He adds nothing for several seconds, until one of the trumpeters prods, “Yes, Gerhart?”
“There is a, um, problem.”
Several musicians now say, “Yes, Gerhart?”
“The, ah, the entire Philharmonic may be called into the Volkssturm.”
The men of the orchestra are unbalanced by this sudden news. Brass horns bump music stands, tubas are put down, many men stand in anger, the violinists grip their instruments like chickens by the neck.
“No! Unheard of! Impossible! We were promised! Exempt, we’re exempt!”
“Gentlemen, gentlemen, please. Gentlemen.”
The musicians do not return to their chairs or soften their voices until von Westermann steps off the rostrum in frustration to leave the stage. At this they quiet as if by a conductor’s baton. The orchestra manager reascends the riser.
“There is nothing definite at present. But you must be made aware that Herr Goebbels has made statements to the effect that no one, absolutely no one, will be exempt from service now that the Russian advance is picking up speed across Poland. He is revoking all exemptions. The Red Army may be in Berlin at any time.”
Someone calls, “What about the Americans, the English?”
“I know as much about the intentions of the Americans and the British as you do, which I will suppose is nothing. Right now it seems that anyone who claims to know anything is worried about the Russians.”
A tympany drummer with a maid’s voice unlike his instrument, high and quavering, calls out the question Lottie is sure is on every man’s mind.
“Well, what are you going to do?”
“Do? Me? What can I do?”
Voices raise again. “Something! Talk to Goebbels! We’re the BPO, for God’s sake! Goebbels has always been behind us, go talk to him! Talk to Speer!”
Lottie sits in the heart of this pandemonium, afraid for her own purposes. Certainly as a woman she will not be called into the Volkssturm like these hapless men of the Philharmonic. But her membership among them has provided her with status and connections. How can Goebbels do this? The orchestra provides the only citywide distraction and pride left for the miserable citizenry of Berlin, for the great and small alike, Nazis, frightened soldiers, grieving mothers. Every Monday the Philharmonic’s performances are broadcast to all of Berlin and the fighting troops. Through Lottie’s quartet, she has made precious money, been paid in barter food, eaten hot meals. If the BPO and with it her quartet are disbanded, if these tuxedoed men are given guns and marched off to meet the Russians, her world will fall with theirs.
The only chance is if the Americans and British reach Berlin first.
The men continue to haggle with von Westermann for some course of action, but it’s clear at present there is none. Hopelessness abides in their scattershot voices. In the acoustics of the Admirals Palace, their pleas sound orchestral, as random and unmusical as was earlier the tuning of their instruments.
* * * *
FEBRUARY
* * *
L
et every one
Kill a hun
Winston Churchill
S
oldiers of the Red Army!
Kill the Germans!
Kill all Germans! Kill! Kill! Kill!
From a leaflet dropped to advancing
troops, composed by the Russian
propagandist Ilya Ehrenburg
signed by Stalin
* * * *
THREE
* * *
February 2, 1945, 10:15 a.m.
Aboard the U.S. Navy cruiser Quincy,
Grand Harbor
Valletta, Malta
The president squeezes his daughter’s hand.
“Look at Winston,” he says. “That cigar he’s smoking is so big, I can see it from here. It’s like he’s got a dog’s leg in his mouth.”
Anna laughs. “Oh my God, you’re right!” Three hundred yards off, aboard the British cruiser HMS Orion, the Prime Minister has shouldered his way between the white sleeves of two seamen in the long, perfect queue of swabbies gathered at the ship’s port rail. Churchill and his cheroot are spotted with ease, he is the only dark, animated blot in the line of British seamen, all arranged at motionless attention. He waves to the Quincy steaming alongside, at the President and Anna seated on the bridge.
Roosevelt sweeps back his blue cape, doffs his old cloth cap, and raises the hat in salute to the Prime Minister. Churchill seems to bounce on his heels in excitement. The man loves a show, thinks Roosevelt. Anna keeps laughing, her bright blue eyes like opals rolling in a palm, jumping from Churchill’s animation to her father’s face. She’s a handsome woman, Roosevelt thinks, a beautiful gal. Her voice is a song of excitement: “Isn’t this fun? Isn’t this splendid?”
The Quincy makes toward its berth in Valletta harbor, slipping broadside to the Orion. When the two are abreast, a flight of five RAF Spitfires in V-formation roars overhead, flying low enough for Roosevelt to see the pilots salute in their cockpits. Before the echoes of the plane engines have drained from the surrounding Malta hills, brass bands aboard both naval ships strike up “The Star-Spangled Banner.” Every sailor in sight, and there are hundreds on both vessels, snaps taut to salute the American flag steaming into harbor.
The President leaves his hat in his lap and leans back his head to play the sun across his cheeks. The morning is warming and clear. His daughter’s hand held in his squeezes his fingers and pulls out. Anna says, “Oh, Daddy, there’s Sarah. I’m going to wave. I’ll be right back.” She goes to the rail to greet Churchill’s daughter. He watches her step away, two sailors break attention to make room for her, she’s as tall as the seamen. She goes up on tiptoe. Roosevelt guesses that all the stiff sailors around her want to look down at her legs.
The feel of the ship is good, old, and familiar. He grew up sailing on the lakes around Hyde Park in upstate New York. For seven years he was assistant secretary of the Navy. He feels himself stronger today than when he was in wintry Washington. The rest and relaxation of the Atlantic and now the sunny Mediterranean have restored him.
At the White House he’s treated like a prisoner of his health. Everywhere he turns, there it is; in the news, the Republicans keep bringing it up, in his daily routine. The topic taints everything. His “ticker” doctor, heart specialist Bruenn, takes his blood pressure every afternoon and sets him out pills. His chief physician, Admiral McIntire, comes into his bedroom each morning and watches him eat breakfast in his pajamas and read his papers, gleaning God knows what medical evidence. He’s restricted to less than four hours of concentrated work per day, including only one hour of meetings and interviews. He takes naps. Massages. Medication. Doctors creep in the folds of the White House like mice, multiplying every time there’s some setback, a stomachache, a fever, a nasal congestion. But on this voyage, the gentle roll of the ship has helped him sleep late every day, until ten or eleven. At noon, he lunched with Anna and some of his cronies. Afternoons, the President lounged on the deck, sorting stamps or reading official documents. At five came happy hour, followed by dinner and a movie.
On the seventh day at sea, January thirtieth, Roosevelt celebrated his sixty-third birthday. Anna threw him a party with five cakes. Three were the same size, representing the first three terms in office. The fourth cake was huge, for the current term, and the last was a little cake with a question mark of frosting in the center, for a possible fifth term. Roosevelt laughed for the sake of the crowd around him, and won all the money at poker that evening. But he worried into the night over the question mark, whether or not it was on the wrong cake. His doctors don’t tell him much. They don’t talk to anyone but each other. Roosevelt could insist they level with him, but he doesn’t ask. They have their jobs. He has his.
Anna returns to the deck chair beside him. “Daddy, now you listen. You are not to stay up until all hours with Winston this time. I’m watching you.”
He nods. She is a stunning woman, the stro
ng cut of her jaw in profile. Eleanor has given him five beautiful children, the one girl and four boys. But very early (it seems a lifetime ago now), she stopped giving to him, or he stopped asking her for, the gifts of a wife.
Anna asks, as though reading his thoughts, “Daddy, just once. Couldn’t you let Mother come?”
Roosevelt imagines Eleanor here instead of Anna. She’d asked, as she always does, to come along. His wife is not sympathetic to his health. She believes in willpower as the path to cure yourself. With her constitution, that’s easy for her. She’s too strict, judgmental, she clashes with Winston’s alcohol, his late working hours, Winston who believes women should be silent partners. With Anna’s gaze on him the President shakes his head, no. He lays his cap back on his scalp and pulls down his cape, enfolding himself against the weather, his cool thoughts. Eleanor would cause too much of a ruckus with her presence. He doesn’t need it or want it.
Anna says only, “Daddy.” She purses her lips and wags her head.
Roosevelt looks into his daughter’s sad eyes, thinking a face, like the thickest tomes, can carry so much history.
On his birthday he received no wishes from Eleanor. He was instead handed a testy cable from her describing an imbroglio that had broken out in Congress over his nomination for secretary of commerce. Eleanor’s message was direct and critical of his decision.
Roosevelt takes in and releases a deep breath. He looks away from Anna to free the words into the air. “Your mother and I. We’re quite a pair.”
Anna pats his hand. In her own time, she says, “Yes, you are.”
He wants to soften this melancholy for his daughter. She better than anyone knows how little comfort he takes in his marriage, the other places he turns for that comfort. There’s no need to talk about it to her, she lives it.
“I couldn’t get along without her, you know. She’s irreplaceable. She’s my eyes and ears. Hell, she’s my legs.”
Anna lowers her chin and her eyelids in an elegiac, understanding expression. She drops her head to his shoulder, smoothing the front of his old heavy cape with a strong, veined hand. Her touch on his chest is all he senses; the naval bands, the ships’ engines, the rustle of men and sea all step back behind the closeness of his nestled daughter on this warship in a foreign port. So much history in a touch.
Roosevelt sits with Anna while the ceremony surges and concludes. Father and daughter do not move or disconnect. Nearing the quay, the Quincy slides beyond the Orion, Churchill and his sailors are out of sight. The British brass band fades. The Spitfires bank and return to their base. Roosevelt feels his daughter trying to give to him through her body, her strength and love, her life hooked to his, though he’s aware it does no good; he bites his lip. It’s too late for so many things. Too late.
But perhaps not for everything.
The legacy.
Is there still time and energy left? Or is there only the bitter question mark on the sweet cake?
“Well,” he says. This is a preamble to movement, to get on with events. But Anna does not release him. Roosevelt relents. He stays in her embrace, her head on his shoulder like an angel there. They sit a long while, until the big boat is in dock, until Winston Churchill comes chugging up the gangway. Before he has both feet on the deck, the Prime Minister calls forth.
“Mr. President. My excellent friend. Ha! Ha! You made it in grand fashion, sir. Grand! Anna! My God, Franklin, you do travel with the most beautiful women. Look who’s here, Anna. Sarah!”
Behind Churchill, his daughter Sarah hurries forward. Anna makes to stand to face this barrage of guests and British spunk. But it is Roosevelt who pulls on her hand, just for another moment to keep her in the nest the two of them made for a few perfect minutes. He’s not ready for her to flap out, or to fly off himself. If only there were more time, for everything. Father and daughter fix eyes, and in this shared glance—miraculously somehow—all the good and awful and hidden and feared in his heart is said to her. This is more than he expected, this sudden communication. Here, of all places, now, this goodbye. He can, he must, let her go. Winston barges forth. Roosevelt presses his child’s fingers for one more selfish second; let Winston wait.
As though releasing a dove, he opens his hands and off she flies, white and strong and gone.
In her place, round and blocking the sight of her, stand the gold buttons, cream braid, and blue naval jacket of Churchill. The man adores playing dress-up, especially uniforms. He wears an admiral’s cap.
Roosevelt opens his hands to the Prime Minister.
“Winston, you are, as always ...”
“Hungry, Mr. President.” Churchill plops into Anna’s deck chair.”Hungry. When is lunch, sir?”
Roosevelt can’t help but be buoyed by the spirit of the man’s arrival.
“Lunch always awaits you, Winston. Now that you’re here, let’s put on the feedbag.”
“The feedbag.” Churchill mulches this word, taps his cane. “I do love the American way with the tongue. The feedbag. Marvelous.”
The two leaders share quick laughter. Their eyes meet, and the mirth is doused. Their two looks are identical, appraising and secretive. Roosevelt wonders if his own appearance is as worn as Churchill’s. The Prime Minister seems frail, the weight in his face and shoulders has a soft and soggy sag. His cheeks, always ruddy, are pale today, his high forehead seems chalky. During the war Churchill has traveled hundreds of thousands of miles, to the front, to Moscow and Washington several times, to constant conferences with Eisenhower and Montgomery at their headquarters. He’s all over the place, he strolls London and the cities after every bombing, thumbs up, V for Victory, “KBO.” He’s the oldest of the three Allied leaders, seventy. He’s got to be tired. But right now Winston Churchill speaks of lunch as though it will be a coronation, of the President’s arrival in Malta as a great and propitious event. Roosevelt thinks, This is real courage, this man. My God.
Lunch is filled with chatter between the two families and key staffs. No mention is made of the Montgomery gaffe or Churchill’s humble and marvelous speech in the House of Commons. Roosevelt thinks it best to let those sleeping dogs lie. He relishes the ninety-minute meal, flush with charm and gossip, and draws from those at the table their own wits and best habits. Roosevelt wants to be held by this company as a brave man, no less than his admired friend Winston.
Churchill drinks champagne as though he is putting out a fire in his gut. Food goes in, words fly out, he’s a locomotive, shoveling in fuel, producing speed. Roosevelt marvels but holds court despite the Prime Minister’s blanketing charm.
“That’s enough,” says Anna, standing at her place. She claps her hands once. “Everyone go home. Father and Winston need their rest. Big days ahead, everyone, big days. Let’s conserve ourselves, shall we?”
Churchill rises, his party of a dozen follows his lead. He leans over to Roosevelt, and behind a raised hand says, “Six o’clock all right? I’ll come to your cabin. We can talk an hour before dinner.”
Roosevelt tips a lit cigarette in agreement. Churchill turns and raises his hands like a man being taken prisoner to Anna’s dictate, saying, “I shall go quietly, madam.”
When all are gone, Anna herself wheels Roosevelt to his cabin. “Nap,” she says on the way. “Whew, I think I’ll take one myself. Hurricane Winston.”
At six o’clock sharp, the Prime Minister raps on Roosevelt’s cabin door.
“Come in, Winston.”
Churchill enters with a different energy from how he came aboard that afternoon. This is the private Winston, not the roaring electric personality but a calm presence, almost graceful. Roosevelt sees the intellect palpable in the man’s eyes. His words at these times are not chosen for display but for reason and clarity.
“Since we only have an hour before your lovely daughter comes to drum in my head, let me jump right in, Franklin, about the meeting of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.”
Roosevelt lights a cigarette, places it in his holder, and
folds his hands in his lap.
“Proceed, Mr. Prime Minister “
In succinct terms, Churchill describes the results of the military conference held over the past several days here in Malta between the military staffs of General Marshall and his British counterpart General Brooke.
The American and British forces are to put their major efforts into two converging thrusts toward the Rhine, in the hopes of trapping a large number of German troops west of the river. The main drive across the river, deep into Germany, will be made by Montgomery’s Twenty-first Army, across the Lower Rhine, skirting north of the industrial Ruhr region. Churchill calls this route “the shortest road to Berlin.” In the south, American forces are to cross the Rhine and head toward Frankfurt, to draw off as many enemy troops as possible from Monty’s advance. This line of attack could become the focus if Montgomery falters in the north. Marshall and Brooke concurred that Montgomery’s army will be reinforced for this assault, with top priority in men, air support, supplies, and equipment. The Field Marshal will have under his command a million soldiers, including the U.S. Ninth Army.
The End of War - A Novel of the Race for Berlin - [World War II 02] Page 11
