Herman Wouk - The Winds Of War

by The Winds Of War(Lit)

  Yielding to Rhoda's urging, he had accepted an invitation to come back to Abendruh in January, though he had not enjoyed himself there.

  More and more, especially since his glimpse of the National Socialist leaders at Karinhall, he thought of the Germans as people he would one day have to fight. He felt hypocritical putting on the good fellow with them. But intelligence opportunities did exist at Steller's estate. Pug had sent home a five-page account just of his talk with General von Roon. By pretending he agreed at heart with Ike Lacouture-something Steller already believed, bel-ause he wanted to-he could increase those opportunities. It meant being a liar, expressing ideas he thought pernicious, and abusing a man's hospitality-a hell of a way to serve one's country! But if Steller was trying games with the American naval attache, he had to take the risks. Victor Henry was mulling over all this as he strode along, muffled to his eyes against a sleety rain that was starting to fall, when out of the darkness a stooped figure approached and touched his arm.

  'Captain Henry?" "Who are you?"

  "Rosenthal. You are living in my house."

  They were near a corner, and in the glow of the blue streetlight Pug saw that the Jew had lost a lot of weight; the skin of his face hung in folds, and his nose seemed far more prominent. He was stooped over, and his confident bearing had given way to a whipped and sickly look. It was a shocking change. Holding out his hand, Pug said, "Oh, yes. Hello."

  "Forgive me. My wife and I are going to be sent to Poland soon.

  Or at least we have heard such a rumor and we want to prepare, in case it's true. We can't take our things, and we were just wondering whether there are any articles in our home you and Mrs. Henry would care to buy. You could have anything you wished, and I could make you a very reasonable price."

  Pug had also heard vague stories of the "resettlement" of the Berlin Jews, a wholesale shipping-off to newly formed Polish ghettos, where conditions were, according to the reports you chose to believe, either moderately bad or fantastically horrible. It was disturbing to talk to a man actually menaced with this dark misty fate.

  "You have a factory here," he said. "Can't your people keep an eye on your property until conditions get better?"

  "The fact is I've sold my firm, so there's nobody." Rosenthal held up the frayed lapels of his coat against the cutting sleet and wind.

  "Did you sell out to the Steller bank?"

  The Jew's face showed astonishment and timorous suspicion. "You know about these matters? Yes, the Steller bank. I received a very fair price. Very fair." The Jew permitted himself a single ironic glance into Henry's eyes. "But the proceeds were tied up to settle other matters. My wife and I will be more comfortable in Poland with a little ready money.

  it always helps. So-perhaps the carpets-the plate, or some china?"

  "Come along and k it ov m taler with my wife. She makes all those decisions. Maybe you can have dinner with us."

  Rosenthal sadly smiled. 'I don't think SO, but you're very kind."

  Pug nodded, remembering his Gestapo-planted servants. "Herr Rosenthal, I have to repeat to you what I said when we rented your place.

  I don't want to take advantage of your misfortune." 'Captain Henry, you can't possibly do me and my wife a greater kindness. I hope you will buy something."

  Rosenthal put a card in his hand and melted into the blackout.

  When Pug got home Rhoda was dressing for the charge's dinner, so there was no chance to talk about the offer.

  The embassys Christmas party had none of the opulence of an Abendruh banquet, but it was good enough. Nearly all the Americans left in Berlin were there, chatting over eggnogs and then assembling at three long tables for a meal of roast goose, pumpkin pie, fruit, cheese, and cakes, all from Denmark. Diplomatic import privileges made this possible, and the guests grew merry over the unaccustomed abundance. Victor Henry loved being back among American faces, American talk, offhand open manners, laughter from the diaphragm and not from the face muscles; not a bow or a clicked pair of heels, not a woman's European smile, gleaming on and off like an electric sign.

  But trouble broke out with Rhoda. He heard her raising her voice at Fred Fearing, who was sucking his corncob pipe and glaring at her far down the table. Pug called, "Hey, what's it about, Fred?"

  'The Wolf Stellers, Pug, the loveliest people your Wife has ever met."

  'I said the nicest Germans," Rhoda shrilled, "and it's quite true.

  You're blindly prejudiced."

  "It's time you went home, Rhoda," Fearing said.

  'And just what does that mean?" she snapped back, still much too loud. At Abendruh Rhoda had loosened up on her count of drinks, and tonight she app ar fuer ong than usual. Her gestures were e ed to berth al getting broad, she was holding her eyes half-closed, and her voice tones were going up into her nose.

  "Well, kid, if you think people like Wolf Steller and his wife are nice, You'll believe next that Hitler just wants to reunite the German folk peacelily. About that time you need to go back for a while on American chow and the New York Times."

  'I just know that Germans are not monsters with horns and tails," said Rhoda, "but ordinary people, however misgidded. Or did one of your frauleins show up in bed with cloven hoofs, dear?" The crude jibe caused a silence. Fearing was an ugly fellow, tall, long-faced, curly-beaded, with a narrow foxy nose; upright, idealistic, full of rigid liberal ideas, and severe on injustice and political hypocrisy.

  But he had his human side. He had seduced the wife of his collaborator on a best seller about the Spanish Civil War. This lady he had recently parked in England with an infant daughter, and he was now-so the talk ran-making passes at every available German woman, and even some American wives. Rhoda had once half-seriously told Pug that she had had trouble with Freddy on the dance floor. All the same, Fred Fearing was a famous, able reporter. Because he detested the Nazis, he tried hard to be fair to them, and the propaganda ministry understood this. Most Americans got their picture of Nazi Germany at war from Fearinles broadcasts.

  Victor Henry said, as amiably as he could, to break the silence, "It might be easier to navigate in this country, Rhoda, if the bad ones would sprout horns or grow hair in their palms or something." nWhat Wolf Steller has in his palms is blood, lots of it," Fearing said, with a swift whiskeyed-up pugnacity, 'He acts unaware of it. You and Rhoda encourage this slight color blindness, Pug, by acting the same way."

  it's Pug's job to socialize with people like Steller," said the charge mildly, from the head of the table. "I propose a moratorium tonight on discussing the Germans." Colonel Forrest was rubbing his broken nose, a mannerism that signalled an itch to argue, though his moon face remained placid. He put in, nasally, 'Say, Freddy, I happen to think Hitler just wants to reorganize central Europe as a German sphere, peacefully if he can, and that he'll call off the war if the Allies will agree. Think I should go home, too?" Fearing en-dtted a column of blue smoke and red sparks from his pipe.

  "What about Mein Kampf, Bill?" 'Campaign document of a thirty-year-old hothead," snapped the military attache, "written eighteen years ago in jail. Now he's the head of state. He's never moved beyond his strength. Mein Kampf's all about tearing off the southern half of Russia and making a German breadbasket of it. That's an old Vienna coffeehouse fantasy. It went out of the window once and for all with the pact. The Jewish business is bad, but the man's doing his job with the crude tools at hand. That unfortunately includes anti-Semitism. He didn't invent it. It was big on the German scene before he was born."

  "Yes, time for you to go home," said Fearing, gulping Moselle.

  "Well, what's your version?" Now plainly irritated, the military attache put on an imitation of the broadcaster's voice. "Adolf Hitler the mad house painter is out to conquer the world?" "Oh, hell, Hitler's revolution doesn't know where it's going, Bill, any more than the French or Russian revolutions did," exclaimed Fearing, with an exasperated wave of his corncob- "it's just raging along the way those did and it'll keep going and s
preading till it's stopped. Sure he moves peacefully where he can. Why not? Everywhere he's pushed in there have been welcoming groups of leading citizens, or traitors, you might say. In Poland they swarmed, Why, You know that France and England have parties ready right this second to cooperate with him. He just has to strike hard enough in the west to knock out the ins and bring in the outs. He's already got Stalin cravenly feeding him al ssi ii I the Ru an o and wheat he needs, in return for the few bones he threw him in the Baltic."

  With swinging theatrical gestures of the smoking pipe, Fearing went on, "By 1942, the way things are going, you may see a world in which Germany will control the industries of Europe, the raw materials of the Soviet Union, and the navies of England and France. Why, the French fleet would go over to him tomorrow if the right admiral sneezed. He'll have a working deal with the japs for exploiting Asia and the East Indies and ruling the Pacific and Indian oceans.

  Then what? Not to mention the network of dictatorships in South America, already in the Nazis' pocket.

  YOu know, of course, Bill, that the United States Army is now two hundred thousand strong, and that Congress intends to cut it."

  "Well, I'm against that, of course," said Colonel Forrest.

  'I daresay! A new bloody dark age is threatening to engulf the whole world and COngress wants to cut down the Arinyl" 'An interesting vision," smiled the charge. "Slightly melodramatic."

  Rhoda Henry raised her wineglass, giggling noisily. "Lawks a mercy me! I never heard such wild-eyed poppycock. Freddy, you're the one who should go home. Merry Christmas.Fred Fearinies face reddened.

  He looked up and down the table.

  "Pug Henry, I like you. I guess I'll go for a walk."

  As the broadcaster strode away from the table, the charge rose and hurried after him, but did not bring him back. The Henrys went home early. Pug had to hold up Rhoda as they left, because she was halfasleep, and unsteady at the knees.

  The next pouch of Navy mail contained an Alnav listing changes of duty for most of the new captains. They were becoming execs of battleships, commanding officers of cruisers, chiefs of staff to admirals at sea. For Victor Henry there were no orders. He stared out of the window at Hitler's chancellery, at the black-clad SS men letting snow pile on their helmets and shoulders like statues. Suddenly, he had had enough. He told his yeoman not to disturb him, and wrote three letters. The first expressed regret to the Stellers that, due to unforeseen official problems, he and Rhoda would not be coming back to Abendruh. The second, two formal paragraphs to the Bureau of Personnel, requested transfer to sea duty. In the third, a long handwritten letter to Vice-Admiral Preble, Pug poured out his disgust with his assignment and his desire to go back to sea. He

  ended up:

  I've ed twenty-five years for combat at sea. I'm miserable, Admiral, and maybe for that reason my wife is miserable. She's falling apart here in Berlin. it's a nightmarish place. This isn't the Navy's concern, but it's mine. If I have been of any service to the Navy in my entire career, the only recompense I naw ask, and beg, is a transfer to sea duty.

  A few days later another White House envelope came with a scrawl in black, thick, slanting pendl. The postmark showed that it had crossed his letter.

  PugYour report is really grand, and gives me a helpful picture.

  Hitler is at rybody's reaction is a little different. I'm destrange one, isn t he? Eve lighted that you are where you are, and I have told C.N.O that. He says you want to return briefly in May for a wedding- That will be arranged sure to drop in on me when you can spare a moment.

  FDR

  Victor Henry bought two of Rosenthal's C)riental carpets, and a set of English china that Rhoda particularly loved, at the prices the man named. His main motive was to cheer her up, and it worked; she gloated over the bargains for weeks, and never tired of saying, truly enough, that the poor Jewish man's thankfulness to her had been overwhelming. Pug also wrote the Stellers about this time that, if e invitation held, he and Rhoda would come back to Abendruh after all.

  If his job was intelligence, he adedded, he had better get on with it; moreover, the moral gap between him and Steller seemed to have narrowed.

  Notwithstanding Rosenthal's pathetic gratitude for the deal, his possessions were Obiekte.

  New Year's Eve Midnight Briny dearI can't think of a better way to start 1940 than by writing to you. I'm home, typing away in my old bedroom, which seems one-tend, as large as I remembered it. The whole house seems so cramped and cluttered, and God, how that sen,ll of insecticide wipes away the years.

  Oh, my love, what a Marvelous place the United States is! I had forgotten, completely forgotten.

  When I reached New York, my father was already out of the hospital -I learned this by phoning home-so I blew two hundred of my hundred dollars on a 1934 Dodge upend ve to 0 da I y dmiedn.

  tViYaes,WIaswhainntgton. I wan co I tiro Fl ri i really oo- More of that later, but let me assure ed to see Sltoetde tto see the Capitol dome and the you that he got little comfort out of the meeting. But so help me, Briny, I mainly wanted to get the feel of the country again.

  Well, in dead of winter, in lousy weather, and despite the tragic Negro shantytowns that line the ds down South, t roa he Atlantic states are beautiful, spacious, raw, clean, full of wilderness still, exploding with energy and life. I loved every billboard, every filling station. it's really the New World Old World's might Th pretty in its rococo fashion, but it's rotten-ripe and going insane. Ilank God I'm out of it. Take Miami Beach. ive always loathed this place, y It's a

  measure of my present frame of mind that I regard evenou know.

  Miami Beach with affection. I left here a raging anti-Semite. It jars me even now to see these sleek Jews without a care in the world, ambling about in their heavy wearing furs, or pearls and tans and outlandish sun clothes-often diamonds, my dear with pink or orange shirts and shorts. The Miami Beachers don't believe in hiding what they've got. I think of Warsaw, and I get angry, but it passes.

  They're no different, in their obliviousness to the war, from the rest of the Americans.

  much

  The doctors say my father's coming along fine after a heart attack that all but did him in. I don't like his fragile look, and he doesn't do but sit in the sun in the garden and listen to the news o, the radio. He's terribly worried about Uncle Aaron. He never used to speak much of him (actually he used to avoid the subject) but now he goes on and on about Aaron. My father is terrified of Hitler. He thinks he's a sort of devil who's going to conquer the world and murder all the Jews.

  But I guess you're waiting to hear about my little chat with Leslie Slote-eh, darling?

  Well-he was definitely not expecting the answer I brought back to his proposal! When I told him I'd fallen head over ears in love with you, it literally staggered him. I mean he tottered to a chair and fell in it, pale as a ghost. Poor old Slote! A conversation ensued that went on for hours, in a bar, in a restaurant, in my car, in half a dozen circuits on foot around the Lincoln Memorial in a freezing wind, and finally in his apartment.

  Lord, did he carry on! But after all, I had to give him his say.

  The main heads of the dialogue went something like this, round and round and round: Slote: It's just that you were isolated with him for so long.

  Me: I told Briny that myself. I said it's a triumph of propinquity.

  That doesn't change the fact that I love him now.

  Slote: You can't intend to marry him. It would be the greatest possible mistake. I say this as a friend, and somebody who knows you better than anyone else.

  Me: I told Byron that too. I said it would be ridiculous for me to marry him, and gave him all the reasons.

  Slote: Well, then, what on earth have you in mind?

  Me: I'm just reporting a fact to you. I haven't anything in mind.

  Slote: You had better snap out of it. You're an intellectual and a grown woman. Byron Henry is a pleasant light-headed loafer, who managed to avoid getting an educati
on even in a school like Columbia.

  There can't be anything substantial between you.

  ME: I don't want to hurt you, dear, but-(this is the way I walked on eggs for a long while, but in the end I came flat out with it) the thing between Byron Henry and me is damned substantial. In fact by comparison, just now, nothing else seems very substantial. (Slote Vlunged in horrid gloom.) Slote (he only asked this once): Have you slept with him?