The Winds of War

“Good hunting with the California, Pug.” Tollever stood watching as the car left, a white straight mark in the warm night.

The Clipper took off from Guam at dawn.

Chapter 59

On the day that Victor Henry left Manila, the Japanese embassy in Rome gave an unexpected party for Japanese and American newspaper correspondents. The purpose seemed to be a show of cordiality to counteract all the war talk. A New York Times man asked Natalie to come along. She had never before left her baby in the evening; none of her clothes fitted her; and she did not like the man much. But she accepted, and hastily got a seamstress to let out her largest dress. On leaving the hotel she gave to a motherly chambermaid an enormous list of written instructions for bathing and feeding him, which made the woman smile. The rumors of war in the Pacific were eating away Natalie’s nerves, and she hoped to learn something concrete at the party.

She came back with a strange tale. Among the American guests had been Herb Rose, a film distributor who maintained his office in Rome. Herb had somewhat enlivened the cold, stiff, pointless party by speaking Japanese; it turned out that he had managed a similar office in Tokyo. Herb was a tall good-looking California Jew, who used the best Roman tailors, conversed easily in Italian, and seemed a most urbane man until he started talking English. Then he sounded all show business: wise-cracking, sharp, and a bit crude.

This Herb Rose, who was booked to leave for Lisbon on the same plane as Natalie and her uncle, had approached her at the party and walked her off to a corner. In a few quiet nervous sentences, he had told her to go to Saint Peter’s with her uncle the following morning at nine o’clock, and stand near Michelangelo’s Pieta statue. They would be offered a chance to get out of Italy fast, he said, via Palestine. War between America and Japan was coming in days or hours, Herb believed; he was departing that way himself and forgoing the Lisbon plane ticket. He would tell her no more. He begged her to drop the subject and not to discuss it inside the walls of the hotel. When she returned from the party she recounted all this to her uncle, while walking on the Via Veneto in a cold drizzle. Aaron’s reaction was skeptical, but he agreed that they had better go to Saint Peter’s.

He was in a testy mood next morning. He liked to rise at dawn and work till eleven. Sleep put an edge on his mind, he claimed, that lasted only a few hours, and to spend a morning on such a farfetched errand was a great waste. Also, the chill damp in the unheated hotel had given him a fresh cold. Hands jammed in his overcoat pockets, blue muffler wound around his neck, head drooping in a rain-stiffened old gray felt hat, he walked draggily beside his niece down the Via Veneto to the taxi stand, like a child being marched to school. “Palestine!” he grumbled. “Why, that’s a more dangerous place than Italy.”

“Not according to Herb. He says the thing is to get out of here at once, by hook or by crook. Herb thinks the whole world will be at war practically overnight, and then we’ll never get out.”

“But Herbert’s leaving illegally, isn’t he? His exit visa is for Lisbon, not Palestine. Now that’s risky. When you’re in a touch-and-go situation like this, the first principle is not to give the authorities the slightest excuse” — Jastrow waved a stiff admonitory finger — “to act against you. Obey orders, keep your papers straight, your head down, your spirits up, and your money in cash. That is our old race wisdom. And above all, stay within the law.” He sneezed several times, and wiped his nose and eyes. “I have always abominated the weather of Rome. I think this is a wild goose chase. Palestine! You’d be getting even further from Byron, and I from civilization. It’s a hellhole, Natalie, a desert full of flies, Arabs, and disease. Angry Arabs, who periodically riot and murder. I planned a trip there when I was writing the Paul book. But I cancelled out once I’d made a few inquiries. I went to Greece instead.”

There was a long queue at the taxi stand, and few taxis; they did not reach Saint Peter’s until after nine. As they hurried out of the sunshine into the cathedral, the temperature dropped several degrees. Jastrow sneezed, wound the muffler tighter around his neck, and turned up his collar. Saint Peter’s was quiet, almost empty, and very gloomy. Here and there black-shawled women prayed by pale flickering candles, groups of schoolchildren followed vergers, and tourist parties listened to guides, but these were all lost in the grand expanse.

“My least favorite among Italian cathedrals,” said Jastrow. “The Empire State Building of the Renaissance, intended to overpower and stupefy. Well, but there’s the Pieta, and that is lovely.”

They walked to the statue. A German female guide stood beside it, earnestly lecturing to a dozen or so camera-bearing Teutons, most of whom were reading guidebooks as she talked instead of looking at the Pieta, as though to make sure the woman was giving them full value.

“Ah, but what a lovely work this is after all, Natalie,” Jastrow said, as the Germans moved on, “this poor dead adolescent Christ, draped on the knees of a Madonna hardly older than himself. Both of them are so soft, so fluid, so young in flesh! How did he do it with stone? Of course it’s not the Moses, is it? Nothing touches that. We must go and look at the Moses again before we leave Rome. Don’t let me forget.”

“Would you call that a Jew’s Jesus, Dr. Jastrow?” said a voice in German. The man who spoke was of medium height, rather stout, about thirty, wearing an old tweed jacket over a red sweater, with a Leica dangling from his neck. He had been in the group with the guide and he was lingering behind. He took a book from under his arm, an old British edition of A Jew’s Jesus in a tattered dust jacket. With a grin he showed Jastrow the author’s photograph on the back.

“Please,” said Jastrow, peering curiously at the man. “That picture gives me the horrors. I’ve since disintegrated beyond recognition.”

“Obviously not, since I recognized you from it. I’m Avram Rabinovitz. Mrs. Henry, how do you do?” He spoke clear English now, in an unfamiliar, somewhat harsh accent. Natalie nervously nodded at him. He went on, “I’m glad you’ve come. I asked Mr. Rose what other American Jews were left in Rome. It was a great surprise to learn that Dr. Aaron Jastrow was here.”

“Where did you pick up that copy?” Jastrow’s tone was arch. Any hint of admiration warmed him.

“Here in a secondhand store for foreign books. I’d read the work long ago. It’s outstanding. Come, let’s walk around the cathedral, shall we? I’ve never seen it. I’m sailing from Naples on the flood tide tomorrow at four. Are you coming?”

“You’re sailing? Are you a ship’s captain?” Natalie asked.

The man momentarily smiled, but looked serious again as he spoke, and rather formidable. His pudgy face was Slavic rather than Semitic, with clever narrow eyes and thick curly fair hair growing low on his forehead. “Not exactly. I have chartered the vessel. This won’t be a Cunard voyage. The ship is an old one, and it’s small, and it’s been transporting hides, fats, horses, and such things along the Mediterranean coast. So the smell is interesting. But it’ll take us there.”

Natalie said, “How long a voyage will it be?”

“Well, that depends. The quota for the year was used up long ago, so the way may be roundabout.”

“What quota?” Jastrow said.

The question seemed to surprise Rabinovitz. “Why, the British allow only a very small number of Jews into Palestine every year, Professor, so as not to get the Arabs too angry. Didn’t you know that? So it creates a problem. I want to be frank about that. Depending on the current situation, we may sail straight to Palestine anyway, or we may go to Turkey, and then proceed overland — Syria, Lebanon, and through the mountains into the Galilee.”

“You’re talking about an illegal entry, then.” Jastrow sounded severe.

“If it can be illegal for a Jew to go home, yes. We don’t think so. In any case, there’s no choice for my passengers. They’re refugees from the Germans, and all other countries have barred the doors to them, including your United States. They can’t just lie down and die.”

“That isn’t our situation,” Jastrow said, “and what you’re proposing is unsafe.”

“Professor, you’re not safe here.”

“What organization are you with? And what would you charge?”

“My organization? That’s a long story. We move Jews out of Europe. As for paying — well, one can talk about that. You can ask Mr. Rose. That’s secondary, though we can always use money. I came to Rome in fact for