“I been living under the Nazis,” Joe said. “I know what it’s like. Is that just talk, to live twelve, thirteen years—longer than that—almost fifteen years? I got a work card from OT; I worked for Organization Todt since 1947, in North Africa and the U.S.A. Listen-“ He jabbed his finger at her. “I got the Italian genius for earthworks; OT gave me a high rating. I wasn’t shoveling asphalt and mixing concrete for the autobahns. I was helping design. Engineer. One day Doctor Todt came by and inspected what our work crew did. He sai4 to me, ‘You got good hands.’ That’s a big moment, Juliana. Dignity of labor; they’re not talking only words. Before them, the Nazis, everyone looked down on manual jobs; myself, too. Aristocratic. The Labor Front put an end to that. I seen my own hands for the first time.” He spoke so swiftly that his accent began to take over; she had trouble understanding him. “We all lived out there in the woods, in Upper State New York, like brothers. Sang songs. Marched to work. Spirit of the war, only rebuilding, not breaking down. Those were the best days of all, rebuilding after the war—fine, clean, long-lasting rows of public buildings block by block, whole new downtown, New York and Baltimore. Now of course that work’s past. Big cartels like New Jersey Krupp and Sohnen running the show. But that’s not Nazi; that’s just old European powerful. Worse, you hear? Nazis like Rommel and Todt a million times better men than industrialists like Krupp and bankers, all those Prussians; ought to have been gassed. All those gentlemen in vests.”
But, Juliana thought, those gentlemen in vests are in forever. And your idols, Rommel and Doctor Todt; they just came in after hostilities, to clear the rubble, build the autobahns, start industry humming. They even let the Jews live, lucky surprise—amnesty so the Jews could pitch in. Until ‘49, anyhow. . . and then good-bye Todt and Rommel, retired to graze.
Don’t I know? Juliana thought. Didn’t I hear all about it from Frank? You can’t tell me anything about lifeunder the Nazis; my husband was—is—a Jew. I know that Doctor Todt was the most modest, gentle man that ever lived; I know all he wanted to do was provide work—honest, reputable work—for the millions of bleak-eyed, despairing American men and women picking through the ruins after the war. I know he wanted to see medical plans and vacation resorts and adequate housing for everyone, regardless of race; he was a builder, not a thinker. . . and in most cases he managed to create what he had wanted—he actually got it. But .
A preoccupation, in the back of her mind, now rose decidedly. “Joe. This Grasshopper book; isn’t it banned in the East Coast?”
He nodded.
“How could you be reading it, then?” Something about it worried her. “Don’t they still shoot people for reading—“
“It depends on your racial group. On the good old armband.”
That was so. Slays, Poles, Puerto Ricans, were the most limited as to what they could read, do, listen to. The AngloSaxons had it much better; there was public education for their children, and they could go to libraries and museums and concerts. But even so. . . The Grasshopper was not merely classified; it was forbidden, and to everyone.
Joe said, “I read it in the toilet. I hid it in a pillow. In fact, I read it because it was banned.”
“You’re very brave,” she said.
Doubtfully he said, “You mean that sarcastically?”
“No.”
He relaxed a little. “It’s easy for you people here; you live a safe, purposeless life, nothing to do, nothing to worry about. Out of the stream of events, left over from the past; right?” His eyes mocked her.
“You’re killing yourself,” she said, “with cynicism. Your idols got taken away from you one by one and now you have nothing to give your love to.,, She held his fork toward him; he accepted it. Eat, she thought. Or give up even the biological processes.
As he ate, Joe nodded at the book and said, “That Abendsen lives around here, according to the cover. In Cheyenne. Gets perspective on the world from such a safe spot, wouldn’t you guess? Read what it ways; read it aloud.”
Taking the book, she read the back part of the jacket. “He’s an ex-service man. He was in the U. S. Marine Corps in World War Two, wounded in England by a Nazi Tiger tank. A sergeant. It says he’s got practically a fortress that he writes in, guns all over the place.” Setting the book down, she said, “And it doesn’t say so here, but I heard someone say that he’s almost a sort of paranoid; charged barbed wire around the place, and it’s set in the mountains. Hard to get to.”
“Maybe he’s right,” Joe said, “to live like that, after writing that book. The German bigwigs hit the roof when they read it.”
“He was living that way before; he wrote the book there. His place is called—“ She glanced at the book jacket. “The High Castle. That’s his pet name for it.”
“They won’t get him,” Joe said, chewing rapidly. “He’s on the lookout. Smart.”
She said, “I believe he’s got a lot of courage to write that book. If the Axis had lost the war, we’d be able to say and write anything we wanted, like we used to; we’d be one country and we’d have a fair legal system, the same one for all of us.”
To her surprise, he nodded reasonably to that.
“I don’t understand you,” she said. “What do you believe? What is it you want? You defend those monsters, those freaks who slaughtered the Jews, and then you—“ Despairing, she caught hold of him by the ears; he blinked in surprise and pain as she rose to her feet, tugging him up with her.
They faced each other, wheezing, neither able to speak.
“Let me finish this meal you fixed for me,” Joe said at last.
“Won’t you say? You won’t tell me? You do know what it is, yourself; you understand and you just go on eating, pretending you don’t have any idea what I mean.” She let go of his ears; they had been twisted until they were now bright red.
“Empty talk,” Joe said. “It doesn’t matter. Like the radio, what you said of it. You know the old brownshirt term for people who spin philosophy? Eierkopf. Egghead. Because the big double-domed empty heads break so easily . . . in the street brawls.”
“If you feel like that about me,” Julianasaid, “whydon’t you go on? What are you staying here for?”
His enigmatic grimace chilled her.
I wish I had never let him come with me, she thought. And now it’s too late; I know I can’t get rid of him—he’s too strong.
Something terrible is happening, she thought. Coming out of him. And I seem to be helping it.
“What’s the matter?” He reached out, chucked her beneath the chin, stroked her neck, put his fingers under her shirt and pressed her shoulders affectionately. “A mood. Your problem—I’ll analyze you free.”
“They’ll call you a Jew analyst.” She smiled feebly. “Do you want to wind up in an oven?”
“You’re scared of men. Right?”
“I don’t know.”
“It was possible to tell last night. Only because I—“ He cut his sentence off. “Because I took special care to notice your wants.”
“Because you’ve gone to bed with so many girls,” Juliana said, “that’s what you started to say.”
“But I know I’m right. Listen; I’ll never hurt you, Juliana. On my mother’s body—I give you my word. I’ll be specially considerate, and if you want to make an issue out of my experience—I’ll give you the advantage of that. You’ll lose your jitters; I can relax you and improve you, in not very much time, either. You’ve just had bad luck.”
She nodded, cheered a bit. But she still felt cold and sad, and she still did not know quite why.
To begin his day, Mr. Nobusuke Tagomi took a moment to be alone. He sat in his office in the Nippon Times Building and contemplated.
Already, before he had left his house to come to his office, he had received Ito’s report on Mr. Baynes. There was no doubt in the young student’s mind; Mr. Baynes was not a Swede. Mr. Baynes was most certainly a German national.
But Ito’s ability to handle Germanic languages had never impressed either the Trade Missions or the Tokkoka, the Japanese secret police. The fool possibly has sniffed out nothing to speak of, Mr. Tagomi thought to himself. Maladroit enthusiasm, combined with romantic doctrines. Detect, always with suspicion.
Anyhow, the conference with Mr. Baynes and the elderly individual from the Home Islands would begin soon, in due course, whatever national Mr. Baynes was. And Mr. Tagomi liked the man. That was, he decided, conceivably the basic talent of the man highly placed—such as himself. To know a good man when he met him. Intuition about people. Cut through all ceremony and outward form. Penetrate to the heart. –