Searching for Wallenberg (28 page)

Jacob played with the golden chain of his pocket watch on his black vest. “That is very good of you, Ambassador. Our entire family appreciates that, since we know you have much more significant dealings to talk over.”

The prime minister waited for something more to be said, something stronger. But Jacob and Marcus only looked on quietly.

Prime Minister Erlander was puzzled; maybe they thought they had been asked there pro forma? “Naturally, I have asked the ambasador to press for urgency, as much as he can.”

“Thank you, Prime Minister,” said Marcus. “That is much appreciated. We realize how difficult this must be, to press for urgency on a single individual. Any news at all will be welcomed by us, by his mother, and by his two half siblings.”

Söderblom nodded sympathetically.

“Naturally, if there is anything we can do to help, we are at your service.”

“I will remember that,” offered the ambassador. “I am sure your name and your high business affiliations will mean something to the Field Marshall.”

The ambassador finished his cup of coffee; Jacob fingered his gold chain; Marcus sat quietly, staring ahead.

The prime minister, baffled, looked around at his group of guests, jotted a few notes down, and finally stood up and thanked the Wallenbergs for coming in; his heart was stirring. They shook hands all around, and the two men departed.

“You can see what gentlemen they are,” offered Erlander. “They are not presuming to put too big a burden on you and your discussion with Stalin.”

“Yes, I can see that. They are most definitely gentlemen of honor.” He paused. “They are converted Christians, yes?”

“Born Christians. Conversion happened in the last century.”

“And Raoul too?”

“I don’t know his religious convictions.”

With that, the prime minister went back around to his side of the large oak desk, thanked the ambassador for coming, and advised him to keep him posted on any development in this case.

Söderblom assured him he would.

After the ambassador departed, Erlander sat disappointed at his desk, not quite understanding what had gone on. He jotted a reminder to himself to check on the diplomatic notes that had been passed in the year since Wallenberg’s disappearance, including those from Foreign Minister Günther, and to check on Söderblom’s background: what sort of man he was, his origins, his diplomatic biography. He seemed oddly
undiplomatic
, the prime minister judged; and the Wallenbergs, noted for their business aggressiveness, seemed strangely unaggressive. Was it politeness, timidity, fear? Why hadn’t they pushed harder? Everything was upside down in this case, Erlander decided; he half wished to meet the Stalin monster himself, to deliver a few straightforward messages regarding the return of Raoul.

Gellerman set down his laptop and began printing out the scene.

Was this good history, or good fiction? Manny wondered. (Or bad history, and bad fiction?) There was enough evidence, for sure, to draw the scene this way—Söderblom’s indifference, cowardice, hypocrisy, maybe even some furtive political ambition. We do know that Söderblom came back from his meetings with both Abramov and Stalin and proclaimed that the Soviets knew nothing of the whereabouts of Raoul. The ambassador accepted this as fact, and said that Wallenberg was probably lost or dead. (Killed in an auto accident, he opined, at some point.) Why did he go along so easily with the Soviet feigned ignorance? Did he imagine Raoul as a part-Jew whose family conversion meant little, and quietly resent that? Did he resent that Raoul was saving Jews, and this was beyond his job description for a Swedish diplomat? After all, anti-Semitism among Swedish Lutherans, furtive or open, was not a new revelation. The chief fact was that Söderblom was totally ineffective, maybe intentionally so; and he went on to reject outright all American offers for help.

As for the brothers, Marcus and Jacob, was their passivity a matter of family greed, or fear? Was their neglect intentional—saving their own Enskilda necks, if Raoul were free to tell all he knew about their Nazi connections?

It came as no surprise that the Söderblom meeting with Stalin on June 15, 1946, produced no results. The meeting was infamous for its supine acquiescence, a missed opportunity. So Manny’s scene, to be sure—as he analyzed it—actually set the stage for the real meeting.

The historian knew he had enough evidence, circumstantial and otherwise, to support the above creative scene. So fiction here could dramatize a piece of obscure history, complete the dotted lines, fill in a missing scene, and help to make clear what had been clouded, camouflaged. Those were not the best days in Swedish diplomatic history, and Söderblom was a prime exemplar of those black days (as the Swedes acknowledged, years later).

He closed his laptop, bid good-bye to the Indian statue, and went out onto the green to meet Jack, his real Indian (or Native American).

Jack was looking good, in a bright sport shirt and shorts, his dark face and jet black hair in sharp contrast to his clothes. “Hey, how goes it, Prof?”

“Not too bad. And yourself?”

“Good, man, good. I’m headed home for a month. Gonna see the family!”

“Sounds good. Hey, let’s walk down around the pond, and we can have our sandwiches sitting on the golf course.”

Jack smiled. “Why not?

Jack had a fine easy gait, and they began walking across the green and down behind the library and onto Rope Ferry Road. Students strolled or bicycled past, most white-wired to their iPods, others talking on cell phones.

“So, has the term gone well?”

“Yeah, pretty well. And guess what? I’ve begun a long essay on Samson Occom, at last!”

“Hey, bravo! But what about Crazy Horse?”

“Oh, yeah, that’s going along, but remember, that’s gonna be my thesis.”

Manny gestured. “So what’s your angle on Occom? You know there’s been a lot of stuff written on him.”

“Yeah, I knew you’d put on me something like that—well, he was a ‘wild Injun’ right there in the midst of those white Christian gentlemen! Isn’t that enough of an angle?” A restrained smile. “And beating them at their own game—learning. The art of learning. He did that better than all of them!”

“Yeah, I think I did know something of that.”

“Man, that cat knew Hebrew and Latin! Could read and write it, taught those langusges here at the college, can you believe it?”

“I am impressed.”

“He was kinda like your Wallenberg,” Jack said, with a gleaming smile, “an odd man out.”

Gellerman looked over at his young friend. “You’re getting to be a bit dangerous, know that?”

Jack nodded in delight and walked on. They passed the oval pond on the left—“That’s what Samson got for his troubles, a pond named after him!”— strolled up the narrow sidewalk past the hefty houses, and turned left, passing the golf clubhouse on the right. They walked down the small hill, and found a hillock of green to sit on.

“This looks good. We can see a hole or two.”

“Boy, what we would do with this green! Where we live it’s brown most of the year—well, brown all the year!” He hit Gellerman’s arm good-naturedly. “Just throw some seeds down here, come back in a month, and you have plants growing, grass growing!”

“Eat your sandwich. And remember, I’ve visited you out there.”

“Recruiting me, I remember. But you didn’t bring any New England rain!”

“You forgot to e-mail me.”

They ate, observing some golfers lining up a shot, while swallows dived.

“The thing is, Occom reminded me a little of your Wallenberg, the way he always seemed a little finer than others, more Christian than the Christians!”

“Or maybe more essentially Christian, even though he was a Native!”

Jack nodded and laughed.

“That’s a good analogy, Jack. An unusual pair, to be sure. Except my Raoul never learned Hebrew. At least that I knew of!”

“Well, there’s always more to learn.”

“True enough. Hey, look at the arc on that shot. A beauty, huh?”

“Now, this,” observed Jack, moving his palm out, “is what I call the real graduate school life, right? Taking our lunch here and watching the golfers play a round. Who would want to do anything else?”

“Not anyone sensible, of course.” He brushed off an insect. “Remember, last time we had to canoe for our lunch, so I tried to make it easier this time.”

They ate, and breathed in the soft air, the aroma of freshly cut grass. Manny said, “Hard to believe a little white ball could torment so many.”

Jack laughed. “So, are you going ahead with the book, or what?”

“Yeah, maybe so, if I ever get the time, the space.”

They ate, listened, watched, swatted away bugs.

“Hey, I have an idea for you, Prof. Why don’t you trek out to Hopi and write the book there? Really. I can get you a private space in a pottery studio, pretty spare, but it’s quiet; my aunt makes pottery and dolls in one room, and you’d have the other. What d’ya think? And if you need inspiration, there is the grand mountain right in front of you. You’d write it there, believe me!”

Manny looked over at his friend, his dark eyes brimming with his new idea, and he squeezed his arm. “Maybe you’re onto something.”

“I know I am. And for breaks, we can play hoops. You’re a shooter, right?”

“Centuries ago, I had a set shot.” Manny smiled. “But, it’s a thought.”

“Think it over, Professor, really. It’ll be great fun to have you out there! You’d probably get more work done in a Hopi month than in three months here! Away from papers, meetings, students—yeah, it’s perfect!”

Manny pondered the surprise notion, recalling the unique aura of that small rectangle of arid land squeezed within the huge Navajo territory.

“Sir, if you finish up RW on our turf, you can become an honorary Hopi!”

“Oh, I think it’d be truer if you made Wallenberg an honorary Hopi.”

“Hey, that’s a thought. I’ll talk to our chief.”

“Too bad we didn’t think of this before
our
chief, President Reagan, made him an honorary American, back in ’81. Hopi citizen first, American second.”

A few days later Manny flew down to New York, was picked up at LaGuardia by a private town car, brought to his hotel (Affinia, across the street from Madison Square Garden), and, after showering and getting settled, was met in the lobby by a young woman, Cary, an assistant producer whom he had spoken with earlier. She had a cab waiting, which whisked them downtown to a private apartment in Tribeka, and inside that plush place, he met the director, whom he had talked with at length on the telephone, several times, before he had been invited down to do an interview for the HBO documentary.

“Good to meet you in person, Professor,” said Bobby Jenkins, a tall young African American who was making a documentary on the Brooklyn Dodgers on the fiftieth anniversary of their departure from Brooklyn for Los Angeles. “I enjoyed our long phone calls very much. Look, we’re still setting up here with the lighting and the sound crews, so if you don’t mind waiting a bit, over in that room, we will let you know when to come in. It won’t be too long. Meanwhile, either Cary or Joy can get you a coffee or cold drink, or whatever you want.”

Manny walked into the adjoining room, darkened by the drawn drapes, sat on a cozy couch, and asked for a ginger ale. From the deep countryside and the birds singing in the morning to this hip apartment with the hustling crews and video cameras in a few hours was a leap of faith, not just a leap of geography.

Sitting there, in the shadowy darkness, he recalled his childhood of watching Jackie play, in his first year with the Dodgers, in 1947, and tried to pinpoint specifics. (That’s why he had been asked down here, after all.) Ginger ale was brought, and he returned to boyhood … to the friendship with Burt, his boyhood hero who was shot down over Germany in his B-17 and put in a POW camp; he escaped and finally made it home, wounded badly. A series of surgeries ensued, and because of his US Air Force uniform and Purple Heart, he was let in free, along with his eight-year-old buddy, little Manny, and waved down to the box seats behind first base, where Jackie played that first year … Memories of Robinson flooded him now, clear and vivid, taking a big lead off of third base, daring the pitcher provocatively … Manny could hear the Philly and Cardinal curses and slurs slung out to Jackie, at bat or in the field …