Dragon's Teeth

by Sinclair, Upton;

  “Too bad that Sargent is gone!” chuckled Lanny.

  “Don’t make a joke of it,” insisted the mother. “It’s quite inexcusable that the crowds should come and look at pictures of a faded old woman who doesn’t matter, instead of one in the prime of her beauty.”

  “Art is long and complexions are fleeting,” said the incorrigible one.

  II

  A far greater event than the Detaze exhibition came to Munich, causing the city to break out with flags. The Reichskanzler, the Führer of the N.S.D.A.P., had been motoring and flying all over his land making campaign speeches. After his overwhelming triumph he had sought his mountain retreat, to brood and ponder new policies; and now, refreshed and reinspired, he came to his favorite city, the one in which his movement had been built and his crown of martyrdom won. Here he had been a poor Schlawiner, as they called a man whose means of subsistence they did not know, a Wand- und Landstreicher, who made wild, half-crazy speeches, and people went to hear him because it was a Gaudi, or what you would call in English a “lark.” Munich had seen him wandering about town looking very depressed, uncouth in his rusty worn raincoat, carrying an oversize dogwhip because of his fear of enemies, who, however, paid no attention to him.

  But now he had triumphed over them all. Now he was the master of Germany, and Munich celebrated his arrival with banners. Here in the Braune Haus he had the main headquarters of the party; a splendid building which Adolf himself had remodeled and decorated according to his own taste. He, the frustrated architect, had made something so fine that his followers were exalted when they entered the place, and took fresh vows of loyalty to their leader and his all-conquering dream.

  Mabel Blackless, alias Beauty Budd, alias Madame Detaze, had done some conquering in her time, and was still capable of dreams. “Oh, Lanny!” she exclaimed. “Do you suppose you could get him to come to the exhibition? It would be worth a million dollars to us!”

  “It’s certainly worth thinking about,” conceded the son.

  “Don’t delay! Telephone Heinrich Jung and ask him to come. Pay him whatever he wants, and we’ll all stand our share.”

  “He won’t want much. He’s not a greedy person.”

  The young Nazi official was staggered by the proposal. He feared it was something far, far beyond his powers. But Lanny urged him to rise to a great occasion. He had worked hard through the electoral campaign and surely was entitled to a few days’ vacation. What better way to spend it than to pay his compliments to his Führer, and take him to see some paintings of the special sort which he approved?

  “You can bring them to him if he prefers,” said Lanny. “We’ll close the show for a day and pick out the best and take them wherever he wishes.” He spoke with eagerness, having another scheme up his sleeve; he wasn’t thinking merely about enhancing the prices of his family property. “If you can get off right away, take a plane. There’s no time to be lost.”

  “Herrgott!” exclaimed the ex-forester. He was in heaven.

  Then Lanny put in a long distance call to Kurt Meissner in Stubendorf. Kurt had refused an invitation to Berlin because he couldn’t afford the luxury and wasn’t willing to be put under obligations. But now Lanny could say: “This is a business matter. You will be doing us a service, and also one for the Führer. You can play your new compositions for him, and that will surely be important for your career. Heinrich is coming, and we’ll paint the town brown.” He supposed that was the proper National Socialist formula!

  Irma took the phone and added: “Come on, Kurt. It will be so good for Lanny. I want him to understand your movement and learn to behave himself.” Impossible for an apostle and propagandist to resist such a call. Irma added: “Take a plane from Breslau if that’s quicker. We’ll have a room reserved for you.”

  III

  Somewhat of an adventure for Beauty Budd. Six years had passed since Kurt had departed from Bienvenu and had failed to return. He had found himself a wife, and she a husband, and now they would meet as old friends, glad to see each other, but with carefully measured cordiality; their memories would be like Marcel’s paintings hanging on the walls—but not for public showing.

  Parsifal Dingle was here, and he had heard much talk about the wonderful German composer who had lived for so long with the Budds. He hadn’t been told that Kurt had been Beauty’s lover for eight years, but he couldn’t very well have failed to guess. He never asked questions, that being contrary to his philosophy. A wise and discreet gentleman with graying hair, he had found himself an exceptionally comfortable nest and fitted himself into it carefully, taking up no more than his proper share of room. He cultivated his own soul, enjoyed the process, and asked nothing more of life. If a German musician who had read Hegel, Fichte, and others of his country’s philosophers wished to ask questions about the inner life, Parsifal would be glad to answer; otherwise he would listen to Kurt play the piano in their suite and give his own meanings to the music.

  Friendship to Lanny Budd had always been one of life’s precious gifts. Now he was happy to be with Kurt and Heinrich again; yet he was torn in half, because he wasn’t really with them, he was lying to them. How strange to be using affection as a camouflage; feeling sympathy and oneness, yet not-really feeling it, working against it all the time! Lanny’s friendship was for Freddi, and Freddi and these two were enemies. With a strange sort of split personality, Lanny loved all three; his friendship for Kurt and Heinrich was still a living thing, and in his feelings he went back to the old days in Stubendorf, twelve years ago, when he had first met the Oberförster’s son. To be sure, Heinrich had been a Nazi even then, but Lanny hadn’t realized what a Nazi was, nor for that matter had Heinrich realized it. It had been a vision of German progress, a spiritual thing, constructive and not destructive, a gain for the German Volk without any loss for Jews or Socialists or democrats or pacifists—all those whom the Nazis now had in their places of torture.

  The three talked about old times and were at one. They talked about Kurt’s music, and were still at one. But then Heinrich fell to talking about his work, and recent developments in party and national affairs, and at once Lanny had to start lying. It wasn’t enough just to keep still, as he had done earlier; no, when the young party official went into ecstasies over that marvelous electoral victory, Lanny had to echo: “Herrlich!” When Kurt declared that the Führer’s stand for peace and equality among the nations was a great act of statesmanship, Lanny had to say: “Es hat was heroisches.” And all the time in his soul he wondered: “Which of us is crazy?”

  No easy matter to stick to the conviction that your point of view is right and that all the people about you are wrong. That is the way not merely with pioneers of thought, with heroes, saints, and martyrs, but also with lunatics and “nuts,” of whom there are millions in the world. When one of these “nuts” succeeds in persuading the greater part of a great nation that he is right, the five per cent have to stop and ask themselves: “How come?” Particularly is this true of one like Lanny Budd, who was no pioneer, hero, or saint, and surely didn’t want to be a martyr. All he wanted was that his friends shouldn’t quarrel and make it necessary for him to choose between them. Kurt and Rick had been quarreling since July 1914, and Lanny had been trying to make peace. Never had he seemed less successful than now, while trying to act as a secret agent for Rick, Freddi, and General Göring all at the same time!

  They talked over the problem of approaching the Chancellor of Germany, and agreed that Kurt was the one to do it, he being the elder, and the only one with a claim to greatness. Kurt called the Führer’s secretary at the Braune Haus, and said that he wished not merely to play the piano for his beloved leader, but to bring the Führer’s old friend, Heinrich Jung, and the young American, Lanny Budd, who had visited the Führer in Berlin several years ago. Lanny would bring a sample of the paintings of Marcel Detaze, who was then having a one-man exhibition and had been highly praised in the press. The secretary promised to put the matter before the Chancell
or in person, and the Komponist stated where he could be reached. Needless to say, it added to his importance that he was staying at the most fashionable of Munich’s hotels, with its fancy name, “The Four Seasons.”

  IV

  Irma invited Kurt into her boudoir for a private chat. She was in a conspiracy with him against her husband—for her husband’s own good, of course; and Kurt, who had had professional training in intrigue, was amused by this situation. A sensible young wife, and it might be the saving of Lanny if he could be persuaded to follow her advice. Irma explained that Lanny had been behaving rationally on this trip, and was doing very well with his picture business, which seemed to interest him more than anything else; but he still had Freddi on his conscience, and was convinced that Freddi was innocent of any offense. “I can’t get him to talk about it,” said Irma, “but I think somebody has told him that Freddi is a prisoner in a concentration camp. It has become a sort of obsession with him.”

  “He is loyal to his friends,” said the Komponist, “and that’s a fine quality. He has, of course, no real understanding of what the Jews have done to Germany, the corrupting influence they have been in our national life.”

  “What I’m afraid of,” explained Irma, “is that he might be tempted to bring up the subject to the Führer. Do you think that would be bad?”

  “It might be very unfortunate for me. If the Führer thought that I had brought Lanny for that purpose, it might make it impossible for me ever to see him again.”

  “That’s what I feared; and perhaps it would be wise if you talked to Lanny about it and warned him not to do it. Of course don’t tell him that I spoke to you on the subject.”

  “Naturally not. You may always rely on my discretion. It will be easy for me to bring up the subject, because Lanny spoke to me about Freddi in Stubendorf.”

  So it came about that Lanny had a talk with Kurt without being under the necessity of starting it and having Kurt think that that was why he had been invited to Munich. Lanny assured his old friend that he had no idea of approaching the Führer about the matter; he realized that it would be a grave breach of propriety. But Lanny couldn’t help being worried about his Jewish friend, and Kurt ought to be worried too, having played so many duets with him and knowing what a fine and sensitive musician he was. Lanny said: “I have met one of Freddi’s old associates, and I know that he is under arrest. I could never respect myself if I didn’t try to do something to aid him.”

  Thus the two resumed their old intimacy; Kurt, one year or so the elder, still acting as mentor, and Lanny, the humble and diffident, taking the role of pupil. Kurt explained the depraved and antisocial nature of Juda, and Lanny let himself be convinced. Kurt explained the basic fallacies of Social-Democracy, one of the Jewish perversions of thought, and how it had let itself be used as a front for Bolshevism—even when, as in the case of Freddi, its devotees were ignorant of what base purposes they were serving. Lanny listened attentively, and became more and more acquiescent, and Kurt became correspondingly affectionate in his mood. At the end of the conversation Kurt promised that if they had the good fortune to be received by the Führer, he would study the great man’s moods, and if it could be done without giving offense, he would bring up the subject of Lanny’s near-relative and ask the Führer to do the favor of ordering his release, upon Lanny’s promise to take him out of Germany and see to it that he didn’t write or speak against the Fatherland.

  “But don’t you bring up the subject,” warned Kurt. Lanny promised solemnly that he wouldn’t dream of committing such a breach of propriety.

  V

  They waited in the hotel until the message came. The Führer would be pleased to see them at the Braune Haus next morning; and be sure they would be on hand!

  It proved to be one of those early winter days when the sun is bright and the air intoxicating, and they would have liked to walk to the appointment; but they were taking the picture, Sister of Mercy, so Lanny would drive them. Heinrich, who had learned as a youth to labor with his hands, offered to carry the burden into the Braune Haus, but Beauty insisted that things had to be done with propriety, by a uniformed attendant from the hotel. She herself called up the management to arrange matters, and they fell over themselves to oblige. No charge, Frau Budd, and a separate car if you wish—what hotel in all Germany would not be honored to transport a picture to the Führer? The word spread like wildfire through the establishment, and the three young men were the cynosure of all eyes. The Führer, they learned, had been a familiar figure in this fashionable hotel; for many years he had been entertained here by two of his wealthy supporters, one of them a piano manufacturer and the other a Prussian Graf whose wife was conspicuous because of her extreme friendliness with the bellhops. Irma knew all about this, for the reason that she was practicing her German on one of the women employees of the establishment. One would never lack for gossip in a grand hôtel of Europe!

  The Braune Haus is on the Briennerstrasse, celebrated as one of the most beautiful streets in Germany; a neighborhood reserved for millionaires, princes, and great dignitaries of state and church. In fact, the palace of the Papal Nuncio was directly across the street, and so the representatives of the two rival faiths of Munich could keep watch upon each other from their windows. The princely delegate of the lowly Jewish carpenter looked across to a square-fronted three-story building set far back from the street and protected by high fences; on top of it a large swastika flag waved in the breeze which blew from the snow-clad Alps; in front of its handsome doorway stood day and night two armed Stormtroopers. If the Catholic prelate happened to be on watch that morning he saw a luxurious Mercédès car stop in front of the Nazi building and from it descend a blond and blue-eyed young Nazi official in uniform, a tall Prussian ex-artillery captain with a long and somewhat severe face, and a fashionably attired young American with brown hair and closely trimmed mustache; also a hotel attendant in a gray uniform with brass buttons, carrying a large framed picture wrapped in a cloth.

  These four strode up the walk, and all but the burden-bearer gave the Nazi salute. Heinrich’s uniform carried authority, and they came into an entrance hall with swastikas, large and small, on the ceiling, the windows, the doorknobs, the lamp-brackets, the grillework. They were a little ahead of time, so Heinrich led them up the imposing stairway and showed them the Senatorensaal, with memorial tablets for the Nazi martyrs outside the doors. Inside were forty standards having bronze eagles, and handsome red leather armchairs for the “senators,” whoever they were—they couldn’t have met very often, for the Führer gave all the orders. “Prachtvoll!” was the comment of Heinrich and Kurt. Lanny had the traitor thought: “This came out of the deal with Thyssen and the other steel kings!”

  The offices of Hitler and his staff were on the same floor, and promptly at the appointed hour they were ushered into the simply decorated study of the head Nazi. They gave the salute, and he rose and greeted them cordially. He remembered Lanny and shook hands with him. “Willkommen, Herr Budd. How long has it been since we met—more than three years? How time does fly! I don’t have a chance to notice it, to say nothing of enjoying it.”

  Once more Lanny felt that soft moist hand, once more he looked into those gray-blue eyes set in a pale, pasty face, rather pudgy now, for Adi was gaining weight, in spite of or possibly because of his gall-bladder trouble. Looking at him, Lanny thought once more that here was the world’s greatest mystery. You might have searched all Europe and not found a more commonplace-appearing man; this Führer of the Fatherland had everything it took to make mediocrity. He was smaller than any of his three guests, and as he was now in a plain business suit with a white collar and black tie, he might have been a grocery assistant or traveling salesman for a hair tonic. He took no exercise, and his figure was soft, his shoulders narrow and hips wide like a woman’s. The exponent of Aryan purity was a mongrel if ever there was one; he had straight thick dark hair and wore one lock of it long, as Lanny had done when a boy. Apparently t
he only thing he tended carefully was that absurd little Charlie Chaplin mustache.

  Watching him in his Berlin apartment, Lanny had thought: “It is a dream, and the German people will wake up from it.” But now they were more deeply bemused than ever, and Lanny, trying to solve the riddle, decided that here was the Kleinbürgertum incarnate, the average German, the little man, the “man in the street.” Thwarted and suppressed, millions of such men found their image in Adi Schicklgruber, understood him and believed his promises. The ways in which he differed from them—as in not eating meat and not getting drunk when he could—these made him romantic and inspiring, a great soul.

  VI

  The hotel attendant was standing in the doorway, with the picture resting on the floor; he steadied it with his left hand while keeping his right arm and hand extended outward and upward in a permanent salute. The Führer noticed him and asked: “What is this you have brought me?”

  Lanny told him, and they stood the picture on a chair, with the attendant behind it, out of sight, holding it firmly. Hitler placed himself at a proper distance, and Lanny ceremoniously removed the cover. Then everybody stood motionless and silent while the great man did his looking.

  “A beautiful thing!” he exclaimed. “That is my idea of a work of art. A Frenchman, you say? You may be sure that he had German forefathers. Who is the woman?”

  “She is my mother,” replied Lanny. He had made that statement hundreds of times in his life—Munich being the fifth great city in which he had assisted at an exhibition.

  “A beautiful woman. You should be proud of her.”

  “I am,” said Lanny, and added: “It is called Sister of Mercy. The painter was badly wounded in the war, and later killed. You can see that he felt what he was painting.”