Dragon's Teeth

by Sinclair, Upton;

  There was the question of the hesped, the funeral eulogy. Shlomo was competent to pronounce it, but he had never met the deceased, and somebody would have to tell him what to say. At this point the young widow dried her tears and broke into the discussion. The person who should deliver the oration was the dead man’s dearest friend, the one who knew him best and had risked his life to get him out of Naziland. This friend was in Paris, and Rahel had telephoned to him; he had promised to hire a plane and arrive in Cannes before the day was over. Surely Mama must know that it would be Freddi’s wish to have the wonderful Lanny Budd speak the last words over his grave.

  This was embarrassing to the master of ceremonies. To be sure, there was nothing in the Torah to forbid a goy to speak at a funeral; but it would seem very “modern,” and would trouble the Orthodox, into whose hands the mother wished to entrust her son’s fate. Nevertheless, Rahel insisted: not merely would it be Freddi’s wish, but also that of his father and his elder brother. They, alas, were in South America, and there was no way to consult them; but Rahel knew their minds, and Mama knew that they looked with disfavor upon her most cherished ideas. So there would have to be two orations; Shlomo would speak the proper conventional words and then dear kind Lanny Budd would say whatever came from his heart. Everyone who attended the funeral, Jew or Gentile, would know how much the two young men had meant to each other, how many clarinet and piano duets they had played, and for how many months Lanny had labored to get his friend out of the clutches of Adolf Hitler and Hermann Wilhelm Goring.

  III

  It was a mild day in early October, and Lanny’s plane should arrive in time. The hour for the ceremonies was set as late as possible, and the bereaved women summoned friends by telephone. By various means word was spread among all Jews, rich and poor, who might be willing to attend; for it is necessary to the honor of the deceased that there shall be a procession, accompanied by convincing demonstrations of grief.

  Rahel took a step which came near to spoiling the occasion for her mother-in-law; she sent a message to a Spanish Socialist who was employed in Cannes and who ran the workers’ school which Freddi and Lanny had helped to finance. Yes, indeed, Raoul Palma would attend the funeral, and many of the comrades would find ways to leave their work and pay the last tribute to a brave and loyal soul. The funeral ought to have been delayed for several days so as to give the anti-Fascists of the Midi an opportunity to make a demonstration of it. But since Moses hadn’t known about refrigerants and formaldehyde, the comrades would do their best at short notice and later would hold a memorial meeting with music and Red speeches.

  Toward the middle of the afternoon the motor-cars began to assemble in the driveway which circled the pink stucco villa of Bienvenu. Some parked their cars and waited decorously outside the gates, ready to take their places in the procession, and not realizing how this would mix things up. It was hard for modern people to understand that the men must precede the hearse and women follow it. Such has been the fate of the most holy customs in these evil days—people don’t even know that they exist!

  Six pallbearers carried the plain wooden coffin to the hearse and then took their places in a car preceding it. In front went the car with the melamed and the little five-year-old son of the deceased. His mother would have preferred to spare him this ordeal, but the grandmother insisted that duty required him to become familiar with grief, and on the way the melamed would teach him the words of a Hebrew prayer which would be helpful to his father’s soul.

  Next rode the men friends, taking with them various Jewish males who were too poor to have cars of their own. Behind the hearse rode the mother and the widow, heavily veiled; no one would see their faces or that of Freddi, which had been distorted by pain beyond power of an undertaker’s art. Next rode the women friends of the family, these also taking a few poor women, to symbolize the fact that in the eyes of Jahweh all are the same; all are commanded to appear before Him in white grave-clothes of the same humble and unpretentious cut.

  Slowly the cortege proceeded into the city of Cannes, and everywhere, according to the French custom, passers-by stopped and the men bared their heads respectfully. But apparently not one of them knew that he should walk four cubits, a distance of six feet, with the procession. It went by appointment to the school, where quite a company had assembled; at least fifty men and women, but they had no idea that the sexes should be separated. They were working people, with a few intellectuals; some were black-clad and others had armbands of crape; several carried wreaths, again being ignorant of ancient Jewish prejudices. They stood respectfully until the last car had passed, and then they fell in behind, carrying a red banner having two clasped hands and the initials E.T.M., Ecole des Travailleurs du Midi.

  IV

  So into the beautiful hills which line the Cote d’Azur. When they came to the gates of the cemetery the cortege stopped, and the pallbearers bore the coffin to the grave. Three wealthy and fashionable friends of the family did not enter the cemetery grounds, but watched the procedure from outside, reading the prayers which they could not hear. The reason was that they belonged to the tribe of the priests, the Cohanim, who are not permitted to enter a burial ground, a place contaminated and perhaps a haunt of evil spirits.

  Frequently the pallbearers stopped and set down their burden; this was not because they were weary, but because it was a part of the ritual. As they walked, the melamed recited the Ninety-First Psalm, full of assurances to those who put their trust in the Most High. Surely He shall deliver thee from the snare of the fowler, and from the noisome pestilence. He shall cover thee with His feathers and under His wings shalt thou trust: His truth shall be thy shield and buckler. Thou shalt not be afraid for the terror by night; nor for the arrow that flieth by day; nor for the pestilence that walketh in darkness; nor for the destruction that wasteth at noonday. A thousand shall fall at thy side, and ten thousand at thy right hand; but it shall not come nigh thee. So spoke the psalmist; he mentioned plagues and stones and lions and adders and dragons—but nothing about Nazis!

  Several times male friends came forward at the pauses and replaced the pallbearers, for this is a way to do honor to the deceased. Lanny Budd had arrived at the cemetery in a taxicab and waited at the gates; when a friend of the family explained the custom in a whisper, Lanny stepped up and did his share. He had known the Robin family for twenty years, and had heard poor Mama wailing over her darling’s dreadful fate. He would have done whatever she wished, even if it had included the most ancient custom of having the pallbearers walk barefoot, lest they should stumble over the latchets of their sandals.

  The bier arrived at the grave, and the rabbi recited the Zidduk ha-Din, a Hebrew prayer; very few knew what it meant, but it had fine rolling sounds. When the coffin had been lowered to its appointed place the Orthodox ones came forward, plucking bits of grass-roots and earth from the ground and throwing them upon the coffin as a symbol of the resurrection. They said a Hebrew formula which means: “And they of the city shall flourish like the grass of the earth.” Some of the Gentiles threw flowers, and had to be excused because they didn’t understand the proprieties. The Jewish people wept loudly, because it was good form and also because they felt themselves at one with the bereaved women, exiles in a strange land and heirs of the man of Uz. When the dark-eyed, pale little son of the dead man stepped forward and with tears on his cheeks recited the Kaddish, part Hebrew and part Aramaic, there were few dry eyes in the assembly.

  Shlomo Kolodny delivered his hesped. He said about the son of Johannes Robin the same things he had said about a thousand other Jewish men in the course of his long service. He laid stress upon the young man’s piety, a virtue in which Freddi had been lacking—unless you chose to give a modernized meaning to the word. He laid stress upon Freddi’s dutifulness to his parents and to his wife and child—virtues especially commanded by Jewish law. The melamed said another rolling Hebrew prayer, and then it was the turn of a young Gentile to speak for the Socialist porti
on of this oddly assorted procession.

  V

  Lanny Budd at this time was thirty-four but looked much younger. He had pleasant and frank American features and well-tanned and well-nourished skin; he wore a neatly trimmed little brown mustache, and a brown tropical worsted suit of a fashionable cut. He had no claim to being an orator, but had talked to the workers at the school and to other groups and didn’t mind doing it when he had something to say. He understood clearly that funerals are for the living, and now his words were for Mama and Rahel and a few others who had really known the deceased; also for those workers for whom Freddi had often played music at the school.

  The victim of the Nazis had been twenty-seven, and Lanny had corresponded with him since he was a little boy and had known him since he was a youth. In all those years Lanny had never known him to speak an unkind word or perform a dishonorable action. “He was as near to being perfectly good as one could ask of a human being; and I do not say that just because he is dead—I said it many times and to many people while he was living. He was an artist and a scholar. He knew the best literature of the land which he had made his own. He earned a doctoral degree at the University of Berlin, and he did this not for the honor nor yet for a livelihood, but because he wanted to know what the wisest men had learned about the causes and the cure of poverty.”

  Dr. Freddi Robin had called himself a Socialist. This was not the place for a political speech, Lanny said, but those who had known and loved him owed it to his memory to study his ideas and understand them, not letting themselves be confused by calumny. Freddi had been done to death by cruel forces which he himself had understood and had refused to bow to. Others also would have to learn about them, and find out how to save the world from hatreds and delusions which are the root of wars. If we would do this, we would be serving this dead man’s memory and be worthy to meet him in whatever future abode the Creator of us all may have prepared.

  That was all, and it wasn’t much of a speech. The Socialists had come expecting more, and some would have been glad to supply it if invited. But this was a Jewish funeral, centered upon two sobbing women. Those who knew the proper way to behave at funerals formed two parallel lines leading back to the cemetery gates, and as the chief mourners walked between these lines everyone recited a formula beginning “Hamokom yehanem,” meaning: “May God comfort you in the midst of all those who mourn for Zion and Jerusalem.” Just inside the gates of the cemetery stood the melamed with a collection-plate, and no one failed to drop in a coin. This was for charity, of great importance to every Jew. “Tzedaka tatzil mimavet,” recited Shlomo, meaning: “Charity delivereth from death.”

  Lanny stepped into the waiting taxicab, and when he reached Bienvenu he found servants at the porte-cochere of the house with several basins of clean water and towels. It was necessary for every person who attended the funeral to cleanse the hands before entering. This was supposed to be done in a special ritual way, by letting the water run three times from fingertips to elbows, but only the melamed knew this, and the reason—that evil spirits cannot pass running water and so can be kept from entering the house of mourning.

  After that the family and their friends sat down with the melamed and recited seven times certain passages from the Book of Lamentations. Then they ate the “meal of condolence,” which consisted of any non-alcoholic beverage, with bread and hard-boiled eggs, the last being symbols of life. Leah and Rahel Robin would eat these meals and none others over a period of seven days; wearing slippers, and with their dresses cut in such a way as to indicate that they had torn them in grief, they would sit on the floor or a low stool and read from the Book of Job. This is known as the shiv’ah, and during it they would receive consolatory visits and they and their friends would discuss only the virtues of the dear departed.

  For eleven months they would not dance or take part in any form of recreation. There was a Talmudic reason for this precise period—if you mourned a full year, it would imply that you thought the deceased had been a bad man and was in Gehenna, that is, hell; you didn’t quite wish to admit that, but you thought it wiser to take no chances, so you came as near to a year as propriety allowed. During this period the Kaddish must be recited every day for the benefit of the man’s soul, and there was only one member of this household who was expected to say it—the five-year-old son. The prayers of women do not count, so little Johannes must say this long prayer, of which he wouldn’t understand a single word.

  VI

  Lanny strolled about the grounds of Bienvenu, his home since he could remember. Always it seemed smaller after he had been visiting in chateaux and hotels particuliers, but he loved it and brought his smartest friends to it with pride. Now it was his duty to look things over and see what repairs might be needed to any of the three villas on the estate. He must consult with Leese, the Provencal woman who had risen from the post of cook to an informal sort of steward. It would be his duty to report matters to his mother, who was visiting in England, but would be coming back after Christmas to take her part in the gaieties of a new Riviera season. He played with the dogs, of which there were always too many, because nobody could bear to dispose of them.

  Lanny had a visit from Raoul Palma, a handsome young Spaniard—at least Lanny thought of him as young, just as he thought of himself. Hard to realize that Lanny was going to be thirty-five next month and that Raoul was past thirty! He wanted to get up a meeting in memory of Freddi Robin and wanted Lanny to come and make a good Socialist speech about him. But Lanny explained that his father was in Paris on one of his brief flying trips; also, Lanny had a wife and child in England whom he had been neglecting for the greater part of a year while getting his Jewish friends out of the clutches of Hitler and Goering. Lanny wrote a check to pay the cost of a hall, and told the grateful and attentive schoolmaster some of the things to say about Freddi.

  They talked about the progress of the school and about the political situation in France and other countries. That was the way a “parlor Pink” got his education and kept his contacts with the workers. Lanny apologized for his own way of life: as an art expert, advising the rich about the buying of paintings, he had a reason for traveling to all the cities and towns of this old and fear-tormented continent; as an American he was assumed to be a neutral in Europe’s quarrels, and it was the part of wisdom for him to keep that position. Thus he could meet the great ones, enjoy their confidence, and gain information which he could pass on quietly to working-class persons who could make use of it. The Spaniard was one of these; he had been born in a peasant hut and had been a humble clerk in a shoestore; but with a small subsidy from Lanny he had become a leader, attending conferences, making speeches, and furnishing news to the Socialist and labor press of the Midi.

  VII

  Raoul talked for a while about events in his native land, from which he had fled, driven by a cruel despotism which lined working-class rebels against the wall and shot them without ceremony. But three years ago the wretched King Alfonso had been dethroned; Spain had become a republic and its government had received an overwhelming vote of support from the people. Raoul Palma had been so excited he had wanted to go back, but Lanny had persuaded him that his duty lay with the school he had helped to build.

  Now it was just as well, for the teacher was deeply discouraged about his own country. It was the old tragic story of party splits and doctrinal disputes; the factions couldn’t agree on what to do, and the amiable elderly college professors and lawyers who composed the new government found it fatally easier to do nothing. The Spanish people continued to starve; and for how long would they rest content with the most well-meaning “Liberalism” which gave them neither bread nor the means of producing it?

  Lanny didn’t know Spain very well—only from stops on a yachting-cruise and a plane trip. But he knew the Spaniards here on the Riviera; they came to play golf and polo, to dance and gamble and flirt in the casinos, or to shoot pigeons, their idea of manly sport. They read no books, they knew noth
ing, but considered themselves far above the rest of mankind. Alfonso of the jimber-jaw and the unpleasant diseases liked to be amused, and when on holiday he had unbent with the rich Americans of this Coast of Pleasure. Lanny had played tennis with him, and wasn’t supposed to beat him, but had disregarded this convention. Now the ex-monarch was in Rome, intriguing with Mussolini to be restored to his throne.

  “You ought to go to Spain!” insisted Raoul. “You ought to know the Spanish workers—they haven’t all been killed. They have seen the light of modern ideas, and nothing will be able to blind them again.”

  Lanny replied that he had often thought of such a trip. “There are pictures there I want to see and study. But it might be better to wait till you have got through expropriating the landlords, and then I can pick up a lot of bargains.”

  He said this with a smile, knowing that his friend would understand. Whenever the young organizer came to him for funds, Lanny would say: “I’ve just sold a picture, so I can afford it.” Or he’d say: “Wait till next week; I’ve got an oil princess in tow and expect to sell her a Detaze.” Raoul knew that in a storeroom on this estate were a hundred or more of the paintings of Lanny’s former stepfather, and whenever a purchaser came along, the Ecole des Travailleurs du Midi could have a mass meeting or a picnic with refreshments and speeches. But don’t say anything about Lanny’s part in it!

  VIII

  This was in October of 1934, and Adolf Hitler had held power in Germany for not quite two years. He was the man who dominated Lanny Budd’s thoughts; he was the new center of reaction in Europe, dangerous not merely because of his fanaticism, but also because he had in his hands the industrial power of Germany and was proceeding to turn it into military power. “It isn’t only what he has done to the Jews,” said the art expert. “He has done things much worse to the Socialists and to the whole labor movement in the Fatherland; but you don’t hear so much about it in the capitalist press of France.”