Herman Wouk - The Winds Of War

by The Winds Of War(Lit)

  'Oh, what the hell," Tollever said. "I don't get to see a classmate very often, especially such a distinguished one. You young studs run along and amuse yourselves. See you tomorrow, same time."

  "Aye aye, sir," said the marine officer, trying to sound disappointed.

  The four young officers vanished in a rapid tattoo of heels on tile.

  Captain Tollever and Captain Henry sat long over brandy. What did Pug really think, Kip asked; would the japs go, or was this buildup at Saipan just a bluff for the Washington t? He had once served as attache in Tokyo, but the japs were an enigma to him. The wrong people had gotten in the saddle, that was the trouble. The army had gained the power to confirm or veto the minister of war. That meant the army brass could overthrow any cabinet it didn't like. Ever since then Japan had been i going hell-bent for conquest; but would they really attack the United States? Some Japanese he had known had been the finest imaginable people, friendly to the United States and very worried about their militarists; on the other hand, Clipper travellers had been telling him blood-freezing stories of Japanese cruelties in China, especially toward white people who fell into their hands. "And have you ever read about what the jap army did, Pug, when they captured Nanking in ' king 37? We were so steamed up about their sin the Pamay, we hardly paid attention. Why, they ran amuck. They raped twenty thousand Chinese women, so help me, and butchered most of 'em afterward. I mean butchered-just that. Women's thighs, heads, and tits, for God's sake, were strewn in the streets! This is the truth, Pug. And they

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  tied Chinamen together by the hundreds and mowed 'em down with machine guns. They hunted kids in the street and shot 'em like rabbits. They murdered maybe two hundred thousand civilians in a few days. All this is in official reports, Pug. It happened. I've had occasion to check into the facts, being somewhat personally interested, as you might say. And here I sit," he went on, sloshing his fourth or fifth brandy into a shimmering balloon glass and rolling white eyeballs at his old classmate, "here I sit, with no aircraft, no warships, no ground troops, just a few sailors and a few marines. The Navy should order me to evacuate, but oh no, the politicians wouldn't stand for that! The same politicians who refused to vote the money to fort4 the island. No, here we'll sit till they come. The fleet will never get here in time to save us.

  'Tug, remember what the Lucky Bag said about me when we graduated?

  'Any one of Kip Tollever's classmates would like to be in his shoes today, and even more, thirty years from today." Funny, isn't it?

  Isn't that the biggest laugh of all time? Come on, let's have one more and listen to the midnight news from Tokyo."

  In the wood-panelled library, the governor manipulated the dials of a Navy receiver: a big black machine seven feet high that winked red, green, and yellow lights and emitted whistles and moans. A Japanese woman's voice came through clearly. After recounting gigantic German victories around Moscow and predicting the early surrender of the Soviet Union, the voice went on in tones of glee to report a great uproar in the United States over the unmasking of Franklin Roosevelt's secret war plans.

  The Chicago Tribune had obtained a document known as the Victory Program-Victor Henry sat up as the dulcet voice drawled "Victory Plot-calling for an army of eight million men, a defensive war against japan, and an all-out air attack on Germany from bases in England, to be followed by invasion of Europe in 1943- The newspaper, she announced, had patriotically printed the whole plan! Roosevelt's devilish schemes to,drag America into war on the side of the colonialist plutocracies were now exposed; so the woman said. The American people were rising in anger. Congressmen were calling for impeachment of the White House deceiver. The White House was maintaining shameful silence, but the fairness and peaceful intent of the latest Japanese proposals-especially in the light of this secret warmongering Roosevelt plot-were being hailed throughout the United States. On and on the woman went, reading whole passages of the document from the Tribune. Pug recognized them. Some sentences were his own.

  "What do you make of that, Pug? It's a lot of poppycock, isn't it?"

  Tollever yawned. "Some reporter got hold of a contingency staff study maybe, and blew it way up."

  "Sure. What else?"

  Pug felt sick to the heart. If this could happen, the United States was infected bone-deep with decay. The japs could grab the East Indies, even the Philippines; America would not fight. This betrayal of the highest national secret in a newspaper was a collapse of honor, it seemed to him, unlike anything in history. The only relieving aspect was that so bald and amazing was the treason, the Germans and the Japanese could probably not bring themselves to believe it, though of course they would make heavy propaganda of it.

  "Time for me to go to bed." Victor Henry shook his head and stood up.

  "Hell, no, Pug. Sit down. How about an omelette, or something?

  My chef makes fine omelettes. In a half hour we'll get the 8 A.M.

  news from San Francisco. This beast picks it up like it was next door.

  Let's see if there's anything to all this Chicago Tribune business.

  It's always fun, checking Tokyo against San Francisco."

  Pug insisted on going back to the Pan American Hotel. The sense of doom enveloping him was thick enough without the added black misery emanating like a smell from the trapped governor of Guam, the faded hotshot of his Naval Academy class, maundering over his brandy.

  Tollever ordered up the omelettes all the same, and kept Victor Henry for another hour, talking about the old days in Manila when they had been next-door neighbors. His dread of loneliness was stark and terrible.

  Sadly Tollever went at last to a telephone and summoned the marine officer, who arrived in the car in a few minutes. Four Guamanian stewards busied themselves with Pug's valise and two handbags. 44

  From the top of the palace stairway, Kip raised his voice. Say, how about giving Kate a ring from Pearl? She's back in our house in La Jolla.

  Tell her you saw me and that everything's fine. She's very interested in the Guam schools, you know. Tell her the enrollment's way up for next term.

  And, you know, tell her I love her and all that stuff."

  "I sure will, Kip."

  "And say, you give my love to Rhoda, too. Will you? Of all the Navy wives I knew, she was the prettiest and the best-excepting my Kate, naturally."

  "I'll tell her you said that, Kip," Pug replied, chilled by Tollever's use of the past tense about himself.

  "Good hunting with the California, Pug." Tollever stood watching as the car left, a white straight mark in the warm night.

  The Clipper took off from Guam at dawn.

  On the day that Victor Henry left Manila, the Japanese embassy in Rome gave an unexpected party for Japanese and American newspaper correspondents. The purpose seemed to be a show of cordiality to counteract all the war talk. A New York Times man asked Natalie to come along. She had never before left her baby in the evening; none of her clothes fitted her; and she did not like the man much. But she accepted, and hastily got a seamstress to let out her largest dress.

  On leaving the hotel she gave to a motherly chambermaid an enormous list of written instructions for bathing and feeding him, which made the woman smile.

  The rumors of war in the Pacific were eating away Natalie's nerves, and she hoped to learn something concrete at the party.

  She came back with a strange tale. Among the American guests had been Herb Rose, a film distributor who maintained his office in Rome.

  Herb had somewhat enlivened the cold, stiff, pointless party by speaking Japanese; it'turned out that he had managed a similar office in Tokyo.

  Herb was a tall gOOd-looking California Jew, who used the best Roman tailors, conversed easily in Italian, and seemed a most urbane man until he started talking English. Then he sounded all show business: wisecracking, sharp, and a bit crude.

  This Herb Rose, who was booked to leave for Lisbon on the same Plane as Natalie and her uncle, had approached her at
the party and walked her off to a corner. In a few quiet nervous sentences, he had told her to go to Saint Peter's with her -uncle the following morning at nine o'clock, and stand near Michelangelos Pieta statue. They would be offered a chance to get out of Italy fast, he said, via Palestine.

  War between American and Japan was coming in days or hours, Herb believed; he was departing that way himself and forgoing the Lisbon plane ticket.

  He would tell her no more. He begged her to drop the subject and not to discuss it inside the walls of the hotel. when she returned from the party she recounted all this to her uncle, while walking on the Via Veneto in a cold drizzle. Aaron's reaction was skeptical, but he agreed that they had better go to Saint Peter's.

  He was in a testy mood next morning. He liked to rise at dawn and work till eleven. Sleep put an edge on his mind, he claimed, that lasted only a few hours, and to spend a morning on such a farfetched errand was a great waste. Also, the chill damp in the unheated hotel had given him a fresh cold. Hands jammed in his overcoat pockets, blue muffler wound around his neck, head drooping in a rain-stiffened old gray felt hat, he walked draggily beside his niece down the Via Veneto to the taxi stand, like a child being marched to school. "Palestine!"

  he grumbled.

  "Why, that's a more dangerous place than Italy." "Not according to Herb. He says the thing is to get out of here at once, by hook or by crook. Herb thinks the whole world will be at war practically overnight, and then we'll never get out."

  'But Herberes leaving illegally, isn't he? His cidt visa is for Lisbon, not Palestine. Now that's risky. When you're in a touch-and-go situation like this, the first principle is not to give the authorities the slightest excuse'-Jastrow waved a stiff admonitory finger-'to act against you. Obey orders, keep your papers straight, your head down, your spirits up, and your money in cash. That is our old race wisdom. And above all, stay within the law." He sneezed several times, and wiped his nose and eyes. 'I have always abominated the weather of Rome. I think this is a wild goose chase. Palestine!

  You'd be getting even further from Byron, and I from civilization.

  It's a hellhole, Natalie, a desert full of flies, Arabs, and disease.

  Angry Arabs, who periodically riot and murder. I planned a trip there when I was writing the Paul book. But I cancelled out once I'd made a few inquiries. I went to Greece instead."

  There was a long queue at the taxi stand, and few taxis; they did not reach Saint Peter's until after nine. As they hurried out of the sunshine into the cathedral, the temperature dropped several degrees.

  Jastrow sneezed, wound the muffler tighter around his neck, and turned up his collar. Saint Peter's was quiet, almost empty, and very gloomy.

  Here and there black-shawled women prayed by pale flickering candles, groups of schoolchildren followed vergers, and tourist parties listened to guides, but these were all lost in the grand expanse.

  "My least favorite among Italian cathedrals," said Jastrow. "The Empire State Building of the Renaissance, intended to overpower and stupefy. Well, but there's the P, and that is lovely."

  They walked to the statue. A German female guide stood beside it, earnestly lecturing to a dozen or so camera-bearing Teutons, most of whom were reading guidebooks as she talked instead of looking at the Pieta, as though to make sure the woman was giving them full value.

  "Ah, but what a lovely work this is after all, Natalie," Jastrow said, Ll as the Germans moved on, "this poor dead adolescent Christ, draped on the knees of a Madonna hardly older than himself. Both of them are so soft, so fluid, so young in flesh! How did he do it With stone? Of course it's not the Moses, is it? Nothing touches that. We must go and look at the Moses again before we leave Rome. Don't let me forget."

  'Would you call that a Jew's Jesus, Dr. Jastrow?" said a voice in German. The man who spoke was of medium height, rather stout, about thirty, wearing an old tweed jacket over a red sweater, with a Leica dangling from his neck. He had been in the group with the guide and he was lingeeing behind. He took a book from under his arm, an old British edition of A Jew's Jesus in a tattered dust jacket. With a grin he showed Jastrow the author's photograph on the back.

  "Please," said Jastrow, peering curiously at the man. "That picture gives me the horrors. I've since disintegrated beyond recognition."

  "Obviously not, since I recognized you from it. I'm Avram Rabinovitz. Mrs. Henry, how do you do?" He spoke clear English now, in an unfamiliar, somewhat harsh accent. Natalie nervously nodded at him. He went on, "I'm glad you've come. I asked Mr. Rose what other American Jews were left in Rome. It was a great surprise to learn that Dr. Aaron Jastrow was here."

  "Where did you pick up that copy?" Jastrow's tone was arch. Any hint of admiration warmed him.

  "Here in a secondhand store for foreign books. I'd read the work long ago. It's outstanding. Come, let's walk around the cathedral, shall we?

  I've never seen it. I'm sailing from Naples on the flood tide tomorrow at four. Are you coming?"

  "You're sailing? Are you a ship's captain?" Natalie asked.

  The man momentarily smiled, but looked serious again as he spoke, and rather formidable. His pudgy face was Slavic rather than Semitic, with clever narrow eyes and thick curly fair hair growing low on his forehead. "Not exactly. I have chartered the vessel. This won't be a Cunard voyage. The ship is an old one, and it's small, and it's been transporting hides, fats, horses, and such things along the Mediterranean coast. So the smell is interesting. But it'll take us there."

  Natalie said, "How long a voyage will it be?"

  "Well, that depends. The quota for the year was used up long ago, so the way may be roundabout."

  "What quota?" Jastrow said.

  The question seemed to surprise Rabinovitz. "Why, the British allow only a very small number of Jews into Palestine every year, Professor, so as not to get the Arabs too angry. Didn't you know that?

  So it creates a problem, depending on the current situation about that. De roblem- I want to be frank v. or we may go to Turkey, we may sail straight to Palesine anyway Syria, the Lebanon, and through the mown and then proceed overlandtains into the Galilee." An illegal entry, then"' Jastrow sounded severe.

  alking about a so. In "You're t a jew to go home yes, We don't think "If it can be illegal for s. They're refugees from the there , s no choice for my passenger them, including any case, barred the doors to all other countries have Germans, and tates- they can , t just lie down and die."

  your United States d , and what you're proposing that isn't our situation,"

  " Jastrow says unsafe." " 're not safe here." "Professor, you you with? And what would you charge?"

  i'What organization are p. We move Jews out of Europe. s a long stOrY What's "MY organization? That - Th one can talk about that. You can ask Mr. Rose of As for paying-well, oney. I came to Rome in fact f

  ways use m

  seconclaryp though we can al

  Rose."

  s how I met MT money. Thee estine-then what?"

  why not just g'And once we get to Pal eeable look. 'Vel' 9) Rabinovitz gave him a warm, agr t jewish historian among us. d to have a great stay? We would be honored o- -OICI infant.) Natalie put in, "I have a two month eyes, so Mr. Rose said." the 'could a small baby make that trip?y altar, Rabinovitz stared in admiration at Halting at the main ful. It's overwhelm ,Inis cathedral is so rich and beautiful twisted pillars, where Jew executed

  e ort, just to honor one p

  ma if 00 isn't it? Such a gigantic hun n" dominates all Rome, 1

  guess we by the Romans. And now this builcli. in a forceful should feel flattered." He looked straight in Natalie's eyes Pobaven't you heard the stories coming from way. irwell, Mrs. Henry, you should take some risk to get your baby out land and Russia? Maybe of Europe."

  "One hears all kinds of stories in war Aaron JastrOW Said benignly, aid. time." vi eeks," Natalie Rabinovitz, we're leaning in less than two w Mr. R s, all our documents. We were at tremendous pains "We have all our tick
et P) to get them. Were flying home. d his head swayed, Rabinovitz put a hand to his face an

  ed his arm.

  "Are you all right?tp Natalie touch d smiled painfully. "I have a headHe uncovered a knotted brow, an erbert Rose had an airplane ticket ache, but that is all right. Look, Mr. H too, and he's coming to Naples with me. If you join us, you'll be welcome.

  What more can I say?"

  "Even if we did want to consider this drastic move, we couldn't get our e idt visas changed," Jastrow said.

  "Nobody will have an exit visa. You will just come aboard to pay a visit. The ship will leave, and you will forget to go ashore."

  "If one thing went wrong, we'd never get out of Italy," Jastrow per it sisted, until the war ended."