A few days after the death of Jan Masaryk, Lanny attended a session of the United Nations at Lake Success. He heard the discussion of a resolution that the U.N. should investigate the situation in Czechoslovakia. He heard a speech by the Soviet delegate, denouncing this motion as an insult to and an outrage upon the Democratic Peoples Republic of Czechoslovakia. This Soviet representative was still Gromyko. He was young, and so had never known anything but the Soviet system; he was one of those robots which the system was now turning out by the million. He had a perfectly expressionless face and spoke with a perfectly expressionless voice. Every evening he telephoned Moscow, reported the situation, and got his instructions; the next day he rose up and said what he had been told to say. He knew, of course, that very few people in the audience understood what he was saying; it all had to be translated. He voted against the resolution, and when it was carried he walked out; that too was automatic.
A few days later Lanny listened over the radio and heard General Marshall, the American Secretary of State, announce that we would stay in Berlin regardless of all protests and at all hazards. Also Lanny heard that the United Nations Commission on Atomic Energy had announced that it had reached an impasse in its efforts to arrange for atomic control. The Soviets would never agree to inspection of the atomic plants in their country, and they persisted in their demand that the U.N. must first forbid the use of atomic weapons and require their destruction before there could be any steps toward general disarmament. It was obvious to all the world that the only thing which had so far kept the Soviet Union from taking possession of Western Europe was that supply of atomic bombs which the United States kept dangling over the Kremlin; the Soviet demand was equivalent to a statement that they would not give up the intention to march.
IX
Under State Department auspices there had been set up in New York a radio organisation known as the Voice of America, whose purpose was to make known the country’s ideas and ideals to the rest of the world. A Congress dominated by isolationists wouldn’t give it much money, and the great news associations wouldn’t sell it any of their product. To Lanny this was an illustration of the incredible length to which the profit system would go in the effort to protect itself against government competition; but so matters stood, and the Voice didn’t go to law about it. It was free to use the news once it had been published, and to people listening in Siam, Tasmania, and Chile a few hours’ delay didn’t make much difference.
The Voice was forbidden to broadcast in America; it used short wave only, and as time passed it would be able to get more money and set up short-wave stations at strategic points surrounding the great Communist empire. This, of course, would be taken as a hostile action by the rulers of that empire. The Voice gave the facts, and there was nothing the rulers feared more. They would expend a large part of their radio funds to make clattering noises that would drown out the sounds of V.O.A. They would spend more of their radio energy in denouncing those statements which their own people were not supposed to have heard.
This was a new form of the cold war, and, like all the other forms, it would grow less cold as time passed. Thomas Jefferson had written that truth had nothing to fear from error where reason was left free to combat it; but reason was not left free inside the Communist empire, so the only way for reason to have a chance was for the news of the day to be translated into forty or fifty different languages and beamed in the direction of the lands where those languages were spoken. Many of those lands were poor and not many persons in them had short-wave radio sets; but the hope was that a few persons would get it and would be moved to go out and spread it by other means and at whatever risk, even of life. That had always happened so far in history, and the assumption was that it would continue to happen. A long time before Thomas Jefferson one of the old Hebrew prophets had stated that ‘truth is mighty, and it prevails’.
V.O.A. hadn’t the money to hire the top men away from private industry. It had to find men who were willing to take small salaries in return for the privilege of saying what they believed. There were many of these, and some were competent; others made mistakes. Always they worked under a sniping fire from both sides, the left and the right. The Communists, who had penetrated everywhere into newspapers, magazines, and radio, were quick to find fault with anything that was done in the name of the free world; and they could count upon the support of reactionary congressmen, isolationists who wanted nothing to do with foreign nations except to sell them a bill of goods. V.O.A. had to have a large staff of translators, people who could read and write and speak the most unlikely languages; and it wasn’t always possible to be sure that their translations were correct. The most elementary ideas had to be explained; and sometimes it would be discovered that the American brand of humour was different from that of the Singhalese or the Egyptians.
People working under such pressure were glad to have the help of a volunteer group such as the Peace Programme. The little Peace paper was full of quotable extracts, and tape recordings were made of the programmes and supplied to both V.O.A. and R.I.A.S., thus increasing manyfold the effectiveness of the effort. It was casting bread upon the waters, and it came back in the form of a constant stream of letters from all over the world. Great numbers of people were listening and getting the facts; and in his own way each was labouring to spread knowledge and understanding. The outcome of all that effort lay upon the lap of the gods.
18 LOVE GILDS THE SCENE
I
Lanny was worried about his wife. He was certain that she was overworking. She was so conscientious that she considered it her duty to see every visitor and to answer every letter personally. She was keeping two secretaries busy; she would lie in bed with a stack of letters, reading them and marking them with instructions. She hadn’t had a vacation in a long time, and Lanny set himself to lure her away. Let the well-trained subordinates take over the work, under the supervision of Rick and Nina, and then by and by this pair too could have a rest and a change.
There was Hansi, left alone in that big house, except for the servants. The boys had gone back to school after their Easter vacation, and Bess had gone off on a speaking tour. She had quarrelled with him before she left, accusing him of cowardice, or at any rate of moral slackness, because he was dropping his Communist activities. What was the good of saying you believed in a cause if you didn’t work for it? And what was the value of a concerto compared with saving the proletarian state?
The trial was nearly two months off, and Lanny said, ‘Why not kidnap Hansi and give him a little fun?’ He called up Wilbur Post of the F.B.I. and asked about it. With Bess away, there was no possibility of Hansi getting any more information from the Reds. He was brooding over the dreadful publicity that was coming, the problem of what his friends would think about his conduct in spying upon his wife—an awful thing. Why not take him away and keep him cheerful? Post arranged the matter with the United States Commissioner, and Hansi agreed to keep in touch with that official.
Lanny had another meeting with his friend and put the proposition to him. They wouldn’t let Bess know where he had gone or whom he had gone with. He would just write her a note, saying that he was taking a trip to get away from his troubles. If she guessed that her ideological enemies had something to do with it, that could do no great harm. The three of them would take things easy and see the sights on the way. They would stop in auto courts, and Hansi would take along his fiddle and some music paper and could write when he felt like it. He could ride in the back seat and think his own thoughts—provided only that they were cheerful.
The violinist was agreeable, and they arranged a completely secret getaway. Hansi went back and gave his instructions to the servants, wrote his letter to Bess, and packed up his belongings. Next morning he called a taxi and had himself driven to a nearby town, and in front of the post office he piled his belongings on the curb. He paid off the taxi driver and saw him depart, and stood there until Lanny’s car showed up. Nobody had noticed him, a
nd his belongings were safely stowed, and they set out for New Jersey and the South.
II
By late afternoon they were just above Washington, and they stopped at one of those comfortable hotels which by now had spread all over the country. They hired two little cabins, with a shelter in between for the car. Then they drove and found a café and had dinner and came back to the cabins. They had a radio in the car, and another set they could take inside, so they could always get the news, and afterward they would sit and solve all the problems of the world. They were three old friends who understood one another’s minds; they could disagree without displeasure, and it was pleasure enough just to be near one another.
In the morning they drove into the city and rolled around like all the other tourists. It was amazing the way the place grew; there were always new buildings and new projects. Lanny didn’t go to the Treasury Building, or to the Pentagon, or to the State Department; this was a pleasure trip, and they went to the National Gallery and spent the day looking at great art. The basis of this display had been the Mellon collection, and Lanny, an ardent young radical, had greatly disliked that shrewd banker named Andy, who had dominated the financial affairs of the nation and helped to bring on the great panic of 1929. Less than nineteen years had passed since that time, but what a lot of history had happened, and how the world had changed! Hitler had changed it, then Roosevelt, and now Stalin was having his try.
One of those who bore the praise or blame for the collection had been the English art dealer Duveen, a fabulous personage whose art had been the hypnotising of multimillionaires and persuading them that he was the world’s supreme authority on ‘old masters’. He had understood that the way to make art works valuable was to put high prices on them, and he had put prices in the hundreds of thousands, and the multimillionaires had been enraptured. He had made so much money that he had become an English lord. Hansi said that some day there might be a Lord Lanny, and they had a laugh over that.
Anyhow, there were the paintings, and many of them were really grand. To look at them one after another was to be transported through the ages; to have the pageant of history made real to you, the continuity of human life and of civilisations in their endless variety. It was to have the imagination stimulated and the understanding extended. It was to be taken out of your narrow self, to be freed from your petty cares, to visit past ages and strange climes, and to be impressed with the infinite mystery of being.
Lanny, who for a quarter of a century had been earning his living as an art expert, knew these painters and their life stories and the ages in which they had lived. He knew the costumes they had worn and the homes in which they had been housed and the rulers or prelates who had patronised them and supplied them with their subjects. He could point out how the painter had balanced his design, how he had harmonised his colours, and the technique of his brush strokes—also where modern work had been done on his masterpiece. They found all this so fascinating that they decided to spend another night in the auto court and another day in the National Gallery.
III
Then the great bridge across the Potomac, and they were on their way southward through Virginia, past some of the battlefields of the Civil War. The effects of that war were still felt. It was still ‘the Wilderness’; the fields were barren and the cabins unpainted. But they went past speedily, and the warm sunshine was a delight.
U.S. I, the thousand-mile highway was called, and that at least showed no signs of dilapidation. You could make good time, and Lanny was a fast but careful driver. He watched the cars in front, and those behind in the little mirror. When one of those “bumper-chasers” settled on behind him he would move a foot or two over to the right and slow up and let the lunatic go on by himself. He had a precious cargo—including Hansi’s violin—and he took the best care of it.
They spent a night in Savannah and drove about admiring magnolias and live oaks bedecked like Christmas trees with Spanish moss. They went on to Florida and drove about in old St. Augustine, the most ancient of American towns, with horse-drawn hacks which might have come down from the time of the Negro slaves who had driven them.
Here in Florida American millionaires had sought for profitable and sometimes agreeable things to do with their money. One had built a railroad all the way down the East Coast, with a chain of luxury hotels. Now the motor highway paralleled the railway and the broad white-sand beaches. Along the way was the world’s most elaborate aquarium, with all the creatures of the subtropical seas. You could look below the surface through plate-glass windows and imagine yourself swimming there; you could look from above and watch the huge dolphins jump out of the water to take fish from their keeper’s hands.
They drove all the way down to Miami with its gambling palaces, which they did not patronise. They crossed by a highway to the west and went up Florida’s west coast with its sponge and tarpon fisheries. It is a tremendous state and has become all America’s playground, to say nothing of its winter-vegetable garden. In the flat interior lands it was raising great herds of cattle about which the tourists knew nothing. If you drove through its boundless pine forests at twilight you would see deer crossing the road and would have to watch out for them. The highway was hot, but they dressed accordingly, and the motion of the car provided a breeze; they found it delightful.
No one knew them or paid any attention to them, except to render the services for which they paid, and that was always done with courtesy. For Hansi it was wonderful; he had never been here before and could look at new scenes and discuss them with his friends and really forget the problems and horrors and griefs of his life. He was travelling incog, and since his name had to be entered in the registers of motels they had an amusing time discussing a suitable name. It had to be Jewish, of course, and they wanted it to sound as much so as possible. So he had become Mr Moishe Zinsenheimer.
In the evenings he would shut himself up in his little cabin and play for dear life, for never must his fingers be allowed to lose their flexibility. The effect upon the neighbourhood was electric. Americans were used to hearing such performances over the radio, but few of them had ever heard it ‘live’, and somehow they had not actually realised that human fingers could perform such miracles of agility. They would come out of their cabins and stand near Hansi’s cabin, listening. Sometimes they would stand through the whole performance and never make a sound and speak in whispers when it stopped.
They were people from all over the land, and invariably they were polite and respectful. They would ask Lanny and Laurel who this was, and always the answer would be that Mr Moishe Zinsenheimer was a refugee from the Nazis in Rumania. ‘Is he famous?’ they would ask, and the answer would be that he had been famous in Europe. These little fictions did not harm anybody; and of course it would have done no good to say that he was the notorious Red who was under indictment for espionage and stood to get ten or twenty years in a federal prison.
IV
St. Petersburg, Florida, was the city which boasted that the sun shone every day of the year, or almost; it was the place to which the old people of America who had saved up a little money came to die. In the meantime they went fishing, pitched horseshoes, and on Saturday nights had square dances. Hansi Robin had never caught a fish in his life, and he never did anything with his hands that he could possibly avoid doing; but it amused him greatly to let an old lady from Iowa teach him to dance the Virginia reel, and he went through the capers with spirit. He learned the meaning of ‘dosy-doe’ and ‘sashay your partner’. French words underwent a strange transmogrification when they travelled to Florida by way of Ioway.
Yes, it was fun. Hansi had played the peasant dances of all the countries of Europe, but this was the first time he had ever been on the receiving end. When the dance was over he went up to the country fiddler, who played with the instrument held to his chest, and said politely, ‘May I borrow your violin for a moment?’ The man looked perplexed but handed over the violin and the bow. Hansi took his stance,
struck three loud chords, and plunged into the playing of one of those frenzied Hungarian gypsy dances which he had made one of his specialities. The audience stood amazed; no one moved from the spot. Their eyes opened wide, and their mouths too, the better to take in the sounds, perhaps. And when the music ended with a wild flourish they broke into a storm of applause.
This was an American audience and no one shouted, ‘Bravo’; they shouted, ‘More’ and, ‘Give us another’. Hansi might have stopped the dancing and turned it into a concert, but he bowed once or twice politely, handed back the fiddle and the bow with a word of thanks, and literally fled from the place. Let them remember it the rest of their lives, and let it be a mystery to them! He had taken a chance, for somebody might have heard him play at a concert, and the story might get around and reach a newspaper.
V
They continued northward, trending toward the west and came to a steel bridge with a sign on it reading ‘Suwannee River’. They stopped the car and got out and walked on the bridge. So this was the stream made famous the world over by a song! The poet had misspelled the name, leaving out the u, and people looked it up in the gazetteers and encyclopedias and couldn’t find it and drew the conclusion that the river was fictitious. But it was very real. It didn’t in any way suggest ‘the old plantation’; on the contrary it suggested the jungles of the Congo. The water was dark, the river narrow and deep and overshadowed with thick, almost black trees. It had come two hundred miles from a swamp in Georgia, and they would have liked to get out and hire a power boat and be taken as far up it as they could go. But they remembered that it was the mosquito season, and they got into the car and went on, singing the song while Lanny drove.
The Return of Lanny Budd Page 41
