One Clear Call I

by Upton Sinclair

  To help in the process American bombers came at night and showered the towns of Sicily and Italy with leaflets containing the proclamation; they did not omit Rome, and this not merely gave the Romans something to think and argue about, but it reminded them that planes that carried packages of printed matter might bring packages of TNT on the next trip. Lanny Budd was too polite to mention this himself, but he heard it several times from the lips of others. He walked the streets of this half-old and half-new city and listened, making a remark now and then to draw people out. He was fascinated to observe that when he spoke with a German accent, the reaction he got was one of sly pleasure in what was happening in Sicily. Nobody shook his fist in the stranger’s face, but many planted little darts of malice in his skin. Not all the radios in Axis Europe could persuade the Roman uomo qualunque than he had any other enemy than Germans.

  Among Lanny’s rich friends the reaction appeared to be: “Why don’t they come quickly and get it over with?” He could understand that feeling, because he had watched the invasion of North Africa through all its stages; it had taken a full six months, and he had suffered agonies of impatience. The military men had explained to him what a giant task it was to put several hundred thousand men and all their equipment ashore on enemy soil and keep them supplied with all the goods they would consume. Each of those clumsy landing craft would have to make a hundred, perhaps two hundred, crossings in the course of Operation Husky. The island of Sicily is a mass of hills and mountains, plus one great volcano, and the Germans would defend them all. They would not make the mistake they had made in Tunisia and let themselves be penned up, but would retreat from one position to the next and fight a “delaying action.”

  “We must cultivate patience,” said the elderly landowner who had become Lanny’s trusted confidant, attending conferences with the other conspirators and bringing Lanny word of what happened. “Our leaders are old men; they hesitate and postpone, saying that tomorrow may be better than today.”

  Lanny argued, “They must see that we are now firmly established in Sicily, and that it’s only a question of weeks before we shall be ready to cross to the mainland. What are they waiting for?”

  “They are waiting for someone to make up their minds for them. I hate to say it, and you must not quote me, but I don’t believe they will move until Rome has been bombed.”

  “That makes it rather hard on us,” pleaded the P.A. “We have to do it, and then be blamed for doing it.”

  “There is nothing rational about war so far as I have been able to observe,” said Commendatore d’Angelo. “I suggest that the end might come more quickly if one of your bombadiers were to miss the railroad yards and hit one of the palaces.” The old gentleman smiled as he said it, because that was what urbanity required. The word, derived from the ancient Romans, means that you have lived in a city and acquired those gracious and easy manners which city folk have leisure to invent and to practice.

  XI

  The P.A. needed no further hint. He prepared another report, telling of the reaction of various groups of Romans to the invasion. He added, “I have good authority for the belief that our friends will take no action until their hand has been forced by the bombing of Rome.” He sealed the letter in the usual way and took it to the “post office.”

  When he entered, the stoutish rosy-faced Italian who presumably was Pietro Padrone said to him, “Would you mind stepping inside, sir?” Lanny was startled, but there was nothing for him to do but comply.

  Behind the stationery shop was a passage lined with shelves on each side and with a door at the end. It seemed a good place for conspiracy, and the man murmured, “I have a message for Traveler.” Lanny replied, “Thank you,” and the man went into the back room and returned in a few seconds and laid in the caller’s hands a tiny strip of paper with typewritten words. Lanny read, “Traveler one to five received.”

  All Lanny’s reports were numbered, and this of course was gratifying to him. He thanked the man and then added, “I don’t want to ask anything I shouldn’t, but I have a letter here which is important, and I would like to know how soon it is likely to be delivered.”

  The answer was, “It is impossible to say exactly, but it should take about a week. Perhaps I should add that we have a wireless sender now, and if the message is urgent I can send it by way of Sicily.”

  “Does it go in code?”

  “Oh, surely.”

  “Then I think perhaps you had better send it to Robert Murphy in Algiers, with instructions to forward it from Traveler to the President. He will understand.” Lanny opened the two envelopes and handed the message to the Italian, who slipped it into his pocket.

  “It does not go from here, but from another place,” he explained. “It will be sent within the hour.”

  “And what will be done with the paper?”

  “It will be burned and the ashes well broken up. We do not keep files.”

  “You are unique among all the government services,” replied the P.A., smiling.

  The other had been speaking Italian, but now he grinned and said, “Is dem Bums goin’ to win de woil’ series?” That also was code and meant, “I am from Brooklyn.”

  6

  Truth Crushed to Earth

  I

  The Marchesa had a friend who possessed some modern paintings and wanted to have them viewed by the art expert from the French Riviera. This lady had a villa in Frascati, a summer resort in the Alban Mountains to the southeast of Rome. Lanny had to maintain his camouflage, so he couldn’t say no. An appointment was made and he set out one morning by what the Americans call a trolley and the Italians a tram elettrico. Motorcars were scarce, and besides, he welcomed chances to watch the people and listen to their talk. In Italy you do not sit in solemn state, as in an English railway compartment; you chat with your neighbors, and before you leave the car you know all about their lives, and especially their troubles.

  This car was packed not merely with humans but with bundles. Many people were moving away, and others had baskets which they expected to fill with country produce if they could find it; they had small objects which they hoped to trade, and the woman who sat next to Lanny, wife of a government clerk, showed him a small trinket and asked his advice as to how many eggs it should be worth. He was using his German accent, but she showed no hostility and asked if he really thought the Americans would drop bombs on Rome. Poor soul, her cheeks were sunken and her hands trembled; she had three children, and it was hard to keep them alive on the ration permitted—especially when you could not get it, she added.

  The woman left and her place was taken by a man who came from the back of the car and whom Lanny had not seen previously. He wore the rough clothes of a workingman and carried a parcel wrapped in news-papers, a glance out of the corner of Lanny’s eyes told him that the man had a black beard and mustache turning gray. Wearing beards had come back into fashion because steel was being made into a thousand kinds of war materiel and there was none left for razor blades. Lanny said, “Buon’ giorno” with his careful German accent.

  The man answered curtly, making it plain that he did not like the new masters of his country. The pretended German tried several topics—the weather, the scarcity of food, the events in Sicily—and each time the replies were in monosyllables. But that was enough to start an idea in Lanny’s mind: he knew that voice! He stole a look and then turned his head and took a better one. He looked away quickly and murmured out of one side of his mouth, “Hello, Pete!”

  The man sat rigid, but Lanny thought he could feel him start. “My name is not Pete,” he replied, likewise in a low voice.

  “OK, Pete,” whispered Lanny; then, in a normal voice, in his German-Italian, “Do you think the enemy is going to bomb the city?”

  The reply was, “Don’t know,” and again silence. Lanny whispered, “Better to talk,” and then, in Italian, “It will be pleasant to get a little higher up, away from the sultriness of Rome.” He went on to remark that the anc
ient Romans had discovered that fact and had built themselves a fine road to the near-by mountains. Did the stranger know that what was taken to be a chain of mountains was really the rim of an immense volcano, and that Lake Nemi had been one of its several craters? Had he seen the ancient Roman trireme which Emperor Tiberius had built on this small lake and which the great new leader of the Italian people had rescued from the depths and restored? To each of these questions the bearded laborer replied with the monosyllable no—which happens to be both English and Italian.

  II

  The car stopped and several people got off. Just as it was about to start again the man sprang up and stepped quickly to the door. Lanny, prepared for this maneuver, did not hesitate, but followed behind him and swung off the moving car. There they were, at a small station, a mere box, the car rolling away, and the people who had got off going their separate ways, paying no heed to them. The pair were about fifteen feet apart and Lanny reduced the distance to one foot and whispered, “You don’t have to worry, Pete.”

  The man insisted again, “I don’t know you.”

  The other people were out of hearing, so it was safe to speak in English. “I am Lanny Budd,” said the P.A.

  “You are mistaken about me. My name is Arrigo.”

  “A beard may be a disguise for some, but not for me. Let’s take a stroll, away from everybody, and have a talk. That can’t possibly do you any harm.”

  They started away on a country road. “I can guess what you are doing,” Lanny said, “and you probably have orders not to reveal yourself to anybody. So I won’t ask unnecessary questions. But I may be able to help you, or you to help me.”

  For the first time the man replied in English. “You speak with a German accent.”

  “That is my beard, Pete.”

  “I have heard reports that you have become a Fascist sympathizer.”

  “That is my mustache. The last time we met you entrusted me with an important secret about Hitler’s demands on Czechoslovakia, and I smuggled it out to the British press for you. How could you imagine that I would change?”

  “Many have changed.”

  “Nobody but idiots and knaves have gone over to Mr. Big. I assure you I am neither.”

  They came to a great oak tree which offered welcome shade and they sat beneath it. Pete Corsatti looked about carefully, then said, “I am in your hands, Lanny.”

  “So am I in yours. We are in the enemy’s country. Are you in any special danger?”

  “Nothing more than usual.”

  “Just one more question. Does the name Padrone mean anything to you?”

  “Yes, it does.”

  “OK, then. I asked because I thought maybe you might need a means of communication. Were you one of those American newspapermen whom Mr. Big locked up when he went to war?”

  “No. I hadn’t been in Italy for several years.”

  “I see. Then there is less chance of your being recognized. I wondered how you could risk it.”

  “I had just got on that trolley when I sat down next to you. I belong back in the mountains.”

  Lanny quoted Milton, “‘The mountain nymph, sweet liberty!’”

  III

  Nineteen years had passed since these two men had first met, and six since their last meeting. It surprised Lanny to realize that Pete was fifty and had graying hair. Brooklyn-born, of Italian parents, he had been the representative of an American newspaper in Rome when the grandson of Budd Gunmakers had come on an unsanctioned honeymoon with Marie de Bruyne. This had been rudely interrupted by the kidnaping of Matteotti and the trouble that Lanny had got into.

  Lanny had promised not to ask questions about what his friend was doing, so he brought up another subject. “I want to tell you a strange story, Pete. I have no idea whether you know anything about what is called psychical research, and maybe you’ll think I’m nuts, but anyhow, this is what happened to me. I have a friend who is a medium; she goes into trances and doesn’t know what is happening, but she speaks, and the voices say they are spirits, and maybe they are and maybe they’re not—I’ve never been able to make up my mind. A month or so ago I was leaving on a dangerous mission, and we tried a séance to see if the spirits would have anything to say about it. Does this sound crazy to you?”

  “A little bit, but it’s interesting. Go ahead.”

  “Well. I sit listening, and I am told that Giacomo Matteotti is communicating. You remember him?”

  “I have had no chance to forget him. His name has become a symbol for the whole Italian underground.”

  “Well, I’m told that he is present and is telling me the secrets of his death. He says that the proof of Mussolini’s guilt exists. There is a memorial written by Filippo Filipelli, editor of the Corriere Italiano, who lent Dumini the car that the gangsters used.”

  “That is true, Lanny. We know about this memorial. There is said to be only one copy.”

  “I was told more. The man who carried Mussolini’s orders to Dumini is Contarelli, parliamentary secretary of the Fascist party.”

  “That might easily be the truth. I don’t know.”

  “Memorials were also prepared by Cesare Rossi, head of the Press Bureau, and by Aldo Finzi, secretary of the Ministry of the Interior.”

  “He was undersecretary, I believe.”

  “I was making notes of the words spoken and I had to write fast, so I may have got it wrong. I was warned that these men were weather-cocks, who turn quickly, and that I must be careful in dealing with them.”

  “That is surely correct, and the story is very astonishing. Are you sure the medium did not know these facts?”

  “I did not mention the subject to her either before or after the séance, because I was not at liberty to tell her that I was coming to Italy, or why. From previous experience I know that in her trances she reveals all sorts of things about which she cannot possibly have conscious knowledge. Of course it may be that she gets it out of my mind, or the mind of someone else who is present. I speculate about the possibility that there may be a level in our subconscious where all our minds are one. I know about Dumini, of course; Matteotti’s wife had named him to me when she telephoned me that her husband had been abducted. But I can’t recall that I ever heard the other names. Did you ever tell me about those men?”

  “I learned about them later. I’m sure I didn’t know about them before you were escorted to the border. Of course we may have talked about the case years later, when we met at the Stresa Conference.”

  “That’s the devil of trying to probe these psychic mysteries. You’re up against the fact that the subconscious mind never forgets anything—all the psychologists appear to agree on that. But the conscious mind forgets and can never be sure what it has forgotten. Even on that basis I’m confronted with the fact that a medium can go into a trance and dip these things out of my mind and present them to me in the form of a little drama, a dialogue so real that it would take a novelist to create it.”

  “All this is new to me,” commented the journalist. “I took it for granted that mediums were fakes and I never paid any attention to them.”

  IV

  Lanny had said that he might be able to help Pete, or vice versa, and so it turned out. Pete knew a lot about the Matteotti case, and since it was in the past, it was a subject about which he could talk freely. He had taken Lanny into the press gallery of the Parlamento, where they had witnessed the scene in which the young leader of the Italian Socialists had defied the fury of the Fascists, reading off a list of the crimes by which they had seized power and were gradually stifling the liberties of the nation. It had been the most stirring scene that young Lanny Budd had ever witnessed, and it had made an indelible impression upon him. Afterward he had paid a visit to Matteotti in his office—he was editor of the party newspaper—a frail, sensitive man with a mournful face, as if he had foreseen what was coming to him. Gentle, idealistic, and kind he had been, and five ruffians had seized him on the street in daylight and dragged
him into a Fiat car, carried him out to a lonely place, stabbed him thirty-six times, and left his half-burned body in a ditch.

  “An interesting thing to observe,” commented the newspaperman; “it seems to take martyrdom to make history. Matteotti’s name has become a battle cry to Mr. Big’s opponents; he is the symbol of what they are fighting for. If Socialism ever comes to Italy, he will have more to do with it than any other one man.”

  “He has had a great deal to do with my life,” the P.A. replied. “There are times when I am afraid, and then I think of him and become ashamed of myself. He voiced the conscience of a whole people.”

  “Is that really the way you feel, Lanny?” asked Pete. And then, without waiting for the answer, he said, “You know how careful I have to be, not merely for myself but for a lot of other people.”

  “Sure thing, old man. Don’t trust me with anything you don’t have to. I have no idle curiosity.”

  “This you ought to know. Matteotti left a son, and a widow who trained the son to worship his father’s memory. The dirty dog, Mr. Big, overlooked them. The son was a little toddler when the father died; now he’s a man, and has only one thought in life—I won’t say to avenge the father’s murder, but to end Fascism in Italy and to complete his father’s work. He is one of the leaders of the underground, and I am here to help him.”