Dark Tunnel Read online

  “Thanks. Where’s Judd?”

  He jerked his thumb towards an open door. “He’s being interviewed. It takes half an hour or so.” He went back to work on a pile of papers in front of him.

  I remembered the glasses in my hand and put them on and looked out of the window. What I saw was a street in Munich on a night six years before: brown stone walls like carved cliffs in the lamplight and four men in black uniform coming out of a doorway like an arched cave, walking in step. I saw again like a repeated nightmare the stick raised above the white hostile face, and the girl getting up from the road with bloody knees. I felt the hot pain of the swishing stick across my face and the pleasure of bruising my knuckles on the white snarl and hearing the head strike the pavement.

  A sharp pain in my right hand reminded me that the place was Detroit and the time was six years later. I looked at my hand and saw that I was clenching my fist so tightly that the nails were digging into the palm. I lit a cigarette and tried to relax.

  I had been waiting for about half an hour when Alec came into the outer office. His back was straighter than ever, if possible.

  He handed Curtis a sheaf of papers and said, “Can I take the physical now?”

  “Not this afternoon,” Curtis said. “Any morning, though. To-morrow morning if you can make it. We open at 8:30 and the earlier you come the shorter time you’ll have to wait.”

  “I’ll be here at 8:30 to-morrow,” Alec said, and turned to me. “Sorry to keep you waiting.”

  “Finished?”

  “As much as I can do to-day.” His voice lowered sympathetically as we went out the door: “You didn’t come in for your interview. Didn’t you make it?”

  “My left eye is not the eye of an American eagle,” I said. “I’d still like to meet Carl von Esch, to talk over old times.”

  “Don’t let it ride you.” He squeezed my arm. “The Army’s sure to take you when your number comes up again. They’re reclassifying, you know.”

  “Don’t worry, I won’t brood,” I said, and manufactured a grin. “It looks as if you’ll make it, doesn’t it?”

  “If I can pass the physical. The officer who interviewed me was pretty encouraging.”

  “Congratulations.”

  We took the elevator down and went out into the street. The sky was still blue and bright but the memory of the night in Munich hung across it like a shadow. There was a first faint chill of winter in the air, and I felt older.

  On the way back to the parking-lot neither of us said anything. We were good enough friends not to have to talk, and I had nothing to say. Alec seemed to be thinking about something. The lines that slanted down from his blunt nose were deep and harsh, and he didn’t walk as fast as he had before.

  Even after we reached the car and headed out of the city, the silence remained unbroken. He’d have unfinished business to worry about, I thought, and let him worry. He drove smoothly and automatically by instinct, and his brain went on working on something else.

  When we were approaching Dearborn, I got tired of reading billboards to myself and said, “Are passengers allowed to talk to the driver of this bus?”

  “Eh?” He smiled a little sheepishly.

  “What’s eating you? You tell me not to brood and immediately pull a Hamlet yourself.”

  “Sorry. Matter of fact, I want to talk to you about this. Let’s go in there and have a beer.” He nodded his head at a tavern that we were passing.

  “I could do with a beer.”

  He turned down the next side-street and parked, and we got out and walked back to the tavern. It was a long, dim room lit by red neon, with a black bar running the length of it punctuated by red leather stools. The juke box at the back of the room looked like a small French chateau that had swallowed a rainbow. As we entered somebody put in a nickel and it began to cough rhythmically.

  The place was nearly empty and we had one end of the bar to ourselves. We slid onto stools and Alec ordered two beers from a waitress who wore powder like a clay mask.

  When we got our beer, I said, “What’s on your mind?”

  He wasn’t ready to talk. “Look about you,” he said. “The twentieth-century inferno, and we pay to sit in it. Red light like hell-fire. Ear-busting noise, and we pay the juke to lambaste our ears. Bitter beer.”

  “And horrible hags to serve it,” I said. At the other end of the bar the two waitresses were giggling together over the exploits of their grandchildren.

  “Walk down the streets of Detroit and what do you see,” Alec went on. “Grey streets bounded by grey walls. Men caught in the machines. The carnivores creep between the walls on rubber tires. The parrots squawk from the radio in every home. The men run round in the buildings like apes in iron trees. A new kind of jungle.” He drained his glass and ordered more.

  “Baloney,” I said. “Look at the other side of the medal. Hot lunches for children and advanced medical facilities. Cars for everybody—after the war. Education for everybody now. It’s a fairly Utopian jungle to my mind.”

  “I won’t argue. I’m a country bumpkin and Detroit always gets me.” He was born in Detroit. “But education isn’t everything. A car in every garage isn’t everything, nor a helicopter on every roof.”

  “You sound like Thoreau,” I said. “What good is a telegraph line from Maine to Texas, if Maine has nothing to say to Texas?”

  “Exactly.” He was talking now, and he let me have it: “Education isn’t everything. There’s a certain Doctor of Philosophy, for example, that I suspect of doing a pretty barbarous thing.”

  “Dr. Goebbels?”

  “This is serious. You can keep it under your hat.” I nodded.

  “I’m telling you because I may need your help. I’ve got to clean this thing up before I go into the Navy.”

  “I’ll help of course,” I said. “But what do you want me to help do?”

  He answered my question in his own way:

  “I’m not in a position to go to the F.B.I. I’m not certain I’m right, and if I’m wrong I can’t ruin a man’s career for nothing. But there’s been a leakage of information from the War Board to Nazi agents. You know we handle some pretty confidential stuff, and I’ve got to plug that leak. If I can uncover enough evidence to turn the case over to the Federal boys with a clear conscience—”

  “Christ, do you suspect a member of the board?”

  The five other members of the board flashed through my mind like actors in a disconnected movie short. Hunter, Leverett, Jackson, Vallon, Schneider. The President of the University, an ex officio member, attended some of the meetings, but he was above suspicion. Jackson was too: a former braintruster, head of the economics department, and a grassroots American liberal.

  Hunter, a small brown man who looked like an efficiency expert and knew fifteen languages, hated the Nazis so much that when he was in Washington on a government assignment, the Dies Committee almost investigated him. Colonel Leverett commanded the troops on the campus and had taught at West Point. Vallon, of Romance Languages, was the descendant of a Rochellois Protestant who had come to America at the beginning of the eighteenth century. He was a slim, elegant man who wore a ruby on his left hand and looked like a prosperous actor. Vallon was said to have a Puritan conscience but I had never met his conscience.

  Schneider was a German, Doctor of Philosophy of Heidelberg and head of the Department of German at Midwestern since 1935. He had left his chair at the University of Munich in protest against Nazi philosophies of education soon after Hitler rose to power. His classic letter of resignation to the Chancellor of the University of Munich had been published in translation in the United States, and made several hundred dollars in royalties for the International Red Cross.

  “Do you suspect Schneider?” I asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Why? On what grounds?” His judgments were impulsive at times and I wondered if this was a time.

  “Who else?”

  “That’s what I was thinking. What abo
ut me, then? I need the money more than Schneider with his ten thousand a year.”

  “Sure. Do you suspect yourself? Do you love Germany?” His irony was as subtle as a blowtorch.

  “Not passionately,” I said.

  “Schneider loves Germany.”

  “Maybe he does. But he hates the Nazis and Hitler. Remember what he said about Hitler in that open letter? ‘When a hyena drapes a lion’s skin over his narrow flanks and attempts to improvise a lion’s bearing and a lion’s voice, the imposture is immediately and pitifully apparent to all sensitive eyes and ears, and to all discriminating noses.’ Something like that.”

  “There’s such a thing as protesting too much,” Alec said. “There have been wolves in liberal’s clothing before.”

  “There’s such a thing as suspecting too much.”

  “Perhaps. If Schneider really hates the Nazis so violently, why did he leave his son in Germany to be educated after he left himself?”

  “That doesn’t prove anything. I heard that the Nazis wouldn’t let the boy go. He stayed with his mother’s family in Germany and then they conscripted him.”

  “They let him go two years ago,” Alec said. “He’s been in this country since 1941.”

  “Well, you seem to know more about it than I do. But you haven’t shown me a case against Schneider.”

  “There’s been a leakage of information from the War Board,” he repeated in a whisper like a leakage of steam from a boiler. “Maybe Schneider isn’t responsible. If he isn’t, who is? Who else is there?”

  “How much do you know about Vallon? Your secretary, Helen Madden, has access to everything we touch. I’m not accusing anybody, but how much do you know about her?”

  “Enough,” he said. He drained his glass and got off the stool, looking at me slantwise. The jaw muscles under his ears moved like a tangled bunch of worms. “Helen promised to marry me last week.”

  As I got off the stool, I saw my face in the mirror behind the bar. It was red and flustered-looking. I said, “Oh! Congratulations,” and Alec said, “Thanks.”

  We went out the door and around the corner to the car and drove back to Arbana through the domains of King Henry the First, American model. Alec had relapsed into his deaf-mute phase, a new thing to me though we had been friends for years. I sat in the seat beside him and thought about Schneider. The only thing I knew against Herman Schneider was that he privately held the opinion that Shakespeare was a German on his mother’s side. And that he was vain of his beard, which he treated like a pet mink.

  We had driven into Detroit in the morning and lunched there, so it was barely four o’clock when we got back to Arbana. The little city was a relief after Detroit, which gave me the megalopolitan blues in spite of what I had said to Judd. Arbana is different. In the leafy season it looks almost like a forest from an airplane, there are so many trees. Now in September the trees were beginning to turn, but most of the leaves were still green. There was green grass on the campus, and when Alec stopped the car in front of McKinley Hall I could hear the power-mowers humming.

  He said, “No hard feelings, Bob. You’re perfectly right to keep an open mind, of course. I’ve got to go over to the Board office to catch up on some work, but I’d like to talk to you to-night.”

  “Fine. About Helen, I think she’s a fine woman. I was just using her as an example, but I picked one hell of an example. What time to-night?”

  “Will you be free at ten? How about my office up in McKinley? There’ll be nobody to disturb us.”

  “Right. See you at ten.” I slammed the door and Alec drove away to the Graduate School. I could have gone to the Library and done some work but I didn’t feel like working. I decided to go up to the English Department office to see if there was any mail in my box, and started up the walk to McKinley Hall.

  McKinley Hall is the British-Museum-classic building five stories high and a block long, which houses the college of arts and the administrative offices of Midwestern University. Arbana is the Athens of the West and McKinley Hall is its Parthenon and I am Pericles.

  I started up the sweeping steps of the stupendous portico without even an alpenstock to lean on. There were students sitting on the steps, mostly girls in sweaters and young soldiers in their new winter uniforms. It was the end of the summer term, and they were holding post-mortems over the examinations they had been writing. A few pioneer couples were holding hands.

  As I reached the top, Hunter the linguist, Professor of Comparative Literature, came out through one of the swinging glass doors. He was a small, wiry man with little black eyes like licorice drops and a face as brown as his Harris tweeds.

  “Hello, Hunt.”

  “Hello, Bob, how did it go?”

  “It looks as if Alec will make it. They turned me down.”

  “They did? I thought you were in good shape.”

  “It’s not my shape they objected to. My left eye is weak.”

  “That’s tough. What’s the matter with your eye?”

  “I had an accident a few years ago in Munich—”

  “Oh, yes, Alec said something about that. You weren’t as lucky as I was. One time in Naples they put me in jail for brandishing a Leica in the harbor, but there was no rough stuff and they let me go next morning.”

  “My crime was worse. I objected to the murder of a Jew.”

  “What happened?” Curiosity shrank Hunter’s small eyes to raisins.

  “He was killed. But there’s more to it than that, it’s a long story. When we get together sometime, remind me to tell you about Ruth Esch—”

  “Ruth Esch? Do you know Ruth Esch?”

  “Do you know her, Hunt? We were engaged to be married—years ago. If she’s alive, we still are, as far as I’m concerned.”

  “I didn’t know. You shouldn’t be so secretive. No, I don’t know her, but she’s coming here.”

  “Coming here?” My heart hit me under the chin. “When?”

  “This week, I think. If it’s the same Ruth Esch—”

  “Is the woman who’s coming here an actress? Tall? Red-haired?”

  “I wouldn’t know, but Schneider can tell you about her. She’s been given a special instructorship in his department to teach German conversation.”

  “You don’t know where Schneider is now, do you?”

  “I was just talking to him in his office. If you hurry you should catch him.”

  “Thanks. I want to talk to him,” I said, and opened the door.

  Hunter called after me, “I hope it’s the right girl.” As I climbed the stairs to the second floor, my brain pounded out the words over and over like somebody practising on a typewriter in my head.

  Schneider was just about to leave when I reached the German Department office on which his private office opened. He was standing with his topcoat on and a grey Homburg in his hand, giving last-minute instructions to the departmental secretary.

  Dr. Herman Schneider’s appearance was as impressive as his reputation, which was awesome. Until 1934 he was the greatest Shakespearean scholar in Germany. It was generally acknowledged that he knew more about the First Folio than Heminge and Condell, and that some of his footnotes were as valuable as whole books by other men. As the President of the University said when Schneider came to Midwestern to become head of the Department of German: “With the advent of Dr. Schneider, we may say with some assurance that the cultural centre of gravity of the earth has shifted perceptibly towards the American Middle West.” This was printed in the newspapers, and print never lies.

  I stood behind him and waited for him to finish talking to the secretary, not realizing that our conversation was going to shift the cultural centre of the earth again. It’s not that it wasn’t an impressive conversation, to me at least. When he finally turned and gave me the full benefit of his beard, I was quite overpowered.

  He was a huge man with large brown eyes, deepset under a bald dome for which his black beard compensated. He would have stood about five feet kneel
ing in prayer, if such a Jupiter of a man could ever feel the need of prayer. His belly, once the pride of the Hofbrauhaus, was a cenotaph to thousands of perished liters of beer.

  “What can I do for you, Dr. Branch?” He spoke with the slightly exaggerated and aggressive courtesy of many Germans. His English was better than my German, but it seemed to rumble in his belly and lollop around in his throat.

  “I was just talking with Hunter, Dr. Schneider.” Schneider called all college teachers doctor and expected the same in return: his beard demanded it.

  “Oh, yes, he and I had a very pleasant conversation a few minutes ago.”

  “He mentioned a certain Ruth Esch, who is coming to teach in your department.”

  “Yes,” Schneider said. “Yes, that is so. A very talented young woman. Why do you ask?” A hardness that may have been suspicion made the mellowness of his voice seem suddenly shallow.

  “Is she an actress, a tall, red-haired girl?”

  “Why, yes. I hadn’t realized that her fame had penetrated to America. I must tell her.”

  “It hasn’t so far as I know. I knew her in Munich.”

  “You did?” He seemed astonished and his eyebrows jumped like black mice. “She played a season with the Schauspielhaus in München. You saw her on the stage, perhaps?”

  “Yes, I did. But I knew her personally as well. We were very good friends, in fact.”

  The black mice had convulsions and even the beard was perturbed. “Is that so? I didn’t know you had ever visited Germany, Dr. Branch.”

  “I was there for a month in 1937, studying the influence of English romanticism on the continental garden.” On a travelling fellowship you have to study something that justifies travel. “I don’t often talk of my visit to Germany. It ended unpleasantly.”

  “Unpleasantly?”

  “Very. I was arrested and ordered to leave the country. I have an irrational prejudice against Jew-baiting.”

  “It is a commendable prejudice, Dr. Branch.” He spoke as if he meant it. “And it was in 1937, then, that you met Ruth Esch?”

  “Yes.”

  “You were close friends, you say? Wunderbar!” The enthusiasm seemed a little forced. “Fräulein Esch was a pupil of mine, you know. A charming and talented girl. I am greatly looking forward to seeing her again. Dr. Branch, you must make one of the party at our reunion.”