“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 Pietà, 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 Pietà, 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, the 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 money. That’s how I met Mr. Rose.”
“And once we get to Palestine—then what?”
Rabinovitz gave him a warm, agreeable look. “Well, why not just stay? We would be honored to have a great Jewish historian among us.”
Natalie put in, “I have a two-month-old infant.”
“Yes, so Mr. Rose said.”
“Could a small baby make that trip?”
Halting at the main altar, Rabinovitz stared in admiration at the twisted pillars. “This cathedral is so rich and beautiful. It’s overwhelming, isn’t it? Such a gigantic human effort, just to honor one poor Jew executed by the Romans. And now this building dominates all Rome. I guess we should feel flattered.” He looked straight in Natalie’s eyes in a forceful way. “Well, Mrs. Henry, haven’t you heard the stories coming from Poland and Russia? Maybe you should take some risk to get your baby out of Europe.”
Aaron Jastrow said benignly, “One hears all kinds of stories in wartime.”
“Mr. Rabinovitz, we’re leaving in less than two weeks,” Natalie said. “We have all our tickets, all our documents. We were at tremendous pains to get them. We’re flying home.”
Rabinovitz put a hand to his face and his head swayed.
“Are you all right?” Natalie touched his arm.
He uncovered a knotted brow, and smiled painfully. “I have a headache, but that is all right. Look, Mr. Herbert Rose had an airplane ticket too, and he’s coming to Naples with me. If you join us, you’ll be welcome. What more can I say?”
“Even if we did want to consider this drastic move, we couldn’t get our exit visas changed,” Jastrow said.
“Nobody will have an exit visa. You will just come aboard to pay a visit. The ship will leave, and you will forget to go ashore.”
“If one thing went wrong, we’d never get out of Italy,” Jastrow persisted, “until the war ended.”
Rabinovitz glanced at his watch. “Let’s be honest. I’m not sure you will get out anyway, Dr. Jastrow. Mr. Rose told me about the difficulties you’ve been having. I don’t think they’re accidental. I’m afraid you’re what some people call a ‘blue chip’”—he used the American slang haltingly—“and that’s your real problem. The Italians can trade you someday for a lot of ‘white chips,’ so something can always go wrong at the last minute when it’s time to leave. Well, meeting you was a great honor. If you come along we’ll talk some more. I have many questions about your book. Your Jesus had very little to do with this, did he?” He swung both his hands around at the cathedral.
“He’s a Jew’s Jesus,” said Jastrow. “That was my point.”
“Then tell me one thing,” said Rabinovitz. “These Europeans worship a poor murdered Jew, the young Talmud scholar you wrote about so well—to them he’s the Lord God—and yet they go right on murdering Jews. How does a historian explain that?”
In a comfortable, ironic, classroom tone, most incongruous in the circumstances, Jastrow replied, “Well, you must remember they’re still mostly Norse and Latin pagans at heart. They’ve always chafed under their Jewish Lord’s Talmudic morals, and possibly they take out their irritation on his coreligionists.”
“Now that explanation hadn’t occurred to me,” Rabinovitz said. “It’s a theory you should write up. Well, let us leave it this way. You want to think it over, I’m sure. Mr. Rose will telephone you tonight at six o’clock and ask you whether you want the tickets for the opera. Tell him yes or no, and that will be that.”
“Good,” Natalie said. “We’re deeply grateful to you.”
“For what? My job is moving Jews to Palestine. Is your baby a girl or a boy?”
“Boy. But he’s only half-Jewish.”
With his crafty grin, and an abrupt handwave of farewell, Rabinovitz said, “Never mind, we’ll take him. We need boys,” and he walked rapidly away. As his plump figure merged into a tourist group leaving Saint Pet
er’s, Natalie and her uncle looked at each other in puzzlement.
“It’s freezing in here,” said Dr. Jastrow, “and very depressing. Let’s go outside.”
They strolled in the sunshine of the great piazza for a while, talking the thing over. Aaron tended to dismiss the idea out of hand, but Natalie wanted to give it thought and perhaps discuss it with Rose. The fact that he was going troubled her. Jastrow pointed out that Rose was not as secure as they were. If war should break out between the United States and Italy—and that was the threat in the Japanese crisis—they had the ambassador’s promise of seats on the diplomatic train, with the newspaper correspondents and the embassy staff. Rose had no such assurance. Earlier in the year, the embassy had given him warning after warning to leave. He had chosen to stay at his own risk, and now he had to face the consequences. If he wanted to chance an illegal exit, that did not mean they needed to.
At the hotel, Natalie found the baby awake and fretful. He seemed a frail small creature indeed to expose to a sea voyage uncertain even in its destination, let alone its legalities; a voyage in a crowded old tub—no doubt with marginal food, water, sanitation, and medical service—that might lead to a rough trip through mountains; the goal, a primitive and unstable land. One look at her baby, in fact, settled Natalie’s mind.
Rose called promptly at six. “Well, do you want the opera tickets?” His voice on the telephone was friendly and, it seemed, anxious.
Natalie said, “I think we’ll skip it, Herb. But thank your friend who offered them.”
“You’re making a mistake, Natalie,” Rose said. “I think this is the last performance. You’re sure?”
“Positive.”
“Good luck, kid. I’m certainly going.”
Janice Henry left her house and drove toward Pearl City in a cool morning echoing with distant church bells. Vic had wakened her at seven o’clock, coughing fearfully; he had a fever of almost 105. Yawning on the telephone, the doctor had prescribed an alcohol rub to bring the baby’s temperature down, but there was no rubbing alcohol in the house. So she had given the fiery, sweat-soaked little boy his cough medicine, and set out for town, leaving him with the Chinese maid.
From the crest of the hill, under a white sun just climbing up from the ocean rim, the harbor wore a Sabbath look. The fleet was in, and ranged at its moorings in the morning mist: a scattering of cruisers, oilers, and tenders, clusters of gray destroyers and minesweepers, nests of black submarines. Off Ford Island the battleships stood in two majestic lines with white sun-awnings already rigged; and on the airfield nearby dozens of planes touched wings in still rows. Scarcely anybody was moving on the ships, the docks, or the airfield. Nor was any large vessel under way to ruffle the glassy harbor. Only a few church party boats, with tiny sailors in whites, cut little foamy V’s on the green still water.
Janice got out of the car to look for her husband’s ship. To her disappointment, the Enterprise was not only absent from the harbor, it was nowhere in sight on the sea. She had been counting on a Sunday morning return. She took binoculars from the glove compartment and scanned the horizon. Nothing: just one old four-piper poking around, hull down. Tuesday would be two weeks that Warren had been gone; and now here she was with a sick baby on her hands, and a hangover. What a life! What a bore!
She had gone to the Officers’ Club dance the night before out of loneliness and boredom, accepting the invitation of a lieutenant she had dated long ago, a Pensacola washout who now served on Cincpac’s staff. Vic had had a cough for days, but his temperature had remained normal. Of course she would never have stayed out until after three, cavorting and boozing, had she known he would turn so sick. Still she felt guilty, irritated, and bored to the bone with this idiotic existence.
Since her return from Washington, she had been growing more and more bored, realizing that she had married not a dashing rake after all, but a professional Navy fanatic, who made marvellous love to her now and then and otherwise almost ignored her. Lovemaking at best took up very little time. What an end for Janice Lacouture—at twenty-three, a Navy baby-sitter! She had taken a half-day coding job at Cincpac to avoid being evacuated with the service wives, but that was dull drudgery too. Janice had spells of deep rebellion, but so far she had said nothing to Warren. She was afraid of him. But sooner or later, Janice meant to have it out, even if divorce ensued.
A small general store in a green wooden shack at a crossroads stood open, with two fat Japanese children playing on the rickety porch. That was lucky; it stocked a strange jumble of things, and she might not have to drive clear into town. As she went in, she heard gunfire pop over the harbor, as it had been popping for months off and on in target practice.
The storekeeper, a black-haired little Japanese in a flowered sport shirt, stood behind his counter drinking tea. On shelves within reach of his arms, goods were neatly stacked: canned food, drugs, pans, brooms, candy, toys, soda pop, and magazines. He bobbed his head, smiling, under hanging strips of dried fish. “Lubbing acoho? Ess, ma’am.” He went through the green curtain behind him. The gunfire sounded heavier and louder, and planes thrummed overhead. A funny time for a drill, she thought, Sunday morning before colors; but maybe that was the idea.
Going to the doorway, Janice spotted the planes flying quite high, lots of them, in close order toward the harbor, amid a very heavy peppering of black puffs. She went to her car for the binoculars. At first she saw only blue sky and clouds of black smoke, then three planes flew into the field of vision in a shining silvery triangle. On their wings were solid orange-red circles. Stupefied, she followed their flight with the glasses.
“Ess, ma’am? Many pranes! Big, big drir!” The storekeeper stood beside her, offering her the package with a toothy smile that almost shut his eyes. His children stood behind him on the porch, pointing at the sky and chattering in shrill Japanese.
Janice stared at him. Nearly everybody in the Navy disliked the Hawaiian Japanese and assumed they were spies. She had caught the feeling. Now here was this Jap grinning at her, and overhead Jap planes were actually flying! Flying over Hawaii! What could it mean? The nerve of these Japs! She took the package and abruptly, rudely offered him the binoculars. The man bobbed his head and peered upward at the planes, now beginning to peel off and dive, one by one, glinting silver amid the thickening black puffs. With a queer noise in his throat, he pulled himself erect and held out the binoculars to her, regarding her with a blank face, his slant eyes like black glass. More than the unreal, startling sight of the orange-marked planes, the look on his face told Janice Henry what was happening in Pearl Harbor. She snatched the binoculars, jumped into her car, slammed the door, and whirred the ignition. He hammered on the door, holding out his hand, palm up, and shouting. She had not paid him.
Janice was an honest young lady, but now with a pulse pf pleasurable childish excitement she shouted harshly—using the sailor epithet for the first time in her life—“Fuck you!” and shot off up the road.
That was how the war came to Janice Henry, and that was the story she told down the years after a few drinks in suitable company, usually to laughter and applause.
Accelerator to the floor, she careered and screeched uphill and around curves to the top of the ridge, jammed on the brakes, and leaped out into roadside grass. She was all alone here. Below, silver planes were flitting and diving about the peaceful Navy base, where the morning mist still lay pearly pink around the ships. Columns of water were shooting up, a couple of ships were on fire, and here and there guns were flashing pale yellow. But it still looked much more like a drill than like war.
Then she saw a very strange and shocking sight. A battleship vanished! One instant the vessel stood in the outer row and the next second nothing was there but a big red ball surrounded by black and yellow smoke. A cracking explosion hit and hurt her ears; the pressure wave struck her face like an errant warm breeze; and the ball of smoke and red fire climbed high into the air on a pillar of lighter smoke, and exploded again, i
n a beautiful giant burst of orange and purple, with another delayed BOOM! The vanished battleship dimly appeared again in the binoculars, a vast broken twisted wreck all on fire, sinking at a slant. Men were running around and jumping overboard, and some with their white suits on fire were moving in and out of the smoke, silently screaming. It looked like a movie, exciting and unreal, but now Janice Henry began to grow horrified. Here was one battleship actually sinking before her eyes, and the whole thing had scarcely been going on ten minutes! She saw more planes coming in overhead. Bombs began to explode in the hills. Remembering her baby, she ran to the car, backed it squealing onto the road, and raced home.
The Chinese maid sat in an armchair, dressed for church, hat on her knee, glumly leafing through the missal. “The baby’s asleep,” she said in clear English; she was island-born and convent-raised. “The Gil-lettes never even came. They forgot me. So I’ll have to go to ten o’clock mass. Please telephone Mrs. Fenney.”
“Anna May, don’t you know that the Japanese are attacking us?”
“What?”
“Yes! Can’t you hear the guns, the explosions?” Janice gestured nervously toward the window. “Turn on the radio. You’ll hear plenty! Jap planes are all over the harbor. They’ve already hit a battleship.”
Victor lay on his back, still doped by the cough syrup, breathing loud and fast. Janice stripped the hot, flushed little body. From the radio came the sliding twangs of Hawaiian guitars and a woman’s voice singing “Lovely Hula Hands.” As Janice sponged the infant an announcer gibbered cheerfully about Cashmere Bouquet Soap, and another Hawaiian melody began. The maid came to the doorway. “You sure about the war, ‘Mis’ Henry? There’s nothing on the radio. I think maybe you just saw a drill.”
“Oh, for heaven’s sake! A drill! How stupid do you think I am? I saw a battleship blow up, I tell you! I saw a hundred Jap planes, maybe more! They’re all asleep or out of their minds at that radio station. Here—please give him the aspirin. He feels a lot cooler. I’ll try to call the Fenneys.”