Herman Wouk: The Winds of War

“Why, sure. That tall lieutenant commander who lived next door in Manila. Where’s he stationed now?”

“He’s just finished a tour as naval attaché in Berlin,” Victor Henry said.

Warren made a comic grimace, and dropped his voice. “Jehosephat, Dad. How did he ever get stuck with that ? Cookie pusher in an embassy!”

Rhoda looked at her husband, whose face remained impassive.

“Commander Tollever, ma’am,” said the houseman at the doorway.

“Hello, Rhoda!” Tollever marched in with long arms outstretched, in a flawlessly cut evening uniform: blue mess jacket with medals and gold buttons, a black tie, a stiff snowy shirt. “My lord, woman! You look ten years younger than you did in the Philippines.”

“Oh, you,” she said, eyes gleaming, as he lightly kissed her cheek.

“Hi, Pug.” Smoothing one manicured hand over heavy wavy hair just turning gray, Tollever stared at the son. “Now for crying out loud, which boy is this?”

Warren held out his hand. “Hello, sir. Guess.”

“Aha. It’s Warren. Byron had a different grin. And red hair, come to think of it.”

“Right you are, sir.”

“Rusty Traynor told me you’re serving in the Monaghan . What’s Byron doing?”

Rhoda chirruped after a slight silence, “Oh, Byron’s our romantic dreamer, Kip. He’s studying fine arts in Italy. And you should see Madeline! All grown up.”

Warren said, “Excuse me, sir,” and went out.

“Fine arts! Italy!” One heavy eyebrow went up in Tollever’s gaunt handsome face, and his cobalt-blue eyes widened. “Well, that is romantic. Say, Pug, since when do you indulge?” Tollever inquired, accepting a martini and seeing Henry refill his own glass.

“Why, hell, Kip, I was drinking in Manila. Plenty.”

“Were you? I forget. I just remember what a roaring teetotaler you were in the Academy. No tobacco either.”

“Well, I fell from grace long ago.”

Victor Henry had started to drink and smoke on the death of an infant girl, and had not returned to the abstinences his strict Methodist father had taught him. It was a topic he did not enjoy exploring.

With a slight smile, Tollever said, “Do you play cards on Sunday now, too?”

“No, I still hold to that bit of foolishness.”

“Don’t call it foolishness, Pug.”

Commander Tollever began to talk about the post of naval attaché in Berlin. “You’ll love Germany,” were his first words on the topic. “And so will Rhoda. You’d be crazy not to grab the chance.”

Resting his elbows on the arms of his chair, legs neatly crossed, he clipped out his words with all the old articulate crispness; still one of the handsomest men in Pug’s class, and one of the unluckiest. Two years out of the Academy, while officer of the deck of a destroyer, Tollever had rammed a submarine at night in a rainsquall, during a fleet exercise. The submarine had surfaced without warning a hundred yards in front of him. It had scarcely been his fault, nobody had been hurt, and the general court-martial had merely given him a letter of reprimand. But that letter had festered in his promotion jacket, sapping his career. He drank two martinis in about fifteen minutes, as he talked.

When Victor Henry probed a bit about the Nazis and how to deal with them, Kip Tollever sat up very erect, his curled fingers stiffened as he gestured, and his tone grew firm. The National Socialists were in , he said, and the other German parties were out, just as in the United States the Democrats were in and the Republicans out. That was the one way to look at it. The Germans admired the United States, and desperately wanted our friendship. Pug would find the latch off, and the channels of information open, if he simply treated these people as human beings. The press coverage of the new Germany was distorted. When Pug got to know the newspapermen, he would understand why — disgruntled pinkos and drunks, most of them.

“Hitler’s a damned remarkable man,” said Tollever, poised on his elbows, one scrubbed hand to his chin, one negligently dangling, his face flushed bright pink. “I’m not saying that he, or Göring, or any of that bunch, wouldn’t murder their own grandmothers to increase their power or to advance the interests of Germany. But that’s politics in Europe nowadays. We Americans are far too naïve. The Soviet Union is the one big reality Europe lives with, Pug — that Slav horde, seething in the east. We can hardly picture that feeling, but for them it’s political bedrock. The Communist International is not playing mah-jongg, you know, those Bolos are out to rule Europe by fraud or force or both. Hitler isn’t about to let them. That’s the root of the matter. The Germans do things in politics that we wouldn’t — like this stuff with the Jews — but that’s just a passing phase, and anyway, it’s not your business. Remember that. Your job is military information. You can get a hell of a lot of that from these people. They’re proud of what they’re accomplishing, and not at all bashful about showing off, and I mean they’ll give you the real dope.”

Rhoda asked questions about the Jews, as Pug Henry mixed more martinis. Tollever assured her that the newspaper stories were exaggerated. The worst thing had been the so-called Crystal Night when Nazi toughs had smashed department store windows and set fire to some synagogues. Even that the Jews had brought on themselves, by murdering a German embassy official in Paris. As an embassy official himself, Tollever said, he took rather a dim view of that! He and his wife had gone to the theatre that very night, and on the way home had seen a lot of broken glass along the Kurfürstendamm, and the glow of a couple of distant fires. The account in Time had made it seem that Germany was ablaze from end to end, and that the Jews were being slaughtered en masse. There had been conflicting reports, but so far as he knew not one of them had really been physically harmed. A big fine had been put on them for the death of the official, a billion marks or something. Hitler did believe in strong medicine. “Now as to the President’s recalling our ambassador, that was a superfluous gesture, utterly superfluous,” Tollever said. “It only made things worse for the Jews, and it completely fouled up our embassy’s workings. There’s just no common sense here in Washington about Germany.”

Drinking two more martinis, the erect warrior began dissolving into a gossipy, slouched Navy insider, reminiscing about parties, weekends, hunting trips, and the like; about the potato soup he had drunk with Luftwaffe officers in the dawn, while recovering from a drinking bout after a Party rally; about the famous actors and politicians who had befriended him. Great fun and high living went with an attaché’s job, he chuckled, if one played one’s cards right. Moreover, you were supposed to do those things, so as to dig up information. It was dream duty. A man was entitled to get whatever he could out of the Navy! He had sat in a front seat, watching history unfold, and he had had a glorious time besides. “I tell you, you’ll love it, Pug. It’s the most interesting post in Europe nowadays. The Nazis are a mixed crowd, actually. Some are brilliant, but between you and me, some are pretty crude and vulgar. The professional military crowd sort of looks down on them. But hell, how do we feel about our own politicians? Hitler’s in the saddle and nobody’s arguing about that . He is boss man, and I kid you not. So lay off that topic and you’ll do fine, because really you can’t beat these people for hospitality. In a way they’re a lot like us, you know, more so than the French or even the Limeys. They’ll turn themselves inside out for an American naval officer.” A strange smile, rueful and somewhat beaten, appeared on his face as he glanced from Rhoda to Pug. “Especially a man like you. They’ll know all about you long before you get there. Now if this is off the reservation say so, but how on earth did a gunnery redhot like you come up for this job?”