VII
Footsteps in the corridor; a slot at the bottom of Lanny’s door was widened, and something was set inside. He said, quickly: "Will you please tell me how long I am to be kept here?" When there was no reply, he said: "I am an American citizen and I demand the right to communicate with my consul." The slot was made smaller again and the footsteps went on.
Lanny felt with his hands and found a metal pitcher of water, a cup of warm liquid, presumably coffee, and a chunk of rather stale bread. He wasn’t hungry, but drank some of the water. Presumably that was breakfast, and it was morning. He lay and listened to more shooting off and on; and after what seemed a very long time the slot was opened and more food put in. Out of curiosity he investigated, and found that he had a plate of what appeared to be cold potatoes mashed up with some sort of grease. The grease must have been rancid, for the smell was revolting, and Lanny came near to vomiting at the thought of eating it. He had been near to vomiting several times at the thought of people being shot in this dungeon of horrors.
A bowl of cabbage soup and more bread were brought in what he assumed was the evening; and this time the warder spoke. He said:
"Pass out your slop-pail." Lanny did so, and it was emptied and passed back to him without washing. This sign of humanity caused him to make a little speech about his troubles. He said that he had done nothing, that he had no idea what he was accused of, that it was very inhuman to keep a man in a dark hole, that he had always been a lover of Germany and a sympathizer with its struggle against the Versailles Diktat. Finally, he was an American citizen, and had a right to notify his consul of his arrest.
This time he managed to get one sentence of reply: "Sprechen verboten, mein Herr." It sounded like a kind voice, and Lanny recalled what he had heard, that many of the permanent staff of these prisons were men of the former regime, well disciplined and humane. He took a chance and ventured in a low voice: "I am a rich man, and if you will telephone the American consul for me, I will pay you well when I get out."
"Sprechen verboten, mein Herr" replied the voice; and then, much lower: "Sprechen Sie leise." Speaking is forbidden, sir; speak softly! So the prisoner whispered: "My name is Lanny Budd." He repeated it several times: "Lanny Budd, Lanny Budd." It became a little song. Would that it might have wings, and fly to the American consulate!
VIII
For three days and four nights Lanny Budd stayed in that narrow cell. He could estimate the number of cubic feet of air inside, but he didn’t know what percentage of that air was oxygen, or how much he needed per hour in order to maintain his life. His scientific education had been neglected, but it seemed a wise precaution to put his straw sacks on the floor and lie on them with his mouth near the breathing hole.
Saturday, Sunday, Monday—he could tell them by the meal hours —and during a total of some eighty-two hours there were not a dozen without sounds of shooting. He never got over his dismay. God Almighty, did they do this all the time? Had this been going on ever since the National Socialist revolution, one year and five months ago? Did they bring all the political suspects of Bavaria to this one place? Or was this some special occasion, a Nazi St. Bartholomew’s Eve? "Kill them all; God will be able to pick out His Christians!"
Lanny, having nothing to do but think, had many and varied ideas. One was: "Well, they are all Nazis, and if they exterminate one another, that will save the world a lot of trouble." But then: "Suppose they should open the wrong cell door?" An embarrassing thought indeed! What would he say? How would he convince them? As time passed he decided: "They have forgotten me. Those fellows didn’t book me, and maybe they just went off without a word." And then, a still more confusing possibility: "Suppose they get shot somewhere and nobody remembers me!" He had a vague memory of having read about a forgotten prisoner in the Bastille; when the place was opened up, nobody knew why he had been put there. He had had a long gray beard. Lanny felt the beginnings of his beard and wondered if it was gray.
He gave serious study to his jailers and their probable psychology. It seemed difficult to believe that men who had followed such an occupation for many years could have any human kindness left in their systems; but it could do no harm to make sure. So at every meal hour he was lying on the floor close to the hole, delivering a carefully planned speech in a quiet, friendly tone, explaining who he was, and how much he loved the German people, and why he had come to Munich, and by what evil accident he had fallen under suspicion. All he wanted was a chance to explain himself to somebody. He figured that if he didn’t touch the heart of any of the keepers, he might at least get them to gossiping, and the gossip might spread.
IX
He didn’t know how long a person could live without food. It wasn’t until the second day that he began to suffer from hunger, and he gnawed some of the soggy dark bread, wondering what was in it. He couldn’t bring himself to eat the foul-smelling mash or the lukewarm boiled cabbage with grease on top. As for the bitter-tasting drink that passed for coffee, he had been told that they put sal soda into it in order to reduce the sexual cravings of the prisoners. He didn’t feel any craving except to get out of this black hole. He whispered to his keepers: "I had about six thousand marks on me when I was brought in here, and I would be glad to pay for some decent food." The second time he said this he heard the kind voice, which he imagined coming from an elderly man with a wrinkled face and gray mustaches. "Alles geht d’runter und d’ruber, mein Herr." . . . "Everything topsy-turvy, sir; and you will be safer if you stay quiet."
It was a tip; and Lanny thought it over and decided that he had better take it. There was a civil war going on. Was the "Second Revolution" succeeding, or was it being put down? In either case, an American art lover, trapped between the firing lines, was lucky to have found a shell-hole in which to hide! Had the warder been a Cockney, he would have said: "If you knows of a better 'ole, go to it!"
So Lanny lay still and occupied himself with the subject of psychology, which so far in his life he had rather neglected. The world had been too much with him; getting and spending he had laid waste his powers. But now the world had been reduced to a few hundred cubic feet, and all he had was the clothes on his back and what ideas he had stored in his head. He began to recall Parsifal Dingle, and to appreciate his point of view. Parsifal wouldn’t have minded being here; he would have taken it as a rare opportunity to meditate. Lanny thought: "What would Parsifal meditate about?" Surely not the shooting, or the fate of a hypothetical revolution! No, he would say that God was in this cell; that God was the same indoors as out, the same yesterday, today, and forever.
Then Lanny thought about Freddi Robin. Freddi had been in places like this, and had had the same sort of food put before him, not for three days but for more than a year. What had he said to himself all that time? What had he found inside himself? What had he done and thought, to pass the time, to enable him to endure what came and the anticipation of what might come? It seemed time for Lanny to investigate his store of moral forces.