Presidential Mission

by Sinclair, Upton;

  Pierre Laval hated them more than ever now, and his language concerning them was more fitted to the village tavern than to the dinner table of the head of l’État Français. The spectacle of a furious man stuffing food into his mouth and then pouring out vituperations, pausing now and then to mop his greasy black mustache—this was one which the fastidious Lanny Budd would not have chosen for his own enjoyment, but only in the line of duty. His well-trained memory was taxed to remember all the secrets of Vichy France—vicious France was an almost inescapable pun. When he was shown to his room he did not dare make a single memorandum, but lay on the bed for an hour going over what he had heard in the course of the long evening.

  And back in the town next morning, he sat at his little portable and typed off the most important details—no carbon copy—and sealed the sheets carefully in an envelope marked “Traveler: Personal to the President.” This he put in a larger envelope, addressed to the Chargé d’Affaires at the American Embassy—Admiral Leahy, the Ambassador, having been summoned home as a gesture of repudiation of the new government. This missive Lanny had delivered by a messenger, watching from the street to see it handed in at the door. Then his job was done. He went back to his room, packed his few belongings, and set out for the south.

  X

  The trains were running again—it was the classic boast of Fascism that it caused the trains to run on time. They were jammed with people who were trying to get to some place where they hoped that life would be a little less hard than they had found it where they were. They squatted on the floors or in one another’s laps, and slept that way if they could. Lanny had learned in China that the conductor of a train keeps some compartment locked on chance that somebody will pay him a cumshaw for the use of it; in France it is called a pourboire—for a drink—and Lanny paid enough to keep any conductor properly alcoholized for a week. It was his fate in life to be comfortable while other people were miserable, and he made up for it by having his conscience troubled. Manifestly he couldn’t go into fashionable society if he slept on dirty floors, and he couldn’t be an alert and capable secret agent if he stinted himself on food. If he wanted to meet the rich and powerful he had to look like one of them, and they are watchful and severe in their judgments.

  When he stepped off the “Blue Train” at the famous resort city of Cannes, he was the glass of fashion and the mold of form. He had telegraphed of his coming, and there was his mother waiting to welcome him with the mild enthusiasm permissible to a lady on a public platform. More than a year had passed since she had seen him, and there had been parts of that year when she had given up hope of ever seeing him again. But here he was, cheerful and sound as ever, her adored only son, her own handiwork, yet so different from what she had ever imagined. A man of mystery, and never more so than now, when the world seemed to have gone entirely mad—and what part was her Lanny playing in it?

  He was forty-two, and his mother almost sixty; she shuddered at the very word, but had to face it. For half her life she had had to worry about what the ladies politely called embonpoint. Now the Vichy government had helped her by rationing food, and instead she had to worry about wrinkles. When you have been “plump,” and then lose ten or twenty pounds, you have more skin than you need to cover you; and when you come out into the sunlight, how dreadfully the folds do show! You just have to make up your mind that you are an old woman, and get along with such love as you have been able to win in a world where the young are selfish and pleasure-seeking.

  But Lanny loved her! He took her in his strong arms and kissed the powder off her cheeks and exclaimed: “Well, well, old girl! Here we are again!” And how was Parsifal, and how was Baby Marcel, and had she heard from Marceline, and had she got the letters he had written from various parts of the earth? And then it was Beauty’s turn: How was Robbie, and how was his family, and where had he left Laurel, and what was she doing, and was it really certain that she was pregnant? “Lanny, I want you to know right away, I think you have made a good choice. She is just the woman for you.”

  “Yes, dear, I am glad to hear you say so. She is wise and sensible and understands me very well.” He refrained from extreme praise, being wise himself in matters where “the sex” was concerned; his mother was a jealous goddess, and it wasn’t easy for her to see her place taken by another female—and especially one whom she hadn’t picked out. But it is the way of nature, and if Laurel was going to give Beauty another grandchild she would be forgiven for having once called Lanny a “troglodyte,” and caused Lanny’s mother to want to scratch her eyes out.

  Essence being almost unobtainable, even to the rich, Beauty was driving herself in an ancient buggy with a middle-aged horse. They looked extremely odd trotting down the splendid Boulevard de la Croisette; they had almost the only vehicle, for traffic was confined to official cars. The small city was packed to the roofs with refugees; they walked in the two lanes of the wide drive, separated by palm trees; they sunned themselves in near nudity on the beach below. “The Côte d’Azur will never be the same again,” said Beauty Budd sadly. “But we take what we can get and are thankful to be alive.”

  “Are you thinking of going back to the States?” the son inquired, and as he had guessed, she told him no. People of all nations had always been polite to her and she couldn’t bring herself to be afraid of either Germans or Italians. This was her home, and who could say that she had ever done any harm here?

  XI

  Always a pleasant thing to come back to Bienvenu, the lovely old place which had been Lanny’s home for as long as he could remember. It was his headquarters and repository; his books were here, his piano and accumulation of music scores, his treasures of one sort and another. It was always his dream that some day he would be able to live here again and do the things he really liked. But that couldn’t be so long as gangsters threatened mankind. Lanny had been forced to the conclusion that it couldn’t be until the world had been made over according to the principles of justice and co-operation.

  Meantime here was a place of retreat, a shelter where the gangsters had not yet intruded. The dogs came running out, barking their welcome; following them came a lovely little dark-haired boy, Beauty’s grandson and Lanny’s nephew, whom they called Baby Marcel, but they would have to change that before long. He was the son of Marceline Detaze, and when she had divorced his father she had had his name legally changed to Marcel Detaze; an honored name, that of his grandfather, the French painter, long since dead. The little one remembered his Uncle Lanny from a year ago, with Beauty’s help, of course; Uncle Lanny had taught him dancing steps and would teach him more, and now he leaped into Uncle Lanny’s arms with a cry of delight.

  And here came Beauty’s husband, her third, as she wished the world to believe, and it obligingly did so. Parsifal Dingle’s hair had grown snow-white, and if he had his way it would have grown long, for he was too busy with God to bother with barbers. But Beauty wouldn’t let him be any more eccentric than necessary, and now and then she would pin a sheet about his neck and trim him herself. It was so hard to get about nowadays that people revived the home industries, reverting to an earlier stage of culture. Parsifal was no trouble to anybody. He adored his beautiful wife—she was still that to him if not to herself—and he asked nothing but to sit in the court reading his “New Thought” books or to stroll about the grounds of the estate, keeping himself in tune with the Infinite. A more harmless man never lived, and he was always delighted to see Lanny, who shared his interest in psychic matters and would go over Parsifal’s notes and join in speculation concerning what had happened.

  There was “Madame,” the elderly Polish woman who had lived on this estate ever since Parsifal had discovered her in a dingy “medium parlor” on Sixth Avenue in New York. At a time when bankers and brokers had been throwing themselves out of top-story hotel windows because they had lost everything in the world, this man of God had been busy with the next world, or, as he would say, the world in which yesterday, today, and forever
are the same, and which is in us and around us, whether or not we choose to become aware of it. Madame Zyszynski didn’t have any ideas of her own on these abstruse matters, but she accepted whatever Parsifal said; she loved this kind gentleman as if he had been her father, and Lanny as if he had been her son.

  XII

  How delightful the son would have found it to stay here and teach Baby Marcel to dance and to swim, and let Beauty cut the hair of both of them, and let Madame summon the spirits from the vasty deep, and let Parsifal sit by as sage and interpreter, and as healer in case of need. Beauty would have pleaded for it, save that she had tried so often and knew that it was no use. There was something that called Lanny away, and it hadn’t taken her shrewd mind many years to guess what the thing must be. Always the call came by mail; there were letters postmarked Toulon which took him westward, and others from Geneva which took him northward. Beauty had studied the handwriting and guessed that the former came from Raoul Palma, whom she had known for twenty years or more as one of Lanny’s Leftist friends; the other writing she did not know, but it had peculiarities which were German, and she had noted that Lanny generally went into Germany after getting one of these letters.

  She knew much more about this strange son than he guessed. She had become certain that he had never changed his political coloration, as he gave the world to understand; if he had, he would never have become a friend of Laurel Creston’s—to say nothing of marrying her. The idea that he was a secret Leftist terrified her, for she knew what danger it meant in times like these. The fact that he refused to take her into his confidence hurt her, but she had to accept his cryptic statement: “A promise is a promise, old darling.” She had kept these speculations hidden in the deepest corner of her mind, and even her best friends believed that she believed her son to be an art expert, traveling about the world only in search of beautiful paintings.

  Beauty’s instructions were never to forward his mail, because of the uncertainty of his movements and of communications in wartime. She put the papers and magazines on a closet shelf and locked the letters up in her escritoire. There was a considerable packet after a whole year, and she didn’t make him ask for them, but put them into his hands without delay. He would not look at them in her presence, but would take them off to his study to read and perhaps answer. He would never entrust the replies to the postman who delivered mail at the estate every day, but would find some excuse to go into Cannes and there presumably drop them into an inconspicuous box. All this she had observed for years and had tactfully pretended to observe nothing.

  Alone in his study, Lanny set aside a number of unimportant letters and tore open those which had to do with a P.A.’s job. There were three which had come from Raoul, all mailed in Toulon and signed with the code name “Bruges.” According to their practice, the text had to do solely with the purchase of paintings; when Raoul wrote that he had located an especially fine Meissonier, it meant that he had important news about the war; when he said that the painting could be purchased for eighty thousand francs, it meant that he wanted Lanny to bring him that amount of money. In the last of his letters, mailed over three months ago, “Bruges” said that he had been distressed to hear about M. Budd’s plane accident and hoped soon to hear of his recovery. That didn’t surprise Lanny, for the Budd family was well known in Juan-les-Pins and near-by Cannes, and Raoul had many friends in the neighborhood who could tell him what members of that family were doing.

  There was only one letter from Bernhardt Monck, and that was six months old. He had discovered a fine work by the Swiss painter Hodler, and since this painter had done most of his work and attained most of his fame in Germany, Lanny could guess what that meant. Monck wanted only five thousand Swiss francs, but each of these was worth more than ten of the depreciated francs of Vichy. Lanny had no way to reach Monck by mail; he would have to go to Geneva, on chance that the old-time Social Democrat would still be doing research work in the public library there.

  Raoul’s last letter said: “I am still employed by the bookstore.” So Lanny wrote a note to “M. Bruges” in care of the Armand Mercier bookstore, Toulon, saying: “I am home again, and much interested in what you tell about having come upon a Meissonier painting. The price is reasonable, if you are sure of its genuineness. Let me know at once if it is available, and I will come.” He added: “I don’t want to take any chance of finding that it has already been sold, as happened in the case of the Daumier drawings.” That was asking Raoul whether there was any chance of Lanny’s getting into trouble, as had happened to him on his last visit to Toulon.

  According to Beauty’s expectation, Lanny came to her, saying: “I have to go into town to attend to some matters at the bank. If you don’t mind, I’d like to take the buggy, because I’ll buy some presents for our friends whom I have been neglecting.” The generous-hearted Lanny, so the friends would all think; but he didn’t fool his keen-minded mother, who had been Robbie Budd’s side-partner in munitions deals for a couple of decades and knew all there was to know about intrigue. She had observed this business of giving presents to people who needed them and to others who didn’t, and she had managed to figure out what it meant. Lanny must be needing money in small denominations which could not be traced through the bank, and this was his way of getting large bills changed. She had even noticed that his pockets were bulging when he came home! Now she said: “All right,” and didn’t offer him the pleasure of her company on the expedition. She knew that when he had got the money, he would be leaving shortly.

  4

  We Cannot Escape History

  I

  Life at Bienvenu went on comfortably in spite of war. Foods were rationed, and that was supposed to apply to everybody, but of course it didn’t. Beauty had American money, large sums of it because of the sales of her late husband’s paintings. Also, she had many friends, and not merely among the fashionable folk. In one of the valleys which ran back from this rocky coast lived Leese, who for thirty years or so had been Beauty’s cook and major-domo; she had purchased a farm out of her savings, and while she herself was crippled with rheumatism, she had a swarm of grandchildren and grandnephews, and the war had not got them all. They would load up a one-horse cart with produce, and in the middle of the night drive to the village of Juan-Ies-Pins; not to the markets, but to Bienvenu, and at the back door of the Villa they would be met by the lame butler whom Lanny had brought from Spain. They would have a price written on a scrap of paper, and José would take that to Madame, who would make a wry face, for the amount grew steadily larger; but no matter, it was in francs, and they were worth less than a cent apiece.

  So the cellar and pantry and icebox of Bienvenu were kept full. And then would come Lanny’s old friend and ex-tutor, Jerry Pendleton, whose travel bureau had very few patrons these days. Jerry liked to go fishing, and his wife had a pension with hungry boarders. When Jerry had a good day he would appear at Bienvenu with, say, a ten-pound mérou, or perhaps a basket of langoustes. There would be an argument as to whether they should be paid for, and Beauty would insist that if he refused payment she wouldn’t let him come again. Sometimes they settled it one way and sometimes the other; in any case there would be a seafood dinner, and then a cold supper, and next day a bouillabaisse, something resembling a chowder. Beauty, a generous soul, couldn’t bear to think of anybody being hungry, at least not anybody she knew; so she would send baskets of food to the various refugees she had stowed away on the estate and whom she was rapidly pauperizing—without too much resistance on their part.

  She had announced her determination to stay in her home regardless of hostilities. But the recent imperative from the State Department had caused many of her friends to depart, and she was uneasy in her mind and asked what Lanny thought about it. He couldn’t give any hint of what he knew, but he could say that he didn’t consider the French Riviera a likely landing place for an army, at least not for some time to come. The Germans had done some fortifying, but in a halfhearted sort of way
, and it would seem that they agreed with Lanny. He pointed out that there was danger in sea travel also, and surely in the air, as he had proved. If the worst came, Beauty could hitch up her bony horse and drive into the hills and stay with Leese until the issue was decided.

  II

  One evening she said to him: “Come for a stroll with me.” She took him out behind the garage, where there was a storeroom, and near one corner of it a little oleander was growing. “I planted that myself one night,” she said. “It is a yellow oleander, and we have no other on the place, so it will be easy to remember.”

  She was speaking in a low tone, and they did not stop. “I took the precaution to bury some money there, and in case anything should happen to me, I want you to know about it. I noted the fact that when the Italians came into Menton they blocked all accounts at the bank, and I thought it might happen here at any time.”

  “You are right about that,” he answered. “You would be in enemy territory, whether Italian or German. You couldn’t draw money from New York, and neither Robbie nor I could send you any.”

  “That was my thought. I have been getting cash from the bank at intervals and hiding it in the house; but I thought the house might be burned, so I wrapped all the money in oilcloth and put it in an aluminum box which won’t rust. The oleander grows slowly, as you know, so you won’t have trouble digging it up. I thought it wise to plant something, because that explained the ground being freshly dug. I buried it on Saturday night, and told the gardener the plant was a gift and I had put it into the ground at once to make sure it would live.”