The Hunt

Bert Rudman liked to write in a small reading room off the lobby of the Bristol Hotel, preferring it to his apartment, which was much too quiet and secluded, and his office, which was frenetic and intrusive. The room was subdued and quiet, its floor-to- ceiling brass lamps flared at the top and mounted against the walls, casting soft indirect light off the ceiling on scarlet-and- black-striped silk wallpaper. There were fringed lamps and brass ink wells on the half-dozen mahogany writing desks in the room. The sofas and chairs were leather and the people who sat in them usually whispered as they would in a library.

If he felt the urge for a drink, across the narrow lobby was the hotel bar, a subdued, intimate watering hole with a twenty- foot-long slate bar running the length of one wall, charcoal carpeting, glass-topped pedestal tables and deep-piled chairs. The bartender, Romey, played his favorite records on a Gramophone hidden in a storage closet, his eclectic taste ranging from opera and classics to the latest jazz recordings. Romey was perhaps the rudest bartender in Paris, greeting occasional musical requests from customers with a dour grunt, followed by ‘non.” He refused to indulge in casual conversation and muttered obscenities to himself when asked to make a drink he personally did not like. But if Romey was less than radiant he made up for it with phenomenal recall, remembering the drink preference of guests he sometimes had not seen for six months or longer.

For two years, Rudman had been keeping a daily journal o his activities, his viewpoints and impressions of the escalating crisis in Europe, a chronicle of his innermost thoughts and fear an evaluation of the gathering storm.

On this night he was writing an essay about the élan of the French who seemed, on the surface, to ignore the threat to the north and east of them. After all, they had the Maginot Line, a string of vertical, concrete buttresses backed up by bunkers that stretched the entire length of the border. That, with the French Army, was supposed to hold back Hitler’s Wehrmacht. Rudman thought it was a joke and had so stated in several of his columns, an observation which had hardly endeared him to the French government or the military.

Each night he sat in the writing room with a glass of absinthe and let his thoughts ramble, stretching his subjective viewpoint, adding unproven rumors and predictions on the future of the continent he could not use in his newspaper articles. He had been using the free time before going to work for the Times to update the journal, which he called Overture to Disaster, and trying to ignore a persistent inner voice that told him he was actually writing a book. Rudman was not ready yet to accept that responsibility as a reality.

The Bristol Hotel was a small but exclusive hotel catering to steady customers and celebrities who sought the kind of anonymity they would not find at the larger and more famous Ritz. Keegan always stayed at the Bristol. It was a comfortable hotel and because he was known there, he was treated especially well by the managers. The lobby was a long, narrow corridor leading to a small registration desk and an elevator, an open brass and ebony cage. The lobby was bracketed by the reading room on the left and the bar on the right. Keegan and Jenny always came by the reading room when they returned from their nightly forays in search of entertainment. That was Rudman’s sign to quit for the night. They always had a nightcap together.

But tonight they were running late. As Rudman, tired of his own nitpicking rewriting, decided to have another drink, he looked up to see von Meister, the German Embassy attaché, standing across the lobby in the doorway of the bar. Silhouetted by the back-lit glass shelves of liquor behind the bar, he was an intimidating figure, tall and erect, an almost satanic personification of the Third Reich. Von Meister was wearing a dark blue double-breasted suit instead of his uniform, yet Rudman still felt a sudden chill, as if he had walked past an open refrigerator.

“Bon soir, Monsieur Rudman,” he said. Then, nodding at the journal, “Letting your imagination run rampant as usual?”

Rudman smiled. “I prefer to call it truth.”

“Well, one man’s truth is another man’s lie, correct? I do not know who said that, certainly some astute poet.”

“I’m sure,” Rudman answered.

“I understand your American friend—what was his name again?” Rudman didn’t answer and von Meister waved his hand, as if forgiving the silence. “Ah, yes. Keegan. I understand he is going to marry that German girl.”

“That’s the story going around.”

“I hope they will be very happy,” the German said without conviction.

“I’ll tell them you care.”

Again von Meister indicated Rudman’s journal, this time with a faint smile.

“You hardly have an objective viewpoint,” he said. “I thought that was the mark of a good journalist, objectivity.”

“That what they taught you at Cambridge?”

“What they taught me at Cambridge is of little use to me. What I learned at Cambridge is that the British Empire is doomed. The strain is weak. Too much inbreeding.”

“That’s what you thought the last time you took them on and look what happened. You got your ass whipped.”

The German’s smile faded. The muscles in his jaw tightened.

“You know, it is a privilege for you to work in Germany. We grant you a visa and we can always rescind it. I would not forget that if I were you.”

“I don’t forget anything,” Rudman said.

“How interesting,” von Meister answered. “Neither do I.”

“Christ, you’re an educated man, von Meister. Can’t you see what’s happening to your country? Don’t you have any conscience?”

Von Meister stared at him. “Hitler is my conscience,” he said.

He turned to return to the bar. “Bon soir,” he said without turning back. “Give my regards to Herr Keegan and his deutsche lady friend.” He lifted his glass in a mock toast.

Rudman was deeply disturbed by the conversation. His mind was in a perpetual whirl, trying to sort out all the dichotomies of the German situation. He had spent fifteen years off and on in Germany and he thought he knew the people. But the reaction of Germans to the startling rise of Hitler from jailbird to absolute dictator of the country astounded him.

He turned back to his ledger and wrote:

“How could the Germans let this happen? How could they simply give up freedom of speech, freedom of expression, freedom from search and seizure?

“The German people are virtually prisoners in their own country. They are choked by censorship and rampant police excesses. Their literacy and taste are controlled by creative illiterates. Goebbels and his henchmen, supported by religious opportunists, have stripped the libraries of the great books—Kipling, Mark Twain, Dante, Steinbeck, Hemingway, Freud, Proust, Thomas Mann, the list is endless—which they have deemed degenerate, and the museums of the depraved paintings of Van Gogh, Picasso, Modigliani, Gauguin, Degas and dozens more.

“How can they abide the destruction of the Constitution by judges who are political henchmen, who make their decisions, not on the basis of morality or justice, but simply to appease Hitler and his mob. Legalize sterilization? Legalize lobotomy? These men are judges! They legalize everything he does. My God, what crimes are justified in the name of Justice!

“How can a whole nation of basically decent people turn its collective face away from the wholesale robbery, assault and murder of Jews and political dissidents? Good God, these things are not subtle! It takes an effort to look the other way!

“How, indeed?

“Perhaps if we learn the answer to that question, we can prevent such a human tragedy from ever happening again.

“But I doubt that we will.

“We never seem to learn.”

A few minutes later Keegan and Jenny came in with their arms wrapped around each other, laughing as usual. He closed the ledger.

“What was it tonight?” Rudman asked, gathering up his papers and putting them in a leather portfolio.

“Le Casino de Paris,” she said, her words rushing together with excitement. “We saw the Dolly Sisters and the Duke of Windsor and Maurice Chevalier and, who was the fighter, Francis?”

“Jack Sharkey,” he answered and rolled his eyes. “He’s only the ex-heavyweight champion of the world.”

“Another memorable night, eh?” Rudman asked.

“Oh yes,” she said, wrapping her arms in Keegan’s. “Every night is memorable.”