V
Lanny Budd lived externally the life of a young man of fashion. He accompanied his wife to various functions, and when she entertained he played the host with dignity. Having been married nearly four years, he was entitled to enjoy mild flirtations with various charming ladies of society; they expected it, and his good looks and conversation gave him reason to expect success. But instead, he would pick out some diplomat or man of affairs and disappear into the library to discuss the problems of Europe. These gentlemen were impressed by a young man’s wide range of knowledge, but they thought he was unduly anxious concerning this new movement of Nazism; they had learned what a French revolution was, and a Russian one, but had difficulty in recognizing a revolution that happened in small instalments and under ingenious camouflage. Hardly a man of wealth and importance in France who didn’t accept Nazism as a business man’s answer to Bolshevism. When they read in the papers that Communists were being shot pretty freely throughout Germany, they shrugged their French shoulders and said: "Eh, Men? Do the Reds complain of illegality?"
Lanny ran up a large telephone bill calling his friends in Berlin. It was his one form of dissipation, and Irma learned to share it; she would take the wire when he got through and ask Rahel about the baby, or Mama about anything—for Mama’s Yiddish-English was as delightful as a vaudeville turn. Lanny was worried about the safety of his friends, but Johannes said: "Nu, nu! Don’t bother your head. I have assurances that I cannot tell you about. I wear the Tarnhelm."
He would retail the latest smart trick of those Nazis, whose cleverness and efficiency he couldn’t help admiring. "No, they will not outlaw the Communist party, because if they did, the vote would go to the Sozis, and there would be the same old deadlock in the Reichstag. But if they let the Communist deputies be elected, and then exclude them from their seats, the Nazis may have a majority of what is left! What is it that you say about skinning a cat? There are nine ways of doing it?"
How long would a Jew, even the richest, be allowed to tell the inmost secrets of the Führer over the telephone to Paris? Lanny wondered about that, and he wondered about the magic cap which Johannes thought he was wearing. Might he not be fooling himself, like so many other persons who put their trust in political adventurers? Who was there among the Nazi powers who had any respect for a Jew, or would keep faith with one for a moment after it suited his purpose? To go to a rich Schieber to beg money for a struggling outcast party was one thing; but to pay the debt when you had got the powers of the state into your hands—that was something else again, as the Jews said in New York.
Lanny worried especially about Hansi, who was not merely of the hated race, but of the hated party, and had proclaimed it from public platforms. The Nazi press had made note of him; they had called him a tenth-rate fiddler who couldn’t even play in tune. Would they permit him to go on playing out of tune at Red meetings? The Stormtroopers were now turned loose to wreak their will upon the Reds, and how long would it be before some ardent young patriot would take it into his head to stop this Jewish swine from profaning German music?
Lanny wrote, begging Hansi to come to Paris. He wrote to Bess, who admitted that she was afraid; but she was a granddaughter of the Puritans, who hadn’t run away from the Indians. She pointed out that she and her husband had helped to make Communists in Berlin, and now to desert them in the hour of trial wouldn’t be exactly heroic, would it? Lanny argued that a great artist was a special kind of being, different from a fighting man and not to be held to the military code. Lanny wrote to Mama, telling her that it was her business to take charge of the family in a time like this. But it wasn’t so easy to manage Red children as it had been in the days of Moses and the Ten Commandments.
However, there was still a Providence overseeing human affairs. At this moment it came about that a certain Italian diva, popular in Paris, was struck by a taxicab. The kind Providence didn’t let her be seriously hurt, just a couple of ribs broken, enough to put her out of the diva business for a while. The news appeared in the papers while Lanny and Irma were at Bienvenu, having run down to see the baby and to attend one of Emily’s social functions. Lanny recalled that the diva was scheduled with one of the Paris symphony orchestras; she would have to be replaced, and Lanny asked Emily to get busy on the long distance telephone. She knew the conductor of this orchestra, and suggested Hansi Robin to replace the damaged singer; Mrs. Chattersworth being a well-known patron of the arts, it was natural that she should offer to contribute to the funds of the symphony society an amount equal to the fee which Hansi Robin would expect to receive.
The bargain was struck, and Lanny got to work on Hansi at some twenty francs per minute, to persuade him that German music ought to be promoted in France; that every such performance was a service to world culture, also to the Jewish race, now so much in need of international sympathy. After the Paris appearance, Emily would have a soiree at Sept Chênes, and other engagements would help to make the trip worth while.
"All right," replied the violinist, anxious to cut short the expenditure of francs. "I’m scheduled to give a concert at Cologne, and that is half way."
Lanny said: "For God’s sake, keep off the streets at night, and don’t go out alone!"
VI
Lanny missed his inside news about Germany, because the government forbade the publication of Vorwärts for three days, as a punishment for having published a campaign appeal of the Social-Democratic Party. Communist meetings were forbidden throughout the whole nation, and many Communist and Socialist papers were permanently suspended. "In ten years there will be no Marxism in Germany," proclaimed the Führer. All over Prussia Goring was replacing police chiefs with Nazis, and the Stormtroopers were now attending political meetings in force, stopping those in which the government was criticized. Next, all meetings of the Centrists, the Catholic party, were banned; the Catholic paper, Germania, of which Papen was the principal stockholder, was suppressed, and then Rote Fahne, the Communist paper of Berlin. These events were reported in L’Humanite under the biggest of headlines, and Uncle Jesse denounced them furiously in the Chamber of Deputies; but that didn’t appear to have much effect upon Hitler.
What the Nazis were determined to do was to win those elections on the fifth of March. If they could get a majority in the Reichstag, they would be masters of the country; the Nationalists and aristocrats would be expelled from the cabinet and the revolution would be complete. Papen, Hugenberg, and their backers knew it well, and were in a state of distress, according to Johannes’s reports. A curious state of affairs—the gentlemen of the Herren Klub defending the Reds, because they knew that Hitler was using the Red bogy to frighten the people into voting for him! Goebbels was demanding the head of the Berlin police chief because he wouldn’t produce evidence of treasonable actions on the part of the Communists. "The history of Germany is becoming a melodrama," wrote the Jewish financier. "In times to come people will refuse to believe it."