Winds of War (14 page)

A beefy young Pole in an olive uniform, speaking broken French, asked the two Americans many hostile questions and seemed to regard them as spies or lunatics. He confiscated their passports, muttered with other officials, told them to wait, and disappeared. They were famished, but the throng of refugees in the canteen, mostly Germans, sitting on luggage, squatting on the floor, or crowding every bench and chair, had long since eaten up all the food. Byron pounced on a couple of seats vacated for a moment. Bottles of warm Polish beer stood in the center of the table, with an opener and some glasses, so they drank warm beer and paid the waiter who came swooping down. Then Byron found a telephone and talked the waiter into calling the embassy. Slote was shocked to hear his voice. He appeared at the airport within the hour, chewing nervously on his cold pipe, in a shiny blue Chevrolet that prompted stares. Out came not only the passports, with various entry documents badly printed in purple ink on crude paper, but their luggage too, mysteriously rescued from the Balkans. They piled into the embassy car and set off for the city.

Natalie looked trim and pert after a last grooming in the ladies’ lounge - the size of a telephone booth, she said, with one cold water tap, and no seat on the single toilet bowl. “Does this continue, Leslie?” she said. “I mean, this is the airport of the capital of Poland! The further east we’ve come, the smaller the airports have gotten, the more loused-up the schedules, the worse the airplanes, the surlier the officials, the cruder the johns, and the rougher the toilet paper. I’m not sure my bottom would survive a trip to Russia.”

“Well, eastern Europe is another world, Natalie. And you’re seeing it at a bad time. This little airport’s usually deserted and half asleep. However” – he jabbed the stem of his pipe toward her – “if you choose to go on a trip during a time of general mobilization -”

“Here it comes, Briny,” she said, her eyes full of amusement.

Slote reached a caressing hand, with a large blue-gemmed college ring, to her face. The easy intimate gesture hurt Byron’s eyes, signalling the end of his exclusive (if unheated) possession of the girl’s company. He slumped glumly in the back seat. I’m thrilled to see you, though you’re stark mad,” Slote said. “Things are looking much better tonight. England finally signed her guarantee to Poland, just today. The betting was that the pact with Russia would make her crawfish. Nothing of the sort. There’s reliable word from Sweden that Hitler’s calling off his invasion. The English knocked his breath out, that’s unmistakable.”

“Where are you putting us? A place with bathtubs, I hope.”

“It’s no problem. In the past three days the hotels have emptied. The Europeiski has some luxurious rooms, quite Western, really, and at Eastern prices. Don’t figure on staying long. The situation can still turn sour overnight.”

“I thought maybe a week,” Natalie said. “Then Byron and I can fly or drive down to Cracow and visit Medzice, and then fly on back to Rome.”

“Great bloody Christ, what are you talking about? Medzice! Just forget it, Natalie!”

“Why should I? Uncle Aaron said I should visit the family in Medzice. That’s where we’re all from. My gosh, this is flat country. Flat as a table.”

They were driving through fields of sweet-smelling grain, interspersed with pastures where cows and horses grazed. Far, far ahead on the level plain, the buildings of Warsaw dimly rose.

“Exactly, and that’s Poland’s curse. It’s a soccer field, a hundred thousand square miles in size. Fine for invasions. Even the low mountains along the south have nice wide easy passes. Half a million German soldiers are in Czechoslovakia at this moment, poised at the Jablunka pass, forty miles from Medzice. Now do you understand?”

Natalie made a face at him.

Warsaw was much calmer than Rome. In lamplit twilight, well-dressed crowds, heavily sprinkled with uniforms, were happily promenading on the broad avenues, eating ice cream, smoking, chatting. The green parks were thronged with jocund children. Bright red buses went by with side placards advertising a movie; the name SHIRLEY TEMPLE stood out from Polish words. Splashy billboards touted German toothpastes, radios, and hair tonic. The long rows of four-story gray or brown buildings, the boulevards running into great squares flamboyant with statues, bordered by baroque official buildings or palaces, the electric signs beginning to flash and dance - all this made Byron think of Paris and London. It was strange to find such a metropolis at the end of the primitive air journey. The Europeiski Hotel had a lobby as ornate as any he had seen, with a massive brown-and-white marble staircase jutting down to the front door.

Natalie went up in the elevator. Slote detained Byron by touching his arm, then lit his pipe with harried flaming puffs. To Byron, seeing him after a lapse of many months, the Foreign Service man appeared impossibly old for Natalie: bespectacled, baggy-eyed, with marked lines in his lean sallow cheeks. A double-breasted chalk-striped dark suit emphasized his stodgy mature air, and he appeared shorter than Byron remembered.

“I wish I had time to buy you a drink,” Slote said. “I’d like to talk to you. This Cracow trip is dangerous nonsense. I’m going to get you air reservations out of here as soon as I can. They must be booked solid for a week, but the embassy has some pull. If it takes both of us to put her bodily on a plane back to Rome, it’s got to be done. Don’t tell her tonight, though. She’ll become unmanageable.”

“Okay. You know her better than I do.”

Slote shook his head, laughing. “I wonder, at this point. I ought to be deeply touched by this cuckoo visit - and I am, of course I am - but Natalie Jastrow is too much for almost anybody. See you at dinner. The embassy’s a madhouse. If I can’t get away, I’ll telephone.”

Byron sat for a while in his cavernous gloomy room with tall windows facing the Bristol Hotel, wondering what the hell he was doing in Poland. He picked up the antique ivory-handled telephone, and with some haggling in German managed to get connected to Natalie’s room.

“Hello. Are you in the bathtub yet?”

“Well, I’m glad you can’t see me. What’s up?”

“I’m beat. You have dinner with Slote. I’m going to bed.”

“Stop that rubbish. You’re dining with us, Briny. Come and fetch me at nine, do you hear? Leslie has booked me into Paderewski’s suite, or something. It’s fantastic. I’ve got a full-length mirror here, held by two big brown wooden angels.”

* * *

“This way,” Slote said. “Our table’s ready.”

An orchestra in gold-frogged red coats was thumping old jazz tunes in the main dining room of the Bristol, which for size, silk hangings, white linen, gilt-and-crystal chandeliers, obsequiousness of waiters, fine dress of the thronging customers, and ineptness on the dance floor, might have been in any first-class hotel in Europe. Certainly there was no trace of a war scare.

“Sorry I’m late. It’s the Jews,” Slote apologized when they sat down. “They’re storming the embassy. We’ve all become visa officers, right on up to Biddle. Christ knows I don’t blame them. If they can show a relative, a friend, a letter, anything, we process them. A New York telephone book, today in Warsaw, is worth a hundred zlotys, that’s about twenty dollars.”

“That puzzled me,” Natalie said. “I understood Warsaw was full Jews. I’ve seen very few so far.”

“Oh, they’re here, all right. A third of this city’s Jewish.” At this point, a tailcoated, bowing headwaiter brought a menu, and Slote had a long colloquy with him in Polish. Natalie listened with an admiring, envious look.

“Les, was it very hard to learn? One day I’ll try,” she said as the waiter left. “My folks used to talk Polish when they didn’t want me to understand. I’m haunted by a sense of being back in my childhood, and yet this is such a foreign place! It’s all very singular.”

“They ate amazingly good smoked salmon, a strange egg dish, and tough roast meat. Slote kept tossing off brown Polish vodka in a thimble-size glass, while the others drank good French wine.

“Leslie, you’re going to be stone drunk.” Natalie sounded more jovial than disapproving.

“There’s so little in every glass,” Slote said, pouring more from the bottle. “I’ve had a very hard day. Even without you turning up, you fool.”

They smiled at each other. Byron wished he had gone to bed. Slote looked at him and with a polite effort resumed talking. “Hm, yes. It’s a historical puzzle, really, how three and a half million Jews came to settle in Poland. It’s such an anarchic country. You’d think they’d have chosen a more stable place. I have a theory. I sort of wonder what Aaron would make of it.”

“What’s your theory about us Polish Jews, Leslie?” Natalie said with a grin.

“That the anarchy was the inducement. Imagine a government of nearly a thousand barons, any one of whom could veto any legislation. That’s the way they stumbled along here for centuries. No wonder Poland kept getting partitioned! Well, as long as the Jews could work things out with each individual nobleman they could at least live and farm and work. No royal oppression to fear.”

“Not bad,” said Natalie. “But in point of fact, didn’t the Polish kings welcome them in with special protective laws? When Spain expelled them and the Holy Church was having one of its bad spasms of hounding and massacring the Jews? That’s as I recall it.”

“I haven’t studied the thing,” Slote said, “but the Poles eventually took to doing that too.”

“That’s why I was born on Long Island,” said Natalie. “My grandfather got out, and a good thing.”

“What military shape are the Poles in?” Byron asked Slote. “Will they give Hitler a fight, if it comes to that?”

“A fight?” Slote sucked on his pipe, looking up into the air. His tone turned measured and professional. “Why, ask any one of them, and he’ll probably tell you they’ll defeat the Germans. After all, they defeated them in 1410! These are strange people, Byron. They can be brilliant, talking about politics and history, yet they don’t give a damn that Germany is now an industrial giant, while Poland remains all farms and Jews and castles and mazurkas. Maybe they’re right. Maybe the Polish fighting spirit will scatter the stupid unwilling cattle of Hitler. That’s the Poles in uniform, more men than Hitler’s got. A highly questionable figure, but in this country, any statistics –”

“Say, isn’t that ‘Stardust’?” Natalie put in. “It sounds a bit like ‘Stardust.’ Dance with me.”

Byron thought Slote looked more like her uncle than her sweetheart, steering her clumsily around the floor. But Natalie’s clinging attitude, closed eyes, and touching cheek weren’t the ways of a niece. They exchanged a few laughing words, then Natalie said something that made Slote look serious and shake his head. They argued as they danced.

“I’ll find him without you,” Natalie was saying as they came back to the table.

“I didn’t say I wouldn’t help you find him. I said if you’re going to talk to him about going to Medzice –”

“Just forget it. Forget I mentioned it.”

Natalie glowered at the meat on her plate. Slote took two more shots of vodka. To lighten the atmosphere, Byron asked Slote about the workings of the embassy. Looking relieved, Slote turned on the measured voice. The alcohol hadn’t blurred his brain; it made him talkative. He sketched the organization and said that he was in the political section, but that since his arrival, he had been preoccupied with the flood of emigrants, as had everybody else.

“Were you fellows surprised by the pact?”

“Naturally. Even the Poles were struck dumb, and their history they’ve seen everything. But nobody can predict Hitler. That’s his genius, if you want to call it that. He does have an instinct for the breathtaking.”

The cloud was clearing from Natalie’s face. “Leslie, why did Stalin go along?”

“Honey, that’s perfectly simple. Hitler offered him a piece of cake on a gold platter, and he simply said, ‘Yes, thank you!’ Stalin’s completely turned the tables on England and France now. They froze him out of Munich. In effect, they handed Czechoslovakia to Hitler and said, ‘Here, boy, leave us alone and go smash Russia.’ Now Stalin’s done a Munich in reverse. ‘No, no,
here
, boy, take
Poland
, and go and smash the West.’” With little rapid puffs of blue smoke, clearly enjoying the chance to expound, Slote went on, “Lord, how the British have been asking for this! An alliance with Russia was their one chance to stop Germany. They had years in which to do it. All of Stalin’s fear of Germany and the Nazis was on their side. And what did they do? Dawdle, fuss, flirt with Hitler, and give away Czechoslovakia. Finally, finally, they sent some minor politicians on a slow boat to see Stalin. When Hitler decided to gamble on this alliance, he shot his foreign minister to Moscow on a special plane, with powers to sign a deal. And that’s why we’re within inches of a world war.”

“Is it going to come?” Natalie asked.

“Why, I thought you and Aaron were the authorities for the view that it won’t.”

“I’m not ready to panic. It just seems to me that Hitler will get what he wants, as usual.”

Slote’s face turned pinched and sombre. He pulled at the pipe, sucking in his pallid cheeks. “No. The Poles now have the signed British guarantee. Very gallant; very irrational, very belated, and probably futile. To that extent we’re back in 1914. Poland can plunge the world in by standing firm. It’s all up to Hitler. If he wants to arm some more first, the crisis will subside, and that seems to be in the wind at the moment. But for all we know, he’s already given the order to march. That’s why I’m being such a pill about Medzice. Down there, in the next two weeks, you have a fifty-fifty chance of being captured by German soldiers. I do think that’s a bit risky, dear.”

* * *

After dinner Slote drove them to another part of town: street after street of old brick houses of three and four stories, with shops everywhere at ground level. Here indeed were Jews by the thousands, strolling on the sidewalks through narrow cobbled streets, looking out of windows, sitting in shop doorways. On the street corners knots of bearded men argued with loud voices and sweeping gestures, as on Manhattan’s Lower East Side. Many of the men wore kaftans, or else the boots, blouses and caps of the countryside. There were men in ankle-length black coats and black hats, and a few youngsters in army uniforms. There were some prosperous people, too, smooth-shaven men wearing bowlers and well-groomed women looking much like the Warsaw Gentiles around the Europeiski. Children darted about at their street games, boys in caps and short trousers and girls in neat colored frocks, and their mothers gossiped as they watched them.