Winds of War (85 page)

But when you flood the boat to go down, can’t the flooding get out of hand? Don’t smile darling. It’s all a mystery to somebody like me.”

“I smile because you ask good questions. But as I told you, the main tanks are outside the real hull. They’re just stuck on. When they flood, you’re awash, waterlogged. For diving there’s a small sealed tank inside, the negative tank. It can hold about twelve tons of seawater. Flood negative and down you go fast. When you’re at the depth you want, you blow negative, and there you are, hanging. You spread your bow planes, and you’re sort of like a fat airplane, flying slowly through thick air. Submariners are picked men, and great guys, darling, and all seventy-five of them dearly want nothing to go wrong! There are no slobs on a submarine. That’s the truth about submarines, and this is one peculiar conversation to be having in bed with a new wife.”

Natalie yawned. “You’re making me feel better. That rusty little boat scared me.”

“The new fleet submarines are luxury liners compared to the
S-45
,” Byron said. “I’ll go to one of those next.”

She yawned again, as a patch of pink light appeared on the wall. “Bless my soul, is that the sun? Where did the night go? Draw the curtains.”

Byron walked naked to the windows and closed the heavy draperies. As he returned to her in the gloom, she thought with piercing pleasure how handsome he was – a sculpted male figure – alive, warm, and brown.

He settled beside her. She leaned over him and gave him a kiss. When the young husband strongly pulled her close she pretended for a moment to fight him off, but she couldn’t choke down her welling joyous laughter. As the sun rose outside the screening curtains on another day of war, Byron and Natalie Henry went back to lovemaking.

They breakfasted at noon in the sunny sitting room, where the air was heavy with the scent of roses. Their breakfast was oysters, steak, and red wine; Natalie ordered it, saying it was precisely what she wanted, and Byron called it a perfect menu. They ate in dressing gowns, not talking much, looking deep in each other’s eyes, sometimes laughing at a foolish word or at nothing at all. They were radiant with shared, gratified desire.

Then she said, “Byron, exactly how much time do we have?”

“Well, seventy-two hours from the time we came alongside would be half past two. Thursday.”

Some of the pure gladness in her eyes dimmed. “Hm. That soon? Short honeymoon.”

“This isn’t our honeymoon. I’m entitled to twenty days leave. I reported straight to the
S-45
from sub school. I’ll take those twenty days once you’re back home. When will that be?”

She leaned her head on her hand. “Oh, dear. Must I start thinking?”

“Look, Natalie. Why not send Aaron a wire that we’re married, and go straight home?”

“I can’t do that.”

“I don’t want you going back to Italy.”

Natalie raised her eyebrows at his flat tone. “But I have to.”

“No, you don’t. Aaron’s too cute,” Byron said. “Here, let’s finish this wine. As long as you or I or somebody will do the correspondence and dig in the library and keep after the kitchen, the gardeners, and the plumbers, he won’t leave that house. It’s that simple. He loves it, and he doesn’t scare easily. He’s a tough little bird, Uncle Aaron, under the helplessness and the head colds. What d’you suppose he’d do if you sent him that wire?”

Natalie hesitated. “Try to get me to change my mind. If that failed, make a real effort to leave.”

“Then it’s the best favor you can do him.”

“No. He’d make a mess of it. He’s not good with officials, and the stupider they are the worse he gets. He could really trap himself. Leslie Slote and I together can get him on his way in short order, and this time we’ll do it.”

“Slote? Slote’s en route to Moscow.”

“He’s offered to stop off in Rome and Siena first. He’s very devoted to Aaron.”

“I know who he’s devoted to.”

Natalie said softly with a poignant look, “Jealous of Leslie Slote, Briny?”

“All right. Sixty days.”

“What, dear?”

“Go back there for two months. No more. That should be plenty. If Aaron’s not out by April first or before, it’ll be his own doing, and you come home. Book your own transportation, right now.”

Natalie’s wide mouth curved wryly. “I see. Are you giving me orders, Byron?”

“Yes.”

She rested her chin on her palm, contemplating him with surprised eyes. “You know, that feels pretty good, being ordered around. I can’t say why. Possibly the delicious novelty will wear off. Anyway, lord and master, I’ll do as you say. Sixty days.”

“All right,” Byron said. “Let’s get dressed and see Lisbon.”

“I’ve seen Lisbon,” said Natalie, “but I’m all in favor of coming up for air.”

Dropping the key at the desk, Byron asked for their passports. With a heavy-lidded look, the swarthy short clerk disappeared through a door.

“Look at those fellows,” Byron said. Half a dozen Germans, in belted black raincoats despite the sunshine, were talking together near the lobby entrance, looking hard at everybody who came in and went out. “They might as well be wearing boots and swastikas. What is it about them? Those raincoats? The big brims on the hats? The bronze sunburns? How do they have time for sunbathing?”

“I recognize them with the back of my neck. It crawls,” Natalie said.

The desk clerk emerged from the door, busily shuffling papers. “Sorry, passports not ready yet.”

“I need mine!” Natalie’s tone was strident.

The clerk barely lifted his eyes at her. “Maybe this afternoon, madame,” he said, turning his back.

After the languors of the bedroom, the cold sunny outdoors felt bracing. Byron hired a taxi to drive them into and around Lisbon. The city was no Rome or Paris for sights, but the rows of pastel-colored houses – green, pink, blue - perched along the hills above a broad river made a pretty picture. Byron enjoyed himself, and he thought his bride was having fun too; she clung to his arm and smiled, saying little. The peculiar mixture of Moorish and Gothic styles in the churches, and in the great fortress commanding the city’s highest hill, brought back to Byron his dead-and-gone fine arts drudgery. They left the cab to descend arm in arm the steep, narrow, extremely small streets of the Alfama, where ragged children swarmed in and out of cracking crazy houses hundreds of years old, and open shops the size of telephone booths sold fish, bread, and meat scraps. It was a long wandering walk.

“Where did the cab promise to meet us?” Natalie spoke up in a strained tone, as they traversed an alley where the stinks made them gasp.

“Everything all right?” he said.

She wearily smiled. “At the risk of sounding like every stupid woman tourist in the world, my feet hurt.”

“Why, let’s go back. I’ve had plenty of this.”

“Do you mind?”

She said not a word as they drove along the river road back to the hotel. When he took her hand it was clammy. Entering the hotel, she pulled at his elbow. “Don’t forget – passports.”

It proved unnecessary. With the key, the desk clerk, showing large yellow false teeth in an empty grin, handed him two maroon booklets. Natalie snatched hers and riffled through it as they walked to the elevator.

“Okay?” he said.

“Seems to be. But I’ll bet anything the Gestapo’s photographed it, and yours too.”

“Well, it’s probably routine in this hotel. I don’t think the Portuguese are denying the Germans much nowadays. But what do you care?”

When she went into the bedroom of the suite to put away her coat and hat, Byron followed, took her in his arms, and kissed her. She responded, she held him close, but her manner was apathetic. He leaned back with a questioning look.

“Sorry, she said. “I have a thundering headache. Burgundy for breakfast may not be just the thing, after all. Luckily I have some high-powered pills for this. Just let me take one.”

Soon she came back from the bathroom smiling. “Okay. Proceed.”

He said, “It couldn’t work that fast.”

“Oh, it will. Don’t worry.”

They kissed, they lay on the bed, Byron was on fire to make love and tried to please her, but it was as though a spring had broken in Natalie. She whispered endearments and tried to be loving. After a while he sat up, and gently raised her. “All right. What is it?”

She crouched against the head of the bed, hugging her knees. “Nothing, nothing! What am I doing wrong? Maybe I’m a little tired. The headache’s not gone yet.”

“Natalie.” He took her hand, kissed it, and looked straight into her eyes.

“O)h, I guess nobody can experience such joy without paying. That’s all. If you must know, I’ve been in a black hole all afternoon. It started when we didn’t get our passports back, and those Germans were standing there in the lobby. I got this horrible sinking feeling. All the time we were sightseeing, I was having panicky fantasies. The hotel would keep stalling about my passport, and you’d sail away in the submarine, and here I’d be, just one more Jew stuck in Lisbon without papers.”

“Natalie, you never turned a hair all through Poland. You’ve got your passport back now.”

“I know. It’s sheer nonsense, just nervous depletion, too many wonderful things happening too fast. I’ll get over it.”

He caressed her hair. “You fooled me. I thought you were enjoying Lisbon.”

“I
loathe
Lisbon, Briny. I always have. I swear to God, whatever else happens, I’ll regret to my dying day that we married and spent our wedding night here. It’s a sad, painful city. You see it with different eyes, I know. You keep saying it looks like San Francisco. But San Francisco isn’t full of Jews fleeing the Germans. The Inquisition didn’t baptize Jews by force in San Francisco, and burn the ones who objected, and take away all the children to raise them as Christians. Do you know that little tidbit of history? It happened here.”

Byron’s face was serious, his eyes narrowed. “Maybe I read it once.”

“Maybe? If you had, how could you forget?
Anybody’s
blood should run cold at such cruelty. But somehow what’s happened to Jews in Europe over the centuries is just a matter of course. What was Bunky’s pretty phrase?
Fish in a net
.”

Byron said, “Natalie, I’ll do anything you want about the religion. I’ve always been prepared for that. Would you want me to become Jewish?”

“Are you
insane
?” She turned her head sharply to him and her eyes had an angry shine. She had looked like this in Königsberg, giving him a rude abrupt good-bye. “Why did you insist on getting married?
That’s
what’s eating me. Just tell me that. We could have made love, you know that, all you wanted. I feel tied to you now with a rope of raw nerves. I don’t know where you’re going. I don’t know when I’ll ever see you again. I only know you’re sailing away Thursday in that damned submarine. Why don’t we tear up those Portuguese documents? Let everything be as it was. My God, if we ever find ourselves in a human situation, and if we still care, we can get properly married. This was a farce.”

“No, it wasn’t. It’s the only thing I’ve wanted since I was born. Now I’ve got it. We’re not tearing up any papers. You’re my wife.”

“But God in heaven, why have you gone to all this trouble? Why have you put yourself in this mess?”

“Well, it’s like this, Natalie. Married officers get extra allowances.”

She stared at him. Her taut face relaxed, she slowly, reluctantly smiled, and thrust both her hands in his hair. “I see! Well, that makes a lot of sense, Briny. You should have told me sooner. I can understand greed.”

Mouth to mouth, they fell back on the bed, and the lovemaking started to go better, but the telephone rang. It rang and rang and rang, and the kisses had to stop. Byron sighed, “Could be the S-45,” and picked up the receiver. “Yes? Oh, hello. Right. That’s thoughtful of you. Nine o’clock? Wait.” He covered the mouthpiece. “Thurston apologizes for intruding. He and Slote thought we might conceivably want to have dinner in a special place. Best food in Lisbon, best singer in Portugal.”

“Good heavens. Old Slote is uncovering a masochistic streak.”

“Yes or no?”

“As you wish.”

Byron said, “They mean to be nice. Why not? We have to eat. Get away from the black raincoats.”

He accepted, hung up, and took her in his arms.

* * *

The restaurant was a brick-walled low room, illuminated only by table candles and the logs blazing in an arched fireplace. Jews, many in sleek dinner clothes, filled half the tables. Two large British parties side by side made most of the noise in the sedate place. Directly in front of the fire a table for six stood empty, longingly eyed by customers clustering in a small bar. The four Americans sat at another favored table near the fire. Over Portuguese white wine, Bunky Thurston and the newlyweds soon grew merry. Not Slote: he drank a lot but hardly spoke or smiled. The firelight glittered on his square glasses, and even in that rosy light his face looked ashen. “I don’t know if you youngsters are interested in the war, by the way,” Thurston said over the meat. “Remember the war? There’s news.”

“If the news is good I’m interested,” Natalie said. “Only if it’s good.”

“Well, the British have captured Tobruk.”

Natalie said, “Is Tobruk important?”

Byron exclaimed, “Important! It’s the best harbor between Egypt and Tunis. That’s mighty good news.”

“Right,” Thurston said. “They’re really roaring across North Africa now. Makes the whole war look different.”

Slote broke his silence to say hoarsely, “They’re fighting Italians.” He cleared his throat and went on, “Byron, did you actually read the list of books I gave you in Berlin? Natalie says you did.”

“Whatever I could find in English, yes. Maybe seven or eight out of ten.”

The diplomat shook his head. “Extraordinary heroism.”

“I don’t claim I understood them all,” Byron said. “Sometimes my eyes just passed over words. But I plowed on through.”

“What books?” Thurston said.

“My darling here became slightly curious about Germans,” said Natalie, “after a Luftwaffe pilot almost shot his head off. He wanted to know a little more them. Slote gave him a general syllabus of German nineteenth-century romanticism, nationalism, and idealism.”