“I am on my knees with gratitude, darling, and I will do all that a man can do to make it up to you.”
“There is no way you can ever make it up to me, so don’t deceive yourself with the idea. I have deceived myself long enough, and this time it’s never again. I want to have it understood—I’m going to help, and publicly I’ll do and say whatever is necessary; but apart from that I don’t want to hear one word from her, and as few from you as possible. I don’t mean to be disagreeable—I just want to avoid arguments, and to keep my thoughts to myself, and solve my own problems while you solve hers.”
He thought it the part of wisdom to let matters rest right there.
12
PERILOUS EDGE OF BATTLE
I
Serene and self-possessed, according to the code of the aloof classes, Irma Barnes and her prince consort strolled through the lobby of the Hotel Adlon and out to their parked car. Within sight of the august doorman the wife was introduced to her husband’s friend and shook hands with her, and then the three strolled back into the hotel, Lanny giving the car keys to the functionary so that one of the bellboys might take the car to the garage. The guests went up in the elevator to their suite, and when they were in Irma’s bedroom, with the muffled telephone receiver, she delivered herself as follows:
“Miss Schultz, my husband has explained to me the unfortunate circumstances, and I have agreed to try to help you. We have decided to postpone conversation on all other subjects until that has been done. You will understand that I am doing it for my husband’s sake, and not for that of a stranger; so do not waste any words in thanking me, but let us get down at once to the practical questions of how to proceed.”
Trudi gulped once, and replied: “Frau Budd, your husband has not told me his plans, so all I can say is that I am prepared to do whatever you and he tell me. I am deeply sorry to have put you in this position.”
“We cannot go backward, so there is no use discussing that.” Irma turned to Lanny, who looked at her grimly set face and remembered the large and determined mother in Shore Acres who had tried so hard to prevent this unfortunate marriage; also the buccaneer of Wall Street whose black-mustached and frowning portrait confronted the household at the head of the grand staircase and still had power to intimidate. On Lanny’s recent visit, rummaging in unexplored drawers of his deceased father-in-law’s library, he had come upon a stack of handsomely printed pamphlets containing a speech which the manufacturer of public-utility pyramids had delivered to the United States Chamber of Commerce in banquet assembled. In it the man of great affairs had stated his opinion of “Socialist crackpots and dreamers”—thus putting a prince consort in his place, just as Irma was now doing!
II
“We cannot leave tonight,” declared the husband, in a low voice, “because we have no exit permits; also it would seem phony if we left Germany without putting through the picture deal for which we came. The first thing in the morning I will phone Oberleutnant Furtwaengler and explain that I have an appointment to call on the Fuhrer in the evening; he will recognize the urgency, and will no doubt bring the paintings and the necessary papers at once. If we have our bill of sale with the signature of General Goring’s office, it may solve problems at the border—I proved that the last time I went out.”
“You mean that you expect to get through without either a passport or exit permit for Miss Schultz?”
“This is what I have in mind. We leave Celeste here at the hotel, stating that we are going to visit the Fuhrer and then return. We take Trudi out with Celeste’s exit permit, and we take her into Austria on Celeste’s passport.”
“But there is Celeste’s picture on the passport, and Miss Schultz does not look in the least like a Breton peasant.”
“It will be late at night, and Miss Schultz will be lying back in the rear seat, pretty well surrounded by paintings and bags. If any question is raised, I will say that she has been ill and has lost twenty pounds or so. I will also say that I am a friend of the Minister-Prasident General, and am handling these paintings for him; also that we have just come from a visit to the Fuhrer, and that they may call the Berghof, which is only a couple of miles inside the border. I am sure those statements will turn the officials to jelly.”
“And then what do you expect to do about Celeste? Leave her in Germany the rest of her life?”
Lanny had worked over a problem like that more than two years ago, when he had been scheming to carry Freddi Robin out of Germany on the passport of a truck driver. He had told that story to Irma, but he didn’t remind her of it now. He explained:
“Celeste will be staying safely in this hotel, going to picture shows and flirting with one of the male employees. She gets a letter from you saying that you were called home unexpectedly and that you forgot her papers and carried them out with you, and are now mailing them to her. You enclose money and tell her to join you in London or wherever you wish. Celeste waits, but the papers do not come, and when she telegraphs you to that effect you reply that they must have got lost in the mail. You tell her to go to the French consul and have the matter straightened out; you telegraph the French consul explaining the error and he will give her a new passport. All this may mean that you will have to have a substitute maid for a month or so.”
“You overlook one detail: there will be a record at the border where we go out, showing that Celeste’s passport and exit permit were used there and that three persons went out.”
“In the first place, in wiring Celeste and the French consul you will not say when or where you went out, but will state that we left Berlin hurriedly because we had an invitation to visit the Fuhrer, and you afterward decided to come home at once. The consul will show that letter to the authorities, when he presents the new passport and gets the new exit permit. The authorities will hardly do much investigating in a case of the Fuhrer’s guests; at the worst it could not be a serious matter for Celeste, for it will be obvious that she is an ignorant person, a victim of her employers, and that she has no idea what has been done to her. Most probably she will never know just what happened to her; if she does, a small sum of money will salve her feelings. If possible, think up some errand for her to do tomorrow morning, so that she will not see Trudi and will have no idea that we have anyone with us.”
Said Irma: “This may mean that you will never be able to come back into Germany.”
“We can see how that works out,” was the reply. “It is my guess that I can come into Germany any time I have a bank draft for a large sum payable to a certain fat gentleman.”
III
Lanny gave up his bedroom to his guest, and slept on a couch in the drawing-room—since Irma did not invite him into her room. Lanny slept, because he knew he had to drive hard on the morrow, and he had grown to some extent accustomed to mixups with the Gestapo. Whether either of the ladies slept they did not tell him and he did not ask. In the morning his first act was to call the worshipful Oberleutnant, who, being a member of the fat General’s household, was available early. As Lanny had foreseen, the young officer was overwhelmed by the news about the invitation to the Berghof, and undertook to get the paintings and the necessary papers and bring them personally to the Adlon.
Lanny removed all traces of his having slept in the drawing-room, and locked Trudi in the bedroom while breakfast was set on a couple of folding-tables; also while Irma summoned Celeste, who slept in the servants’ quarters of the hotel. She came, a sturdy peasant woman, always smiling, and of course having no idea of the shabby trick being planned. She looked embarrassingly unlike Trudi Schultz; it was evident that no amount of illness or starvation would ever reduce those broad cheekbones, or cause those features to assume the delicacy and fineness of a woman saint’s. But Lanny was planning to blind the eyes of border officials, and he was interested to observe how even a Frenchwoman was thrilled by the news of the visit to the Fuhrer.
The mistress explained that they were taking only two bags and had already put their thi
ngs into these. She mentioned that her mother’s birthday was approaching, and she had meant to send a gift; now she commissioned Celeste to visit the department stores and select something that was completely German and that Mrs. Barnes would appreciate, and send it by mail or express. Irma gave her a hundred-mark note, worth about forty dollars at this time, and sent her off contented and with no suspicion if anything wrong in the Budd family.
Lanny ordered his car and hurried to the Austrian consulate, where a modest oduceur got him without delay the necessary visas upon the passports of himself, wife, and maid. When he got back to the hotel, the efficient Oberleutnant was on hand, and in one of the parlors of the hotel Lanny examined the two paintings, paid the money, and took the bill of sale with the magical stamp of the fat General’s office; also the exit permits. He exchanged the usual courtesies with his S.S. friend, and forbore to ask whether he had recently been down in any cellars, whipping the editors and printers of a Socialist paper.
The paintings were carried to the car and placed in the back seat—fortunately they were not very large. Lanny bade the doorman keep his eye on them, and returned to the hotel and phoned Irma that all was ready. He paid the bill, incidentally mentioning to the clerk that he was driving to Berchtesgaden to pay a call upon the Fuhrer that evening. In the midst of the interest aroused by this conversation, Irma and a well-dressed woman friend emerged from the elevator and went out to the car, followed by a bellboy with a couple of bags. Lanny performed his customary function of distributor of tips; and if it should happen that any of the day staff would compare notes with any of the night staff and realize that a strange lady had passed the night in the Budd suite, Lanny felt sure they would not bother to report it to the Polizei.
IV
The strangest ride this habitual motorist had yet taken over the old continent of Europe! Irma had not a word to say, and Trudi respected her wishes; so Lanny conducted himself as a well-trained chauffeur. He had something more than four hundred miles to cover and no time to waste; he kept his eyes fixed on the excellent Reichsautobahn before him and his right foot on the accelerator. If any traffic officer on the route Berlin-Leipzig-Regensburg-Munich ventured to stop him, he had the most perfect of answers; if the authority presumed to doubt his word, he had the document from the office of the second-in-command. Seeing this, any traffic officer would volunteer to ride ahead and clear the way.
It was a road over which Lanny and his wife had traveled more than once. The level plains of Prussia, now green with potatoes and sugar-beets—unless they had been taken over by higher authority and were dusty with the tramp of drilling recruits or with great tanks thundering like herds of stampeding elephants. Lanny thought he had seen military preparations before, but never anything like this. There was hardly a large field without a group of youths wearing sandals and khaki shorts and shirts open at the throat, launching one of their number into the air on a glider. Great planes curved and swooped overhead, and time and again the travelers heard sounds of gunfire. Tourists were free to come into the Fatherland and witness these spectacles, and so for that matter were the agents of Britain, France, and other nations which had signed the Versailles treaty; but apparently no statesman of any nation could think of anything to do but make fussy speeches about it.
The hotel had put a lunch into the car, and after they were past Leipzig Lanny ventured to suggest that Irma should open it up and pass it about. He munched a sandwich while he drove; then, since dead silence seemed hardly polite at mealtimes, he bethought him of a new gadget which Irma had had installed in the car—a radio set with which to beguile the tedium of motoring. He ventured to turn it on, softly and diffidently. She made no comment, and so, reaching in front of her knees, he turned the dial: a Nazi orator bellowing; a Nazi newsman denouncing a recent British statement on the subject of German affairs, then, magically, a lovely melody floating out upon the air, an orchestra playing the first movement of the Pastoral Symphony. “Allegro ma non molto. The pleasant feelings aroused in the heart on arriving in the country”—so Beethoven had written upon the score. It had been the gracious countryside about Vienna which the master had had in mind, and there had been fewer soldiers tramping and not a single armored tank rumbling, not a single fighter plane roaring in the sky.
It might be doubted if ever in the range of musical history there has been produced a more sustained expression of “pleasant feelings.” Lanny had hopes of the effect these sounds might have upon the abnormally silent woman by his side. If music be the food of love, play on! Perhaps it was a live orchestra, perhaps a “canned” one; anyhow, it played, and presently: “Andante con moto. Scene at the Brook.” Call it that if it pleased your fancy, but to Lanny it was one of those glider-planes floating over hill and dale; the youth in it thinking not about dropping a bomb upon some of his fellow-humans, but about the mastery of nature, the widening of vision and enhancement of the joy of living. Something like this magical car, which enabled one to speed from one landscape to the next, lending to space an element of time, making geography into history and scenery into panorama.
“Scherzo. Jovial assembly of country folk.” Lanny knew all about that, for he had shared the festivities of the peasants of Provence, and had learned to dance the farandole as a boy. So many innocent pleasures life offered, if only men could be persuaded not to rob and kill! If only they would let Beethoven teach them how to make more joy for themselves, instead of stealing the joy of others! Here the country folk were interrupted by nothing more dangerous than a thunderstorm; and Lanny, who as a rule did not care for program music, found these musical sheets of rain so vivid that he had an impulse to start his windshield wiper. He did not at any time take his eyes off the road ahead, so he couldn’t guess whether his moods were being shared by the woman at his side.
“Allegro. Pleasurable feelings after the storm, mixed with gratitude to God.” Surely no woman could go on quarreling in her mind while that most heavenly melody laid siege to her ears! Surely she, too, must have gratitude—merely to be alive in a world where such beauty had been imagined and recorded! Surely she must cry out: “Oh, Lanny, let us be kind to each other! Let us be happy, and not miss any more of the holy rapture of being!” But if she had such thoughts she crushed them down, and kept that implacable silence, broken only by practical remarks, as when she pointed out that the gas-gauge was low or offered to take his place at the wheel.
V
The forests of Thuringia, and then the pleasant valley of the River Naab, tributary to the Danube. The last time Lanny had been driven over this route was at night; the S.S. had been taking him to Berlin, for reasons about which they had left him to guess. He much preferred it to be daytime, even if the view was the rather unlovely Oberpfalz, sometimes referred to as the Bavarian Siberia. They came into the city of Munich a little before seven, still having a hundred miles to go and no time to waste. Lanny insisted that he wasn’t tired; he knew the route, having studied it while planning schemes for Freddi Robin.
A gentle climb into the foothills of the Bavarian Alps; the road became more winding, and there were streams, and here and there little lakes which make the district popular with tourists and vacationers. The sun was down behind the mountains, and twilight was gathering. The campers were at supper, or singing their Nazi songs; the young people all wore military insignia now, and all hikes were drills, practice in hiding from enemies or creeping up on them. Lanny knew that he and Irma saw these things through different eyes; to her it was “Strength through Joy,” while to hint it was demoralization and cruelty, the breaking to pieces of the Germany he knew and loved in music, literature, and philosophy.
At last the village of Berchtesgaden, named for a witch, Berchta, with whom Bavarian children are frightened into behaving themselves. To Lanny it seemed appropriate that Adi Schicklgruber should have chosen this place for his hideout while plotting the bewitchment of Europe. It was still eight miles to the Fuhrer’s retreat; far ahead and high up was a revolving light, li
ke that of a lighthouse, and Lanny knew this to be his destination. “Here’s where we have our trouble, if any,” he said; and sure enough, at the entrance of the Fuhrer’s road there was a barrier painted with blue and white stripes, and a guard-building with several armed sentries in the black and silver S.S. uniform.
Lanny stopped within a few feet of the obstacle, and when the captain of the guard emerged and flashed an electric torch upon him he extended his arm. “Heil Hitler!” All the Nazis as one returned the salute. “Heil Hitler! Heil Hitler!”
“I have an appointment with the Fuhrer,” said Lanny.
“Ihr Name, mein Herr?”
“Lanny Budd.”
“Und die Dame?”
“Meine Frau.”
The man flashed the torch upon Irma and then into the back of the car, full into Trudi’s face. “You have another passenger,” he said, his tone indicating surprise.
“My wife’s maid.”
“Aber, Herr Budd, we have no instructions concerning a third person.”
“One does not make appointments for servants, surely!”
“Aber, mein Herr, it must be specified. It is strictly forbidden—strengstens verboten—that anyone shall enter unless we have been notified.”
“What do you expect me to do?”
“The maid will please to wait here until after your visit.”
“Aber,” said Lanny, “we are going out by way of Salzburg. Surely it is not to be expected that we shall drive all the way back here for a maid?”
Wide Is the Gate (The Lanny Budd Novels) Page 27
