A few months ago there had been civil war in these streets; the Brownshirts had marched and the workers had hurled bottles and bricks from the rooftops; meetings had been raided and party workers dragged away and slugged. But now all that was over; the promise of the Horst Wessel Lied had been kept and the streets were free to the brown battalions. The whole appearance of the neighborhood had changed; the people no longer lived on the streets, even in this brightest spring weather; the children stayed in their rooms, and the women with their market-baskets traveled no farther than they had to, and watched with furtive glances as they went.
Lanny parked his car around the corner and walked to the house.
He looked for the name Schultz and did not find it, so he began knocking on doors and inquiring. He couldn’t find a single person who would admit having heard of Ludi and Trudi Schultz. He was quite sure from their manner that this wasn’t so; but they were afraid of him. Whether he was a Socialist or a spy, he was dangerous, and "Weiss nichts" was all he could get. Doubtless there were "comrades" in the building, but they had "gone underground," and you had to know where to dig in order to find them. It was no job for "parlor Pinks," and nobody wanted one to meddle with it.
V
Lanny went back to the hotel and continued his vigil. Sooner or later a note or a telephone message was bound to come, and this painful business of guessing and imagining would end. He went downstairs for a haircut, and when he came back he found his wife in a state of excitement. "Mama called!" she whispered. "She has to buy some gloves at Wertheim’s, and I’m to meet her there in half an hour."
Irma had already ordered the car, so they went down, and while they were driving they planned their tactics. Irma would go in alone, because the meeting of two women would be less conspicuous. "Better not speak to her," suggested Lanny. "Let her see you and follow you out. I’ll drive round the block and pick you up."
The wife of Johannes Robin didn’t need any warning as to danger; she was back in old Russia, where fear had been bred into her bones. When Irma strolled down the aisle of the great department store, Mama was asking prices, a natural occupation for an elderly Jewish lady. She followed at a distance, and when Irma went out onto the street and Lanny came along they both stepped into the car. "Where is Freddi?" she whispered with her first breath.
"We have not heard from him," said Lanny, and she cried: "Ach, Gott der Gerechte!" and hid her face in her hands and began to sob.
Lanny hastened to say: "We have got things fixed up about Papa. He’s all right, and is to be allowed to leave Germany, with you and the others." That comforted her, but only for a minute. She was like the man who has an hundred sheep, and one of them has gone astray, and he leaves the ninety and nine and goeth into the mountains, and seeketh that which is gone astray. "Oh, my poor lamb, what have they done to him?"
The mother hadn’t heard a word from her son since he had called Lanny, and then written her a comforting note. She had been doing just what Lanny had been doing, waiting, numb with fear, imagining calamities. Freddi had forbidden her to call the Budds or to go near them, and she had obeyed for as long as she could stand it. "Oh, my poor darling, my poor baby!"
It was a painful hour they spent. The good soul, usually so sensible, so well adjusted to her routine of caring for those she loved, was now in a state of near distraction; her mind was as if in a nightmare, obsessed by all the horror stories which were being whispered among the Jews in the holes where they were hiding, apart from the rest of Germany. Stories of bodies found every day in the woods or dragged out of the lakes and canals of Berlin; suicides or murdered people whose fates would never be known, whose names were not mentioned in the press. Stories of the abandoned factory in the Friedrichstrasse which the Nazis had taken over, and where they now brought their victims to beat and torture them. The walls inside that building were soaked with human blood; you could walk by it and hear the screams—but you had best walk quickly! Stories of the concentration camps, where Jews, Communists, and Socialists were being made to dig their own graves in preparation for pretended executions; where they underwent every form of degradation which brutes and degenerates were able to devise—forced to roll about in the mud, to stick their faces into their own excrement, to lash and beat one another insensible, thus saving labor for the guards. "Oi, oi!" wailed the poor mother, and begged the Herrgott to let her son be dead.
Only one thing restrained her, and that was consideration for her kind friends. "I have no right to behave like this!" she would say. "It is so good of you to come and try to help us poor wretches. And of course Freddi would want us to go away, and to live the best we can without him. Do you really believe the Nazis will turn Papa loose?"
Lanny didn’t tell her the story; he just said: "It will cost a lot of money"—he guessed that would help to make it real to her mind. She couldn’t expect any kindness of these persecutors, but she would understand that they wanted money.
"Oh, Lanny, it was a mistake that we ever had so much! I never thought it could last. Let it all go—if only we can get out of this terrible country."
"I want to get you out, Mama, and then I’ll see what can be done about Freddi. I haven’t dared to try meantime, because it may make more trouble for Papa. If I can get four of you out safely, I know that is what Freddi would want."
"Of course he would," said Mama. "He thought about everybody in the world but himself. Oi, my darling, my little one, my Schatz! You know, Lanny, I would give my life in a minute if I could save him. Oh, we must save him!"
"I know, Mama; but you have to think about the others. Papa is going to have to start life over, and will need your counsel as he did in the old days. Also, don’t forget that you have Freddi’s son."
"I cannot believe any good thing, ever again! I cannot believe that any of us will ever get out of Germany alive. I cannot believe that God is still alive."
VI
Oberleutnant Furtwaengler telephoned, reporting that the prisoner had signed the necessary documents and that the arrangements were in process of completion. He asked what Lanny intended to do with him, and Lanny replied that he would take the family to Belgium as soon as he was at liberty to do so. The businesslike young officer jotted down the names of the persons and said he would have the exit permits and visas ready on time.
It would have been natural for Lanny to say: "Freddi Robin is missing. Please find him and put me in touch with him." But after thinking and talking it over for days and nights, he had decided that if Freddi was still alive, he could probably survive for another week or two, until the rest of his family had been got out of the country.
Lanny had no way to hold Goring to his bargain if he didn’t choose to keep it, and as half a loaf is better than no bread, so four-fifths of a Jewish family would be better than none of them—unless you took the Nazi view of Jewish families!
However, it might be the part of wisdom to prepare for the future, so Lanny invited the Oberleutnant to lunch; the officer was pleased to come, and to bring his wife, a tall sturdy girl from the country, obviously very much flustered at being the guest of a fashionable pair who talked freely about Paris and London and New York, and knew all the important people. The Nazis might be ever so nationalistic, but the great world capitals still commanded prestige. Seeking to cover up his evil past, Lanny referred to his former Pinkness, and said that one outgrew such things as one grew older; what really concerned him was to find out how the problem of unemployment could be solved and the products of modern machinery distributed; he intended to come back to Germany and see if the Führer was able to carry out his promises.