The Trespassers

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The Trespassers

Laura Z. Hobson

To Raymond Gosselin

Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Three

Chapter Twenty-Four

CHAPTER ONE

THE MIGRATIONS HAD BEGUN. At that point in time, the trains, the ships, the rutted dirt roads, the cement highways, the vaulting air lanes of the earth and seas and skies were beginning to carry again the ones in flight.

From the early thirties onward, the flow of the migrations swelled and thickened. In nineteen thirty-seven and -eight and -nine, two million of Europe’s people were moving, flying before the bitter fact that they were not wanted, not safe on the ground they knew and loved.

Movement, flight, the roots uptorn, the dear belongings left behind, the unknowing roses abandoned in the garden—gone forever the beloved view from the kitchen window, the comfortable smile of a twenty-year-known neighbor.

Movement, flight, the aching decision, the visit to the Consulate, the seeking for affidavits and visas and passports, the last locking of the door, the train pulling away forever from the friendly station, the border crossed, the sea sailed—already the surface of the earth was restless and harassed with the ones in flight.

These new ones were to be the aliens wherever they went. The decent and kindly imagination grappled with it, tried to comprehend and share the emotions of flight, of the frightened and harried seeking that constricted the hearts of these many. Two million faces turned toward the strange land, planning it will be better there, we will be safe again in France, in England, in Belgium, in America, we will have courage and begin all over, the children are young enough so they will not understand nor be too deeply wounded, and as for us, the older…

From Germany the human flight poured forth, from Austria and Czechoslovakia. From Poland and Spain, from Yugoslavia and Rumania, from Italy and Hungary. And behind the ones that already moved were untold millions more, who thus far knew flight only as a scheming in the heart, an urgency in the blood, to escape while there was still time.

But for two million, the fleeing had already started. They were en route; they were committed, for them there was no turning back. For them the only hope lay beyond the frontier, lay in tomorrow.

And each night through that time began the tossing and terrible dreaming. Two million dreams each night, the nightmares of flight, the wishful dreams of welcome and safety, the recurrent dreams of being stopped by cold-eyed authority—your papers? your permits? your passports are out of date, you will have to go back … douane, contrôle, Ellis Island, alien registry…

And not only human beings were in motion across the face of the earth. Manuscripts of novelists were being shipped for safety to foreign lands, away from the quiet desk in the familiar well-lit library to a distant vault, a safe-deposit box, a publisher’s files in another land.

Mathematical formulae were traveling, anthropological data, religious tracts, sermons about a man’s faith in a power beyond the national dictator’s. And chemical research and economic treatises and all the beautiful, devious, certain or uncertain products of men’s minds migrated over state boundaries, national borders, through seaports—all seeking haven.

And a thousand canvases were flying before the new political critique, carrying their brave pigments, their bold or delicate lines and shadows, to freedom. And a thousand songs and poems and essays were migrating—expatriates, all, while there was still time.

All this was quite unlike the simultaneous flight of thirty other millions from the wars that were blasting China and Spain. That other flight was a purely physical fleeing on one’s own soil from the steel tyranny of bomb and bullet and shell. But in a curious way, such physical need for flight was less of an assault on the dignity of the men who fled; the flesh was outraged and wounded, but not the subtle spirit, the proud heart. The tyranny of bomb and bullet was of kinder steel than that other tyranny of scorn and persecution.

In nineteen thirty-seven and -eight and -nine, the migrations of the unwanted were on. The earth had known other vast migrations, in ancient times and modern, had known the eager journeys of those who of themselves sought a richer soil, a fuller chance; had known migrations from war and famine and revolution. But this newest flight of life and potentiality was the first of all flights to a closed or closing earth.

This was a journey toward uncertainty, the most uncertain migration since that earliest one of the creatures migrating from the ancient seas on to the new and slimy land.

Only, on that new and slimy land in the dawn of man’s evolution, the new arrivals found no hostile faces, no closed legislative doors, no fearful reckoning whether there was room, whether there were jobs, whether there was, even, the willing heart to bid them enter.

Dr. Franz Vederle waited on the street before his house for the postman coming toward him. He took the packet of letters and riffled through them quickly. There was no letter with an American postmark.

He felt a small slap of disappointment, and smiled at his own childishness. Only if her reply had caught the Bremen could it be here already. And she could scarcely mail the documents within twenty-four hours of receiving his cable.

Patience. She had wired those three immediate words, OF COURSE, WRITING, but these arrangements took time.

Surely by now the letter was on its way. Ann Willis would not leave him wondering or waiting a day longer than necessary. That day, two years ago, when she was saying good-by, she had cried out, If I ever, ever can do anything for you, for God’s sake, let me—on that day he had not thought the need would come. But it had come, the desperate need, and a week ago he had cabled.

He was a tall man, slim and dark, looking his thirty-nine years now because his face was grave and thoughtful, not because of the physical markings of time. There was quick, excitable depth in his brown eyes, laid over by quiet weariness. The planes of his face were definite from hairline to chin; it was a strong face, candid and pleasing. He looked more French or Spanish than Viennese, because of the darkness in hair, eyes, mustache, because of the quick gestures of hands, the darting life of his glance.

Yet he had been born in Vienna, had lived all his boyhood and until his marriage in the business section of the city, his family not too poor, nor too insecure on his father’s small professorship to make for him a happy, busy boyhood, an assured education in medicine. There had been always enough money for vacations in England and France, and enough, too, for his lessons at the piano.

After his marriage, he and Christa had lived in a small, charming flat just off the Universitätstrasse, where it enters the Ringstrasse, and though Vienna’s life was sad and poor, their own was rich in music, work, and love.

When Paul was born and they needed more room, they had moved out here to Döbling, on the outskirts. Years before, as a child, Franz used to be taken by his parents to walk through Döbling. Always he had thought of it as an unattainable fairyland. The houses, set back in deep, flowery space, seemed to him then to have a tangible overlay of culture and wealth. Later, when his feeling for music had developed into a leaping, irrational love, the older streets of Döbling drew him like a shrine to be worshiped. For Beethoven, with his dark discontent and seeking, had lived in almost every other house, and Schubert too had lived and written there. Wandering through those old streets, he had pondered always on the ceaseless quest of those two, the quest, only, for beauty, for the free and soaring melody. When he was a man, he too would try to care only for the things that were free and noble.

And eleven years ago, after Paul’s birth, they had moved from Vienna to Döbling. We’ll live here until we die. He had said that to Christa. She had smiled, nodded happily, her small face had worn a fleeting proprietary pride, for it was her own money, left to her by her aristocratic Aunt Ilse, which had bought the house for them.

Now he walked slowly up the flagged path back to the house. He looked about him from some new plateau of emotion. Already the shooting green of new grass pierced through the foggy gray of the slate-slabbed path. Everywhere over the bushes and lawn shone the tentative twinkle of new green, and the first thin yellow of plumping, splitting buds. For eleven springtimes, he and Christa had watched this gentle, silent renewal overtake each bush, each tree, each stretch of winter-brown lawn.

His throat knobbed up. Somehow it went more against the grain to pull up roots in the early spring when the whole instinct of the earth was toward growth and renascence. One wished to flower with it; it was curiously deathlike to interrupt the process.

Still, he reminded himself, one transplants in the early spring, too.

Paul’s, face, so self-reliant and bright, appeared briefly in an upstairs window, and a moment later, the small, lively feminine face of little Ilse. They stood there behind the pane, smiling and calling inaudible words down to him. This transplanting would not be easy for children of eleven and five; the separation from the mother at birth was scarcely harsher than the first separation from the good, secure ground one had always lived upon.

Christa heard him open the door. She came rapidly toward him, and knew the letter had not come from the casual way he held the packet of envelopes. They were bills, invitations, notices of a meeting of the Society, of something at the University, personal mail—the world’s daily offering to him in his busy and illustrious life. But not the letter.

The next boat, he said. Surely. Try not to be anxious.

I am not anxious a bit, she said.

Christl is tired, he thought, "and she looks older. I suppose most Viennese are a little tired and older since the Anchluss."

I am not at all anxious, in the usual way, Christa said. Only today—

She turned her head slightly from him, but not quickly enough to prevent his seeing the concern in her blue eyes. She was short, slight; her features were small, with a soft bluntness of line to the short nose and small chin that he always found curiously endearing. She was four years younger than he, but there was something inexperienced and sheltered about her that made her always seem younger. The first time, years ago, he had called her by the affectionate Christl, he had thought of the English meaning of the two syllables and found it oddly appropriate. Crystal. She was somehow like the word, delicate and fragile. These past weeks, she had seemed so troubled, so inadequate for the grinding decision.

Only today, Paul came in from school and—he was joking of course—

Yes, and he—?

There was commotion above them. They both looked up; the children were racing along the hall and then down the stairs. Their beloved black spaniel, Hansi, raced after them. Midway down, Paul stopped, seeing his father’s eye upon him. Then he tensed his small body into a soldier’s straight, line, clicked his heels, and shot his right arm up.

"Heil Hitler, he shouted. Sieg Heil."

There—that’s—that’s what he did today, Christa whispered.

Ah-h-h—

It was a long, difficult breath that came out of him. Only part of it was anger. A long time ago, or so it seemed now, he had heard his breath wrung out of him so, long, painful. Then too only part of it had been anger. He had been reading a speech made by the German Minister of Justice to the Association of University Professors.

Today the German university professor, the Minister had said, must ask himself one question: ‘Does my scientific work serve the welfare of National Socialism?’

That same labored exhaling then. Part of it was anger, and part a grotesque weary defeat. Defeat for him, for every student, for every scientist, for every free mind.

"Sieg Heil. Heil Hitler." His small, happy son, so independent, so sturdy, so—so decent. Yet so reachable, still, so malleable.

Both children were upon him now, chattering questions and greetings. Christa went into the library and a moment later he had sent the children into the garden and was at her side. He put his hand on her arm. Reassurance. Comfort.

They will not have time, Christl, he said. This is just a child’s aping. For the real thing—we will not give them time. Next week several mail boats are due. The letter must be on one of them.

And his mind saw the letter, in Ann Willis’ firm, squared American handwriting, with its purplish or blue stamps reading United States of America; it was tossed in with a thousand other letters in a canvas mail sack, and that sack with hundreds of other such sacks was now, this very moment, in the hold of some great ship crossing the seas, heading for Cherbourg or Southampton or Bremerhaven. The great turbines were in motion, the commanders were on duty, the watch was alert on the bridge, all was in order and the ships were steadily, pleasantly furrowing the waters of the Atlantic, carrying crates of goods, cases, boxes, carrying sacks of mail.

Somewhere in one of those ships was his letter that spelled the end of an era in his life. How many other such letters did those ships carry?

It seemed to him suddenly that part of him had known as far back as 1933 that the day would come when he too would be waiting for such a letter. That faraway day when they burned the books in Germany—he had known then that the dear world of freedom was going up in that murky smoke. He had known that those brutish flames would lick across every timber in the whole structure of civilized life—so slowly, so laboriously constructed through patient centuries—the whole structure of free thought, free worship, free protest.

He had read of the burning of the books and his own constricted throat told him how the awful ashes of it would clog and choke the very breath of science, of literature, of jurisprudence and teaching. The twentieth century, he thought on that day in 1933, would lie gasping within a decade.

The books, the Reichstag Fire, the first decrees against the Jews, the first dismissals of college professors, the first swooping arrests in the night—each had warned him, in another country, that the holocaust might spread to Austria next. Nor had he ever truly blinded himself into believing that somehow he would escape it, he, Dr. Franz Wilhelm Vederle, for all his scientific position, for all that he was an Aryan—that disgusting and untenable word.

Yes, a part of him had understood, had estimated the future, had acted. Quietly and steadily he had begun, as long ago as 1934, to prepare, financially at least, for the ultimate necessity of flight.

I must ask something of you, he would say to every British or American patient, although it is not—er—classic analytical procedure for the analyst to ask a favor of his patient.

Yes, Dr. Vederle? I should be so glad… How eager the new patient was, to bribe the analyst.

It will put you to some small trouble. When you pay your bills, will you be so kind as to pay me only half, and to send the rest to a close friend of mine in Basel?

Oh, yes, of course, but that is nothing. The voice was always disappointed. The bribe was too small to be effective.

And now in Switzerland he had a small fortune of some forty thousand Swiss francs. That was comforting in this hazardous new world. He had, too, kept the family papers and passports in order. To that extent he had acted.

But apart from that, he knew that he was deeply unprepared. The other part of his mind, he now thought, sitting alone in his charming small library with the cheery voices of Christa and the children drifting in to him—the other part of his mind had always rejected, refused the image. A hundred thousand people might be fleeing National Socialism and Fascism, a half million, a million, but that harsh necessity will never be my necessity. The madness in Germany will pass, the folly of it will lessen, Hitler will be discredited, be assassinated, die—somehow the forces of justice and sanity will regain the upper hand while there is yet time, and then all this brutish attack on human lives, dignity, security will be done. Before it can strike Austria. Before it can strike me and Christa and the children…

The two interlocked yet always warring parts of his mind had spawned forth inertia, the sad, weak progeny of conflict. He was, in this, like so many of his own patients. Like some woman in love with a man who consistently hurt her, gave her only pain and shock, yet whom she could not seem to give up. Such a woman could feel clearly that the future was hopelessly doomed between her and her lover, yet at the same time cling to the fantasy, the hope that something would occur, something would change the pattern, and then all would be peace and joy. Such a woman never could take the decisive step. The dream vanquished the reality.

In the same way, he was enmeshed in a love fantasy. He was in love, not only with his life in Vienna. But also he was in love with the dream that reason and decency would triumph before it was forever too late, before the problem became his own personal problem.

So far the dream had conquered.

Once every so often, in the passing months and years, there came a specific act strong enough to pierce that continuing hope. That night in February, 1934, when little Dollfuss struck out against the workers, when he and Fey and the Heimwehr under Prince Starhemberg began virtual civil war against forty per cent of the people to make a clean breast of things in Austria.

That night he had seen the inescapable future. What had happened to lull him again? Ilse was ill, she was the merest infant then—ah, yes, his anxieties were channeled toward her. Time passed, and then in June came the purges in Berlin and everyone said this was the first real rift, the Nazi ranks would crack soon, the worst fanaticism would disappear…

The Nazi murder of Dollfuss, their seizure of the Chancellory and the radio station—that rocked him as it did all Austrians. But once again, the terrible rhythm of renewed hope. Schuschnigg and Miklas seemed to maintain control. Perhaps the coup had really failed. Austria, after all, was not Prussia; Austrians, after all, were civilized, tolerant, humane people…

Always, always, part of his mind seeing, estimating, hearing the roar of the onrushing tide. But always, always, it would ebb again, leaving enough confusion to starve the will, to nourish the dream.

February, 1938, little more than a month ago, and Schuschnigg in secret meeting with Hitler at Berchtesgaden. Ah, then the beating heart, the thrusting sense of time lost, of the inactive months and years.

Since then, only a mounting progression of anxious hours and days. Schuschnigg and Miklas surrendered to the demands of the Berchtesgaden Agreement. There was a new cabinet, Nazi Seyss-Inquart was Minister of the Interior. There was amnesty for all Nazi prisoners. There would be a plebiscite—free will, free choice, in the true spirit of democracy. The class of 1915 was called up. Everywhere were fearful whisperings about invasion, the German Reichswehr would march, was marching. Mobs of young Austrian Nazis sang and howled in the streets. Sieg Heil, Sieg Heil, Sieg Heil—Heil Hitler.

And then came the eleventh of March.

Dr. Vederle knew then, knew that day, that years must pass before any March 11 could become just a simple, sunny day again, rather than the bitter tombstone of Austria’s past.

On Friday, March 11, 1938, the Reichswehr marched. The plebiscite was ordered off by Berlin the master; the whole people clung to the wireless, heard rumor, report, counterreport, snatches of song, Viennese waltzes, too poignant now to be borne, heard at last that "Achtung, Achtung—an important announcement coming."

Then for breathless seconds only the tick-tick-tick of the metronome that was Ravag’s station identification. Tick-tick-tick; gone-gone-gone—

Then Schuschnigg’s voice: The German Government today handed President Miklas an ultimatum…we have yielded to force…God protect Austria…

God protect Austria. The next morning sudden swastikas flew from every building, laughing, swaggering young Nazis swarmed the streets, hurled bricks and stones through the windows of Jewish shops, tossed down steins of beer in the great gulps of celebrating victors.

God protect Austria. Already on that first day, the smell of danger, of persecution and political slavery, was in the nostrils.

That same day, two Jewish families in the Vederles’ own circle of friends left: the Wolffs, bound for the safety of Holland, the Markheimers for France. Franz and Christa took them to the station. Their Auf Wiedersehen’s were hollow, full of restraint on both sides. Only little Editha Wolff, aged five, told what was in the heart to be told.

"But I don’t want to go anywhere; please let’s go home, it’s better at home than anywhere."

The next day Franz went to a special board meeting of the Vienna Psychoanalytical Society. It was Sunday afternoon, and the meeting took place in Freud’s apartment, amid the old plush furniture of the ’90’s when he had first moved into the Berggasse. The members showed, quite realistically, tension and unease. They knew well the Nazi attitude toward psychoanalysis, the science that dealt with men’s minds, that was an hourly rebuttal of the new myths of racism and Blut. Besides, many of the members were Jews. Sigmund Freud himself—would he now, like Einstein in Germany…?

At the end of the meeting, Freud came in, old and fragile and calm. Anna Freud told him of the board’s decision, that even in migration each member of the Viennese Society would go on being a member of this Society until he were able to practice elsewhere, and join some other. She told him that the board had voted that the seat of the Society would always be wherever Freud was, and had asked him to remain its President. He agreed, and then he spoke. In his low, somewhat husky voice, he offered some final words to these men who would carry on their work in other lands.

Immediately after the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem by Titus, he said, his fine long hands quiet instead of moving in their usual deft gestures, Rabbi Jochanan ben Zakkai asked for permission to open at Jabne the first school for the study of the Torah. That is what we will do with our science—we will carry it elsewhere, where there is still freedom. He spoke on briefly, and then left the room once more. But at the door, he turned and said, Hold fast to the truth.

Franz, like the others, knew that it was probably the last time he would see and hear this great man, and the sounds of his final words stirred deep and warm in his heart throughout the rest of the day and night.

On Monday morning, Vienna woke to the sure feeling that the German army was near. German soldiers, German S.S. men were everywhere. Hundreds of airplanes flew low over the city, roaring through the early spring sunshine, casting incessant shadows. In the trees and bushes, the birds started up anxiously; in the streets and gardens, the children were disturbed and apprehensive.

From his office, Franz drove to the University, where he was an associate professor. Many of his printed papers were there, as well as some work in progress, still in manuscript form. They would be safer in his own study at home.

The head of the department was leaving the building.

"Heil Hitler," the professor of psychiatry greeted Franz.

There was a pause. Men taking each other’s measures.

"Guten Abend," Vederle replied at last. The other’s eyelids drew together. Antagonism stood instantly between them. So quickly were the lines to be drawn?

This is a good time for you, the professor went on. There will be many vacancies at once. The Jew cowards will run fast. It will be easy now for you to attain a full professorship.

I suppose it would be.

Shaken with anger, he went inside and speedily put his papers together. Outside again in half an hour, he found the early twilight of middle March already softening and blurring outlines of buildings, trees. The wind fell away, the daylight withdrew, quietly, patiently. Only, overhead, the sky was efficient with the steady roar of the German planes, the red and green lights on their wing tips like swift, colored meteors in some new astronomy.

Homebound, he found himself passing police headquarters. Impulsively he went in.

Are the borders still open? I am Dr. Vederle of the University. May a citizen travel without special permission?

"Still open, Herr Doktor. Except, naturlich, for Jews."

At home, the children leaped upon him in all their untouched delight. They were so unaware, unknowing, free of doubt and fear.

No scenes of brutality had assaulted their young eyes as yet, no frightened whispering in the night their ears. When they went up to bed, he as well as Christa followed to say good night. He kept his voice casual, friendly, answered Paul’s incessant questions about ordinary things in his ordinary tone. Only, when he leaned down to kiss Ilse’s scrubbed, shining little girl’s face, he kissed her with a new vehemence. Some savage, determined protectiveness stirred deeply in him.

What’s the matter, Daddy? she asked in her sweet, high voice. Is something the matter?

The same sweet, high voice of little Editha Wolff at the station. "But I don’t want to go anywhere…"

Nothing’s the matter, silly child, he said. Oh, with the world, yes, but not for us. And at the reassuring sound of his love, Ilse smiled at him and cuddled herself into a drowsy crescent.

Downstairs again, Christa turned to him. Her face was grave; her blue eyes were steady and curiously stilled.

It will be impossible for us, he said. Dearest, I know how you resist the idea of going—

Not any more, she answered quickly. Oh, today was a sign. I went to the Webbers’. They were there, the S.A. men. They demanded old Mr. Webber’s passport, his bankbooks. They were taking him to the new Gestapo office. For ‘examination.’ He is so old, Franz, so fine, only a few months ago he was presented by Miklas himself with the gold medal. And today—there he stood, old and tired, with these S.A. men shouting as if he were a thief. They kept saying something about his speeches against National Socialism. He refused to give over his passport—I—I was afraid, and it was I who begged him to—

Her voice broke. He took her into his arms, patted her head as he might Ilse’s or Paul’s. In the four weeks just past, she had skillfully sidled away from any discussion about leaving Austria. She had talked more than usual of her love for the house and Döbling, busily sewed ruffly little curtains for their summer place on the clean, clear lake near the Traunstein Mountain.

He said nothing, simply waited. So one waits for the analysis and, to go on, to dredge up the hidden feelings, the deep fears, the lost memories.

And then I went to the Brauns’, Christa continued, to ask if they could help Johann Webber through that uncle of theirs who’s a judge. Some of their Jewish friends were there. Suddenly the janitor flung open the door without knocking or ringing. He’s a secret Nazi, nobody knew, nobody even suspected. He ordered their Jewish friends out, ordered the Brauns not to let Jews into the apartment any more. His voice was so—so arrogant, Oh, Franz, darling, this new sudden cruelty—the streets, the windows smashed—what is to become of us all?

He held her closer. She was seeing the small personal tragedies—God knows they are enough; if one sees and feels them deeply enough one is seeing and feeling history.

But he knew she was not relating any of it, really, to the sweep of the future. She did not know that they had already arrested many thousands, not only Jews, but also thousands of Catholics who supported Schuschnigg, hundreds of labor leaders, scores of journalists. She did not even wonder yet about the world beyond these smashed homes, these tinkling slivers of windows on pavements. She had not thought what it meant that England and France were politically shrugging their shoulders, speaking politely about the internal affairs of other countries as none of their business. Probably Christa did not even know yet—

Did you listen to the radio? he asked.

No. I can’t bear to turn it on any more. She leaned away from him to search his face. Her eyes opened wider. What, Franz, anything new? Oh, tell me, is there any hope—

Hitler entered Vienna late this afternoon. Entered in triumphal procession, the Conqueror.

She gasped. Her mouth made a small oblique O like a yawning baby’s.

He will speak tomorrow from the Hofburg. From the balcony he will shout to the people that they are now a part of his glorious Reich.

That night they cabled Ann Willis.

As in a Bach fugue, one melodic part or voice makes its solo entrance, establishes its theme, and engages the attention, then is followed by a second voice, crossing and mingling with it, and then duly by a third voice and finally a fourth, so the flight of humankind from Germany, from 1933 onward, was only the first major statement of the theme of the great migrations of the 1930’s.

In the summer of 1936 the second voice issued forth from Spain, swelling to fuller volume in 1937. And now in Austria, in March, 1938, still a third was coming in to join its stately and harrowing melody to the other continuing parts.

Each part or voice was played not by a dozen human beings, but by hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands, half millions. The listening ear of Europe and of the world knew by some tense and unwilling instinct that the fugue was not yet squared, that another voice was still to be heard in the tragic counterpoint. And perhaps not only one other, as in the classical fugue, but many others were yet to come, to widen the fugue form out into a world-enveloping symphony.

From the East, from Hangchow and Nanking and Shanghai, where sixteen millions were now in that other kind of flight upon their own soil, crawling through fields and along choked roads from province to province—from the East came the strident, brassy assurance that this would be so.

CHAPTER TWO

IT WAS FROM A portable radio, instrument for picnics and holiday hours, that Vera Marriner learned of Anschluss.

For a second she scarcely took in the meaning of the news. The quiet British voice went on with the Reuter’s dispatch, and a moment later she sat up violently and searched about her on the blinding white sand for the source of the hateful words.

There it rested, just one of innumerable similar portable sets, this one under a bright beach umbrella at Montego Bay, Jamaica, in the British West Indies. The innocent, indifferent box went on tossing out into the yellow sunshine its black message of calamity.

Her heart contracted, as with a purely personal pain. She didn’t know Austria, as she had once known Germany, but she had heard so much of so many people there, from Jasper, from Ann Willis, that she could not feel impersonal now.

So here he goes, this is it, this is the real beginning, she thought. "All that about the Ruhr and the Rhineland was just winding up…but this…now he’s really begun scooping up great chunks of Europe into his Reich. Damn him, damn him—"

For a moment she wished she were at home, where she could talk this out with people who would be as angry as she. Yet she had come alone all this way south partly at least to escape the political and social nervousness of New York and the people she knew. Remembering that, she got to her feet and started up along the curve of beach, along the shining spread of blue water. Her mind worked over the vast implications of the news.

She was hailed half a dozen times, by people she had come to know in the three weeks since she had come down. Their voices, their words, showed they had not heard, or else had heard and already dismissed the news from their thoughts. That angered her, too.

She walked on more briskly. Her body was a dark, positive brown, already impervious to the stinging sun. In the flushed dark of her tanned face, the light, clear gray of her eyes was startling and compelling. Her warmly brown hair blew about, wavy and free, springing back from the ribbon tied about her head. She was small and slim; the brief white bathing suit gave her a long-legged look that made her seem taller than she was.

For all her regular features and gray eyes, she carried in her face somewhere a slightly foreign look, the look of Magyar or Slav or Central European. It was there in the deep socketing of the wide-set eyes, in the high cheekbones; it was in the rather large mouth and the quick mobility of her expression. She was no good at dissembling what she felt; she could not act a part with any skill whatever.

Now as she strode along, she was disturbed and she looked disturbed. She wondered what Jasper felt when he had heard the news from Europe. It must have held a special prod for him, and a special meaning. Everything now was translated into the vigorous language of his own purpose. That was inevitable, she knew. She could imagine the very words he was saying this moment up there in New York.

Before the quiet British voice with the Reuter’s dispatch had broken into her thoughts, she had been lying on the busy, bright beach, lazying through thoughts and memories as they came. If a vacation alone had any special merit to recommend it, it surely lay in the opportunity to think, to browse through her mind and her memories, as if she were browsing through some dim library open only to herself, where each book on every shelf was an autobiography of some phase of her own life. As she lay on the sand, thinking, this notion struck her; it pleased her and made her smile faintly.

One such volume in this secret library was titled Jasper and I; that was the latest, the most absorbing, though it was still unfinished and Volume II still unwritten. Another was named My Marriage and Divorce; that seemed to be bound in some meaningless gray, and was on the whole a dull, mediocre thing, rather than a tragic one. Another was My Childhood, and another, My Success Story—Don’t Make Me Laugh.

There were many other volumes there, some short, some very long, some seemed bound in flamboyant scarlet leathers and others in the prosy cloth of schoolbooks. But one volume was missing—the restless, heated discussions of politics among her friends at home always served as a reminder of the gap. Yet this book could not be there until she herself had formulated its contents. It could never be there until she herself knew what it was she really stood for, found the continuing pattern she could live by. As yet she couldn’t even catch up this ghostly volume with any title at all, so formless was it. But someday it would be there too, and it would be a blessed book, an unquenchable book.

Until it was there, she would have a nameless unrest and searching. Neither her marriage, nor her work, nor her love affair with Jasper had quieted the one and given answer to the other.

She envied the positive ones, the devout Catholics, the ecstatic Communists, the untroubled devotees of any cause. They no longer were a-search. They knew; they had their purpose. But one could not simply decide, cool intellectual decision, I will become passionately involved in this or that movement; I will devote myself to the juvenile delinquency problem; or I will crusade for better conditions for Negroes; or I will immerse myself heart and soul in the labor movement…

Jasper never seemed to be troubled so. His own ambitions, his own determination to own the most famous network on the world’s air, were the inner drive that propelled him onward through every obstacle, through every emotion. It made him unswerving; his enemies called him ruthless. Many people whom he himself would call friends privately thought him so, too.

She herself did not know what he was. He did things differently from other people, that was true. He was unlike any other man she had ever known. In big ways, in little ways. Take so small an instance as his seeing her off on this very trip.

He himself had telephoned to suggest driving her to the airport.

It had never occurred to her that he would break into one of his crowded days to see her off on a short holiday.

Oh, Jas, how dear of you, when you’re so busy.

Well, it’s our first separation, isn’t it? he asked.

But the next day, when he came for her, he strode into her apartment, elated, talkative, triumphant.

It’s a red-letter day, today is, he greeted her.

Because I’m going away?

Because it was signed and delivered this morning. The station is mine—it’s been mine legally, officially, financially mine for three hours. It doesn’t belong to Grosvenor any more.

Jas, that’s grand, to have it settled at last. She was glad for him, deeply glad. No wonder he was so high-spirited.

God, if it were only the whole network as well. I’m going mad at the lost chances because I’m not ready. Here’s all hell going to break in Austria and what do they broadcast? Hitler and Schuschnigg at Berchtesgaden yesterday—and CBS sends out a program called Old Vienna. Christ, one broadcast this whole month from Austria, and it turns out folk songs. God knows what NBC did.

His strong voice now had scorn and hatred in it.

If I were only ready—I’d be sending out news from Austria every couple of hours, not songs and music, but news, excitement, crisis. Radio’s coming to that, Vee—damn them if they beat me to it.

They won’t. There’s no reason to think—

The idea’s getting around. I’m the very one who’s constantly talking it up—talking to every new prospect about my plans for regular, daily news from London, Berlin, Paris. And every damn day for a year I’ve known somebody’s going straight back to the big boys, spilling my ideas, handing them right over—

He broke off suddenly, shrugged. The intensity went out all over him, from his voice, his eyes, his muscles.

Oh, the hell with them, he said coldly. They’ll take the idea and then muff it anyway, because they’ll be scared of its heat, the sweep of it. But I’ve got to hurry. I hurry in my sleep.

She looked at her watch then.

We’ve got to hurry now, or I’ll miss the plane.

He looked suddenly apologetic.

Vee, I’m no good, talking business now. With you going— He looked to her for reassurance, found her face smiling. You’re a darling to let me. Come on, not another word about it.

But in his car, through the gray, unlovely drive to Newark Airport, the talk soon went back to the network, and stayed there. At the airport, there was a last-minute rush to check her tickets, weigh in her luggage. The passengers were already boarding the plane.

He took her to the gate. Then his face changed.

Good-by, darling, I’ll miss you, he said. I’ll hate your being away.

I’ll miss you, too, Jas. But it’s not for so long.

If you get a new beau down there, I’ll come and tear his ears off.

He leaned down to her, ignoring anybody who might see. He kissed her and then held her away from him a moment, staring at her, as if he were suddenly finding it too hard to part. For one moment she wished she were not going.

Flight Fifteen, all aboard Flight Fifteen, Charleston, Jacksonville, Miami—

He dropped his arms; she turned quickly away from him, went through the gate.

If you meet any big shots down there, his voice shouted after her, teasing, gay, anybody from BBC, fix my deal for me, will you?

She pretended she had not heard.

That was Jasper. The scene came back to her as she lay in the sand—no wonder she herself did not know what he was. And he was as contradictory in other ways.

He described himself as a liberal, spoke often of the little people and the injustice life ladled out to them—but his voice remained tranquil, his eyes cold. She always disliked the phrase itself, with its implication that the speaker