Upton Sinclair - Dragons’s teeth

He didn’t know how long a person could live without food. It wasn’t until the second day that he began to suffer from hunger, and he gnawed some of the soggy dark bread, wondering what was in it. He couldn’t bring himself to eat the foul-smelling mash or the lukewarm boiled cabbage with grease on top. As for the bitter-tasting drink that passed for coffee, he had been told that they put sal soda into it in order to reduce the sexual cravings of the prisoners. He didn’t feel any craving except to get out of this black hole. He whispered to his keepers: "I had about six thousand marks on me when I was brought in here, and I would be glad to pay for some decent food." The second time he said this he heard the kind voice, which he imagined coming from an elderly man with a wrinkled face and gray mustaches. "Alles geht d’runter und d’ruber, mein Herr." . . . "Everything topsy-turvy, sir; and you will be safer if you stay quiet."

It was a tip; and Lanny thought it over and decided that he had better take it. There was a civil war going on. Was the "Second Revolution" succeeding, or was it being put down? In either case, an American art lover, trapped between the firing lines, was lucky to have found a shell-hole in which to hide! Had the warder been a Cockney, he would have said: "If you knows of a better 'ole, go to it!"

So Lanny lay still and occupied himself with the subject of psychology, which so far in his life he had rather neglected. The world had been too much with him; getting and spending he had laid waste his powers. But now the world had been reduced to a few hundred cubic feet, and all he had was the clothes on his back and what ideas he had stored in his head. He began to recall Parsifal Dingle, and to appreciate his point of view. Parsifal wouldn’t have minded being here; he would have taken it as a rare opportunity to meditate. Lanny thought: "What would Parsifal meditate about?" Surely not the shooting, or the fate of a hypothetical revolution! No, he would say that God was in this cell; that God was the same indoors as out, the same yesterday, today, and forever.

Then Lanny thought about Freddi Robin. Freddi had been in places like this, and had had the same sort of food put before him, not for three days but for more than a year. What had he said to himself all that time? What had he found inside himself? What had he done and thought, to pass the time, to enable him to endure what came and the anticipation of what might come? It seemed time for Lanny to investigate his store of moral forces.

On Tuesday morning two jailers came to his cell and opened the door. " 'Raus, raus. " they said, and he obeyed to the best of his ability; he was weak from lack of food and exercise—not having dared to use up the air in that cell. Also his heart was pounding, because all the psychology exercises had failed to remove his disinclination to be shot, or the idea that this might be his death march. Outside the cell he went dizzy, and had to lean against the wall; one of the jailers helped him up the flight of stone stairs.

They were taking him toward an outside door. They were going to turn him loose!—so he thought, for one moment. But then he saw, below the steps, a prison van—what in America is called "Black Maria," and in Germany "Grüne Minna." The sunlight smote Lanny’s eyes like a blow, and he had to shut them tight. The jailers evidently were familiar with this phenomenon; they led him as if he were a blind man and helped him as if he were a cripple. They put him into the van, and he stumbled over the feet of several other men.

The doors were closed, and then it was mercifully dim. Lanny opened his eyes; since they had been brought to the condition of an owl’s, he could see a stoutish, melancholy-looking gentleman who might be a businessman, sitting directly across the aisle. At Lanny’s side was an eager little Jew with eyeglasses, who might be a journalist out of luck. Lanny, never failing in courtesy, remarked: "Guten Morgen"; but the man across the way put his finger to his lips and nodded toward the guard who had entered the van and taken his seat by the door. Evidently "Sprechen verboten" was still the rule.

But some men have keen wits, and do not hand them over when they enter a jail. The little Jew laid his hand on Lanny’s where it rested on the seat between them. He gave a sharp tap with his finger, and at the same time, turning his head toward Lanny and from the guard, he opened his mouth and whispered softly: "Ah!" just as if he were beginning a singing lesson, or having his throat examined for follicular tonsillitis. Then he gave two quick taps, and whispered: "Bay!" which is the second letter of the German alphabet. Then three taps: "Tsay!"— the third letter; and so on, until the other nodded his head. Lanny had heard tapping in his dungeon, but hadn’t been sure whether it was the water-pipes or some code which he didn’t know.

This was the simplest of codes, and the Jew proceeded to tap eighteen times, and then waited until Lanny had calculated that this was the letter R. Thus slowly and carefully, he spelled out the name "R-O-E-H-M." Lanny assumed that the little man was giving his own name, and was prepared to tap "B-U-D-D," and be glad that it was short. But no, his new friend was going on; Lanny counted through letter after letter: "E-R-S-C-H-O-S-." By that time the little Jew must have felt Lanny’s hand come alive beneath his gentle taps, and realized that Lanny had got his meaning. But he finished the word to make sure. It took twice as long as it would have taken in English: "Rohm shot!"

That simple statement bore a tremendous weight of meaning for Lanny. It enabled him to begin choosing among the variety of tales which he had constructed for himself in the past three days and four nights. If Ernst Rohm, Chief of Staff of the Sturmabteilung, had been shot, it must mean that the much-talked-of "Second Revolution" had failed. And especially when the tapping continued, and Lanny counted out, letter by letter, the words "in Stadelheim." That was a flash of lightning on a black night; it told Lanny what all the shooting had been about. The S.A. Chief of Staff and his many lieutenants who had been gathered for a conference! They must have been seized, carried from Wiessee, and shot somewhere in the grim old prison! The quick finger tapped on, and spelled the name of Heines, followed again by the dread word "erschossen." Lanny knew that this was the police chief of Breslau, who had led the gang which had burned the Reichstag; he was one of the most notorious of the Nazi killers, and Hugo had named him as one of Rohm’s fellow-perverts, and a guest at the Wiessee villa.

And then the name of Strasser! Lanny put his hand on top of the little Jew’s and spelled the name "Otto"; but the other wiggled away and spelled "Gr—" so Lanny understood that it was Gregor Strasser, whom he had heard getting a tongue-lashing from the Führer, and whom he and Irma had heard speaking at a Versammlung in Stuttgart. Otto Strasser was the founder of the hated "Black Front," and was an exile with a price on his head; but his elder brother Gregor had retired from politics and become director of a chemical works. Lanny had been surprised when Hugo had mentioned him as having had conferences with Rohm.

The little Jewish intellectual was having a delightful time breaking the rules and gossiping with a fellow-prisoner, telling him the meaning of the terrific events of the past three days. Even into a prison, news penetrates and is spread; and never in modern times had there been news such as this! The eager finger tapped the name of Schleicher; the one-time Chancellor, the self-styled "social general" who had tried so hard to keep Hitler out of power; who had thwarted von Papen, and then been thwarted in turn. Of late he had been dickering with the malcontents, hankering to taste the sweets of power again. "Schleicher erschossen!" A high officer of the Reichswehr, a leading Junker, one of the sacred ruling caste! Lanny looked at the face of the stoutish gentleman across the aisle, and understood why his eyes were wide and frightened. Could he see the little Jew’s finger resting on Lanny’s hand, and was he perhaps counting the taps? Or was he just horrified to be alive in such a world?