War and Remembrance

  “Ah, upper-crust anti-Semitism is epidemic, Werner. Elites always detest gifted and nimble outsiders. Who made the British policy to turn back the refugee ships, but old-school-tie anti-Semites? The upper-crust anti-Semites who run our State Department have closed all the Americas to refugees. Why am I still here? Only because of obscure sabotage of my papers.”

  Natalie said, striving for a calm note, “You were dilatory, Aaron.”

  “Granted, my dear. Granted.” He sank into an armchair. “Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa. But it’s done. The question is, what next? I quite understand that those bored newspaper soaks down at the Excelsior Hotel can’t wait to get out of Siena, and I know that you want to take Louis home. But I believe there may be a negotiated peace this year, and I for one would welcome it.”

  “Welcome it!” Natalie’s face and Beck’s showed almost the same degree of astonishment. “Welcome peace with Hitler?”

  “My dear, the best chance for mankind’s survival is simply for the war to stop. The sooner the better. The fabric of civilization has been shaken loose already by the industrial and scientific revolutions, the collapse of religion, and two mechanized world wars. It can’t stand much more of a pounding. In a bitter way I almost welcome the fall of Singapore —”

  “It hasn’t fallen —”

  “Oh, that’s a question of days,” put in Beck. “Or for all we know, hours. The British are finished in Asia.”

  “Let’s face it,” said Jastrow, “the Japanese belong there and the Europeans don’t. The Russian front is at a stalemate. The Atlantic front is at another stalemate. A negotiated peace would be the best thing for the world, for America, and certainly for the Jews. It’s much more desirable than a vengeful five-year crusade to destroy the have-nots. I suppose if we marshal all our industrial power we’ll crush them, but to what purpose? They’ve shown their mettle. The hegemony can be shared. The British and the French learned to do that after centuries of bloodletting. It will have to be shared in any case with the Russians. The longer the war goes on, the worse things will get for Jews behind the Nazi lines, my dear, and if we do crush Germany, the end of it will merely be a Soviet Europe. Is that so desirable? Why shouldn’t we hope instead that the bloody madness will stop? And if it does stop, how silly I’ll look to have uprooted my whole life for nothing! Nevertheless, you won’t go without me, so I’ll leave. I’ve never said otherwise. But I’m not a soft-headed old fool to consider remaining, and I’ll not have you take that tone with me again, Natalie.”

  She did not answer him.

  “Mrs. Henry, I find your uncle’s vision of the war lucid and inspiring,” said Werner Beck excitedly. “He gives all this stupid carnage a theme, a direction, and a hope.”

  “He does? Peace with Hitler? Who can believe a word Hitler says, or have faith in a paper he signs?”

  “That is not an insoluble problem,” Beck quietly returned.

  “Exactly. There are other Germans. There are even other Nazis,” said Jastrow. “The skin of the tyrant is not steel plate. So history teaches.”

  “Professor, I have not had such a conversation, except with my brother, in ages.” The eyes of Werner Beck strangely flashed at Jastrow, and his voice quavered. “I will pretend I never had this conversation. Yet I will tell you, my old and trusted teacher, that my brother and I have more than once discussed into the dawn the ethics of tyrannicide.”

  “My baby gets fed now.” Natalie stood up, and Werner Beck jumped to his feet.

  “Let me thank you for the best dinner I have had in months, Mrs. Henry.”

  “Well, we probably owe you our lives. I’m not unaware of that. So if I —” Without looking at her uncle, she broke off and hurried from the room. Jastrow stood at the open casement, his thin hair blowing, his face heavily shadowed by the moonlight.

  “Professor, your discussion of the war stunned me,” said Dr. Beck. “You spoke with the grasp of a Thucydides.”

  “Ah, Werner, it was just an angry rush of words. Poor Natalie. Even an animal mother fears for her baby. She’s not very good company these days.”

  “I would urge you, Dr. Jastrow, when you get home, to write a short book developing those thoughts. A book like The Last Palio, your exquisite little elegy over the Europe of the Versailles Treaty.”

  “Oh, did you read that?” Jastrow sounded flattered. “A minor jeu d’esprit.“

  “But your vision of the war! That a man like yourself, a humanist, a Jew, can speak with such understanding of the Japanese problem, and of the German revolution! Can even suggest that ‘sharing the hegemony,’ in your brilliant phrase, might be preferable to a grim five-year mutual bloodletting! It’s breathtaking. It restores one’s faith in the possible brotherhood of mankind. What a profound tribute to the Jewish spirit!”

  “You’re too kind, but I shall write nothing about this accursed war. I shall get on with Martin Luther. Well! Shall we have a nightcap?”

  “Bitte.Let me telephone for my car.”

  Beck made his call, while Jastrow poured two snifters fuller than usual. They drank standing at the open window, chatting about the view and about the quiet charm of Siena. “I understand your reluctance to leave,” Beck said. “What you have here is a private little paradise.”

  “Well, I’ve been happy here.” Jastrow’s mood was much improved. “And brandy has helped me snare many an elusive theme and thought.”

  “Professor, would you consider coming to Rome and talking to press correspondents of neutral countries? Only of neutral countries. None of Goebbels’s propagandists or Gayda’s hacks.”

  “To what purpose?”

  “Your views on the war would command attention. They are original, magnanimous, and wise. Their impact would be great. I can tell you” — the diplomat’s voice sank low — “that better elements in Germany would be encouraged.”

  Jastrow stroked his beard, his face wrinkling into sharp smiling lines. “Hardly. I’m a very minor writer.”

  “Not so. You have news value. Only Berenson and Santayana, besides yourself, have lived so long in the Italian dictatorship. I urge you to think about this.”

  “Out of the question. On my return home, I should be pilloried.” A car came rolling into the driveway, the same bank limousine that had brought the diplomat. “Ah, then you must go?” said Jastrow. “Pity. I did want you to see my library.”

  Beck leaned out of the window and spoke a few crisp words to the driver. Jastrow led him upstairs to the library, where they made a circuit of the room, brandy glasses in hand. “Bless my soul,” said Beck, “don’t you have as good a private collection on Christianity as one will find anywhere?”

  “Oh, no! This is a pathetic scratch of the surface. And yet —” Jastrow’s eyes moved along the shelves, and the look on his face was deeply sad. “You know, Werner, I’ve had no family life. No children. If my love has an object, it’s this collection of books. Santayana’s right, of course, an institutional library is best. Yet there’s something personal and — this will sound mawkish — alive for me in this room. These books speak to me. The authors are all my friends and colleagues, though some of them crumbled to dust fifteen centuries ago. I shall leave the villa with no regret, but it will hurt to leave these books behind, knowing that it may be the end of them.”

  “Dr. Jastrow, could I not have them crated up for you, after you go, and sent to Switzerland or Sweden? All wars end. Then you could retrieve them.”

  The mournful aged eyes shone with delight. “Could you do that, my dear fellow? Would it work?”

  “I will find out details on my return to Rome, and telephone you about it.”

  “Why, I’ll never forget you! And I’m already so much in your debt.”

  “Please! You pulled me through my doctorate. That shaped my whole career. And now I bid you good-night. I thank you for a grand evening. Dr. Jastrow, I shall be pressing you yet again to share your prophetic insights with a suffering world. Fair warning.”

  ??
?I am not a prophet, nor the son of a prophet, Werner,” said Jastrow archly. “Pleasant journey.”

  18

  LESLIE SLOTE came trudging back to the legation after a too-heavy Swiss lunch with too much Swiss wine, all ingested to comfort himself in his mood of profound futility. Head down to the wind-driven rain, collar turned up, he almost butted Augie Van Winaker, coming out of the legation building. “Steady there, laddie.”

  “Hi.”

  “No offense, I hope, about that meeting yesterday.”

  “No offense.”

  “Good. You’d have looked very silly — or worse — if the matter had gone further.”

  In his office Slote threw his wet coat and hat down, seized the telephone, and called Selma Ascher. A heavy weary voice came on. “Ja? Who is that?”

  “Ah — it’s Leslie Slote, Dr. Ascher.”

  “So.” Pause. “You wish to speak to my daughter? My daughter is not here.”

  “It’s not important. Thank you.”

  “My daughter will return at six. Shall she telephone you?”

  “If she has a moment.”

  He went to work, and ground through his paper pile at half his usual speed. The telephone rang at the stroke of six. “Hello? This is Selma Ascher speaking.”

  “Are you free to talk, Selma?”

  “Certainly. What is it I can do for you?”

  The stiff cool tone was warning enough. “Well, I’d rather like to call the English girl I met at your house.”

  “You mean Nancy Britten? They live at 19 Tellenstrasse in the Pension Gafen. Would you like Nancy’s number?”

  “Please. Sorry to trouble you.”

  “No trouble. One moment — here we are. Nancy’s number is68215.”

  “I’m much obliged.”

  “Good-bye then, Mr. Slote.”

  He was stuffing his briefcase despondently when the phone rang again. Her voice was breathless and gay. “Yes, Leslie? I’m in a pay telephone down at the corner garage.”

  “Selma, that priest I met at your house —”

  “Father Martin? What about him?”

  “I have to talk to him. Your father mustn’t know, and I can’t telephone his parish house.”

  “Oh. I see. Is that it?” The girlish tone turned brisk. “I’ll have to call you back.”

  “I’m about to go to my flat. The number —”

  “No, stay where you are.”

  She called again half an hour later. “The corner of Feldstrasse and the Boulevard. You know where that is?”

  “Of course.”

  “Wait there. I’ll pick you up.”

  He had scarcely arrived at the busy boulevard corner when the gray Fiat roadster came zipping up and the door flew open. “Nancy Britten, indeed!” Selma exclaimed with an agitated smile. “Hop in.”

  “Well, I had to say something.” He slammed the door shut. The smell of the leather seats and of her perfume brought back strongly the mood of their one clumsy night out. “Wasn’t your father standing beside you?”

  “Indeed he was.” She shifted gears and went off in a jackrabbit start. “I hardly know Father Martin, but I drove over and saw him. He gave me some strange instructions. I can take you only partway. He said you mustn’t involve me again. I’ve never been in such a situation before. It’s like a film.” Slote laughed. She added, “No, truly. Is there any danger?”

  “No.”

  “Has this to do with his information about the Jews?”

  “Never mind.”

  “My father found out about our evening together.”

  “How?”

  “He asked me. I can’t lie to him. I’m disobeying him by seeing you again.”

  “What is his objection to me?”

  “Oh, Leslie, don’t talk rot.”

  “I’m serious. His attitude puzzles me.”

  “Don’t you find me attractive?” The question shot out at him as she whisked the car into a dark side street.

  “Terrifically.”

  “I find you attractive. I’m engaged to be married. We’re a religious family. What puzzles you about my father’s attitude?” In these crackling commonsense sentences, Slote could hear Natalie Jastrow, as in old days, pinning him to the wall.

  Selma braked the car on a hill lined with town houses, near a street-lamp where two bundled-up children played hopscotch in the pool of light. “Here I leave you. You walk to the top of the hill and turn left. Go along the park until you come to a stone parish house, with a wooden garden door in the stone wall. Knock at that door when nobody else is in sight.”

  “Selma, won’t we see each other again?”

  “No.”

  Round soft eyes glistened under a red shawl. Shawled in much the same way against winter, Natalie had often looked like this — aroused, melancholy, tense from the effort at control. Once again he felt the throb of recognition and regret. She took his hand and pressed it hard in her cold fingers. “Be very careful. Good-bye.”

  “Ja?” A woman’s voice responded to his knock at the heavy wooden garden door.

  “Herr Slote.”

  The door creaked open. A short shapeless person led him toward a bay window glowing orange in the darkness, where he could see the priest at a candlelit table. As Slote came inside, Father Martin rose and waved to a dinner setting beside him. “Welcome! Join me.” He lifted the lid of a tureen. “These are tripes à la mode de Caen.“

  “What a pity,” said Slote, glancing down at the steamy pungent-smelling brown mass. He had eaten tripe once in his life, and classed it, like octopus, as a rubbery abomination to be avoided. “I’ve eaten.”

  “Well, then,” said Father Martin as they sat down, pouring red wine from a clay jug. “Try this.”

  “Thank you. — I say! It’s superb.”

  “Ah?” The priest looked happy. “It is from my brother’s family vineyard near Würzburg.”

  Father Martin did not speak again while he methodically and placidly devoured a loaf of bread, chunk by chunk, with the tripes, sopping up brown juice from his plate. Each time he broke the bread, his gestures and his shiny red face showed pleasure at the feel and smell of the loaf. He kept refilling his glass and Slote’s. The thick-lipped moon face remained almost stupidly serene. The roly-poly housekeeper, a middle-aged woman with a bristling mustache, in a full black skirt down to the floor, brought in a yellow cheese and another bread loaf.

  “You will take a bite of cheese,” said the priest. “Surely you will.”

  “I guess so, thanks.” By now Slote was ravenous. The cheese, the fresh bread, the wine, were all delicious.

  Father Martin happily sighed and wiped his mouth after demolishing most of the cheese. “Now let us have a little air.”

  A wind was springing up outside, making the tall old trees in the garden creak their leafless boughs. “What is it you want?” The voice turned businesslike and anxious. “I can say nothing within walls, even my own.”

  “It’s about the document I received in the theatre. Have you read it?”

  “No.”

  “I have to establish its authenticity.”

  “I was told the authenticity was self-evident.”

  Silence, and the crunching of their steps on the gravel walk.

  “Does Jacob Ascher know about it?”

  “No.”

  “Did he arrange our meeting at his house?”

  “He did not.”

  “May I tell you how things stand at my end?”

  “Bitte.”

  Slote recounted his interview with the minister and Van Winaker, and he described the contents of the Protocol. The priest uttered peculiar gasps and grunts. Up and down the garden they paced as the wind gusted heavily and the trees whipped.

  “Frightful. Frightful! But as to the authenticity, Herr Slote, are you not butting a stone wall, the will not to believe?” He spoke the words slowly, sternly, bitterly, grasping Slote’s elbow and thrusting a stubby finger toward his face. “The will not to bel
ieve! It’s nothing new to me. I meet it on deathbeds. I hear it in the confessional. I hear it from deceived husbands, from parents whose sons are missing in action, from trapped bankrupts. The will not to believe. It is simple human nature. When the mind cannot grasp or face up to a horrible fact it turns away, as though refusing credence will conjure away the reality. That is what you’re encountering.”

  “Father Martin, our minister is an able and tough-minded man. He’ll face up to hard facts, if I can provide them.”

  “What hard facts? What would your minister accept as authentication, Herr Slote? How can one argue with the will not to believe? Supposing I persuaded a certain man in the German legation to meet him face to face? Do you appreciate the risk? The Gestapo net spreads all through Bern. It might mean the man’s death. And what would be gained? Your minister suspects he has seen fake papers. Well? Won’t he simply suspect he has talked to the faker?”

  “I could identify a man from the German legation. You’d better tell your man that all the risk so far has been in vain. Tell him Americans say about the document, ‘Incredible contents. Dubious origins.’ ”

  The priest let go of his arm, opened the garden door, and peered out. “Good-night. Straight on beyond the park, outside the Café William Tell, you will find a taxi stand.”

  “You won’t help me any further?”

  “Herr Slote, I have asked my Provincial to transfer me from Bern.” The priest’s voice was shaking badly. “You must not approach me anymore. You Americans really don’t comprehend Europe. And in the name of God do not bring in the Aschers again.”

  August Van Winaker poked his head into Slote’s office a few days later. “Hi. I’ve just been having a long hot session with a friend of yours. He’d like to say hello.”

  “Certainly. Who is it?”

  “Dr. Jacob Ascher.”

  In a black homburg, and a black suit that hung loose on his bowed shoulders, Dr. Ascher looked like an invalid forced from his bed by an emergency. But his handshake was surprisingly strong.