by Howard Fast
“I haven’t seen her for years.”
“Do you correspond?”
“Occasionally. She’s supposed to return next week—at least that was her plan the last time I heard from her.”
“I never asked about the split between you, never felt it was my affair. Truth is, I never quite got over that business of the strike. Was it over your father?”
“In part. Oh, we’re not enemies. I can talk to Barbara. I can’t think of any reason why she should stand in my way.”
“You might plan to spend some time with her when she returns, win her confidence. It’s important, Tom. I don’t want to upset you, but Clancy and Sommers hold enough stock between them to tip the balance if we were to have Barbara turn against us.”
“I don’t think she would.”
“On the other hand, your mother holds enough stock to tempt Barbara. She must not be tempted.”
“I think you must let me handle it,” Tom said.
“I have faith in your abilities,” Whittier agreed.
The following day, as they stood at the gates to the White House, he spelled out that faith. “The trick, Thomas,” he said, “for a man who intends to take up residence there someday, is to plan in advance. Not a month or a year in advance, but a lifetime. You have some of the qualifications, but it’s a damn sight more than that. You have to establish a record. You have to calculate every move in your life, and one thing you damn well cannot afford is sentiment. Whether you’re going to a toilet, a cathouse, or a dinner party on Nob Hill, you think of how it will look on the record. That benighted, crippled man in there will not live forever, and sooner or later our party will have its day. So take a good look at it”
“You’re being very kind, John. But you’re overrating me.”
“I certainly am, Thomas,” Whittier admitted. “At this moment, I don’t think you have the qualifications for the state assembly, and that’s pretty much the doghouse of it all. You’ve spent your twenty-seven years sitting back and waiting for the Seldon trust to fall into your lap. If you think you can do something else with the next twenty-seven, I’ll back you to the hilt.” He paused and faced Tom. “When we go in there and sit down with Harry Hopkins, it can begin an association that can change some history. Do you like the idea?”
“I do. Thank you, John,” Tom said, not humbly, but as a confirmation between equals.
“Good. Now let’s get to work.”
***
The enormous, ornate, two-room suite in the Adlon dismayed Barbara. “I don’t want this,” she informed the manager flatly, staring at the baroque furniture, the thick gold and blue rug, the gilted drapes, the huge vase of fresh flowers. A black Mercedes limousine, waiting at the station for Harbin, had taken her there—Harbin still the proper, reserved, avuncular tour guide and protector—where Harbin had whispered a few words to the manager. Already Barbara was beginning to regret the fact that she had committed herself to Harbin’s cloying courtesy. To be on her own, to do as she pleased and go where she pleased, had become second nature to her. She told herself that she was perhaps the most poorly equipped candidate in the world for the act of dissembling. This whole venture, she felt, was both romantic and stupid.
“I don’t want this,” she said, “and furthermore, I can’t afford it.”
The manager’s English was not the best. “Bitte, sprechen Sie langsamer. Slow, yes? I understand, but slow.”
“It is too expensive.”
“So? No. I agree with ze baron, price is the same as Esplanade. Bitte. You are important guest.”
Her luggage was in the room, and she was too tired to carry on the argument. The manager left, and Barbara kicked off her shoes and sprawled out on the vast bed. What on earth was she doing here in Nazi Germany, in Berlin? If I had an ounce of intelligence, she told herself, I’d be on the next train back to Paris and then to Cherbourg and home. Suddenly, she felt so wretched and lonely and aimless that she began to cry, and, still crying, she got up and walked to the huge mirror that took up most of one wall of the bedroom. Staring at the woeful, weeping face in the mirror, she burst into laughter, weeping and laughing at the same time. Oh, I am a card, she told herself. What a great undercover agent I have turned out to be!
Enough of that, she decided. She stripped off her clothes and showered. It was still early, not yet midday. She dressed herself in a pleated plaid skirt, white blouse and light cardigan, and a good, solid pair of walking shoes; then she paced around her suite, studying it and beginning, in her mind, the composition of her first “Letter from Berlin”: “One discovers, immediately, a German gift for tastelessness. This is no inconsiderable talent. One would have to haunt the bazaars for weeks to discover a rug so garish and vulgar as that which covers the floor of my hotel living room.”
She rejected it, annoyed with herself. She had hardly looked at the city, and she had no right to judge. She also realized that she would have to change the manner of her writing. There was something almost obscene about commenting on taste and manners and hotel furnishings in Berlin of 1939. No preconceived notions, she said to herself, not even in this cesspool. You go out and you see, and you make no judgments until the facts are presented before your own eyes.
It was just past noon when she came out on the street to a pleasant, sunny day, a cool breeze, and stretching before her, the magnificent reach of Unter den Linden. She knew from her guidebook that the university was on the same avenue, but she had carefully avoided mentioning it or asking about it. Now she decided to set out to find it on her own, after which she would find a restaurant and have some lunch. She strolled down Unter den Linden, studying the faces of the people who passed by. In all truth, she had to admit to herself that here on this lovely avenue there was no indication of what she had read about Germany. The people were well-dressed, cheerful, very ordinary human beings. Men looked at her, but then, she was sufficiently aware of her own face and figure to accept the fact that men looked at her, even though she herself could not accept a picture of herself as a beautiful woman. It was all so normal, so very matter-of-fact a picture of life in a busy, prosperous city, that she had to keep reminding herself where she was.
When she reached the university, opposite the Zeughaus Museum, she had the eerie feeling that the unseen eyes of the Gestapo were fixed upon her, and she made sure not to slow her pace or give the university buildings more than a passing glance, which she felt was all their unattractive architecture deserved. Certainly, her reaction was based on nothing more than her own excited imagination, yet for all that, she felt naked and alone. She would not go near the university on her first day in Berlin, nor on her second; she had to have, in her own mind, a valid excuse, some pages in her writing that would deal with higher education. She wandered along and found herself in Leipzigerstrasse; she ate a sausage and drank a glass of dark beer at a food bar and then walked back to the Adlon. First things first. Bits and pieces of reading surfaced in her mind. If one went in for this sort of thing, one had to cover every movement. She picked up her copy of Mein Kampf, regarded it distastefully, and then began to read, thumbing the pages, picking up passages here and there:
“All the human culture, all the results of art, science and technology that we see before us today, are almost exclusively the creative product of the Aryan. This very fact admits of the not unfounded inference that he alone was the founder of all higher humanity, therefore representing the prototype of all that we understand by the word man—”
A knocking at her door gave her an excuse to throw the book from her in disgust. “Oh, no,” she whispered. “These are people with a penchant for wandering in sewers. I am not one of them.” Then she went to the door and opened it.
A tall, slender, thinly handsome woman stood there, black hair in a close bob, high-bridged nose, and cynical gray eyes. She wore a flowered dress of red silk with a fur piece thrown across her shoulders. “My dear,” s
he said, without formalities, “you are beyond question the beautiful, enchanting Barbara Lavette. Dutzi is quite right. You, my dear, are a knockout. In your own way, mind you.” The accent was British, the voice high-pitched, confident, and touched with arrogance.
“Who are you, if I may ask? And who on earth is Dutzi?”
“Ah, so much for the famous—or for the infamous, should I say? I am the notorious Pleasance Rittford. Does it shock you, my dear?”
“Should it?” Barbara wondered, trying desperately to place the name. Certainly she had heard it—something British upper class and reasonably scandalous.
“My dear child, must I stand in your doorway? Even if you bloody well don’t approve of me, you can invite me in.”
“Please come in,” Barbara agreed. “How do you know I disapprove of you?”
“Plaid skirt, walking shoes, cardigan—all of it eminently sensible. Eminently sensible people do not approve of me. You see, I do not hate Nazis. I quite adore them, and I make no secret of it.”
It fell into place, Lady Pleasance Rittford, wife of Lord Nigel Rittford, both of them eager and articulate supporters of Hitler’s new order and very vocal propagandists against Britain taking up arms against Germany. Barbara’s first inner reaction was cold shock, a kind of sick disgust and an impulse to burst out in a storm of righteous anger. This she controlled, even managing to maintain her expression of naive bewilderment. After all, she was not a tourist. She was a writer who had stupidly agreed to do a job for a cause she neither understood nor approved of, but she was also a writer whose editor would turn handsprings after reading the kind of story she could do on Lady Pleasance Rittford.
“I don’t shock you?”
“Perhaps a bit,” Barbara admitted, forcing a smile, studying Lady Pleasance carefully. At least forty, Barbara said to herself, neurotic, terribly thin, hardly a sex object, and absolutely obsessed, trying to remember what she had read of Freud on the subject of obsession and compulsion. How wasted her two years of college had been, but again, how is anyone at age eighteen to know what educational necessities will arise a decade later?
“Poor dear, to come blasting in on you like this.” She pointed to the great mass of yellow roses on the coffee table. “Dutzi’s trademark. He is quite taken with you. You must thank him profusely. He’s very sensitive and sentimental under that fìshface Prussian mask of his.”
“Who is Dutzi?”
“The Baron—Harbin, your traveling companion. His close friends call him Dutzi.” She wet her lips with her tongue and leaned back, assessing Barbara. “Not you. It wouldn’t sound right from you at all. It’s that English schoolgirl look that has his heart dancing. Keep it. It’s worth its weight in gold—or in yellow roses.”
“What on earth are you trying to tell me? I barely know this man.”
“Oh, he’s not in love with you, my dear, if that’s what you’re thinking. Men like Dutzi don’t fall in love. But Dutzi has his Aryan image and ideal. He’s quite nutty on the subject, and you fulfill it.”
“Good heavens! Would you please tell him that I am a mongrel.”
“That won’t make a bit of difference. Aryan is as Aryan decides. They get rid of only the truly loathsome types. You wouldn’t have a drink, would you, dear? I’m positively parched.”
“I haven’t had time. I only arrived this morning, and I’ve been wandering around Berlin. I’ll have them send up something.”
“I’ll do it.” She sighed. “Unless your German is good?”
“Nonexistent.”
“I thought so. What will you have?”
“A white wine cooler?”
Lady Pleasance made a face, then went to the phone and ordered. Then she stalked around the living room, grimacing disapproval. “You know, my dear, Germans have even less taste than the British. Dutzi says you’re a writer. What do you write?”
“I do a weekly piece for Manhattan Magazine. Gossip, people, and fashion. Books and theater. My editor wants a few pieces from Berlin. But now that I’m here, I’m up against the language. I never had that problem in Paris.”
“Gossip, people, and fashion,” Lady Pleasance repeated, clapping her hands with pleasure. “Forget fashion. They don’t have it. But gossip—dear one, we must talk and talk and talk. You’re not political, are you? I mean, you’re not going to pal around with that stupid group of American and British correspondents who pin virtue all over themselves by sitting around and hating the Nazis. But of course not. They write the dullest, dreariest things imaginable, and whatever Dutzi may appear to be, he has a nose like a bloodhound. You’re very lucky that he approves of you. It’s an open sesame.”
“To what?” Barbara wondered.
“You name it, love. You could even get to the Führer himself, and he’s not such a bad chap at that. No gentleman, like Dutzi and Papen and some of the others, but power is a heady drink, and one forgives. And speaking of drink, where is it?”
The drinks came then. Lady Pleasance had ordered two double whiskeys, and she drank the first one neat, as if it were water. She mixed some soda into the second, and then launched into a rambling discourse on the character of the Führer.
By now, Barbara had had her fill of Lady Pleasance, and it occurred to her that perhaps she had also had her fill of Berlin. How had she ever gotten herself mixed up with this crew, and why didn’t she put a stop to it? She knew the answer. Professor Schmidt and the university had dropped to the background of her mind, and like a child offered candy, she was composing, witty, cynical pieces for Manhattan, close-ups of these “creatures,” as she thought of them, journalistic scoops that might never have come her way under different circumstances. A door had been opened, and it needed only one angry, disapproving remark from her to close it; whereupon, she sipped her wine cooler and forced herself to make polite, leading remarks to a Lady Pleasance, who was rapidly becoming quite drunk.
“The Führer will like you,” Lady Pleasance confided. “I wouldn’t dwell on that mongrel business. What is it, a French father? Dutzi says your French is simply divine. Goebbels is somewhat confused about the French, whether to give them Aryan status or not, but with a woman who looks like you, it’s nothing to worry about, not one bit. You don’t have a few drops of Jew blood anywhere? No, of course not. Now, you’re just about the Führer’s height, love, if you don’t go in for high heels. But don’t be too chummy. I think Dutzi has his own plans. He had a wife once who died or something—”
“Died or something?” Barbara asked.
“Or sleeping pills. Who knows? Not that I blame her. Dutzi’s great fun—but to be married to him? Heaven forbid. He’s jolly good for an evening or two, a trifle kinky, but darling, they all are, and it’s all good fun, you know, if you don’t take it too seriously, and don’t look at me like that. I don’t kiss and tell, but I do draw the line. I drew it with Goring. He’s a disgusting fat pig, and I told him so to his face. Anyway, his Lüger—good name for it, don’t you think—anyway, it’s so buried in fat that he can’t do anything much, or so I’ve heard, and anyway, he’s a bit of a dope fiend. Papen, now that’s something else. There’s a gentleman, only he’s a bit stupid, and Dutzi thinks the Führer will find him a bit of too much. You don’t want to chum up with anyone who’s on the way out. It can get quite nasty. Well, Pleasance will mother you through the sticky places. I do hope you’re here for a long stay, and don’t be put off by this war talk. There won’t be any war. Winston, Neville, Tony—the whole lot of them are a pack of sniveling idiots, and as for your Deladier, he’s the toadiest of the lot. What Adolf wants, Adolf will get, and he’ll get it his way—the whole bloody continent—”
And on and on. She returned to the phone, and the waiter reappeared with two more double whiskeys. Finally, at long last, she rose unsteadily, told Barbara, “I must toddle, dear one. We’ll have another darling chat very soon,” and made her way to the door.
/> Alone, Barbara sat and shivered, and then, moving like an automaton, she went into the bathroom and began to brush her teeth. Then she paused, thinking, What on earth am I doing here, brushing my teeth? Really, Barbara, you are behaving like a child.
She returned to the sitting room, which was now quite dark in the gathering twilight. She put on the lights, called room service, and in a mixture of French and English managed to order some dinner. She took out her notebook, and then she paused. She sat for at least ten minutes, pen in hand, staring at the empty page, and then sighed and confessed to herself that she was afraid. She realized that there would be no “Letter from Berlin.” She could not remain here, and she could not write from here. She would do what she had to do, and then she would leave. Suddenly, it was not just Berlin, not just Germany; in her mind, the whole of Europe was turning into a miasmal nightmare, and somewhere inside her a voice was screaming to be let out of it.
That night she lay awake for hours. I want to go home, she told herself. I want to go home. I’m so afraid and so lonely. I can’t go through with this. I want my mother, and I want my father, and I want to be able to see plain, ordinary people, who are not sick and not insane.
She turned on the light, picked up the telephone, and asked for the overseas operator. It was one o’clock in the morning, and it took an hour more to get through to Dan’s office on Terminal Island.
“Daddy,” she said at last, “is that you? Is that truly you?”
“Barbara? Where on earth are you? We’ve been trying to reach the ship.”
“I didn’t sail, Daddy. I’m in Berlin.”
“Berlin? No, you’re kidding.”
“It’s the truth.”
“God Almighty, what the devil are you doing in that filthy place? Are you all right?”
“I’m fine, Daddy. Just a little homesick. Don’t scold me. I’m here on a story. I wrote to Mother. I know I should have written to you, but I knew how troubled you’d be.”
