Winds of War (86 page)

“Never dreaming he’d do anything about it,” Slote said, turning his blank firelit glasses toward her.

“I had all this time in Siena last year,” Byron said. “And I was interested.”

“What did you find out?” said Thurston, refilling Byron’s glass. “You couldn’t get me to read German philosophy if the alternative were a firing squad.”

“Mainly that Hitler’s always been in the German bloodstream,” Byron said, “and sooner or later had to break out. That’s what Leslie told me in Berlin. He gave me the list to back up his view. I think he pretty well proved it. I used to think the Nazis had swarmed up out of the sewers and were something novel. But all their ideas, all their slogans, and practically everything they’re doing is in the old books. That thing’s been brewing in Germany for a hundred years.”

“For longer than that,” Slote said. “You’ve done your homework well, Byron. A-plus.”

“Oh, balderdash!” Natalie exclaimed. “A-plus for what? Repeating a tired cliché? It’s only novel to Byron because American education is so shallow and because he probably didn’t absorb any he got.”

“Not much,” Byron said. “Mostly I played cards and ping-pong.”

“Well, it’s very evident.” His bride’s tone was sharp. “Or you wouldn’t have gone boring through that one-sided list of his like a blind bookworm, just to give him the chance to patronize you.”

“I deny the patronizing and the one-sidedness,” said Slote. “Not that it matters, Jastrow – I guess I’ll have to call you Henry now – but I think I covered the field, and I admire your hubby for tackling the job so earnestly.”

“The whole thesis is banal and phony,” Natalie said, “this idea that the Nazis are a culmination of German thought and culture. Hitler got his racism from Gobineau, a Frenchman, his Teutonic superiority from Chamberlain, an Englishman, and his Jew-baiting from Lueger, a Viennese political thug. The only German thinker you can actually link straight to Hitler is Richard Wagner. He was another mad Jew-hating socialist, and Wagner’s writings are all over
Mein Kampf
. But Nietzsche broke with Wagner over that malignant foolishness. Nobody takes Wagner seriously as a thinker, anyway. His music disgusts me too, though that’s neither here nor there. I know you’ve read more in this field than I have, Slote, and I can’t imagine why you gave Byron such a dreary loaded list. Probably just to scare him off with big names. But as you ought to know, he doesn’t scare.”

“I’m aware of that,” Slote said. Abruptly he splashed wine into his glass, filling it to the brim, and emptied it without pausing for breath.

“Your veal’s getting cold,” Byron said to his bride. This unexpected edgy clash between Natalie and her ex-lover was threatening to get out of hand.

She tossed her head at him and impatiently cut a bit of meat, talking as she ate. “
We
created Hitler, more than anybody. We Americans. Mainly by not joining the League, and then by passing the insane Smoot-Hawley tariff in 1930, during a deep depression, knocking over Europe’s economy like a row of dominoes. After Smoot-Hawley the German banks closed right and left. The Germans were starving and rioting. Hitler promised them jobs, law and order, and revenge for the last war. And he promised to crush the Communists. The Germans swallowed his revolution to fend off a Communist one. He’s kept his promises, and he’s held the Germans in line with terror, and that’s the long and short of it. Why, there isn’t a German in a thousand who’s read those books, Briny. It’s all a thick cloud of university gas. Hitler’s a product of American isolation and British and French cowardice, not of the ideas of Hegel and Nietzsche.”

“University gas is good, my dear,” Slote said, “and I’ll accept it.” He touched his spread fingertips together, slouched in his chair, regarding her with a peculiar smile at once superior and frustrated. “In the sense that in any time and place the writings of the philosophers are a kind of exhaust has of the evolving social machinery – a point that Hegel more or less makes, and that Marx took and vulgarized. But you can recover from an analysis of the gas what the engine must be like and how it works. And the ideas may be powerful and true, no matter how produced. German romanticism is a terribly important and powerful critique of the way the West lives, Jastrow. It faces all the nasty weaknesses.”

“Such as?” Her tone was mean and abrupt.

A rush of argument broke from Slote, as though he wanted to conquer her with words in Byron’s presence, if he could do nothing else. He began stabbing one finger in the air, like exclamation points to his sentences. “Such as, my dear, that Christianity is dead and rotting since Galileo cut its throat. Such as, that the ideas of the French and American revolutions are thin fairy tales about human nature. Such as, that the author of the Declaration of Independence owned Negro slaves. Such as, that the champions of liberty, equality, and fraternity ended up chopping off the heads of helpless women, and each other’s heads. The German has a very clear eye for such points, Natalie. He saw through the rot of Imperial Rome and smashed it, he saw through the rot of the Catholic Church and broke its back, and now he thinks Christian industrial democracy is a rotting sham, and he proposes to take over by force. His teachers have been telling him for a century that his turn is coming, and that cruelty and bloodshed are God’s footprints in history. That’s what’s in the books I listed for Byron, poured out in great detail. It’s a valid list. There was another strain in Germany, to be sure, a commonsense liberal humanist tendency linked with the West. The ‘good Germany!’ I know all about it, Natalie. Most of its leaders went over to Bismarck, and nearly all the rest followed the Kaiser. When his time came, Hitler had a waltz. Now listen!”

In a solemn tone, like a priest chanting a mass, beating time in the air with a stiff finger, Slote quoted “
‘The German revolution will not prove any milder or gentler because it was preceded by the Critique of Kant, by the Transcendental Idealism of Fichte. These doctrines seemed to develop revolutionary forces that only await their time to break forth. Christianity subdued the brutal warrior passion of the Germans, but it could not quench it. When the cross, that restraining talisman, falls to pieces, then will break forth again the frantic Berserker rage. The old stone gods will then arise from the forgotten ruins and wipe from their eyes the dust of centuries. Thor with his giant hammer will arise again, and he will shatter the Gothic cathedrals.’”

Slote made an awkward, weak gesture with a fist to represent a hammerblow, and went on: “
‘Smile not at the dreamer who warns you against Kantians, Fichteans, and the other philosophers. Smile not at the fantasy of one who foresees in the region of reality the same outburst of revolution that has taken place in the region of intellect. The thought precedes the deed as the lightning the thunder. German thunder is of true German character. It is not very nimble, but rumbles along somewhat slowly. But come it will, and when you hear a crashing such as never before has been heard in the world’s history, then know that at last the German thunderbolt has fallen
.’

“Heine - the Jew who composed the greatest German poetry, and who fell in love with German philosophy - Heine wrote that,” Slote said in a quieter tone. “He wrote that a hundred and six years ago.”

Behind him chairs rasped, and a party in evening clothes, cheerily chattering in German, flanked by three bobbing ducking waiters, came to the big table by the fire. Slote was jostled; glancing over his shoulder, he looked straight into the face of the Gestapo chief, who amiably smiled and bowed. With him was the man with the scarred forehead they had seen in the hotel, and another German with a shaved head, and three giggling Portuguese women in bright evening dresses.

“End of philosophy seminar,” muttered Bunky Thurston.

“Why?” said Byron.

“Because for one thing,” Natalie snapped, “I’m bored with it.”

As the Germans sat down, conversation died throughout the restaurant. The Jews were looking warily toward them. In the lull, only the boisterous and oblivious British parties sounded louder.

“Who are those English people?” Natalie said to Thurston.

“Expatriates, living here because it’s cheap and there’s no rationing. Also, I guess, because it’s out of range Luftwaffe bombs,” Thurston said. “The British embassy staff isn’t crazy about them.”

“That’s a remarkable quote from Heine,” Byron to Slote.

“I wrote a paper on Hegel and Heine at Oxford.” Slote smiled thinly. “Heine was fascinated by Hegel for a long time, then repudiated him. I translated that passage for an epigraph. The rhetoric is rather purple. So is Jeremiah’s. Jewish prophets have one vein.”

As they were drinking coffee, a pink spotlight clove the dark room, striking a gray curtain on a little platform. Bunky Thurston said, “Here he comes. He’s the best of the
fado
singers.”

“The best of what?” Byron said. A pale dark-eyed young man, in a black cloak with thick fringes, stepped through the curtain holding an onion-shaped guitar.

“
Fado
singers. Fate songs. Very pathetic, very Portuguese.”

At the first chords that the young man struck - sharp sad chords, in a hammering rhythm - the room grew still. He sang in a clear high florid voice, looking around with his black eves, his high bulging forehead pink in the spotlight. Natalie murmured to Thurston, “What song is that?”

“That’s an old one, the
fado
of the students.”

“What do the words mean?”

“Oh, the words never amount to anything. Just a sentence or two. That one says, ‘Close your eyes. Life simpler with your eyes closed.’”

The glance of the newlyweds met. Byron put his hand over Natalie’s.

The young man sang several songs, with strange moments of speeding up, slowing down, sobbing, and trilling; these evidently were the essence of
fado
, because when he performed such flourishes in the middle of a song, the Portuguese in the room applauded and sometimes cheered.

“Lovely,” Natalie murmured to Bunky Thurston when a song ended. “Thank you.”

He smoothed his moustache with both hands. “I thought you’d find it agreeable. It’s something different.”

“
Spieler! Können Sie ‘O Sole Mio’ singen?
” The shaven-headed German was addressing the singer. He sat only a few feet from the platform.

Smiling uneasily, the singer replied in Portuguese, gesturing at his oddly shaped guitar, that he only performed
fado
songs. In a jolly tone, the German told him to sing “O Sole Mio” anyway. Again the young man made helpless gestures, shaking his head. The German pointed a smoking cigar at him, and shouted something in Portuguese that brought dead quiet in the restaurant, even among the British, and froze the faces of the three women at his table. With a piteous look around at the audience, the young performer began to do “O Sole Mio,” very badly. The German leaned back, beating time in the air with his cigar. A thick pall fell in the restaurant.

Natalie said to Thurston, “Let’s leave now.”

“I’m for that.”

The singer was still stumbling through the Italian song as they walked out. On the counter at the entrance, under a picture of him, phonograph records in paper slipcovers were piled. “If that first song is there,” Natalie said to Byron, “buy me a record.”

He bought two.

The streetlights outside were brighter than the illumination in the restaurant, and the wind was cutting. Leslie Slote, tying a muffler around his neck, said to Byron, “When do you leave?”

“Not till day after tomorrow.”

“Years hence, the way I’m counting time,” said Natalie with a note of defiance, hugging her husband’s arm.

“Well, Natalie, shall I try to get us on a plane to Rome Saturday?”

“Oh, wait. Maybe he won’t leave. I can always hope.”

“Of course.” Slote held out his hand to Byron. “If I don’t see you again, congratulations, and good luck, and smooth sailing.”

“Thanks. And thanks for that suite. It was brash of us to put you out of it.” “My dear fellow,” said Slote, “it was quite wasted on me.”

* * *

All her limbs jerking, Natalie woke from a nightmare of Gestapo men knocking at the door. She heard real knocking in the darkness. She lay still, hoping that a trace of the nightmare was hovering in her fogged brain, and that the knocking would stop. It did not. She looked at her luminous watch and touched Byron’s warm hairy leg.

“Byron! Byron!”

He raised himself on an elbow, then sat up straight. “What time is it?”

“Quarter to two.”

The knocking became faster and louder. Byron jumped from the bed and slipped into a robe.

“Briny, be careful about letting anyone in! First make sure who it is.”

Natalie left the warm nest of the bed and was putting on a negligee, shivering in the chilly night air, when Byron opened the bedroom door. “It’s only Aster, so don’t be scared.”

“What does he want?”

“That’s what I’m finding out.”

The door shut. Natalie went and leaned her ear against it, and heard Tobruk mentioned. Humiliated at having to eavesdrop, she rattled the knob and went in. The two young men rose from the sofa where they sat hunched in talk. Lieutenant Aster, in a blue and gold uniform and white peaked cap, was eating an apple.

“Hi, Natalie. This is one terrible thing to do, breaking in on honeymooners,” he said cheerily. “Talk about extrahazardous duty!”

“What’s the matter?”

Byron said, “Change of orders, nothing serious or urgent, no sweat.”

“Right. Matter of fact I was just shoving off.” Lieutenant Aster dropped the apple core in a tray. “I have to round up some crew members that had overnights. It’s going to be an interesting tour of Estoril and Lisbon after dark. See you, Byron.”

With a grin at her, and a brief tip of his rakishly tilted hat, the lieutenant left.

“Well? Tell me.” Natalie confronted her husband, arms folded.

Byron went to the red marble fireplace and touched a match to papers under a pile of kindling and logs. “The
S-45
leaves this morning.”