“Fine, fine.” The priest smiled almost warmly. “No, what I need to know is when you and your intended wish to schedule your wedding mass, for you both will need to meet with me several times. There are the banns to be read, and as you are not a Catholic, there will be some papers that you must sign, of course.”
Milo felt for the second time in two days as if he had been clubbed down with a baseball hat. He just sat mute for a long moment, his mouth gaping open.
“Well, Mr. Moray?” probed the priest. “I must have a date today.”
“What the bloody hell are you talking about?” he finally got out. “I’m not about to get married, not to anybody, no matter what that stubborn, pigheaded, wedding-crazy Norwegian may have told you.”
Rüstung’s pale-blue eyes became as cold as glacial ice, and he stared at Milo as if at some loathsome thing that had crawled from under a boulder. His voice, tpo, was become frigid, his words curt and clipped.
“You have taken your suit rather far, Mr. Moray, to now change your mind. I know—I am Irunn ‘Tiers-/ dottar’s confessor. I also am not without influence in this city and state, and I here warn you, unless you do the honorable thing by the poor girl you callously led on and seduced into mortal sin, I will see you laid in the Cook County Jail, if not in the state prison. You were well advised to heed me, Mr. Moray—if that is truly your name!—for I do not indulge in the making of idle threats, and I feel most strongly in this matter.
“If I do not hear from you of your planned wedding date in … ten days, I shall act to have you jailed and tried for criminal fornication and breach of promise to marry.
“Good day, Mr. Moray.”
“Another light this all puts onto the issue, mein freund Milo,” said Sam Osterreich soberly. “And to underestimate this Nazi-loving priest, do not, either, for he is, unfortunately, very powerful politically in this city, county and state.”
“What has the arrogant bastard got against you, Sam?” asked Milo. “And against your group’s digest of foreign news?”
Grimly, Osterreich replied, “Against me as one person only, nothing of which I know, save simply that I am a Jew, an Austrian Jew. As for his fear and hatred of our group and the digest …
“You have heard of, read of the Deutsche-American Bund, perhaps. Yes, well, this Pomeranian priest, this Father Alfonse Rustung, is both an officer and organizer of the Bund. The Bund would have eferyone to think that they promote just only a spirit of friendship between Germany and America combined with the same sort of love and respect for the homeland as one sees in efery other ethnic club of immgrants.
“But, Milo, what they to project to Americans vould and what is their real raison d’etre vastly at odds are. It true is that the majority of the Bund members and supporters only poor, beguiled dupes and deluded fools are, but the leaders and the organizers, these all very evil men are, scheming together to efentually set up in this beautiful, free country nothing less than a murderous, fascistic government along the lines of—indeed, allied with—the Nazis of Germany, the Fascisti of Italy, the Iron Guard of Rumania and the Falange espanola of General Francisco Franco.
“They at great length carry on about the aims of Herr Hitler. They say that he but wishes to reunify to Germany and Austria the lands and the territories and the German-speaking persons so shamefully stripped from Germany in the vake of the Great War, to reunite all into a Deutsches Reich, a single nation all Germans … and did they truth tell, efen I could with them agree.
“But as I know, and as you must by now know from your work at translations, the truth, in the Bund does not lie, which why it is that they and my group at great odds are and must always be. To silence us all they vould, Milo, to nullify our so important mission and vork, and they must not, they cannot, be allowed to defeat us— rather to defeat them we must.
“But back to your so personal danger, Milo. Mein freund, I and the group cannot to you offer much real protection from the priest, Rustung. He is just too well connected to vealthy and powerful men who now occupy high places in the city of Chicago, in the County of Cook and in the State of Illinois.
“Therefore, you only two options haf. Either to marry the nurse, Irunn Thorsdottar, you must or to leaf the state and go far away. One hears that the State of California a most congenial climate has… . But the choice of destination must yours be, and please to not of it tell me, for then if by the police I am questioned I to lie to them would not need.
“All of the help and advice I can to give you, I haf, mein freund, Milo. You what, ten days haf to the expiration of the Nazi priest’s ultimatum? Then your preparations make quickly and quietly. It well were that you tell no one of just when you leaving are or where you going ??? not to sell personal possessions try, rather is to pawn them much better, demanding detailed receipts and guarantees, that you may soon buy them back. When go you do, travel light—only your money, small valuables and clothes in no more than a single small case. To travel first-class, do not, and tell no one your real name, from where you come or to where you go. Gott sie
dankt, travel papers not required are in all this great, free country, so to purchase forgeries you have no need. If you need of money haf …”
The psychiatrist opened a drawer of his desk with a key from his watchchain and brought out several sheafs of bills of as many denominations. But Milo waved his hand and shook his head in negation.
“Thank you so much, Sam, you’re a true friend, but no. I have enough money, now, to get clear out of the country, should I choose to do so.”
Osterreich smiled slightly and nodded briskly. “Gut, gut, that last is just what the police I vill tell if asked by them, that to leaf America entirely, you spoke today. No matter how serious the charges of which the priest and the nurse accuse you, hardly it is to be thought that to so much trouble and expense they or the authorities would go as to try to hunt you down beyond the borders of America.”
Milo stalked through the O’Shea house, going directly from the front door to the sideboard on which Pat kept his whiskey, filled a tumbler and drained k off, neat, then refilled it.
“Saints preserve us, Mr. Moray,” came the voice of the cook, Rosaleen, from the kitchen doorway, behind him, “it’s gettin’ pie-eyed you’ll be in nothin’ flat, swillin’ of the craytchur like that! What’s befallen you, this lovely day?”
With her on one side of the bare dining table, him on the other, Milo sat and drank and told her all of it, from start to the immediate present. She heard him out in silence, only pursing her lips and frowning when he spoke of his nights of unhallowed copulation with Irunn and again on the occasion when he roundly cursed the priest, for his meddling and his threats. Not until he was done did the old woman speak.
“Och, poor Mr. Moray, it’s pitying you I am. That Miss Irunn, why she must be daft, clear off her knob. What kind of a married life could she expect to have with a man she had so shamefully trapped into it with lies and all? Bad enough it is that she lied to you and to her poor parents and forged your name to a letter of proposal, then gave it to her father, but to lie and all to a holy priest of God, och, how terrible a woman she is who always gave the appearance of being good and so very proper. Herself will have thirteen kittens with plush tails when it’s hearing of it she is.”
Even as Milo opened his mouth to speak in protest at this planned violation of his impulsive confidence, Rosaleen raised her hand.
“She must know, soon or late, Mr. Moray, sure and you can see that? It’s better, I’m thinkin’, that she hear it from first me and then you than from Miss Irunn or this Jerry priest or … or others. As for the rest, it was good advice that the Jew doctor was givin’ you, I thinks, I do. But just take all the time you find yourself needin’ to get ready to-leave; when she’s heard it all, herself won’t be heavin’ you out, though she may well throw that Miss Irunn onto the streets, where the schemin’, connivin’ strumpet belongs. To be sneakin’ around of nights and crawl naked into the bed of a decent, sleepin’ man to try to make him marry her, Holy Mither save us, that’s scandlous, it is, I say!