Lanny would have liked to ask: “What way is there but war?”—but of course that wouldn’t have done. This serious-minded, middle-aged chair-warmer with the round, rosy face and horn-rimmed spectacles blamed most of the world’s present woes upon America’s failure to join the League and put its immense influence upon the side of law and order. He deplored the bloody conflict in Spain, but insisted that the Communists were in full control in Valencia, and thought that when Franco had won, as he was bound to, he would settle down and become a conservative statesman. He had hoped the same from Hitler and Mussolini, and was waiting to see the decent elements in those countries arouse themselves and take control.
To Lanny he was a mine of information about the various personalities prominent in international affairs. Occasionally he would say: “Don’t you think so?” and Lanny would reply, discreetly: “I haven’t your sources of knowledge, Sidney,” or: “You are the one to tell me,”—and found that this satisfied the permanent official. After an afternoon and evening, Lanny was in position to return to his hotel and prepare another report for Gus Gennerich—important and interesting, but without a single ray of sunshine in it.
X
Hansi and Bess arrived; they didn’t put up at the same hotel with Lanny, nor appear in public with him, but he would go to their rooms: and stay, and listen while they rehearsed their recital. For Lanny it was like coming home; he kept little from this couple, only his dealings with Roosevelt and Trudi. He had told them that he was collecting information for an important purpose, and they took it for granted that this meant Rick—as in part it did. Bess still wondered why he didn’t get a wife, and was prepared to co-operate with Beauty to this end; but she didn’t bother Lanny about it, and both musicians listened gladly to what he told them about Europe’s affairs.
When it came to Communism, Lanny would say: “Well, maybe so; I’m not taking any sides.” They knew it was a polite evasion, and had learned to accept it and avoid arguments. They had their formulas, simple and satisfying. Nazi-Fascism represented the last stage of capitalism on its way to collapse; the Nazi-Fascists were gangsters whom the capitalists hired to protect them, just as Henry Ford and other great capitalists of America had done in the effort to keep labor unions out of their plants. If these gangsters now and then took to blackmailing their employers, that, too, was according to precedent. When finally the gangsters were overthrown, capitalism would fall with them, and there would be nobody but the Communists organized and able to take control.
Lanny would smile and say: “Well, I have a sister who will become a commissar, and a brother-in-law who has been made a Distinguished Artist of Soviet Europe; so I’ll probably get by.” Meantime, he would go on sending data to Eric Vivian Pomeroy-Nielson, who wrote under the pen-name of “Cato,” and was quite sure that when the British people had been sufficiently informed, they would turn out the semi-Fascists and appeasers of Fascism and install a democratic regime; also to Franklin D. Roosevelt, President of the U.S.A., who pleaded that he couldn’t go any faster than his people would let him, and asked his friends to trust him while he gave the dictators rope enough so that they could hang themselves.
Lanny sat quietly and inconspicuously in a large audience and listened while Hansi and Bess played a Mozart sonata, and then the very fine César Franck, which was one of Hansi’s favorites, and which he had chosen to play on a notable occasion of his life. Two sensitive Jewish lads had come to Bienvenu to meet the wonderful Lanny Budd, about whom their father had been telling for years; two dark-eyed shepherd boys out of ancient Judea, transplanted magically to the French Riviera, playing fiddle and clarinet instead of harp and shawm. Hansi had been so nervous that he had, hardly been able to hold his instrument; but as soon as he had got going and the lovely first theme came floating to Lanny’s ears, Lanny realized that here was a musician who combined tenderness with dignity, and whom no demonstrations of technique would distract from the great purposes of art.
Now here he was, a recognized master; and again the lovely theme came to Lanny’s ears, full of memories of which a French organist, its composer, had known nothing. Lanny saw little Freddi Robin, sitting near and watching his older brother, his hands locked tightly together, his whole body turned to stone with fear that one finger might be misplaced by the hundredth part of an inch; dear gentle, sensitive Freddi, who had grown up to be a steel-nerved hero and had been tortured by the Nazis to the edge of his dreadful death.
Strange are the whims of fate, and stranger still the alchemies of the spirit which turn suffering into beautiful art! “For deeper their heart grows and nobler their bearing, whose youth in the fires of anguish hath died.” The soul of Freddi Robin had passed into his brother and sister-in-law, and when they played the music he had loved, something magical came forth from strings of gut and wire, and even casual strangers such as this audience in Geneva felt that they had been taken into some temple and were witnessing some valid rite. That is what art is, a process of creation, which makes itself a part of life, and builds new life in its own image, immortal and eternally operating within the soul of man. One accent of the Holy Ghost the heedless world hath never lost!
XI
The concert team moved on to Zurich, and Lanny traveled on the same train, for it was on his way to Vienna, and he needed the sustenance of great music to give him the courage to face another bout with the Nazis. He knew, of course, that when he entered that hell of intrigue and greed, when he put himself on exhibition as a court favorite, a privileged guest not merely of Die Nazi Nummer Eins but also of Die Nummer Zwei, he was bound to stir into life a million little demons of jealousy and suspicion. Who was this handsome and elegant stranger, and by what right did he intrude into the Holy of Holies, violating all the canons of national exclusiveness and racial domination? What did he want?—for manifestly nobody comes to visit a sovereign who does not want great prizes, either for himself or for others. His father was an airplane manufacturer—but couldn’t the Fatherland make its own planes? And what secrets could a Yankee sell that were half so precious as those he would wangle or steal? Watch him closely, for he is a menace—so a score of court favorites would decide, persons who would have given their eye teeth to be invited to Karinhall or Rominten, to say nothing of spending two hours with the Führer in his splendid study in the New Chancellery.
So Lanny did not visit two Red musicians on the train, but sat quietly reading a safe book on the psychic researches of the sound and racially respectable Baron Schrenck-Notzing. In Zurich he went to a separate hotel, and then phoned for Hansi’s room number, and went to it without giving his name at the desk. They had their meals in the Hansibess’s rooms, and Lanny went into the adjoining room while the waiters brought the trays. None of these precautions seemed excessive to the musicians, for they knew the Nazi spy system, and that only their international reputation kept them safe from harm. Anybody might be a spy or worse, and when this Red pair were driven to the concert hall, their agent accompanied them and had two able-bodied male friends along with him. Such was life in a city which lay only a dozen miles or so from the Nazi border.
Lanny was sitting in the lobby of his hotel, reading the news from Vienna in the local German-language newspaper. He chanced to look up as there passed him a slender, blond-haired woman; her blue eyes met his brown, and both gave a start of recognition; then she passed on swiftly, and went to the desk and got her key and disappeared into the elevator—called also the lift, l’ascenseur, der Fahrstuhl—for Zurich is a city where you are never sure what language you are speaking. If you go south, you will have Italian thrown in; if you go east you will hear a Tirolean dialect which will puzzle you unless you know German very well; in remote valleys you will hear varieties of Romansh, a language which has come down from ancient Latin.
Lanny sat thinking about Magda Goebbels. She it was, without question; and what was she doing in Switzerland? The last time he had seen her was at Hitler’s retreat, Der Berghof; he had thought then that she
was the unhappiest-looking woman he had ever seen, and he thought the same now. He could not say that she was pale, for the ladies do not leave themselves that way; but she was as thin as ever, and haggard and harcelée. She was out of Germany—and did it mean for good?
Lanny wasn’t much surprised when a bellboy brought him a tightly sealed note, and he read, in English: “Dear Mr. Budd: Could I have the honor of a brief talk with you? Room 517.”—and no signature. He said to the boy: “No answer,” and sat for a while in further thought. She wasn’t likely to be a spy; she had troubles enough of her own, and would be wanting advice, help, money—or possibly just to pour out her heart. To listen to high-placed, unhappy ladies was surely part of a presidential agent’s job; and Lanny was free to do it, for this was international Switzerland, and not America, where high-class hotels catering to the family trade maintain a guardian angel on every floor to make sure that no gentleman enters a lady’s room unless he is registered as the lady’s husband or father or son. Here no one would pay any heed if Lanny entered the elevator and stepped off au cinquième or Nummer Fünf, and went to a certain door and tapped gently.
XII
“Wie schön dass Sie kommen, Herr Budd!” exclaimed Magda, with intense feeling; but there wasn’t any gush about it, and she didn’t stop for social formalities, to offer a drink or to ring for Kaffee. No, she was in grave trouble, and said: “Bitte, nehmen Sie Platz,” and then: “Ich muss mich entschuldigen. You remember when you came to my home in Berlin, and asked me for help, I did what I could—it turned out not to be very much, but that was not my fault, it was out of my power.”
“So I understood, Frau Goebbels.”
“I have never forgotten how you told me the story of poor Johannes Robin and his terrible trouble. You may not know it, I was brought up by a Jewish family and have a host of Jewish friends; you cannot imagine what I have suffered to see their plight and to be helpless to do anything about it. Now my own turn has come—I am in the most awful distress, Herr Budd.”
“I am sorry to hear that, Frau Goebbels.”
“I have the keenest recollection of your kindness—that was four and a half years ago, if I remember—but I have not forgotten what I thought: here is a really kind and generous man, trying to get something for somebody else, not for himself. I have not met so many since then, Herr Budd.”
“They are not so easy to find in our so-called grosse Welt.”
“Ja, leider! If only I could have known it when I was younger! I have nobody to blame but myself for the wreck of my life. I have been a vain and silly woman. I had a kind husband, and a most elegant estate in Mecklenburg; my every whim was indulged, but I did not have sense enough to know that I was well off. I was taken in by formulas, by high-sounding phrases. I had dreams of glory, I thought I was going to make my mark on history—in short, I was ambitious.”
“It is a common failing,” said Lanny, consolingly.
“It should be left to men! Women should ask nothing but to be safe from the evils that men inflict! Nothing but a home, and a place to hide from horror and shame! I suppose you know what sort of man I am now married to. All the world has heard it over the radio.”
“I didn’t happen to listen; but I have heard talk.”
“I cannot stand it any more. I am prepared to die rather than stand it. I have brought my dear children out of Germany, never to return. I have nobody to help me but my two maids, and I desperately need advice. Where are we to find safety?”
“That is a difficult problem, Frau Goebbels.” Lanny had decided in advance that he would take time to think that problem over!
“Um Gottes Willen, you must help me! At least give me the benefit of your knowledge of the outside world. Not for my sake, but that of these pitiful children, who must not be made to pay for their mother’s vanity and folly. If only you could know what I have suffered! What has been told over the radio is not the hundredth part of it, Herr Budd.” The woman got up suddenly and stepped to the door of her room, opened it swiftly, and peered out. She closed and locked it, then took her costly fur coat, which had been flung upon the bed, and spread it over the table on which the telephone stood. All this was the familiar ritual in Naziland, the preliminary to confidential conversation.
XIII
Magda Goebbels drew her chair close to Lanny’s, and lowered her voice. “Mein Freund, will you permit me to tell you just a little of the realities of National Socialism? And will you promise never to hint at me as the source?”
“Most surely, gnädige Frau! And will you, in return, never mention that you have talked to me?”
“That is only fair. I am throwing myself upon your mercy; what is it you say?—throwing discretion to the winds. I am desperate, and do not care what becomes of me—only for my poor little ones.” She caught her breath and then rushed on: “I do not know what is in your heart concerning our neue Ordnung, and be sure I shall not ask you for the smallest hint, not even watching the expression on your face. All I will do is to tell you what I have experienced. My first husband was one of those who joined with Thyssen and other magnates in putting up money to aid a certain great man—I won’t use names—”
“The Big Shot, we say in America.” Lanny could still smile.
“Richtig! I listened to him shoot, and the thunder deafened my ears. I thought: This is the greatest man in the world. This is the man who is going to make over Germany and bring order to all Europe. I became completely converted, completely demented—what is it—the devotee of some cinema idol?”
“A fan.”
“Das ist’s! I make no excuses for myself; I was a vain and silly fool, but at the same time there was genuine admiration, a desire to help and serve. The human heart is not simple, you know.”
“Indeed I know, Frau Goebbels, and I am prepared to make allowances. Nobody can question that the Big Shot is an orator, and a dynamo of energy.”
“I came to Party headquarters to work, in order to be near him. I gave my money to the cause. I aspired to be known as the perfect Parteigenossin. I demanded a divorce from my husband, and broke with my old life entirely. I dreamed of the day when the Party would come to power and my hero would be able to accomplish in Germany all those wonderful promises. I gazed upon him with adoring eyes, and he saw it, of course, but he did not respond, and I thought it was because he was a man of saintly life, a consecrated man, thinking only of the German people and the National-Socialist cause; so I adored him all the more. I began to hear rumors that there had been women in his life, and still were, but they were such dreadful stories that I refused to believe them—I even denounced to the police one person who had repeated them. You have heard those stories?”
“I have heard many.”
“They are all true, the very worst; but I didn’t find it out until later, too late. Jockl fell in love with me—I was beautiful in those days, and he was an ardent wooer. He has a brilliant mind and can be most charming when he wishes. It was all for the cause; I would help him, I would become his first assistant, I would be put in charge of women’s fashions in Germany—all sorts of things like that. I thought I could do great things, and wanted to be admired and to have titles and honors. Die Nummer Eins—the Big Shot—came to me and asked me to marry Jockl, and become some day the first lady of the Fatherland. This was before the Party took power, and long before Göring’s marriage. So I became Frau Josef Goebbels and bore my darling Helga; and almost at once I made the cruel discovery that my husband cheats in love as he does in everything else in the world. He is one of those lewd men who want every young woman they see; he wants a new one every night—he must have the thrill of conquest, the excitement of unveiling, the novelty of solving a new problem, discovering a new set of reactions. I stood it because I had to; I was a woman among the Nazis, and there must not be any scandal in the Parteileitung. Am I boring you, Herr Budd?”
“Not in the least. You are not surprising me, either.”
“You saw me at the Big Shot’s home i
n the mountains, the evening you came there with your wife. Did that surprise you?”
“Not especially; but I thought you looked very unhappy.”
“I was in such a state of terror that I could hardly keep my teeth from chattering. I came very near asking to be allowed to go away with you and your wife. It is the most horrible thing—I can hardly bear to speak about it.” She got up and went to the door again, opened it and looked out, then returned, and lowered her voice almost to a whisper: “You know, perhaps, a little concerning sexual pathology?”
“Surely, Frau Goebbels.”
“The great man is impotent; he, the most powerful in the world, cannot accomplish what his commonest soldier, his humblest Diener, can do. He is frightfully humiliated, he struggles against his frailty; he becomes excited, hysterical; he raves, he foams at the mouth; he blames the woman. He makes her do unspeakable things; and she obeys because he is the master, because his will is the only law in the land, because there is no one who would dare to help her, because, if she defied him, he would have her whipped until the skin had been stripped from her naked back. If she should escape to a foreign country, he would have her relatives seized and tortured—because you see, he demands loyalty, and does not permit scandals in the Parteileitung. Such is our neue Ordnung.”
XIV
So at last Lanny had the truth about matters which had puzzled him greatly. A presidential agent had information which he wouldn’t put on paper, even in Switzerland, but would deliver viva voce in that room in the White House. Said he: “It is a tragic story, Frau Goebbels. You must know that it is a very old story, and is in the medical books.”
Presidential Agent (The Lanny Budd Novels) Page 47
