reckless scheme. She would play the card most likely to touch the Italian heart: her pregnancy. She was really having intermittent bleeding. The Americans she knew were sarcastic and skeptical about Roman doctors. They had told her of an obstetrician in Zurich, one Dr. Wundt, the best man outside the Nazi reach in Europe. She decided to request permission from Swiss authorities for a short medical visit: two weeks, ten days, whatever she could get. Pleading her bad condition, she would take her uncle along and so get exit permits. Once in Switzerland, they would by hook or by crook stay there until they obtained passage to the United States. Aaron Jastrow had a publisher in Zurich, and she knew Bunky Thurston had been transferred there from Lisbon. Once she thought of it, the idea seemed brilliant.
To her delight, Aaron after some argument agreed to play his part. He would leave his travelling library, his luggage, and all his work papers at the hotel; everything except the typed book itself which he would carry in one small valise with his clothing. If challenged, he would say he intended to work on the inky interlineated pages during the brief Zurich visit. If the Italians did not want Jastrow to leave for good — something Natalie now half- suspected — such a casual departure might deceive them. The Atlantic Charter broadcast had given Jastrow, too, a flicker of concern; that was why he consented.
The dodge worked like a charm. Natalie booked passage to Zurich and got the exit permits. A week later she and Dr. Jastrow flew to Switzerland. Everything was in order, except that he did not have formal permission from the Swiss, as she did to stay for ten days. The document issued to him simply stated that he was accompanying an invalid for her safety en route. When Natalie telephoned Bunky Thurston in Zurich about this, he said they had better leave it on that basis, and not push their luck further. He could take care of Aaron once they arrived.
The Zurich terminal was startling with its bustle, its clean glitter, its open shops crammed with splendid clothing, watches, porcelain, and jewelry, its heaped boxes of chocolates, exquisite pastries, and fresh fruit. Natalie ate a big yellow pear as she walked to Thurston’s car, uttering little moans of delight.
“Ah, this pear. This pear! My God,” she said, “what a filthy thing Fascism is. What a foul idiocy war is! Europe’s a rich continent. Why do the bloody fools lay it waste time after time? The Swiss are the only smart Europeans.”
“Yes, the Swiss are smart,” Thurston sighed, stroking the enormous moustache, which was as sleek and perfect as ever. The rest of his face had paled and aged as though he were ill. “How’s your submariner?”
“Who knows? Dashing around the Pacific. Have you ever witnessed a crazier wedding?” Natalie turned to Jastrow, her eyes all at once gone from dulled suffering to the old bright puckish gleam. “Bunky signed the marriage document. Do you like Zurich better than Lisbon, Bunky?”
“I don’t like to think of eighty million Germans seething just beyond the Alps. But at least they’re nice high Alps. Here we are, the red Citroen. The tragic refugee thing goes on here too, Natalie, but less visibly, less acutely. In Lisbon it was just too horrible.”
Aaron Jastrow said as they drove down the highway, “Will they send our passports to you at the consulate? “
“Maybe you’ll just pick them up when you go back.”
“But we’re not going back, darling,” Natalie said. “Aaron, give me your handkerchief, my face is all pear juice. I wish I could bathe in pear juice.”
“It’s my only handkerchief,” Jastrow said.
Thurston pulled a handkerchief from his breast pocket and passed it to her. “What do you mean, you’re not going back?”
“My uncle and I intend to hop the first train, plane, or goat cart out of here, so long as it heads for the good old USA. I couldn’t tell you that over the telephone, obviously. But it’s the whole point of this trip.”
“Natalie, it won’t work.”
“Why on earth not?”
“Aaron got through Swiss immigration on my parole. I must return him there. He has no transit visa.”
After a silence Dr. Jastrow said from the back seat, in a low sad voice, “I thought it was going too easily.”
“Bunky, wild horses can’t get me back to Rome,” Natalie said cheerfully. “I won’t have my baby there. That’s that. You have to figure out some way to clear Aaron, too. He’s here now. His passport is good as gold. I know you can solve this.”
Thurston ran a careful hand over the moustache as he drove. “Well, you’ve caught me unawares. Give me a little time.”
“I’ve got ten days,” Natalie said.
“There aren’t too many ways to travel out of Zurich now,” said Thurston. “I’ll look into this a bit.”
He left them outside Dr. Herman Wundt’s office, which was in an old four-story house decked with flower- filled window boxes, and took their suitcases off to the hotel. Jastrow dozed in an anteroom while Wundt examined Natalie.
After asking a few questions and noting the answers on a card, the bald freckled doctor, a gnome not as tall at her uncle, with big ears and darting little brown eyes probed, palpated, took specimens, and submitted Natalie to the usual indignities, and a couple of new painful ones with strange implements, all the while smiling and chatting in French. She lay on the table panting and exhausted under a sheet, her face sweating, all her lower body in an ache. The breeze brought a delicious scent of sweet peas from the window boxes.
“Very well, take a little rest.”
She heard him washing his hands. He returned with a notebook and sat beside her.
“You’re as strong as a horse, and you’re carrying that baby perfectly.”
“I had three bleeding episodes.”
“Yes. You mentioned that. When was the last one?”
“Let’s see. A month ago. Maybe a little more.”
“Well, you can wait around a day or so for the result of the smear, and the urine test, and so forth. I’m almost sure they’ll be negative, and Dr. Carona will deliver a fine baby for you. I know him well. He’s the best man in Rome.”
“Dr. Wundt, unless I go back to the States, I’d rather stay and have the baby here. I don’t want to return to Rome.”
“So? Why?”
“Because of the war. If the United States becomes involved, I’ll find myself on enemy soil with a newborn baby.”
“You say your husband is an American naval officer, in the Pacific Ocean?”
“Yes.”
“You’re too far away from him.”
Natalie sadly laughed. “I agree, but that’s done now.”
“What kind of name is that — Henry?”
“Oh, I guess it’s Scotch. Scotch-English.”
“And your maiden name is Jastrow, you said? Is that Scotch-English too?”
“It’s Polish.” After a pause, as the little brown eyes stared at her, she added, “Polish-Jewish.”
“And that gentleman outside, your uncle? Is he Polish-Jewish?”
“He’s a famous American writer.”
“Really? How exciting. Is he a Polish Jew?.
“He was born in Poland.”
“You can get dressed now. Then come into the other room, please.”
Dr. Wundt sat hunched in a swivel chair in his tiny office, smoking a cigar. The smoke wreathed up over wrinkled yellow diplomas on the walls, and a dusty engraving of the wounded lion of Lucerne. He rested the cigar in an ashtray, pressed his fingertips together, and put them to his mouth. The brown-patched old face stared blankly at her.
“Mrs. Henry, in the past few years — I have to be frank with you — pregnancy has been used and abused to death here to solve passport difficulties. The immigration authorities have become very hard. I am an alien myself, and my license can easily be revoked. Do I make myself clear?”
“But I’m having no passport difficulties,” Natalie replied calmly. “None at all. Do you think I can safely travel
