One Clear Call I

by Upton Sinclair

  When Lanny called, a man’s voice said, “Villa Bienvenu,” and Lanny replied promptly, “Capitaine Charles de Bruyne.” He waited, and when he heard the familiar voice he said quickly, “This is an old friend. No names, please. I have just seen your father and your wife, and they are well. They have sent you an urgent message. I am at the Métropole and can’t stay long. The room number is seven-fourteen. I have no means of transportation. Can you come to me at once?”

  The answer was prompt, “I will come.”

  “Room seven-fourteen, the Métropole. I am staying with a friend named Girouard.” The French pronounce it “Zheer-wahr,” and Lanny took the precaution to spell it.

  V

  Two years had passed since Lanny had seen Charlot, and he was not surprised to discover lines of care in his face. The world had not been going the way an ardent and aristocratic-minded young Frenchman wanted it to go, and now, according to his point of view, it appeared about to slide over a precipice. But the capitaine was well set-up, his figure trim and well-corseted, his dark hair closely cut and his uniform faultless. His face was pale, and this brought out the scar which he carried as a badge of honor, having got it in battling with the “Red” mob which had rioted in Paris shortly before the war. He hated that mob and still burned to put it down.

  They exchanged a handclasp, and Lanny took the precaution to look out into the hall before he closed the door. Then he said, “Charlot, I was at the château a few days ago. I saw le père, and Eugénie and Annette. They are well and told me the children were well. Having a garden, they are not doing badly. They begged me to get a message to you and I promised to try.”

  “Lanny, how on earth do you manage these things?”

  “It was my father who made it possible. He was concerned about le père, as both a friend and a business associate.” The P.A. signed his friend to a chair and drew up another. “Cher ami,” he said, “I come as a herald of what I fear is bad news. I have taken a risk to come to you, and I have to pledge you to hold what I tell you in strict confidence.”

  “Of course, Lanny, you don’t need to say that. What on earth has happened to you?”

  “As you know, I continued to visit Germany and do what little I could on behalf of our cause. But on the last trip I was warned by friends that I was in an unsafe position. Both Hitler and Göring are surrounded by jealous persons who could not endure to see an American enjoying their trust, and these evil ones have been whispering rumors and slanders. I saw that my position was becoming impossible and made up my mind to withdraw entirely from this hateful civil war. That is what it is to me, for I have made my friends among Germans and French and British and Americans alike, and I cannot get any pleasure out of seeing them destroy one another. I decided to become once again an art lover, as your dear mother so often begged me to do.”

  “I can understand your decision, Lanny, and perhaps it is the wisest thing for a man of your gifts.”

  “I found that my father had entirely changed his position under the pressure of events. He likes the so-called New Deal as little as ever, but he has become convinced that the Americans are going to win this war.”

  “How can he bring himself to believe that Germany can be conquered, Lanny?”

  “He is in touch with the men who mean to do it. He himself is turning out a fabulous number of planes—I have never seen anything to equal the mushroom growth of the Budd-Erling plants. There is no resisting airpower, Charlot. It gives the ability to land on any coast and to roll in any direction. From what I have been told I believe the last German soldier will be out of France within the next month, or two months at the outside.”

  “You may be right, Lanny,” admitted Charlot humbly. “I have been unpleasantly surprised by recent events.”

  The P.A. got up and went to the door and opened it suddenly. He had left it unlocked, so that he could do this. Then he came back and resumed in a still lower voice. “Believe me, Charlot, my father has made it his business to know what is coming. He became greatly worried about your family. He says that between the time when the Germans withdraw and the Allies arrive, there will be a period of disorder in which great numbers of people who have aided the Germans will be shot out of hand; later, when a pro-Allied French government is set up, many of the Vichy leaders will be tried for treason and sentenced to death. You must know without my telling you that you are one of the most vulnerable.”

  “Certainly I know it, Lanny. It will not trouble me too greatly, for I have no desire to live under a regime of the rabble.”

  “Robbie sent me to explain matters to le père and urge him to change his position and make some contribution to the de Gaulle movement. I spent the better part of an evening with him and found that he had already taken this step. His one fear was for you, and he begged me with tears in his eyes to find a way to see you and transmit to you not merely his wishes but his command as père de famille. He wanted to write you an explicit letter, but I pointed out that if such a letter fell into the hands of the Germans he would be shot, and his property confiscated, and his grandchildren left in destitution. I persuaded him that it would suffice if he told you to follow my instructions, for I was sure you would not question my good faith in this matter.”

  “No, surely not, Lanny.”

  The P.A. took the letter from his pocket and put it into his friend’s hand. Knowing the letter by heart, Lanny followed in his mind what Charlot was reading: “Do what our old and dear friend desires. It is a command of your father.” And beneath it the words of the wife: “It is also my prayer.”

  VI

  Charlot looked up from his reading and gazed hard at his friend. “Well, Lanny, what is it you want me to do?”

  “It is not what I want, Charlot, but what your father commands and your wife prays. I am only their messenger. First, let me inform you, in the strictest confidence, that the Allies are going to invade this coast. It may be at any moment now.”

  “We know that well, Lanny. We have made all preparations to receive them.”

  “Do you think you can withstand them?”

  “That is in the lap of the gods. My only concern is to defend my honor.”

  “You are aware, Charlot, that a considerable part of the force will be Frenchmen, under the command of General de Tassigny?”

  “He is under the political control of the wretched de Gaulle, whom we consider a traitor to la patrie.”

  “I am surely not among his admirers, cher garçon, but it appears that he is the man the so-called Free French want.”

  “The Free French are a bunch of Reds and asssassins, and we do not consider them our countrymen.”

  “Let me assure you, I have talked with some of de Gaulle’s supporters, men whom you were glad to call your comrades in past times. Whatever his faults may be, he surely has no trace of sympathy with Communism. If he has accepted the help of Reds, it is as any military man accepts the help of any ally in war. Le grand Charlie is a devout Catholic like yourself; a graduate of St. Cyr, and they do not train social rebels. If he should gain power he would quickly divorce himself from every trace of radicalism and proceed to make France the kind of country you desire. Yet you are fighting him!”

  “It is he who began it, Lanny, by setting himself up against the legitimately constituted government of France.”

  “I cannot debate those questions with you, Charlot, because they seem to me metaphysical, and I am no abstract thinker. No words can alter the fact that you are going to fight an army of Frenchmen, and an army that is bound to win. You remember, we Americans had a revolution in our country; if George Washington had been defeated, he would have been a traitor under British law, and he might lawfully have been hanged. But he won, so he is called the Father of his Country.”

  “That is a cynical way to look at it, Lanny. I have heard you quote some American philosopher about the worship of ‘the bitch-goddess Success.’”

  “Yes, but you are a military man, and that means that you accept the
arbitrament of arms; you consent to have the issues of history decided that way. Surely there could be no other reason for a Frenchman to fight on the side of Germans against a French army.”

  “What do you want me to do, Lanny, run away?”

  “Again I remind you, I am not telling you what I want; I am repeating a message from your father.”

  “Bien. What does le père wish me to do?”

  “He wishes you to live. He points out that you are the heir-apparent to half of a great property. Also, you are the father of a family, and you owe it to them not to throw your life away and leave them in destitution. Le père wishes you to take part in the shaping of the new France which will emerge from this war. He wishes you to work by your brother’s side for those ends. I must tell you that I have seen your brother several times, and he is in an agony of distress about you; his pleading was one of the reasons which induced me to risk this journey. Denis was severely wounded and in hospital, and is only now beginning to get about on crutches. He begged me with tears in his eyes to persuade you to come over to the Allied side before it is too late. I do not need to tell you what will happen to you if you fight the French Army.”

  “I have faced that issue, Lanny.”

  “You must know,” continued the P.A., “that the moral struggle going on in you is no new thing to me. I saw it with one Frenchman after another prior to the Allied landing in North Africa. Hundreds of your old comrades came over to the Allied side, they risked their lives, and they do not have to feel that they besmirched their honor. General Giraud, General Juin, General Béthouart, Admiral Fenard, Admiral Battet—I could call a long roll of the men I saw making up their minds, and without any help from me, because I hadn’t made up my own then. Now these men are commanding French divisions or French ships. The hour has come when you Frenchmen on the Côte d’Azur have to make the same decision. It seems to me it should be much easier for you, because in North Africa there were no Frenchmen landing and no Germans giving orders to Frenchmen.”

  VII

  This was the beginning of an argument that lasted all through that day. As a man who did not wish to be convinced, Charlot took the argument back over the same ground again and again. L’honneur, which means so much to a Frenchman, and la gloire, and la patrie, and la légitimité. Who was this Big Charlie? A mere brigadier general who had dared to rebel against le vieux Maréchal and to vilify him to the world? And the boy who had shot the Breton admiral, Darlan, for his treason, was he or was he not a patriot and hero? And what were the prospects for France if it was set free and entrusted to the politicians, to democracy à l’Américaine—would it not become a Red satrapy? And what would have happened if Vichy had had its way—would Hitler have ever kept his promises to withdraw?

  Lanny had the advantage of having come fresh from the Allied lands; he could tell of the colossal preparations being made for Operation Anvil. What were the defenses of the Midi compared to those along the Channel? What was the roughness of the Mediterranean compared with those northern waters? Raoul had told Lanny there were few reserves back of the Riviera, and Lanny now pretended to know this, and Charlot admitted that it was true. The big battleships would pound the shore installations to pieces, the planes would do pinpoint bombing on what was left, the parachutists would seize the bridges, power plants, and airfields, and the tanks would be coming ashore in a few hours and racing everywhere. The Germans who stayed to defend the towns would be surrounded and made prisoners, and the younger son of the de Bruynes would be tried and shot. And what good would it do to his honneur, his gloire, or his patrie?

  Charlot had four persons against him, his father, his elder brother, his wife, and his near-godfather; and that was about all a Frenchman could have in the way of family authority. Lanny had an especial hold, because up to recently he had believed as Charlot had. It did not occur to Charlot to doubt that such was the case, and when Lanny described the steps his conversion had taken, he was preparing a path for the younger man’s feet. When Lanny had come to Vichy, his job had required him to buttress the capitaine in all his convictions; and now that he had changed, his example was equally convincing. He had recently been in London and could knock out the Nazi propaganda that the city was in ruins and the population in a panic. Of course the buzzbombs were nasty, but could anyone imagine that the killing of a few thousand more civilians would cause Britain to give up? It was just a question of digging out the launching sites, and already the British armies had broken out of Caen and were forcing their way eastward along the coast.

  And then—the Germans! Had Charlot been able to get along with them? Were they kind masters? Did they respect the honor, the dignity, of their French partners? Just as Lanny had guessed, the high-spirited young capitaine had been ill pleased with his comrades-in-arms. They had become more and more exacting and less and less patient. As things went against them, they demanded more of France, and when it was impossible to meet the demands they became insolent. Would it be too unbearable to see a French army come in and knock them off their perches?

  And then, Charlot’s colleagues, the former Jeunesses Patriotes, now evolved into the Francs-Gardes—were they all patriots and heroes? Their capitaine was forced to admit that some of them were blackguards and others of low intelligence. In short, Lanny dragged out of him the fact that for a long time he had been unhappy in his occupation and in despair for the future of his country. Once started, he poured out his confession, and Lanny gathered enough information to make his journey worth-while, even if he did not win the soul of his friend.

  But he meant to win, and he kept on until evening. The argument which clinched the matter was Lanny’s statement that by coming over in time Charlot might be saving not merely himself but his whole family. Lanny would bear witness to the part which le père and la femme had played in Charlot’s conversion, and the Partisans would know of it. Charlot bowed his head to hide the tears that welled into his eyes. “All right, Lanny,” he said, “I will do what you advise.” And suddenly it seemed to his near-godfather that Charlot turned back into the shy and sensitive lad whom his mother had introduced to Lanny at the château more than two decades ago, in that quiet garden, with the apricots and the grapevines in blossom, the jonquils and the narcissus filling the air with fragrance. Lanny thought, oh, God, if children knew what was going to happen to them, would they consent to stay in this world?

  VIII

  The younger de Bruyne was not the sort of man to wish to run away. If he was coming over to the Allied side, he would take an active part, and Lanny talked to him on that basis. Who was there among his associates who might be open to persuasion? What strategic places were there which might be occupied at the critical moment? The German garrison in Cannes greatly outnumbered the French group, so there could be no outright revolt; but saboteurs might blow up munitions dumps, set fuel stores on fire, put guns out of commission, render vehicles inoperable. Above all, a mass of information might be turned over to Allied agents, so that they would know when to strike and where to meet their Partisan friends and give them support.

  Lanny reported what he had seen in North Africa. At Casablanca the conspiracy had failed, and as a result there had been two or three days of fighting between the French on the shore and the British and American invaders; General Béthouart, who had tried to help the Allies, had come near to being shot as a traitor. But in Algiers the conspiracy had been more widespread and there had been little fighting. Unfortunately the conspirators had gone into action too early, and their opponents had had time to rally; if the opponents had been Germans, great numbers of the conspirators would surely have been shot.

  The next step was for Charlot to meet the Partisan leaders, and this was a matter of some delicacy. Lanny warned him that he would meet some he did not like and hear ideas which were anathema to him. He had to make up his mind to work with any and all who were willing to fight Germans. Lanny was expecting a telephone call from Raoul and told about this old friend who was in contact wi
th the Partisans here. Charlot had been hunting these people and might have a hard time convincing them that he had come over. In all probability some of them had known Lanny in the old days and believed that he had become a Fascist enemy; they would feel sure that Raoul was being led into a trap.

  They got some food delivered to their room—Charlot had a card which enabled him to order what he wanted. Soon after dark came the telephone call, and Lanny told Raoul to come to the room. In spite of the fact that Charlot and Raoul were old friends of Lanny’s, they had never met, for Marie de Bruyne had been out of sympathy with Lanny’s political opinions and he never introduced her boys to his socially undesirable acquaintances. In those days the grandson of Budd Gunmakers had lived in two idea-tight compartments, the world of Raoul and Rick, and the world of his mother and his amie.

  Now these two worlds met and mingled, and if the occasion had been one of less deadly seriousness Lanny would have been amused. The scion of the de Bruynes was very stiff and correct; he was “St. Germain,” which is the same as if you said “Beacon Street” in Boston or “Berkeley Square” in London. When Charlot met his social inferiors, they were servants or common soldiers with whom he did not shake hands. Now he was meeting a peasant’s son who had fled from the police of the Spanish monarchy and who might on some occasion have fitted a pair of shoes on Charlot’s feet in this city on the Coast of Pleasure. Whether or not not that had happened, it was certain that if the capitaine had caught him twenty-four hours ago he would have had him shot forthwith. The distinction between Red and Pink was vague in Charlot’s mind, and he took it as wholly fraudulent, a camouflage.