Upton Sinclair - Dragons’s teeth

Heinrich Jung also had earned a right to hospitality, so he and his devoted little blue-eyed Hausfrau were invited to a dinner which was an outstanding event in her life. She had presented the Fatherland with three little Aryans, so she didn’t get out very often, she confessed. She exclaimed with naive delight over the wonders of the Hotel Adlon, and had to have Irma assure her that her home-made dress was adequate for such a grand occasion. Heinrich talked N.S.D.A.P. politics, and incidentally fished around to find out what had happened in the case of Johannes Robin, about which there was no end of curiosity in party circles, he reported. Lanny could only say that he had orders not to talk. A little later he asked: "Have you seen Frau Reichsminister Goebbels since our meeting?"

Yes, Heinrich had been invited to tea at her home; so Lanny didn’t have to ask who had manifested the curiosity in party circles. Presently Heinrich said that Magda had wished to know whether Mr. and Mrs. Budd would care to be invited to one of her receptions. Irma hastened to say that she would be pleased, and Heinrich undertook to communicate this attitude. So it is that one advances in die grosse Welt; if one has money, plus the right clothes and manners, one can go from drawing-room to drawing-room, filling one’s stomach with choice food and drink and one’s ears with choice gossip.

Hugo Behr, the Gausportführer, had expressed his desire to meet Lanny again. Heinrich, reporting this, said: "I think I ought to warn you, Lanny. Hugo and I are still friends, but there are differences of opinion developing between us." Lanny asked questions and learned that some among the Nazis were impatient because the Führer was not carrying out the radical economic planks upon which he had founded the party. He seemed to be growing conservative, allying himself with Goring’s friends, the great industrialists, and forgetting the promises he had made to the common man. Heinrich said it was easy to find fault, but it was the duty of good party members to realize what heavy burdens had been heaped upon the Führer’s shoulders, and to trust him and give him time. He had to reorganize the government, and the new men he put in power had to learn their jobs before they could start on any fundamental changes. However, there were people who were naturally impatient, and perhaps jealous, unwilling to give the Führer the trust he deserved; if they could have their way, the party would be destroyed by factional strife before it got fairly started.

Heinrich talked at length, and with great seriousness, as always, and his devoted little wife listened as if it were the Führer himself speaking. From the discourse Lanny gathered that the dissension was really serious; the right wing had won all along the line, and the left was in confusion. Gregor Strasser, who had taken such a dressing down from Hitler in Lanny’s presence, had resigned his high party posts and retired to the country in disgust. Ernst Rohm, Chief of Staff of the S.A. and one of Hitler’s oldest friends, was active in protest and reported to be in touch with Schleicher, the "labor general," whom Hitler had ousted from the chancellorship. A most dangerous situation, and Hugo was making a tragic mistake in letting himself be drawn into it.

"But you know how it is," Heinrich explained. "Hugo was a Social-Democrat, and when the Marxist poison has once got into your veins it’s hard to get it out."

Lanny said yes, he could understand; he had been in that camp a while himself; but there was no use expecting everything to be changed in a few months. "You have two elements in your party, Nationalism and Socialism, and I suppose it isn’t always easy to preserve the balance between them."

"It will be easy if only they trust the Führer. He knows that our Socialism must be German and fitted to the understanding of the German people. He will give it to them as rapidly as they can adjust themselves to it."

After their guests had left, Lanny said to his wife: "If we want to collect the dirt, Hugo’s the boy to give it to us."

Mama had agreed with Lanny and Irma that there was nothing to be gained by telling the family in Paris about Freddi’s disappearance. They could hardly fail to talk about it, and so imperil the fate of Johannes. It might even be that Hansi or Bess would insist on coming into Germany—and the least hint of that threw poor Mama into another panic. So Lanny wrote vague letters to his mother: "Everything is being arranged. The less publicity the better. Tell our friends to go to Juan and rest; living is cheap there, and I feel sure that times are going to be hard financially." Little hints like that!

Beauty herself didn’t go to Juan. Her next letter was written on stationery of the Chateau de Balincourt. "Do you remember Lady Caillard? She is the widow of Sir Vincent Caillard, who was one of Sir Basil’s closest associates in Vickers. She is an ardent spiritualist, and has published a pamphlet of messages received from her husband in the spirit world. She is immensely impressed by Madame, and wants to borrow her for as long as Sir Basil will spare her. He invited me out here, and we have had several seances. One thing that came up worries me. Tecumseh said: There is a man who speaks German. Does anyone know German? Sir Basil said: I know a little, and the control said: 'Clarinet ist verstimmt.' That was all. Madame began to moan, and when she came out of the trance she was greatly depressed and could do no more that day. I didn’t get the idea for a while. Now I wonder, can there be anything the matter with your Clarinet? I shall say nothing to anybody else until I hear from you."

So there it was again; one of those mysterious hints out of the subconscious world. The word verstimmt can mean either "out of tune" or "out of humor." Beauty had known that "Clarinet" meant Freddi, and it was easy to imagine Tecumseh getting that out of her subconscious mind; but Beauty had no reason to imagine that Freddi was in trouble. Was it to be supposed that when Beauty sat in a "circle," her subconscious mind became merged with her son’s, and his worries passed over into hers? Or was it easier to believe that some Socialist had been kicked or beaten or shot into the spirit world by the Nazis and was now trying to bring help to his comrade?

Lanny sent a telegram to his mother: "Clarinet music interesting send more if possible." He decided that here was a way he could pass some time while waiting upon the convenience of Minister-Prasident Goring. Like Paris and London, Berlin was full of mediums and fortune tellers of all varieties; it was reported that the Führer himself consulted an astrologer—oddly enough, a Jew. Here was Lanny, obliged to sit around indefinitely, and with no heart for social life, for music or books. Why not take a chance, and see if he could get any further hints from that underworld which had surprised him so many times?

Irma was interested, and they agreed to go separately to different mediums, thus doubling their chances. Maybe not all the spirits had been Nazified, and the young couple could get ahead of Goring in that shadowy realm!

So there was Lanny being ushered into the fashionable apartment of one of the most famous of Berlin’s clairvoyants, Madame Diseuse. (If she had been practicing in Paris she would have been Frau Wahrsagerin.) You had to be introduced by a friend, and sittings were by appointment, well in advance; but this was an emergency call, arranged by Frau Ritter von Fiebewitz, and was to cost a hundred marks. No Arabian costumes, or zodiacal charts, or other hocus-pocus, but a reception-room with the latest furniture of tubular light metal, and an elegant French lady with white hair and a St. Germain accent. She sometimes produced physical phenomena, and spoke with various voices in languages of which she claimed not to know a word. The seance was held in a tiny interior room which became utterly dark when a soft fluorescent light was turned off.