gangsterish American style. The fat man’s swollen beringed fingers drummed the steering wheel, and he chewed at his very long upper lip.
The light changed. As the red car darted forward, the policeman saluted, and Goring laughed and waved his hand.
“How easy it would have been to shoot him,” Pamela said.
Pug said, “The Nazis puzzle me. Their security precautions are mighty loose. Even around Hitler. After all, they’ve murdered a lot of people.”
“The Germans adore them. The governor got in trouble over one of his broadcasts from a Party Day in Nuremberg. He said anybody could kill Hitler, and the free way he moved around showed how solidly the Germans were for him. Somehow this annoyed them.”
“Pamela, I have a son I hope you’ll meet when you’re Stateside.” He told her about Warren.
The girl listened with a crooked smile. “You’ve already mentioned him. Sounds too tall for me. What’s he actually like? Is he like you?”
“Not in the least. He’s personable, sharp as a tack, and very attractive to the ladies.”
“Indeed. Don’t you have another son?”
“Yes. I have another son.” He hesitated, and then he briefly told Pamela what he had not yet told his wife — that Byron was somewhere in Poland in the path of the German invasion, accompanying a Jewish girl in love with another man. Pug said Byron had a cat’s way of getting out of trouble, but he expected to owe a few more gray hairs to his son before this episode was over.
“He sounds like the one I might enjoy meeting.”
“He’s too young for you.”
“Well, maybe not. I never do hit it quite right. There’s the governor.” Tudsbury stood on a corner, waving. His handshake was violent. He wore tweed far too heavy for the weather, and a green velour hat.
“Hello there, my dear fellow! Come along. Pam, be back at this corner at four and wait, won’t you? This won’t be one of his three-hour harangues. The bad man hasn’t had much sleep lately.”
A young German in a business suit met them, clicked his heels at Pug, and took them past SS men, along corridors and up staircases, to the crowded little press balcony of the Kroll Opera House, which the Nazis used for Reichstag meetings. The stylized gold eagle perched on a wreathed swastika behind the podium, with gold rays shooting out to cover the whole wall, had a colossal look in photographs, but before one’s eyes it was just garish and vulgar — a backdrop well suited to an opera house. This air of theatrical impermanence, of hastily contrived show, was a Nazi trademark. The new Reichstag, still under construction, was dully massive, to suit Hitler’s taste, and the heavy Doric colonnades were obviously of stone, but the building made Pug think of a cardboard film setting.
Like most Americans, he could not yet take the Nazis, or indeed the Germans, very seriously. He thought they worked with fantastic industry at kidding themselves. Germany was an unstable old-new country, with heavy baroque charm in some places, and Pittsburgh-like splotches of heavy industry in others; and with a surface smear of huffing, puffing political pageantry that strove to instill terror and came out funny. So it struck him. Individually the Germans were remarkably like Americans; he thought it curious that both peoples had the eagle for their national emblem. The Germans were the same sort of businesslike go-getters: direct, roughly humorous, and usually reliable and able. Commander Henry felt more at home with them in these points, than with the slower British or the devious talkative French. But in a mass they seemed to become ugly gullible strangers with a truculent streak; and if one talked politics to an individual German, he tended to turn into such a stranger, a sneering belligerent Mr. Hyde. They were a baffling lot. In a demoralized Europe, Pug, knew, the German hordes of marching men, well drilled and well equipped, could do a lot of damage; and they had slapped together a big air force in a hurry. He could well believe that they were now rolling over the Poles.
The deputies were streaming to their seats. Most of them wore uniforms, confusing in their variety of color and braid, alike mainly in the belts and boots. It was easy to pick out the military men by their professional bearing. The uniformed Party officials looked like any other politicians — jovial, relaxed, mostly grizzled or bald — stuffed into splashy costumes; and they obviously took Teutonic pleasure in the strut and the pomp, however uncomfortable jackboots might be on their flat feet, and gun belts on their bulging paunches. But today these professional Nazis, for all their warlike masquerade, looked less jaunty than usual. A subdued atmosphere pervaded the chamber.
Goring appeared. Victor Henry had heard of the fat man’s quick costume changes; now he saw one. In a sky-blue heavily medalled uniform with flaring buff lapels, Goring crossed the stage and stood with feet spread apart, hands on belted hips, talking gravely with a deferential knot of generals and Party men. After a while he took his place in the Speaker’s chair. Then Hitler simply walked in, holding the manuscript of his speech in a red leather folder. There was no heavy theatricalism, as in his Party rally entrances. All the deputies stood and applauded, and the guards came to attention. He sat in a front platform row among the generals and cabinet men, crossing and uncrossing his legs during Goring’s brief solemn introduction.
Henry thought the Fuhrer spoke badly. He was gray with fatigue. The speech rehashed the iniquity of the Versailles Treaty, the mistreatment of Germany by the other powers, his unending efforts for peace, and the bloody belligerence of the Poles. It was almost all in the first person and it was full of strange pessimism. He spoke of falling in battle and of the men who were to succeed him, Goring and Hess. He shouted that 1918 would not recur, that this time Germany would triumph or go down fighting. He was extremely hoarse. He took awhile to work up to the flamboyant gestures; but at last he was doing them all. Tudsbury whispered to Henry once, “Damn good handwork today,” but Pug thought it was absurd vaudeville.
Nevertheless, this time Hitler impressed him. Bad as he was performing, the man was a blast of willpower. All the Germans sat with the round eyes and tense faces of children watching a magician. The proud cynical face of Goring, as he sat perched above and behind Hitler, wore exactly the same rapt, awestruck look.
But the Fuhrer himself was a bit rattled, Pug thought, by the gravity of what he was saying. The speech sounded like the hasty product of a few sleepless hours, intensely personal, probably all the truer for being produced under such pressure. This whining, blustering “I — I — I” apologia must be one of the oddest state documents in the history of warfare.
The Fuhrer’s face remained a comic one to Pug’s American eyes: the long straight thrusting nose, a right triangle of flesh sticking out of a white jowly face, under a falling lock of black hair, over the clown moustache. He wore a field-gray coat today — his “old soldier’s coat,” he said in his speech — and it was a decidedly poor fit. But the puffy glaring eyes, the taut downcurved mouth, the commanding arm sweeps, were formidable. This queer upstart from the Vienna gutters had really done it, Henry thought. He had climbed to the combined thrones, in Tudsbury’s phrase, of the Hohenzollerns and the Holy Roman Emperors, to try to reverse the outcome of the last war; and now he was giving the word. The little tramp was going! Pug kept thinking of Byron, somewhere in Poland, a speck of unimportance in this big show.
When they emerged on the street in balmy sunshine, Tudsbury said, “Well, what did you think?”
“I don’t think he’s quite big enough.”
Tudsbury stopped in his tracked and peered at him. “Let me tell you, he’s big. That’s the mistake we’ve all made over here for much too long.”
“He has to lick the world,” Pug said. “What’ll he do it with?”
“Eighty million armed and ravening Germans.”
“That’s just talk. You and the French have him outmanned and outgunned.”
“The French,” Tudsbury said. He added in a pleasanter tone, “There comes Pam. Let us drive you back to the embassy.”
“I’ll walk.”
The car stopped under a waving red swastika banner. Tudsbury shook hands, blinking at Henry through glasses like bottle bottoms.
“We’ll put up a show, Henry, but we may need help. Stopping this fellow will be a job. And you know it must be done.”
“Tell them that in Washington.”
“Don’t you think I will? You tell them, too.”
Henry said through the car window, “Good-bye, Pam. Happy landings.”
She put out a cold white hand, with a melancholy smile. “I hope you’ll see your son soon. I have a feeling you will.” The Mercedes drove off. Lighting a cigarette, Pug caught on his hand the faint carnation scent.
