Wide Is the Gate (The Lanny Budd Novels)

by Upton Sinclair

  V

  The musical couple took their departure by steamer from Marseille. They were going to find a home somewhere on the Connecticut shore, near the rest of the family; also, they were going to have a baby. Mama had written to Bess, pleading for this greatest of all favors; not the first letter of the sort, but the most importunate. They had been married nine years, and surely, if ever—! Mama pointed out that Freddi was gone, and mentioned that Rahel was interested in a young man who was Papa’s capable assistant. What a good Jewish mother wanted was for her firstborn to have a son, and the most perfect piano accompaniments could not take the place of this duty which Bess owed to the God who was her forefathers’ God as well as Hansi’s. Swear now therefore unto me by the Lord, that thou wilt not cut off my seed after me, and that thou wilt not destroy my name out of my father’s house!

  Lanny, left alone, had too much time for brooding over his loss; so he hunted up his old friend and tutor, Jerry Pendleton, who didn’t worry overmuch about the state of the world, but played a fast game of tennis and liked to swim and go fishing. His little French wife was running the Pension Flavin in Cannes, and the boarders could as always be depended upon to eat the fish. Lanny entertained his friend by telling about being a boarder in Salzburg; Jerry in turn told his troubles—his wife’s mother had died, and an aunt owned half of the pension and didn’t get along very well with her niece. “Hang all women!” was the ex-tutor’s comment, and Lanny would have assented, only this might have been taken as a hint concerning Irma.

  It was his duty to let his mother and father know about his marital situation. But just how much? Robbie would be grieved, but probably not greatly surprised. Robbie knew that he had an erratic son, and wouldn’t expect permanent rationality from him. Lanny was Robbie’s wild oat, and the sins of the fathers were being visited upon the children; Robbie had paid a lot, and must be prepared to pay more.

  But Beauty was different. Beauty didn’t want to pay for her sin; Beauty hated to pay any sort of bill whatever. Beauty wanted what she wanted and couldn’t bear to have it snatched away from her. In short, Beauty was going to raise the very devil, and Lanny kept thinking how he could evade payment of that debt. Should he take a trip around the world, as Hansi and Bess had done? Or should he go and see Russia, as they had urged? Perhaps he might suddenly be called to London, the very day that Beauty set out for Bienvenu!

  He wrote a note to both parents, telling of his successful business deals in Germany, his meeting with Hansi and Bess, and their visit; he added: “Irma got lonesome for Frances and decided to sail to New York from Germany. I had to come here on account of some of the problems of the school.” He guessed that this wouldn’t fool either the shrewd man or the shrewd woman of the world. Robbie would phone Irma and, learning that the trouble was serious, would go to Shore Acres and get the story. Beauty would begin having fits; and sure enough, here came a letter by airmail: “Lanny, what does this mean? Is there something wrong between you and Irma? Do for God’s sake write me the truth right away, for I am deeply troubled.”

  The truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help you God! Lanny would tell the first and the last, but surely not the middle section. He wrote: “Irma and I disagree, as you know, about our friends and about our purposes. We thought it might be wiser if we stopped arguing for a while. There is nothing for you to worry about, and please don’t.”

  Nothing to worry about! Lanny could imagine his darling mother reading that sentence and bursting into a hysterical laugh. Nothing to worry about in the prospect of losing the brightest star that ever shone in the diadem of a mother-in-law! Nothing to worry about in losing a hold on twenty-three million dollars—to say nothing of a twenty-three-million-dollar child in which Beauty certainly had a share! All that prestige, that glory! All those beautiful dresses that Irma turned over to her after wearing them only two or three times—and that required only some letting out! All that security against panics and debts—look at how Irma had saved Robbie from ruin during the Wall Street crash and how she had helped to set Robbie up in the airplane business! Nothing to worry about!

  Beauty and Marceline were guests of Margy at her country place. They were meeting the smartest people, riding horses, dancing, having a lovely time; but all that was nothing in the face of impending calamity. Beauty sat down and wrote a telegram: “Must see you at once will come Bienvenu unless you are coming north please wire your plans.”

  Lanny replied by airmail: “It is foolish of you to try to interfere between Irma and me. Believe me, dear, there is absolutely nothing you can do. I expect to be in Paris soon on business with Zoltan, and after that I’ll run up to see you unless you are soon coming south. In the meantime I beg you not to excite yourself. Irma and I are not going to quarrel or make any scandal. She especially charged me to tell you that she would welcome you to Shore Acres at any time, and would give you a house there, as you gave her one. We agreed that we are positively not going to discuss our personal affairs with anyone, so you must forgive me if I do not go into details. Suffice it to say that we differ as to the things we like to do and the company we like to keep. Unfortunately neither you nor I nor anyone else can change that fact.”

  So it went, back and forth. Beauty, of course, took not the least stock in the notion that a husband and wife were parting over questions of philosophy. If that had ever happened it was in some part of the earth which Beauty Budd had never visited. She wrote: “Lanny, for God’s sake tell me, is there another man, or is it another woman?” To this her forever incomprehensible son replied: “There is neither man nor woman—unless you count Hitler as a man or the Statue of Liberty as a woman!” What was a tormented mother to make out of a remark like that?

  VI

  One morning while Hansi had been practicing in one studio and Lanny and Bess in the other, the British home fleet had been steaming past the Cap d’Antibes on its way to the Suez Canal. It was too far out to be seen, but the newspapers told about it, and a British neighbor on the Cap was so excited that he chartered a motor-boat and took his family out to watch the spectacle. Afterward he described it, thrilling with patriotic pride. “The British lion never bluffs!” he announced, proudly; and Lanny, thrilled in turn, believed him and was happier than he had been for a long time. It really did seem unlikely that a huge naval machine would expend all that fuel and human energy for nothing; and so—one of the mad dictators was going to be halted!

  Mussolini had begun his glory raid upon Abyssinia, and all through the summer the diplomats had been scurrying from one capital to another, arguing, pleading, threatening, intriguing. The League of Nations had issued its solemn decrees, its committees of mediation and arbitration had labored, but all in vain. Il Duce was determined to have his pound of dark meat, and to have the fun of slicing it himself. He had gone right on shipping his Blackshirts to Eritrea; children whom he had trained in his Balilla to sing songs in praise of hatred and violence. In a couple of weeks more the rainy season would be over in Northeast Africa, and then il giorno di gloria would arrive.

  Lanny Budd would have had a hard time answering the question which of the two dictators he liked least; but he had known Mussolini somewhat longer and perhaps that was enough. For a decade and a half this wretched braggart had been murdering or driving into exile the liberty-loving people of his country; all this year he had been poisoning the air of Europe with his mouthings, so that Lanny had come to feel for him a deep and personal loathing. Stop him! Stop him now, before it was too late! If he could get away with this defiance of decency it would turn loose the furies of greed and hate all over Europe; there would be no more civilization, only a pit in which wild beasts fought and tore one another to pieces. All that was needed was for Britain to take a stand; to close the Suez Canal to the usurper, bar him from getting oil, and he was helpless, his blatherings would die in his throat.

  That would mean war, Il Duce declared; he stuck out his jaw and his bemedaled chest—the Blessed Little Pouter Pi
geon, Lanny had named him—defying all the world to come and stop him. He boasted of his thousands of planes, whereby he could and would overwhelm the British fleet. Could he do it? Would he dare try? Or was it simply another of his bluffs? Men argued about it wherever they met around the shore of that sea which the dictator called the Fascists’ own; they discussed it in every chancellery and war and navy office. The air weapons were new, and who could be sure what they could do? Sooner or later the trial would be made and the answer given—but each nation rather preferred that some other should afford the test.

  On the third of October the invasion began. And so there was one question answered; Il Duce meant it. And now, what did Britain mean? What did Geneva mean? The latter gave its reply four days later; the League Council unanimously denounced Italy as the aggressor. Fine! That looked like business! The American observer became so excited that he couldn’t stay at home and play music and read books; he wanted to be in Paris, where there would be several editions of the newspapers every day, and parades and speeches, and shouts and perhaps riots in the smoke-filled cafes. He wanted to hear what Uncle Jesse would say about the situation; and Blum and Longuet, and the de Bruynes, and all his other friends. He arranged for his mail to be forwarded, and stepped into his car on a bright autumn morning; in the evening he arrived in Paris and, in accord with his program of economy, put up at a hotel of moderate price: the same where sixteen years ago his mother had hidden Kurt Meissner from the Surete Generale and so had got herself involved in an eight-year love affair.

  VII

  Lanny had seen Paris in a tumult many a time, but he thought he had never seen political passions running so high, never such confusion in people’s thinking. To him it was a clear-cut issue between Right and Left, but he found that his Pink and Red friends couldn’t see it that way. They hated Fascism, but also they hated war, and here their two enemies were lined up on opposite sides. Few Leftists were able to share Lanny’s enthusiasm for the British Home Fleet, and they even questioned the motives of Anthony Eden. Of such hesitations the pro-Italian press took full advantage. “Do you want to die for the Negus?” was their slogan; and the French worker asked himself: Did he? Also, if France let Britain drag her into a war to save the water of Lake Tsana for the British Sudan, what would Hitler be doing in the meantime? They imagined the Fuhrer grinning and rubbing his hands with delight over the prospect of moving into the Rhineland while French armies were busy in the Maritime Alps.

  The bulk of the press of Paris and indeed of all France was on the side of Premier Laval and the other pro-Italian politicians. There was one reason, all-important but rarely mentioned: outright purchase. Here was the tragedy of France, the corruption of those organs upon which the public depended for news and ideas. If you came with enough cash in your hands you could hire the insertion not merely of news stories but of editorial opinion in nearly all the papers of Paris, and now the Italian embassy was said to have sixty million francs for the splitting of the Franco-British alliance in this crisis. Utterly sickening to read the slanders and lies in these papers, descending even to the vilest obscenities. The price of it enabled editors and proprietors to buy jewels and furs for their mistresses to display at the opera and in the cabarets.

  Lanny discovered that whatever people believed they believed with fury; so it became necessary for him to take himself off and decide once more about his own role. Which way was he going to serve his cause, as a political propagandist or as a secret agent and source of funds? Certainly if he followed his present impulses and spoke out to everyone he knew, it wouldn’t be long before the canine press would be snapping at his heels; also, he would make himself persona non grata to most of his wealthy clients. He had been so happy in the thought of being able to say what he pleased, but now a very short trial convinced him that it would prove a costly luxury for an art expert.

  Zoltan Kertezsi was in Paris, ready to set a useful example to his younger associate. The genial Hungarian hated violence and tyranny, as every artist and art lover must; but he kept a bridle upon his tongue. When people expressed political opinions he listened politely, and made some mild remark to the effect that it was too bad that such questions could not be settled without passion and clamor. Somebody had to keep the altar-fires of culture alight, and he chose that role and hoped it might not be entirely futile. The passionate ones would look into that gray-mustached face with the candid blue eyes and feel themselves gently rebuked; they wished that they too might dwell upon those heights and breathe that cold pure air.

  Lanny, always impressible, was impressed; but when he went off by himself and thought it over, he couldn’t see how love of art was going to change the fanaticism of Mussolini and Hitler, or of the Balilla and the Jugend they were training. He went out to Les Forets, as always when he came to Paris, and in discussing the existing crisis he made the remark that these two dictators were raising up ten million little demons all of whom would have to be killed. His old friend Emily was horrified, and begged him never to let such words pass his lips again. Lanny thought it over and decided that his words were scientifically exact, but that their utterance was hardly compatible with the role of secret agent.

  VIII

  The long-expected letter from Trudi Schultz was forwarded from Bienvenu. She told her patron that she now had some sketches which were worthy of his consideration, and asked him to drop her a line telling her where she could meet him, as previously. The address she gave was a postoffice box in “le treizieme,” a working-class quarter of Paris. He wrote at once, naming a street corner in that neighborhood, and an afternoon two days off, to give her time. He drove there, and it was just as in Berlin—except that the mild-looking gendarme who watched her get into the car had no swastika armband and his interest in the episode was purely sexual.

  She was wearing the dark-blue dress which Lanny had taken from Irma’s wardrobe, and it was somewhat large for her. She was pale and apparently thinner, and he said: “Look here, Trudi, you haven’t been keeping your bargain about the milk.”

  “I’ve been working very hard,” she answered.

  “The job of fighting Hitler is a long-range one, I’m afraid. It’s no good wearing yourself out and dying before he does. I took a lot of trouble getting you out of Germany, and I ought to have a claim on you.”

  “Yes, Lanny.” She was a serious person, and didn’t always get his playful American style. “I have something important to show you. Take me to a place where it will be safe for you to stop and read.”

  “It’s safe anywhere,” he replied. “You’re out of Hitlerland, you know.”

  “I thought there might be somebody who knew you.”

  “Hardly in this part of Paris.” They were passing a dingy factory building with dust-covered windows, and he drew up by the curb. “This looks all right,” he said, and she put into his hands a tiny pamphlet about four inches tall and three inches wide, containing some twenty pages of very light paper with no cover. He read the front page:

  Abraham Lincoln: Sein Leben und Seine Ideen

  and then, at the bottom of the page:

  Leipzig: Deutscher Nationalsocialistischer Kulturbund

  He turned to the first page of the text and began reading, in German:

  “Abraham Lincoln was one of the great men of history, and his life and teachings might be of interest and service to the German people if they were truly reported and understood. Known as the Great Emancipator, he gave his life to deliver the Negro people of the North American continent from chattel slavery, and to break the political control of the landlord plutocracy over the southern states; but the party which he founded has been taken over by the finance-capital elements in that land, which use his name and influence to maintain their pseudo-republican rule. Few realize that it was German leaders and sturdy German immigrant soldiers who won the victories of the northern armies in the American Civil War, and that the emancipation of the black slaves of that land is one of the contributions of the Teutonic-Arya
n race which have been seized upon and perverted by the banker-Bolshevik dictatorship entrenched in New York and Washington.”

  “Holy smoke!” said Lanny. “Where did you get this rubbish?”

  “Go on,” commanded the other.

  He obeyed; and in the middle of the second page found himself reading as follows:

  “The North American plutocratic empire is of course not the only government which pretends to serve the popular will while actually serving the interests of a wealthy clique. The Republican party of the United States is not the only case of a party which promises emancipation to the plain people whom Abraham Lincoln loved, and then proceeds to embark upon a course of militant imperialism. This is a danger which has confronted the masses throughout history, and against which they have to be continually alert. Militarism has always been the enemy of culture and true prosperity; for wealth which is expended to make killing machinery cannot be used for constructive purposes. If a man should spend all his resources and labor to make a bicycle, he would some day be able to ride on the roads, but would not be able to sail upon the sea. In the same way, if a nation converts all its iron and steel into rifles, guns, shells, tanks, submarines, and fighting planes, that nation will be lacking in food, clothing, and houses. Moreover, such a nation will be driven automatically to war, because it must use what it has and cannot use what it has not. The day will come when its production is at the peak, and then the nation must act or else admit the futility of all its efforts.

  “Thus it appears that a great gun, a submarine, a fighting plane is a despot as powerful as any southern slave-owner or overseer with his whip. A staff of highly trained men is required to operate such a weapon, and others to replace them when they are killed; others to transport it, and to supply it with munitions and fuel; laborers to supply replacements for damaged parts; men to build the factories, and yet others to grow the food and make the clothing and boots for all these kinds of workers. Thus for every great implement of modern war you condemn thousands of men to unproductive labor all their lives, and you condemn their children and grandchildren to that interest slavery which the National Socialist German Workingmen’s party pledged itself in its earliest days to abolish.