“I’m surprised,” the girl said, “that anyone could blackmail a man of your stature.” She eyed him.
“Well, I’ll tell you,” he said. “This whole damn historicity business is nonsense. Those Japs are bats. I’ll prove it.” Getting up, he hurried into his study, returned at once with two cigarette lighters which he set down on the coffee table. “Look at these. Look the same, don’t they? Well, listen. One has historicity in it.” He grinned at her. “Pick them up. Go ahead. One’s worth, oh, maybe forty or fifty thousand dollars on the collectors’ market.”
The girl gingerly picked up the two lighters and examined them.
“Don’t you feel it?” he kidded her. “The historicity?”
She said, “What is ‘historicity’?”
“When a thing has history in it. Listen. One of those two Zippo lighters was in Franklin D. Roosevelt’s pocket when he was assassinated. And one wasn’t. One has historicity, a hell of a lot of it. As much as any object ever had. And one has nothing. Can you feel it?” He nudged her. “You can’t. You can’t tell which is which. There’s no ‘mystical plasmic presence,’ no ‘aura’ around it.”
“Gee,” the girl said, awed. “Is that really true? That he had one of those on him that day?”
“Sure. And I know which it is. You see my point. It’s all a big racket; they’re playing it on themselves. I mean, a gun goes through a famous battle, like the Meuse-Argonne, and it’s the same as if it hadn’t, unless you know. It’s in here.” He tapped his head. “In the mind, not the gun. I used to be a collector. In fact, that’s how I got into this business. I collected stamps. Early British colonies.”
The girl now stood at the window, her arms folded, gazing out at the lights of downtown San Francisco. “My mother and dad used to say we wouldn’t have lost the war if he had lived,” she said.
“Okay,” Wyndam-Matson went on. “Now suppose say last year the Canadian Government or somebody, anybody, finds the plates from which some old stamp was printed. And the ink. And a supply of—”
“I don’t believe either of those two lighters belonged to Franklin Roosevelt,” the girl said.
Wyndam-Matson giggled. “That’s my point! I’d have to prove it to you with some sort of document. A paper of authenticity. And so it’s all a fake, a mass delusion. The paper proves its worth, not the object itself!”
“Show me the paper.”
“Sure.” Hopping up, he made his way back into the study. From the wall he took the Smithsonian Institution’s framed certificate; the paper and the lighter had cost him a fortune, but they were worth it—because they enabled him to prove that he was right, that the word “fake” meant nothing really, since the word “authentic” meant nothing really.
“A Colt .44 is a Colt .44,” he called to the girl as he hurried back into the living room. “It has to do with bore and design, not when it was made. It has to do with—”
She held out her hand. He gave her the document.
“So it is genuine,” she said finally.
“Yes. This one.” He picked up the lighter with the long scratch across its side.
“I think I’d like to go now,” the girl said. “I’ll see you again some other evening.” She set down the document and lighter and moved toward the bedroom, where her clothes were.
“Why?” he shouted in agitation, following after her.
“You know it’s perfectly safe; my wife won’t be back for weeks—I explained the whole situation to you. A detached retina.”
“It’s not that.”
“What, then?”
Rita said, “Please call a pedecab for me. While I dress.”
“I’ll drive you home,” he said grumpily.
She dressed, and then, while he got her coat from the closet, she wandered silently about the apartment. She seemed pensive, withdrawn, even a little depressed. The past makes people sad, he realized. Damn it; why did I have to bring it up? But hell, she’s so young—I thought she’d hardly know the name.
At the bookcase she knelt. “Did you read this?” she asked, taking a book out.
Nearsightedly he peered. Lurid cover. Novel. “No,” he said. “My wife got that. She reads a lot.”
“You should read it.”
Still feeling disappointed, he grabbed the book, glanced at it. The Grasshopper Lies Heavy. “Isn’t this one of those banned-in-Boston books?” he said.
“Banned through the United States. And in Europe, of course.” She had gone to the hall door and stood there now, waiting.
“I’ve heard of this Hawthorne Abendsen.” But actually he had not. All he could recall about the book was—what? That it was very popular right now. Another fad. Another mass craze. He bent down and stuck it back in the shelf. “I don’t have time to read popular fiction. I’m too busy with work.” Secretaries, he thought acidly, read that junk, at home alone in bed at night. It stimulates them. Instead of the real thing. Which they’re afraid of. But of course really crave.
“One of those love stories,” he said as he sullenly opened the hall door.
“No,” she said. “A story about war.” As they walked down the hall to the elevator she said, “He says the same thing. As my mother and dad.”
“Who? That Abbotson?”
“That’s his theory. If Joe Zangara had missed him, he would have pulled America out of the Depression and armed it so that—” She broke off. They had arrived at the elevator, and other people were waiting.
Later, as they drove through the nocturnal traffic in Wyndam-Matson’s Mercedes-Benz, she resumed.
“Abendsen’s theory is that Roosevelt would have been a terribly strong President. As strong as Lincoln. He showed it in the year he was President, all those measures he introduced. The book is fiction. I mean, it’s in novel form. Roosevelt isn’t assassinated in Miami; he goes on and is reelected in 1936, so he’s President until 1940, until during the war. Don’t you see? He’s still President when Germany attacks England and France and Poland. And he sees all that. He makes America strong. Garner was a really awful President. A lot of what happened was his fault. And then in 1940, instead of Bricker, a Democrat would have been elected—”
“According to this Abelson,” Wyndam-Matson broke in. He glanced at the girl beside him. God, they read a book, he thought, and they spout on forever.
“His theory is that instead of an Isolationist like Bricker, in 1940 after Roosevelt, Rexford Tugwell would have been President.” Her smooth face, reflecting the traffic lights, glowed with animation; her eyes had become large and she gestured as she talked. “And he would have been very active in continuing the Roosevelt anti-Nazi policies. So Germany would have been afraid to come to Japan’s help in 1941. They would not have honored their treaty. Do you see?” Turning toward him on the seat, grabbing his shoulder with intensity, she said, “And so Germany and Japan would have lost the war!”
He laughed.
Staring at him, seeking something in his face—he could not tell what, and anyhow he had to watch the other cars—she said, “It’s not funny. It really would have been like that. The U.S. would have been able to lick the Japanese. And—”
“How?” he broke in.
“He has it all laid out.” For a moment she was silent. “It’s in fiction form,” she said. “Naturally, it’s got a lot of fictional parts; I mean, it’s got to be entertaining or people wouldn’t read it. It has a human-interest theme; there’s these two young people, the boy is in the American Army. The girl—well, anyhow, President Tugwell is really smart. He understands what the Japs are going to do.” Anxiously, she said, “It’s all right to talk about this; the Japs have let it be circulated in the Pacific. I read that a lot of them are reading it. It’s popular in the Home Islands. It’s stirred up a lot of talk.”
Wyndam-Matson said, “Listen. What does he say about Pearl Harbor?”
“President Tugwell is so smart that he has all the ships out to sea. So the U.S. fleet isn’t destroyed.”
“I see.”
“So, there really isn’t any Pearl Harbor. They attack, but all they get is some little boats.”
“It’s called ‘The Grasshopper something’?”
“The Grasshopper Lies Heavy. That’s a quote from the Bible.”
“And Japan is defeated because there’s no Pearl Harbor. Listen. Japan would have won anyhow. Even if there had been no Pearl Harbor.”
“The U.S. fleet—in his book—keeps them from taking the Philippines and Australia.”
“They would have taken them anyhow; their fleet was superior. I know the Japanese fairly well, and it was their destiny to assume dominance in the Pacific. The U.S. was on the decline ever since World War One. Every country on the Allied side was ruined in that war, morally and spiritually.”
With stubbornness, the girl said, “And if the Germans hadn’t taken Malta, Churchill would have stayed in power and guided England to victory.”
“How? Where?”
“In North Africa—Churchill would have defeated Rommel finally.”
Wyndam-Matson guffawed.
“And once the British had defeated Rommel, they could move their whole army back and up through Turkey to join remnants of Russian armies and make a stand—in the book, they halt the Germans’ eastward advance into Russia at some town on the Volga. We never heard of this town, but it really exists because I looked it up in the atlas.”
“What’s it called?”
“Stalingrad. And the British turn the tide of the war, there. So, in the book, Rommel never would have linked up with those German armies that came down from Russia, von Paulus’ armies; remember? And the Germans never would have been able to go on into the Middle East and get the needed oil, or on into India like they did and link up with the Japanese. And—”
“No strategy on earth could have defeated Erwin Rommel,” Wyndam-Matson said. “And no events like this guy dreamed up, this town in Russia very heroically called ‘Stalingrad,’ no holding action could have done any more than delay the outcome; it couldn’t have changed it. Listen. I met Rommel. In New York, when I was there on business, in 1948.” Actually, he had only seen the Military Governor of the U.S.A. At a reception in the White House, and at a distance. “What a man. What dignity and bearing. So I know what I’m talking about,” he wound up.
“It was a dreadful thing,” Rita said, “when General Rommel was relieved of his post and that awful Lammers was appointed in his place. That’s when that murdering and those concentration camps really began.”
“They existed when Rommel was Military Governor.”
“But—” She gestured. “It wasn’t official. Maybe those SS hoodlums did those acts then . . . but he wasn’t like the rest of them; he was more like those old Prussians. He was harsh—”
“I’ll tell you who really did a good job in the U.S.A.,” Wyndam-Matson said, “who you can look to for the economic revival. Albert Speer. Not Rommel and not the Organization Todt. Speer was the best appointment the Partei made in North America; he got all those businesses and corporations and factories—everything!—going again, and on an efficient basis. I wish we had that out here—as it is, we’ve got five outfits competing in each field, and at terrific waste. There’s nothing more foolish than economic competition.”
Rita said, “I couldn’t live in those work camps, those dorms they have back East. A girl friend of mine; she lived there. They censored her mail—she couldn’t tell me about it until she moved back out here again. They had to get up at six-thirty in the morning to band music.”
“You’d get used to it. You’d have clean quarters, adequate food, recreation, medical care provided. What do you want? Egg in your beer?”
Through the cool night fog of San Francisco, his big German-made car moved quietly.
On the floor Mr. Tagomi sat, his legs folded beneath him. He held a handleless cup of oolong tea, into which he blew now and then as he smiled up at Mr. Baynes. “You have a lovely place here,” Baynes said presently.
“There is a peacefulness here on the Pacific Coast. It is completely different from—back there.” He did not specify.
“‘God speaks to man in the sign of the Arousing.’” Mr. Tagomi murmured.
“Pardon?”
“The oracle. I’m sorry. Fleece-seeking cortical response.”
Woolgathering, Baynes thought. That’s the idiom he means. To himself he smiled.
“We are absurd,” Mr. Tagomi said, “because we live by a five-thousand-year-old book. We set it questions as if it were alive. It is alive. As is the Christian Bible; many books are actually alive. Not in metaphoric fashion. Spirit animates it. Do you see?” He inspected Mr. Baynes’ face for his reaction.
Carefully phrasing his words, Baynes said, “I—just don’t know enough about religion. It’s out of my field. I prefer to stick to subjects I have some competence in.” As a matter of fact, he was not certain what Mr. Tagomi was talking about. I must be tired, Mr. Baynes thought. There has been, since I got here this evening, a sort of . . . gnomish quality about everything. A smaller-than-life quality, with a dash of the droll. What is this five-thousand-year-old book? The Mickey Mouse watch, Mr. Tagomi himself, the fragile cup in Mr. Tagomi’s hand . . . and, on the wall facing Mr. Baynes, an enormous buffalo head, ugly and menacing.
“What is that head?” he asked suddenly.
“That,” Mr. Tagomi said, “is nothing less than creature which sustained the aboriginal in bygone days.”
“I see.”
“Shall I demonstrate art of buffalo slaying?” Mr. Tagomi put his cup down on the table and rose to his feet. Here in his own home in the evening he wore a silk robe, slippers, and white cravat. “Here am I aboard iron horse.” He squatted in the air. “Across lap, trusty Winchester rifle 1866 issue from my collection.” He glanced inquiringly at Mr. Baynes. “You are travel-stained, sir.”
“Afraid so,” Baynes said. “It is all a little overwhelming for me. A lot of business worries . . .” And other worries, he thought. His head ached. He wondered if the fine I. G. Farben analgesics were available here on the Pacific Coast; he had become accustomed to them for his sinus headaches.
“We must all have faith in something,” Mr. Tagomi said. “We cannot know the answers. We cannot see ahead, on our own.”
Mr. Baynes nodded.
“My wife may have something for your head,” Mr. Tagomi said, seeing him remove his glasses and rub his forehead. “Eye muscles causing pain. Pardon me.” Bowing, he left the room.
What I need is sleep, Baynes thought. A night’s rest. Or is it that I’m not facing the situation? Shrinking, because it is hard.
When Mr. Tagomi returned—carrying a glass of water and some sort of pill—Mr. Baynes said, “I really am going to have to say good night and get to my hotel room. But I want to find out something first. We can discuss it further tomorrow, if that’s convenient with you. Have you been told about a third party who is to join us in our discussions?”
Mr. Tagomi’s face registered surprise for an instant; then the surprise vanished and he assumed a careless expression. “There was nothing said to that effect. However—it is interesting, of course.”
“From the Home Islands.”
“Ah,” Mr. Tagomi said. And this time the surprise did not appear at all. It was totally controlled.
“An elderly retired businessman,” Mr. Baynes said. “Who is journeying by ship. He has been on his way for two weeks, now. He has a prejudice against air travel.”
“The quaint elderly,” Mr. Tagomi said.
“His interests keep him informed as to the Home Islands markets. He will be able to give us information, and he was coming to San Francisco for a vacation in any case. It is not terribly important. But it will make our talks more accurate.”
“Yes,” Mr. Tagomi said. “He can correct errors regarding home market. I have been away two years.”
“Did you want to give me that pill?”
Starting, Mr. Tagomi glanced down, saw t
hat he still held the pill and water. “Excuse me. This is powerful. Called zaracaine. Manufactured by drug firm in District of China.” As he held his palm out, he added, “Nonhabit-forming.”
“This old person,” Mr. Baynes said as he prepared to take the pill, “will probably contact your Trade Mission direct. I will write down his name so that your people will know not to turn him away. I have not met him, but I understand he’s a little deaf and a little eccentric. We want to be sure he doesn’t become—miffed.” Mr. Tagomi seemed to understand. “He loves rhododendrons. He’ll be happy if you can provide someone to talk to him about them for half an hour or so, while we arrange our meeting. His name, I will write it down.”
Taking his pill, he got out his pen and wrote.
“Mr. Shinjiro Yatabe,” Mr. Tagomi read, accepting the slip of paper. He dutifully put it away in his pocketbook.
“One more point.”
Mr. Tagomi slowly picked at the rim of his cup, listening.
“A delicate trifle. The old gentleman—it is embarrassing. He is almost eighty. Some of his ventures, toward the end of his career, were not successful. Do you see?”
“He is not well-off any longer,” Mr. Tagomi said. “And perhaps he draws a pension.”
“That is it. And the pension is painfully small. He therefore augments it by means here and there.”
“A violation of some petty ordinance,” Mr. Tagomi said. “The Home Government and its bureaucratic officialdom. I grasp the situation. The old gentleman receives a stipend for his consultation with us, and he does not report it to his Pension Board. So we must not reveal his visit. They are only aware that he takes a vacation.”
“You are a sophisticate,” Mr. Baynes said.
Mr. Tagomi said, “This situation has occurred before. We have not in our society solved the problem of the aged, more of which persons occur constantly as medical measures improve. China teaches us rightly to honor the old. However, the Germans cause our neglect to seem close to outright virtue. I understand they murder the old.”
The Man in the High Castle Page 7
