The family purchased tickets and made test of that slogan which was spreading the fame of Fascism throughout Europe and America: “In Italy the trains now run on time!” But this was equally true in the people’s republic of Germany, at least so far as concerned the fast international expresses; these were for the rich, who must be served and made comfortable, for they brought foreign exchange, the most precious thing in the Fatherland. At this moment it was increasing in value at a rate which suggested Jack’s beanstalk in the fairy-tale. If you owned so much as one round red copper cent with the head of an American Indian on it, you could lie down to sleep with the knowledge that you were a millionaire, and that you would wake up a multi-millionaire. The figures were fantastic, seeming to belong in the realm of nightmare. On the day that Lanny and his friend arrived in Munich one dollar would buy 625,000,000 marks, and the next day it would buy a billion and a half. On no day did it go backward, and when they left, a dollar was worth seven trillion marks.
Impossible not to pity the distracted people who had to live in the midst of such a cyclone. Employers paid their workers for a half-day at noon, so that they could rush out and buy some food before it was out of their reach. People bought whatever they could find in the shops, regardless of whether they had any use for it; so long as it had value it could be sold later on. In the midst of such confusion a foreigner moved like an enchanted being; his status was that upon which the fancy of all races and times has been exercised—he had the lamp of Aladdin, the purse of Fortunatus, the touch of Midas, the Tarnhelm which rendered him invisible so that he could walk into any shop and take whatever he wanted. Omnipotence places a heavy strain upon human character, and not all visitors to the Fatherland made wise use of their magic. To put it briefly, many proved themselves to be the vultures which the Germans called them behind their backs.
III
Zoltan Kertezsi arrived the same day as Lanny, and the two men of business proceeded at once to the palace of their aristocratic client. There wasn’t going to be any social intercourse, they discovered; Seine Durchlaucht’s steward received them, and escorted them to a large salon where all the paintings had been hung, and left them to make such examination as they wished. They would have the freedom of the salon at reasonable hours, and might bring clients to inspect the offerings. But this, as it happened, was no part of their program, for Robin had made the loan in pounds sterling, and it had to be repaid in the same currency, which meant that sales must of necessity be made to foreigners.
An odd and miscellaneous collection, with a great deal of commonplace German stuff which Zoltan said would have to be auctioned off in Germany later on. But it might be that the amount of the loan could be realized from the “good stuff” alone. There were some Holbein drawings, and one small portrait; there were two Hobbemas, and a very luxurious Rubens, besides large and less valuable canvases by his pupils. Modern France was represented by two bright lilyponds at Giverny by Monet, in that pointilliste style which he had developed, and which had caused Sargent to remark that the old man had become color blind—he could see nothing but color. Modern Germany was represented by a superlative Menzel, a romantic Feuerbach, a head of a peasant by Munkacsy, and a group of mythological subjects by Arnold Bocklin, whose patron Seine Durchlaucht’s father had been, so the steward told them.
They made a list of the paintings which Zoltan thought could be sold without delay, and then he put his young assistant through what amounted to an examination. Let each take a copy of the list, and set down what he considered a proper price for each item. This proposal made cold chills run up and down Lanny’s spine, but he admitted that it would be educational, and when they compared lists, Zoltan was kind enough to say that Lanny hadn’t done so badly. They discussed each painting, and gave their reasons, and Lanny thought the Bocklins ought to be higher because the painter was well known to Americans; they appreciated what Lanny called “philosophic content.” But Zoltan said that that was something rarely recognized in sales; the pictures were démodés.
The proposed prices had to be approved by both creditor and debtor, so a schedule was prepared, and two copies placed in the hands of the steward. Seine Durchlaucht couldn’t have done much more than glance over it, for a copy with his signed approval was returned within an hour, and Robin’s O.K. came by telegraph next day. Zoltan sent off several cablegrams to clients in America; all he had to do was to describe one item in a few words, with the name of the painter and the price, and in the next three days he had sold the Holbein, one of the Hobbemas, and one of the Monets. It was all in the knowing how, he said, with a happy smile.
IV
Lanny decided to try the same method. He cabled his father about two Bocklins whose “philosophic content” he thought would appeal to Esther Budd; also he cabled the Murchisons about the Rubens, a female nude which he thought might give a jolt to Pittsburgh. He had had a couple of jolly letters from Adella, enclosing a bunch of newspaper clippings in which the Goya and the Velásquez were reproduced and the full story told. Said the plateglass lady: “My dreams of cultural prestige have been fully realized!” Lanny now told her that Zoltan expected the Rubens would be sold within a week, and Adella’s reply came within twenty-four hours: they had put Lanny’s message in the hands of a well-known steel man of advanced age who collected fair ladies in the name of art, and his money was in the Munich bank two days later.
Lanny’s stepmother would be more cautious, naturally; she might travel to the New York or Boston public library to find out all she could about Bocklin. When her reply came, it was a request that the sale be held up until she could receive photographs of the paintings; but Lanny had to answer that it was first come first served, and Zoltan was pretty sure one of his British clients would cable acceptance on receipt of a letter. Lanny smiled, realizing the mental stress of his cautious Puritan stepmother, invited to pay eleven thousand dollars apiece for two paintings that she had never seen. Probably it was Robbie who decided the matter; anyhow, he cabled the cash, and included a commission for Lanny, even though Lanny had said he wouldn’t accept one.
A list and description of all the paintings was prepared, with photographs of some of them, and sent with a letter to a number of persons, including names which Lanny had accumulated. Zoltan expected that most of the collection would be sold in that way, and he would take the remainder to London under bond. Wherever and however they were sold, Lanny would receive half the commission; he couldn’t raise any question this time, for Johannes Robin was assuredly his client. So Lanny could afford to have a splurge in Germany; if he wanted any paintings he could buy them, and the same would apply to any of the girls he saw on the streets or in the cafes. Zoltan said this sadly, for he was a tender-hearted fellow, and was sorry for these pathetic creatures, with their painted hollow cheeks and eyes feverishly bright, who would go with any foreigner for the price of a piece of bread.
V
Meanwhile Rick had arrived, and he and Kurt set forth to investigate the activities of the National Socialist German Workingmen’s Party. They found quickly that Heinrich Jung hadn’t exaggerated the situation, for all Bavaria was in turmoil. The surrender to France hadn’t had the expected effect of stopping the flight from the mark; “runaway inflation” ran over everything which tried to stop it, governments included. The distracted people were ready to hear any agitator with a plausible program, and the dingy headquarters of the Nazis were like a beehive at swarming time. Hundreds of young ex-soldiers with their swastika armbands were pouring in from near-by towns, saluting all over the place and being marched here and there.
It was the same odd combination of conspiracy and propaganda which the visitors had noted nearly a year ago. Nobody had the slightest hesitation about telling what they were all going to do: first take Munich, then march on Berlin. There was the same unwillingness to admit any imitation of Mussolini, but if you had read about the March on Rome you would hardly fail to recognize the pattern. The great war-leader General Ludendorf
f had publicly declared his adherence to the party’s cause, so the success of its coming coup was assured. The extraordinarily bright blue eyes of Heinrich Jung shone with excitement as he whispered the most holy of secrets to a future musical genius and a representative of an English newspaper.
Heinrich’s particular “hundred,” as the Hitler groups were called, was going to march at seven o’clock the following morning. Heinrich couldn’t tell where, because only the leaders knew, but Kurt and Rick might come along and see—it would be real history, said the youth. He used that phrase often, and it was evident that this thought had inspired him—he was going to be in history! In one nation after another, first Russia, then Hungary and Greece and Turkey and Italy, it had been shown that vigorous, determined men might seize power, and the followers of these men might become officials, persons of importance and of fame. It had been shown right here in Munich by the Reds; and now a new group was going to try it, with the newest of slogans, the most timely and potent: Deutschland erwache! Germany awake!
That was how it appeared to the visiting British journalist; but of course to twenty-year-old Heinrich Jung it meant the deliverance of Germany from the heel of the oppressor, the casting out of the money-changers from the temple, the setting free of honest German labor—the young Nazi’s doctrines seemed as pink as his cheeks, and Rick laughed and said that the longer he talked the redder both became.
That evening there was a mass meeting in the same Burger-braukeller where they had heard Adi speak in January. This time it was a meeting of the Bavarian monarchists, who were also planning a revolt against Berlin. Heinrich Jung was very insistent that the visitors should attend this meeting—he practically told them that the Nazis meant to attempt some sort of coup; so the four friends went, and they saw plenty of history. Promptly on the second of eighty-thirty, Adolf Hitler burst into the hall, followed by steel-helmeted men, some of them pushing Maxim guns. Hitler rushed to the platform and took possession of it, delivering one of his wild tirades and telling the audience that the National Socialist regime had begun. At the point of his revolver he forced the monarchist leaders to pledge their allegiance to his kind of revolution, and to order their troops to obey him.
The meeting broke up in the wildest confusion. Apparently “history” consisted of parties of men rushing this way and that about the streets, so the visiting strangers went back to their hotel. They were out again before dawn, an ungodly procedure for two society ladies, but Beauty wouldn’t let Kurt go without her, and Marie didn’t think it “sporting” not to accompany Lanny’s mother. When Kurt decided to walk alongside the “hundred,” Beauty insisted upon walking with him; a fashionably gowned lady holding onto his arm would keep a sight-seeing stroll from becoming a military expedition. It appeared that other women of Munich had the very same idea, for many a young Nazi had a sweetheart hanging onto his swastika armband. Rick, being unable to march, followed the troop in a taxi, and Marie rode with him, glad of the protection of his journalist’s credentials. Lanny and Zoltan were busy with their picture job.
VI
There wasn’t much cheering, for apparently the working people on the streets at that hour didn’t know what it was all about. The troop marched to the Capuchin convent, under whose five-foot walls great stores of rifles had been buried. All night the monks had held torches while the arms were being carried out and distributed to the storm troopers. Ammunition had been stored in the vaults of one of the city’s great banks; a peculiar circumstance, in view of the party program concerning the money-changers. But nobody stopped to think about that, save only the skeptical Britisher; the eager young Nazis were busy getting their share of cartridges from the truck which suddenly put in appearance. Their guns were loaded, and then it was real war.
Off they marched, singing Deutschland über Alles, until they came to one of the city’s bridges, where they halted, and there was an interminable wait. Nobody knew what it was for; presumably they were to hold the bridge against the enemy, but no enemy appeared, and making history was gradually discovered to be as tedious as making motion pictures. The four visiting strangers finally decided to repair to a near-by cafe for breakfast, and they gave a few marks to a street urchin to keep watch for them, promising him a still larger fortune if he would run to the cafe and advise them whenever the Sturmabteilung started to advance. One of the advantages of making history in a great city is that you can take a taxi and catch up with events.
They had an excellent meal, and sat for a long time over their cigarettes and coffee, agreeing that Lanny and Zoltan had been more sensible to stick to their picture job. But Kurt and Rick wouldn’t quit and go home, and Beauty wouldn’t desert Kurt, and Marie wouldn’t desert Beauty. Presently Kurt and Rick got into an argument as to whether this Nazi movement was a plain “racket,” or whether it had any ideas that might be fruitful for the Fatherland’s future. Was Adolf Hitler Schicklgruber just a plain “nut,” or was he an expression of the Volk spirit? Kurt insisted that for a people beaten and depressed as the Germans were it was important to have their courage and hopes restored, to be made to believe that they were a race with a world destiny. Rick replied that all this talk about racial superiority was “the bunk”; a half-cracked Englishman by the name of H. S. Chamberlain had put that bug into the Kaiser’s ear—the Kaiser, half cracked himself, had circulated the book all over Germany, and it had spawned a whole library of rubbish, some of which this poor Schicklgruber creature had picked up.
Rick insisted that he knew just the type: you could hear a score of them ranting in Hyde Park any Sunday afternoon. One shouted that Britain was being bankrupted by the upkeep of the royal family, the next clamored that it was belief in God which was wrecking civilization; one would tell you that money must be abolished, and the next that Esperanto offered the only way of understanding among the peoples. Many of these poor devils slept in flophouses and old men’s homes, exactly as Adi had done, wearing out their own vocal cords and the eardrums of their fellow inmates.
Kurt and Rick might have started a small civil war right there, but the urchin came rushing in to report that the Sturmabteilung was on the march. They paid him the promised fortune and took their taxi and followed. Kurt wanted to walk, perhaps to revive his enthusiasm for the Nazi cause; but Beauty wouldn’t let him take a step without her hand in the crook of his arm. He couldn’t raise the question of etiquette, for other women and girls were marching, each with her man. Would this become one of the war customs of the new Hitler Germany?
They were joined by thousands of other troopers, and with the Hakenkreuz banner at their head they marched out into the Marienplatz. Farther on was the Ludwigstrasse, and there, apparently to the surprise of the marchers, some forces of the Reichswehr, the regular army, were lined up. Then from behind the Feldherrnhalle came a body of the Bavarian state police; it looked as if the swastika bearers had been led into an ambush. As they continued to advance, orders rang out and shots were fired; a dozen or more of the Nazis fell, and the women began to scream and to scatter. Be sure there was no louder screamer, no quicker scatterer than Beauty Budd! She dragged Kurt with her, willy-nilly, dignity or no dignity; the taxi came speeding up, and in they hopped, and around one of the corners they went, the troops letting them pass unchallenged. And that was all they saw of the “Beerhall Putsch,” the derisive name for the history that was made on those two days of November 1923. General Ludendorff was a prisoner, Adolf Hitler Schicklgruber was a fugitive with a dislocated shoulder, and Eric Vivian Pomeroy-Nielson was shut up in a room of the Vier Jahreszeiten Hotel, pounding out the story on his portable typewriter, to be cabled to a London newspaper.
VII
The visitors finished with their business and pleasure in Munich, and meanwhile they read that Herr Schicklgruber was in prison, and his movement outlawed under heavy penalties; they were glad to know that they would never again have to think about that dangerous and most unpleasant “nut.” Rick, explaining history to his British public, wrot
e that people did not starve gladly, and that these events served notice that humane and rational elements in Britain and France must get together with those in Germany and find a way of reconcilement. The twenty-five-year-old social philosopher was planning a play in which these issues would be fought out among a group of characters. It was the “note” of the time, and even the French Nationalists were beginning to admit that the Ruhr technique hadn’t proved a success.
Lanny celebrated his twenty-fourth birthday during this Munich visit. Zoltan asked Beauty’s permission to give him a surprise party and invite several lovers of music and art whom he knew in the city. These were the “good Europeans,” the sort of people whom the three musketeers of the arts had met in Hellerau before the war, when it had been possible to believe that the golden age of peace had come to Europe, that Orpheus with his lute was charming the furies of greed and hate so that they would no more torment mankind. What a change in ten years! Now many of the art lovers were dead, and others in mourning, or broken in health and spirits. If you invited them to a dinner party in a de luxe hotel, they would take out some ancient finery from a trunk and brush it and mend the mothholes; they would come timidly, as if no longer sure how to behave. For a couple of those fabulous American dollars the most distinguished artists in Munich would be happy to sing and play for the gratification of a young Croesus, a young Fortunatus, a young Harun-al-Rashid.
The party moved on to Berlin, where there was another picture job to be done. This time Lanny guessed the values more closely; he was learning fast and gaining assurance. A portion of his mind would be set aside for a catalogue of artworks; in it would be several thousand names of painters, and the instant he heard a name and the date of a picture he would be able to say: “One thousand dollars,” or “ten thousand,” or “a hundred thousand.” With lower figures it wasn’t worth while to bother; but here was one of the temptations to which he would never be entirely immune—some poor devil of ability would be brought to his attention and he would have an urge to promote him, even though the commission on the sales wouldn’t pay for the gasoline he used in traveling about.
Between Two Worlds Page 40
