Upton Sinclair - Dragons’s teeth

The news hit the rest of the world like a high-explosive shell. The statesmen of the one-time Allied lands who were so certain that they had Germany bound in chains; the international bankers who had lent her five billion dollars; the negotiators who, early in this year of 1930, had secured her signature to the Young Plan, whereby she bound herself to pay reparations over a period of fifty-eight years—all these now suddenly discovered that they had driven six and a half million of their victims crazy! War gains were to be confiscated, trusts nationalized, department stores communalized, speculation in land prevented, and usurers and profiteers to suffer the death penalty! Such was the Nazi program for the inside of Germany; while for the outside, the Versailles treaty was to be denounced, the Young Plan abrogated, and Germany was to go to war, if need be, in order to set her free from the "Jewish-dominated plutocracies" of France, Britain, and America!

Lanny’s host was unpleasantly surprised by these returns, but, after thinking matters over, he decided not to worry too much. He said that no soup is ever eaten as hot as it is cooked. He said that the wild talk of the Nazis was perhaps the only way to get votes just now. He had his private sources of information, and knew that the responsible leaders were embarrassed by the recklessness of their young followers. If you studied the Nazi program carefully you would see that it was full of all sorts of "jokers" and escape clauses. The campaign orators of Berlin had been promising the rabble "confiscation without compensation" of the great estates of the Junkers; but meanwhile, in East Prussia, they had got the support of the Junkers by pointing to the wording of the program: the land to be confiscated must be "socially necessary." And how easy to decide that the land of your friends and supporters didn’t come within that category!

But all the same Johannes decided to move some more funds to Amsterdam and London, and to consult Robbie Budd about making more investments in America. Hundreds of other German capitalists took similar steps; and of course the Nazis found it out, and their press began to cry that these "traitor plutocrats" should be punished by the death penalty.

The rich did not give up their pleasures on account of elections, nor yet of election results. The fashionable dressmakers, the milliners, the jewelers came clamoring for appointments with the famous Frau Lanny Budd, geborene Irma Barnes. They displayed their choicest wares, and skilled workers sat up all night and labored with flying fingers to meet her whims. When she was properly arrayed she sallied forth, and the contents of her trunks which Feathers had brought from Juan, were placed at the disposal of the elder Frau Budd, who dived into them with cries of delight, for they had barely been worn at all and had cost more than anything she had ever been able to afford in her life. A few alterations, to allow for embonpoint attributable to the too rich fare of the yacht, and a blond and blooming Beauty was ready to stand before kings — whether of steel, coal, or chemicals, potash, potatoes, or Renten-marks.

She did not feel humiliated to play second fiddle in the family, for after all she was a grandmother; also, she had not forgotten the lesson of the Wall Street collapse. Let Irma go on paying the family bills and nursing the family infant, and her mother-in-law would do everything in the power of a highly skilled social intriguer to promote her fortunes, put her in a good light, see that she met the right people and made the right impressions. Beauty would even write to Irma’s mother and urge her to come to Berlin and help in this task; there must never be any rivalry or jealousy between them; on the contrary, they must be partners in the duty of seeing that Irma got everything to which her elegance, charm, and social position—Beauty didn’t say wealth—entitled her.

Lanny, of course, had to play up to this role; he had asked for it, and now couldn’t back out. He had to let the tailors come and measure him for new clothes, and stand patiently while they made a perfect fit. No matter how bored he was, no matter how much he would have preferred trying some of Hindemith’s new compositions! His mother scolded him, and taught his wife to scold him; such is the sad fate of kind-hearted men. When he and Irma were invited to a dinner-party by the Prinz Ilsaburg zu Schwarzadler or to a ball at the palace of the Baron von Friedrichsbrunn, it would have been unthinkable to deprive Irma of such honors and a scandal to let some other man escort her.

It wasn’t exactly a scandal for Johannes Robin to escort the elder Frau Budd, for it was known that he had a wife who was ill-adapted to a fashionable career. Beauty, on the other hand, had taken such care of her charms that you couldn’t guess her years; she was a gorgeous pink rose, now fully unfolded. Fashionable society was mistaken in its assumptions concerning her host and her self, for both this strangely assorted pair were happy with their respective spouses, and both spouses preferred staying at home—Mama Robin to watch over the two infants whom she adored equally, and Parsifal Dingle to read his New Thought publications and say those prayers which he was firmly assured were influencing the souls of all the persons he knew, keeping them free from envy, hatred, malice, and all uncharitableness. Parsifal himself had so little of these worldly defects that he didn’t even know that it was a humiliation to have his wife referred to as the elder Frau Budd.

The Jew who had been born in a hut with a mud floor in the realm of the Tsar was proud to escort the Budd ladies about die grosse Welt of Berlin. He told them so with a frankness touched with humor and untouched with servility. He said that when he was with them his blood was pure and his fortune untainted. He said that many a newly arrived Schieber was paying millions of marks for social introductions which he, the cunning one, was getting practically free. He could say such things, not merely because Bess and Hansi had made their families one, but because he knew that Robbie Budd needed Johannes in a business way as much as Johannes needed Robbie’s ladies in a social way. A fair deal, and all parties concerned understood it.

So the former Jascha Rabinowich of Lodz gave a grand reception and ball in honor of the two Damen Budd. Decorations were planned, a list of guests carefully studied, and the chefs labored for a week preparing fantastical foods; the reception-rooms of the marble palace which looked like a railway station came suddenly to resemble a movie director’s dream of Bali or Brazil. Anyhow, it was a colossal event, and Johannes said that the magnates who came wouldn’t be exclusively his own business associates, the statesmen wouldn’t be exclusively those who had got campaign funds from him, and the members of the aristocracy wouldn’t be exclusively those who owed him money. "Moreover," added the shrewd observer, "they will bring their wives and daughters."

Lanny Budd, in his best bib and tucker, wandering about in this dazzling assemblage, helping to do the honors, helping to make people feel at home; dancing with any overgrown Prussian Backfisch who appeared to be suffering from neglect; steering the servitors of food toward any dowager whose stomach capacity hadn’t been entirely met. Dowagers with large pink bosoms, no shoulder-straps, and perfectly incredible naked backs; servitors in pink-and-green uniforms with gold buttons, white silk gloves and stockings, and pumps having rosettes. Lanny has dutifully studied the list of important personages, so that he will know whom he is greeting and commit no faux pas. He has helped to educate his wife, so that she can live up to the majesty of her fortune. Never think that a social career is for an idler!