Presidential Agent

by Upton Sinclair

  Belchite lies in Southern Aragon, something over a hundred miles north from Valencia. It is rather barren hill country, and the front there represented a noose drawn by the invading armies from the west of Madrid to the north and around to the east and southeast. If they had been able to come southwest from Belchite, they would have cut off Madrid from connection with the outside world; if they could have come southeast to the coast, they would have cut both Madrid and Valencia from Catalonia, dividing the Loyalist territory in half. They had marched boldly in full sweep, with one or the other of these plans in mind; but the free men of the Spanish democracy had stopped them cold, and now Raoul brought the latest news from headquarters and was all but dancing with delight. The battle of Belchite, the greatest victory of the war!

  VI

  Lanny didn’t want to sleep; he didn’t mind driving on Spanish roads at night, even with a strange car whose motor sputtered ominously now and then. They sped rapidly northward over a wide plain, green with well-tended orchards, the setting sun casting long shadows of tall date-palms across the road. Their destination was Lérida, and Lanny said: “Do you remember—we spent a night there, trying to make up our minds whether to strike north through the Pyrenees, or east to Barcelona. What a difference it made in your life!”

  “I’ll tell the world!” exclaimed Raoul, who had been perfecting his American in the company of visiting journalists. He talked about the cataclysm of humanity which had turned upside-down the life of an amiable idealistic school director, and made him into a sort of publicity agent in the service of Mars. Incidentally he had met so many famous correspondents and writers that he fancied himself as military expert and authority upon international diplomacy. He was quite sure that Franco had shot his bolt up here in this hard and harsh land; also that Britain and France were at last awakening to the perils of Fascism, and that their stand against submarine piracy would soon be broadened into a policy of true neutrality. Lanny had grave doubts on both points, but refrained from voicing them, for the poor Spaniard had to live and do his work. Let him have hope as long as he could.

  Raoul described the manifold duties of a publicity agent of Mars. The head of the Foreign Press Bureau, to whom Raoul tried to be loyal in spite of many obstacles, was a gnomelike little man, pallid-skinned and nearly bald. He was embarrassed because he was assumed to understand the American language but really didn’t; therefore he shut himself up in a small room with carefully drawn curtains, wore dark glasses even in that gloom, and left the meeting of foreign journalists entirely to his subordinates. One of these was a charming lady whom Lanny had met in Madrid on his first visit. “Constancia de la Mora. You remember, you bought some art goods in her little shop.” Raoul was loud in his praises of this aristocratic Spanish woman, granddaughter of a former premier, who had broken with her old associations and cast in her lot with the people. Her husband had done the same, and was now commander of the Loyalist Air Force.

  VII

  They climbed into the hills, from which most of the forests had been stripped many centuries ago, leaving the land barren and the population sparse. Darkness stole upon them, except for the feeble rays from their little car, turning this way and that on the winding road and lighting hillsides of red clay and now and then a peasant hut. They reached Lérida soon after midnight, and arousing a sleepy clerk of the Palace Hotel, found that they could have only one room and one bed. In the morning they had orange juice and coffee and huevos revueltos con tomates. They bought bread and fruit—for the nearer they got to the front the scarcer food would be.

  On the familiar road toward Saragossa they passed those sights of war which Lanny had learned to know so well. The road was worn and rutted, and the dust of vehicles made a reddish-gray fog around them and ahead. Out of this fog emerged trucks carrying wounded men back to the bases, and slow-plodding peasant carts taking families and their belongings away from destruction. Very young children and old people rode, while the rest walked alongside; the men wearing short black trousers and hempen sandals, the women much-worn dresses, invariably black. Sorrow enveloped them, old and young, but they had that patient dignity which characterizes the Spanish people, inured through centuries to every known kind of suffering.

  Raoul’s papers were in order, and an American visitor was welcomed with old-fashioned courtesy by guard-posts on the way. Always the travelers asked how the fortnight-old battle was going, and made the discovery that the closer you get to war, the less you know about what is happening. Better to stay at home, sitting by a radio! The rumble of the guns grew louder, but there was no way to tell enemy shots from friendly, or which were finding their targets.

  La gasolina, otherwise unobtainable, was purchased from government stores, and before noon they were coming down into the valley of the Ebro. The bridge across the river had been blown up, and they went along the bank by a road which had been torn to pieces by shell-fire. There were burned-out wrecks of cars and trucks scattered here and there, and a sickening sweet-rich smell that made one reluctant to breathe. The publicity agent of Mars was put on the defensive, and explained: “They can bury all the human bodies, but not the horses and mules.”

  As they neared their destination, Lanny apologized: “I have a message for the Capitán which I am pledged not to reveal to anyone else.” His friend replied promptly: “I much prefer not to know anything that doesn’t concern me. If ever there is a leak, the fewer persons one has to suspect, the better.” He went on to state that he would find some of the soldiers to talk to; they would tell him not merely about the fighting, but about the progress of adult education in the trenches. That was Raoul’s hobby, about which he was willing to ask questions without end. The government program called for teaching every soldier to read and write, and nothing else could have reconciled a pacifist and idealist to the manifold horrors of civil war. “Even if the Fascists should win,” he said, “that is one thing they will never be able to undo.”

  VIII

  The appointment with Capitán Herzog was at an inn called El Toro Rojo. Raoul didn’t know just where it was, and they stopped to get directions; apparently these were not correct, for they got lost, and finally approached the place by a sandy path in which the car would have stuck if the Spanish official had not leaped out and pushed from the rear. A swinging sign with a fierce red bull told them, as it had told thousands through the centuries, that they had found the right place. It was a building so old that it was sagging in the middle, but it had an inside court with a second-story gallery all around, and carvings which Lanny would have been glad to study if there hadn’t been a battle so near.

  El Capitán was waiting for them: a solidly built, shaven-headed Prussian, the sort whom Lanny was used to seeing in a brown shirt with shiny black belt and a swastika on the sleeves; but this one was a rebel, a laborer and sailor who had educated himself and become an active Social-Democratic Party worker. He had learned war the hard way, in action, and because of his force of personality had been chosen as leader by the Germans of all creeds and parties who made up the Thaelmann columna. The Capitán was clad in a much-worn khaki shirt and trousers tucked into boots, with insignia of his rank sewn onto the sleeves. His face was drawn, and Lanny guessed that he hadn’t been back from the front more than a few hours.

  Raoul stayed by the car, so there were no introductions. Comrade Monck, as Lanny had learned to call the German, was a man of direct approach. His first words were the same that he had spoken at their first meeting: “Wir sprechen besser Deutsch.” When Lanny assented, he said: “Bitte, kommen Sie mit,” and led him out of the courtyard and up a hillside path. Under a cork-oak tree, clear of underbrush and giving a view in all directions, they seated themselves. “Bushes may have ears,” declared Monck.

  Lanny was in the same businesslike mood. He didn’t comment on the crash and rattle of gunfire. He didn’t even ask: “How is the battle going?” It was enough that the enemy had retired from this field, if not from the atmosphere. “Trudi has disa
ppeared in Paris,” he announced.

  “Ach Gott, die Arme! How long ago?”

  “About three weeks. She had made me promise that if ever she disappeared, I would wait a while before I took any action. Then I tried to get in touch with the man whose name she had given me, a clarinetist, Professor Adler.”

  “I know him; a true comrade.”

  “I wrote twice, making an appointment, but he failed to show up.”

  “It must be that the Nazi devils have got him also.”

  “That is what I feared. Trudi has given me no other name, and you are the only person I could think of who might put me in touch with the underground.”

  “I guessed as much as soon as I heard you had come,” replied the German.

  “There is something I must explain at once,” continued Lanny; “something rather embarrassing to me. Trudi has always insisted that I have a special value to the movement, in that I am able to get large sums of money. There are others who can write, print leaflets, and distribute them; so she said, again and again.”

  “The world being what it is, Herr Budd, she is right beyond question.”

  “She made me promise that never under any circumstances would I take any step that might reveal my connection with the underground, and make it impossible for me to go on with what I have been doing for her and a couple of other trusted friends. It puts a man in an awkward position, to have to see other people risking their lives while he lives in comfort and safety.”

  “You can put your conscience at rest,” declared the Capitán. “From what Trudi told me I would name you as one of the persons indispensable to our movement. You should under no circumstances let yourself be tempted to break your promise.”

  Said Lanny: “You will understand better how difficult the decision has been when I tell you that for nearly a year Trudi has been my wife.”

  “Oh, wie schrecklich!” exclaimed the Capitán. Then, gazing into the visitor’s face: “Herr Budd, you have my deep sympathy. This is a terrible thing in any case, and beyond words when it is someone we love. It is the time we live in that permits assured happiness to none of us.”

  “I have known what must be her fate, Comrade Monck; but somehow, it was impossible to be prepared.”

  “She was a magnificent girl; one of those who should be at the head of the German government, instead of the monsters and madmen who have seized the power.”

  “You think there is no chance that she may be alive?”

  “Alive? Yes, quite possibly; but better dead.”

  “I wrestle with myself day and night. I ought to be doing something to save her. But what can I do?”

  “What can anybody do, except to make war on the Nazis? Here, right now, we are having the satisfaction of putting a number of them where they can do no further harm. We are fighting what is called a holding action; the longer we can keep them busy in Spain, the more time we give the rest of Europe to awaken to its peril. The Nazi-Fascists did not expect this, I assure you, and it has deranged their plans not a little. It may be they will learn what is in the souls of free men and women, and be more hesitant in attacking the next democratic government. At least, that must be our hope.”

  IX

  Lanny realized that he had come to the place of consolation, if any such there was in the world. The noise which filled this air was of a giant sausage machine, grinding up Nazis; here the self-called master-race were being met by the only measures that counted with them, the only argument they understood. If you really wanted to get rid of Hitlerism, these were the weapons and the techniques. The thing to do was concentrate your attention upon them, forgetting everything else.

  “You must understand, Herr Budd,” went on the Capitán, “I have been seeing men die in Spain for more than a year; men of conscience, of fine minds, many who were or might have become artists, writers, scientists, teachers—intellectuals of all sorts. They didn’t have to come here and die; they might have lived quite safely elsewhere. I get to know them, I share their lives—and then in a fraction of a second I see their faces shot off, their guts blown out by a shell burst. I have to go on and leave them; the enemy is out there, and my business is with him. So you must understand, I have got used to death, and I spare my own feelings. There is a limit to the attention I can give to any one person, no matter how worthy.”

  “I understand perfectly,” answered Lanny. “It was exactly the way Trudi felt, and tried to make me feel. It is I who am the weakling.”

  “That is not the way to put it. Trudi told me a good deal about you, Genosse Budd—may I call you that?”

  “Assuredly.”

  “I have had a rough life, but I managed to hear a little music and read enough poetry to know that there are finer things in this world, and to appreciate people who have been able to live in them and for them. I know the torment you must be enduring, and I sympathize with all my heart. All I can tell you is that the fate of the world—not merely of Spain, but of all the future—is being decided up here in these hot and dusty hills, and we need the sort of help that you can give, we need it worse than any other kind. We cannot fight unless we have the weapons and we cannot get the weapons unless we can get world opinion behind us, unless we can somehow manage to explain why we are fighting—not for ourselves, but for those who are so blind and indifferent to their own danger.”

  “There is almost nothing I can do, Genosse Monck; I am filled with despair because of my impotence.”

  “Don’t be too hard on yourself. I know about the documents you smuggled out of Germany for Trudi, and I know that they somehow got published and produced their effect. Also, the money you gave us was turned into hundreds of thousands of pieces of paper, and, as a result, millions of Germans know things of which they would otherwise be ignorant. All that will count some day—I don’t know when or how, exactly, but we have to keep our faith in the human spirit, in the social mind. I beg you not to let this tragic sorrow weaken your determination and dry up the source of funds for our underground work.”

  “What it makes me want to do is to stay here and learn to fight like you. It makes me feel myself a coward—”

  “To be a coward of that sort takes courage, Genosse Budd, and I beg you to have that special kind. You are one in a million, and you must keep the promise you made to your clearsighted wife.”

  “I am going to do my best,” said the unhappy man. “I have to have your help in getting new contacts with the movement.”

  “You will certainly have that help. It may take a little time, because I have my duties here, and one cannot write about such matters from a war zone. I do not know how much longer this battle will last, but when it is over, I will apply for a furlough; I have earned it, because I have been on duty constantly for more than a year. I will come to Paris and meet you and make the necessary contacts.”

  “That is all right, so far as it goes; but you are taking the chance that you may be killed in the meantime, and I would be left with a pocket full of money and no place to spend it. I do not know anyone else whom I could approach without risk of uncovering my secret.”

  “Let me think.” There was a pause while Lanny listened to the sounds of the guns and endeavored with professional ears to sort one kind from another. Finally the Capitán inquired: “You remember how I identified myself to you, with a little sketch drawn by Trudi?”

  “Be sure I shall never forget it.”

  “You have other such sketches in your possession?”

  “Quite a collection.”

  “Are they signed, by any chance?”

  “No; Trudi never put her name on anything.”

  “Very good; they will serve. I will write a letter to a man I know in Paris; let us call him ‘X’ for the present. I will say that I have a friend who is an artist; I want X to see his work, which I am sure X will appreciate. That is an innocent-appearing note which should not trouble any censor. I will say that the American art expert, Mr. Lanny Budd, has a collection of these drawings and
will be glad to send him samples on request by mail. I will give your address, which Trudi taught me and which I have graven in my memory: Juan-les-Pins, Alpes Maritimes, France. X will guess that this is a party matter, and will write to you and ask to see the drawings you have for him. He knew Trudi in the old days and will recognize her work. In the event that I fail to show up in Paris, you can propose a meeting, and tell him everything and follow his guidance.”

  “That sounds all right,” said Lanny. “But suppose the Gestapo has got this man also? They would undoubtedly make a response to me, and I would hate to be earning money for them to spend.”

  “The man I am sending you to is a German, about my age, which is thirty-five. He was in the Oranienburg concentration camp for two years. As a result he has a sort of nervous spasm, a tic I believe it is called; his left eyelid cannot be still. The Nazis in their efforts to make him talk used to tie his hands behind his back and then hang him up by the thumbs; that mangled his thumbs and pulled them out of joint; also it broke his shoulders and they healed improperly. You have a right to ask him to show you these various scars.”

  “I will do so,” replied the other. “The Nazis might have difficulty in reproducing such marks at short notice!”

  X

  They discussed the methods by which they might communicate with each other, without Lanny’s having to visit battlefronts. The Capitán said: “You understand that in a war like this, everybody watches everybody else, and often has reason for doing so. Letters may be stolen, or they may be secretly opened and read by others than the censors. We have traitors in our army—and you may be sure that Franco has some in his.”