War and Remembrance (81 page)

The apartment was enormous, for Mendelson had knocked down walls and merged several flats to fashion this labyrinthine warren, where Louis kept disappearing down dim corridors with racketing children who yelled in Yiddish. Two other younger families, refugee relatives of Mendelson, lived in the place. Natalie had trouble sorting out the transients from the residents, but it didn’t really matter. The common tongue in the flat was Polish-Yiddish; in fact, the master plumber prided himself on a Yiddish historical romance he had written in his Warsaw youth, about the false Messiah Shabbatai Zvi. He had evidently paid to have it translated into French, for yellow-bound copies of
Le Faux Messie
lined the walls of the small room where Jastrow, Natalie, and Louis now dwelled. Glancing at this version, Natalie found it very silly stuff, though not bad for a plumber. Aaron, of course, with his flawless Yiddish, was right at home in the Mendelson menage; and as
der groiser shriftshteller
he received immediate deference. Louis had a boil of children to play with, Natalie could get along with her rusty Yiddish, and all in all it was a warm, noisy, homey milieu. She was grateful to Pascal Gaffori, when she thought about it, for having driven her to this little Jewish oasis in Marseilles to await her freedom.

At first she didn’t feel that way. The third night they were there, the police made a sweep of the neighborhood to round up alien Jews. Warned by his high-placed friends, Mendelson had notified as many Jews as he knew; and he assured Natalie and Aaron that his building would not be entered. When at midnight she heard excited talk in the front rooms, she
jumped from her bed and went to watch. Peeking through the curtains with the others, she saw two police vans surrounded by a docile crowd, much like onlookers at an accident, except for the valises they carried, and the small children among them. Under the eyes of a few gendarmes, they all peaceably got into the vans. The only odd detail was the frills of nightgowns, the legs of pajamas, and even bare feet, showing below the overcoats of some. Mendelson was right, the police never entered his building. The vans drove off, leaving the blue-lit street empty, and Natalie frightened.

She cheered up next day when Rabinovitz came with the news that the American consul general was expected back from Vichy in a day or two. Jim Gaither was a man of his word, the Palestinian said, a decent guy, a bonded officer with money and authority to deal with the Resistance. Since he had taken over the consulate, hundreds of people had received visas whose departure would otherwise have been blocked. A great admirer of A
Jew’s Jesus,
Gaither was handling the Jastrow-Henry file himself, taking no chances on a leak. Nobody else in the consulate knew anything about it. Once Gaither got back they could count on a prompt departure.

About the Castelnuovos Rabinovitz was less sanguine. The headstrong doctor was negotiating directly for passage to Algiers with the Bastia roughnecks who had brought them from Elba. Rabinovitz said these fellows were unreliable, even dangerous, except when dealing with old Gaffori. He wanted the Castelnuovos to stay where they were until some safer way to leave opened up. Corsica was a good refuge, with enough to eat and drink. But Castelnuovo was becoming obsessed with an itch to move on. “So far, luckily, those scoundrels are asking for more money than he’s got,” Rabinovitz said. “So maybe he’ll stay put. I hope so.”

When Byron returned to Marseilles with another pouch for Sam Jones, the vice consul told him that Gaither had returned; and that, on hearing the name and rank of the expected courier from Gibraltar, he had exclaimed, “Hooray!”

“He wants you to report to his office at once. Second floor. You’ll see the sign,” Jones said.
“Without fail
were his words. Is he an old friend of your family, or something?”

“Not that I know of,” Byron replied, with the greatest false show of nonchalance in his life. “Tell him I’m coming.” He leaped up the stairs to the second floor.

“Well!” exclaimed the consul general, standing up and extending a hand over his desk. “D’Artagnan!” In his yellow pullover and gray slacks he looked like an old tennis pro: tall, stringy, brown, with close-cut straight white hair.

Byron blurted, “Where are they?”

“What? Sit down.” The consul general laughed at the impetuous question.
“They’re in Corsica. Or they were, last I heard. They’re fine, the three of them. How the devil have you pulled this off?”

“Corsica!” Byron gasped. “Corsica! God Almighty, so close? How do I get there? Is there a boat? An airplane?”

Gaither laughed again, very agreeably. “Take it easy, young fellow.”

“You say they’re fine? You’ve seen them?”

“I’ve been in touch. They’re quite okay. There’s no airplane to Corsica. The boat runs three times a week, and it takes eleven hours. They’ll be leaving for Lisbon in a few days, Lieutenant, and —”

“They will? Why, that’s marvelous, sir. Are you sure? I have orders to return to the States. I’ll get to work on priorities, and maybe take them with me.”

“Could be.” Gaither shook his head, smiling. “You’re an energetic fellow. Aren’t you in submarines? How do you come to be in Gibraltar?”

“Can I talk to them on the telephone? Is there phone service to Corsica?”

“I wouldn’t recommend that.” Gaither leaned back in his chair, pulling at his lower lip. “Now look, Sam Jones has got an urgent job for you. You’ll have to return to Gibraltar tonight. Sam will bring you to my house for dinner about six. How’s that? We’ll have a long talk. I repeat, they’re fine, just fine, and they’ll be out of here in a few days. Incidentally, Sam Jones knows nothing about all this. Nobody does. Keep it that way.”

Impulsively Byron grasped his hand. “Thanks.”

“All right. Steady does it. Don’t get impatient.”

Jones gave Byron two sealed envelopes to deliver by hand to an unnamed place. A silent ghost-pale young man in a ragged sweater drove him out along the coast in an old taxicab, ceaselessly glancing at the rearview mirror. The ride took over an hour, ending in a bumpy ride down a dirt road to a small villa within sight of the blue calm sea, almost hidden by overgrown shrubs and vines. A wary woman half-opened the door to Byron’s knock. He could see behind her a tall mustached man looking keenly toward the door, hands jammed in the pockets of a red dressing gown. So he caught a good look at General Henri Giraud; though only long afterward, coming on a picture story of the Casablanca Conference in an old
Life
magazine, did he realize what his courier errands had been about, and who the man had been. It was after five o’clock when he returned to the consulate. Sam Jones said, rubbing his eyes and yawning, “Ready to go to the boss’s house? He’s waiting to give you dinner.”

Natalie put on the white dress for the Friday night meal, and arrayed Louis in his cleanest shirt and jumper. Rabinovitz was coming, and they were going afterward to his apartment in the Old Town. She had herself proposed this in all innocence, during their last chat in the clamorous living
room. She wanted to be alone with him, to talk in unhurried peace. Yet the last time she had invited herself to a man’s flat, her love affair with Slote had ensued; and, a bit laggardly, this thought was troubling her. On impulse she pinned to her dress the brooch of purple stones that Byron had given her in Warsaw.

On this night she did something she had not done before in her life; she lit Sabbath candles. It seemed more mannerly to do it than to decline, when Mrs. Mendelson, a stout, incessantly busy, incessantly cheerful red-faced woman, came to tell her the candles were ready. Scrubbed and dressed-up children crowded around their mothers by the long dining table, where eight candlesticks stood on a fresh white cloth. Covering her head with a kerchief, putting the match to two cheap sputtering candles, stammering the Hebrew blessing as Louis watched her with enormous eyes, Natalie felt decidedly peculiar. Mrs. Mendelson elbowed her and made a genial joke to the others:
“Zeh, zi vert by unz a ganzer rebbitzin.”
(“Look, we’re making her into a rabbi’s wife.”) Natalie sheepishly joined in the laughter.

While the children were being fed, Rabinovitz arrived. Above the piping tumult of the children, he said, “Jim Gaither’s back. I missed him at the consulate, but I’ll go and see him tomorrow morning. That’s a pretty piece of jewelry.”

When the children swarmed out of the dining room, the adults gathered at the reset table. Rabinovitz was just sitting down beside Natalie when the doorbell rang. Mendelson answered it. He came back to tap Rabinovitz on the shoulder, and without a word Rabinovitz got up and left. He tended to come and go like a wraith, and nobody commented. The seat was left vacant beside Natalie. Twelve people, including several famished new transients, fell to the meal. It was all black market fare, obviously: baked fish, fish soup, and boiled chickens, the bones of which the transients loudly gnawed to splinters. Brown bottles of fiery potato spirits went round, and Aaron Jastrow quaffed more than his share.

Ever since his arrival, Aaron had been holding forth at table, overawing even Mendelson. Tonight he was in good form. The sacrifice of Isaac came up, for it was in the Sabbath Torah reading. Mendelson had a brash atheist of a son-in-law named Velvel, his partner in the plumbing business, characterized by a lot of bushy red hair and strong opinions. Velvel said the story exposed the Jewish God as a fictive Asian despot, and the author as a Bronze Age savage. Coolly Aaron put Velvel down. “The story’s about Abraham, not God, don’t you understand, Velvel? Even a
goy
like Kierkegaard could see that. Read
Fear and Trembling
some time. The people of Father Abraham’s time burned children to their gods. Archaeology confirms it. Yes, Abraham took up the knife. Why? To show for all time that he cared no less for God than the pagans did for their bloody idols. He trusted God to make him drop the knife before he hurt the boy. That’s the whole point of the story.”

“Beautiful,” said Mendelson, adjusting a large black yarmulka on his white hair. “That’s a beautiful interpretation. I must read Kierkegaard.”

“And suppose,” Velvel grumbled, “God hadn’t told the old fanatic to drop the knife?”

“Why, the Bible would end at Genesis twenty-two,” Aaron retorted, smiling. “There’d have been no Jewish people, no Christianity, no modern world. Holocausts of children might still be going on. But you see, He did tell him to drop it. Western civilization turns on that stark fact. God wants our love, not the ashes of our children.”

“What a depressing conversation,” said Mrs. Mendelson, jumping up to collect dishes. “Burning children, slaughtering a boy!
Feh!
Velvel, play something happy.”

Velvel got his guitar and struck up a Sabbath hymn,
Yah Ribon,
which everyone sang. Even Natalie knew that this instrument playing violated orthodox rules. In the Mendelson ménage everything went eccentrically. The women cleared the table and brought on tea and coarse cakes, and the singers grew very jolly in a ditty about an Old King Cole sort of rabbi sending for fiddlers, drummers, fifers, and so on. Natalie joined the women in the kitchen to get the dishes and pots washed before the electricity went off. In the dining room Velvel began to play an old lullaoy,
Rozhinkes mit Mandlen
(Raisins and Almonds). This song was now Aaron’s solo; he was vain about knowing all the Yiddish verses. Softly accompanied by the guitar, Aaron began the haunting nonsense refrain that stirred Natalie’s heart with powerful childhood echoes:

Under my darlings cradle

Lies a little white goat.

The little goat went into business,

That will be your career.

Raisins and almonds,

Sleep, little boy, sleep, dear.

She heard the outside door open and close. Avram Rabinovitz appeared in the kitchen doorway, his face pale and smiling. “Natalie?” She came to the doorway, drying her hands on her apron. In the hallway, redolent of Sabbath food aromas, dim light from a wall bracket fell slantwise on Byron in his gray raincoat, standing with a large valise in one hand, and a leather pouch in the other. Natalie’s legs almost gave way at the shock. He looked much changed, but there was no mistaking him.

“Hi, darling,” Byron said.

* * *

(from
World Holocaust
by Armin von Roon)

The Torch assault on North Africa was an Anglo-American gesture to placate Stalin. Since the day we invaded the Soviet Union, he had been nagging the British to open a “second front NOW in Europe.” This demand was empty noise and Stalin knew it. The British were too weak for that.

But once Japan was goaded into the Pearl Harbor attack, enabling Roosevelt to make the gleeful plunge into world war, Stalin’s demand became clamorous. The unscathed American Union, sitting prosperous and happy beyond bomber range, could field ten million men. Its capacity for making the tools of war was immense, and the Soviet Union was hard-pressed.

Yet the warmongering President had only a half-trained expanding army of green recruits, led by an unblooded officer cadre. Civilian morale was unstable. Mild rationing ordinances brought wails of protest; austerities that we Germans had been taking for granted for years seemed to the spoiled Americans the end of the world. What was worse — and this was fundamental, and Roosevelt knew it — like the Italians,
the American people were incapable of accepting substantial battle losses. This fact shaped all of Franklin Roosevelt’s war decisions, including the North African landing.