The Winds of War

public park, she admitted, but the signs on the benches, juDEN vERBoTEN, were nauseating. Seeing similar signs in restaurant windows, she would recoil and demand to g

aintings and architecture. The world at large flocked to Siena twice a year to watch the mad horse races, and otherwise let the bypassed town, a living scene out of an old tapestry, molder in the Tuscan sunshine. In nine years of living just outside Siena, Aaron Jastrow had never attended a Palio. When Byron asked why, Jastrow held forth on the cruel public games of Roman times, the forerunners of all these burlesque races of the Middle Ages. The Palio had happened to survive in mountain-locked Siena, he said, like a dinosaur in the Lost World. "Some medieval towns raced donkeys or buffaloes," he said. 'In papal Rome, they raced Jews. I'm not exactly afraid I'll be pressed into service if a horse should break its leg. I'm just not very interested." Moreover, his friend the archbishop had told him long ago that elderly people avoided the Palio, because of the risk of being jostled or trampled. But now there was the article to write. Jastrow obtained tickets for both runnings, and sent Byron and Natalie to do research in the town while he read books on the subject. They first learned that the race was a contest among Siena's neighborhoods or parishes. Each district, called a contrada, comprised a few square blocks of old houses. All of Siena contained but two and a half square miles and some thirty thousand people. But these little wardsthere were seventeen, and ten competed each year-took themselves, their boundaries, their loyalties, their colors, their emblems, with inconceivable seriousness. They bore curious names like Oca, Bruco, Torre, Tartuca, Nicchio (Goose, Caterpillar, Tower, Tortoise, Seashell). Each ward had its flag, its anthems, its separate churches, and even a sort of capital hall. Byron and Natalie spent days walking through the hilly angular streets. When an occasional old omnibus snorted by, they had to flatten against the high red-brown walls for their lives; there were no sidewalks, and the somnolent, deserted streets were hardly wider than the bus. Maps in hand, the pair visited the tiny districts one by one, trying to pin down the background of the Palio. They found out about alliances and hatreds going back hundreds of years. Panther was friendly to Giraffe, Tortoise loathed Snail, and so forth, in a tangle of emotions, very real and current. They came to realize too that the famous race itself was just a crooked farce, and thateverybody knew it. The contrade owned no horses. A few days before each race, animals from the nearby countryside were brought into town, and the competing districts drew lots for them. The stolid durable nags back year after year, shuffling from one neighborhood to an(same) other by the luck of the draw.(came) What then made a race of it? Bribing the jockeys, doping the animals, conspiring to block the best horses or injure their riders: only such devices turned the Palio into a murky contest of a sort. The largest, richest neighborhoods therefore tended to win; but the outcome was unpredictable, because a poor, small district might put on a desperate surge. It might squander funds in bribes, pledge future alliances, swear to future treacheries, just to win a banner to bear off to its hall. For that was what the 'Palio" itself was: a banner painted with a picture of the Virgin. Like all medieval races, this one was run on sacred days; it was a manifestazione in honor of the Virgin. Hence her portrait graced the and faded Palios by the dozens hung in the contrada halls. After a while, even Jastrow became interested too, in an ironic way. The crookedness, he said, was obviously the soul of the thing; old European skulduggery, bribes and counterbribes, doublecross and triplecross, sudden reversals of old alliances, secret temporary patching up of ancient enmities, convoluted chicanery in the dark-all leading at last to the horse race, When all the shadowy corruption was put to explosive Proof in red sunset light. 'Why, this article will write itself," he said cheerfully one day at lunch. "These Sienese have evolved willy-nilly a grotesque little parody of European nationalism. The archbishop told me that a woman from the Panther neighborhood who marries a Caterpillar or a Tower man Will go back to have her babies in a house on a Panther street to make sure they'll be Panthers. Patriotism! And of course, the insane explosion every summer is the key. All this obsolete mummery-Snails, Giraffes, what have you-would have died out centuries ago, except for the lovely colorful outbursts of excitement, treachery, and violence in the races. The Palio is war." "You ought to go over to town, sir," Byron said. "They're laying the track. Hundreds of truckloads of this golden-red earth, all around the Piazza tiel Campo." i "Yes," Natalie said, "the way they're decorating up the streets is quite i amazing. And wherever you look the flag-wavers are practicing-" "I'm taking off two whole workdays for the races themselves. That's plenty," Jastrow said severely. You know what?" Bryon said. "This whole thing is utterly idiotic."Natalie looked at him with startled, excited eyes, touching a handkerchief to her sweaty forehead. It was the day of the first Palio, and they stood on the balcony of the archbishos palace, watching the parade. The great lade of the cathedral gave a bit of shade at one end of the balcony, where Jastrow in his big yellow Panama hat and white suit stood talking with the archbishop. Byron and Natalie were crowded among privileged onlookers at the other end, in the hot sun. Even in her sleeveless light pink linen dress, the girl was perspiring, and a seersucker jacket and silk tie were making Byron acutely uncomfortable. Below, the Caterpillar marchers in green and yellow costumes puffed sleeves and trunks, colored hose, feathered hats-were leaving the thronged cathedral square, waving great banners to cheers and applause from the crowd; and the red-and-black Owl company was COMing in, repeating the same flag stunts: intertwining whorls, two flags flung pole and all in the air and crisscrossing, flag-wavers leaping over each other's poles while keeping their banners in fluid motion. 'Idiotic?" Natalie said. "I was just deciding it's rather magical." "What is? They do the same things over and over. We've been here for hours. There's still the Porcupine, the Eagle, the Giraffe, and the Forest to come and show off with their flags. I'm roasting." "Ah, Byron, it's the liquid flow of color, don't you see, and the faces of these young men. So help me, these people look more natural in medieval togs than in their workaday clothes. Don't they? Look at those long straight noses, those deep-set sad big eyes! Maybe they're really a remnant of the Etruscans, as they claim." "Six months of work," Byron said. "Special buildings and churches for Unicoms, Porcupines, and Giraffes

otecting arms in front of the girl and Jastrow as the bloody-faced one seized the pole. The whole squad roared, cheered, and came thundering back down the benches with the banner. "Now!" Byron took the hands of the other two. "Come." The excited Sienese, as well as the tourists, were prudently making way for the triumphant Caterpillars. Moving right behind them, with one arm around the girl and another around Jastrow, Byron got through the archway into the main lower street of the town. But here the mob eddied in behind the Palio and its triumphant escort and engulfed them, crushing uphill toward the cathedral. "Oh, Lord," Natalie said. "We're in for it now. Hang on to Aaron." "Dear me, I'm afraid I didn't bargain for this," gasped Jastrow, fumbling at his hat and his glasses with one hand. The other was pinned in Byron's grip. "My feet are scarcely touching the ground, Byron." "That's okay. Don't fight them, sir, just go along. At the first side street this jam will ease up. Take it easy-' A convulsive, panicky surge of the crowd at this momenttore the professor out of Byron's grasp. Behind them sounded the clatter of hoofs on stone, wild neighs and whinnies, and shouts of alarm. The crowd melted around Byron and Natalie, fleeing from a plunging horse. It was the winner, the Caterpillar animal. A brawny young man in green and yellow, his wig awry and sliding, was desperately trying to control the animal, but as it reared again, a Hailing front hoof caught him full in the face. He fell bloodied to the ground, and the horse was free. It danced, reared, and screamed, plunging forward, and the crowd shrank away. As Byron pulled Natalie into a doorway out of the retreating mob, Aaron Jastrow emerged in the clear street without his glasses, stumbled, and fell in the horse's path. Without a word to Natalie, Byron ran out into the street and snatched Jastrow's big yellow hat off his head. H

h, I've got money. As a matter of fact, Natalie, there's not all that much to think about. I guess I'll come along. With Jastrow off in Greece, this will be a dismal place." "Bless your heart." She gave him a delighted smile. "We'll have fun. I'll see to that." 'What happens after Warsaw?" Byron said. "Will you come back here?" "I guess so, if the consul doesn't persuade Aaron to go home meantime. He's really working on him. And you, Briny?" "Well, maybe I will too," Byron said. 'I'm at loose ends."That night at dinner, when he heard the news, Dr. Jastrow ordered up a bottle of champagne. "Byron, I can't tell you what a load you've taken off my mind! This headstrong girl doesn't know how wild and backward Poland is. I do. From what my relatives write me, it hasn't improved one iota since I left there forty-five years ago. And the situation really is unstable. The villain with the mustache is making nasty noises, and we must look for the worst. However, there's bound to be some warning. My mind is much more at ease now. You're a capable young man." "You talk as though I were some kind of idiot," Natalie said, sipping champagne. "You are a girl. It's something you have trouble remembering. You were that way as a child, climbing trees and fighting boys. Well, I'll be here alone, then. But I won't mind that." 'Won't you be in Greece, sir?" Byron said. "I'm not so sure." Jastrow smiled at their puzzled looks. "It's some clumsiness about my passport. I let it lapse, and not being native-born, but naturalized through my father's

d a screech half a second after Pamela whisked into her own lane between two trucks, brushing hair off her forehead with one relaxed little hand. "But the charm is based on success. It may lapse once he stops moving ahead. He's murdered a lot of people on the way up. They all have relatives." Commander Grohke came to meet them at the base gate in a small car, which Tudsbury could barely squeeze into. Pamela roared off to a hotel, and Grohke took the two men for a long tour, by car and on foot, through the Swinemonde yard. It was a gray afternoon, with low black clouds threatening rain. The dank east wind off the Baltic felt pleasantly cool after the sultriness of Berlin. The flat, sandy, bleak seacoast base was much like New London, Victor Henry thought. If one ignored flags and signs, in fact, the naval facilities of big powers were hard to tell apart. They were all in the same business, imitating the British navy, which had first brought the industrial age to war at sea. The low black U-boats tied in clusters to the long piers or resting on blocks in dry docks; the smell of tar, hot metal, and se

The four young officers were thin-lipped, ruddy, blond, shy; like Americans in their features, but with a different look around the eyes, more intense and wary. They sat silent at first, but soon warmed to the American's compliments about the boat, and the joking of Grohke, who got into an excellent mood over the food and wine. Stories passed about the stupidity and laziness of navy yard workmen. One of Pug's best yarns, an incident of crossed-up toilet plumbing on the West Virginia, brought uproarious laughter. He had noticed before the German taste for bathroom humor. The officers told tales, which they considered comic, of their early training: first about the cleaning of latrines, then of electric shocks to which they had had to submit without flinching while their reactions were filmed; exposure to cold and heat past the point of collapse; knee bends until they dropped; the "Valley of Death" cross-country run up and down hillsides, wearing seventy-pound loads and gas masks. An officer emerged the better, they said, from such ordeals. Only Grohke disagreed. That Prussian sadism was old-fashioned, he asserted. In war at sea, initiative was more important than the blind submission that the ordeals implanted. "The Americans have the right idea," he said, either because he sensed that Pug was shocked, or out of maverick conviction. Tbev feasted on cabbage soup, boiled fresh salmon, roast pork, potato dumplings, and gooseberry torten. Obviously Grohke had ordered up this banquet on the chance that Pug might stay. Streaks of red sunset showed through the black rain clouds when Henry and Grohke I it the submarine. On the dock me crewm e so en, naked except for trunks, were wrestling inside a cheering circle, on gray mats laid over the crane tracks. Henry had seen everywhere this love of young Germans for hard horseplay. They were like healthy pups, and these U-boat men looked stronger and healthier than American sailors. "So, Henry, I suppose you join your English friend now?" "Not if you have any better ideas." The German slapped him on the shoulder. "Good! Come along."They drove out through the gate. "Damn quiet after five o'clock," said Pug. "Oh, yes. Dead. Always." Pug lit a cigarette. "I understand the British are working two and three shifts now in their yards." Grohke gave him an odd look. "I guess they make up for lost time." A couple of miles from the base, amid green fields near the water, they drove into rows of wooden cottages. "Here's where my daughter lives," Grohke said, ringing a doorbell. A fresh-faced young blonde woman opened the door. Three children, recognizing Grohke's ring, ran and pounced on the paper-wrapped hard candies he handed out. The husband was at sea on maneuvers. On an upright piano in the tiny parlor stood his picture: young, long-jawed, blond, stern. "It's good Paul is at sea," Grohke said. "He thinks I spoil the kids," and he proceeded to toss them and romp with them until they lost their bashfulness in the presence of the American, and ran around laughing and shrieking. The mother tried to press coffee and cake on the guests, but Grohke stopped her. )t "The commander is busy. I just wanted to see the children. Now we go. As they got into the car, looking back at a window where three little faces peered out at him, he said: "It's not much of a house. Not like your mansion in the Grunewald! It's just a cracker box. The German pay scale isn't like the American. I thought you'd be interested to see how they live. He's a good U-boat officer and they're happy. He'll have a command in two years. Right away, if there's war. But there won't be war. Not now." "I hope not." 'I know. There is not going to be war over

er. What follows gets into prognostication, and so may be judged frivolous or journalistic. However, the impression that this observer has formed points so strongly to a single possibility, that it seems necessary to record the judgment. All the evidence indicates to me that Adolf Hitler is at this time negotiating a military alliance with the Soviet union. Arguing in support of his idea, Victor Henry alluded to the Rapallo Treaty of 1922, when the Bolsheviks and the Germans had stunned a European economic conference by suddenly going off and making a separate deal of broad scope. He pointed out that the present German ambassador in Moscow, Schulenburg, was a Rapallo man. Litvinov, Russia's Jewish pro-Western foreign minister, had recently fallen. Hitler in two speeches had left out his usual attacks on Bolshevism. A Russo-German trade agreement had been in the news, but suddenly the papers had dropped all mention of it. He cited, too, the remark of a man high in the U-boat command, 'Watch the east. Something's happening in the east. I have a brother in the foreign ministry." And he cited Hitler's pledge to the U-boat officers that there would be no war over Poland. None of this, he acknowledged, added up to hard intelligence, nor did it impress the professionals at the embassy. There were always, they said, rumors of theatrical surprises. They insisted on sticking to basic facts. The Nazi movement was built on fear and hate of Bolshevism and a pledge to destroy it. The whole dieme of Mein Kampf was conquest of "living room" for Germany in the southeast provinces of Russia. A military reconciliation between the two systems was unthinkable. Hitler would never propose it. If he did, Stalin, assuming that it was a trick, would never accept it. The words Henry had encountered most often were "fantasy" and "melodrama." He maintained, nevertheless, that the move not only made sense, but was inevitable. Hitlerwas far out on a limb in his threats against Poland. A dictator could not back down. Yet his combat readiness for a world war was marginal. Probably to avoid alarming the people, he had not even put his country on a war production basis, contrary to all the lurid blustering propaganda of "cannon instea ugh talk of Nazi pro of butter." Despite this to politicians and newspapers, the man in the street did not want a war, and Hitler knew that. A Russian alliance was a way out of the dilemma. If Russia gave the Germans a free hand in Poland, the English guarantee would become meaningless. Neither the French nor the British could possibly come to Poland's aid in time to avert a quick conquest. Therefore the Poles would not fight. They would yield the city of Danzig and the extraterritorial road across the Polish corridor, which was all Hitler was demanding. Maybe later, as in the case of Czechoslovakia, he would move in and take the rest of Poland, but not now. Victor Henry argued that the sudden reversal of alliances was an old European stratagem, especially characteristic of German and Russian diplomacy. He described many instances, fresh from his heavy history reading. He pointed out that Hitler himself had come to power in the first place through a sharp reversal of political lines, a deal with his worst enemy, Franz von Papen. Fully clothed, he fell asleep on the red leather couch, with the report and two carbon copies tucked inside his shirt, after shredding the sheets of carbon paper into the wastebasket. His slumber was restless and brief. When his eyes popped wide open again, the sun was sending weak red rays through the treetops. He showered, dressed, read the report again, and walked five miles from the Grunewald to the Wilhelmstrasse, turning the document over in his mind. Compared to Tollever's reports, which he had studied, it was a presumptuous discussion of grand strategy, far beyond his competence and his position; the sort of "Drew Pearson column" against which the Met of Naval Operations himself had warned him. On the other hand, it seemed to him factual. He had already sent in a number of technical reports

ped gaps, she teetered along narrow ledges, she scrambled up bare rocks, careless alike of her modesty and her neck. She was a strong, surefooted girl, and a little too pleased with herself about it. He sat slouched in his chair, contemplating her across the red and white checked cloth, the dirty dishes, the empty wineglasses. The Alitalia plane was departing for Zagreb on the first leg of their flight in little more than an hour. She stared back, her lips pushed out in a wry pout. Her dark gray travelling suit was sharply tailored over her pretty bosom. She wore a black crushable hat and a white shirt. Her ringless fingers beat on the cloth. "Look," she said, "I can well understand that for you it's no longer a gay excursion. So I'll go on by myself." 'I suggest you telephone Slote first. Ask him if you should come." Natalie drummed her fingers. "Nonsense, I'll never get a call through to Warsaw today." "Try." "All right," she snapped. "Where are the damned telephones?" The long-distance office was mobbed. Two switchboard girls were shouting, plugging,unplugging, scrawling, waving their hands, and wiping sweat from their brows. Byron cut through the crowd, pulling Natalie by the hand. When she gave the operator a number in Warsaw, the girl's sad huge brown eyes widened. "Signorina-Warsaw? Why don't you ask me to ring President Roosevelt? It's twelve hours' delay to Warsaw." "That's the number of the American embassy there," Byron said, smiling at her, "and it's life and death." He had an odd thin-lipped smile, half-melancholy, half-gay, and the Italian girl warmed to it as to an offered bunch of violets. "American embassy? I can try." She plugged, rang, argued in German and Italian, made faces at the mouthpiece, and argued some more. "Urgent, emergency,"