The Winds of War

yron was led to a white-painted room full of surgical equipment and buzzing flies. A fat old doctor in a white jacket and patched canvas trousers sewed up his head. The shaving of the hair a

ngines, such as Byron had not seen except in old silent movies. A crowd was watching all this as it would any peacetime excitement. "What is it?" Byron said. One of the soldiers, a big young blond fellow with a square red face marred by boils, walked around to the driver's window. A conversation ensued in Polish between the soldier, Yankel, and Jastrow. The soldier kept smiling with peculiar unpleasant gentleness, as though at children he disliked. His scrawny companion came and looked through the yellow glass, coughing continually over a cigarette. He spoke to the big one, addressing him repeatedly as Casimir. Byron knew by now that Zhid was a Polish epithet for "Jew"; Zhid was occurring often in this talk. Car addressed the driver again, and once reached in

another human being, smelling more and more like an overheated cow, embraced Natalie and kissed and hugged her. It took three more hours before the groaning, clanking car reached the embassy. The two boys jumped off the hood and ran away down a side street. 'Go ahead, go in quickly," the mushroom dealer said to Natalie in Yiddish, stepping out of the car to kiss her. "Come and see me later if you can." When Byron said good-bye, Berel Jastrow would not let his hand go. He clasped it in both his hands, looking earnestly into the young man's face. "Merci. Mimi lois merci. Tousand times tank you. American save Poland, yes, Byron? Save de vorld." Byron laughed. 'That a big order, but I'll pass it on, Berel.""What did he say?" Berel asked Natalie, still holding Byron's hand. When she told him Berel laughed too, and then astonished Byron by giving him a bear hug and a brief scratchy kiss. A lone marine stood watch at the closed gates. Gray sandbags lined the yellow stucco walls, ugly X-shaped wooden braces disfigured the windows, and on the red tile roof an enormous American flag had been painted. All this was strange, but strangest was the absence of the long line of people. Nobody but the marine stood outside. The United States embassy was no longer a haven or an escape hatch. The guard's clean-scraped pink suspicious face brightened when he heard them talk. 'Yes, ma'am, Mr. Slote sure is here. He's in charge now." He pulled a telephone from a metal box fastened on the gate, regarding them curiously. Natalie put her hands to her tumbled hair, Byron rubbed his heavy growth of red bristles, and they both laughed. Slote came running down the broad stairway under the embassy medallion. "Hello! God, am I ever glad to see you two!" He threw an arm around Natalie and kissed her cheek, staring the while at Byron's dirty blood-stained head bandage. "What the devil? Are you all right?" 'I'm fine. What's the news? Are the French and British fighting?" 'Have you been that out of touch? They declared war Sunday, after fussing at Hitler for three days to be nice and back his army out of Poland. I'm not aware that they've done anything since but drop leaflets." Over a wonderful breakfast of ham and eggs, the first hot food they had eaten in days, they described their journey. Byron could feel his racked insides taking a happy grip on this solid boyhood fare and calming down. He and Natalie ate from trays on the ambassador's broad desk. Washing. ton had ordered the ambassador and most of the staff out of Poland when the air bombing began; as the only bachelor on the number three level, Slote had been picked to stay. The diplomat was appalled at Byron's tale Of aban&rung his PassPort-"Ye. gods, man, in a country at war! It's a nmrvel you weren't caught and jailed or shot. That you're a German agent would be far more plausible than the real reason you've been wandering around. YOU two are an incredible pair. Incredibly lucky, too." "And incredibly filthy," Natalie said. "What do we do now?""Well, you're just in it, my love. There's no getting out of Poland at the moment. The Germans are overrunning the countryside, bombing and blasting. We have to find you places to stay in Warsaw until, well, until the situation clarifies itself one way or another. Meantime you'll have to dodge bombs like the rest of us." Slote shook his head at Byron. "Your father's been worrying about you. I'll have to cable him. We still have communication via Stockholm. He'll let A.J. know that Natalie's at least found and alive." 'I am dying for a bath," Natalie said. Slote scratched his head, then took keys from his pocket and slid them across the desk. 'I've moved in here. Take my apartment. It's on the ground floor, which is the safest, and there's a good deep cellar. When I was there last the water was still running and we had electricity." "What about Byron?" Byron said, "I'll go to the Methodist House." "It's been hit," Slote said. "We had to get everybody out, day before yesterday." 'Do you mind," Natalie said, "if he stays with me?" Both men showed surprise and embarrassment, and Byron said, "I think my mother would object." "Oh, for crying out loud, Byron. With all the running into the bushes you and I have been doing and whatnot, I don't know what secrets we have from each other." She turned to Slote. "He's like a loyal kid brother, sort of." "Don't you believe her," Byron said wearily. "I'm a hot-blooded beast. Is there a Y.M.C.A?" "Look, I don't mind," Slote said, with obvious lack of enthusiasm. "There's a sofa in the sitting room. It's up to Natalie." She scooped up the keys. "I intend to bathe and then sleep for several days-between bombings. How will we ever get out of Poland, Leslie?" Slote shrugged, cleared his throat, and laughed. "Who knows? Hitler says if the Poles don't surrender, Warsaw will be levelled. The Poles claim they've thrown the Wehrmacht back and are advancing into Germany. It's probably nonsense. Stockholm Radio says the Nazis have broken through everywhere and will surround Warsaw in a week. The Swedes and the Swiss here are trying to negotiate a safe-conduct for foreign neutrals through the German lines. That's how we'll all probably leave. Tillthat comes through, the safest place in Poland is right here." "Well then, we did the sensible thing, coming to Warsaw," Natalie said. "You're the soul of prudence altogether, Natalie." As the trolleybus wound off into the smaller residential streets, Byron and Natalie saw more damage than they had in Cracow-burned-out or smashed houses, bomb holes in the pavemen an occasional rubble-filled street roped off-but by and large Warsaw looked much as it had in peacetime, less than a week ago, though now seemingly in a bygone age. The threatened German obliteration was not yet happening, if it ever would. The other passengers paid no attention to Byron's bandage or growth of beard. Several of them were bandaged and most of the men were bristly. A thick human smell choked the car. Natalie said when they got off, "Ah-air! No doubt we smell just like that, or worse. I must bathe at once or ".U go mad. Somehow on the road I didn't care. Now I can't stand myself another minute." Slivers of sunlight through the closed shutters made Slote's flat an oasis of peaceful half-gloom. Books lining the sitting room gave it a dusty library smell. Natalie flipped switches, obviously quite at home in the place. 'Want to wash up first?" she said. 'Once I get in that tub there'll be no moving me for hours. There's only cold water. I'm going to boil up some hot. But I don't know. Maybe you should find a hospital, first thing, and get your head examined." After the phrase was out of her mouth it struck them both as funny. They laughed and laughed and couldn't stop laughing. "Well, while we still both stink," Natalie gasped, 'come here." She threw her arms around him and kissed him. "You damned fool, abandoning your passport to protect some dopey Jews." " My head's all right," Byron said. The touch of the girl's mouth on his was like birdsong, like flowers, exhausted and filthy though they both were. 'I'll clean up while you boil your water." As he shaved she kept coming into the bathroom emptying steaming kettles into the cracked yellow tub, humming a polonaise of Chopin. The music had introduced the noon news broadcast, in which Byron had understood only a few place-names: towns and cities more than halfway in from the western and southern borders toward Warsaw. "My God, how pale you are, Briny," she said, inspecting his cleanshaven face, nicked here and there by the cold-water shave, "and how Young! I keep forgetting. You're just a boy.

her chair, and paced again. He was wondering whether the President would remember him, and hoping he wouldn't. In 1918, as a very cocky Assistant Secretary of the Navy, Franklin Roosevelt had crossed to Europe on a destroyer. The wardroom officers, including Ensign Henry, had snickered at the enormously tall, very handsome young man with the famous family name, who made a great show of using nautical terms and bounding up ladders like seadog, while dressed in outlandish costumes that he kept changing. He was a charmer,(a) the officers agreed, but a lightweight, almost a phony, spoiled by an easy rich man's life. He wore pince-nez glasses in imitation of his great relative, President Teddy Roosevelt, and he also imitated his booming manly manner; but a prissy Harvard accent mac e t s ness somewhat ridiculous. One morning Ensign Henry had done his usual workout on the forecastle, churning up a good sweat. Because there was a water shortage, he had hosed himself down from a saltwater riser on the well deck. Unfortunately the ship was pitching steeply. The hose had gotten away from him and spouted down into the hatchway to the wardroom, just as Roosevelt was coming topside in a gold-buttoned blazer, white flannel trousers, and straw hat. The costume had been wrecked, and Pug had endured a fierce chewing out by his captain and the dripping Assistant Secretary of the Navy. A door opened. "All right. Come on in, Pug," Captain Carton said. The President waved at him from behind the desk. 'Hello there! Glad to see you!" The warm commanding aristocratic voice, so recognizable from radio broadcasts, jarred Pug with its very familiarity. He got a confused impression of a grand beautiful curved yellow room cluttered with books and pictures. A gray-faced man in a gray suit slouched in an armchair near the President. Franklin Roosevelt held out a hand: 'Dmp your bonnet on the desk, Commander, and have a chair. How about some lunch? I'm just having a bite." A tray with half-eaten scrambled eggs, toast, and coffee stood on a little serving table by the President's smivel chair. He was in shirt-deeves and wore no tie. Pug had not seen him, except in newsreels and photographs, in more than twenty years. His high coloring was unchanged, and he was the same towering man, gone gray-headed, much older and very much heavier; and though he had the unmistakable lordly look of a person in great office, a trace remained in the up-thrust big jaw of the youthful conceit that had made the ensigns on the Davey snicker. His eyes were sunken, but very bright and keen. "Thank you, Mr. President. I've eaten." "By the way, this is the Secretary of Comm

Henry disappointed Hugh Cleveland when he walked into the broadcaster's office; just a squat, broad-shouldered, ordinary-looking man of about fifty, in a brown suit and a red bow tie, standing at the receptionist's desk. The genial, somewhat watchful look on his weathered face was not sophisticated at all. As Cleveland sized up people-having interviewed streams of them-this might be a professional ballplayer turned manager, a lumberman, maybe an engineer; apple-pie American, fairly intelligent, far from formidable. But he knew Madeline feared and admired her father, and day by day he was thinking more highly of the young girl's judgmen so he took a respectful tone. "Commander Henry? It's a pleasure. I'm Hugh Cleveland." " Hello. Hope I'm not busting in on anything. I thought I'd just drop by and have a look-see." "Glad you did. Madeline's timing the script. Come this way." They ked along the cork floor of a corridor walled with green soundproofing slabs. 'She was amazed. Thought you were in Germany." 'For the moment I'm here."In a swishing charcoal pleated skirt and gray blouse, Madeline came scampering out of a door marked zqo ADmrrrANcm, and kissed him. "Gosh, Dad, what a surprise. Is everything all right?" 'Everything's dandy." He narrowed his eyes at her. She looked a lot more mature, and brilliantly excited. He said, "If you're busy, I can leave, and talk to you later." Cleveland put in, "No, no, Commander. Please come in and watch. I'm about to interview Edna May Pelham." "Oh? The Getwal's Lady? I read it on the plane. Pretty good yarn." In the small studio, decorated like a library with fake wood panelling and fake books, Cleveland said to the sharp-faced, white-haired authoress, 'Here's another admirer of the book, Miss Pelham. Commander Henry is the American naval attache in Berlin." 'You don't say! Hi there." The woman waved her pince-nez at him. "Are we going to stay out of this idiotic war, Commander?" "I hope so." 'So do I. My hopes would be considerably higher if that man in the White House would drop dead." Pug sat to one side in an armchair while they read through the script. The authoress, passing vinegary judgments on current literature, said that one famous author was obscene, another sloppy, a third superficial. His mind wandered to his meeting yesterday with 'that man in the White House." It seemed to him that he had been summoned on a haphazard impulse; that he had spent a couple of thousand dollars of public money on a round trip from Germany for pointless small talk over scrambled eggs. The morning paper showed that yesterday had been a crowded, portentous day for the President. The leading story, spread over many columns, was Roosevelt Proclaims Limited National Emagency. Three other headlines on the front page began FDR or President; he had reorganized two major government boards; he had lifted the sugar quota; he had met with congressional leaders on revision of the Neutrality Act. all these things had been done by the ruddy man in shirt-sleeves who never moved from behind his desk, but whose manner was so bouncy you forgot he was helpless in his chair. Pug wanted to believe that he himself might have said one thing, made one comment, that by illuminating the President's mind had justified the whole trip. But he could not. His comments on Germany, like his original report, had rolled off the President, who mainly had sparked at details of Hitler's oratorical techmque and touches of local Berlin color. The President's request for gossipy letters still struck him as devious, if not pointless. In the first few minutes Victor Henry had been attracted by President Roosevelt's warmth and goodhumor, by his remarkable memory and his ready laughter. But thinking back on it all, Commander Henry wasn't sure the President would have behaved much differently to a man who had come to the office to shine his shoes. "Fourteen minutes and twenty seconds, Mr. Cleveland." Madeline's speaker-distorted voice roused him. 'That's fine. Ready to record, Miss Pelham?" 'No. All this about Hemingway is far too kind. I'd like about half an hour with this script. And I'd like some strong tea, with lemon." "Yes, ma'am. Hear that, Madeline? Get it." Cleveland invited the naval officer to his office, where Pug accepted a cigar. The young broadcaster displeased him by hitching a leg over the arm of his chair. Pug had used considerable severity to cure Byron of that habit. 'Sir, you can be proud of Madeline. She's an unusual girl." "Unusual in what way?" "Well, let's see. She understands things the first time you tell them to her. Or if she doesn't, she asks questions. If you send her to fetch something or do something, she fetches it or she does it. She never his a long story about it. I haven't heard her whine yet. She isn't afraid of people. She can talk straight to anybody without being fresh. She's reliable. Are reliagle people common in the Navy? In this business they're about as common as g[ant pandas. Especially girls. I've had my share of lemons here. I understand that you want her to go back to school, and that she'll have to quit next week. I'm very sorry about that." The girl's nineteen." "She's better than women of twenty-five and thirty who've worked for me." Cleveland smiled. This easy-mannered fellow had an infectious grin and an automatic warmth, Pug thought, that in a trivial way was like the President's. Some people had it, some didn't. He himself had none of it. In the Navy the quality was not overly admired. The name for it was 'grease." Men who posed it had a way of climbing fast; they also had a way of relying upon it, till they got too greasy and slipped. "I wish she'd show some of these 4.o qualities at school. I don't appreciate the idea of a nineteen-year-old girl loose in New York." "Well, sir, I don't mean to argue with you, but Washington's no convent either. it's a question of upbringing and character. Madeline is a superior, trustworthy girl." Pug uttered a nonconnnittal grunt. 'Sir, how about coming on our show? We'd be honored to have you." 'As a guest? You're kidding. I'm nobody." "America's naval attache in Nazi Germany iscertainly somebody. You could strike a blow for preparedness, or a two-ocean Navy. We just had Admiral Preble on the show." 'Yes, I know. That's how I found out what my little girl's doing these days." "Would you consider it, sir?" 'Not on your life." The sudden frost in Pug's tone rose not only from the desire to be final, but the suspicion that the praise of Madeline had been a way of greasing him. "No harm in asking, I hope," Cleveland grinned, running a hand through his heavy blond hair. He had a pink harborshop sunburn and looked well in a collegiate jacket and slacks, though Victor Henry thought his argyle socks were too much. He did not like Cleveland, but he could see that Madeline would relish working for such a Broadwayish fellow. Later Madeline showed her father around the studios. Certain corridors were like passageways in the bowels