The Winds of War

electromagnetism. At forty he had decided to manufacture magnetic amplifiers on his own, instead of settling for an executive post at General Electric or Westinghouse, and security for life. The long struggle for financing had all but sunk him; it was just now paying off. War industries demanded magamps in quantity, and he was first in the field. He had come to Germany because the Germans were ahead of the United States in the quality of some components. He was studying their techniques and buying their nickel-alloy cores.

She also learned that he was a widower and a grandfather. He talked about his dead wife, and then they exchanged long confidences about their children’s faults and virtues. Like most men, Kirby loved to talk about himself, once over his shyness. His story of backbreaking money troubles and final big success so enthralled her that she forgot to be coy, and spoke pleasantly and to the point. Rhoda was most attractive, in fact, when she made the least effort to be. She was the kind of woman who can dazzle a man at first acquaintance by piling everything into the shop window: none of it forced or faked, but in sum nearly all she has to offer. Victor Henry had long since found that out. He had no complaints, though he had once imagined there must be much more. Palmer Kirby was hit hard by this maximum first impact. He ordered a second bottle of Moselle, and they got to Brandenburg almost an hour late. While he went about his business Rhoda strolled through the picturesque old town, guidebook in hand; and her mind unaccountably kept wandering to her little misconduct long ago with Kip Tollever. She was a bit dizzy from the Moselle, and it wore off slowly.

When they returned to Berlin toward evening, Kirby offered to take her to dinner and to the opera. It seemed quite natural to accept. Rhoda rushed home and began raking through her dresses and shoes, pushing her hair this way and that, wishing she could have gone to the hairdresser, hesitating over her perfumes. She was still at it when Kirby came to call for her. She kept him waiting for an hour. In girlhood she had always kept boys waiting. Pug had harshly cured her of the habit, for Navy social life began and ended by the clock, and he would not tolerate embarrassment by Rhoda. Keeping Palmer Kirby waiting while she fussed over herself was a delicious little nostalgic folly, a lovely childish self-indulgence, like eating a banana split. It almost made Rhoda feel nineteen again.

The mirror told her a different story, but even it seemed friendly to her that night: it showed shiny eyes, a pretty face, a firm figure in the sheer slip, and arms that were round and thin all the way up, instead of bagging above the elbow as so many women’s did. She sailed into the living room wearing the pink suit with gold buttons that she had bought to please Hitler. Kirby sat reading one of Pug’s technical journals. He took off big black-rimmed glasses and rose, exclaiming, “Well, don’t you look grand!”

“I’m awful,” she said, taking Kirby’s arm, “dawdling so long, but you brought it on yourself, asking the old girl out after a hard day.”

The opera was La Traviata, and they enjoyed discovering that they both had always loved it. Afterward, he proposed a glimpse of the notorious Berlin night life. It was nothing he’d ever do by himself, he said; still, Berlin night life was the talk of the world and if it wouldn’t offend Mrs. Henry, she might enjoy a peek at it.

Rhoda goggled at the notion. “Well, this seems to be my night to howl, doesn’t it? Thank you very much for a disreputable suggestion, which I hasten to accept. Let’s hope we don’t run into any of my friends.”

So it happened that when the telephone rang in the Henrys’ home at two in the morning — the long distance call from New York, via the U.S.S. Marblehead in Lisbon — there was nobody to answer. Rhoda was sipping champagne, watching a hefty blonde German girl fling her naked breasts about in blue smoky gloom, and glancing every now and then at Dr. Palmer Kirby’s long solemn face in thick-rimmed glasses, as he smoked a long pipe and observed the hard-working sweaty dancer with faint distaste. Rhoda was aroused and deliciously shocked. She had never before seen a nude dancing woman, except in paintings.

After that, until her husband returned, she spent a lot of time with Kirby. They went to the less frequented restaurants. In her own vocabulary, she never “did anything.” When Pug returned, the adventure stopped.

* * *

A farewell lunch at Wannsee for Palmer Kirby was Rhoda’s idea, but she got Sally Forrest to give the lunch, saying she had already sufficiently entertained this civilian visitor. If Sally Forrest detected an oddity in this she said nothing. With the end of the Polish war at hand — only Warsaw was still holding out — the two attaches felt able to take off some midday hours. Berlin wore a peacetime air, and there was even talk that rationing would soon be over. Byron drove them all out to the resort in an embassy car. Along the broad sandy beach on the Havel River people strolled in the sun or sat under broad gaily colored umbrellas, and a number of gymnasts braved the fall breezes to exercise in skimpy costumes.

In the luncheon the Forrests ordered, rationing was not much in evidence. The pasty margarine tasted as usual like axle grease, but they ate excellent turbot and good leg of lamb. Midway during the lunch a loudspeaker crackled and whined, and a voice spoke in firm clear German: “Attention! In the next few minutes you will hear a report of the highest importance to the fatherland.”

The identical words boomed all over the river resort. People stopped on the promenade to listen. On the beach the small figures of the gymnasts halted briefly in their tumbling or running. An excited murmur rose all through the elegant Kaiserpavillon restaurant.

“What do you suppose?” Sally Forrest said, as the music resumed, thin gentle Schubert on strings.

“Warsaw, I’d guess,” said her husband. “It must be over.”

Dr. Kirby said, “You don’t suppose there’s an armistice coming up? I’ve been hearing armistice talk all week.”

“Oh, wouldn’t that be marvellous,” Rhoda said, “and put an end to this stupid war before it really gets going.”

Byron said, “It’s been going.”

“Oh, of course,” said Rhoda with an apologetic smile, “they’d have to make some decent settlement of that hideous Polish business.”

“There’ll be no armistice,” said Pug.

The buzz of talk rose higher on the crowded terrace and in the dining room. The Germans, eyes bright and gestures animated, argued with each other, laughed, struck the table, and called from all sides for champagne. When the loudspeaker played the few bars of Liszt’s music that preceded the news, the noise began to die.

“Sondermeldung!” (Special bulletin!) At this announcement, an immediate total stillness blanketed the restaurant, except for a clink here and there. The loudspeaker randomly crackled; then a baritone voice spoke solemn brief words. “From Supreme Headquarters of the Fuhrer. Warsaw has fallen.”

The whole restaurant rang with applause and cheers. Women jumped to their feet and danced. Men shook hands and hugged and kissed each other. Brass band music — first “Deutschland Uber Alles,” then the “Horst Wessel Lied” — came pouring out of the loudspeakers. To a man the diners in the Kaiserpavillon rose, all except the American party. On the beach, on the promenade, wherever the eye turned, the Germans stood still, most of them with arms thrust forward in the Nazi salute. In the dining room, about half were saluting and singing, a discordant swell of voices in the vulgar beery National Socialist anthem. Victor Henry’s skin prickled is he looked around, and he felt at this moment that the Germans under Adolf Hitler would take some beating. He then noticed something he had not seen for many, many years. His son sat still, face frozen, lips pressed in a line, white-knuckled hands clasped on the table. Byron had almost always taken pain and punishment dry-eyed since the age of five, but now he was crying.

The American party, sitting in a restaurant full of people on their feet, was getting hostile glares.

“Do they expect us to stand?” Sally Forrest said.

“I’m not standing,” Rhoda said.

Their waiter, a roly-poly man in black with very long straight blond hair, hitherto all genial expert service, stood bellowing with arm outstretched, visibly sneering at the Americans.

Byron saw none of this. Byron was seeing dead swollen horses in the gutter, yellow plywood patches on rows of broken buildings, a stone goose bordered with red flowers in a schoolyard, a little girl wearing a lilac dress taking a pen from him, orange starshells bursting in the night over church domes.

The song ended. The Germans applauded and cheered some more, and began toasted each other. The string orchestra switched to drinking songs, and the whole Kaiserpavillon went into a gay roar of