I’m a lot thinner again in the enclosed, and at least I’m smiling. Isn’t Louis cute?
Love,
N
Slote sat at his desk and stared at the snapshot, comparing Selma Ascher in his mind to this young woman in a plain housedress, holding a pretty baby on her arm. How Selma faded! Something was wrong with him, he thought. When one lost a girl, it ought to be like having a tooth out; brief sharp pain, then a rapid healing of the hole. Every man went through it. But Natalie Jastrow, utterly gone, preoccupied him yet like a teasing mistress. The very look of the letter gave him a poignant bittersweet sensation; ah, the passionate outpourings he had received on just such yellow sheets, in this Remington typeface with the crooked y! Gone, all gone, that fiery love, that once-in-a-lifetime golden chance!
Though it might be a couple of weeks before a letter could even start back to her through the diplomatic channel, he stopped work and wrote a three-page reply. Pouring out words to Natalie Henry was in itself a real if frustrating pleasure. Then he wrote a short letter to Jastrow, cautioning him against the plan to remain in Italy. He tore up a draft referring to “new documents” about the danger to Jews that he had come upon. He did not want to scare Natalie uselessly. The minister’s reproof about security before authentication troubled him, too.
But what would be authentication?
17
STEPPING from an ice-cold shower in a shivery glow, Natalie towelled herself fast and hard at the tall antique mirror framed in pink-and-gilt curlicued wood; turning here and there, feeling thankful for the flat belly she saw. Louis’s passage into the world had left, after all, only a few fading purple stretch marks. Even her breasts were not too bad, not too bad. Meager wartime rations helped! She might be twenty.
Her nakedness struck memory sparks of the Lisbon honeymoon. Sometimes she could hardly remember how Byron looked, except in the few old snapshots she still had. At this moment she could picture his mouth curling in the old beguiling grin, feel the thick red-brown hair in her fingers, feel the touch of his hard hands. What a dry death-in-life this was, what a waste of love, of young years! She bent one knee in the female pose common to the Venus de Milo and Rabinovitz’s girlie pictures. This fleeting thought of Rabinovitz sobered her. “Vain old bag,” she said aloud, wondering how to dress for the unusual dinner guest. The telephone rang. She pulled the damp towel around her and answered it.
“Hello, Mrs. Henry. Dr. Beck here. I’ve finished my meeting at the bank, so I can still get to Florence for the seven o’clock train to Rome. May I take a cup of tea first with you and Professor Jastrow?”
“Tea? But we’re expecting you for dinner.”
“You’re very kind, but dinner guests in wartime are a trouble. Now tea —”
“Dr. Beck, we’ve got veal.”
“Veal! Amazing.”
“The archbishop sent it over for Aaron’s birthday. We saved it for you. Do come.”
“I’m flattered. And hungry! Ha ha! The morning train’s faster, anyway. Veal! I accept.”
The black and white cathedral in slant sunset light, rising out of Siena’s old walls and ascending red roofs, made a fine view through the tall windows of Jastrow’s sitting room. But Italy was full of fine views and virtually empty of Scotch whiskey. The bottle of Haig and Haig which Natalie brought in with glasses, soda, and ice really impressed Dr. Beck. Jastrow explained that Bernard Berenson had given him the whiskey “out of sheer gratitude at hearing another American voice.” She also briefly fetched in the baby. Dr. Beck cooed at Louis, his glasses misting, his face glowing. “Ach, how I miss my kiddies,” he said.
The Scotch put Jastrow in his vein of jocose persiflage. The philosopher George Santayana had also lunched with him and Berenson, and Jastrow satirized the foibles of both men at table, such as Santayana’s drinking a whole bottle of wine, and Berenson’s hogging the conversation and admiring the play of his own shapely little hands. He was waspishly amusing about all this. Dr. Beck roared with laughter, and Natalie yielded up a few giggles.
She found herself warming a bit to the visitor. She never could truly like or trust him, but his admiration of her baby pleased her, and they owed him their present safety. His square face topped with thick lank blond hair was not unhandsome, and he even had a clumsy humor of his own. She asked him when he had last eaten veal. “I’m not sure, Mrs. Henry,” he said. “I was served veal two weeks ago in Rome, but I think that particular calf had been well broken to the saddle.”
The dinner was a decided success. Happy to be cooking veal again, the housekeeper had made superb scallopini in Marsala. The archbishop had also sent champagne for Aaron’s birthday, and they quaffed both bottles. Natalie drank more than she wanted to, mainly so that Aaron would not get her share of the wine. In his isolation, and perhaps in a suppressed state of nerves, he was becoming a toper, and when he had had too much his mood could turn unstable, and his tongue could loosen. At the end of the meal, as they ate raspberry tarts and ice cream, an exquisite aroma drifted in.
“My dear professor, coffee?” said Beck.
Jastrow smiled, dancing his fingertips together. “The Swiss charge d’affaires brings Berenson little gifts. My generous friend shared half a pound with me.”
“One begins to understand,” said Beck, “why Berenson has decided not to leave.”
“Ah, creature comforts aren’t everything, Werner. There are shortages at I Tatti. The place is in shocking disrepair. B.B. has spells of depression about it. But he says it’s his only home now. As he puts it, he’ll ‘ride out the storm at anchor.’ “ With an arch and not exactly sober smile he added, “B.B. thinks it will all end well, meaning that your side will lose. Of course, he’s an expert on Italian paintings, not warfare.”
“Dr. Freud might call that wishful thinking,” Beck replied, pursing his lips. “In view of what’s happening in Singapore, and Burma, and the Atlantic, and North Africa. However, whichever side wins, such a prominent person needn’t worry.”
“A prominent Jew?” It was a measure of Natalie’s unbending that she could say this without edginess.
“Mrs. Henry, victory softens harsh wartime policies.” Beck’s tone was calm. “That’s my profound personal hope.”
The housekeeper proudly bore in the coffee service. They watched the steaming brew fill the cups, as though a magician were pouring it from an empty pot.
“Ah,” Beck exclaimed over his first sip. “Worth the trip to Siena.”
“Of course Santayana has no problem, he’s neither Jew nor American,” Jastrow mused aloud, sipping his coffee. “He’s a strange personality, Werner, a true exotic. A fixture at Harvard for twenty years, writing and speaking exquisite English, yet he has retained Spanish nationality. He explained why, but I couldn’t follow. Either he or I had had too much wine. He’s Gentile to the bone, a bit of a Spanish grandee, and not too fond of the Hebrews himself. One could hear that in his subtle digs at Berenson’s opulent surroundings. Santayana holes up in a little cell in a Roman convent, writing his memoirs. He says that a scholar living in one small room near a major library is as close to happiness as a man can come on earth.”
“A true philosopher,” said Beck.
“Well, I could live like that, too.” Jastrow waved a hand around at the walls. “When I bought this place with the book-club money for A Jew’s Jesus, I was fifty-four. It was my fling. I can leave with a cheerful shrug and never look back.”
“You too are a philosopher,” said Beck.
“Then again I can always get my niece angry” — Jastrow’s glance at her was sly and tipsy — “by suggesting that she and the baby go home while, like Berenson, I ride it out at anchor.”
“I’m enjoying my coffee,” said Natalie sharply.
“And why should you do that?” said Beck.
“Because a philosopher is above worrying about concentration camps,” said Natalie. Jastrow shot her a vexed look. “Is that discourteous? I have trouble making Aaron face realities. Someb
ody must.”
“Perhaps not all Germans, either, are enthusiastic about concentration camps.” Beck’s voice was kindly and sad. His fat cheeks reddened.
“And what about the stories coming out of eastern Europe, Dr. Beck? Stories that your soldiers have been massacring the Jews?”
Jastrow stood up, raising his voice. “We’ll have brandy and more coffee in the sitting room.”
That they were unendurably on each other’s nerves was all too evident. “I take it, Mrs. Henry,” Beck said, settling into a corner of a sofa in the other room, carefully lighting a cigar, and making his voice easy and conciliatory, “that your question was not merely provocative. I have standard replies to standard provocations. I can also give you an honest opinion about your uncle’s safety, if he should elect to stay on.”
“Can you?” She sat tensed on the edge of the sofa, facing Beck. Jastrow stood at a window, brandy glass in hand, glowering at her. “How much do you really know about what’s happening to Jews?”
“In Italy? Nothing is happening.”
“And elsewhere?”
“The Foreign Service does not operate in the Occupied Territories, Mrs. Henry. The army governs the combat areas. Drastic measures are imperative there, and life is hard for both occupiers and the occupied.”
“Worse for the Jews, no doubt,” said Natalie.
“I don’t deny it. Anti-Semitism is rife all through eastern Europe, Mrs. Henry. I’m not proud of our own excesses, but the Jews had to be rounded up for their own safety! Of that I assure you. They would otherwise have been plundered and murdered en masse in places like Lithuania, Poland, and the Ukraine. The local hooligans were amazed, when German forces arrived, that they didn’t want them to join in straightway to rob and kill the Jews. They expected an ‘open season,’ as one might say.”
Jastrow cut in. “What excesses by your own forces?”
“Professor, our police units are not always the highest types,” Beck replied, looking unhappy. “Scarcely the representatives of an advanced culture. There has been rough handling. The Jews have passed a bad winter. There were outbreaks of disease. True, in the snow outside Moscow and Leningrad our soldiers have also suffered terribly. War is a vile business.” He faced Natalie and his voice rose. “But when you ask me, Mrs. Henry, whether the German army is massacring Jews, I respond that this is a lie. My brother is an army officer. He has spent much time in Rumania and in Poland. He assures me that the army has not only refrained from atrocities, but has at times interfered to protect the Jews from the local population. That is God’s truth, as I know it.”
Aaron Jastrow said, “I was born and grew up in eastern Europe. I believe you.”
“Don’t let me gloss things over. Our regime will have much to answer for.” Werner Beck spread his pudgy hands, puffed at his cigar, and drank brandy. “Even in victory decent Germans are not going to forget, I promise you. This is excellent brandy, Professor. Your friend Berenson again?”
“No.” With a pleased look, Jastrow passed his glass under his nose. “I’m rather a fancier of French brandy. I had enough foresight to lay in several cases of this stuff back in 1938.”
“Yes, my brother told me some fantastic things. Strangely enough, one can visit these wretched ghettos. Imagine that! The elegant Polish ladies and our officers sometimes enjoy a night of slumming among the Jews. There are even grotesque little nightclubs. Helmut went several times. He wanted to see conditions for himself. He tried to do something about improving supplies. He’s in the quartermaster corps, and he had some success in Lodz. But the whole thing remains bad. Very bad.”
“Has your brother visited concentration camps?” Natalie inquired very politely.
“Let’s change the subject,” said Jastrow.
“Mrs. Henry, those are secret political prisons.” Beck gave a miserable shrug.
“But that’s where the worst things are happening.” The studied patience of his manner was impressing Natalie, for all her rising irritation. She regretted having started this topic, but why had Aaron brought up his fatuous maddening notion of remaining in Italy?
“Mrs. Henry, dictatorships use terror to keep order. That is classic politics. What forced the German people to submit to a dictatorship is a long, complex question, but the outside world — including America — is not guiltless. I have never so much as seen the outside walls of a concentration camp. Have you ever visited an American prison?”
“That’s not a reasonable comparison.”
“I’m comparing only your ignorance and mine about penal institutions. I’m sure that American prisons are very bad. I imagine our concentration camps are worse. But —” he passed a hand across his forehead and cleared his throat. “We began with the question of your uncle’s safety, if he should stay in Italy.”
“Never mind!” Jastrow knit his brow fiercely at his niece. “We asked Werner here to give him a good dinner, Natalie. It’s not his problem. Bernard Berenson is a very shrewd and worldly man, yet he too —”
“Damn Berenson!” Natalie exploded, and she thrust a demanding finger at Beck. “Supposing Germany occupies Italy? Is that so impossible? Or supposing Mussolini decides to ship all Jews to the Polish ghettos? Or just supposing some Fascist bigwig up and decides that he’d like to live in this villa? I mean it’s so incredible, so childish, to even think of taking such risks —”
“It would be I, only I, taking those risks,” Aaron Jastrow burst out, slamming down his glass so that the brandy flew, “and frankly I’m getting sick of this. Werner is our guest. You and your baby are alive because he rescued you. Anyway, I never said I wouldn’t leave.” Jastrow jerkily, noisily threw open a casement window. Cool air streamed in, and a patch of blue moonlight fell on the Oriental rug. He stood with his back to the window, and picked up his glass in a badly shaking hand. “One crucial difference between you and me, Natalie, is that you’re hardly Jewish. You know nothing about our culture and our history, and you’re not interested. You married a Christian without turning a hair. I’m a Jew to the core. I’m a Polish Jew!” He said this with a proud glare. “A Talmud scholar! I could resume the study tomorrow if I chose. All my writings turn on my identity. My nerve ends are antennae for anti-Semitism, and I detected it in George Santayana before we’d been in the same room five minutes. You needn’t warn me about the hazards of being Jewish!” He turned to Dr. Beck, “You haven’t an anti-Semitic bone in you. You serve a detestable regime, and whether you should be doing that is another and a very large question — one you and I should discuss another time — but —”
“Professor, this was for me, and still remains, a radical ethical dilemma.”
“I should think so. What your government has done to the Jews is unforgivable. But alas, how far back it all goes! There are anti-Jewish rules in Aquinas’s Summa that make your Nuremberg laws look mild. The church has yet to repudiate them! We’re the eternal strangers, the outsiders in Christian Europe, and in times of breakdown we feel the impact first and hardest. It happened to us during the Crusades, it happened in the plague years, it has happened during most wars and revolutions. The United States is the modern liberal oasis, full of natural wealth and protected by the oceans. We’re able and we’re hard workers, so we’ve done well there. But Natalie, if you think we’re any less strangers there than in Germany, you’re the childish one, not I! If the war should take a bad turn, a defeated America will be uglier than Nazi Germany. Louis will be no safer there than here, and perhaps less so, because the Italians at least love children and are not very violent. These are simple truths you can’t grasp because your Jewish blood runs so thin.”
“Nonsense! Plain nonsense!” Natalie shot back. “Nazi Germany is a freakish monster of history. Not Christian, not Western, not even European. To equate it with America, even in defeat, is just drunken babble. As for my Jewish blood —”
“Why? What’s so freakish about Hitler? Why are the Germans more wrong, in trying for world mastery, than the British wer
e two centuries ago when they succeeded? Or than we Americans are, for making our own bid now? What do you suppose this war is about, anyway? Democracy? Freedom? Fiddlesticks! It’s about who rules next, who fixes the currencies, who dominates the markets, who gets the raw materials and exploits the vast cheap labor of the primitive continents!” Jastrow was wound up now, and his wine-loosened tongue flew; not at all blurrily, but with the clipped edged classroom accents of an enraged professor. “Mind you, I think we’ll win. I’m glad of that, because I’m a liberal humanist. Radical nationalism like Hitler’s or Stalin’s tends to crush free thought, art, and discourse. But I’m honestly not sure at this late hour of my life, Natalie, whether human nature is happier under tyranny, with its fixed codes, its terrorized quiet, its simple duties, or amid the dilemmas and disorders of freedom. Byzantium lasted a thousand years. It’s doubtful whether America will last two hundred. I’ve lived more than ten years in a Fascist country, and I’ve been more at peace than I ever was in the money-chasing hurly-burly back home. I really fear an American 1918, Natalie. I fear a sudden falling apart of those unloving elements held together by the common pursuit of money. I foresee horrors in defeat, amid abandoned skyscrapers and grass-grown highways, that will eclipse the Civil War! A blood bath with region against region, race against race, every man’s hand against his brother, and all hands against the Jews.”
Werner Beck made a gesture and wink at Natalie as though to say, Don’t stir up the old fellow any more. He took a soothing, almost unctuous tone. “Professor, you surprise me with your penetrating insight about America. Frankly, when I was in Washington I was shocked. Some of the best-connected persons whispered in my ear total approval of the Führer’s position on the Jews, never supposing that I might not agree.”