The Return of Lanny Budd

by Upton Sinclair

  ‘You are very kind’, replied the radio man, ‘but you are making a mistake. It would be much better to give me a scolding, because that is the way we become known and get our ideas across to the Germans on your side’.

  They joked for a while about this, amusing themselves by assembling a collection of Soviet clichés and abusive formulas. Lanny would be a Wall Street flunkey and a Truman bootlick, a capitalistic parasite, a diversionary mad dog and a counterrevolutionary wrecker. By the time the waiter brought their wienerschnitzel the American had become a cannibal, and they examined the meat with such concern that the waiter inquired if there was anything wrong. Fortunately other customers appeared and he had to go away and leave them.

  Einsiedel remarked, ‘I noticed that at the end of your broadcast you advised East Germans not to come over but to stay where they were and work for the cause of the free world. But that is not the advice you gave me’.

  The answer was, ‘It is easy to give that advice in the abstract, to people you do not know. It is not so easy when the person is a friend and you are in his presence. I have done it in more than one case and I have them on my conscience’.

  ‘You must not have me there’, replied the other. ‘I am an independent person, and I shall do what my own conscience directs. I want you to know, Herr Budd, I am not really so naïve as I must seem to you. My trouble is, I find it so hard to share your faith in democracy. You Americans may have the good luck to choose fit leaders; but for us in old Europe the tyranny of the majority can assume frightful forms’.

  Lanny, having watched the rise of Hitler, found it hard to answer that. He said, ‘Tell me, how have you been getting along with your friends since your return?’

  ‘They expected me to be more bitter against the Americans. They say, “You have changed. You are not so sharp as you used to be”’.

  ‘Ah, there you have it!’ exclaimed Lanny. ‘There begins suspicion, and out of that grows fear. Hab’ Acht, mein lieber Graf!’

  IX

  Immediately after this came an interesting development; one of the examiners at the refugee clearing station called Lanny on the telephone at his hotel. He reported that half-a-dozen students from Berlin University had shown up at the station, saying that they were sick of the propaganda fed to them at that institution, which was in the East sector. Might it not be possible for the Americans to set up some kind of embryo college in which truth could be taught instead of propaganda?

  Lanny hurried over to Kuno-Fischer-Strasse, and there he met a group of Germans in their early twenties, each of whom had a tale to tell of the boredom and futility of Soviet education. For technical subjects it was all right, they were factual and efficient. But when it came to cultural subjects, to literature, history, philosophy, it was ‘the bunk’—the young Germans had learned this term. It was all dogma; independent opinion was absolutely excluded, and one was bored to extinction. There ought to be in the American sector a ‘Free University’, to which students from all the sectors could come. Lanny took fire at the idea; he telephoned Lasky, and Lasky took fire; he telephoned Shub, and Shub took fire and said that Lanny should come at once and they would give him a spot on the radio to talk about it.

  These young Germans groping their way caused the visiting art expert to think of Fritz Meissner; he asked if any of them had known him, but none had. Somehow he felt that the Free University would be a memorial to Fritz—a secret memorial, in Lanny’s heart. It would be a way of winning absolution for what he had done to Kurt’s eldest son. It would be what the son himself would want, or would have wanted had he been alive. It was a real idea, and Lanny could tell by the fury it aroused in the Communists that it was one which would grow and spread.

  He went to see General Clay about it, and that officer agreed. There would be the problem of getting a building, but he would find one. He would set aside funds and get some teachers and some books. Wouldn’t Mr. Budd like to become one of the teachers? Lanny was immensely amused by the idea of becoming a university professor—he, with only two years at St. Thomas’s Academy by way of formal education. But he told the general that he had a family at home, also a Peace Programme. He would go home and tell the American public about the embryo Free University of Berlin. Radio listeners would send books, and teachers would volunteer; also, some of the foundations might help; many people who didn’t want to pay income taxes might be willing to have their money used to set up a rival to the great Berlin University which had fallen prey to the Reds. Lanny counted that a good day’s work; he would have been still happier if he had been able to look forward and realise that within three years the Free University of Berlin would have a couple of hundred teachers and five or six thousand students.

  BOOK NINE

  No Fiend in Hell Can Match

  25 INTO THE JAWS OF DEATH

  I

  Lanny went to R.I.A.S. and gave what he intended to be his last talk. His subject was the embryo Free University. He explained carefully the difference between the teaching of dogma and the free inquiry into truth. He referred to some of the absurdities that were taught as dogma in various parts of the world, not failing to include East Berlin and Moscow. He told of some of the persecutions for efforts at free inquiry, beginning with Socrates being made to drink the cup of hemlock juice, because he taught that the Hellenic gods did not really exist; and then Galileo, who had been shut up in a dungeon for teaching that the earth moved around the sun.

  He said that all we called progress in the modern world depended upon the sacred right of free inquiry; the right of every individual to take part in the free competition of ideas, not merely the search for them but the propagation of them. He stated that a university dedicated to this cause was to be started at once, and that his hearers were to talk about it and spread the good news; and very soon they would be informed where qualified students might report for enrolment. Students from East Berlin and East Germany would be welcome, and it was hoped that they would assert their right to attend a university of their own choice.

  Then Lanny shook hands with his friends and set out to walk to his hotel. It was a pleasant warm evening at the end of August. He watched the crowds and reflected upon the courage and endurance of civilised people in the midst of the worst adversities. He turned into a side street on the way to his hotel, and at the corner he stopped and waited for a car to pass before he stepped down from the curb; but the car swerved and bumped over the curb, and as he leaped back it struck him a glancing blow on the shoulder, knocking him off his feet.

  The car sped on; but another car that was not far behind it stopped with a grinding of brakes. Lanny was a bit dazed and did not realise exactly what was happening; some men ran toward him and helped him to his feet, expressing concern and asking if he was badly hurt. He said no, he didn’t think so, and one of them said he ought to be taken to a hospital. ‘No, wait,’ Lanny said. ‘I think I’m all right’. But the man insisted, ‘You should not take a chance, you should go to a hospital’. He started to push Lanny toward the car, and the American realised that there were three Germans and that they had him surrounded and were leading him to their car.

  Suddenly a stab of fear smote him; they were trying to take him by force, and quickly. There flashed into his mind the words that Monck had spoken to him so solemnly, ‘Don’t be afraid to make a noise! Don’t think about the proprieties, scream! Scream as loud as you can!’

  And Lanny screamed. He was amazed at the sound of his own voice when he really turned it loose. ‘Ich bin Lanny Budd! Mein Name ist Lanny Budd!’ Monck had said there was no use calling for help, because the kidnappers would be armed; the only thing to cry was your name. Your one chance was that some passer-by might hear it and might be moved to telephone A.M.G. or the German police.

  The man who had demanded that Lanny come to the hospital clapped his hand over Lanny’s mouth. Lanny bit with all the power of his jaw, and the man jerked his hand loose and struck Lanny a blow on the side of his head which made his head
ring and deafened him. But he went on struggling madly and yelling at the top of his lungs, ‘Mein Name ist Lanny Budd!’ But then he felt something soft and wet clamped over his face. He smelled a strong, sweetish smell and tried his best not to breathe it in. He fought with all his might, but these two things are incompatible; when you make exertions you have to breathe, and when you are breathing chloroform you do not fight. The three men had him in their grip, and the cloth was clamped tightly against his face, and in a few seconds he had passed out and knew no more.

  II

  His consciousness came back in a wavy blur. He realised that he was alive, but he wasn’t sure where or how, or what it meant to be alive, or what had happened to him. Mostly his sensations were of pain, a headache, a ringing in his ears, an aching in his shoulder. He began to move his hands feebly, in the effort to make sure that he was alive, or whether perhaps this was some state of consciousness in the next world. He opened his eyes and saw nothing; he couldn’t be sure about that, and thought that maybe he was blind. Only gradually did he realise that he was in total darkness. There were sounds, and it took time to realise that they were in his own head; only gradually did he become sure that outside was utter and complete stillness, the like of which he had never imagined before. He began to feel himself; yes, he was all here. He moved his shoulder; apparently it was not broken, it was just a bad bruise. One elbow hurt; he had struck it when he fell. He tested it and it seemed to work all right. He tried his voice; he could hear it, so presumably he wasn’t deaf. Or could a deaf man hear from inside? He wasn’t sure.

  He felt beneath him; there was something hard and cold and smooth, and he realised that he was lying on a concrete floor. He began to recall what had happened to him. It was hard to think; the effort hurt, and he shrank from the pain; but the instinct of life drove him to keep at it. Yes, he had been struck by an automobile, and then he was to be taken to a hospital. Could this be a hospital, or was it a tomb? Had he been buried alive? Or was it the future life? Would he meet Madame Zyszynski and presently be talking to Laurel in a trance?

  He had lost the sense of time and didn’t know how long it took, but in the end his consciousness cleared and he said to himself, I have been kidnapped. I am in the hands of the Reds. This must be a dungeon, and what are they going to do to me?

  He remembered what Monck had said, ‘If they get you without witnesses you are gone for good. Your only chance is, if somebody has reported your name’. Lanny tried to think. Had there been other people on the street? Yes, he was almost sure there had been several. Some would have seen the accident; they would have stopped and might have approached out of curiosity. But when they realised that it was a kidnapping they would have moved away. They were helpless civilians and knew that the kidnappers were desperate men and to interfere might mean death. But after the kidnappers were gone, to run to a telephone and call the police would involve no risk.

  Lanny remembered that he had screamed his name half-a-dozen times. Somebody must surely have heard it. They wouldn’t know that it was the man they had listened to on the radio, but they would guess it was an American name, and they would know that the kidnappers would be from the East. There was at least a good chance that the incident had been reported. And in any case he would be missed, and his friends would guess. R.I.A.S. would make a fuss; but would the Reds care?

  There had been two cars; one had deliberately struck him, and the other had picked him up and carried him away. No doubt he had been followed from the radio station. The Reds of course had known who he was; they knew everything, it was their business. Probably they had spies in R.I.A.S.; they had them everywhere among the Germans in American employ, among the servants in every department of government and in the homes of officials. So Ilya Ehrenburg had got the information and had broadcast it.

  All this thinking took time and caused headache. He was in the hands of the enemy—the cold-war enemy. He had been in danger before and always had managed to escape, but this time he could be sure there would be no escaping. They had him, and they would give him the works, they would put him through the mill. He had talked with many persons who had been through that mill; he had read about scores of others. His first impulse was to panic at the thought, but he checked himself. No, that wouldn’t do any good; he must use his wits, he must be better than they were, better in mind and in spirit.

  They would torture him; and what would it be for? What would they want? Would they do it for revenge or for the sheer pleasure of making him suffer pain? No—for they were not savages, they were scientists. They were scientists of Marxist materialism; they were practical men, and what they did was for a purpose, for their own clear advantage. What would they want from the son of Budd-Erling, from the cannibal, the son of a crocodile? They would want information; they would want the names of the people who were helping him, his fellow conspirators. They would know a lot about him already; they would have a card file on him, a large dossier. Lanny had studied many such, including one the Nazis had accumulated on him. The Reds would have an even better one; for where the Nazis had had only a dozen years the Reds had had thirty and they had taken over all the Nazis techniques.

  III

  He felt around him cautiously; the smooth, hard concrete floor. Leaning over to one side, he found that he could touch a concrete wall. Leaning over to the other side, he found that he could touch another. He made certain that he was in a box a little more than six feet square. He wanted to know how high it was, so very cautiously, he tried to get to his feet, leaning against one of the walls. He found that he couldn’t stand and had to sit again and wait to get firmer control of himself.

  Finally he was able to get up, and he found that by raising his hands he could touch the ceiling; the room, or box, was about seven feet high. Then he groped his way around it and discovered that there was a door, solid, smooth, and hard; it was steel. The idea flashed over him: Was he put in here to be suffocated? Was that the reason for the ringing in his ears and the dizziness? But by feeling every inch of the wall, one side after another, he discovered there was an opening of about four inches square high up in one wall, and that down near the floor on the same wall was another opening of the same size. Obviously these were ventilation ducts. He felt the air coming in, and it was cool. He knew there was no cool air in Berlin on the hot day he had been experiencing, and suddenly a horrible realisation flashed over him; they had put him in one of their temperature chambers.

  They had a name for it, but he had forgotten it. First, they subjected you to cold. They brought you to a precise point, scientifically determined, where you did not quite freeze; you did not die but your faculties were paralysed. The Nazis had determined all that by experiment, and the Soviets had taken over both the experimenters and their data. When they had all but frozen you for exactly the right time they warmed you. They turned the heat up to the precise scientifically determined point where you could endure that for a certain length of time without perishing. So, without damaging you permanently, without bruising you or making any marks, they could paralyse your will and break your spirit, bring you to the point where you would tell them anything they wanted to know and confess to anything, true or false. It was something they could do without waste of time or bother; it was something that worked while they slept.

  Yes, the air coming in near the floor was getting colder, and Lanny realised that he would have to think fast. What would they want from him? What were the things he could tell them, and what were the things he couldn’t tell them? He must make up his muddled mind, and he must manage to hold on to the ideas regardless of whatever might be done to him. Would they ask him about R.I.A.S.? But what could they expect to get? They undoubtedly had spies there and knew everthing. Would they ask about his talk with General Clay? But there was nothing confidential about that, the General had authorised him to quote what he said. Would they ask about Bernhardt Monck? But Monck was an old-timer—they no doubt had people who had been his colleagues away back after
World War I. They knew he was a lifelong Social Democrat, an ex-sailor, ex-labour leader, an American agent who had worked against Hitler and now was working against the Reds. His present position was known, his place of residence, his family, all such matters. Monck himself had told Lanny they would know all that; and Lanny knew no more.

  Then, Fritz Meissner; undoubtedly they had caught Fritz and had put him through the mill. How much had he told? Lanny could never feel sure that any psychic message was valid; Fritz might still be alive, and if so Lanny could do him great harm by talking about him. No, he would not take that chance.

  But then, thinking more about it, he began to wonder if he should say he had set Fritz to trying to catch the men who were circulating Himmler money. He had assumed that it was Neo-Nazis who were doing it, and they were doing harm to the Soviets just as much as to the Americans. Surely it had never crossed his mind that any Soviet officials would be engaged in promoting anything so low, so obviously criminal! But then, if they were doing it, they would take that for an insult; and above all he must say nothing to affront them and their wonderful, their holy Soviet system. Lanny, who had done some interrogation for General Patton’s army, remembered how different his attitude had been toward prisoners who had answered freely and cheerfully and those who were surly and insulting. He made up his mind that he would be polite and obliging; his life might depend upon it. The official who questioned him would be a Communist fanatic, but he would be doing his duty as he saw it, and there would be no use in adding personal antagonism to his professional severity.