The Strong City

by Taylor Caldwell

  He smiled, though well aware of the ambiguity of her words.

  “It is enough for me,” he answered, very gently.

  He held out his hands to her, but she shrank back, in spite of herself.

  “Not yet,” she whispered. “Oh, not yet!”

  Then he knew that she knew the truth. He smiled, as though in cynical wonderment and delight. And relief. They regarded each other intently.

  From upstairs, now, came a faint murmur and a sound, then a call: “Franz. Franz?”

  “It is my father,” said Franz, quickly. “I shall go to him.” He hesitated. He gave his mother a vicious and inimical glance. Then he left the room, and they heard him mounting the steps in the rear.

  When he had gone, Emmi still stood in her stony and unmoving attitude, her small light eyes distended as though fixed in death on something so horrible that it had killed her. Irmgard, aching with wretchedness, despair and compassion, put her arms about her aunt, wordlessly.

  Then, suddenly, the poor woman uttered a loud groan. Then another, and still another. Her fixed expression changed. She looked at Irmgard with blind agony. “No, no,” she groaned, and Irmgard felt her trembling. She embraced the girl with desperate arms, and began to weep. They stood there together, and now there was no sound in that dank dark room, so hideous and cheerless, but that heart-broken weeping, that final collapse of a proud and assaulted spirit, which had seen too much, and too clearly, and could not endure the seeing.

  And then she murmured, brokenly, and with tearing gasps, and it was a strange thing that she said:

  “O God, what will the future bring him? What will become of him?”

  No accusation of hatred, rage or fury was in those words, and that dying voice. Nothing but the anguished cry of a mother:

  “What will become of him? What will the end be, for him?”

  Irmgard did not answer. She held her aunt more closely, and stared before her, whitely.

  * * *

  Franz wore a humorous, if subdued smile, when he went in to his father. Egon, faintly alarmed was sitting up in bed, in his nightshirt. He had lit the lamp. When he saw Franz, he was relieved, then immediately pitiful.

  “My son,” he said, and held out his hand to him. Franz sat down on the edge of the bed, and regarded his father with affection. Egon studied his face, and he saw the pinched blueness of his lips, in spite of the smile.

  “I am sorry, Franz,” he said, simply, and his dimmed eyes became moist. “He was your friend, that poor Englishman. I suffer for you.”

  Franz ceased to smile. He gazed over his father’s head, and his expression became tense, and a little dark.

  “Yes,” he said. “He was my friend. The only friend I ever had.”

  Then he was silent. His hand was cold in his father’s. Egon felt that a stranger sat near him, no one of his blood, but some creature of strange heritage, whom he could never understand, in spite of his love.

  CHAPTER 35

  “The German is never subtle,” Franz had once said, with frankness and malice. “Even his cruelties are brutish.”

  Nevertheless, there was refinement in the torture he inflicted on his mother the next morning. He insisted on talking brightly and volubly to her, and then, when she did not answer him, but sat like carved granite at the table, he asked her questions. His father sat at her side, smiling timidly and lovingly from one to the other, and in order to preserve his ignorance of the tragic breach between mother and son, she was forced to answer Franz. She answered him in monosyllables, it is true, but answer him she did, her small pale eyes averted. It was torment to have to speak to him, but it was torment she bore without a quiver of the voice, or a gesture, or a formidable look. For Egon’s sake she would bear this heroically. Franz was not inspired with pity for her, or compassion or mercy. He enjoyed this dreadful baiting. He smiled at her, his blue eyes pointed with hatred and pleasure in her misery. Egon thought him very talkative, but was pleased, if touched, at Franz’s apparent effort not to afflict his parents with his private sorrow over Tom Harrow. He kept giving his son glances of understanding, gentleness and sympathy. Emmi saw these glances, and her heart was squeezed with almost unbearable suffering. A nausea of loathing for her son made her retch internally. But her hands did not shake for an instant. A less cruel and relentless nature than Franz’s would have felt some shame, some remorse. He felt neither. It gave him a kind of perverse delight to see her sharp profile tense with agony. In his masochist’s diversion he found some alleviation for himself.

  Egon, looking less ill and beaten than usual, talked timidly of a farm he and Emmi would buy. A quiet place, he said, looking hopefully from his wife to his son. Emmi and he had always loved the country. Five thousand dollars would buy an excellent farm, and surely there must be beauty here, as well as in the Fatherland. They would live simply. Franz would help them select the farm, and it would be home to him, also.

  Emmi glanced up blindly, and her pale swollen lips parted for a moment. But she said nothing.

  “On the week-ends,” Franz said, with an indulgent smile at his father, “I shall visit you.”

  “We may live far out,” said Emmi, in a dull voice, in which there was no life, but only an echo.

  “What does that matter?” exclaimed Franz. “I am much attached to my parents! I could not deprive myself of seeing them regularly.”

  Egon smiled tenderly, and with some embarrassment, but with great joy. “Yes, yes! I did not know you cared for us so, Franz! We shall then know, on your visits, that all is well with you.”

  “Everything,” said Franz, rising and putting his hand for a moment on his father’s shoulder, “will always be well with me. You see, I know what I want. That gives me a great advantage over fools.”

  His malignant victory over his mother sustained him for a long time, that day. His pleasure in that victory gave him serenity and sureness. He was certain, now, that he could face the problem of Jan Kozak, and conquer it. It had been a problem that had given him a sleepless night, and had driven from his mind the dim ghost of Tom Harrow.

  He had the capacity to forget the past, to shut a black door upon it. In retrospection, he knew, there was weakness and hesitation. What was dead was dead. Tom Harrow left nothing in him now but a static depression upon which his thoughts and his plottings rode brilliantly as upon a dark wave. Dolly Harrow and her children were provided for: he even said to himself, cynically: “Had Tom lived to the end of his life, he could never have secured five thousand dollars.” He had convinced himself that such a life as Tom’s, restless, burdened and unhappy, was well exchanged for that sum of money. He even thought, with a faint smile, that Tom, in an honest moment, would agree with him.

  He thought that his expediency, his implacability, his quick adjustment even to grief and remorse, were signs of strength. Like most Germans, he worshipped what he fondly considered “strength.” He did not know, as Irmgard did, that in such “strength,” and the worship of it, was an ignoble if subconscious confession of fundamental and complete weakness, and futility, and emptiness. And craven fear. He did not know that in accepting, and understanding all, in bearing the complete result of action and in refusing to mitigate it with sophistries, was the real strength. Real courage and strength lay in taking up burdens of action and circumstance, and developing the capacity to bear them. In memory there was no weakness, but courage. He thought himself a realist. He did not know that realists were those who faced result of self and others with equanimity and wisdom, and made the most of it. Forgetfulness, deliberate and conscious, was the mark of the coward, who dared not meditate, who dared not confront himself.

  He thought his ruthlessness the feature of the strong man. He did not know that the ruthless man exhibited himself as a weakling, who must continually make exaggerated gestures to hide his weakness.

  Nevertheless, when he entered the mills, walking steadily and quietly, a sick darkness assailed him when he knew that he would see Tom Harrow no more, in his us
ual place. He walked boldly now, through the ranks of the silent working men, and he could not help wondering, uneasily, if they had heard Jan Kozak’s terrible story. A stronger man would have faced furtive glances calmly, bearing them down with a quiet eye. But he could only look ahead, forcing an expression of indomitable contempt on his face. He knew that the men looked after him with mingled fear and hatred and scorn, and this gave him a tremor which he despised, but could not throw off.

  He could not keep himself from darting quick looks about for Jan Kozak. And when he did see the big Hungarian, standing squarely in his way, he could not keep down a sudden twisting in his middle, which he would not acknowledge as fear.

  A thousand thoughts darted through his uneasy mind. He was assistant to the Superintendent now. He had only to discharge Jan Kozak. But there was Dietrich, the Superintendent, who hated him, and would only be too glad to listen to any story to his detriment. But, dared Dietrich discharge him, after having learned that the foul story was common knowledge? But, again, would not his discharge establish the innocence of the Schmidt Steel Company?

  He had another, and a much more disquieting thought. Had Kozak told Dietrich of the theft, by Franz, of his idea for the moulds? Dietrich, if he did not discharge Franz, would seize upon that idea, and Kozak would be the rewarded, and not Franz. The first great door to his progress would then be closed forever. Dietrich would prefer to believe Jan Kozak.

  His thoughts made him stop before the Hungarian, though his first plan had been to ignore him.

  Jan stood before him, arm akimbo. His torso was naked to the waist, and Franz saw clearly the thick matted black hair on the other’s chest, and the giant shoulders, and the immense muscles. He also saw the wrinkling hatred on the great apelike face, and the parted lips between which wolfish teeth glistened.

  “So,” said Jan, “you come back, you dog. Tom is dead. But you and me, we are not dead, no? We got things to say which ain’t dead. Yes?”

  Franz was silent for a moment. The men nearby stopped to listen, holding shovels or hammers in their hands, and Franz had the impression that they crouched, as though to spring. He saw their faces in the fitful yellow light of the furnaces, and clearly, as in a nightmare, he saw the web-like pulleys of the cranes, and the men who leaned out from them like spiders, listening. One of the cranes was slowly moving, stealthily, and though no doubt it was only a sick illusion, it seemed to move upon Franz. The faces about him seemed to move upon him, also, silent, deadly, gleaming with hatred and murder. The booming of the mill, and the clangor, he heard, faintly, but this background only accentuated the silence and watchfulness of the men, and the yellow and scarlet light in their eyes and on their faces was like the reflection of hell on demons. The mill was a cavern of hell, also, dusky, quivering with flames, lost in drifting gloom. And before him stood the chief demon, surrounded by his servitors, and his enormous body seemed to expand like an enveloping and crushing doom.

  “Out of my way,” said Franz, and his voice echoed against the fog of the sounds of the mill.

  The one crane crept nearer, bearing a huge ladle of molten steel, which blazed like a miniature sun. Its light burned fiercely on Jan’s ferocious features, and on the dark, waiting and savage faces of the men, which seemed disembodied and malevolent masks floating in semi-darkness. A blast of heat emanated from the ladle. Franz did not see the ladle, except vaguely. He was preoccupied with Jan Kozak. And now he felt fear, abysmal and frantic.

  Jan did not move at his command. He smiled. It was a frightful smile.

  “You—you thief,” he said. “You no steal my brains. You are liar. You give me back my brains. Or,” and he doubled up his giant fists.

  The face of the man, high up in the webs of the crane, peered out and down, and grinned wickedly. Inch by inch, stealthily as death, and as remorseless, the crane and the ladle moved nearer Franz. Now the fiery light enveloped him and Jan Kozak. The man was maneuvering, with dreadful and fiendish care. Some of the men, scenting peril and horror, glanced up uneasily at the crane and moved out of the path of the ladle which was apparently bound for the moulds on the other side of the mill.

  “Out of my way, you fool,” said Franz, again. The skin on his back was crawling, as though inspired by some mysterious awareness of danger.

  A loud and maddened shout suddenly burst from the men in the background. Franz and Jan turned. The ladle was wavering, hissing with a frightful roar, and tilting. Clouds of glittering sparks rose from its molten depths, and an aura of brilliant scarlet enveloped its round black form. The crane screeched and rocked; the man on his tiny platform was working feverishly, and apparently impotently, with levers. The men rushed backwards, blindly, thrusting outward with their arms, in order to escape from the stream of crimson death which appeared imminently to flow out over them. Their shouts echoed against the gray fog of the mill, and boomed back.

  Franz was in the direct path of the ladle. Now he felt its unendurable heat, and saw the seething red and gold contents, bubbling like some infernal soup. He glanced up swiftly at the crane, and the man within it. He saw his face. And then he knew that he was deliberately marked for destruction.

  He could not move. His feet seemed to have been seized by subterranean hands, which held them immovable. His flesh turned to rigid ice. A ghastly sickness filled him, and a nightmare quality pervaded his whole mind and paralyzed his will to save himself. He could only stare at the seething and shaking ladle, its blazing contents roaring, hissing, sparkling, which moved upon him with such a hideous implacability. Now he could feel its searing breath through his clothing and upon his flesh. He could see the black, pock-marked exterior of the ladle, and heard, as in a dream, the creaking of the crane. For centuries, it seemed, he stood there, blasted with the heat, waiting for the rocking ladle to tilt and pour its vivid, dissolving death upon him. Sharpened by panic, his eyes saw the hell-like reflections of the molten metal on the far dim ceiling of the mill. To him, the world swam in the red shadows, and eternity rushed in on him on a black wave. And he saw himself as a static mote of consciousness, held immovable in the path of irrevocable annihilation.

  The dream heavy upon him, and fatalism preventing one wild leap out of imminent peril, he heard Jan’s wild shout:

  “No! No! Damn fool, no!”

  The darkness engulfed him. He felt himself seized violently, and flung aside like a straw. The universe was suddenly broken into chasm of crimson light, and long shooting lightnings of burning blackness, and tumultuous thunder. He did not know whether he was lying or standing, but everything rocked about him, filled with roarings, hissings, explosions, and the screams of men and demons. He felt a dull crushing blow on his head, like a hammer blow from out of whirling space. Now he too begain to whirl in long spirals, and he threshed about with his arms and legs, a swimmer in deep lightless seas. Some one, he thought vaguely, was coming to his rescue, for he felt tugging hands, lifting him above smothering waters.

  Now solidity was under him again, and a great silence, broken only by dim distant hissings, and faint shouts. He opened his eyes.

  He was lying on his back. His head had struck the floor with intense force after Jan had seized him and tossed him aside from the writhing and blinding path of the poured metal. Jan had saved his life. But in the very instant of tossing him into space, the metal had struck Jan’s legs almost to the groin. They had dragged him away, and Franz, also. Jan was lying on a low heap of slag near the furnaces, and the men, groaning, wringing their hands, and even weeping, stood about him, their eyes fixed on his face, and refusing to see what remained of his body. The craneman knelt beside him, sobbing like a child, supporting his head on his arm.

  This Franz, forcing himself dizzily to his knees saw. He saw the pool of spilled metal, a bubbling black pool now, shot through with dull threads of scarlet. It hissed along the edges. One scallop of it was dangerously close to Franz. He shrank back from it, whimpering in his chest. Then, across the pool he saw Dethloff and Dietrich, wi
th far white faces and dumb lips.

  Now he heard Jan’s gasping, dwindling voice, speaking to the craneman.

  “Damn fool. He not worth hangin’ for, see? Now you hang, maybe. If the boys don’t lie. Boys, you lie?”

  “Yes. Ja. Ja! We lie!” said the men. “The ladle—it spilled. Itself. We lie. Boze no hang for bastard.”

  Franz scrambled to his feet, swaying. Boze, Jan’s brother, had tried to kill him. He knew the temper of the men. He was not safe, even now. He thought suddenly of Jan, horribly dying, and he was overcome with terror. He looked across the thick smoking bubbling pool of the cooling metal, and saw Dethloff and Dietrich, paralyzed, but avidly listening. He found a narrow space across which he could leap, and he went to the two men.

  Dietrich regarded him with a white and wicked smile. He spoke to him in their native language.

  “Perhaps you had best go home for a few days, nein? A few days. We dislike killings in our mill.”

  Franz put his hand to his head. A long warm trickle of blood ran over his cheek.

  All at once he was violently sick. Dietrich and Dethloff watched him cynically, and even with a kind of cruel interest. And then, remembering, they became frightened, and went away quickly and furtively, followed by Franz.

  CHAPTER 36

  Fritz Dietrich was exultantly triumphant. The hour for which he had waited, in which he would destroy Franz, and the danger to himself, had come. Hans Schmidt had not yet arrived at his office, and Dietrich determined that he would act swiftly. He had come to his decision during the short walk to his office followed by Franz and Dethloff. He sat down at his desk, put the tips of his fingers together, and his elbows on his desk, and smiled at Franz malevolently. Dethloff, anticipating, leaned against the window, and waited. Franz stood before Dietrich, calmly wiping the blood from his gray face. He was horribly shaken, the happy Dietrich could see, but he was disconcertingly calm, also. His shrewd mind was already aware that the Superintendent believed his hour of victory had come.