“Trudi,” he said, gravely, “how much do you really know about Monck?”
“Oh, Lanny, you mean that you suspect him? He has been one of our most devoted comrades; he’s a marine engineer, a skilled man, and he has worked in the party since he was a youth.”
“How did it happen that the Nazis spared him until just recently?”
“He went underground, as we all have done. Believe me, I thought long and hard over the right man to send to you. It is easier for a seaman to go abroad than for a woman. I am sure he would have betrayed you at once if he had meant to. The Gestapo doesn’t wait to strike, and they would never have let you come into Germany and distribute large sums of money if they had any hint of it.”
“Do you know anybody known to Monck who is still at large and working for the cause?”
She thought for a while. “Yes, I do; at least I think I do. You can never be sure from hour to hour. That is the most trying thing about the life we live. You go to a friend’s room, thinking to find shelter for the night, and you are afraid to tap on the door, because it may be opened by a man in uniform. No use trying to run; he will shoot you in the feet. That leaves you still able to talk.”
“Well, Trudi,” he said, “I don’t know what to advise. If you can’t function any longer, I’m ready to help you get out.”
“Oh, I can’t desert the comrades! So many of them, in such dreadful trouble! We all pledged ourselves to carry on.”
“Yes; but it’s possible to edit and print a paper in France or in Holland and to smuggle copies in. I might be able to help you with that and still keep my part a secret, so that I could continue to earn money.”
“It is something to think about; but I am staying with a family now whose head is an old printer, and he thinks he can find a way to buy a hand-press, so that we can go on.”
“All right,” he answered; “if that is what you want, here’s five thousand marks. I took the precaution to buy them in New York, and some in London, so I don’t think they can be traced.” He had hidden the precious wad in his car while entering Germany, and on the way to this rendezvous he had dug it out. Now he put it into her hands.
“I don’t know if I ought to take it,” she countered. “I’m not sure if I can use it to advantage, the way I’m having to live now.”
“Forget it,” he replied. “You have to live in any case, and so do your friends. What can I do better with Goring’s money?”
IX
Meetings with Trudi Schultz were few and costly. Lanny didn’t expect to see her again on ths trip, so he had tried to think of all the questions he had to ask and the arrangements he had to make. He didn’t ask for details of her work or the names of those who had been seized by the Nazis. He remembered many whom he had met in the old days, and was curious as to their fates, but he left them in the shadows. She asked whether his wife had any idea of his activities, and he said he didn’t think so. He defended Irma as well as he could; she was what her environment had made her, and she was still young. He told his fellow-conspirator that he was expecting to return to New York, and gave her his address there. Also they agreed upon certain code words, the names of painters, so that she could tell him if she needed a printing-press, or paper, or whatever it might be. Lanny had once brought a van-load of Marcel’s works into Germany for exhibition, and he could repeat that stunt if necessary, concealing quite a quantity of goods under a hundred paintings!
Finally she said: “I’m afraid to travel in the subway, and I had to walk a long distance here, so I’ll let you set me down in the Schoneberg district, where I am living now.”
He drove according to her directions, and when she was ready to be set down, he said: “You know, I’m not curious about where you’re living, but I hate to put you down at random, not knowing how things may be. Can’t I drive you through your block and let you have a look? Then I’ll drive around the block a couple of times so that if you find anything has gone wrong you can come out and join me.”
She told him the block, one of scores all alike, as in modern capitals. Scarcely had they driven into it when she caught his arm and whispered: “There are two cars in front of the house! Turn around!”
He saw the cars, facing his way, and knew they could start and catch up with him while he was backing and turning in a not very wide street. “Sit still!” he commanded. “Sink down in the seat! Lay your head on my shoulder!” He sat forward slightly, so as to hide her face but not the fact that she was there.
In this position they drove past the two cars. At the wheel of each Lanny saw that most dreadful of sights, the Schutzstaffel uniform, steel helmet and black shirt with arm and containing the skull and crossbones. One glimpse was enough, and after that he drove with eyes straight ahead, not altering his speed. It was his guess that a man with a fancy foreign-made car, driving a young woman on a summer’s night, would not arouse special interest in the Gestapo. When he got farther down the street and saw in his little mirror the cars remaining where they were, he hit it up and turned the next corner, and got quickly out of the Schoneberg district of Berlin.
X
Trudi Schultz had sunk into a heap, shaken with sobs. At first he thought it was the reaction from her terror, but then he realized that she was not thinking about herself. “Oh, Lanny, those poor people! They will be dragged away to some cellar by those devils and torn to pieces, to make them tell where I’ve gone.”
“Do they know?” asked the man, thinking about himself for once.
“Nein, ausgeschlossen! I told them I was going to interview a man who can get us some paper without the police tracing it. But, Lanny, if you knew them! The most devoted comrades, workers who have toiled all their lives and put their pfennigs into party dues and literature! The man’s face lined and hair turned gray too early, and the woman thin and harassed, with work-worn hands and forearms that seem to be nothing but whipcords. And two children—a half-grown boy and girl—the S.S. will torture them, too. It does no good to say you don’t know anything; they don’t believe you, they go on whipping you senseless, they make your whole body one mass of raw wounds.”
“I know,” Lanny said. “I have seen it with my own eyes.” He let her have another spell of weeping; after which he thought it was time to put her mind to work. “Listen, my dear. You know I have a date with Irma, and I can’t go on driving all night.”
“Yes, yes, I understand. I am imposing on you cruelly. Put me down any place.”
“But where do you mean to go?”
“I haven’t an idea. I can’t think of another family that would dare to take me in—or that I would have the right to impose upon.”
“Can’t I take you somewhere out of town?”
“What good would it do? If I go to a hotel, or take lodgings, I have to register with the police within twenty-four hours, and I have to show my identification card, which I destroyed long ago. I am an outlaw.”
“Well, my dear, you can’t just go on walking about the streets; and you certainly must know that I wouldn’t be happy driving off and leaving you.”
She didn’t know what to say; and after an interval he decided that the time for action had come. “Listen, Trudi,” he said, “we have an old saying, that he who fights and runs away may live to fight another day. I’m going to take you out of Germany.”
“How can you do it?” she asked.
“That is something that will require thinking. But first I want to know, will you come?”
There was a pause. “All right,” she said, at last, her voice low, as if it hurt.
“Gut!” he exclaimed. “The first thing, I have to tell my wife, because we shall need her help.”
“Will she give it, Lanny?”
“She won’t like it, of course; but it will not be possible for her to refuse.”
“I don’t want to come between you and her, Lanny.”
“I don’t think it will be as serious as that. She is a sensible person, also kind-hearted. When she realizes the s
ituation, she will not wish to throw you to the wolves.”
“Will you tell her the whole story?”
“I must think about that. The first thing is to get you into the hotel.”
“Aber, Lanny! You are dreaming of taking me into the Adlon?”
“You will be surprised what a difference it will make when you get some of Irma’s clothes on. They’ll be a bit large, but she will walk on one side of you and I on the other and I don’t think anyone will pay any special attention.”
“But if I’m to spend the night there, I’ll have to register.”
“You’ll go in late, and you’ll be leaving in the morning, and I doubt if they’ll realize the situation before that.”
“Lanny, I could get you into horrible trouble!”
“I doubt it, really. We’re Americans, and we’re well known, and I don’t believe the Nazis would want a scandal. I have a perfectly good story if it comes to a showdown: you are an artist and I am a Kunstsachverstandiger; I helped to get your drawings published in France, and I gave you financial aid because I expected to sell your work and make money out of it. I had no idea of your illegal doings. By the way, you had better give me back that money until we get out of Germany. It’ll be more natural for me to have it than you.”
XI
Lanny parked the car boldly in front of the hotel. He had put Trudi in the rear seat, and told her to lie back so that her face was out of sight. If anyone spoke to her she would say that she was waiting for Herr Budd; but he doubted if anyone would speak, unless he left the car too long.
The keys to his suite were still at the desk, so Irma had not returned. That was convenient; he went to her room and threw into an empty suitcase a dress of dark-blue silk, not too conspicuous, a hat to match, and shoes and stockings. Whatever Trudi wore had to be complete; a pair of brown cotton stockings would have been as much a giveaway as a red Socialist badge. He took the precaution to phone to Celeste, Irma’s maid, who was in the hotel, telling her to go to bed, as her services would not be required that evening. Then he hurried down to the car and drove away. Trudi pulled down the side and rear curtains, and changed her clothes quickly. What to do with the old ones was a problem, suggestive of a murder mystery. It wouldn’t do to have them found in the hotel or in the car. After she had assured him that there were no marks of identification on her clothing, no papers in pockets and no laundry marks, he told her to tie the whole lot into a tight ball, and when he was crossing the River Spree on one of the numerous bridges he tossed the bundle over the parapet.
Now Trudi Schultz was a lady, and a perfect one; but Lanny didn’t want to escort her into the suite alone, nor did he wish her to witness the interview between himself and his wife. He parked near the hotel and left her as before. Irma still hadn’t arrived, though it was after midnight; he assumed that she was enjoying a good gossip with the Frau Ritter von Fiebewitz, and he used the time to make a thorough search of her bedroom, under the rugs, inside the window curtains, under the bed, to make sure there was nothing resembling a wire or metal disk which might be part of a sound-transmitting device. He took the additional precaution to get a heavy bath towel and wrap the telephone in it. After that he was ready for the “big scene.”
Irma had been having a good time, including, no doubt, a couple of cocktails; her cheeks were flushed and she was full of things to talk about. “Oh, Lanny, I’m sorry to be late, but I had such a curious adventure! Did you ever see a Thingspiel?”
“I have heard of them,” he said.
“Fiebewitz’s cousin came and took us out into the country somewhere, and we saw one, in a big open-air theater. There must have been a thousand people, peasants and villagers, and really I felt I was in Germany for the first time in my life. The play was unbelievably crude, but they ate it up—the women were sobbing all around me. It made me think of an Uncle Tom’s Cabin show I saw once when I was a girl—up in the Adirondacks. Fiebewitz says it is like the old miracle and mystery plays in England.”
“What was it about?” Lanny had to be polite now, of all times.
“About Hitler and his saving the German people. It was called German Passion 1933, and it showed how Hitler took up the cross—really it was quite blasphemous, because it showed him instead of Christ being crucified by the Jews, and then he had a resurrection and ascended to heaven, and got instructions from an angel, and came back to earth in shining armor to save a lovely blue-eyed maiden with two long braids of flaxen hair; she was Germany, of course, and it sounds silly to tell it, but you can’t imagine how deeply moved the audience was. I’m sure those country women all really believed the Fuhrer had had exactly those experiences.”
“Listen, dear,” said Lanny, quickly. “You’d better come in here if you want to talk about things like that.” He drew her into the bedroom and shut the door, led her to a chair, drew up his own, and said: “Something serious has happened. Listen carefully, and please, whatever you think, don’t raise your voice.”
XII
So began the story of how Lanny had received a note from a young woman artist of talent, telling of her need for help, and how he had gone to meet her; what she had told him about her activities and the fate of her associates, and how he had driven her past her tenement home and what they had seen. It was the truth and nothing but the truth, but of course not the whole truth. He found that Irma didn’t remember Trudi; the woman artist had been one of some twoscore persons she had met at a reception of the school, and had disapproved of. It was a perfectly consistent story, and while telling it he thought that he was getting away with it.
But when he quit, he soon discovered that he wasn’t! His young wife sat with her hands clenched tightly and her lips pressed together. “You see!” she exclaimed. “I can’t trust you! You have got mixed up with that Red business again!”
“No, dear—”
“Don’t try to fool me any longer, Lanny! You have been meeting that woman! Tell me the truth and stop treating me like a child.”
“I have met her two or three times, and gave her some money—I couldn’t very well refuse to help her, when I consider her a real artist—”
“Artist my eye! You helped her because she’s a Socialist, and you can’t refuse anything those people ask of you. You’ve been coming into Germany on her account, and not for pictures. And now you’ve got yourself into another mess, the very thing you swore to me you wouldn’t. You got me into Germany on that promise, and you were breaking it and meant to go on breaking it. What is that woman to you that you have to wreck our happiness for her sake?”
“Darling,” he said, “let me make one thing clear at the start—there hasn’t been the faintest hint of love between Trudi Schultz and me. I haven’t so much as touched her hand. She is all wrapped up in the fate of her husband. She clings to the faith that he is still alive in some concentration camp, and that she is helping him by the work she is doing. Please be sure of that, Irma.”
There were tears in her eyes. “How little you understand me, Lanny! If you came to me and said you loved this woman, I’d be heart-broken, of course, but I wouldn’t stand in the way of your happiness. If you told me that you had been making love to her, and that you realized it was a mistake and that you really loved me, I’d forgive you and try again to make you happy. That would be something I could understand, and if you said you were sorry I could believe you. But this Socialism business is something you aren’t sorry about; you consider that it’s right, and you mean to go on with it!” She paused; and when he was silent, she insisted: “Isn’t that true?”
“Yes,” he admitted, in a voice which implied that he was sorry about that. He was surprised by her point of view; impressed by its logic and at the same time shocked by the fierceness of prejudice it revealed.
“That’s why I know I can never be happy with you again!” exclaimed the outraged wife.
“Listen, dear,” he pleaded; “there is so much to be said on this subject—”
“No, Lanny, y
ou are mistaken. It can all be said in a very few words.”
“Don’t say them now—please! Try to understand the situation. Trudi has no place in the world to go. The Nazis have seized the working people she was staying with—an elderly printer, a frail mother, and two half-grown children. The chances are a hundred to one that they have them in their dungeons at this moment and are torturing them to make them tell where Trudi is.”
“Do they know where she is?”
“They do not.”
“But you know?”
“She is sitting in our car in front of the hotel; and she can’t sit there much longer without attracting attention. The entire police force of Berlin, the Brownshirts, the Schutzstaffel—the whole Nazi machine—have her picture and will be on the look-out for her.”
“What is it you want me to do?”
“I want you to help her get out of Germany.”
“Just a little simple thing like that!”
“You must remember, dear, this isn’t a new problem to me. I faced it when I thought of getting Freddi out. I worked out many different plans.”
“None of which was good enough!”
“I didn’t have your help then.”
“Suppose I refuse to help?”
“I’ll have to do the best I can by myself. I’m surely not going to turn, this woman out of our car and leave her on the streets to be picked up by those savages.”
“And suppose I want the car to go home in?”
“Well, then, I’ll have the problem of buying another. Somehow I have to get her to the border. There are people who make money smuggling refugees out, and perhaps I can find them.”
There was a long silence. He understood that a struggle was going on in her soul, and thought that she had better settle it for herself. Finally she said: “You have done something quite horrible to me, and something I can never forgive. But I don’t want to see you killed, and I’m put in the position where I have to help this woman or run the risk of causing your death. If you can show me any chance of getting her out, I will do my part; but don’t for a moment take it to mean that I am condoning what you have done.”
Wide Is the Gate (The Lanny Budd Novels) Page 26
