraid. She opened her purse, her eyes on the face above her, since her fingers needed no help to find the priceless cargo she carried. She brought out her papers, held them open, but did not pass them over to him.

He wrenched them from her, examined them. She watched him leaf over the pages of her passport, and gloated inside her soul at his hesitation when he came to the page with the American visa. He stared at it. Was he trying to remember whether they had been ordered to let such blessed ones alone? He inspected her railway tickets, her steamship ticket.

Then he threw them back to her.

The passport fell to the street, and she stooped for it. He spat again, she could hear the sound. And in that same instant, her ungloved hand which reached for the passport was wet. Wet with Nazi spittle.

She stood up. She put the passport into her bag and picked up her cheap straw suitcase. She looked up to his face. He was watching her, and their eyes met. She looked down at her hand. It was still wet.

Then she suddenly pursed her lips and spat, full and wet, on the sidewalk at his feet. For one second more, she watched his unbelieving face, then she turned.

She walked rapidly away. There, just ahead was the station.
This
she had had to do. From behind her came his voice, “
Halt, halt, Achtung, halt.
” She walked on. More rapidly now. No, she had not been afraid.

Somewhere a shot rang out. She heard it. Then, mysteriously, she was falling, stumbling. Her suitcase left her hand. Her black bag slipped and fell to the sidewalk. It fell open. She could see—she could see—there, spread on the sidewalk—the little book with the page inside—the bright colors of the steamship ticket. She stretched her body forward, forward to reach them.

“G
ET ME
B
ELLINGER,”
Jasper said to his secretary. “Try London first, then Berlin.”

“Yes, Mr. Crown.”

“And ask Craven, Terson, and McAnson if they can come in here right away. Tell them it’s major.”

It was half-past four on the fourteenth of September. Five minutes before, the news that Chamberlain would fly to Germany the next day had burst out at him when he turned on the radio in his office. Almost at once, he put out his hand to the desk calendar, drew it up close before him, and began turning over the pages. When he reached Saturday, October 15, he stopped. For the rest of the five minutes he sat, leaning forward, staring at the date; no part of his body moved. The cigarette on the tray in front of him smoked itself out into a two-inch mound of fragile gray. Then he buzzed for his secretary, and told her to get Bellinger. Only when she nodded and left did he light another cigarette and lean far into the back of his chair.

He had decided. His blood raced with the sense of high occasion.

The door opened. Giles Craven came in, and behind him Ken McAnson. They were talking excitedly about the news. A moment later Frank Terson joined them. He had not heard, and when they poured it out at him he said, “I don’t believe you—that would be suicide for England.”

Jas talked about it as if it were only news—and not a signal. For several minutes not one of the three thought to ask why he had asked them to come at once. Jas was a little amused at that. At last, Terson turned to him.

“Jas, you never got us all here just to hash this news out.”

“That’s right, Frank.” He lifted the telephone. “Call coming through?”

He nodded, lifted a finger to the three men as he began to talk into the instrument.

“Bellinger? Hello there. Where’d they find you?…How are they taking it in London?…Yes…yes…Hitler’s called together the whole military staff, hey?” He listened attentively, his head bent forward, his eyes watching a spot on the carpet at his feet. “No, not direct from Europe…just over the news tickers and then on the air here. Yes…now hang on to yourself—
I’ve
got some news for you.”

His eyes went in turn to each of the faces watching him. Now it was beginning to dawn on them.

“Listen, Bellinger. We’ve decided to open right away…yes, sure, the network …no, not October fifteenth, now, in twenty-four hours or forty-eight—the minute Engineering and Traffic and the A.T. & T. give us O.K…Hold it a minute.”

He turned away from the phone, his face lit with enjoying this moment. Giles Craven was hugging him; McAnson ,and Terson crowded close, talk spurting from them.

“Hey, pipe down, you guys,” he said, boisterous, young, “I can’t hear a damn thing…Yes, Bellinger…oh, good man to feel that too. Sure we’re excited as fools…Now listen and get this. If we can’t carry it over more than three stations, we’ll start. As I get it, we could pipe in about thirty by tomorrow, maybe forty or fifty the day after. We’ll add the others as fast as they can be swung in. Anyway, you skip that part of it—act as if it were four weeks from now and the whole hundred and twenty hooked up…yes…yeah, that’s the way to talk. Anyway, call Kane in London and Le Zitorsky in Paris; tell them that from tomorrow morning, they’re to stand by twenty-four hours a day, keep them revising their scripts every half-hour for new leads…about ten-minute minimums…oh, and, Bellinger, did you get Staunton signed for Berlin?…Good, fine…and keep plugging it through for Prague…”

For five minutes the talk went on. When he hung up, Jas turned to them all. His eyes shone, his mouth grinned, even while he talked.

“We’ve
got
to,” he said. “It’s crazy as hell, but we just can’t miss out on this. God, Bellinger says the market crashed—everybody thinks it will be war.”

They all talked at once. Their voices made layers of sound, their sentences collided and overlapped. Basically cautious or basically venturesome, each man at this moment brushed every difficulty aside in a unison of excited recognition. Crown was right. This leaping decision was a genius of timing.

Almost without speech, they all four swept away their careful plans for the formal opening, preceded by “announcement” advertising in every one of the nation’s important newspapers. Their meticulous arrangements for the next four weeks’ publicity, news releases, radio announcements—everything they now tossed into an emotional wastepaper basket.

Life, history, was doing it for them, better than they ever could hope to do it for themselves. Jasper had seen that instantly and acted upon it instantly.

“It’s going to cost like hell,” Frank Terson finally pointed out, “with no time sold until October fifteenth.”

Jasper waved that aside.

“I don’t care what it costs. Take it out of Advertising. Take it out of anything. This is a God-given break—we just can’t miss out on this one. A war scare like this? It’ll pin millions to their radios—hunting all over the dial for the hottest news.”

“Sure, we’ve got to—NBC and CBS will—”

“Couple of times a day direct from Europe is all they’ll do. And JCN—every thirty minutes! Christ, we’ll have an audience of millions in a week, twenty millions, forty millions.” He broke off his excitement. “
If
we’re ready tomorrow or Friday.”

Giles suddenly slapped his thigh and roared into laughter.

“You must have signed up God, Jas,” he sputtered. “We’ve got two days’ leeway—I just remembered, somebody in Engineering told me—not a damn thing’s coming through from Europe, atmospheric’s thick as marble and looks like it’s going to hold for twenty-four to forty-eight hours. Is God on our team or not?”

They all shouted their laughter. It was an omen.

“O.K., Jasper,” said Frank Terson. “Let’s say Friday at nine
A.M.
we go on the air. Shake.”

For a moment they were solemn. Now the months of planning, of negotiating contracts and deals, of arranging technical facilities, of finding and hiring the right personnel—now all that must fit, mesh into a gigantic and delicate thing.

Crown lifted up his interoffice phone. “Get all heads up here, will you, please?” he said softly. “Engineering, Traffic, Station Relations, and the rest.”

Just before they began to come in, Jas called Vee’s office. Since he’d come back from Cleveland and straightened things out with her, everything had been so fine, he didn’t mean to let even this make him do something to upset her. If Vee only could believe it, she’d know that he hated himself with an unbearable fury after one of those spells which got hold of him.