back to the United States? That’s all I want to know.”
The doctor hunched his shoulders, pursed his lips, and cocked his head like a bright dog, his eyes never leaving her. “By what means of transportation?”
“Airplane, I suppose.”
“What was Dr. Carona’s opinion?”
“I didn’t ask him. Despite what you say, I don’t have much confidence in him. That’s why I want to stay here if I can’t fly home.”
The old doctor’s eyes sparked and he spread his hands. “And that’s precisely where I can’t help you. The authorities will demand from me a written certificate that you’re unable to travel. Otherwise they won’t extend your stay. You’re quite able to fly back to Rome. About flying back to the United States” — he cocked his head again — “that is bound to be a rough long journey.”
Natalie kept an unruffled manner. “You mean I might lose the baby?”
“Not necessarily, but an expectant mother with a first baby should avoid such a strain. Your pregnancy history already is not one hundred percent.”
“Then why make me go back to Rome? The milk and the food are abominable. I don’t like the doctor there. He mishandled my bleeding.”
With a cold edge in his voice, the little doctor said, “Mrs. Henry, a flight to Rome is no problem for you, nothing to justify an extension of your stay. I’m very sorry. The authorities will ask me about your health, not about Roman milk or Dr. Carona.” He flipped open an appointment book and peered into it. “I will see you tomorrow at a quarter past five, and we will discuss your tests.”
At dinner with Thurston and her uncle that night, Natalie was quite blithe. The buoyant excitement of being out of Rome, and in a city at peace, overbore Wundt’s sourness; and she was cheered by the examination results. She was “strong as a horse,” the infant was kicking lustily inside her, and they had escaped from Fascist Italy. The rest would work out, she thought, especially since Thurston seemed in an optimistic mood. She decided not to quiz him, but let him talk when he was ready.
Meantime her common ground with him was Leslie Slote. She told droll anecdotes of her wretched Paris flat: the tiny stairwell elevator in which Slote got stuck and slept all one night, her Algerian landlord’s efforts to keep her from cooking, the one-eyed homosexual sculptor on the floor above who pestered Slote to pose for him. Aaron Jastrow had not heard these yarns of young love on the Left Bank. What with the richly satisfying dinner, the fine wine, and the view from the open-air terrace restaurant of Zurich ablaze with lights, his spirits also rose. He accepted a cigar from Thurston, though he had a bad cough.
“My lord. Havana!” Dr. Jastrow rolled the smoke on his tongue. “This takes me back ten years to the commons room. How gracious and easy and pleasant life seemed! Yet all the time the villain with the moustache was piling up his tanks and his cannon. Ah me. You’re very merry, Natalie.”
“I know. The wine, no doubt, and the lights. The lights! Bunky, electric light is the strongest enchantment there is. Live in a blackout for a few months and you’ll see! You know what Zurich reminds me of? Luna Park in Coney Island, when I was a little girl. You walked in a blaze of lights, millions and millions of yellow bulbs. The lights were more exciting than the rides and games. Switzerland’s amazing, isn’t it? A little dry diving bell of freedom in an ocean of horror. What an experience! I’ll never forget this.”
“You can understand why the Swiss have to be very, very careful,” Thurston said. “Otherwise they’d be swamped with refugees.”
Natalie and her uncle sobered at that last word, listening for what he would say next.
The consul smoothed his moustache with both palms. “Don’t forget there are more than four million Jews caught in Hitler’s Europe. And in all of Switzerland there are only four million people. So the Swiss have become almost as strict about Jews as our own State Department, but with infinitely more reason. They’ve got sixteen thousand square miles of land, much of it bare rock and snow. We’ve got three and a half million square miles. Compare population densities, and we’re a vast empty wilderness. We’re supposed to be the land of the free, the haven of outcasts. The Swiss make no such claim. Who should be taking in the Jews? Yet they are doing it, but carefully, and within limits. Moreover the Swiss depend on the Germans for fuel, for iron, for all trade, in and out. They’re in a closed ring. They’re free only as long as it suits the Nazis. I can’t take a high moral tone with the Swiss authorities about you. As an American official, I’m in a hell of a lousy position for moral tone.”
Jastrow said, “One can see that.”
“Nothing’s been decided in your case, you understand,” the consul said. “I’ve just been making, inquiries. A favorable solution is possible. Natalie, could you endure a long train trip?”
“I’m not sure. Why?”
“The only airline operating from Zurich to Lisbon is Lufthansa.”
Natalie felt a pang of alarm, but her tone was matter-of-fact. “I see. What about that Spanish flight?”
“You were misinformed. It shut down back in May. Lufthansa flies once a week, starting from Berlin and making every stop in between — Marseilles, Barcelona, Madrid. It’s a rotten flight. I’ve taken it going the other way. It’s usually crowded with Axis hotshots. Do you want to separate from your uncle and try Lufthansa? Your passport doesn’t say you’re Jewish. You’re Mrs. Byron Henry. Even the Germans have some tenderness for pregnant women. But, of course, for twenty hours or so you’d be in Nazi hands.”
“What’s the alternative?”
“Train via Lyons, Nimes, and Perpignan, sliding down the French coast, crossing the Pyrenees to Barcelona, and then, heaven help you, clear across Spain and Portugal to Lisbon. Mountains, tunnels, awful roadbeds, and God knows how many breakdowns, delays, and changes, with a long stretch through Vichy France. Maybe three, maybe six days en route.”
Natalie said, “I don’t think I should risk that,”
“I wouldn’t mind trying Lufthansa,” said Jastrow in a far-off voice, rolling the cigar in his fingers. “I still don’t believe, I truly don’t, that the Germans would molest me,”
Thurston shook his head. “Dr. Jastrow, she’s the wife of a Gentile naval officer. I think she’d be all right. Don’t you go on Lufthansa!”
“What I have to decide, then,” Natalie said, “is whether I chance Lufthansa alone, or take the train with Aaron.”
“You don’t have to decide anything yet. I’m telling you some of the things to think about.”
Natalie and her uncle filled the next day looking in shop windows, buying clothes, eating cream cakes, drinking real coffee, riding around in cabs, and luxuriating in the rich freedom of Switzerland, only a few hours by air from brown melancholy Rome. Toward evening she saw Dr. Wundt again. With a sad shrug, he told her that all her tests were negative.
“That’s all right. I may be able to stay, anyway,” she said. “My consul’s looking into it.”
“Ah, so?” the little doctor’s face brightened. “Perfect! Nothing would please me more. Let me book your lying-in right away, Mrs. Henry. The hospitals are crowded.”
“I’ll let you know in a day or two.”
“Excellent.”
In the morning she found a white hotel envelope slipped under the door:
When they arrived at the dock, the consul had already hired an open boat with an outboard motor, and was sitting in it, waiting. Without a word he helped them in, started the engine, and went puttering off from the shore. About a mile out he killed the motor, and they could hear a German waltz thumping brassily over the blue water from the band of an approaching excursion steamer.
“I’ve got quite a report for you,” Thurston said, and Natalie’s heart leaped at his happy grin. “I thought we’d better be by ourselves while we talk it out.”
“Is it all arranged?” Jastrow said, with an eagerness that struck his niece as childish.
Thurston smoothed a palm over his moustache. “Well, we’re not in bad shape.” The consul’s eyes twinkled at Natalie. “Say, I’ve been on the telephone and teletype to Rome. Your Byron outdid his Lisbon feat, didn’t he? Talking to President Roosevelt about your uncle’s passport! What sheer nerve! Sight unseen, nobody in Rome likes him.”
