It seemed clear that all Lanny could accomplish was to center the attention of the Gestapo upon the Robin family. If they set out to look for Freddi they would have to inquire among his friends. They might ask Lanny for a list of these friends; and what could Lanny say? "I do not trust you, meine Herren von der Geheimen Staats Polizei"? On the other hand, to give the names might condemn all these friends to concentration camps. The wife of Johannes was hiding with one of her former servants. The Gestapo would get a list of these and hunt them out—Jews, most of them, and doubtless possessing secrets of Johannes and his associates. Who could guess what they might reveal, or what anybody might invent under the new scientific forms of torture?
II
Lanny and his wife attended the very grand inauguration ceremonies of the Minister-Prasident of Prussia. They were met by Ober-leutnant Furtwaengler and introduced to Ministerialdirektor Doktor X and General Ritter von Y. They were surrounded by Nazis in magnificent uniforms covered with medals and orders, behaving themselves with dignity and even with charm. Very difficult indeed to believe that they were the most dangerous miscreants in the world! Irma in her heart couldn’t believe it, and when she and Lanny were driving afterward they had a bit of an argument, as married couples have been known to do.
Irma was a daughter of civilization. When she suspected a crime she went to the police. But now, it appeared, the police were the criminals! Irma had listened to Lanny’s Red and Pink friends denouncing the police of all lands, and it had annoyed her more than she had cared to say; there were still traces of that annoyance in her soul, and Lanny had to exclaim: "My God, didn’t Goring tell me with his own lips that he would find a hundred of Johannes’s relatives and friends and torture them?"
"Yes, darling," replied the wife, with that bland manner which could be so exasperating. "But couldn’t it have been that he was trying to frighten you?"
"Jesus!" he exploded. "For years I’ve been trying to tell the world what the Nazis are, and now it appears that I haven’t convinced even my own wife!" He saw that he had offended her, and right away was sorry.
He had been through all this with his mother, starting a full decade ago. Beauty had never been able to believe that Mussolini was as bad as her son had portrayed him; she had never been able to think of an Italian refugee as other than some sort of misdoer. Beauty’s own friends had come out of Italy, reporting everything improved, the streets clean, the trains running on time. Finally, she had gone and seen for herself; had she seen anybody beaten, or any signs of terror? Of course not!
And now, here was the same thing in Germany. Wherever you drove you saw perfect order. The people were clean and appeared well fed; they were polite and friendly—in short, it was a charming country, a pleasure to visit, and how was anybody to credit these horror tales? Irma was in a continual struggle between what she wanted to believe and what was being forced upon her reluctant mind. Casting about for something to do for poor Freddi, she had a bright idea. "Mightn’t it be possible for me to go and talk to Goring?"
"To appeal to his better nature, you mean?"
"Well, I thought I might be able to tell him things about the Robins."
"If you went to Goring, he would want just one thing from you, and it wouldn’t be stories about any Jews."
What could Irma say to that? She knew that if she refused to believe it, she would annoy her husband. But she persisted: "Would it do any harm to try?"
"It might do great harm," replied the anti-Nazi. "If you refused him, he would be enraged, and avenge the affront by punishing the Robins."
"Do you really know that he’s that kind of man, Lanny?"
"I’m tired of telling you about these people," he answered. "Get the Fürstin Donnerstein off in a corner and ask her to give you the dirt!"
III
Any pleasure they might have got out of a visit to Berlin was ruined. They sat in their rooms expecting a telephone call; they waited for every mail. They could think of nothing to do that might not make matters worse; yet to do nothing seemed abominable. They thought: "Even if he’s in a concentration camp, he’ll find some way to smuggle out a message! Surely all the guards can’t be loyal, surely some one can be bribed!"
Lanny bothered himself with the question: was he committing an act of bad faith with Johannes in not informing him of this new situation? He had assured Johannes that the family was all well. Was it now his duty to see the prisoner again and say: "Freddi has disappeared"? To do so would be equivalent to telling the Gestapo— and so there was the same round of problems to be gone over again. Even if he told Johannes, what could Johannes do? Was he going to say: "No, Exzellenz, I will not sign the papers until I know where my younger son is. Go ahead and torture me if you please." Suppose Goring should answer: "I have no idea where your son is. I have tried to find him and failed. Sign—or be tortured!"
The agonizing thing was that anywhere Lanny tried asking a question, he might be involving somebody else in the troubles of the Robin family. Friends or relatives, they would all be on the Gestapo list—or he might get them on! Was he being followed? So far he had seen no signs of it, but that didn’t prove it mightn’t be happening, or mightn’t begin with his next step outdoors. The people he went to see, whoever they were, would know about the danger, and their first thought would be: "Um Gottes Willen, go somewhere else."
Rahel’s parents, for example; he knew their names, and they were in the telephone book. But Freddi had said: "Don’t ever call them. It would endanger them." The family were not Socialists; the father was a small lawyer, and along with all the other Jewish lawyers, had been forbidden to practice his profession, and thus was deprived of his livelihood. What would happen if a phone call were overheard and reported? Or if a rich American were to visit a third-class apartment house, where Jews were despised and spied upon, where the Nazis boasted that they had one of their followers in every building, keeping track of the tenants and reporting everything suspicious or even unusual? The Brown Terror!
Was Lanny at liberty to ignore Freddi’s request, even in an effort to save Freddi’s life? Would Freddi want his life saved at the risk of involving his wife and child? Would he even want his wife to know about his disappearance? What could she do if she knew it, except to fret herself ill, and perhaps refuse to let Lanny and Irma take her out of the country? No, Freddi would surely want her to go, and he wouldn’t thank Lanny for thwarting his wishes. Possibly he hadn’t told Rahel where Lanny and Irma were staying, but she must have learned it from the newspapers or from her parents; and surely, if she knew where Freddi was, and if he needed help, she would risk everything to get word to Lanny. Was she, too, in an agony of dread, hesitating to communicate with Lanny, because Freddi had forbidden her to do so?
IV
Lanny bethought himself of the Schultzes, the young artist couple. Having got some of Trudi’s work published in Paris, he had a legitimate reason for calling upon her. They lived in one of the industrial districts, desiring to be in touch with the workers; and this of course made them conspicuous. He hesitated for some time, but finally drove to the place, a vast area of six-story tenements, neater than such buildings would have been in any other land. Almost without exception there were flower-boxes in the windows; the German people didn’t take readily to the confinements of city life, and each wanted a bit of country.