Aware that he was butting a stone wall, but unable to let these things pass, Pug said, “Peace or war isn’t up to the Jews. And you grossly misunderstand Lacouture.”
“Do I? But my dear Captain, what do you call the British guarantee to Poland? Politically and strategically it was frivolous, if not insane. All it did was bring in two big powers against Germany on the trivial issue of Danzig, which was what the Jews wanted. Churchill is a notorious Zionist. All this was clearly stated between the lines in Lacouture’s last speech. I tell you, men like him may still manage to restore the peace and incidentally to save the Jews from a very bad fate they seem determined to bring on themselves. Well how about an omelette and a glass of champagne?”
On Christmas Eve, Victor Henry left the embassy early to walk home. The weather was threatening, but he wanted air and exercise. Berlin was having a lugubrious Yuletide. The scrawny newspapers had no good war news, and the Russian attack on Finland was bringing little joy to Germans. The shop windows offered colorful cornucopias of appliances, clothing, toys, wines, and food, but people hurried sullenly along the cold windy streets under dark skies, hardly glancing at the mocking displays. None of the stuff was actually for sale. As Pug walked, evening fell and the blackout began. Hearing muffled Christmas songs from behind curtained windows, he could picture the Berliners sitting in dimly lit apartments in their overcoats around tinsel-draped fir trees, trying to make merry on watery beer, potatoes, and salt mackerel. At Abendruh, the Henrys had almost forgotten that there was a war on, if a dormant one, and that serious shortages existed. For Wolf Stoller there were no shortages.
Yielding to Rhoda’s urging, he had accepted an invitation to come back to Abendruh in January, though he had not enjoyed himself there. More and more, especially since his glimpse of the National Socialist leaders at Karinhall, he thought of the Germans as people he would one day have to fight. He felt hypocritical putting on the good fellow with them. But intelligence opportunities did exist at Stoller’s estate. Pug had sent home a five-page account just of his talk with General von Roon. By pretending he agreed at heart with Ike Lacouture — something Stoller already believed, because he wanted to — he could increase those opportunities. It meant being a liar, expressing ideas he thought pernicious, and abusing a man’s hospitality — a hell of a way to serve one’s country! But if Stoller was trying games with the American naval attache, he had to take the risks. Victor Henry was mulling over all this as he strode along, muffled to his eyes against a sleety rain that was starting to fall, when out of the darkness a stooped figure approached and touched his arm.
“Captain Henry?”
“Who are you?”
“Rosenthal. You are living in my house.”
They were near a corner, and in the glow of the blue streetlight Pug saw that the Jew had lost a lot of weight; the skin of his face hung in folds, and his confident bearing had given way to a whipped and sickly look. It was a shocking change. Holding out his hand, Pug said, “Oh, yes. Hello.”
“Forgive me. My wife and I are going to be sent to Poland soon. Or at least we have heard such a rumor and we want to prepare, in case it’s true. We can’t take our things, and we were just wondering whether there are any articles in our home you and Mrs. Henry would care to buy. You could have anything you wished, and I could make you a very reasonable price.”
Pug had also heard vague stories of the “resettlement” of the Berlin Jews, a wholesale shipping-off to newly formed Polish ghettos, where conditions were, according to the reports you chose to believe, either moderately bad or fantastically horrible. It was disturbing to talk to a man actually menaced with this dark misty fate.
“You have a factory here,” he said. “Can’t your people keep an eye on your property until conditions get better?”
“The fact is I’ve sold my firm, so there’s nobody.”
Rosenthal held up the frayed lapels of his coat against the cutting sleet and wind.
“Did you sell out to the Stoller bank?”
The Jew’s face showed astonishment and timorous suspicion. “You know about these matters? Yes, the Stoller bank. I received a very fair price. Very fair.” The Jew permitted himself a single ironic glance into Henry’s eyes. “But the proceeds were tied up to settle other matters. My wife and I will be more comfortable in Poland with a little ready money. It always helps. So — perhaps the carpets — the plate, or some china?”
“Come along and talk it over with my wife. She makes all those decisions. Maybe you can have dinner with us.”
Rosenthal sadly smiled. “I don’t think so, but you’re very kind.”
Pug nodded, remembering his Gestapo-planted servants. “Herr Rosenthal, I have to repeat to you what I said when we rented your place. I don’t want to take advantage of your misfortune.”
“Captain Henry, you can’t possibly do me and my wife a greater kindness. I hope you will buy something.”
Rosenthal put a card in his hand and melted into the blackout. When Pug got home Rhoda was dressing for the charge’s dinner, so there was no chance to talk about the offer.
The embassy’s Christmas party had none of the opulence of an Abendruh banquet but it was good enough. Nearly all the Americans left in Berlin were there, chatting over eggnogs and then assembling at three long tables for a meal of roast goose, pumpkin pie, fruit, cheese, and cakes, all from Denmark. Diplomatic import privileges made this possible, and the guests grew merry over the unaccustomed abundance. Victor Henry loved being back among American faces, American talk, offhand open manners, laughter from the diaphragm and not from the face muscles; not a bow or a clicked pair of heels, not a woman’s European smile, gleaming on and off like an electric sign.
But trouble broke out with Rhoda. He heard her raising her voice at Fred Fearing, who was sucking his corncob pipe and glaring at her far down the table. Pug called, “Hey, what’s it about, Fred?”
“The Wolf Stollers Pug, the loveliest people your wife has ever met.”
I said the nicest Germans,” Rhoda shrilled, “and it’s quite true. You’re blindly prejudiced.”
“It’s time you went home, Rhoda,” Fearing said.
“And just what does that mean?” she snapped back, still much too loud. At Abendruh Rhoda had loosened up on her count of drinks, and tonight she appeared to be further along than usual. Her gestures were getting broad, she was holding her eyes half-closed, and her voice tones were going up into her nose.
“Well, kid, if you think people like Wolf Stoller and his wife are nice, you’ll believe next that Hitler just wants to reunite the German folk peacefully. About that time you need to go back for a while on American chow and the
“I just know that Germans are not monsters with horns and tails,” said Rhoda, “but ordinary people, however misguided. Or did one of your frauleins show up in bed with cloven hoofs, dear?”
The crude jibe caused a silence. Fearing was an ugly fellow, tall, long-faced, curly-headed, with a narrow foxy nose; upright idealistic, full of rigid liberal ideas, and severe on injustice and political hypocrisy. But he had his human side. He had seduced the wife of his collaborator on a best seller about the Spanish Civil War. This lady he had recently parked in England with an infant daughter, and he was now — so the talk ran — making passes at every available German woman, and even some American wives. Rhoda had once half-seriously told Pug that she had had trouble with Freddy on the dance floor. All the same, Fred Fearing was a famous, able reporter. Because he detested the Nazis, he tried hard to be fair to them, and the propaganda ministry understood this. Most Americans got their picture of Nazi Germany at war from Fearing’s broadcasts.
Victor Henry said, as amiably as he could, to break the silence, “It might be easier to navigate in this country, Rhoda, if the bad ones would sprout horns or grow hair in their palms or something.”
“What Wolf Stoller has in his palms is blood, lots of it,” Fearing said, with a swift whiskeyed-up pugnacity. “He acts unaware of it. You and Rhoda encourage this slight color blindness, Pug, by acting the same way.”
“It’s Pug’s job to socialize with people like Stoller,” said the charge mildly, from the head of the table. “I propose a moratorium tonight on discussing the Germans.”
Colonel Forrest was rubbing his broken nose, a mannerism that signalled an itch to argue, though his moon face remained placid. He put in, nasally, “Say, Freddy, I happen to think Hitler just wants to reorganize central Europe as a German sphere, peacefully if he can, and that he’ll call off the war if the Allies will agree. Think I should go home, too?”
Fearing emitted a column of blue smoke and red sparks from his pipe. “What about
