The Return of Lanny Budd

by Upton Sinclair

  ‘Lanny, you’re talking nonsense—’

  ‘Yes, old dear, we’re back in our old argument. Let me tell you that I met Jan Masaryk shortly before his death; he went back deliberately, a martyr to human freedom if there was ever one in history. So let’s not waste time trying to change my mind about Stalinism’.

  ‘So you are going to advise the Robin family to keep me from seeing my sons’!

  ‘I won’t go that far. I will say that if the Robins ask me—as they have done and are apt to do again—I shall advise them that you should not see your sons until they are mature, until they understand exactly what communism means and what it is doing to the world. Then they may see you and tell you what I’m telling you—that you’re a pitiful victim of a set of delusions and that you are sacrificing your happiness and your life to a new form of fascism, subtly camouflaged to deceive all the poor and backward races of the earth’.

  ‘Who keeps them poor? Who keeps them backward’? Bess started from her chair and almost screamed the words; she thrust her finger at Lanny’s face so that it seemed almost like a pistol. ‘You, with your privileges and your comforts, you tell the poor and backward peoples to stay peacefully in the chains of wage slavery! You tell them to go on toiling twelve or sixteen hours a day while the great capitalist powers drain the lifeblood out of their veins! You taught me rebellion! You took me as a child and opened my eyes to the cruelty and oppression that exist all over this earth. You taught me sympathy for the poor and oppressed, both at home and abroad! And now you have turned traitor to your cause, to their cause. Now you can’t find words bitter enough to denounce the men and women who are devoting their lives to ending capitalist exploitation and war! Now you are working against them—for all I know, you may be one of those who betrayed me to the government’!

  ‘No, Bess’, he said quietly, ‘you have never misunderstood what I taught you. You know perfectly well at this minute that you never heard me advocate force and violence, nor did you ever hear me advocate a programme of deception. What I talked about was democratic action, and education for it. The distinction between democratic action and dictatorship is fundamental. When you get something by democratic action you can keep it; but when you get it by dictatorship you have a dynasty. You have one cruel tyrant ousted by a still more cruel tyrant; you have a succession of murders; you have a whole plague of concentration camps for slave labourers whom the tyrants fear. You have horror piled upon horror until the world is sick of it, until the very word communism becomes a stench in the nostrils of thinking people’.

  The finger was again trembling in front of Lanny’s face, and he saw that his sister’s face was convulsed with emotion—anger or fear or grief, or all of them mingled. He saw there was no use going on, so he got up. Then he saw that tears had begun to come into her eyes, and she sank into her chair and covered her face and wept hysterically. He waited, because he wasn’t sure what was in her mind. In her heart she must know that what he had said about the Stalinist terror was the truth; every Communist, at least in America, must know it and be fighting against a realisation too awful to be faced.

  But she wasn’t going to give up her dream. She got herself together, wiped her tears away, and stood up, facing him. ‘I am ashamed of myself’, she said. ‘It is weak of me. I have a great cause and it is an agony to hear it abused. There is nothing more for us to talk about, Lanny. I’m sorry’.

  ‘I’m sorry too’, he said. ‘The time may come when events will force you to think it over and change your mind. If that happens you may count upon me to help in any way I can’.

  And so he left.

  VI

  All this time the strange new kind of aerial war was continuing in Berlin. The Americans had taken up the challenge of the Soviets. They were not going to be driven out of the city, and the people of West Berlin were not going to be starved. If the Reds blocked off the railroads, the canals, and the highways, all right; there remained the air and the cargo planes; there was the great Tempelhoferfeld, and in the American zone a field at Frankfurt and in the British zone one at Hanover and one at Hamburg. America would put its great cargo planes to flying food in to Berlin; it would bring new planes from overseas, depleting its own domestic services in order to call the Communist bluff and give the world a demonstration of American might.

  At home there had been discovered an ingenious process of preserving war materials for which there was no storage room available but for which there might be future need. The process was popularly known as ‘putting them in mothballs’. Guns, tanks, planes, and even the vital parts of great battleships were covered with a thin transparent plastic impervious to weather; it lasted forever, and the costly objects could stay outdoors without the slightest damage.

  And now there was another process—taking them out of mothballs. So once more, as in the days of the hot war, the big C-47s and the bigger C-49s would fly from American airfields to Newfoundland and from there to Scotland and on to Berlin. From East Coast ports, from Boston down to New Orleans, the cargo ships brought wheat and other foodstuffs to Antwerp, Bremen and Hamburg, and from there the stuff came by railroad and canals and trucks to the airports. Coal came from Britain and Belgium and the Ruhr and was put into sacks; oil came from Texas and Venezuela and Arabia and was put into tins.

  It was a shuttle service to Berlin, with a plane flying every few minutes. The moment a plane landed at the Tempelhoferfeld it would be run off the field and unloaded into the waiting trucks; then it would be wheeled back to the field and take off for the return trip. At the height of the enterprise each plane was making as many as three trips a day and being serviced while the pilots were getting their meals. On holidays and after working hours the population of Berlin would turn out and watch the sight. All day long through the summer the children of the city would perch on the roofs of buildings and on the fences and the rubble heaps to enjoy that marvellous free show, waving their caps and cheering each plane as it came down with its load of food for them.

  Bernhardt Monck wrote about these matters and sent clippings from the Neue Zeitung, the newspaper A.M.G. was publishing in both Berlin and Munich. Now and then for comic relief he would send clippings from papers the Reds published in their sector. They were raging furiously against the blockade; they were indignant because the Americans were violating the most elementary rules of air safety—so concerned they were for American safety, and for the safety of Germans who lived in the houses around the Tempelhoferfeld! They were saying that the Americans might keep Berlin fed and provided during the summer but could not possibly do it in the winter, when the ground would be deep with snow and when furious storms would last for days and nights. Then the West Berliners would require not merely electric light and power, but also heat for their houses and factories, which took immense quantities of coal. But Monck said the Americans were making their plans to do it and were accumulating stocks. He said that West Berlin had become a symbol to the whole of Europe; it was like a flag flying over a fortress, proclaiming the fact that it was still holding out. The free world was surely not meaning to capitulate!

  VII

  Now and then Monck would put in a sentence or two about secret matters. He would say, ‘No word from Ferdinand or the deaf girl’; he would say, ‘Old Ferdinand is going straight this time; he is useful’. Once Monck enclosed a clipping from a Munich newspaper, telling how the German government of Bavaria had arrested Heinrich Brinkmann on a charge of attempting to transport state-owned treasure out of the country. At the top of this item Monck had put in red pencil the initials ‘O.F.’, which of course meant that the information had been given by Old Ferdinand.

  Lanny didn’t show such things to Laurel, but he did tell her of the statement that Kurt was ‘going straight this time’. She knew about the treasure, because the story had been published in the American press while Lanny was still in Germany. Lanny hadn’t been mentioned—which was the way he wanted it—but Laurel had had no trouble in guessing that this wa
s the important errand which had taken him overseas. She had never met Kurt Meissner but had been hearing about him for many years, so he was vivid in her mind; and now Monck’s letter caused her to talk about him again and to think about him. That, no doubt, was the cause of the strange event which now took place, one of a series of events which she and her husband had experienced together and about which they speculated in vain.

  All our thoughts and impressions sink down into that underground repository we call memory. Millions of facts and thoughts and impressions, names and places and dates, are there, and there is some kind of mysterious elevator; we press a button and a messenger goes down and picks out from the million of shelves and compartments a single detail we have called for—the name of a man we met fifty years ago, a line of poetry we read, a fish we caught, a bird we saw flying—and brings it up to the surface and delivers it to our consciousness. Sometimes the messenger cannot find it; but it is always there, the psychologists tell us. Perhaps under hypnosis we can get it; or if we just wait and repeat the order now and then, suddenly it comes popping to the surface, like a bubble of gas in a stagnant pond. How these things happen the most learned psychologist in the world cannot tell us. But they do happen, we know, and we take them for granted.

  What goes on in the bottom of that stagnant pond when we send no messengers down and give no conscious thought to it? Do the memories just lie there awaiting the summons, or do they by any possibility have a life or energy of their own? Are there by any chance strange psychic entities that writhe and wriggle about and perhaps get into one another’s way? Are there personalities there, other modes of life? Lanny had read more than once a book by a learned psychologist of Boston, Dr. Morton Prince, called The Dissociation of a Personality, the case record of a young lady of good family who developed five different personalities in her subconscious mind; these personalities would dispute the possession of her conscious mind, and now and then a different one would come to the surface and be the young lady whom Dr. Prince called Miss Beauchamp. He took the two of those personalities he considered the best and put them together while his patient was hypnotised, and made a new Miss Beauchamp; the other three personalities he psychically murdered, or at any rate put them permanently to sleep; he hypnotised them and told them they would no longer be Miss Beauchamp or have anything to do with her, and they obeyed him.

  All through the ages men have been aware of the existence of this mysterious pond or well or mine or whatever metaphor one chooses to use for it; all the metaphors are misleading, because it doesn’t exist in space, and it may not exist in time. But we who do exist in space and time have to imagine it that way. We become aware of things going on there, and sometimes we call it God and sometimes we call it the devil; if we are materialists we invent strange names such as the ego and the id. Men have a way of giving a thing a name and then assuming that they know all about it. They will say, ‘Oh, that’s just hypnotism’, overlooking the fact that they don’t know what hypnotism is or how it works. They will say, ‘I believe in telepathy’, overlooking the the fact that if they could really find out what telepathy is and make it work they would completely put an end to the separation of our individual lives and bring about a state of being in which we would either have to love our neighbours or else destroy ourselves.

  VIII

  The bubbles continue to rise now and then from this stagnant pond, and sometimes there is an explosion of them. Laurel Creston Budd had been hearing about Kurt Meissner; he meant much to her because he meant even more to her husband, who went abroad on dangerous errands, and always when she tried to guess what her husband might be doing Kurt Meissner was one of the personalities of whom she thought. Recently she had learned that her guesses had been right, and that had made Kurt still more active in her consciousness, and presumably had made him active in her sub-consciousness as well.

  Anyhow, this is what happened. Laurel was lying on her day-bed, reading some letters, and Lanny was in the next room. She laid the letters down and spoke to him, and when he came to the door she said, ‘Lanny, we are forgetting our psychic powers’.

  ‘Your psychic powers, you mean’, he answered with a smile.

  She said, ‘I have a strange feeling. I suppose it is what people call a hunch. Let’s try a séance’.

  ‘Okay’, he replied and made the preparations, which were simple. All that Laurel had to do was to lie back and close her eyes; Lanny pulled down the window shades to diminish the light and then got a pad of paper and a pencil and sat in a chair by the bedside.

  Laurel closed her eyes and began to breathe deeply. Two or three times she sighed, and then the room became perfectly still. After a minute or two Lanny asked in a soft voice, ‘Is anybody here’?

  ‘Is that you, Lanny?’ answered a voice; it came from Laurel’s lips and yet wasn’t entirely like her voice. Lanny didn’t believe in spirits—at least he didn’t want to believe in spirits, but he had learned that in these séances the entities, whatever they were, took themselves to be living beings and were to be addressed politely, precisely as if they were alive on earth. So Lanny said, ‘Is that you, Madame? I am glad to see you’. He didn’t see her, but that was part of the game.

  ‘I have missed you for a long time’, replied the voice, speaking quietly and slowly.

  ‘I’ve been very busy, Madame. Laurel and I are trying to prevent another war, and that calls for a lot of time’.

  ‘I am afraid you will not succeed, Lanny. The world has come upon evil days. There is a young man here, the one who was here before, the German. He has suffered terribly’.

  ‘What is his name, Madame?’

  ‘He says Ferdinand. He says you know him’.

  ‘Yes, I know him. He is with you’?

  ‘He is here. He wants me to tell you that he is happy, he is at peace’.

  ‘I know him well. Has he anything else to tell me’?

  ‘He wishes to tell you that his father is here’.

  ‘Ferdinand’s father?’ Lanny’s fingers trembled as he wrote his notes. When he looked at them afterward he saw he had given a violent start. ‘I didn’t know that he had come over, Madame’.

  ‘He has just come. He is a sad old man; not so old, but he looks old. He knew you well. He quarrelled with you. He wishes to say that you were right’.

  ‘What happened to him, Madame?’

  ‘He says it was the—he uses a word I do not know—the Vehm-Vehmgericht’.

  ‘I know that word’.

  ‘They tried him and hanged him by the neck. It was a terrible thing. It frightens me, but he says not to worry. He talks about his family; he wants you to advise them’.

  ‘Tell him I will help them, Madame’.

  ‘There are other men here. They are all in uniform. They are Germans. There is a fat man who laughs all the time. He wears a lot of medals. There is a lady with him. He calls her Karin. He says you sold him paintings, and now you can have them all. There is a pale young man here; he is talking. They are both talking at the same time. He was an officer; he was killed in battle. He says you know his mother. Her name is Hilde. You are to tell her that he is happy—they are all talking and it disturbs me. They are all Germans, and you know I never liked Germans, they destroyed my country. I will talk to you some other time, Lanny. The power is failing now’.

  IX

  So the voice faded away and there was silence in the room for a minute or two. Lanny said again, ‘Is there anyone present?’ but there was no reply. Laurel began to sigh and then to moan as if in distress. Then her eyes opened. She always appeared perplexed for a few moments, as if not quite sure where she was. Then she asked, ‘What happened?’

  Lanny said, ‘Madame came, and she said that Kurt is there’.

  ‘Oh no!’ exclaimed Laurel. She sat up. ‘What happened to him?’

  ‘She says he has been hanged. I suppose by his associates. She quotes him as saying it was the Vehmgericht’.

  ‘What is that?’

 
‘It is a name they have taken over from the Middle Ages in Germany; a secret court, a sort of lynch-law affair. Kurt himself told me that if it became known that he went over to the Americans he would not be allowed to live for a week’.

  ‘Oh, Lanny, how awful!’ exclaimed the wife. ‘Do you suppose it is really true?’

  ‘We can only try to find out’, he replied. ‘It may be only an expression of your anxieties’.

  He described the rest of the séance but didn’t mention Kurt’s son; he just said, ‘Madame referred to a young German who had appeared previously’. But so far as Kurt was concerned the facts were no longer ‘classified’. A leading Nazi propagandist had come out on the Allied side, and if he had been murdered it was obviously because he had been giving information to the Americans.

  Lanny said he would telephone Monck and find out. It was then the small hours in the morning in Germany, and he waited until early next morning. Then he put in a call for Monck’s office and had the good fortune to find him. Lanny asked, ‘Have you any news about Old Ferdinand?’ The answer was, ‘The Army turned him loose at his request. I wrote you about it a few days ago’.