War and Remembrance (68 page)

Still, they were to go on to Corsica via Elba as planned. Rabinovitz was arranging to bring them from Corsica to Marseilles, where most of the rescue agencies operated. Several routes existed for going on from Marseilles to Palestine or Lisbon. That was Rabinovitz’s message. But Frankenthal told them of a more direct way to get to Marseilles. Vessels carrying iron ore from the mines of Elba and Massa Marittima for transshipment to the Ruhr made the run from Piombino every week or so. The British navy did not bother the ore boats. He knew a captain who would take them straight to Marseilles for five hundred dollars a passenger.

They were still at the table, drinking chicory by the light of the waning candles. Jastrow said drily, “I sailed from New York to Paris for five hundred dollars, first class.”

“Professore,
that was peacetime. The other way, God knows how long you’ll be stuck in Elba or in Corsica. On the boat you’ll sleep in beds, a direct trip, three days, the children safe.”

He left to catch the last bus for Piombino, saying he would telephone in a day or two for their decision. “Take the ore boat,” were his parting (words.

Jastrow spoke first, with acid amusement, when he was gone. “If we do take the ore boat, this fellow will get a fat cut of our money.”

“Do you trust him?” Natalie asked Castelnuovo.

“Well, I know he comes from Rabinovitz.”

“How do you communicate with Avram?”

“Cables about innocuous matters. Otherwise, messengers like this fellow. Why?”

“I’m thinking of just going back to Siena.”

Sacerdote said to his son-in-law, putting his arm around his frightened-looking wife, “She’s right. You said we would go to Lisbon and never set foot in France.”

“Yes, Papa, and now that has changed,” Castelnuovo said with exaggerated forbearance, “and so, we’re having a little chat.”

Natalie turned to Jastrow. “When I went to meet Byron in Lisbon, the Vichy police pulled me off the train to check my papers. They were in order, luckily. My spine went icy when they asked whether I was a Jew.” She turned to Castelnuovo. “What recourse would we have now in France, Jews travelling illegally? Suppose they jail us? I could become separated from Louis!”

“Avram will arrange transit visas for us,” said Castelnuovo. “Papers can always be had.”

“Fake papers, you mean,” said Sacerdote.

“Papers that will pass.”

Jastrow said, “Let’s not be faint-hearted. We have set out. I confess I never liked the island jumping plan. As long as we’re going to Marseilles, I say let’s take the ore boat. One big bribe, one comfortable trip, that’s my notion.”

Castelnuovo made an impatient gesture with both hands. “Now look, I already knew all about the ore boats. They dock in a maximum security area of Marseilles, behind a high fence with French military patrols, and German inspectors from the Armistice Commission. The captain cares nothing about you. It’s just your money. If any danger arises to him — pauf! — his neck comes first. Going through the islands, we’ll be in the hands of people Rabinovitz knows.”

“I imagine my wife and I will go back,” Sacerdote said very solemnly to Jastrow. “We must still talk it over, of course. But our son is there, you know.” The old woman was sniffling into a handkerchief.

Jastrow quickly said, “It’s natural. It’s your home. For us it’s safer to go on.”

The old couple went upstairs. Jastrow and Castelnuovo debated some more about the ore boat. Castelnuovo hated to trust his family’s lives, he said, to a bribed Italian. The price could jump in mid-passage; the man could take the money and fail to perform; he could in fact sell them out. Resistance people stood for something more than an itching palm.

At last Jastrow said, “Look here, is our organizing principle democracy or authority? If it’s authority, you decide.”

Castelnuovo sourly laughed, waving off the suggestion.

“Well, then, I vote for the ore boat.”

Anna Castelnuovo said, “Two votes.”

“You’re a mule,” her husband said, but the tone was wryly affectionate. He turned to Natalie. “Well?”

“The ore boat.”

Castelnuovo pursed his mouth, lightly struck the table, and stood up. “Settled.”

On a gray cool afternoon, coming back from an eight-mile walk, Natalie noticed from a distance a parked car near the house. There were few private cars in Follonica. Her steps quickened, and something like a prayer flitted through her mind: “Let it not be trouble.” As she drew nearer she recognized the Mercedes. In the house Jastrow and Werner Beck sat at the dining table over tea and a platter of cakes. Yellow typescripts of Jastrow’s broadcasts lay scattered on the bare table.

Werner Beck got up, smiling and bowing. “Delighted. It’s been so long!” She could barely choke out a civil response. He glanced down at his SS uniform with an apologetic little laugh. “Ah, yes. Never mind my for
midable masquerade. I’m on a tour of the western ports, Mrs. Henry, in connection with an unaccountable shortage of fuel oil, which my country has to supply to Italy one hundred percent. We’re sure the black market is draining it off Italians are more forthcoming with the truth when they see this uniform. My SS commission is purely honorary, but they don’t know that. Well, now, the sea air has done wonders for you. And the baby? How is he? I’d love to see him.”

Natalie said in as normal a tone as she could muster, “Shall I fetch him? How long can you stay?”

“Regrettably, not long. I have business in Piombino. Follonica’s only a short way off the main road, so I thought I’d drop by and pay my respects.”

“Let me get him, then.”

On the second floor the Castelnuovos, their faces pallid and strained, sat in their bedroom with the door wide open. The doctor beckoned to her and whispered, “Is that the man?”

“Yes.”

“I heard him mention Piombino.”

“He’s on an inspection tour.”

In the other room Miriam was amusing Louis with a ragged toy bear. She looked up like a worried grown woman when Natalie lifted him from his crib. “Where are you taking him?”

“Downstairs, just for a moment.”

“But downstairs there is a German.”

Natalie put a finger to her lips and bore off the yawning Louis. She halted on the staircase, hearing Beck raise his voice. “But Dr. Jastrow, all four broadcasts are fine as they stand. Why, they’re gemlike essays. You can’t change a word. Why not record them now? At least the first two?”

Jastrow’s voice, quietly serene: “Werner, a publisher once urged the poet A. E. Housman to print some essays he was discarding. Housman cut him off with these words: ‘
I did not say they were not good. I said they were not good enough for me.
’”

“That’s all very fine, but for us time is a key factor. If you could not polish these talks to your taste before the war was over, it would all be pretty pointless, hm?”

Jastrow’s chuckle was appreciative and jolly. “Very neat, Werner.”

“But I’m absolutely serious! I’m shielding you from painful harassment. You told me that a week or two by the sea was all you’d need. If this matter is ever taken out of my hands, Dr. Jastrow, you’ll be extremely sorry.”

Silence.

Natalie hurried down the stairs and into the dining room. Beck stood up, beaming at the child. “My goodness, but he has grown!” He slipped his glasses into a breast pocket and extended his arms. “May I take him? If you knew how I miss my Klaus, my youngest!”

Putting her son into the hands of this uniformed man gave Natalie a sick qualm, but Dr. Beck’s manner of handling the baby was knowing and gentle. Louis smiled beautifully at him. Dr. Beck’s eyes moistened, and he spoke in an artificial little voice. “Well, hello there! Hello, little happy boy! We’re friends, aren’t we? No politics between us, hm? — Well! Want my glasses, do you?” He pried the frames out of Louis’s tiny clutch. “Let’s hope you never need glasses. Here, your mother looks anxious, go back to her. Tell her I’ve never dropped a baby yet.”

Natalie clasped Louis with relief and sat down. Resuming his seat, Beck donned his glasses, and his face took on a severe cast. “Now then. I shall be returning from my tour in five days, and I propose to take you both with me to Rome. Dr. Jastrow, you must be ready to record the broadcasts. I’ve already made hotel arrangements, and I am going to be very firm about this.”

With a resigned mock-humble gesture of bowed shoulders and outstretched arms, Jastrow exclaimed, “Five days! Well, I can try to do something. But the second two scripts are out of the question, Werner. They’re simply scattered notes. I can attempt to cobble up the first one or two, dear fellow, but if you insist on all four, I shall simply lie down in my traces like the overloaded horse.”

Beck patted the old man’s knee. “Just have the first two ready when I return. Then we’ll see.”

“Is it really necessary for me to come to Rome, too?” Natalie asked.

“Yes.”

“Will we return to Siena afterward?”

“As you wish,” Beck said absently, glancing at his wristwatch and standing up. Aaron walked outside with him.

Down the stairs came the Castelnuovos, with Miriam tiptoeing behind her mother’s skirts. She poked out her head at Natalie and stage-whispered, “Did the German go away?”

“Yes, he’s gone.”

“Did he hurt Louis?”

“No, no, Louis is fine.” Natalie was clutching the baby as though picking him up after a fall. “Suppose I put you two out on the porch.”

“Can he have a cake?”

“All right.”

The four adults held a quick conclave in the dining room. That this was a crisis, that Jastrow had to move on, they took for granted. Castelnuovo had to consult Frankenthal, they decided, but not over the telephone. The afternoon bus was leaving in half an hour. The doctor clapped on his hat and departed. A grim evening followed. He returned early the next morning, to the immense relief of his wife, who had not slept. Frankenthal’s advice was that they had better go on to the islands after all, for an ore boat had sailed only last week. The next ferry to Elba was day after tomorrow.

“It’s off to Corsica, then,” said Natalie, covering the thumping of her heart with dogged gaiety.

“Off to Elba,” said the doctor. “There we’ll have to wait. Nothing is organized for Corsica as yet.”

“Well,” said Jastrow. “Napoleon made it off Elba, and so shall we.”

It rained and blew hard the morning they left. Waves were breaking high over the sea wall of the Piombino waterfront when the passengers began straggling aboard the small ferryboat pitching in its slip. Far off under a shed three waterfront customs guards, dry and snug, sat smoking pipes and drinking wine. Frankenthal had excursion permits ready, as well as tickets; the permits were required because of the prison on Elba. But there was no checking of papers. The fugitives boarded the ferry among other travellers under umbrellas; chains rattled, the diesel coughed stinking smoke, the ferry pulled unsteadily away from the slip, Frankenthal waved at them and shouted a casual good-bye, and they were
out!

Looking back at the mainland veiled by the downpour and by smoke from the Piombino blast furnaces, Natalie recalled how, the night before, the red flaming mouths of the furnaces outside the train window had scared Louis into a screaming fit, attracting an inspector examining passengers’ papers. Miriam had distracted both Louis and the official by chattering Italian baby talk in her bell-clear Tuscan accent, and he had laughed and walked off without giving them trouble. For all her nightmarish fears, that had been the only narrow moment in leaving Italy.

A slow nauseating trip over stormy waters, and Elba loomed through the drizzle, a broad mist-shrouded hump of green. They disembarked on a windy U-shaped waterfront lined with old houses under a long frowning old fortress. On Frankenthal’s instructions, Anna wore a white shawl and Natalie a blue one, and Aaron had a pipe in his mouth. A mule-drawn carriage driven by a gnarled old man drew up. He gestured at them to climb in, and he closed the carriage with very dirty canvas rain curtains. A long, long uphill ride ensued, with much bumping and sliding. Seen through isinglass panels, the hilly vineyards and farms were green blurs in fog. The air inside the canvas curtains was mildewy and close, the mule smell chokingly strong. The driver never spoke. Louis slept all the way. At last the carriage halted, the driver pulled back the curtains, and Natalie stiffly stepped down into a puddle, gulping the sweet damp country air. They were in the stone square of a sloping mountain village. There was nobody else in sight; not so much as a dog. Twilight was falling, the rain had stopped, the wet stone front of the old church looked violet, and the stillness was almost shocking.

“Where are we?” Natalie asked the driver in Italian. Her ordinary voice sounded like a shout.

He uttered his first word, “Marciana.”

S
TABLEHANDS
were grooming many neighing, stamping horses in the Bel Air Canyon Riding Academy, but no other riders were about except Madeline and Byron. Madeline’s habit was bandbox-new: fawn jodhpurs, softly gleaming brown boots, mannish feathered hat. Byron wore Warren’s Annapolis blazer with faded dungarees and sneakers. A withered groom in very dirty clothes, appraising him at a glance, brought out a large coal-black steed called Jack Frost. Byron adjusted the stirrups and mounted; whereupon Jack Frost, flattening his ears and redly rolling his eyes, took off up the canyon like a lunatic. He was a powerful animal with a smooth gallop, and Byron let him run free. Passing a white rag lying on the trail, Jack Frost reared, bucked, neighed, and snorted in a Hollywood enactment of acute panic. With some effort Byron stayed in the saddle. The horse, apparently concluding that he could ride, calmed down and glanced around at him inquiringly. Byron saw Madeline trotting along, far back on the trail, through Jack Frost’s settling dust. “Okay, this was your idea, horse,” he said with a kick. “Keep going.”