Rhoda saw that talking to her son would be useless. She went upstairs to her dressing7 room, took out a letter she had put in a drawer beneath her underwear, read it once, then tore it into very small pieces. (from WORLD EMPIRE LOST) The "Phony" War The quiescent8 half year between the fall of Warsaw and the Norway episode became known in the West as the "phony" war, a phrase attributed to an American Senator. We called it the Sitzkrieg, or "sitting war," a play on Blitzkrieg. On the British and French side the name was perhaps justified9. During this lull10 they in fact cad unbelievably little to improve their military posture11, besides sit on their backsides and predict our collapse12. Early in this strange twilight13 period, the Fuhrer delivered his "outstretched hand" peace speech to the Reichstag. Like most of his political moves, it was cleverly concdived. Had the Allies swallowed it, we might have achieved surprise in the west with a November attack, which Hitler had ordered when Warsaw fell, and which we were feverishly15 planning. But by now the Western statesmen had developed a certain wariness17 toward our Fuhrer, and their response was disappointing. In the event this did not matter. A combination of bad weather and insoluble supply problems forced one postponement18 after another on the impatient Fuhrer. The intent to attack France was never Ot issue, but the date and the strategy kept changing. In all, the attack day was postponed19 twenty-nine times. Meanwhile preparations went forward at an evermounting tempo20. Our staff's favorite comic reading as we worked on Fall Gelb-"Cose Yellow," the attack on France-came to be the long, learned articles in French newspapers and military journals, proving that we were about to cave in under economic pressure. In Point of fact, for the first time our economy was really getting moving. Life in Paris, we gathered, was gayer and more relaxed than before the war. The British Prime Minister Chamberlain epitomized the Western frame of mind by stating, "Hitler has missed the bus." In this enforced half-year delay German industrial war production began to rise andespite the neverending confusion and interference in the Fuhrer's headquarters-a new and excellent strategy for the assault on France was at last hammered out. Distraction23 in Finland The sitzkrieg lull was temporarily enlivened when the Soviet24 union attacked Finland. Stalin's unvarying policy after signing the Ribbentrop pact26 was to seize whatever territory he could, while we were at war with the democracies, to strengthen his position for an eventual27 showdown with us. Hitler had already given him huge concessions28 in the Baltic states and in Poland, to buy a free hand against the West. But like all Russian rulers, Czarist or Bolshevik, Stalin had a big appetite. This was his chance to take over the Karelian Isthmus29 and dominate the Gulf30 of Finland. When his emissaries failed to get these concessions from the proud Finns by threats, Stalin set out to take them by force. The rights of Finland were, as a matter of course, to be trampled31 upon.
But to the world's surprise, the Russian dictator got in trouble, for the attack went badly. The vaunted Red Army covered itself with disgrace, revealing itself in Finland as an ill-equipped, ill-trained, miserably32 led rabble33, unable to crush a small well-drilled foe34. Whether this was due to Stalin's purges35 of his officer force in the late thirties, or to the traditional Russian inefficiency36 added to the depressant effect of Bolshevism, or to the use of inferior troops, remained unclear. But from November 1939 to March 1940, Finland did bravely fight off the Slav horde37. Nor did the Russians ever really defeat them militarily. In the classic manner of Russian combat, the handful of Finnish defenders38 was finally drowned in a rain of artillery40 shells and a bath of Slav blood. Thus Stalin's goal was achieved, at ruthless cost, of shaping up the Leningrad front by pushing back our Finnish friends on the Karelian Isthmus. This move, it must be confessed, probably saved Leningrad in 1941. After the Finnish victory during Christmas-the classic battle of Suomussalmi in which nearly thirty thousand Russians were killed or frozen to death, at a cost of about nine hundred Finnish dead-it was impossible to regard the Soviet army as a competent modern adversary41. Much later, Hermann Goering was to call the Finnish campaign "the greatest camouflage42 action in history," implying that the Russians in Finland had pretended to be weak in order to mask their potential. This was just an absurd excuse for the failures of his Luftwaffe in the east. In point of fact, Stalin's Russia in 1939 was militarily feeble. What happened between that time and our final debacle on the eastern front at Russian hands is the subject of a later section, but their performance in Finland certainly misled us in our planning. Sitzkrieg Ends: Norway Much vociferous43 propaganda went on in the Western democracies about the attack on Finland, and about sending the Finns military aid. In the end they did nothing. However, the opening of the Finnish front did force Hitler to face up to a genuine threat in the north: the British plot to seize Norway. Of this we had hard intelligence. Unlike many of the "plots" and "conspiracies44" of which our German armed forces were accused at the Nuremberg trials, this British plot certainly existed. Winston Churchill openly describes it in his memoirs45. He acknowledges that the British invasion was laid on for 0 date ahead of ours, and then put off, so that we beat the British into Norway by the merest luck, by a matter of days. The Russo-Finnish war made the problem of Norway acute, because England and France could use "aid to Finland" as a perfect pretext46 for landing in Norway and driving across Scandinavia. This would have been disastrous47 for us. The North Sea, bracketed by British bases on both sides, would have been closed to our U-boats, choking off our main thrust at sea. Even more important, the winter route for ships bringing us Swedish iron ore lay along the Norwegiancoast. Deprived of that iron ore, we could not have gone on fighting for long. When the High Command convinced Hitler of these risks, he issued the order for "Weser Exercise," the occupation of Norway, and postponed Case Yellow once again. It is a sad commentary that Admiral Raeder, at the Nuremberg trials, was convicted of "a plot to occupy neutral Norway," when the British who sat in judgment49 had plotted the same thing themselves. Such paradoxes50 have enabled me to bear with honor my own experience at Nuremberg, and to regard it as not a disgrace at all, but rather as a political consequence of defeat. Had the war gone the other way, and had we hanged Churchill for plotting to occupy Norway, what would the world have said? Yet what is sauce for the goose should be sauce for the gander. Our occupation of Norway, a surprise overwater move virtually under the guns of a highly superior British fleet, was a great success; not, however, because of Hitler's readership, but in spite of it. We took heavy losses at sea, especially of destroyers that we sorely missed when the invasion of England was later planned. But the price was small compared to the gain. We forestalled51 the British, opened up a much wider coastline to counter the blockade, and secured the Swedish iron ore supply for the rest of the war. Mistakes in Norway Hitler's amateurishness52 showed up badly in Norway. It cropped up again cind again in every campaign, tending only to get grosser as time went on. The mark of the amateur in any field is to lose one's head when the going gets hard. What marks the professional is his competence53 in an emergency, and almost the whole art of the soldier is to make sound judgments54 in the fog of war. Hitler's propensity55 to lose his head took two forms: calling a panicky halt to operations when they were gathering56 momentum57, and changing the objective in mid-campaign. Both these failings appeared in Weser Exercise. I give details in my Norway operational analysis, of his hysterical58 insistence59 day after day that we abandon Narvik, the real key to the position; his wild sudden scheme to capture the port of Trondheim with the luxury liner Bremen, and so forth60. Why then was the occupation of Scandinavia a success? Simply because General Falkenhorst, once in Norway, ignored the Fuhrer's interference, and did a fine professional job with good troops and a sound plan. This interference from above, incidentally, was to haunt operations to the end. Adolf Hitler had used all his political shrewdness over many years to gain control of the armed forces, not stopping at strong-arm methods. There is no question that this man's lust61 for power was insatiable, and it is certainly regrettable that the German people did not understand his true nature until it was too late. The background of this usurpation62 will be sketched63 here, as it significantly affected64 the whole course of the six-year war.
How Hitler Usurped65 Control of the Army In 1938, he and his Nazi66 minions67 did not scruple68 to frame grave charges of sexual misconduct against revered69 generals of the top command. Also, they took advantage of a few actual unfortunate lapses70 of this nature; the details need not be raked over in this account. Suffice it that the Nazis71 managed to topple the professional leadership in a bold underhanded coup72 based on such accusations73. Hitler with sudden stunning74 arrogance75 then assumed supreme76 command himself! And he exacted an oath of loyalty77 to himself throughout the Wehrmacht, from foot soldier to general. In this act he showed his knowledge of the German character, which is the soul of honor, and takes such an oath as binding78 to the death. Our staff, muted and disorganized by the disgusting revelations and pseudorevelations abovt honored leaders, offered no coherent resistance to this usurpation. So the strict inde(our) pendence of the German army from German politics, which for generations had kept the Wehrmacht a strong stabilizing79 force in the Fatherland, came to an end; and the drive wheel of the world's strongest military machine was grasped by an Austrian street agitator80. In itself this was not a catastrophic turn. Hitler was far from a military ignoramus. He had had four years in the field as a foot soldier, and there are worse ways to learn war. He was a voracious81 reader of history and of military writings. His memory for technical facts was unusual. Above all, he did have the ability to get to the root of a large problem. He had almost a woman's intuition for the nub of a matter. This is a fine leadership trait in war, always providing that the politician listens to the soldiers for the execution of his ideas. The combination of a bold political adventurer, a Charles XII personality risen from the streets to weld Germany into a solid driving force, and our General Staff, the world's best military leadership, might well have brought us ultimate success. But Hitler was incapable82 of listening to anybody. This undid83 him and ruined Germany. Grand strategy and incredibly petty detail were equally his preoccupations. The overruling axiom of our war effort was that Hitler gave the orders. In a brutal84 speech to our staff in November 1939, prompted by our efforts to discourage a premature85 attack on France, he warned us that he would ruthlessly crush any of us who opposed his will. Like so many of his other threats, he made this one good. By the end of the war most of our staff had been dismissed in disgrace. Many had been shot. All of us would have been shot sooner or later, had he not lost his nerve and shot himself first. Thus it happened that the strength of the great German people, and the valor86 of the peerless German soldier, became passive tools in Hitler's amateur hands. Hitler and Churchill: A Comparison Winston Churchill, in a revealing passage of his memoirs on the functioning of his chiefs ofstaff, expresses his envy of Hitler, who could get his decisions acted upon without submitting them to the discouragement and pulling apart of hidebound professional soldiers. In fact, this was what saved England and won the war. Churchill was exactly the kind of brilliant amateur meddler87 in military affairs that Hitler was. Both rose to power from the depths of political rejection88. Both relied chiefly on oratory89 to sway the multitude. Both somehow expressed the spirit of their peoples, and so won loyalty that outlasted90 any number of mistakes, defeats, and disasters. Both thought in grandiose91 terms, knew little about economic and logistical realities, and cared less. Both were iron men In defeat. Above all, both men had overwhelming personalities92 that could silence rational OPPosition93 while they talked. Of this strange phenomenon, I had ample and bitter experience with Hitler. The crucial difference was that in the end Churchill had to listen to the professionals, whereas the German people had committed itself to the fatcil Fuhrerprinzip. Had Churchill possessed94 the power Adolf Hitler managed to arrogate95 to himself, the Allied96 armies would have bled to death in 1944, invading the "soft underbelly of the Axis," as Churchill called the fearful mountains and water obstacles of the Balkan peninsula. There we would have slaughtered98 them. The Italian campaign proved that. Only on the flat plains of Normandy did the Ford-production style of American warfare99, using immense masses of inferior, cheaply made machinery100, have a chance of working. The Balkans would have been a colossal101 Thermopylae, won by the defenders. It would have been a Churchill defeat compared to which Gailipoli would have been a schoolboy picnic. With a Fuhrer's authority, Churchill would also have frittered away the Allied landing craft, always a critical supply problem, in witless attempts to recapture the Greek islands and to storm Rhodes. In 1944 he nagged102 Eisenhower and Roosevelt to commit these wild follies103 until they both stopped talking to him. Churchill was a Hitler restrained by democracy. If the German nation ever rises again, let it remember the different ends of these two men. I am not arguing for the goose gobble of parliamentarians. By conviction I have always been a conservative monarchist. But whatever the civilian104 structure, let our people hereafter entrust105 military affairs to its trained generals, and insist that politicians keep hands off the war machine. TRANSLATOR'S NOTE: This very jarring and distorted comparison of Hitler and Churchill omits the crucial difference, of course. By the common verdict of historians, even most German ones, Hitler was a ruthless adventurer bent25 on conquest and plunder106, while Churchill was a great defender39 of human liberty, dignity, and law. it is true that Churchill tended to interfere22 in military matters. Politicians find that temptation hard to resist.
Roon's assertion about the British plan to land in Norway is correct. His conclusions, again, are a different matter, showing how slippery the issues at Nuremberg were. England was the sole protector and hope of small neutral countries like Norway and Denmark. The purpose of a British landing would have been to defend Norway, not to occupy and dominate it. In a war, both sides may well try to take the same neutral objective for strategic reasons, which does not prove that both sides are equally guilty of aggression107. That is the fallacy in Roon's argument. I would not recommend trying to persuade a German staff officer of this.-V.H. N HENRY and his fiancee Janice were set straight about WRussia's invasion of Finland by an unexpected person: Madeline's new boyfriend, a trombone player and student of public affairs named Sewell Bozeman. Early in December the engaged couple came to New York and visited Madeline in her new apartment. Finding the boyfriend there was a surprise. The news of her move to her own apartment had enraged108 Pug Henry, but had he known her reason, he would have been pleased. Madeline had come to despise the two girls with whom she had shared a flat. Both were having affairs-one with a joke writer, the other with an actor working as a bellhop. Madeline had found herself being asked to skulk109 around, stay out late, or remain in her room while one or another pair copulated. The walls in the shabby apartment were thin. She had no way of even pretending unawareness110. She was disgusted. Both girls had good jobs, both dressed with taste, both were college graduates. Yet they behaved like sluts, as Madeline understood the word. She was a Henry, with her father's outlook. Give or take a few details of Methodist doctrine111, Madeline believed in what she had learned at home and at church. Unmarried girls of good character didn't sleep with men; to her, that was almost a law of nature. Men had more leeway; she knew, for instance, that Warren had been something of a hellion before his engagement. She liked Byron better because he seemed, in this respect, more like her upright father. To Madeline sex was a derightful matter of playing with fire, but enjoying the blaze from a safe distance, until she could leap into the hallowed white conflagration112 of a bridal night. She was a middle-class good girl, and not in the least ashamed of it. She thought her room-mates were gross fools. As soon as hugh Cleveland gave her a raise, she got out. "I don't know," she said, stirring a pot over a tiny stove behind a screen, "maybe this dinner was a mistake. We all could have gone to a restaurant." She was addressing the boyfriend, Sewell Bozeman, called Bozey by y in September. Bozey was a thin, long, the world. They had met at a part hair and thoughtful brown pale, tractable113 fellow with thick straight brown s that bulged114 behind rimless115 glasses. He always dressed in brown, to eye ties, and even brown shirts; he was always reading brown shoes, brown economics and politics and had a generally enormous brown books on doomed116 society, brown outlook on life, believing that America was a rapidly going under. Madeline found him a piquant117 and intriguing118 talking her small dining table, wearing novelty. At the moment, he was seti over his brown array the pink apron119 he had put on to peel onionsfor the stew120. e said. "You can save the stew for another (Well, it's not too late,h night, and we can take your brother and his girl to Julio's." tNo, I told Warren I was cooking the dinner. That girls rolling in idn't like an Italian dive. And they have to rush off to the money, she would theatre." Madeline came out, patting her hot face with a handkerchief, "That's fine. Thanks, Bozey. I'm going to change." the table. and took out and looked at g white paint She opened a closet door crusted with yellowin -sided bay and the small room. With a three a dress and slip, glancing arou as the whole window looking out on back yards and drying laundry, it w f blue the kitchenette and a tiny bath. Large pieces of apartment, exce for van under yellow PaPer Patterns-'Dam it. Cloth jay on the threadbare finish cutting that t. Maybe I'll have time to That divan121 is such a rat's nes dress, if I hurry. "I can finish cutting it," Bozey said. a dress. Don't try." A doorbell "Nonsense, Bomey, you can't cut ready. That's good." She went to wheezily rang. iwell, the wine's here al seti the tall POPopen the door. Warren and Janice walked in and surpri his pink apron, holding shears122 in one hand and a sleeve eyed man in ew, and Madeline pattern in the other. What with the smell of the hot toast was a strikingly in a housecoat with a dress and a lacy slip on her arm, it domestic scene. "My gosh, Warren, you're tan!" Madeline was "oh, hi. You're early. M cur to her to be embarrassed. so sure of her own rectitude that it didn't oc ozeman, a friend of mine." "This is Sewell B ; he was embarrassed, and in Bozey waved the shears feebly at them his fluster123 be started to cut a ragged124 blue rayon sleeve. Madeline said, "Bozey, will you stop cutting that dress!" She turned to Janice. "Imagine, he actually thinks he can do it." "it'more than I can," Janice Lacouture said, staring incredulously at Bozeman. Bozey drop(s) ped the shears and took off his apron with a giggle125. Warren said just to say something and cover his stupefaction, "Your dinner smells great, Madeline." After completing introductions, Madeline went off into what she called her boudoir, a grimy toilet about four feet square. "If you'd like to freshen up first-" she said to Janice as she opened the door, gesturing at the few cubic feet of yellow space crammed126 with rusty127 plumbing128. "It's a bit cosy129 in there for two." "Oh, no, no I'm just fine," Janice exclaimed. 'Go ahead." A halting conversation ensued while Bozey donned his jacket and tie. Soon Madeline put out her head and one naked shoulder and arm.
"Bozey, I don't want that beef stew to boil over. Turn down the gas." "Sure thing." As he went behind the screen, Janice Lacouture and Warren exchanged appalled130 looks. "Do you play with the New York Philharmonic, Mr. Bozeman?" Janice raised her voice. 'No, I'm with Ziggy Frechtel's orchestra. We play the Feenamint Hour," he called back. 'I'm working on getting up my own band." He returned and sat in an armchair, or rather lay in it, with his head propped131 against the back and the rest of him projecting forward and down, sloping to the floor. Warren, something of a sloucher himself, regarded this spectacular slouch by the limp long brown bulging-eyed trombonist with incredulity. In a way the strangest feature was his costume. Warren had never in his life seen a brown tic on a brown irt. a the issued from the bathroom smoothing her dress. "Oh, come on, Bozey, mix some drinks," she carolled. Bozey hauled himself erect132 and made drinks, talking on about the problems of assembling a band. A shy, awkward fellow, he honestly believed that the best way to put other people at their ease was to keep talking, and the one subject that usually occurred to him was himself. He disclosed that he was the son of a minister in Montana; that the local doctor had cured him of religion at sixteen, by feeding him the works of IngersoU and Haeckel while treating him less successfully for thyroid trouble; and that in rebellion against his father he had taken up the trombone. Soon he was on the topic of the war, which, he explained, was nothing but an imperialist struggle for markets. This was apropos133 of a remark by Warren that he was a naval134 fighter pilot in training. Bozey proceeded to set forth the Marxist analysis of war, beginning with the labor135 theory of value. Madeline meanwhile, finishing angi with d serving up the dinner, was glad to let him entertain her company. She knew Bozey was talkative, but she found him interesting and she thought Warren and Janice might, too. They seemed oddly silent. Perhaps, she thought, they had just had a little spat136. Under capitalism137, Bozey pointed138 out, workers never were paid what they really earned. The capitalist merely gave them the lowest wages possible. Since he owned the means of production, he had them at his mercy. Profit was the difference between what the worker produced and what he got. This had to lead to war sooner or later. In each country the capitalists piled up big surpluses because the workers weren't paid enough to buy back what they produced. The capitalists, to realize their profits, had to sell off those surpluses in other countries. This struggle for foreign markets, when it got hot enough, inevitably139 turned into war. That was what was happening now. "But Hitler has no surpluses," Janice Lacouture mildly observed.
An economics student, she knew these Marxist bromides, but was willing to let the boyfriend, or lover-she wasn't yet sure which-of Warren's sister run on for a while. "Germany's a land of shortages." 'The war is a struggle for foreign markets, all the same," Bozey insisted serenely140, back in his deep slouch. 'How about cameras, just at random141? Germany still exports cameras. Warren said, 'As I understand you, then, the Germans invaded Poland to sell Leicas." "Making jokes about economic laws is easy, but irrelevant142." Bozey smiled. "I'm fairly serious," Warren said. "Obviously Hitler's reason for attacking Poland was conquest and loot, as in most wars." "Hitler is a figurehead," said Bozey comfortably. "Have you ever heard of Fritz Thyssen? He and the Krupps and a few other German capitalists put him in power. They could put someone else in tomorrow if they chose, by making a few telephone calls. Of course there's no reason why they should, He's a usem and obedient lackey143 in their struggle for foreign markets." 'I"at you're saying is the straight Conununist line, you know," Janice said. "Oh, Bozey's a Communist," Madeline said, emerging from behind the screen with a wooden bowl of salad. "Dinner's ready. Will you dress the salad, Bozey?" "Sure thing." Bozey took the bowl to a rickety little side table, and made expert motions with oil, vinegar, and condiments144. "I'm not sure I've ever met a Communist before," Warren said, peering at the long brown man. "My gosh, you haven't?" said Madeline. "Why, the radio business swarms145 with them." "That's a slight xaggerafion," Bozey saidy rubbing garlic on the salad bowl, and filling the close, warm flat with the pungent146 aroma147. "Oh, come on, Bozey. Who isn't a Communist in our crowd?") "Well, Peter isn't. I don't think Myra is. Anyway, that's just our gang.-He added to Warren, "It dates from the Spanish Civil War days. We Put on all kinds of shows for the benefit of the LoYalists." Bozey brought the salad bowl to the table, where the others were already seated. "Of course there', just a few of us left now. A lot of the crowd dropped away after Stalin made the pact with Hitler. They had no fundamental convictions." "Didn't that pact bother YOu?" Warren said. "Bother me? Why? It was a move. The capitalist powers wantto snuff out socii in the S ' sen oviet union. If they bleed themselves white beforehand, fighting each other, the final a(a) ttack on socialism will be that much weaker. Stalin's peace policy is very wise." Warren said, "Suppose Hitler polishes off England and France in a one-front war, and the tun n ms and smashes Russia? That may well happen. Stalin could have made a deal with the Allies, and all of them together would have had a far better chance of stopping the Nazis." "But don't you see, there's no reason for a socialist148 country to take part in an imperialist struggle for foreign markets," 'Socialism doesn't need foreign Plained to the benighted149 naval aviator150. Bozey patiently e,markets, since the worker gets all he creates." "Bozey, will you bring the stew?" Madeline said. 'Sure thing." JaWce Lacouture said, speaking louder as he went behind the screen, "B,t surely you know that a Russian worker gets less than a worker in any capitalist country." "Of course-There are two reasons for that. Socialism triumphed first in a feudal151 country," Bozey said, reappearing with the stew, 'and had a big industrial gap to close. Also, because of the imperialist threat, socialmn had to divert a lot of Production to arms. When socialism triumphs everywhere, arms will become useless, and they'll all be thrown in the sea. "But even if that happens, which I doubt, it seems to me," said Janice, "that when the state owns the means Of Production, the workers will get less than if capitalists own them. You know how inefficient152 and tyannical government bureaucracies are." "Yes," interjected Madeline, ('but as soon as socialism triumphs everybody will need a central rywhere the state will wither153 away, because nobod e wine Then the workers will get it all. Pass the government any more, around) Bozey."-"Sure thing-2) mowing154 his eyes at her, "Do you believe Warren said to his sister, na that? "Me?" Madeline said, giggling155. "Well, that's how the argument goes ds with Communists? For "Wouldn't Dad die if he knew I'd made frien heaven's sake don't write and tell him-' "that about Finland?" "Have no fear." Warren turned to Bozey. country was then about a The Russian invasion of the tiny northern week old, and already looking like a disaster. "Okay. What about it?" "Well, you know Russia claims that Finland attacked her, the way Hitler claimed Poland attacked Germany. Do you believe that?" "It's ridiculous to think that Poland attacked Germany," Bozey said calmly, "but it's highlylikely that Finland attacked the Soviet union. It was probably a provocation156 engineered by others to embroil157 socialism the imperialist war." in "The Soviet union is fifty times as big as Finland," Janice Lacou ture said. "I'm not saying the Finns did something wise," said Bozey-'They were egged on into making a bad mistake. Anyway, Finland just used to be a duchy of Czarist Russia. It's not an invasion exactly, it's a rectification158." "Oh, come on, Bozey, Madeline said. "Stalin's simply making hay while the sun shines, slamming his way in there to improve his strategic position against Germany. "Of course " , Warren said and that's a damned prudent159 move in his situation, whatever the morality of it may be." Bozey smiled cunningly, his eyes starting from his head. "Well, it's lift their hands in holy horror when a socialist government does something realistic. They think that's their exclusive privilege." quite true he wasn't born yesterday. The imperialists liny do you suppose the invasion's flopping161 on its face?" Warren said. "Oh, do you believe the capitalist newspapers?" said Bozey, with a broad wink162 "Yuu think the Russians are really winning?" "Why, all this nonsense about the Finnish sid troops in white unifomis makes me ill," Bozey said. "Don't you suppose the Russians have I - m Lskis and white uniforms too? But catch the New York Times saying so." "This is a lovely stew," Janice said. "I used too many cloves," Madeline said. 'Don't bite into one." Warren and Janice left right after dinner to go to the theatre. He was on a seventy-two-hour pass from Pensacola, and Janice had come up from Washington to meet him; dinner with Madeline had been a lastminute arrangement by long-distance telephone. when they left, Madeline was cutting out her dress and Bozey was washing the dishes. 'What do I do now?" Warren said, out in the street. The theatre was only a few blocks away. It was snowing and cabs were unobtainable , so they walked. "Get myself a shotgun? "What for? To put Bozey out of his misery163?""TO get him to marry her, was my idea." Janice laughed, a-d hugged his arm. "There's nothing doing between those two, honey." "You don't think so? "Not a chance. that's quite a gal164, your little sister. note I say?" "Jesus Christ, Yes. The Red Flame of Manhattan. That's a hell of a And I Wrote my folks I was going to ('YOu just tell your parents that everything's cause it is." v's' do They walked with heads bent, the snow whirling on the wind into their faces. "y are you so quiet?" said Janice. 'Don't worry about your sister. Really, you don't have to." us vice4 family and "I'M thinking how this war's blown ourWfaem'rielyaaspeart- I mean, we we're used to that, but it's different no said ed to scatter165 here and there," Warrenw. Id.don't feel there's a base any more- And we're a changin gether again." 11 9. I don't know if we'll ever pull back to-Sooner or later all la mil et change and scatter," said Janice Lacouture, "and out of the pieces new families t n fl ' She Put her face to his for a moment, a d snow akes fell on the two warm cheeks. and a very lovely arrangement it is, too start up. That's how it goes, phat! I hope she's rid of that one by t e time Dad gets back. "The imperialist struggle for foreign markets," said Warren. jehoe he'll lay waste to Radio City.- h therwise peachy with her. Be t her-Now hat YRON!" ut the name and stared. He sat as usual on the BDr, Jastrow gasped166 o his legs, the ay shawl around his shoulders, terrace, the blue blanket over grad on his lap. A cold breeze blowing across the writing board an'd Yellow P s. In the translucent167 air the the valley from Siena fluttered Jastrow's Page d cathedral atop the vineack-and-white stripe Id red-walled town, with its bl like the medieval Siena in o hills, looked hauntingly yard-checkered frescoes168. "Hello, A.J." declare I'll be a week recovering from the start or me, Byron! I about you only at breakfast. We were you've given me! We were talking both absolutely certain you'd be in the State "She's here?" "of course. She's up in the library." u"Sir, will You eric se me?p onect myself-oh, and Byron, tell Maria I'd '-Yes, go ahead, let me c g tea right awaylike some stron a time and walked into the 00 three at Byron t k the center hall steps black skirt, pale and library. She stood at the desk in a gray sweater, a It is you. NobodY else galumphs up those wide-eyed. -It is, by God! stairs like that." "It's me. "Why the devil did you come back?" "I have to make a living." y didn't you let us know you were coming?" ni an tretched out a hand uncertai Y, d Put it She approached him, s you look rested, to his face. The long fingers felt dry and cold. "AnYwaY, kwardly and weight She backed off aw you seem to have put on some beastly that day in K6rugs abruptlY169. it! owe you an apology. I was feeling from him and l,m sDrry.-She walked away surprises like berg, and if I was rude to YOu we can use YOu here, but sank into her desk chair. "Well s by now.)t "You're an little. Wi lveu, I thought I'd better just come-y# this are never pleasant. Don't you know that yet?" As though he had returned from an errand in town, she resumed clattering170 at the typewriter. That was all his welcome. Jastrow put him back to work, and within a few days the old routines were restored. It was as though the Polish experience had never occurred, as though neither of them had left the hilltop. The traces of the war in these quiet hills were few. Only sporadic171 shortages of gasoline created any difficulty, The Milan and Florence newspapers that reached them played down the war. Even on the BBC broadcasts there was little combat news. The Russian attack on Finland seemed as remote as a Chinese earthquake. Because the buses had become unreliable, Dr. Jastrow gave Byron a lodging172 on the third floor of the villa173: a cramped174 little maid's room with cracking plaster walls, and a stained ceiling that leaked in hard rains. Natalie lived directly below Byron in a second-floor bedroom looking out on Siena. Her peculiar175 manner to him persisted. At mealtimes, and generally in Jastrow's presence, she was distantly cordw. In the library she was almost uncivil, working away in long silences, and giving terse176 cool answers to questions. Byron had a modest opinion of himself and his attractions, and he took his treatment as probably his due, though he missed the comradeship of their days in Poland and wondered why she never talked about them. He thought he had probably annoyed her by following her here. He was with her now and that was why he had come; so, for all the brusque treatment, he was as content as a dog reunited with an irritablemaster. When Byron arrived in Siena, the Constantine book was on the shelf for the moment, in favor of an expanded magazine article, "The Last Palio." In describing the race, Jastrow had evoked178 a gloom-filled image of Europe plunging179 again toward war. A piece startling in its foresight180, it had arrived on the editor's desk on the first of September, the day of the invasion. The magazine printed it, and Jastrow's pubjisher cabled him a frantic181 request to work it up into a short book, preferably containing a note of optimism (however slight) on the outcome of the war. The cable mentioned a large advance against royalties182. This was the task in hand. In this brief book, Jastrow was striking an Olympian, farseeing, forgiving note. The Germans would probably be beaten to the ground again, he wrote; and even if they gained the rule of the earth, they would in the end be tamed and subdued183 by their subject peoples, as their ancestors, the Goths and Vandals, had been tamed to turn Christian184. Fanatic185 or barbaric despotism had only its hour. It was a recurring186 human fever fated to cool and pass. Reason and freedom were what all human history eternally moved toward. The Germans were the bad children of Europe, Jastrow argued: egotistic, willful, romantic, always poised187 to break up faltering188 patterns of order. Anninius had set the ax to the Par2 Romana; Martin Luther had broken the back of the universal Church; now Hitler was challenging Europe's unsteady regime of liberal capitalism, based on an obsolete189 patchwork190 structure of nations. The "PalioP of Europe, wrote Jastrow, the contest of hot little nationalisms in a tiny crowded cockpit of a continent, a larger Siena with the sea for three walls and Asia for a fourth, was worn out. As Siena had y one water company and one power company, one telephone system only and one mayor, instead of seventeen of these in the seventeen make-believe sovereignties called Goose, Caterpillar191, Giraffe, and so forth, so Europe was ripe for the same conunonsense unification. Hitler, a bad-boy genius, had perceived this. He was going about the breakup of the old order cruelly, wrongly, with Teutonic fury, but what mattered was that he was t. The Second World War was the last Palio. Europe essentially192 correc would emerge less colorful but more of a rational and solid structure, whichever side won the idiotic193 and gory194 horse race. Perhaps this painful but healthy process would become global, and the whole earth would be unified195 at last. As for Hitler, the villain196 of the melodrama197, he would either be hunted down and bloodily198 destroyed like Macbeth, or he would have his triumph and then he would fall or die. The stars would remain, so would the earth, so would the human quest for freedom, understanding, and love among brothers. As he typed repeated drafts of these ideas, Byron wondered whether Jastrow would have written such a tolerant and hopeful book had he spent September under bombardment in Warsaw, instead of in his villa overlooking Siena. He thought "The Last Palio' was a lot of high-flown irrelevant gab200. But he didn't say so. Letters were coming to Natalie from Leslie Slote, one or two a week. She seemed less excited over them than she had been in the spring, when she would rush off toher bedroom to read them, and return looking sometimes radiant, sometimes tearfw. Now she casually201 skimmed the singlespace typed pages at her desk, then shoved them in a drawer. One rainy day she was reading such a letter when Byron, typing away at the Palio book, heard her say, "Good God!" He looked up. 'Something the matter?" "No, no," she said, very red in the face, waving an agitated202 hand and flipping203 over a page. "Sorry. It's nothing at all." EL Byron resumed work, struggling with one of Jastrow's bad sentences. The Professor wrote in a spiky204 burned hand, often leaving out letters or words. He seldom clod his s's an se d o's. It was anywy's guess what words some Of these strings205 of blue spikes206 represented. Natalie could puzzle them out, but Byron disked her pained condesc ding "Well!" Natalie sat " en way of doing it. back in her chair with a thump207, staring at the letter. "Briny-" "Yes?" She hesitated, chewing her full lower lip. "Oh, hell, I can't help it. I've got to tell someone, and you're handy. Guess what I hold here in my hot little hand?" She rustled208 the pages. "I see what you're holding." "You 0 y think you do." 4 n' She laughed in a wicked way. 'I'm going to tell you. it's a proposal of marriage from a gentleman named Leslie Manson Slote, Rhodes Scholar, rising diplomat209, and elusive210 bachelor. And what do you think of that, Byron Henry?" "Congratulations," Byron said. The buzzer211 on Natalieps desk rang. "Oh, lord. Briny, please go and see what A.J. wants. I'm in a fog." She tossed the letter on the desk and thrust long white hands in her hair. Dr. Jastrow sat blanketed in the downstairs study on the chaise I.we by the fire, his usual place in rainy weather. Facing him in an armchair, a fat pale Italian official, in a green and yellow uniform and black halfboots, was drinking coffee. Byron had never seen the man or the uniform before. -Oh, Byron, a,k Natalie for my resident status file, will you? She knows where it is." Jastrow turned to the official. Will you want to see their papers toO?" -Not 'oday, PrOfessore- Only yours."Natalie looked up with an embarrassed grin from rearranging the letsse i fr di Byron told her. Her face sobering, she took a key from Iler purse and unlocked a small steel file by the desk. "Here." She gave him a mnila folder212 tied with red tape. "Does it look like trouble? Shall I come down?" "Better wait till you're asked." As he descended213 the stairs he heard laughter from the study, and rapid jovial214 talk. "Oh, that. Thank you, Byron," Jastrow said, breaking into English as he entered, 'just leave it here on the table." He resumed his anecdote215 in Italian about the donkey that had gotten into the grounds the previous week, laid waste to a vegetable patch, and chewed up a whole ter- "oh, hi. What's doing?" 00 wier chapter of manuscript. The official's belted belly97 sh k th aught In the library Natalie was typing again. The Slote letter was out Of sight. it seem to be much of a problem," Byron said. "There doesn "That's good," she said pladdlyAt dinner that night Dr. Jastrow hardly spoke216, ate less than usual, and drank two extra glasses of wine. in this household, where things were so monotonously217 the same day after day, night after night, the first extra glass was an event, the second a bombshell. Natalie finally said, "Aaron, what was that visit about today?" Jastrow came out of an abstracted stare with a little headshake. Strangely enough, Giuseppe again." t gardener, whom he had recently disGiuseppe was the a charged: a scrawny, lazy, stupid old drunkard with wiry black hairs on e nose. Giuseppe had left open the gate through which the donkey ha, entered. He was always committing such misdemeanors. Jastrow had lost his temper over the destroyed chapter and the ravaged218 vegetable beds, had been unable to write for two days, and had suffered bad indigestion. 'How does that officer know Giuseppe?" Byron said. That's the odd part. He's from the alien registration219 bureau in Florence, yet he mentioned Giuseppe's nine children, the difficulty of finding work nowadays, and so forth. When I said I'd rehire him, that ended it. He just handed me the registration papers with a victorious220 grin." Jastrow sighed and laid ws napkin on the table. 'I've put up with Giuseppe all these years, I really don't mind. I'm rather tired. Tell Maria I'll have my fruit and cheese in the study." Natalie said when the professor was gone, Let's bring the coffee to my room." "Sure. Great." Never before had she invited him there. Sometimes in his room above he could hear her moving about, a tantdwng, faint, lovely noise.
He followed her upstairs with a jumping pulse. "I live in a big candy box," she said with a self-conscious look, opening a heavy door. 'Aaron bought the place furnished, you know, and left it just the way the lady of the house had it. Ridiculous for me, but-' She snapped on a light. It was an enormous room, painted pink, with pink and gilt221 furniture, pink painted cupids on a blue and gold ceiling, pink silk draperies, and a huge double bed covered in frilly pink satin. Dark Natalie, in the old brown wool dress she wore on chilly222 evenings, looked decidedly odd in this Watteau setting. But Byron found the con14 his big knobby EL trast as exciting as everything else about her. She lit the log fire in the marble fireplace carved with Roman figures, and they sat in facing armchairs, taking coffee from the low table been them. "Why do you suppose Aaron's so upset?" Natalie said, settling comfortably in the large chair and pulling the long pleated skirt far down over her beautiful legs, 'Giuseppe's an old story. Actually it was a mistake to fire him. He knows all about the water connections and the electric lines, much more than Tomaso. And he's really good at the topiary work, even if he is a dirty old drunk," "A.J. was coerced223, Natalie." She bit her lip, nodding. Byron added, "We're at the mercy of these people, A.J, even more than you and me. He ovens property, he's stuck here." "Oh, the Italians are all right. They're not Germans." "Mussolini's no bargain. Berel gave A.J. the right advice. Get out!" Natalie smiled. "Lekh lekha. My God, how far off that all seems. I wonder how he is." Her smile faded. "I)ve shut Warsaw from my mind. Or tried to." "I don't blame you." "How about you, Briny? Do you ever think about it?" "Some. I keep dreaming about it." "Oh, God, so do I. That hospital-I go round and round in it, night after night-" 'When Warsaw fell," Byron said, "it hit me hard." He told Natalie about the Wannsee episode. At his description of the waiter's sudden turnabout, she laughed bitterly. "Your father sounds superb." "He's all right."He must think I'm a vampire224 who all but lured225 you to your death." "We haven't talked about you." Sudden gloom shadowed Natalie's face. She poured morecoffee for both of them. "Stir the fire, Briny. I'm cold. Giuseppe's brought in green wood, as usual." He made the fire flare226, and threw on it a light log from a blighted227 tree, which quickly blazed. 'Ah, that's good!" She j"-peti up, turned off the electric chandelier, and stood by the fire, looking at the flames. "That moment in the railroad station," she nervously228 burst out, "when they took away the Jews! I still can't face it. That was one reason I was so nasty at K,5,igsberg. I was in torture. I kept thinking that I could have done some thing. Sup rw pose I'd stepped lo and, ,aid I was Jewish, forced the issue? St'PPose we'd all created a scandal? It might have made a difference. But we calmly went to the train, and they trudged229 off the other way." lost you and Mark Hartley. The thing Byron said, "We might have was touch and go. vented230 that. He stood his ground, at least, "Yes, I know. Leslie pre though he was shaking like a leaf. He did his plain duty. But those other ambassadors and charges-well-"-e. "And my fan-dly in Medzicel When I Natalie had begun to pac picture those kind, good people in the clutches of the Germans-but what's the use? It's futile231, it's sickening, to dwell on that." She threw up her hand in a despairing gesture and dropped in her chair, sitting on her legs with her skirt spread over them. Nothing of her was visible in the firelight but her face and her tensely clasped hands. She stared at the fire. "Speaking of old Slote," she said after a long pause, in an entirely232 different tone, what do you think of his proposal to make an honest woman of me?" "I'm not surprised." Y-P) "You're not? I'm stunned233. I never thought I'd live to see the da "He told me in Berlin he might marry you. He'd be crazy not to, if he could." "Well, he's had that option open to him for a hell of a long time, dear." She poured coffee and sipped234, looking darkly at him over the rim21 of the cup. "Had a big discussion about me in Berlin, you two gentlemen, did you?" "Not a big discussion. He mentioned that you were just as surly to him that last day in Kenigsberg as you 'd been to me." "I was feeling absolutely horrible that day, Briny." -Well, that's all right. I thought I might have off how, so I asked him." ended you somese did Slote say about me?" 'This is getting interesting. What el The low, vibrant236 voice, the amused glinting of her eyes in the firelight, stirred Byron. That you were no girl for me to get involved with, and that he hadn't known an hour's peace of mind since he first laid eyes on you. She uttered a low gloating laugh. "Two accurate statements, my pet.
Tell me more." "That's about it. It was the same conversation in which he gave me the reading list." "Yes, and wasn't that pure Slote? Coming it over you with his book learning! An illuminating237 little incident, that. Didn't he really tell you all about us? About him and me?" Byron shook his head. Natalie said, 'You wouldn't go and get us some brandy, would you? I think I'd like a little brandy." EL He raced down the stairs and up again, returning with a bottle and two shimmering238 snifters. Swirling239 the brandy round and round in her hands, looking into the balloon glass and rarely raising her eyes at him, Natalie broke loose with a SUrprising rush of words about her affair with Leslie Slote. It took her a long time. Byron said little, interrupting only to throw more wood on the fire. It was a familiar tale of a clever older man having fun with a girl and getting snared240 into a real passion. Resolving to marry him, she had made his life a nlisery-He didn't want to marry her, she said, simply because she was Jewish and it would be awkward for his career. That was all his clouds of words had ever come to. At last, with this letter, after thir months, she had him where she wanted him. tY Byron hated every word of the story, yet he was fascinated, and grateful. The closemouthed girl was taking him into her life. These word" which couldn't be unsaid, were ending the strange tension between them since Warsaw, their own little phony war-the long hostile silences in the library, her holing up in her room, her odd snappish condescension241. As she talked, they were growing intimate as they never had become in a month of adventuring through Poland, Everything about this girl interested him. If it was the account of and this was what he had her affair with another man, let it be that! At least Byron was talking about Natalie Jastrow with Natalie ja trow, been starved for. He was hearing this sweet rough voice with its occaali tai s sional New Yorkisms, and he could watch the play of her free gesturing hand in the firelight, the swoop242 and sudden stop in the air of flat palm and fingers, her visible signature. Natalie Jastrow was the one person he had ever met who meant as much to him as his father did. In the same way, almost, he hungered to talk to his father, to listen to him, to be with him, even though he had to most every conversation be either offended or disappointed Victor Henry. His mother he took resist and withdraw, even though he knew that in a] for granted, a warm presence, cloying243 in her affection, annoying in her kittenish changeability. His father was terrific, and in that way Natalie wa, terrific, entirely aside from being a tall dark girl whom he had hopelessly craved244 to seize in his arms since the first hour they had met. "Well, there you have it," Natalie said. "This mess has been endless, b"t that's the general idea. How about some more of Aaron's brandy?
Wouldn't you like some? It's awfully245 good brandy. Funny, I usually don't care for it." Byron poured more for both of them, though his glass wasn't empty. "What I've been puzzling about all day," she said after a sip235, "is why Leslie is throwing in the towel now. The trouble is, I think I know." "He's lonesome for you," Byron said. Natalie shook her head. "Leslie Slote behaved disgustingly on the Praha road. I despised him for it, and I let him know I did. That was the turnaround. He's been chasing me ever since. I guess in a way I've been running, too. I haven't even answered half his letters." Byron said, "You've always exaggerated that whole thing. All he did-"-"Shut up, Byron. Don't be mealymouthed with me. All he did was turn yellow and use me as an excuse. He hid behind my skirts. The Swedish ambassador all but laughed in his face." She tossed off most of her brandy. "Look, physical courage isn't something you can help. It isn't even important nowadays. You can be a world leader and a cringing246 sneak247. That's what Hitler probably is. Still, it happened. It happened. I'm not saying I won't marry Leslie Slote because shellfire made him panic. After all, he behaved well enough at the railroad station. But I do say that's why he's proposing to me. This is his way of apologizing and being a man. it's not quite the answer to my maidenly248 prayers." it's what you want." "Well, I don't know. There are complications. There's my family. My parents had wild fits when I told them I was in love with a Christian. My father took to his bed for a week, though that bit of melodrama left me unmoved. Well, now there's that whole fight again. And Leslie's proposal is odd. It's not very specific as to time and place. If I wrote him back yes, he might well get on his bicycle again. "If he's really that kind of fool, which I doubt very much," Byron said, "you could just let him bicycle away." "Then there's Aaron." "He's not your problem. He ought to get out of Italy in any case." "He's very reluctant to go." "Well, he survived while we were away. 'Oh, that's what you think. You should have seen the library and study when I got back. Chaos249. And he hadn't written anything in weeks. Aaron should have gotten married ages ago. He didn't, and he needs a lot of fussing andpetting. He can't even sharpen a pendl properly." Byron wondered whether Natalie's irritable177 garrulity250 was due to the brandy. She was gesturing broadly, talking breathlessly, and her eyes were wild. "And there's still another complication, you know. The biggest.l "What's that?" A She stared at him. "Don't you know what it is, Briny? Haven't you any idea? Not the faintest inkling? Come on now. Stop it." He said or rather stammered251, because the sudden penetrating252 sexuality in Natalie Jastrow's glance made him drunk, 'I don't think I do." "All right then, I'll tell You. You've done it, you devil, and you know it. You've done what you've wanted to do from the first day you came here. I'm in love with you." She peered at him, her eyes shining and enormous. "Ye gods, what a dumb stunned face. Don't you believe me?)' Very hoarsely253 he said, "I just hope it's true." He got out of his chair, and went to her. She jumped up and they embraced. "Oh God," she said, clinging to him, and she kissed him and kissed him. "You have such a Marvelous mouth," she muttered. She thrust her hands in his hair, she caressed254 his face. "Such a nice smile. Such fine hands. I love to watch your hands. I love the way you move. You're so sweet." It was like a hundred daydreams255 Byron had had, but far more intense and confusing and delicious. She was rubbing against him in c rude sensual delight, almost like a cat. The brown wool dress was scratchy in his hands. The perfume of her hair couldn't be daydreamed256, nor the moist warm sweet breath of her mouth. Above all gleamed the inconceivable wonder that all this was happening. They stood embraced by the crackling flames, kissing, saying broken foolish sentences, whispering, laughing, kissing, and kissing again. Natalie pulled away. She ran a few steps and faced him, her eyes blazing. "WeE, right. all I had to do that or die. I've never felt anything like this in my life, Byron, this maddening pull to you. I've been fighting it off and fighting it off because it's no daum good, you know. You're a boy. I won't have it. Not a Christian. Not again. And besides-"she put both hands over her face. "Oh. Oh! Don't look at me like that, Briny! Go out of my bedroom." Byron turned to go, on legs almost caving under him. He wanted to please her. She said in the next breath, "Christ, you're a gentleman. It's one of the unbelievable things about You. Would you rather stay? My darling, MY love, I don't w t put you 0 an to u I want to talk some more, but I want to make some sense, that's all. And I don't want to make any false moves. I)II do anything you say. I absolutely adore you." He looked at her standing199 in the firelight in the long wool dress with her arms crossed, one leg out to a side, one hip48 thrust out, a typicalNatalie Pose. He was dazed with happiness beyond imagining, and flooded with gratitude257 for being alive. "Listen-would you think of marrying me?" Byron said. Natalie's eyes popped wide open and her mouth dropped. Byron could not help it; he burst out laughing at the comic change of her face, and that made her laugh crazily too. She came to him, almost flung herself at him laughing so uproariously that she could hardly manage to kiss him. "God in heaven," she gasped, twining him in her arms, "you're incredible. That's two proposals in one day for la Jastrow! It never rains but it pours, eh?" "I'm serious," he said. "I don't know why we're laughing. I want to marry you. It's always seemed preposterous258, but if you really do love me-" "It is preposterous"-Natalie spoke with her lips to his cheek-"preposterous beyond words, but where you're concerned I appear to be quite mindless, and perhaps-well! Nobody can say you're a beardless boy, anyway! Quite sandpapery, aren't you?" She kissed him once more, hard, and loosened her arms. "The first idea was right. You leave. Goodnight, darling. I know you're serious, and I'm terribly touched. One thing we've got in this godforsaken place is time, all the time in the world." In the darkness, on his narrow bed in the tiny attic259 room, Byron lay wide awake. For a while he heard her moving about below, then the house was silent. He could still taste Natalie's lips. His hands smelled of her perfume. Outside in the valley donkeys bee-hawed to each other across the echoing slopes, a misguided rooster hailed a dawn hours away, and dogs barked. There came a rush of wind and a long drumming of rain on the tiles, and after a while water dripped into the pail near his bed, under the worst leak. The rain passed, moonlight shafted260 faint and blue through the little round window, the pattering in the pail ceased, and still Byron lay with open eyes, trying to believe it, trying to separate his dreams and fantasies of half a year from the real hour when Natalie Jastrow had overwhelmed him with endearments261. Now his feverish16 mind ran on what he must do next. The window was turning violet when he fell asleep in a jumble262 of ideas and resolves, ranging from medical school and short-story writing to the banking263 business in Washington. Some distant cousins of his mother did control a bank. Hi, Natalie." "Oh, hi there. Sleep well?" It was almost eleven when he hurried into the library. Byron was a hardened slugabed, but he had not come down this late before. Three books lay open on Natalie's desk, and she was typing away. She gave him one ardent264 glance and went on with her work. Byron found on his desk a mass of first-draft pages heavily scribbled265 with jastrov/s corrections, to which was clipped a note in red crayon: Let nw have this material at lunch, please. 'A.J. looked in here ten minutes ago," Natalie said, 'and made vile160 noises."Byron counted the pages. "He's going to make viler266 ones at lunch. I'm sorry, but I didn't close my eyes till dawn." "Didn't you?" she said, with a secret little smile. "I slept exceedingly well." With a quick shuffling267 of papers and carbon he began to type, straining his eyes at Jastrow's scrawl268. A hand ran through his hair and rested warmly on his neck. "Let's see." She stood over him, looking down at him with affectionate amusement. Pinned on the old brown dress over her left breast was the gold brooch with purple stones from Warsaw. She had never before worn it. She glanced through the pages and took a few. "Poor Briny, why couldn't you sleep? Never mind, type your head off, and so Will I." They did not finish the work before lunch, but by then, as it turned out, Dr. Jastrow had other things on his mind. At noon, an enormous white Lancia rattled269 the gravel270 outside the villa. Byron and Natalie could hear the rich voice of Tom Searle and the warm hard laugh of his wife. Celebrated271 American actors, the Searles had been living off and on for fifteen years in a hilltop villa not far from Jastrow's. The woman painted and gardened, while the man built brick walls and did the cooking. Endlessly they read old plays, new plays, and novels that might become plays. Other celebrities272 to Siena just to see them. Tlrough them Jastrow had met and entertainedMaugham,B(came) erenson, Gertrude Lawrence, and Picasso. A retired273 college professor would have been a minnow among these big fish; but the success of A Jew's Jesus had put him fairly in their company. He loved being part of the celebrities' group, though he grumbled274 about the interference with his work. He often drove down to Florence with the Searles to meet their friends, and Natalie and Byron thought the actors might be passing by now to fetch him off. But coming down for lunch, they found A.J. alone in the drawing room, sneezing, red-nosed, and waving an emptied sherry glass. He complained that they were late. In fact they were a bit early. "The Searles are leaving," he said when lunch was over, having sneezed and blown his nose all through the meal without uttenng a word. "Just like that. They came to say good-bye." "Oh? Are they doing a new play?" said Natalie. "They're getting out. Lock, stock, and barrel. They're moving every stick back to the States." "But doesn't their lease run for-how many more years? Five?" "Seven. They're abandoning the lease. They can't afford to get stuck here, they say, if the war spreads." Jastrow morosely275 fingered his beard.
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enrolled
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| adj.入学登记了的v.[亦作enrol]( enroll的过去式和过去分词 )；登记，招收，使入伍（或入会、入学等），参加，成为成员；记入名册；卷起，包起 | |
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par
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| n.标准，票面价值，平均数量；adj.票面的，平常的，标准的 | |
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lieutenant
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| n.陆军中尉，海军上尉；代理官员，副职官员 | |
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vice
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| n.坏事；恶习；[pl.]台钳，老虎钳；adj.副的 | |
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briny
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| adj.盐水的；很咸的；n.海洋 | |
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jaw
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| n.颚，颌，说教，流言蜚语；v.喋喋不休，教训 | |
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dressing
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| n.(食物)调料；包扎伤口的用品，敷料 | |
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quiescent
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justified
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lull
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| v.使安静，使入睡，缓和，哄骗；n.暂停，间歇 | |
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posture
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| n.姿势，姿态，心态，态度；v.作出某种姿势 | |
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12
collapse
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| vi.累倒；昏倒；倒塌；塌陷 | |
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13
twilight
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| n.暮光，黄昏；暮年，晚期，衰落时期 | |
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14
con
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| n.反对的观点，反对者，反对票，肺病；vt.精读，学习，默记；adv.反对地，从反面；adj.欺诈的 | |
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15
feverishly
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| adv. 兴奋地 | |
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feverish
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| adj.发烧的，狂热的，兴奋的 | |
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17
wariness
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| n. 注意,小心 | |
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18
postponement
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| n.推迟 | |
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19
postponed
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| vt.& vi.延期，缓办，（使）延迟vt.把…放在次要地位；[语]把…放在后面（或句尾）vi.（疟疾等）延缓发作（或复发） | |
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20
tempo
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| n.(音乐的)速度；节奏，行进速度 | |
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21
rim
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| n.(圆物的)边，轮缘；边界 | |
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22
interfere
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| v.(in)干涉，干预；(with)妨碍，打扰 | |
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23
distraction
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| n.精神涣散，精神不集中，消遣，娱乐 | |
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24
Soviet
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| adj.苏联的，苏维埃的；n.苏维埃 | |
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25
bent
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| n.爱好，癖好；adj.弯的；决心的，一心的 | |
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26
pact
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| n.合同，条约，公约，协定 | |
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27
eventual
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| adj.最后的，结局的，最终的 | |
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28
concessions
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| n.（尤指由政府或雇主给予的）特许权( concession的名词复数 )；承认；减价；（在某地的）特许经营权 | |
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29
isthmus
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| n.地峡 | |
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30
gulf
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| n.海湾；深渊，鸿沟；分歧，隔阂 | |
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31
trampled
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| 踩( trample的过去式和过去分词 )； 践踏； 无视； 侵犯 | |
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32
miserably
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| adv.痛苦地；悲惨地；糟糕地；极度地 | |
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33
rabble
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| n.乌合之众，暴民；下等人 | |
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34
foe
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| n.敌人，仇敌 | |
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35
purges
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| 清除异己( purge的名词复数 )； 整肃（行动）； 清洗； 泻药 | |
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36
inefficiency
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| n.无效率，无能；无效率事例 | |
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37
horde
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| n.群众，一大群 | |
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38
defenders
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| n.防御者( defender的名词复数 )；守卫者；保护者；辩护者 | |
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39
defender
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| n.保卫者，拥护者，辩护人 | |
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40
artillery
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| n.(军)火炮，大炮；炮兵(部队) | |
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41
adversary
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| adj.敌手，对手 | |
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42
camouflage
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| n./v.掩饰，伪装 | |
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43
vociferous
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| adj.喧哗的，大叫大嚷的 | |
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44
conspiracies
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| n.阴谋，密谋( conspiracy的名词复数 ) | |
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45
memoirs
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| n.回忆录；回忆录传( mem,自oir的名词复数) | |
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46
pretext
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| n.借口，托词 | |
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47
disastrous
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| adj.灾难性的，造成灾害的；极坏的，很糟的 | |
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48
hip
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| n.臀部，髋；屋脊 | |
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49
judgment
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| n.审判；判断力，识别力，看法，意见 | |
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50
paradoxes
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| n.似非而是的隽语，看似矛盾而实际却可能正确的说法( paradox的名词复数 )；用于语言文学中的上述隽语；有矛盾特点的人[事物，情况] | |
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51
forestalled
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| v.先发制人，预先阻止( forestall的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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52
amateurishness
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| n.amateurish（业余的）的变形 | |
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53
competence
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| n.能力，胜任，称职 | |
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54
judgments
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| 判断( judgment的名词复数 )； 鉴定； 评价； 审判 | |
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55
propensity
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| n.倾向；习性 | |
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56
gathering
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| n.集会，聚会，聚集 | |
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57
momentum
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| n.动力，冲力，势头；动量 | |
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58
hysterical
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| adj.情绪异常激动的，歇斯底里般的 | |
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59
insistence
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| n.坚持；强调；坚决主张 | |
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60
forth
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| adv.向前；向外，往外 | |
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61
lust
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| n.性(淫)欲；渴(欲)望；vi.对…有强烈的欲望 | |
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62
usurpation
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| n.篡位；霸占 | |
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63
sketched
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| v.草拟（sketch的过去式与过去分词形式） | |
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64
affected
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| adj.不自然的，假装的 | |
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65
usurped
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| 篡夺，霸占( usurp的过去式和过去分词 )； 盗用； 篡夺，篡权 | |
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66
Nazi
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| n.纳粹分子，adj.纳粹党的，纳粹的 | |
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67
minions
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| n.奴颜婢膝的仆从( minion的名词复数 )；走狗；宠儿；受人崇拜者 | |
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68
scruple
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| n./v.顾忌，迟疑 | |
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69
revered
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| v.崇敬，尊崇，敬畏( revere的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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70
lapses
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| n.失误，过失( lapse的名词复数 )；小毛病；行为失检；偏离正道v.退步( lapse的第三人称单数 )；陷入；倒退；丧失 | |
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71
Nazis
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| n.（德国的）纳粹党员( Nazi的名词复数 )；纳粹主义 | |
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72
coup
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| n.政变；突然而成功的行动 | |
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73
accusations
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| n.指责( accusation的名词复数 )；指控；控告；（被告发、控告的）罪名 | |
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74
stunning
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| adj.极好的；使人晕倒的 | |
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75
arrogance
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| n.傲慢，自大 | |
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76
supreme
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| adj.极度的，最重要的；至高的，最高的 | |
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77
loyalty
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| n.忠诚，忠心 | |
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78
binding
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| 有约束力的，有效的，应遵守的 | |
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79
stabilizing
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| n.稳定化处理[退火]v.（使）稳定， （使）稳固( stabilize的现在分词 ) | |
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80
agitator
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| n.鼓动者；搅拌器 | |
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81
voracious
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| adj.狼吞虎咽的，贪婪的 | |
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82
incapable
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| adj.无能力的，不能做某事的 | |
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83
Undid
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| v. 解开, 复原 | |
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84
brutal
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| adj.残忍的，野蛮的，不讲理的 | |
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85
premature
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| adj.比预期时间早的；不成熟的，仓促的 | |
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86
valor
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| n.勇气，英勇 | |
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87
meddler
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| n.爱管闲事的人，干涉者 | |
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88
rejection
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| n.拒绝，被拒，抛弃，被弃 | |
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89
oratory
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| n.演讲术；词藻华丽的言辞 | |
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90
outlasted
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| v.比…长久，比…活得长( outlast的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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91
grandiose
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| adj.宏伟的，宏大的，堂皇的，铺张的 | |
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92
personalities
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| n. 诽谤，（对某人容貌、性格等所进行的）人身攻击； 人身攻击；人格, 个性, 名人( personality的名词复数 ) | |
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93
opposition
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| n.反对，敌对 | |
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94
possessed
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| adj.疯狂的；拥有的，占有的 | |
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95
arrogate
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| v.冒称具有...权利，霸占 | |
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96
allied
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| adj.协约国的；同盟国的 | |
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97
belly
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| n.肚子，腹部；(像肚子一样)鼓起的部分，膛 | |
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98
slaughtered
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| v.屠杀，杀戮，屠宰( slaughter的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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99
warfare
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| n.战争(状态)；斗争；冲突 | |
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100
machinery
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| n.(总称)机械，机器；机构 | |
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101
colossal
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| adj.异常的，庞大的 | |
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102
nagged
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| adj.经常遭责怪的；被压制的；感到厌烦的；被激怒的v.不断地挑剔或批评（某人）( nag的过去式和过去分词 )；不断地烦扰或伤害（某人）；无休止地抱怨；不断指责 | |
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103
follies
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| 罪恶，时事讽刺剧； 愚蠢，蠢笨，愚蠢的行为、思想或做法( folly的名词复数 ) | |
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104
civilian
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| adj.平民的，民用的，民众的 | |
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105
entrust
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| v.信赖，信托，交托 | |
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106
plunder
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| vt.劫掠财物，掠夺；n.劫掠物，赃物；劫掠 | |
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107
aggression
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| n.进攻，侵略，侵犯，侵害 | |
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108
enraged
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| 使暴怒( enrage的过去式和过去分词 )； 歜； 激愤 | |
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109
skulk
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| v.藏匿；潜行 | |
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110
unawareness
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| 不知觉；不察觉；不意；不留神 | |
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111
doctrine
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| n.教义；主义；学说 | |
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112
conflagration
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| n.建筑物或森林大火 | |
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113
tractable
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| adj.易驾驭的；温顺的 | |
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114
bulged
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| 凸出( bulge的过去式和过去分词 )； 充满； 塞满（某物） | |
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115
rimless
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| adj.无边的 | |
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116
doomed
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| 命定的 | |
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117
piquant
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| adj.辛辣的，开胃的，令人兴奋的 | |
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118
intriguing
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| adj.有趣的；迷人的v.搞阴谋诡计(intrigue的现在分词)；激起…的好奇心 | |
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119
apron
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| n.围裙；工作裙 | |
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120
stew
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| n.炖汤，焖，烦恼；v.炖汤，焖，忧虑 | |
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121
divan
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| n.长沙发；（波斯或其他东方诗人的）诗集 | |
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122
shears
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| n.大剪刀 | |
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123
fluster
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| adj.慌乱，狼狈，混乱，激动 | |
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124
ragged
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| adj.衣衫褴褛的，粗糙的，刺耳的 | |
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125
giggle
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| n.痴笑，咯咯地笑；v.咯咯地笑着说 | |
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126
crammed
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| adj.塞满的，挤满的；大口地吃；快速贪婪地吃v.把…塞满；填入；临时抱佛脚( cram的过去式) | |
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127
rusty
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| adj.生锈的；锈色的；荒废了的 | |
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128
plumbing
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| n.水管装置；水暖工的工作；管道工程v.用铅锤测量（plumb的现在分词）；探究 | |
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129
cosy
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| adj.温暖而舒适的，安逸的 | |
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130
appalled
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| v.使惊骇，使充满恐惧( appall的过去式和过去分词)adj.惊骇的；丧胆的 | |
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131
propped
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| 支撑，支持，维持( prop的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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132
erect
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| n./v.树立，建立，使竖立；adj.直立的，垂直的 | |
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133
apropos
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| adv.恰好地；adj.恰当的；关于 | |
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134
naval
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| adj.海军的，军舰的，船的 | |
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135
labor
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| n.劳动，努力，工作，劳工；分娩；vi.劳动，努力，苦干；vt.详细分析；麻烦 | |
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136
spat
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| n.口角，掌击；v.发出呼噜呼噜声 | |
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137
capitalism
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| n.资本主义 | |
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138
pointed
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| adj.尖的，直截了当的 | |
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139
inevitably
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| adv.不可避免地；必然发生地 | |
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140
serenely
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| adv.安详地，宁静地，平静地 | |
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141
random
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| adj.随机的；任意的；n.偶然的(或随便的)行动 | |
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142
irrelevant
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| adj.不恰当的，无关系的，不相干的 | |
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143
lackey
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| n.侍从；跟班 | |
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144
condiments
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| n.调味品 | |
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145
swarms
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| 蜂群，一大群( swarm的名词复数 ) | |
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146
pungent
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| adj.（气味、味道）刺激性的，辛辣的；尖锐的 | |
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147
aroma
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| n.香气，芬芳，芳香 | |
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148
socialist
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| n.社会主义者；adj.社会主义的 | |
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149
benighted
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| adj.蒙昧的 | |
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150
aviator
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| n.飞行家，飞行员 | |
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151
feudal
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| adj.封建的，封地的，领地的 | |
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152
inefficient
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| adj.效率低的，无效的 | |
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153
wither
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| vt.使凋谢，使衰退，(用眼神气势等)使畏缩；vi.枯萎，衰退，消亡 | |
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154
mowing
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| n.割草，一次收割量，牧草地v.刈，割( mow的现在分词 ) | |
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155
giggling
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| v.咯咯地笑( giggle的现在分词 ) | |
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156
provocation
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| n.激怒，刺激，挑拨，挑衅的事物，激怒的原因 | |
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157
embroil
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| vt.拖累；牵连；使复杂 | |
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158
rectification
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| n. 改正, 改订, 矫正 | |
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159
prudent
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| adj.谨慎的，有远见的，精打细算的 | |
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160
vile
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| adj.卑鄙的，可耻的，邪恶的；坏透的 | |
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161
flopping
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| n.贬调v.（指书、戏剧等）彻底失败( flop的现在分词 )；（因疲惫而）猛然坐下；（笨拙地、不由自主地或松弛地）移动或落下；砸锅 | |
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162
wink
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| n.眨眼，使眼色，瞬间；v.眨眼，使眼色，闪烁 | |
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163
misery
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| n.痛苦，苦恼，苦难；悲惨的境遇，贫苦 | |
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164
gal
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| n.姑娘，少女 | |
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165
scatter
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| vt.撒，驱散，散开；散布/播；vi.分散，消散 | |
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166
gasped
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| v.喘气( gasp的过去式和过去分词 )；喘息；倒抽气；很想要 | |
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167
translucent
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| adj.半透明的；透明的 | |
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168
frescoes
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| n.壁画( fresco的名词复数 )；温壁画技法，湿壁画 | |
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169
abruptly
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| adv.突然地，出其不意地 | |
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170
clattering
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| 发出咔哒声（clatter的现在分词形式） | |
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171
sporadic
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| adj.偶尔发生的 [反]regular；分散的 | |
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172
lodging
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| n.寄宿，住所；(大学生的)校外宿舍 | |
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173
villa
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| n.别墅，城郊小屋 | |
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174
cramped
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| a.狭窄的 | |
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175
peculiar
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| adj.古怪的，异常的；特殊的，特有的 | |
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176
terse
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| adj.(说话，文笔)精炼的，简明的 | |
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177
irritable
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| adj.急躁的；过敏的；易怒的 | |
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178
evoked
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| [医]诱发的 | |
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179
plunging
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|
| adj.跳进的，突进的v.颠簸( plunge的现在分词 )；暴跌；骤降；突降 | |
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180
foresight
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| n.先见之明，深谋远虑 | |
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181
frantic
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| adj.狂乱的，错乱的，激昂的 | |
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182
royalties
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| 特许权使用费 | |
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183
subdued
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|
| adj. 屈服的，柔和的，减弱的 动词subdue的过去式和过去分词 | |
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184
Christian
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| adj.基督教徒的；n.基督教徒 | |
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185
fanatic
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|
| n.狂热者，入迷者；adj.狂热入迷的 | |
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186
recurring
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| adj.往复的，再次发生的 | |
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187
poised
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| a.摆好姿势不动的 | |
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188
faltering
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| 犹豫的，支吾的，蹒跚的 | |
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189
obsolete
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|
| adj.已废弃的，过时的 | |
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190
patchwork
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|
| n.混杂物；拼缝物 | |
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191
caterpillar
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|
| n.毛虫，蝴蝶的幼虫 | |
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192
essentially
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|
| adv.本质上，实质上，基本上 | |
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193
idiotic
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| adj.白痴的 | |
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194
gory
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| adj.流血的；残酷的 | |
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195
unified
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|
| (unify 的过去式和过去分词)； 统一的； 统一标准的； 一元化的 | |
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196
villain
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| n.反派演员，反面人物；恶棍；问题的起因 | |
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197
melodrama
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|
| n.音乐剧；情节剧 | |
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198
bloodily
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|
| adv.出血地；血淋淋地；残忍地；野蛮地 | |
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199
standing
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| n.持续，地位；adj.永久的，不动的，直立的，不流动的 | |
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200
gab
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| v.空谈，唠叨，瞎扯；n.饶舌，多嘴，爱说话 | |
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201
casually
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|
| adv.漠不关心地，无动于衷地，不负责任地 | |
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202
agitated
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| adj.被鼓动的，不安的 | |
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203
flipping
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| 讨厌之极的 | |
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204
spiky
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| adj.长而尖的，大钉似的 | |
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205
strings
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| n.弦 | |
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206
spikes
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|
| n.穗( spike的名词复数 )；跑鞋；（防滑）鞋钉；尖状物v.加烈酒于( spike的第三人称单数 )；偷偷地给某人的饮料加入（更多）酒精（ 或药物）；把尖状物钉入；打乱某人的计划 | |
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207
thump
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|
| v.重击，砰然地响；n.重击，重击声 | |
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208
rustled
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| v.发出沙沙的声音( rustle的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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209
diplomat
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| n.外交官，外交家；能交际的人，圆滑的人 | |
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210
elusive
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| adj.难以表达(捉摸)的；令人困惑的；逃避的 | |
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211
buzzer
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| n.蜂鸣器；汽笛 | |
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212
folder
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| n.纸夹，文件夹 | |
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213
descended
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| a.为...后裔的，出身于...的 | |
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214
jovial
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|
| adj.快乐的，好交际的 | |
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215
anecdote
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| n.轶事，趣闻，短故事 | |
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216
spoke
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| n.（车轮的）辐条；轮辐；破坏某人的计划；阻挠某人的行动 v.讲，谈（speak的过去式）；说；演说；从某种观点来说 | |
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217
monotonously
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|
| adv.单调地，无变化地 | |
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218
ravaged
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| 毁坏( ravage的过去式和过去分词 )； 蹂躏； 劫掠； 抢劫 | |
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219
registration
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| n.登记，注册，挂号 | |
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220
victorious
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|
| adj.胜利的，得胜的 | |
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221
gilt
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| adj.镀金的；n.金边证券 | |
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222
chilly
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| adj.凉快的，寒冷的 | |
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223
coerced
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| v.迫使做( coerce的过去式和过去分词 )；强迫；（以武力、惩罚、威胁等手段）控制；支配 | |
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224
vampire
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| n.吸血鬼 | |
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225
lured
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| 吸引，引诱（lure的过去式与过去分词形式） | |
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226
flare
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| v.闪耀，闪烁；n.潮红；突发 | |
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227
blighted
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|
| adj.枯萎的，摧毁的 | |
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228
nervously
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| adv.神情激动地，不安地 | |
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229
trudged
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| vt.& vi.跋涉，吃力地走（trudge的过去式与过去分词形式） | |
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230
vented
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| 表达，发泄（感情，尤指愤怒）( vent的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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231
futile
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| adj.无效的，无用的，无希望的 | |
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232
entirely
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|
| ad.全部地，完整地；完全地，彻底地 | |
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233
stunned
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| adj. 震惊的，惊讶的 动词stun的过去式和过去分词 | |
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234
sipped
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| v.小口喝，呷，抿( sip的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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235
sip
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|
| v.小口地喝，抿，呷；n.一小口的量 | |
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236
vibrant
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|
| adj.震颤的，响亮的，充满活力的，精力充沛的，(色彩)鲜明的 | |
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237
illuminating
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| a.富于启发性的，有助阐明的 | |
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238
shimmering
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| v.闪闪发光，发微光( shimmer的现在分词 ) | |
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239
swirling
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| v.旋转，打旋( swirl的现在分词 ) | |
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240
snared
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| v.用罗网捕捉，诱陷，陷害( snare的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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241
condescension
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| n.自以为高人一等，贬低(别人) | |
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242
swoop
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| n.俯冲，攫取；v.抓取，突然袭击 | |
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243
cloying
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| adj.甜得发腻的 | |
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244
craved
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| 渴望，热望( crave的过去式 )； 恳求，请求 | |
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245
awfully
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| adv.可怕地，非常地，极端地 | |
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246
cringing
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| adj.谄媚，奉承 | |
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247
sneak
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|
| vt.潜行(隐藏,填石缝)；偷偷摸摸做；n.潜行；adj.暗中进行 | |
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248
maidenly
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| adj. 像处女的, 谨慎的, 稳静的 | |
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249
chaos
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| n.混乱，无秩序 | |
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250
garrulity
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| n.饶舌，多嘴 | |
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251
stammered
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| v.结巴地说出( stammer的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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252
penetrating
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|
| adj.（声音）响亮的，尖锐的adj.（气味）刺激的adj.（思想）敏锐的，有洞察力的 | |
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253
hoarsely
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|
| adv.嘶哑地 | |
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254
caressed
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| 爱抚或抚摸…( caress的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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255
daydreams
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|
| n.白日梦( daydream的名词复数 )v.想入非非，空想( daydream的第三人称单数 ) | |
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256
daydreamed
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| v.想入非非，空想( daydream的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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257
gratitude
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|
| adj.感激，感谢 | |
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258
preposterous
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| adj.荒谬的，可笑的 | |
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259
attic
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| n.顶楼，屋顶室 | |
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260
shafted
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| 有箭杆的，有柄的，有羽轴的 | |
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261
endearments
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| n.表示爱慕的话语，亲热的表示( endearment的名词复数 ) | |
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262
jumble
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| vt.使混乱，混杂；n.混乱；杂乱的一堆 | |
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263
banking
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| n.银行业，银行学，金融业 | |
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264
ardent
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| adj.热情的，热烈的，强烈的，烈性的 | |
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265
scribbled
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|
| v.潦草的书写( scribble的过去式和过去分词 )；乱画；草草地写；匆匆记下 | |
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266
viler
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|
| adj.卑鄙的( vile的比较级 )；可耻的；极坏的；非常讨厌的 | |
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267
shuffling
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| adj. 慢慢移动的, 滑移的 动词shuffle的现在分词形式 | |
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268
scrawl
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| vt.潦草地书写；n.潦草的笔记，涂写 | |
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269
rattled
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| 慌乱的，恼火的 | |
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270
gravel
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| n.砂跞；砂砾层；结石 | |
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271
celebrated
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| adj.有名的，声誉卓著的 | |
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272
celebrities
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| n.（尤指娱乐界的）名人( celebrity的名词复数 )；名流；名声；名誉 | |
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273
retired
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| adj.隐退的，退休的，退役的 | |
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274
grumbled
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| 抱怨( grumble的过去式和过去分词 )； 发牢骚； 咕哝； 发哼声 | |
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275
morosely
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| adv.愁眉苦脸地，忧郁地 | |
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