Upton Sinclair - Dragons’s teeth

"You’re going to sacrifice Frances and me for Freddi!"

"That’s rather exaggerated, darling. You and Frances can stay quite comfortably here while I go in and do what I can."

"You’re not asking me to go with you?"

"It’s a job for someone who believes in it, and certainly not for anyone who feels as you do. I have no right to ask it of you, and that’s why I don’t."

"What do you suppose will be my state of mind while you are in there risking your life with those dreadful men?"

"It will be a mistake to exaggerate the danger. I don’t think they’ll do serious harm to an American."

"You know they have done shocking things to Americans. You have talked about it often."

"What happened in those cases was accidental; they were mix-ups in street crowds and public places. You and I have connections in Germany, and I don’t think the authorities will do me any harm on purpose."

"Even if they catch you breaking their laws?"

"I think they’ll give me a good scare and put me out."

"You know you don’t believe that, Lanny! You’re only trying to quiet me down. You will be in perfectly frightful danger, and I will be in torment."

She broke down and began to weep. It was the first time he had seen her do that, and he was a soft-hearted man. But he had been thinking it over for a year, and had made up his mind that this would be the test of his soul. "If I funk this, I’m no good; I’m the waster and parasite I’ve always been called."

There was no way to end the argument. He couldn’t make her realize the importance of the matter to him; the duty he owed to what he called "the cause." He had made Freddi Robin into a Socialist; had taught him the ideal of human brotherhood and equality, what he called "social justice." But Irma hated all these high-sounding words; she had heard them spoken by so many disagreeable persons, mostly trying to get money, that the words had become poison to her. She didn’t believe in this "cause"; she believed that brotherhood was rather repulsive, that equality was another name for envy, and social justice an excuse for outrageous income and inheritance taxes. So her tears dried quickly, and she grew angry with herself for having shed them, and with him for making her shed them.

She said: "Lanny, I warn you; you are ruining our love. You are doing something I shall never be able to forgive you for."

All he could answer was: "I am sorry, darling; but if you made me give up what I believe is my duty, I should never be able to forgive either you or myself."

The airmail letter from Juan arrived. Freddi’s message had been written in pencil on a small piece of flimsy paper, crumpled up as if someone had hidden it in his mouth or other bodily orifice. It was faded, but Rahel had smoothed it out and pasted the corners to a sheet of white paper so that it could be read. It was addressed to Lanny and written in English. "I am in a bad way. I have written to you but had no reply. They are trying to make me tell about other people and I will not. But I cannot stand any more. Do one thing for me, try to get some poison to me. Do not believe anything they say about me. Tell our friends I have been true."

There was no signature; Freddi knew that Lanny would know his handwriting, shaky and uncertain as it was. The envelope was plain, and had been mailed in Munich; the handwriting of the address was not known to Lanny, and Rahel in her letter said that she didn’t know it either.

So there it was. Irma broke down again; it was worse than she had imagined, and she knew now that she couldn’t keep Lanny from going. She stopped arguing with him about political questions, and tried only to convince him of the futility of whatever efforts he might make. The Nazis owned Germany, and it was madness to imagine that he could thwart their will inside their own country. She offered to put up money, any amount of money, even if she had to withdraw from social life. "Go and see Göring," she pleaded. "Offer him cash, straight out."

But Rick—oh, how she hated him all of a sudden!—Rick had persuaded Lanny that this was not to be done. Lanny wouldn’t go near Göring, or any of the other Nazis, not even Kurt, not even Heinrich. They wouldn’t help, and might report him and have him watched. Göring or Goebbels would be sure to take such measures. Lanny said flatly: "I’m going to help Freddi to escape from Dachau."

"Fly over the walls, I suppose?" inquired Irma, with bitterness.

"There are many different ways of getting out of prison. There are people in France right now who have managed to do it. Sometimes they dig under the walls; sometimes they hide in delivery wagons, or are carried out in coffins. I’ll find somebody to help me for a price."

"Just walk up to somebody on the street and say: How much will you charge to help me get a friend out of Dachau? "

"It’s no good quarreling, dear. I have to put my mind on what I mean to do. I don’t want to delay, because if I do, Freddi may be dead, and then I’d blame myself until I was dead, too."

So Irma had to give up. She had told him what was in her heart, and even though she would break down and weep, she wouldn’t change; on the contrary, she would hold it against him that he had made her behave in that undignified fashion. In her heart she knew that she hated the Robin family, all of them; they were alien to her, strangers to her soul. If she could have had her way she would never have been intimate with them; she would have had her own yacht and her own palace and the right sort of friends in it. But this Socialism business had made Lanny promiscuous, willing to meet anybody, an easy victim for any sort of pretender, any slick, canting "idealist"—how she loathed that word! She had been forced to make pretenses and be polite; but now this false "cause" was going to deprive her of her husband and her happiness, and she knew that she heartily despised it.

It wasn’t just love of herself. It was love of Lanny, too. She wanted to help him, she wanted to take care of him; but this "class struggle" stepped in between and made it impossible; tore him away from her, and sent him to face danger, mutilation, death. Things that Irma and her class were supposed to be immune from! That was what your money meant; it kept you safe, it gave you privilege and security. But Lanny wanted to throw it all away. He had got the crazy notion that you had no right to money; that having got it, you must look down upon it, spurn it, and thwart the very purposes for which it existed, the reasons why your forefathers had worked so hard! If that was not madness, who could find anything that deserved the name?

All social engagements were called off while this duel was fought out. Irma said that she had a bad headache; but as this affliction had not been known to trouble her hitherto, the rumor spread that the Irma Barneses were having a quarrel; everybody tried to guess what it could be about, but nobody succeeded. Only three persons were taken into the secret; Rick, and the mothers of the two quarrelers. Rick said: "I wish I could help you, old chap; but you know I’m a marked man in Germany; I have written articles." Lanny said: "Of course."

As for Fanny Barnes, she considered it her duty to give Lanny a lecture on the wrongness of deserting his family on account of any Jew or all of them. Lanny, in turn, considered it his duty to hear politely all that his mother-in-law had to say. He knew it wasn’t any good talking to her about "causes"; he just said: "I’m sorry, Mother, but I feel that I have incurred obligations, and I have to repay them. Do what you can to keep Irma cheerful until I get back." It was a rather solemn occasion; he might not come back, and he had a feeling that his mother-in-law would rind that a not altogether intolerable solution of the problem.