The Return of Lanny Budd Read online

  Lanny was interested in Emil’s observations of the new generation of Germans. What was their attitude toward the present abnormal situation? Every one of them, of course, would be determined upon the reuniting of the severed Fatherland. Which way would they have it—for the East to join the West or the West to join the East? The general-become-teacher reported that they were confused and divided in their opinion; the Reds had behaved like Huns, but their propaganda was tireless and very clever.

  ‘You must understand’, he explained, ‘for a dozen years the German people heard almost no truth about the Western world. This generation which I am teaching has never known what it is to live in a free society, where all facts are reported and all arguments are invited. They hardly know what to make of the idea of hearing both sides; it contradicts the basic principle of their training—to believe that what they are told must be true. The Americans and British have the better case, but the Reds are more expert in presenting theirs. They are tireless propagandists; they have nothing else to do but to spread the faith. The Americans can’t even seem to get started’.

  Lanny explained, ‘It is against our traditions for the government to make propaganda or even to spread news. We take it for granted that that is a job for private interests’.

  ‘They will have to change their ideas if they hope to save East Germany from being dyed completely red. They seem to be making a start now; they have a little radio which they call D.I.A.S—Drahtfunk im amerikanischen Sektor, I believe it is’.

  ‘I have been told about it’, Lanny said. ‘It is a wired-radio system, using telephone lines. But they now have a thousand-watt transmitter mounted on an army truck; it will be RIAS, R for Rundfunk’.

  ‘It is beamed toward East Germany’, said Emil, ‘but we get it here, and people listen to it with an interest you can hardly imagine. They cannot afford books or even magazines from America, but any little radio set will do, and they get facts. That is what they want above anything else in the world, facts about what is going on’.

  They talked a while about Kurt and what were Lanny’s chances with him. Emil said that his brother had a choice to make, a veritable Herculean choice: whether to join the free world or to become a Communist. ‘You know the old-time saying, “Extremes meet.” It was never more true than at present. Kurt hates the British and the Americans; the Reds have the same hate, and so they are drawn together. I see it here among my young people’.

  ‘But Kurt is a mature man, Emil. Surely he cannot help seeing that the Reds do not act according to their propaganda’.

  ‘Neither do the Christians, many of them, yet they make converts. Kurt’s home is in Poland, and he can hardly live there and go on hating the Communists. On the other hand, if he yields to their wiles, or pretends to, he can no doubt have honour and fame again. They will invite him to Moscow and welcome him as a distinguished artist. His name would have propaganda value among the Germans. I feel uneasy when I pick up a newspaper, fearing that I may find such an item of news’.

  Lanny promised to do his best to avert that calamity, and to let the elder brother know what success he had. He persuaded Emil to accept the rest of his supply of food, and in the morning he motored back to Berlin, to report and prepare for the second and more difficult stage of his enterprise.

  4 HOIST WITH HIS OWN PETARD

  I

  The son of Budd-Erling returned to the headquarters of Marshal Sokolovsky, where his permit was awaiting him. He could feel the awe in the tone of the young staff officer. He had to sign a receipt in three places; it was worthy of ceremony, being a large sheet of paper with many spaces filled in, and in the lower left corner a red ink stamp with spaces full of squiggles, and at the bottom a flowing signature. Apparently the signer had been in such a hurry that there were only three or four up-and-down marks and a flourish, but the name was typed underneath. For all Lanny knew it might have been an order for his immediate execution; but he took it on faith and guessed that the Soviet military would do the same, and they did.

  Back in West territory, he drove to the P.X. and laid in another lot of food—for himself this time, since he could not be sure what he would find in war-stricken Poland. Then to the Polish consulate, which was in the West sector—for espionage purposes, he was told. An elderly clerk, shabbily dressed and undernourished, looked at him hungrily, and Lanny took out a package of cigarettes, offered him one, and forgot to take the rest off the counter. The Poles are a proud people.

  Lanny explained amiably that he was an American art expert who wished to travel in Poland to make enquiries concerning some paintings which had been carried into Germany and been lost. He wanted a visa on his passport, to travel to a town which had been called Stubendorf and was now called Stielszcz. When the document had been signed, stamped, paid for, and delivered, Lanny asked where there was a good place to get some Polish money, and the man told him of the nearest black market. Lanny thanked him cordially and in his absent-minded way left a good-sized chocolate bar lying near the cigarettes.

  In the black market Lanny asked for Polish zloty. When the price was quoted he said it was too high and turned away, and thereby got ten per cent taken off the price. He didn’t change all his money by any means, for he knew that American dollars would be accepted on transactions of any size. It might be against the law, but that would only make them more valuable.

  Lanny took some of his precious food to the Moncks and had dinner with them. He did not want to drive at night, and he meant to drive straight through to Stubendorf—he still called it that in his mind, refusing to recognise the Polish occupation. Lanny told Monck about those two German generals who had backed the wrong horse—one of them had changed horses near the end of the race, but it hadn’t done him much good, except in his own mind and conscience. They discussed the psychology of Kurt Meissner, whom Monck had never met but whom he had been hearing about for a long time. Monck said that the battle for the heart and mind of Kurt would be in substance the same as that for a hundred million hearts and minds in Central Europe.

  II

  In the postwar agreements free movement was permitted among all four sectors of Berlin. Thousands of workers lived in the West sectors and worked in the East, or vice versa. They came by the underground, or on bicycles, or just walked. Inspection and questioning came only when you were leaving Berlin and entering the Soviet zone proper. Lanny had his magnificent permit, also his agreeable manner, and a number of Russian phrases he had picked up during visits to the Soviet Union.

  His route faced straight eastward to the new Polish border, which was at Frankfurt-an-der-Oder. It was a German-built autobahn, badly worn by war traffic, and repairs were being made by women labourers. Everything in sight had been blasted by Russian artillery—the most powerful in the world, for Stalin had laid down the dictum ‘The artillery is the god of war’. The peasants were living in hovels they had put up out of the wreckage. There had been few horses left, and men who had ploughs had hitched their families to them, or else had dug up the land with spades and planted enough to keep themselves alive. For centuries they had been building up this land, over and over again, getting it ready for the next war; but now the wars were getting so much worse it seemed that the human spirit might break completely. Such, at any rate, were the reflections of a peace-loving Amerikanetz.

  At the Polish border Lanny presented his passport with the visa; also his cigarettes and his pleasant smile. Again he had no trouble, and presently he was driving southeastward, following the course up the River Oder. He had before him something like a hundred and fifty miles to the battered city which had been Breslau and now had gone back to its old Polish name of Wroclaw. A chill wind blew over these flat plains, all the way from the Baltic, and rain had begun to fall—it was the season for it. Lanny had a warm overcoat, and would not take it off very often during this trip. He watched the desolate landscape and the pitiful ragged people trudging on the roads, most of them bound west; his heart ached for them, and he was mor
e than ever a peace fanatic—but not a hopeful one.

  When his mind was not occupied with the problem of Kurt Meissner it was occupied with the problem of where he was going to get more petrol. Morrison had warned him that the hunt might be long, therefore he should never let his tank get more than half empty. It would be black-market petrol and the price would be high; but this was Uncle Sam’s errand, and Uncle Sam had lots of money to pour out over Europe. First, you laid down the terms of unconditional surrender to your enemy; then you discovered that what you had done was to get your enemy on to your back and that you had to carry him for an indefinite period—and that he would hate you all the time you were doing it. But you had to do it, otherwise he would go Communist on you!

  III

  Breslau was the large city where Lanny had been accustomed to change to a branch line for Stubendorf. Now large sections of it had been wiped out; beyond it lay the mining country, with the mines blasted and dead. Climbing to high ground, he came upon that pitiful sight, familiar to all archaeologists, a great stone structure where pride and glory had once reigned and where now there was only a jumble of large blocks of stone. Schloss Stubendorf it had been, and to Lanny at the age of fourteen it had been a place of splendour, beauty, and magic. He had first seen it at Christmas time, with snow upon all its steep roofs and high pinnacles. He had seen it in the morning shine and in the sunset glow. He had eaten wonderful foods here, and played delightful games, and found courtesy and affection unlimited. Now three men with crowbars and shovels were loading the stones on to a truck and carrying them away to become other buildings—that too a practice familiar to archaeologists.

  Stubendorf had once been a prosperous and delightful village, and now there was hardly a structure left intact. People were living in rooms that were half-roofed, having covered the other half with canvas. They had built themselves shelters in cellars, with a board cover over the entrance to run off the rain.

  Kurt’s cottage was a mile or so away, in a forest that had belonged to the Graf’s estate. Lanny knew the way and did not stop to ask questions. The rain had ceased, but the road was full of puddles and slippery, so it was necessary to drive slowly. There had evidently been fighting in this forest, and many of the trees were blasted, but the debris had been carried away for firewood. Lanny found his heart beating faster as he neared the site of the house; he feared the worst, and he found it. Both the larger building and the smaller were fire-blackened ruins, with hardly one stone left upon another. Evidently they had been looted—even the building material having been carted away, and every scrap of metal. A two-year crop of weeds veiled the tragic sight.

  Lanny got out and walked to the studio. It was the place of memories, of hours full of pure delight. He stood on what had been a broad stone step in front of the building and looked down into the weeds—and there he saw something that set his memories to aching: one twisted strand of thin wire, all that was left of the music master’s piano that had once brought the thundering chords of Beethoven’s ‘Appassionata’ to Lanny’s ears. ‘The harp that once through Tara’s halls/ The soul of music shed!’

  Tears came to the visitor’s eyes, and he turned away. He put his mind on the practical problem of how he could find Kurt Meissner, or any other persons who might be left from the old days. While he thought, he heard the sound of an axe in the forest. He got in his car and drove toward it; he knew the forest roads, for he and Kurt had hunted hares here as boys. When he found the woodman he recognised him as a Polish labourer on the estate; he was old now—war takes the young and the middle-aged and leaves the children and the aged.

  The man spoke a crude German and was pleased when Lanny recalled himself as a visitor from of old. He was glad to stop his work and chat about those better days. Lanny asked who was left, and among those named was a Polish school teacher, a cultivated man whom he had met at Kurt’s home on one of his more recent trips. The woodcutter said he might be somewhere in the village; he told Lanny where he could get information, and Lanny took his departure, not forgetting to pay the old fellow with a package of cigarettes.

  IV

  It was late when the traveller got back to the village, and he didn’t know where he would spend the night. He drove through what had been the main street and remembered a small café and found what was left of it; the back half was gone. The sign Gastwirtschaft had been badly painted over with the Polish equivalent. He got out to see what it was like.

  They were still in business. The back had a makeshift roof held up by poles out of the forest, with the bark not trimmed off—picturesque if you appreciated that sort of thing. The hostess was a worn, sad-faced Polish woman, probably a widow. She was so excited by the entrance of a prosperous gentleman that she started chattering in bad German. Ach ja, she had bread, the very best home-baked bread. She had no butter, alas, only lard; but she had cheese and she had schöne frische Eier—she would make him an omelet out of three beautiful fresh eggs. Lanny said, ‘Bitte sehr’, and took a seat at the one table of the establishment.

  He had been warned not to drink the water in this war-torn land, so he had a little bottle of Vichy water with him. The dry bread and cheese were brought, and he started to eat with pleasure. While he waited for the omelet his mind was busy with the next steps. He was planning to ask this loquacious hostess if she knew the schoolteacher and where he could be found. He was thinking. This teacher is an honest fellow, and if I tell him I have been offered a counterfeit American or British banknote he will understand that I am indignant about it and would like to punish the miscreant. He will talk about Himmler money, and who in the neighbourhood may be mixed up in such evil activities. It was Lanny’s business to be prepared for every contingency, and his active mind was occupied with an imaginary conversation, the different turns it might take, and his own responses to it.

  V

  There is a school of philosophy known as metaphysical idealism, which began with Plato in ancient Greece and has come down through Hegel in Germany and Bishop Berkeley in Britain and reached as far as Emerson and the other Transcendentalists of New England. These philosophers teach that mind is the ultimate reality, and that the thought or the idea precedes the thing or the event. Some carry the doctrine to its extremes, and a New England lady named Mary Baker Eddy would have told Lanny quite positively that it was his own vigorous mental processes which brought into being the series of events that next befell him. If this is true, it is certainly a most convenient way for the universe to be organised and to behave.

  Anyhow, this is what happened. The door of the restaurant opened and a man came in. Lanny took a glance and saw that he was a smallish fellow, fairly young, shabbily dressed like everybody else in the village, and damp as only one can be who has been walking without an umbrella on a rainy day. There were half a dozen seats at the table, and the fellow might have taken any one of them. He came to the seat beside Lanny and stood by it hesitantly.

  First the man spoke in Polish, then, when Lanny shook his head, he asked politely, ‘Ist’s gestattet?’ Lanny answered, ‘Natürlich’. And the man took the seat.

  The American visitor was glad to chat with him. He liked people and was curious about this town which had been through such startling transformations. Lanny said the weather was bad and asked how business was; the man said it was as bad as the weather. His German had a strong foreign accent, but Lanny wasn’t sure where that accent came from.

  The woman came, and the man ordered bread and cheese. She brought the omelet of beautiful fresh eggs, and Lanny started to eat it. Perhaps the man was impressed by this evidence of luxury, or more probably by Lanny’s overcoat, which he kept on because the place was unheated. He said ‘Sind Sie Amerikaner?’ and Lanny admitted that he was. The man took another bite of bread and cheese and asked a question that caused Lanny’s heart to give a jump. ‘You have use for American money, mein Herr?’

  Lanny’s face did not betray his excitement. He said, ‘Oh yes. Who hasn’t use for American money
?’

  ‘I have some’, the stranger replied, ‘and it is hard to spend it in a godforsaken place like this. I would give you a very good discount if you would change it for Polish money’.

  ‘Where did you get the American money?’ inquired Lanny—for of course it was his role not to be too much of an easy mark.

  ‘I have a cousin from America’, the man said. ‘He came here and needed a car in his business. I sold him my car, and he gave me American money. He had got it from the bank in Berlin’.

  ‘Is your cousin an American?’ Lanny enquired.

  The man answered in the affirmative. ‘If I was to let the authorities in this town know that I have it, they would take it away from me. I would have to go into the American zone to spend it, and that would be hard for me because I have a family. So you see I could give you a good discount’.

  ‘Do you have a sample of the money with you?’ Lanny asked.

  The man answered, ‘Fa mein Herr’, and began to fumble in his back trouser pocket under his badly worn coat. He drew out a new unfolded five-dollar American banknote with the portrait of Abraham Lincoln upon it.