One Clear Call I

by Upton Sinclair

  “How long have you been at it, Pete?”

  “About eight months.”

  “And you haven’t been recognized yet?”

  “I don’t come into the towns very often. This was a special job and I took a chance.”

  “Am I delaying you?”

  “I was through and on my way back. But my friends will begin to worry if I stay very long.”

  Lanny said, “It may interest you to know that I was in North Africa and saw the show there. I was able to help a little. Is there anything I can tell you?”

  “There are questions that everybody asks me. Is Rome going to be bombed?”

  “The railroads, yes, I’m pretty sure. Not the rest of the city.”

  “And will the Allies come on to the mainland?”

  “Of course they will. How could they leave that huge Foggia airbase in the hands of the enemy? I am guessing they’ll come as far as Rome, for the moral effect. Whether they’ll go beyond that, I’ve no idea.” There was a pause, then the P.A. said, “Tell me something in return. Will the Partisans be strong enough for an uprising?”

  “We warn them against it. The Germans have all the weapons. Our job is sabotage, especially on communications. We destroy bridges and block tunnels and we hold up trucks. Often we get stuff that we can use, the rest we set fire to. All that will increase as the armies come nearer; they will drop stuff to us.”

  “I know about that,” said the P.A. “I was briefed by OSS, though I’m not directly under them.”

  V

  These two old friends had many things to talk about. Pete had played an important part in Lanny’s life, having had to do with his marriage to Irma Barnes; Pete had talked to her and told her that Lanny was too proud to ask a very rich woman to marry him; so Irma had come after Lanny. It had turned out not to be a happy marriage, but that wasn’t Pete’s fault. Now he said, “I heard reports that you had gone back to your class, and I thought it must be Irma’s influence. I was sad about it, but I didn’t blame you too much.”

  “I caused those reports to be spread, Pete. I found that my best service was to get information from the top fellows among the enemy. Only a very few of my closest friends share that secret; you must be careful and not breathe it to anybody. If you hear my name mentioned, just sigh and go on being sad.”

  “There’s one person here who ought to know about you. I’ve been wondering if you wouldn’t like to meet Matteo Matteotti.”

  “What good would it do?”

  “He could tell you a lot about the underground, its state of mind and its problems—more than I am free to tell. And you might be able to cheer him up; you know it’s no easy job living the life of a criminal when you have no inclination that way but are a noble soul and something of a saint. I take it that you are in a position to state that the Americans are coming in force and will bring whatever it takes.”

  “They have five thousand planes for the Sicily campaign, and they are turning out eight thousand a month now.”

  “If I were to say that to Matteo, he couldn’t be sure that I knew it. But if you told him, he’d be a happy banditto.”

  “Could I trust his discretion, Pete?”

  “You could trust him to the death, or to the OVRA torture chambers.”

  “Could I meet him alone? I mean, just with you?”

  “Of course. But you’d have to take a trip on a donkey. There are reasons why he couldn’t come out into the open at present.”

  “Well, six months ago I rode on a camel, and I don’t suppose a donkey could be worse.”

  “Tell me how I can reach you in the next two or three days.”

  “I am going back to Rome tonight. I’m at the Regina-Carlton. Drop me a line and tell me where to meet you.”

  “I’ll tell you the place now. You know Tusculum?”

  “I have never been there, but I know it’s near Frascati.”

  “There’s an ancient Roman theater there, a famous ruin; the theater, not the amphitheater, which has not been excavated. Anybody can direct you to it. When you get a letter giving the day, you walk there just at sundown, and I’ll pick you up.”

  “You had better have a code name when you write me. I prefer a woman’s name because the spies think that is innocent.”

  “Lady-killer!” exclaimed Pete with a grin. “How will it do if I be Irma?’

  “OK,” said Lanny, returning the grin, “provided my new wife doesn’t hear about it.”

  VI

  Lanny resumed his journey to Frascati, very happy. The luxury of being able to speak the truth for one hour had set him up for another month’s campaign of falsehood. He inspected the paintings, made proper comments, and asked the customary tactful question—whether the lady could be persuaded to part with any of them and what price she would expect. Then he rode back to Rome.

  Reading the Axis newspapers and listening to the Axis radio, he learned that the American armies had been victoriously repulsed from just north of the town of Enna, and from the map he learned that this was an important communications center in the middle of Sicily. He also learned that the Germans had victoriously driven a salient into the Russian lines at Kursk and had victoriously repulsed the effort of the Russians to drive a salient at Orel. This meant that the huge battle of the Ukraine was at last under way; Hitler was pouring in his last reserves, except those that he was pouring into Italy, to set up a series of defense lines across the innumerable mountains of this volcanic land.

  Two days later there came a letter addressed to Lanny’s hotel, informing him that he could meet “Irma” on the following evening. Once more he took the electric car to Frascati, and he strolled on the grounds of a show place once owned by Lucien Bonaparte and said to be the site of Cicero’s villa. From the back of this he proceeded by a shady road to the ruins of ancient Tusculum, birthplace of Cato the Censor. He went down into an underground chamber so old that it preceded the invention of the arch. He climbed upon a height from which he had a magnificent view of the mountains with the sun setting behind them; after which he walked, like any casual tourist, to the open-air theater where the comedies of Plautus and Terence had been presented more than two thousand years ago.

  There came the black-bearded workingman, riding one donkey and leading another by a cord. Lanny mounted—no saddle, only a blanket tied on with ropes. The sight was familiar and attracted no attention whatever. The pace was slow and dignified, and they went into the sunset and presently were ascending a pass between two mountains. Darkness enveloped them, but apparently the donkeys knew the way; Lanny couldn’t have interfered if he had wanted to, because he had no bridle rein and didn’t know how to speak to donkeys in any language. All he had to do was to sit and with his knees firmly clamp the creature’s heaving sides. He was afraid to talk to Pete for fear of being overheard. He breathed the cool mountain air, laden with the scent of pine trees, and thought what he would say to Matteo Matteotti and what questions F.D.R. would wish him to ask of a leader of the Italian Partisans.

  VII

  Lanny’s thighs were beginning to ache. It seemed a long ride, but perhaps it was no more than two hours. Heavy forests surrounded them, and at last there appeared through the trees a dim reddish light. It was a charcoal burner’s fire, with a hut near by; they did not stop, but went on, and presently there was another gleam of fire, and this time they turned off the trail to it. In a small cleared space a little pile of sticks was burning, and near it a blanket was spread on the ground and a man sat on it.

  When he heard the hoofbeats he rose and stepped back into the shadows until Pete spoke; then he appeared again, and Lanny saw a tallish, slender young man with dark hair, expressive eyes, and a sensitive, intellectual face, surprisingly like the one that Lanny remembered from two decades back. A strange and fascinating mystery, those patterns which nature keeps in her storehouse and reproduces with such fidelity. A materialistic age thinks that it has answered the question when it gives a name to the agents—chromosome or gene.
But a little more thought might suggest that a pattern is nothing without a mind to read and understand it; and where was the mind that read and understood the patterns of heredity and provided sons who were like the fathers and the mothers, yet different from both and from one another?

  The ex-journalist introduced the two, and they squatted, Hindu-fashion, on the blanket. They spoke Italian, Lanny having refreshed himself in the language by this time. The young Partisan—he was twenty-two—said, “Call me Matteo, if you please, Signor Budd. I remember that my mother told me about you, and any friend of my father is an old friend of mine.”

  Lanny told the story of that visit to Rome, and how Pete Corsatti had taken him into the press gallery by the simple expedient of slipping five lire to the custodian—in those days five lire had been a dollar, and now, alas, they weren’t much more than a cent. Lanny had sat and listened to the Socialist leader’s speech and to the wild-beast cries of his enemies; he had been so impressed by the lion heart of this so gentle-appearing man that he had gone to call on him in his editorial office and express his sympathy. Lanny told every word he could remember of that interview, and the younger man listened as if it were to a Gospel. He had been brought up to reverence his father as a hero, a statesman, a martyr to the cause of human justice and freedom. Here was a new religion in the making, one that was to be kept forever free from the superstitions and delusions that cumbered the old religion of Italy. This would be a religion based upon modern science, and its priests would be experts who understood how to make freedom and peace for human beings instead of exploitation and war.

  Matteo told what the enemies of Fascism were doing to help the Allies. “For the first time in twenty years we have hope,” he said. “More and more men are taking to the mountains, and the Germans are greatly annoyed by our raids. But we must have more arms, and also food. We cannot live off the peasants, because the tax collectors and the landlords leave them barely enough to keep alive.”

  Lanny was not authorized to speak for the Air Force, but he pointed out that its bases were still far off. “They are getting nearer now,” he said, “and it won’t be long before their planes are over these mountains.”

  “We are in the hands of your President,” declared Matteo. “Do you know him?”

  “I have met him,” replied Lanny modestly. “You must not expect too much of any one man. The Italian people must arouse themselves, take their own freedom, and keep it.”

  “Believe me, Signor Budd, they are eager for the chance. They have learned their lesson, and I do not think they will soon fall under the spell of another dictator. Tell me, if you know, what will be the policy of the Allied armies when they enter our country.”

  Lanny told what Roosevelt had instructed him to say, that each and every people would be permitted to choose its own form of government in a free democratic election. “But you must not be surprised,” he added, “if during the war period you see us making terms with anyone who will help us. First and foremost, we have to save the lives of our soldiers, and if Badoglio, or Grandi, or Ciano will give us aid, we shall not refuse it.”

  “But what promises will be made to such men, Signor Budd?”

  “The same promises as to you, Matteo—that the people of Italy will decide. It will be up to you to do what your father was doing, to awaken the masses and educate them, and see that they choose wisely.”

  “What troubles us is that we know Winston Churchill, and that he wishes to saddle upon us a regime we have learned to despise. Once a government is in power, armed with modern weapons, the people are helpless against it. The monarchy, the landlords, the great capitalists, and the Church hierarchy—they are all one, and they are as much our enemies as the Germans.”

  “I have lived in Europe, Matteo, and understand all that; but the American people do not understand it, and you will have to give them time.”

  “I know that America is a capitalist nation; but if they insist on restoring the old system of exploitation over here, they will have won the war and lost the peace again. There will be the same greedy masters buying up governments and getting ready for the next war.”

  “Nothing can be more certain than that; but it is for you and your friends to bring the change in Italy. You will come down from the mountains and speak with your father’s voice.”

  VIII

  They talked all through the night, for this ardent young Socialist wanted to know everything about the progress of the war. He and his followers rarely heard the truth, and Lanny had to tell about the twelve million Americans under arms, and the eight thousand new planes every month, and the twenty-five hundred ships serving the armies in Sicily; about the conquest of the submarine, about the glider planes and the paratroopers, the tank-killers and the bazookas, the rockets and other weapons that were on the way. Why was the Socialist party so weak in America, and was the Republican party really supporting the war, and what was the basis of Roosevelt’s strength? Lanny told about what F.D.R. had called his troika, the three-horse team he was driving,—the Southern reactionaries, the Catholic machines of the big cities, and the leftist forces of labor—a strange combination which had to be driven with a carrot in front and a club behind. All that was like a wild dream to the son of a humble Italian lawyer; it frightened him, because he knew that the fate of his own country, and perhaps of the world, depended upon the skill and good luck of that teamster.

  Pete said, “It’s time we were leaving. It will be better that we get into town before daylight.” So the P.A. and the Partisan shook hands and promised to meet again when the happy days came. Lanny mounted his patient donkey, and with Pete leading they went into the outer darkness. Pete judged it safe to talk, since there was no one apt to be about at that hour. He said, “What do you think of him?” And Lanny replied, “He has what it will take.”

  “You would have thought so,” remarked the other, “if you had seen the demonstrations that occurred last month on the anniversary of his father’s death. People risked their lives in all the cities.”

  After some thought the P.A. added, “He is the man our government ought to use in reorganizing Italy. But I fear they won’t.”

  “No such luck,” was the other’s comment. “They will pick out some old fuss-budget who hasn’t had a new idea in fifty years. But of course anybody will be better than the Duck.” Such was the disrespectful name which American newspapermen in Rome had employed among themselves.

  They came out of the forest at dawn, and from the top of a ridge Lanny could see the ruins of Tusculum. “No need for you to come any farther,” he said. “The less we are seen together the better.” He got down from the donkey and gave his friend a long handshake. “Take care of yourself, Pete. I heard over the radio that they shot an American spy the other day.”

  “We think we know who it was,” replied the other. “Poor fellow! We know that arrests for what are called ‘security reasons’ are going on all the time.”

  “I ought to have some way to get in touch with you, Pete. There’s always a chance that something might turn up.”

  “My name here is Rinaldo. You can drop me a note in care of Padrone. But it may be some time before I get it. We don’t stay in one place, you know.”

  IX

  Lanny rode into Rome by the first morning car. Even that early he noticed that the cars coming the other way were packed with people, some even hanging on to the steps. When he entered the city he found out the reason—American airplanes had showered leaflets warning the population to get out, the city was about to be bombed. Some were taking that advice, but of course it was a small proportion of a million and a half population. Those who could go were the fortunate few who had money and could leave their jobs; women took their children and worried about what was going to happen to their men. Anxiety was written on the faces of all, and Lanny renewed his hatred of war and his wish to see the warmaking power taken out of the hands of reckless and greedy men.

  For his own part, Lanny trusted to th
e aim of the American flyers, of whose training he had seen a good deal. He went to his hotel and made up for his lost sleep. Then he had a bath, put on his clothes, freshly pressed, and went down and read in the morning papers how the Americans had been victoriously repulsed while trying to reach the north coast of Sicily. The news of the bombing announcement had to be printed of course; it was accompanied by such words as “dastardly” and “criminal,” and by a protest from Il Papa. But no one who read the news expected the protest to have any effect upon the Allied Combined General Staffs.

  Lanny wrote a brief report and took it to the “post office.” On his return to the hotel he found a telephone message from the Marchesa. He had expressed a casual desire to meet Count Grandi, and now, calling back, he was asked if he could come late this afternoon. He said, “Always gladly,” and thanked his friend. The day was stifling hot, and he went up to his room and took off his precious clothes—they were all he had, and more would have cost him a fortune. He lay down on the bed and thought hard about what he was going to say to the second most dangerous man in all Italy.

  Dino Grandi had been Mussolini’s Chief of Staff on that famous “March on Rome.” There was a photograph of it, expected to occupy in Italian history the place that “Washington Crossing the Delaware” occupies in American. It showed Grandi at the head of the parade, wearing his blackshirt uniform, while Mussolini walked by his side wearing civvies. (The others had walked from Milan, but Il Duce had come in a sleeping car.) Grandi had been a handsome, erect young man, educated, and what is called a gentleman—but that had not kept him from being one of the most cruel of the Fascists. One of his jobs had been the exterminating of the Italian co-operatives, by the method of administering castor oil to their leaders; from Lanny’s point of view that made him one of the major criminals of the time. Grandi had gone to London as Mussolini’s Ambassador, had joined all the “best” clubs, and had used his charming manners upon the Cliveden and Wickthorpe sets.