chairs, “except that so many look Jewish.”
“A lot of them are,” Slote said dolefully. “Too many of them are.”
Natalie devoured a whole plate of sugared cakes with her tea. “I shouldn’t do this, but I’m famished. I’m big as a house. I’ve gained ten pounds in six months at the villa. I just eat and eat.”
“Possibly I’m prejudiced, but I think you look like the goddess of love, if a bit travel-worn.”
“Yes, you mean these hefty Venus de Milo hips, hey?” She darted a pleased look at him. “I hope Byron likes hips. I’ve sure got ‘em.”
“I hadn’t noticed your hips, but I assure you Byron will like them. Not that I really think you’re worried. There’s Bunky Thurston.” Slote waved as a little man at the doorway far down the room came toward them. “Bunky’s a prince of a fellow.”
“He has the world’s most impressive moustache,” Natalie said.
“It’s quite a moustache,” Slote said.
The moustache approached, a heavy rounded tawny brush with every hair gleaming in place, attached to a pleasant pink moon face set on a slight body dressed in natty gray flannel.
Slote said, “Hi, Bunky. You’re late for tea” but just in time for a drink.”
With a loud sigh, Thurston sat. “Thanks. I’ll have a double Canadian Club and water. What foul weather. The chill gets in your bones. Natalie, here’s that list I promised you.” He handed her a folded mimeographed sheet. “I’m afraid you’ll agree that it kills the notion. Now, I couldn’t track down Commander Bathurst, but I left word everywhere. I’m sure he’ll call me here within the hour.”
Slote glanced inquisitively at the paper in Natalie’s hand. It was a list of documents required for a marriage of foreigners in Portugal, and there were nine items. Avidly studying the sheet, Natalie drooped her shoulders and glanced from Slote to Thurston. “Why, getting all this stuff together would take months!”
“I’ve seen it done in one month,” Thurston said, “but six to eight weeks is more usual. The Portuguese government doesn’t especially want foreigners to get married here. I’m not sure why. In peacetime we send people over to Gibraltar, where you go through like greased lightning. But the Rock is shut up tight now.”
“Thinking of getting married?” Slote said to Natalie.
She colored at the dry tone. “That was one of many things Byron wrote about. I thought I might as well check. It’s obviously impossible, not that I thought it was such a hot idea anyway.”
“Who’s Commander Bathurst?” Slote said.
Thurston said, “Our naval attache. He’ll know exactly when the submarine’s arriving.” He tossed off half his whiskey when the waiter set it before him, and carefully smoothed down his moustache with two forefingers, looking around the room with a bitter expression. “God, Lisbon gives me the creeps. Forty thousand desperate people trying to get out of the net. I’ve seen most of the faces in this room at our legation.” Thurston turned to Slote. “This isn’t what you and I bargained for when we went to Foreign Service school.”
“Bunky, you’d better get rid of that Quaker conscience, or you really will crack up. Remember that it isn’t us who’s doing it. It’s the Germans.”
“Not entirely. I never thought much about our immigration laws until this thing started. They’re pernicious and idiotic.” Bunky Thurston drank again and coughed, empurpling his face. “Forty thousand people. Forty thousand! Suppose we admitted them all? What difference would forty thousand people make, for God’s sake, in the wastes of Montana or North Dakota? They’d be a blessing!”
“They wouldn’t go there. They’d huddle in the big cities where there’s still an unemployment problem.”
Thurston struck the table with a fist. “Now don’t give me that stale drivel, Leslie. It’s enough that I have to parrot it all day myself. They’d go anywhere. You know that. They’d sign papers to live out their lives in Death Valley. Our law’s inhuman. Wasn’t America started as sanctuary from European oppression?”
Slote took off his glasses, rubbed his eyes, and glanced warily at the people nearest them, four elderly men arguing in French. “Well I’m not going to defend the law, but how do you draw the line? Or do you have unrestricted migration? Do you let in everybody who wants to come?
You’d empty southern and eastern Europe. They’d flood our economy, starve, ferment, and boil up in a revolution. What about the Orientals? Do you break the dike to the west? In ten years the United States would be a big Chinese suburb.”
Natalie said with a gesture at the room, “He’s talking about
“Tried to escape,” said Thurston “The Germans can take Portugal overnight.”
“And I’m talking about the arguments that arise in Congress when you try to alter the law,” Slote said, “especially in favor of Jews.” Nobody wants any more competition from them; they’re too energetic and smart. That’s the fact of it, Natalie, like it or not.
“We could give refuge to all the Jews in Europe, all five million of them. We’d only be a lot better off,” Thurston said. “Remember your Ruskin? ‘Wealth is life,’ he said. And if that’s a bit too simple, it’s certainly true that wealth is brains.” He leaned toward Natalie, lowering his voice. “If you want to see the head of the Gestapo in Portugal, he’s just walking in, and with him is the German ambassador. Charming man, the ambassador. My wife really likes him.”
Natalie stared. “Is he the one with the scar?”
“No, I don’t know who that one is, though I’ve seen him around. I’m sure he’s Gestapo too. The ambassador’s the one in the gray suit.”
The three men sat not far from them, and the headwaiter fluttered and grinned eagerly, taking their orders.
“They look so ordinary,” Natalie said.
“The Germans are quite ordinary,” Slote said. “It’s a little scary, in fact, how much like Americans they are.”
Gloomily, Natalie said. “Those people at the table next to them are obviously Jews. Drinking and laughing, side by side with the Gestapo. Eerie.”
Thurston said, “I know them. They bought their way out of Belgium, and they still don’t believe they can’t buy their way into the United States. Most of the Jews here have been stripped penniless, but there are a handful of those. They’re in the casino night after night, whooping it up. Fish in the net, jumping and flopping, still enjoying the water while they can.” Thurston finished his drink, smoothed his moustache, and waved his glass at the waiter. “I want another. I’ve had some awful interviews today. Lisbon is a very sad and horrible place right now. My request for a transfer is in. The question is whether I’ll wait. I may just quit the service. I’ve never realized before how nice it is to have a wealthy father.”
Slote said to Natalie, “Am I taking you to dinner?”
“Please, I’d love that.”
“How about you, Bunky? Will you join us? Let’s all go upstairs to my suite for a while. I want to change my shirt, and all that.”
“No, I have a dinner appointment. I’ll sit here and have my drink with Natalie. I left word for Bathurst to page me here.”
Slote stood up. “Well, thanks for all you’ve done.”
“I can do wonders for people who don’t need help.”
Slote told Natalie the number of his suite, and left. Later she found a pencilled note stuck in his doorjamb: N —
The water shut off, and he soon appeared in a plaid robe, towelling his head. “How about these digs? Fit for a rajah, what? The legation had it reserved for some petroleum big shot and he didn’t show. I’ve got it for a week.”
“It’s fine.” She dropped heavily in a chair.
“What’s the matter?”
“Bathurst finally called. Briny’s sub has been re-routed to Gibraltar. It won’t come to Lisbon at all. No explanation, that’s just how it is.
“I see. Well, too bad. Maybe you can get to see him in Gibraltar.”
