Dragon Harvest

by Upton Sinclair

  You just had to follow one track and then another, and question every Jew you saw. “Bitte, wo wohnt David Grynspan?” They all understood German, but not all would answer; they weren’t deaf, but were dumb with fear; anybody in an automobile must be Autorität, which meant more trouble for the children of Israel. When Lanny realized this, he took to saying: “Wir sind Amerikaner.” That magic word would loosen tongues, but it didn’t bring the information. No lists of the exiles had been furnished, there were no means of communication, and nobody knew anybody except the few who were neighbors in misery.

  These hordes of Polish Jews had been gathered from all over Germany in the previous autumn. Many had never been in Poland and didn’t know a word of the language; but because their parents had come from that land, they were Polish, and were loaded into cattle cars and transported to the border and dumped across with only such possessions as they had been able to carry in their hands or on top of their heads. Poland didn’t want them, and wouldn’t admit them into the country; they were existing in the most incredible destitution in a sort of No Man’s Land along the border—always the Polish side, because armed Nazis marched on the German side of the barbed wire, ready to shoot anyone who ventured across. The exiles had sheltered themselves in tents, or in hastily built sod huts, many of them half underground, and roofed with poles, old boards, and scraps of tarpaper and tin. Where they got food the travelers had no chance to ask.

  It took a couple of hours to find the Grynspan family. They were living in an abandoned cowshed with a dirt floor and a roof that would leak as soon as the snow melted. Three other families shared the place, each having its own corner. David Grynspan, a black-bearded man old in his fifties, sat shivering in a corner of this poorly heated place, wrapped in an old bathrobe. He was greatly disturbed by the appearance of two well-dressed strangers, and even the word Amerikaner failed to reassure him; he didn’t want to be interviewed, he didn’t want to say anything about his son, he was horrified at what the boy had done and at the dreadful pogrom which had followed in Germany. That much news had come across the border, it appeared.

  In the Grynspan corner of the hut were his bowed and wrinkled wife, also a son and a daughter, both older than the unfortunate Herschel; they were orthodox Jews, and left it to the elder of the household to speak or be silent. They were literate people—the father had been a tailor for twenty-six years in Hanover, and they had thought they were Germans, and that a lifetime of hard work and honest living had guaranteed them security. Lanny, whose German was better than Pete’s, stood for quite a while—there was nothing to sit on—explaining that they were friends, and that the only way the Jews could be helped was to let the outside world know about their condition. The Polish government very much needed the friendship of America, and a story published there might be the cause of persuading the Poles to give the exiles work.

  “They will let us work in the fields in the spring,” said the father; “but in winter there is no work to be done.”

  Little by little Lanny succeeded in gaining the wretched man’s confidence. He had been badly beaten by a Gestapo agent at the time of his deportation, and was not sure if he would be well again. Since the coming of the Nazis none of his family had been allowed to work in Germany, and they had survived by selling their possessions from time to time. That was why David now had no overcoat to face the bitter winter of these Polish fields. At heavy sacrifice the family had sent Herschel to an agricultural school in Frankfurt-am-Main—this preparatory to the family’s emigrating to Palestine. But troubles with the Arabs had nullified that plan, and the boy had gone to Paris, where he had become a sewing-machine operator for an uncle. He had always been a quiet, studious fellow, and had never taken any part in politics—the only organization he had belonged to was the Jewish Misrachi.

  When the father tried to talk about the killing, he broke down, and his wife had to put her arms about him and hold him up; he hadn’t heard from the boy since the tragic event and didn’t know what had happened. The older brother had written to Herschel, telling him about the beating of the father and the deportation of the family, and doubtless that news had driven Herschel out of his mind. None of the family had ever heard of Edouard vom Rath, and could only surmise that the boy had decided to shoot the first high Nazi official he could get near. Lanny didn’t say anything about the terrible sights he had witnessed in Munich and Regensburg immediately after the news of the assassination had reached Germany.

  XIII

  That was the end of the interview. Lanny would have liked to put a couple of hundred-mark notes into the miserable man’s hands, but he was afraid of the consequences—for how could a Jew change such notes, or keep from being robbed? The story would be pretty sure to travel, and the attention of the German authorities might be attracted to the visit and the visitors. Lanny took out of his pocket such small change as he had, and the journalist did the same; the poor exile couldn’t refuse it, and tried to pour out his gratitude, but broke down again. The two Americans hurried away, for they had been reared in a different world, and the sight of such suffering made them mentally if not physically ill.

  They got into the car and drove back to the village with too many consonants in its name. On the way they were both ashamed of themselves: of their way of life, and of the words they had spoken in the course of the day. They drove on by Bydgoszcz, which was the way the Poles preferred to spell Bromberg. The correspondent wished to write and file his story there—since it wasn’t the sort that could be sent from Naziland. Lanny Budd, embarrassed, had to say: “Don’t say anything about having had company, Pete. It could be very bad for me. I’d rather you didn’t talk about me at all, if you don’t mind.” Pete said he wouldn’t; and Lanny thought: “What a skunk he must think me!”

  He consoled himself by locking himself in his hotel room, setting up his little portable typewriter, and writing out Adolf Hitler’s eleven-point program for the liquidation of the Czechoslovakian Republic.

  He made a copy and a carbon, and added on another sheet various items he had gathered from the Herr Doktor Schacht and from the airplane experts. One set of these documents he put into an envelope which he sealed and marked “103” and sealed this in a slightly larger envelope addressed to the man named Baker in a little brick house in Washington, D.C. The other set was addressed to Mrs. Nina Pomeroy-Nielson, in an obscure village on the river Thames. Both would carry airmail postage. Lanny had taken to sending important letters to Nina, because Rick was known as a writer, and a woman’s name was less apt to attract attention.

  Rick, being a very old hand at anti-Nazi propaganda, would recognize a world sensation when he saw one. He had an understanding with Lanny that he never used such material under his own name, which might direct suspicions of Gestapo agents toward Lanny. Rick knew an M.P. who would read this document in the House of Commons, while keeping secret the source from which he had got it. That was fighting the devil with his own fire—and it was the reason why Adolf Hitler hated democracy with such furious intensity, and could not endure to have a democratic nation anywhere near him, or indeed anywhere on the same earth with him.

  7

  Heute Gehört Uns Deutschland

  I

  The Polish Corridor lies in what is called the Baltic plain: flat land with many lakes, and small streams meandering here and there, and what would be swamps if they were not drained. It is farming country with a mixed population, having been fought over since the dawn of history and conquered by Pomeranians and Brandenburgers, Poles, Danes and French. The survivors had stayed on, and seemed willing enough to live peaceably, if their politicians had let them; but they wouldn’t. Just now it was the Nazis, strutting everywhere in their shiny boots, demanding as a matter of principle a freedom which they denied to everyone else.

  There were many small estates suited for a country gentleman, and Lanny found one near the small town of Kartuzy. There was a double row of ancient beech trees leading from the road. The house appe
ared to be in good repair, and there was an orchard, and a stream which would contain trout—or would it be carp? Anyhow, the asking price, thirty-two thousand marks, was about right. “This is my home,” the visitor said to himself, with an inward grin; it looked desolate with the trees bare and everything snowbound, but in spring it would be pleasant enough, though lonely, unless he chose to cultivate the local gentry.

  The owner was a Pole, a veteran of the last war, now in his fifties, tall, erect, with flashing dark eyes and black mustaches beginning to turn gray. He was excited by the appearance of an American millionaire—so Lanny with his fine car must assuredly be. He insisted on the visitor’s coming inside to inspect the house, and then upon serving coffee. He was anxious to find a purchaser, and gave many reasons: he was a widower, his two sons were officers in the army, he had business in Warsaw—every reason except the right one, that he feared the Nazis and the trouble that was coming. Lanny engaged him in conversation, for it was worth while to know how the Poles were thinking. This one had been in the cavalry, and his long lance stretched across one wall of his smoking room, with a sword and brace of pistols underneath.

  The fire of combat still smoldered in his eyes. The Poles were a peace-loving people, he declared, but proud, and by no means to be trampled on. They had constructed a magnificent new port at the foot of this Corridor, and meant to keep it. They had seen what happened to the Czechs, and it was surely not going to happen to Poles—not if the present speaker had to take down his lance and ride forth on the great-grandson of the charger he had ridden all the way to Lemberg, which he spelled Lwow and pronounced Lvuff. Lanny had a sudden vision of Polish cavalry with pennons on its lances charging against those monster tanks which he had seen roaring about the practice fields near Berlin and Munich—any one of them able to spit enough fire to wipe out a whole squadron of horses and men. But he didn’t say anything; he was here to listen.

  The landowner forgot his role as salesman, and talked about the iron determination of his country. The spirit of the army was magnificent, and the Nazis, if they ventured an attack, would get the shock of their lives; but of course the holding of a district so advanced would depend upon prompt support from the West. Did Monsieur Budd—they were speaking French, never the hated German—believe that the French would appreciate the importance of prompt attack? Lanny replied that it was difficult to say; the Maginot Line was not planned for attack, and the attitude of Belgium was problematical.

  “You wouldn’t take help from the Russians, I suppose,” the visitor remarked, and the other replied: “Jamais, jamais! Les Bolcheviques sont pire que les Nazis—si une telle chose est possible.”

  The ex-lancer talked freely about conditions in Danzig, a half-hour drive away, where the Nazis had seized power, and were trying to wrest control of the city’s foreign affairs away from the Poles. Border incidents were frequent, and they all followed one pattern, of aggression followed by brazen lying in the Nazi press; it was hard for a civilized man to believe that such things were happening, and the Polish host seemed to have the idea that if he could convince one American visitor of the facts he would go out and do something to remedy the situation.

  Only when the guest was prepared to leave did he seem to realize that he had been giving the wrong line of talk for a real-estate salesman. He hastened to declare that none of these matters should trouble an American; the Germans had great respect for that nation, on account of the licking they had got in the Meuse-Argonne, and which they would not soon forget. Lanny said he understood that; he was looking at properties, but couldn’t say as yet what he would do. The host expressed the pleasure it had been to meet him, and the polyglot guest replied: “Dzieke tobie, panie”—which he had learned on his last visit to this country, some seventeen years ago.

  II

  Driving back to Berlin, Lanny turned on the radio of his car, and came upon a station playing a transcription of Beethoven’s Eighth Symphony. The Nazis played him continually; they played all the classics, having so few creative artists of their own, and these few third-rate. Beethoven in association with Dr. Goebbels’ propaganda always started a war in Lanny’s mind; he took the liberty of speaking for the great soul-compeller, saying that he wanted nothing to do with this gangster crew, these poisoners of civilization. Just as Beethoven had torn up the dedication page of the Eroica when Napoleon had accepted a crown, so now he spurned the praises which Juppchen Goebbels’ hirelings showered upon him.

  Pessimistic thoughts besieged an art lover on this solitary drive. It seemed to him that Beethoven’s Germany had been dying for at least a quarter of a century. The people of courage and vision had all been murdered, or were languishing in concentration camps, being undermined mentally as well as physically. Modern Germany was a garden in which the flowers had been rooted out and the weeds had grown into a mephitic jungle. The same thing was true of the Italy of Garibaldi and Mazzini; it was true of Spain, and now of Austria; it would soon be true of Czechoslovakia, and then of France. Ever since Lanny’s boyhood he had watched the France of the revolution decaying by slow stages, and the France of the new revolution being aborted. A year of the dreariest prospects, this 1939!

  But the music of Beethoven went on dancing, went on singing, went on calling to Lanny Budd. The great soul-compeller had been burdened with many cares, had suffered pain, had faced the agony of knowing that his deafness was increasing, and that soon he would never again hear his own music or others’; yet he had risen above these troubles, and written this gayest of symphonies, without a note of sorrow. The tripping themes came back again and again, inviting Lanny to laughter, shouting to him; they were Beethoven in his “unbuttoned mood,” not to be resisted. He was proclaiming that hope springs eternal in the human breast; that new generations of men would arise, stronger, braver, wiser than those who were now failing so dismally in their tasks. Evil things would pass, and God would not always be mocked.

  The music swept on to that climax which is generally accepted as a burlesque of the pompous music of Beethoven’s time, the thumping and blaring with which every composer felt it necessary to conclude every composition of any size. Lanny, diverted from the sorrows of Europe, found himself thinking: “What is a joke in music, and how can you be sure it is a joke unless the composer tells you so?” He thought: “How many of the critics today would know it was a joke if they hadn’t been taught it in music school? How many of the uninstructed concertgoers know it, and how many think it is a grand and stirring climax, such as every composition of any size ought to have?”

  These questions brought Laurel Creston into Lanny’s mind. She asked them and he answered in another learned discourse. He liked to talk, and she, apparently, liked to listen. They had got along very well together, and now it seemed the most natural thing in the world that Miss Creston should have been hearing the Eighth Symphony, and should wish to know what he thought about it, and what his half-sister Bess and her husband, Hansi Robin, had said about it. A mass of human experience has been stored up in art, and it has been discussed and commented upon in millions of books and billions of conversations; this is called “culture,” and Miss Creston had some and wanted more. She had taken to coming frequently into a P.A.’s imagination with her questions.

  III

  A lonesome sort of job that Lanny Budd had drifted into. Here in a land of seventy million people, just increased to eighty, there wasn’t a single one to whom he might speak his real thoughts. Monck was a partial exception, but Lanny wasn’t even sure if he would meet Monck again. But here was one woman with whom he could at least have chats concerning music and art and family and friends and home; to whom he could at least make playful remarks concerning the humorous behavior of the Germans zu Hause. A great temptation, and Lanny thought about it from many aspects. He had just had an experience of meeting his old friend Pete and not being happy over it; how was it going to be with this new friend?

  Awkward, from every point of view that he could think of. So far, he
had been meeting Miss Creston semi-clandestinely; but how long could that go on? She was living in a pension, and Lanny knew that these places are hotbeds of gossip; his friend Jerry Pendleton had married one in Cannes, and helped to run it, and told funny stories about it. Everybody knew everything about everybody else and Lanny could be sure that in the Pension Baumgartner of Berlin everybody was wondering about that elegant American Herr Budd with whom “die Miss” went out.

  Doubtless they had read an article about an American Kunstsachverständiger named Budd who enjoyed the friendship of the Führer. Lanny could imagine the clamor: “Ach, Fräulein, ist das Ihr Herr Budd?” Is that your Mr. Budd? She couldn’t very well have said Nein; and if she had said Ja, they would all have one idea in the world, to meet him, or at least to have a look at him the next time he came. To the servants and guests of the pension the Führer would be God; purely and simply God, with no qualifications; not the Jewish God with a long gray beard, of course, but the modern echt deutscher Gott with a little Charlie Chaplin mustache. Preis und Ehre sei Gott!

  And what would die amerikanische Miss say about this God? Would it be anything less than full reverence? If so, there would be a scandal; die Amerikanerin was going out with the Führer’s intimate friend, but she herself frowned, made faces, sneered, or at any rate displayed something less than adequate appreciation of the greatness of the greatest man in the world. That scandal might grow until it became something to be brought to the attention of the Gestapo.