'Did I have anything to do with this lovely, this heavenly miracle?' she said.
'Everything,' I said, holding her close.
'No, no — very little — ' she said, 'but some — thank God, some. The big miracle is the talent you were born with.'
'The big miracle,' I said, 'is your power to raise the dead.'
'Love does that,' she said. 'And it raised me, too. How alive do you think I was — before?'
'Shall I write about it?' I said. 'In our village there in Mexico, on the rim of the Pacific — is that what I should write first?'
'Yes — yes, oh yes — darling, darling,' she said. 'I'll take such good care of you while you do it. Will — will you have any time for me?'
'The afternoons and the evenings and the nights,' I said. 'That's all the time I'll be able to give you.'
'Have you decided on a name yet?' she said.
'Name?' I said.
'Your new name — the name of the new writer whose beautiful works come mysteriously out of Mexico,' she said. 'I will be Mrs — .'
'Se?ora' I said.
'Se?ora who?' she said. 'Se?or and Se?ora who?'
'Christen us,' I said.
'It's too important for me to decide right away,' she said.
Kraft came in at this point
Resi asked him to suggest a pseudonym for me.
'What about Don Quixote?' he said. 'That,' he said to Resi, 'would make you Dulcinea del Toboso, and I would sign my paintings Sancho Panza.'
Dr. Jones now came in with Father Keeley. 'The plane will be ready tomorrow morning,' he said. 'You're sure you'll be well enough to travel?'
'I'm well enough right now,' I said.
'The man who will meet you in Mexico City is Arndt Klopfer,' said Jones. 'Can you remember that?'
'The photographer?' I said.
'You know him?' said Jones.
'He took my official photograph in Berlin,' I said.
'He's the biggest brewer in Mexico now,' said Jones.
'For God's sake,' I said. 'The last I heard, his studio got hit with a five-hundred-pound bomb.'
'You can't keep a good man down,' said Jones. 'Now then — Father Keeley and I have a special request to make of you.'
'Oh?' I said.
'Tonight is the weekly meeting of the Iron Guard of the White Sons of the Constitution,' said Jones. 'Father Keeley and I want to stage some sort of memorial service for August Krapptauer.'
'I see,' I said.
'Father Keeley and I don't think we could deliver the eulogy without breaking down,' said Jones. 'It would be a terrible emotional ordeal for either one of us. We wonder if you, a very famous speaker, a man with a golden tongue, if I may say so — we were wondering if you would accept the honor of saying a few words.'
I could hardly refuse. 'Thank you, gentlemen,' I said. 'A eulogy?'
'Father Keeley thought up a general theme, if that would help,' said Jones.
'It would help a lot, a general theme would,' I said. 'I could certainly use one.'
Father Keeley cleared his throat. 'I think the theme should be,' that addled old cleric said, 'His Truth Goes Marching On'
31: 'His Truth Goes Marching On ...'
The Iron Guard of the White Sons of the American Constitution assembled on ranks of folding chairs in the furnace room of Dr. Jones' basement. The guardsmen were twenty in number, ranging in age from sixteen to twenty. They were all blond. They were all over six feet tall.
They were neatly dressed, wore suits and white shirts and neckties. All that identified them as guardsmen was a little piece of gold ribbon run through the buttonhole of the right lapel of each.
I would not have noticed this odd detail of buttonholes on the right lapels, lapels that conventionally have no buttonholes, if Dr. Jones hadn't pointed it out to me.
'It's a way they have of identifying each other, even though the ribbon isn't worn,' he said. 'They can see their ranks growing,' he said, 'without anybody else noticing it.'
'They all have to take their coats to tailors and insist on buttonholes in the right lapel?' I said.
'The mothers do it,' said Father Keeley.
Keeley, Jones, Resi, and I were sitting on a raised platform facing the guardsmen, our backs to the furnace. Resi was on the platform because she had agreed to say a few words to the boys about her firsthand experiences with communism behind the Iron Curtain.
'Most tailors are Jews,' said Dr. Jones. 'We don't want to tip our hand.'
'Besides — ' said Father Keeley, 'it's good for the mothers to participate.'
Jones chauffeur, The Black Fuehrer of Harlem, was now on the platform with us, hanging a big canvas sign behind us, tying its grommeted ends to steam pipes.
This is what it said:
'Get plenty of education. Lead your class in all things. Keep your body clean and strong. Keep your opinions to yourself.'
'These are neighborhood kids?' I asked Jones.
'Oh, no,' said Jones, 'Only eight of them are even from New York City. Nine are from New Jersey, two are from Peekskill — the twins — and one comes all the way from Philadelphia.'
'Every week he comes from Philadelphia?' I said.
'Where else can he get what August Krapptauer was offering here?' said Jones.
'How were they recruited?' I said.
'Through my paper,' said Jones, 'but they really recruited themselves. Worried, conscientious parents were writing to The White Christian Minuteman all the time, asking me if there wasn't some youth movement that wanted to keep the American bloodstream pure. One of the most heartbreaking letters I ever saw was from a woman in Bernardsville, New Jersey. She'd let her boy go into the Boy Scouts of America, not knowing that the true name of the B.S.A. ought to be 'the Boogies and Semites of America.' And the boy got to be an Eagle Scout, and then he went into the Army, went over to Japan, and came home with a Japanese wife.'
'When August Krapptauer read that letter he cried,' said Father Keeley. 'That's when he knew, tired as he was, he had to get back to working with youth again.'
Father Keeley called the meeting to order, had us all pray. His prayer was a conventional one, asking for courage in the face of hostile hosts.
There was one unconventional touch, however, a touch I had never heard of before, even in Germany. The Black Fuehrer stood over a kettledrum in the back of the room. The drum was muffled — muffled, as it happened, by the simulated leopard skin I had worn earlier for a bathrobe. At the end of each sentence in the prayer, the Black Fuehrer gave the muffled drum a thump.
Resi's talk on the horrors of life behind the Iron Curtain was brief and dull, and so unsatisfactory from an educational standpoint that Jones had to prompt her.
'Most devoted Communists are of Jewish or Oriental blood, aren't they?' he asked her. 'What?' she said.
'Of course they are,' said Jones. 'It goes without saying,' he said, and he dismissed her rather curtly.
Where was George Kraft? He was sitting in the audience, in the very last row, next to the muffled kettledrum.
Jones introduced me next, introduced me as a man who needed no introduction. He said I wasn't to start talking yet, because he had a surprise for me.
He certainly did.
The Black Fuehrer left his drum, went to a rheostat by the light switch, and dimmed the lights gradually as Jones talked.
Jones told, in the gathering darkness, of the intellectual and moral climate in America during the Second World War. He told of how patriotic, thoughtful white men were persecuted for their ideals, how, finally, almost all the American patriots were rotting in federal dungeons.
'Nowhere could an American find the truth,' he said.