Presidential Agent

by Sinclair, Upton;

  7

  Spain’s Chivalry Away

  I

  Lanny Budd was traveling on a train, something which he did rarely. It was the express which ran along the Mediterranean; a rocky and irregular coast, with now a beach, now a wooded stretch, now bare red sandstone cliffs, and now a spur of mountain with a black tunnel through which the train darted with a loud racket. There were fishing villages, and pink and white villas built into the rocks, and vistas of bright blue sea with many small boats, some with white sails and some with red. When it grew dark there were lighthouses flashing white and red signals.

  They came to the southernmost point of France, and the few passengers who were going on had to get out and walk through a tunnel; there it was Spain, and they had to stand in line while officials inspected their papers and luggage. Lanny was traveling light, with only one suitcase, his portable typewriter, and a large package of chocolat Menier, one piece of which would suffice to win the favor of most any official. Presently he was in an extremely dingy train, having scars to prove that it had been through battles. Except for the early fighting, Red Catalonia hadn’t seen much of the war, and in the judgment of the rest of the country wasn’t carrying its share of the burden. Catalonia was anarchist and individualist, and didn’t take kindly to the stern discipline which war imposes. The peasants of Catalonia were glad to be free of their landlords, but didn’t want to part with their products except at war prices, which was why the people of the towns were having a hard time keeping nourished.

  All this was explained to an American traveler by a young working-man who had been into France on some purchasing errand for his collective. He was ardent, full of determination and hope; a new life had begun for him and his kind, and they had no thought of giving it up. It was the final conflict and each stood in his place; the international party would be the human race. What had been done in Catalonia was going to be done throughout the Iberian peninsula, and when the workers of France saw its success, they too would throw the parasites off their backs. In the next stage, the people of the Fascist lands would discover how they had been misled; they would revolt, and Europe would become one commonwealth of workers and peasants, free, fraternal, and dedicated to the life of reason.

  Poor old Europe! Lanny in childhood had thought it was a beautiful and wonderful continent; only little by little he had come to realize that it was a land of hereditary evils too numerous to be counted. Then he had become possessed by the same bright dream of social change as this young workingman; he still cherished the dream, because there was nothing else to live for, but he clung to it now with a sort of desperation, like one who knows that a dream is over and that he has come wide awake. Just recently he had been reading a statement by some historian, that during the past few centuries Spain had spent an average of seventy years of each hundred at war, and France an average of fifty. Idealists preached and promised freedom, but what they got was “man arrayed for mutual slaughter.”

  Of course Lanny mustn’t say anything like that to a workingman of Red Catalonia. He had to explain, as well as he could in his imperfect Spanish, the strange indifference to freedom now being displayed by the great American republic, which all Europe thought of as the land of freedom. Dropping that embarrassing subject as soon as possible, he asked questions about the workers’ co-operatives. To what extent were they solving the problems of production? Were they actually getting it, in spite of all the controversy, the politics, the sabotage? That was the test, and the only test, in war as it would be in peace. More production than capitalism could give; more than that thing which Robbie Budd glorified under the name of “individual initiative,” and which was really the true anarchy. As Lanny had said to his father: perfect order inside the plant and perfect chaos outside!

  Yes, said this workingman, the wheels of the factories were turning and the goods were coming forth. The workers had had more than a year in which to organize and solve their problems; in spite of war and blockade and internal conflicts, they were getting materials and turning out goods. “How do you solve this?” and “How do you manage that?” Lanny would ask; and all the time he was thinking: “I must explain this to F.D.R.” The smiling and genial President of the United States had become little by little the center of Lanny’s thinking, his refuge from despair. A man who really had power and who really understood! If Lanny should tell him how the Catalan workers were running their own plants, F.D.’s face would light up, and he would chuckle and remark: “How the National Association of Manufacturers and the United States Chamber of Commerce would like that!” But would he really do anything about it? Would he even say anything about it publicly? And if he did, wouldn’t the Associated Robbie Budds of America be able to throw him out on his ear at the next election?

  II

  From Barcelona on, the young workingman’s place was taken by a grim-faced elderly peasant woman who had been to town to nurse a son wounded in the fighting on the Aragon front. She had brought in a load of produce to pay her expenses, and now was carrying home such necessities as salt and kerosene. Lanny had picked up many words of the Catalan language, which is allied to the Provençal of the fisher-boys with whom he had played in childhood; and anyhow, he had no shyness about trying to jabber in all the tongues of polyglot Europe. He made out that the peasant woman was dissatisfied because the high prices for farm products were more than balanced by high prices for store products. Lanny knew that this complaint was universal in wartime. He found that this woman didn’t like war, and couldn’t see that the coming of Franco would make any difference to her—provided only that they wouldn’t fight over her hereditary acres! Lanny was interested to understand the peasant mind, which is strictly “isolationist,” and as firmly fixed as the boundary-stones of its small plots of land.

  The farther south the train went the hotter it was, and the nearer to war. Trains were sometimes bombed; ships and small craft had been torpedoed and beached where you could see the wrecks from the train. Few people went to Valencia who didn’t have to, for it was bombed frequently and its defenses were inadequate. It had been the seat of the government ever since the siege of Madrid had begun, ten months previously; now the government was planning to move to Barcelona, so people on the train reported; some departments had already moved. The Italians were pressing in the south, while Franco, with his Moors and Requetes and another large Italian army, was fighting a great battle up on that River Ebro where Lanny had once hidden his car while the Fascists were searching for him. Franco was getting a thumping defeat, so reports indicated, and everybody was exulting in this success.

  Raoul’s wife had written him that “a friend” was coming with news from home. Raoul had no trouble in guessing who it was, and he was waiting at the badly bombed station. He was several years younger than Lanny, but already his dark hair was streaked with gray and his face deeply lined; he looked years older than when Lanny had last seen him, during the first attack upon Madrid. He had a high forehead and delicate features; a thin nose, with nostrils which seemed to quiver when he was deeply moved, which was often, for he was high-strung and impressionable. People call it the “spiritual” type of face, but to Lanny it meant undernourishment; he was sure his Spanish friend hadn’t had a square meal in many a month, and as he handed over a heavy package he said: “This contains chocolate.”

  “Oh, good!” exclaimed Raoul. “How the staff will welcome that!” Lanny thought, how characteristic! He was going to share it with the whole Foreign Press Bureau! Having foreseen this, Lanny had purchased a goodly stock.

  III

  The new arrival explained, quickly: “I don’t want any publicity about my coming. I have a couple of important errands and then I have to skip out. I don’t want to go to a hotel. Can you take me somewhere we can talk quietly?”

  “I’ll put you up in my room, if you don’t mind discomfort.”

  “Not in the least. Let us go.”

  The people of Valencia had no gasolina, and were eating their ho
rses and burros; but there were a few antiquated cabs at the station, and the two friends and their luggage were driven to one of the smaller hotels set apart for government employees. Raoul had a small room with a single cot, and it was his idea that Lanny was to occupy this while his host slept on the floor. Lanny said: “I won’t stay on those terms,” and they started an argument, which might have lasted quite a while.

  Lanny changed the subject abruptly, saying: “I want to see you eat at least one piece of chocolate.” He opened the package, and on account of the heat the contents were soft. It was necessary to unwrap a piece and lick it off the paper. Not a dignified procedure, but a semi-starved man does not stand upon ceremony, and all the time that Lanny talked Raoul licked, and it wasn’t long before his mouth and everything around it were smeared a rich shiny brown.

  Lanny began: “Do you happen to remember that Capitán Herzog whom we saw marching with the International Brigade in Madrid?”

  “Indeed, yes. He has made a good record in the Thaelmann columma.”

  “He is still alive, then?”

  “Well, you know how it is in war. I wouldn’t necessarily have heard if anything had happened to him.”

  “Can you find out?”

  “I can find out where he was stationed and if there’s any recent news about him. His company is fighting on the Belchite front, I’m fairly sure.”

  “What I have to do is to have a talk with him. I have a message from the underground in Germany; I’m pledged not to talk about it, but you will understand, it’s a party matter, and important.”

  “Of course, Lanny. It wouldn’t be easy to get to the front without publicity. We are taking foreign journalists continually; but if you went along, they would know you, and they wouldn’t see any reason for not mentioning you.” Raoul called the roll—it was a roll of honor—of American writers who had made the cause of the Spanish people their own, and who were now or had recently been in Valencia: Ernest Hemingway, Vincent Sheean, Dorothy Parker, Elliot Paul, Louis Fischer, Anna Louise Strong, Albert Rhys Williams. They had taken a long and perilous journey in the cause of conscience. They turned their hearts’ blood into burning words in the effort to overcome the dull inertia of the masses, to awaken the people of America to the meaning of this rape of democracy.

  Lanny said: “I have met many of them, and they would know me. That wouldn’t do.”

  “You must understand,” explained his friend, “I’m not the boss. I have to take the matter to my chief and I have to be able to say something that will convince him.”

  “Couldn’t you say it is somebody with a message for Herzog; say, a family matter.”

  “The answer would be: ‘Let the man write to Herzog, and if Herzog wants to see him, it’s up to him to make the application.’ All that might take some time.”

  “Couldn’t you get somebody to smuggle me up there?”

  “But that’s not done in wartime, Lanny. You’d be a spy, and might get into serious trouble. It would certainly mean publicity.”

  “To be suspected as a Fascist spy wouldn’t be so bad from the point of view of what I’m doing. Much better than being a friend of the Reds.”

  “Yes, but you might have to clear yourself before you could get out. And it would get me into a mess—it might make it impossible for me to be of any use here. You must understand, I am half a foreigner, because I have lived so long in France. We are bedeviled by spies and saboteurs, and by suspicion and fears of them. Once you are suspected, you are guilty.”

  “Then perhaps it isn’t wise for you to be hiding a stranger in your room here.”

  “It won’t be good if it lasts very long, and unless I can introduce you as a comrade.”

  They talked the problem over from every angle. Whatever story Raoul told he had to stick by; he couldn’t try a second. Also, he was bound by the name Lanny Budd, which was in the passport and could not be changed. He asked: “Will Herzog know your name?” and Lanny answered that there could be no doubt of that.

  Finally Raoul said: “The best thing is to be open about it. I will go to my chief and ask permission to get El Capitán Herzog on the telephone. Unless he is at the fighting front, that should be possible. I will say to him: ‘Lanny Budd is in Valencia and wishes to see you.’ If he will say to my chief: ‘Please send this man to me,’ it can be done, I am sure. Perhaps I can get permission to go as your escort.”

  “Bueno!” said Lanny Budd.

  IV

  While Raoul went to carry out this commission, the visitor went for a stroll about the city of the Cid. It is more than a thousand years old, and many of its buildings have been made out of the stones of a previous city a thousand years older; ancient Roman ruins, such as Lanny had been used to seeing in the neighborhood of his childhood home. The less ancient Valencia was built in part by the Moors, and has blue and white and golden domes like Istanbul and other places of the Levant. Like all Spanish cities it had dreadfully crowded slums, and its modern industries were carried on in buildings ill-suited to the purpose. Now these industries were in the hands of the workers, who were learning to run them under penalty of being conquered by Franco’s Moors, which meant death for the men and worse than death for their wives and daughters.

  Italian and German bombers came over at frequent intervals. The interference was pitifully inadequate, and they could come down and pick their targets. They chose places where there might be crowds, for their purpose was to terrify and break the spirit of the population. What they achieved was to fix in the minds of all a black and bitter hatred of their class enemies, whether native or foreign. The outside world called this the “Spanish civil war,” but no worker in Spain ever thought of it as anything but an invasion by foreign Fascists who were pledged to put down and enslave the workers of all Europe and keep them as slaves for the rest of time. Spanish landlords and great capitalists and high prelates of a degenerate Church had hired this crime and paid for it by pledging the national wealth of Spain, the iron ore and copper and all the products of the soil. Foreign troops were doing the fighting, and the weapons were without exception of foreign manufacture—including all the planes which swarmed in Spanish skies and blasted Spanish homes and tore the bodies of Spanish women and children. Some day there would be justice! Some day there would be vengeance!

  Lanny didn’t see any of the torn bodies, for they had been carted away and put underground; but he saw the blasted homes by hundreds. The bombs were not big enough to destroy whole blocks, but enough to send one five-story tenement sliding down into the street, or perhaps to blow out the front walls and leave it like a set in a modernistic play, with several rooms exposed: a dining room with a table for the family to sit at, a bedroom with a bed for lovers to lie in, a crib for the resulting baby to sleep in. Sometimes the damage was recent, and gangs of men were clearing away the rubbish, taking down loose cornices and tottering walls; sometimes the ruins were still smoking—for the bombers dropped incendiaries, and many stone buildings had been gutted and left mere shells.

  Amid all this ruin the people went grimly about their daily tasks. They were drably clad, the men mostly in well-worn black blusas. Lanny never saw anybody smile, even the children, unless he caused them to do so by being a wonderful señor Americano, asking questions and distributing centavos. He looked like a “class enemy,” but did not behave so, and everybody on the Loyalist side knew that there were a few simpáticos, especially from that wonderful land across the sea where every worker owned a motorcar and sent back money to his impoverished relatives. “La tierra de tíos ricos,” a peasant had once said to Lanny; the land of rich uncles!

  V

  Back at Raoul’s room, Lanny read about the battle of Belchite in a crudely printed newspaper. At last his friend came in, greatly excited. “I talked with El Capitán,” he announced. “We are to start tonight, and I am to take you. Congratulaciónes!” But really it seemed that Raoul was the one to receive these; it was a holiday he had earned by fourteen months of incess
ant labor with few thoughts of himself. Now he gave no heed to possible dangers at the front; when you have been under siege for so many months, first in Barcelona, then in Madrid, then in Valencia, you learn to forget about danger; it is like a thunderstorm—maybe you will be hit and maybe not, but there’s nothing you can do about it and no use crawling under the bed.

  What Raoul thought of was the chance to be with the wonderful Lanny Budd, who had picked him out of a starvation job in a shoestore in Cannes and given him a chance, first to study, and then to teach others. During fifteen years Lanny Budd had come and gone, and every time he had come it had been with a pocketful of money for the workers’ school, and a story of adventures in that grand monde which Raoul’s Marxist convictions obligated him to despise, but which his human weakness led him to hear about with curiosity.

  First they went to a café to get some dinner. Lanny was worried, because he hadn’t ever tried the meat of either burros or caballos; but he learned that, for a much higher price, some fisherman had been willing to risk being machine-gunned. Also there was rice fried with olive oil, and there was the juice of the well-known Valencia orange, and dates which grew in groves of tall palms in the suburbs. Few are the times when one cannot get food in a city if one has a purse full of its currency.

  A much-battered Ford runabout had been provided for the trip. The chauffeur, who ordinarily was inseparable from his vehicle (for fear of being drafted into the army), was providentially sick, and so Lanny would be permitted to do his own driving, at his own risk. Raoul had the necessary passes, including a government order for the proper amount of gasolina. If you bought it on the black market, you would pay pretty nearly its weight in silver.