During the spasm of alarm over Norway, he had once visited the Florence consulate. There a “shallow but seemingly affable crew-cut type, had conceded that these were all silly technicalities, that Dr. Jastrow was certainly an eminent and desirable person, and that the consular service would somehow solve the difficulty. Much relieved, Jastrow had gone off on the cathedral tour, fractured his ankle, and thus missed an appointment to return to the consulate two weeks later. The letter continued:
What comes next I still cannot understand. It was either incredible stupidity or incredible malevolence. Crew-cut wrote a letter to me. The tone was polite enough. The gist was that as a stateless person in wartime I faced serious complications, but he thought he had found a way out. Congress has recently passed a law admitting certain special classes of refugees. If I were to apply under that law, I probably would have no further trouble, being a prominent Jew. That was his recommendation.
Do you realize the full depth of the stupidity and the damage in his letter? I received it only five days ago. I’m still boiling. To begin with he wants me to abandon all claim to being an American —
But that isn’t the worst of it.
I cannot believe that even such a dullard doesn’t know that a letter from the consular office to me would be opened and read by the Italians. I’ll never know why Crew-cut did it, but I’m forced to suspect a trace of anti- Semitism. That bacillus is in the European air, and in certain personalities it lodges and flourishes. The Italian authorities now know my problem. That alarmingly increases my vulnerability here.
I’ve been sitting in the lovely sunshine of the terrace day after day, in a wheelchair, alone except for Italian servants, growing more and more perturbed. Finally I decided to write to you, and give the letter to my French friend to mail.
Natalie, I have certainly been heedless about a serious matter. I can only plead that before the war these things seemed of no consequence. To you I’m sure they still don’t. You were born on American soil. I was born on the banks of the Vistula. I am getting a late lesson in the vast difference that makes, and in the philosophy of personal identity. I really should straighten my situation out.
Happily, there’s no desperate urgency in it. Siena’s tranquil, food’s plentiful again, my ankle’s healing, and the war is distant summer thunder. I am getting on with my work, but I had better clarify my right to go home. One can never know when or where the villain with the moustache will make his next move.
Now will you tell all this to Leslie Slote? There he sits in Washington, at the heart of things. A hangman’s noose of red tape can be cut by one word spoken in the right place. If he still has a shred of regard for me, let him look into this. I could write him directly but I know we’ll get faster action if you go to him. I beg you to do this.
Jastrow wrote a touching paragraph about Natalie’s father. He blamed their estrangement on himself. The scholarly temperament was a self-absorbed one. He hoped that he could treat her as a daughter, though a father’s place could never really be filled. Then came the passage about Byron which had prevented Natalie from showing him the letter.
Have you seen Byron yet? I miss him. He has a curiously charming presence —
Sometimes he shows doggedness: and he has a way of coming out with bright flashes. He said Hegel’s World Spirit was just God minus Christianity. That’s commonplace enough, but he added it was much easier to believe in God’s sacrificing Himself for mankind than in His groping to understand Himself through the unfolding of mankind’s stupidities. I rather liked that. Unhappily it was the one good thing amid many banalities such as, “This Nietzsche was just some kind of a nut,” and “Nobody would bother reading Fichte, if anybody could understand him.” If I’d marked Byron for our seminar on the Slote Reading List, he’d have made a C minus.
Often I came upon him reading your letters over and over in the lemon house. The poor lad has a terrible crush on you. Are you at all aware of that? I hope you won’t inadvertently hurt him, and I rather wonder at your writing him so often. For all my troubles, I’ve been a reasonably good boy, and stand on manuscript page 847 of
A clock chiming the half hour brought Natalie back with a start from the terrace in Siena — where in her mind’s eye she could see A.J. sitting wrapped in his blue shawl, writing these words — to the Lacouture mansion on Pensacola Bay.
“Oh God,” she muttered, “oh my God.”
Feet trampled on a staircase; many voices called, laughed, chattered. The bride came sailing down the long dining room, wheat-colored hair beautifully coiffed and laced with pearls, cheeks pink with pleasure. “Well, I did it. Here we go.”
Natalie jumped to her feet, cramming A.J.’s pages into her purse. “Oh, you’re enchanting! You’re the loveliest sight!”
Janice pirouetted clear around on a toe. “Bless you.”
The white satin, clinging to flanks and breasts like creamy skin, rose demurely to cover her throat. She moved in a cloud of white lace. This blend of white chastity and crude fleshy allure was devastating; it shook Natalie with envy. The bride’s eye had an ironic gleam. After her wild pre-wedding night, Janice Lacouture felt approximately as virginal as Catherine of Russia. It didn’t bother her. Rather, it appealed to her sense of humor.
“Come,” she said. “You’ll ride with me.” She took the Jewish girl’s arm. “You know, if I weren’t marrying Warren Henry, I’d give you a run for that little Briny. He’s an Adonis, and so sweet. Those Henry men!”
Rhoda arrived at the hotel in a flurry, and frantically bathed and dressed, pulling cosmetics from one valise, underwear from another, her new Bergdorf Goodman frock from a third. Dr. Kirby had chartered a small plane and had flown down with her and Madeline. “He saved our LIVES!” trilled Rhoda dashing about in a sheer green slip. “The last plane we could get from New York didn’t leave us a MINUTE to finish shopping. Your daughter and I would have come to this wedding in OLD RAGS. This way, we had a whole extra afternoon and, Pug, you never SAW such fast shopping. Isn’t this a cunning number?” She held the green frock against her bosom. “Found it at the last second. Honestly, a small plane is such FUN. I slept most of the way, but when I was awake it was GREAT. You really know you’re flying.”
“Damn nice of him,” Pug said. “Is Fred that rich?”
“Well, of course, I wouldn’t hear of it, but then he said it was all charged to his company. He’s taking the plane on to Birmingham today. Anyway, I wasn’t going to argue too much, dear. It was a deliverance. Fasten me up in back. Pug did Briny really bring that Jewish girl here? Of all things. Why, I’ve never even laid eyes on her. She’ll have to sit with us, and everybody’ll think she’s part of the family.”
“Looks like she will be, Rhoda.”
“I don’t believe it. I just don’t. Why, how much older is she? Four years? That Briny! Just enjoys giving us heart failure. Always has, the monster. Pug, what’s taking you so long? My land, it’s hot here.”
“She’s two years older, and terrifically attractive.”
“Well, you’ve got me curious, I’ll say that. I pictured her as one of these tough Brooklyn chickens who shove past you in the New York department stores. Oh, stop fumbling, I’ll finish the top ones. Mercy, I’m roasting! I’m perspiring in RIVERS. This dress will be black through before we get to church.”
Natalie knew in thirty seconds that the handsome woman in green chiffon and rose-decorated white straw hat didn’t like her. The polite handshake outside the church, the prim smile, told all. Pug presented Natalie to Madeline as “Byron’s sidekick on the Polish jaunt,” obviously trying with this clumsy jocularity to make up for his wife’s freeze.
“Oh, yes, wow! Some adventure!” Madeline Henry smiled and looked Natalie over. Her pearl-gray shantung was the smartest outfit in sight. “I want to hear all that, some time. I still haven’t seen Briny, you know, and it’s been more than two years.”
