The peculiar rwxture 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." 'y, 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. "Oh, 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 sightsecing, 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 and pie on, 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 Kenigsberg, giving him a rude abrupt good-bye. 'Why did you insist on getting married?
That's what's eating at 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 'nursday 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, ive can get properly married. This was a farce." "No, it wasn't. It's the only thing I've wanted since I was born. Noil, 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 masocmstic streak." 'Yes or no?" 'As you wish." Byron said, They mean to be nice. why not? We have to eat. Get away Emm the black raincoats." He accepted, hung u, 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 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 meal. '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 of]t of ten." The diplomat shook his head. "Extraordinary heroism." "I don't claim I understood them all," Byron said. "Sometimes my eyes just pas"ed over words. But I plowed on through." "What books?" Thurston said. "My darling here became slightly curious about the Germans," said Natalie, "after a Luftwaffe pilot almost shot his head off. He wanted to know a little more about them. Slote gave him a general syllabus of German nineteenth-century romanticism, nationalism, and idealism. "Never dreaming he'd do anything about it," Slote said, turning his blank firelit glasses toward her. "I had all this time in Siena last year," Byron said. "And I m,as interested." "What did you find out?" said Thurston, refilling Byron's glass. "You couldn't get me to read German philosophy if the alternative were a firing squad." 'Mainly that Hitler's always been in the German bloodstream," Byron said, "and sooner or later had to break out. That's what Leslie told me in Berlin. He gave me the list to back up his view. I think he pretty well proved it. I used to think the Nazis had swarmed up out of the sewers and were something novel. But all their ideas, all their slogans, and practically everything they're doing is in the old books. That thing's been brewing in Germany for a hundred years." "For longer than that," Slote said. "You've done your homework well, Byron. A plus." 'Oh, balderdash!" Natalie exclaimed. "A plus for what? Repeating a tired cliche? It's only novel to Byron because American education is so shallow and because he probably didn't absorb any he got." "Not much," Byron said. 'Mostly I played cards and ping-pong." "Well, it's very evident." His bride's tone was sharp. "Or you wouldn't have gone boring through that one-sided list of his like a blind bookworm, just to give him a chance to patronizeyou." 'I deny the patronizing and the one-sidedness," said Slote. "Not that it matters, Jastrow-I guess I'll have to call you Henry now-but I think I covered the field, and I admire your hubby for tackling the job so earnestly." "The whole thesis is banal and phony," Natalie said, "this idea that the Nazis are a culmination of German thought and culture. Hitler got his radsm from Gobineau, a Frenchman, his Teutonic superiority from Chamberlain, an Englishman, and his Jew-baiting from Lueger, a Viennese political thug. The only German thinker you can really link straight to Hitler is Richard Wagner. He was another mad Jew-hating socialist, and Wagner's writings are all over Mein Kampf. But Nietzsche broke with Wagner over that malignant foolishness. Nobody takes Wagner seriously as a thinker, anyway. His music disgusts me too, though that's neither here nor there. I know you've read more in this field than I have, Slote, and I can't imagine why you gave Byron such a dreary loaded list. Probably just to scare him off with big names. But as you ought to know, he doesn't scare." 'I'm aware of that," Slote said. Abruptly he splashed wine into his glass, filling it to the brim, and emptied it without pausing for breath. "Your veal's getting cold," Byron said to his bride. This unexpected edgy clash between Natalie and her ex-loyer was threatening to get out of hand. She tossed her head at him and impatiently cut a bit of meat, talking as she ate. 'We created Hitler, more than anybody. We Americans. Mainly by not joining the League, and then by passing the insane Smoot-Hawley tariff in 1930, during a deep depression, knocking over Europe's economy like a row of dominoes. After Smoot-Hawley the German banks closed right and left. The Germans were starving and rioting. Hitler promised them jobs, law and order, and revenge for the last war. And he promised to crush the Communists. The Germans swallowed his revolution to fend off a Communist one. He's kept his promises, and he's held the Germans in line with terror, and that's the long and short of it. Why, there isn't a German in a thousand who's read those books, Briny. It's all a thick cloud of university gas. Hitler's a product of American isolation and British and French cowardice, not of the ideas of Hegel and Nietzsche." "University gas is good, my dear," Slote said, 'and I'll accept it." He touched his spread fingertips together, slouched in his chair, regarding her with a peculiar smile at once superior and frustrated. "In the sense that in any time and place the writings of the philosophers are a kind of exhaust gas of the evolving social machinery-a point that Hegel more or less makes, and that Marx took and vulgarized. But you can recover from an analysis of the gas what the engine must be like and how it works. And the ideas may be powerful and true, no matter how produced. German romanticism is a terribly important and powerful critique of the way the West lives, Jastrow. It faces all the nasty weaknesses.""Such as?" Her tone was mean and abrupt. A rush of argument broke from Slote, as though he wanted to conquer her with words in Byron's presence, if he could do nothing else. He began stabbing one finger in the air, like exclamation points to his sentences. "Such as, my dear, that Christianity is dead and rotting since Galileo cut its throat. Such as, that the ideas of the French and American revolutions are thin fairy tales about human nature. Such as, that the author of the Declaration of Independence owned Negro slaves. Such as, that the champions of liberty, equality, and fraternity ended up chopping off the heads of helpless women, and each other's heads. The German has a very clear eye for such points, Natalie. He saw through the rot of imperial Rome and smashed it, he saw through the rot of the Catholic Church and broke its back, and now he thinks Christian industrial democracy is a rotting sham, and he proposes to take over by force. His teachers have been telling him for a century that his turn is coming, and that cruelty and bloodshed are God's footprints in history. That's what's in the books I listed for Byron, poured out in great detail. It's a valid list. There was another strain in Germany, to be sure, a commonsense liberal humanist tendency linked with the West. The 'good Germany!" I know all about it, Natalie. Most of its leaders went over to Bismarck, and nearly all the rest followed the Kaiser. When his time came, Hitler had a waltz. Now listen!" In a solemn tone, like a priest chanting a mass, beating time in the air with a stiff finger, Slote quoted: "The German revolution will not prove any miuff or gentler because it was preceded by the Critique of Kant, by the Transcendental Idealism of Fichte. These' doctrines served to develop revolutionary forces that only await their times, to break forth. Christianity subdued the brutal warrior passion of the Germans, but it could 'not quench it. When the cross, that restraining talism", falls to pieces, then will break forth again the frantic Berserker rage. The old stone gods will then arise from the forgotten ruins and wipe from their eyes the dust of centuries. Thor with his giant hamtwr will arise again, and he will shatter the Gothic cathedrals." Slote made an awkward, weak gesture with a fist to represent a hammer-blow, and went on: "'Smile not at the dreamer whowarns you against Kantians, Fichteans, and the other philosophers. Smile not at the fantasy of one who foresees in the region of reality the same outburst of revolution that has taken place in the region of intelt. The thought precedes the deed as the lightning the thunder. Ger thunder is of true German character. It is not very nimble, but rumbles along somewhat slowly. But come it will, and 'when you hear a crashing such as never before has been heard in the world's history, then know that at last the German thunderbolt has fallen." "Heine-the Jew who composed the greatest German poetry, and who fell in love with German philosophy-Heine wrote that," Slote said in a quieter tone. "He wrote that a hundred and six years ago." Behind him chairs rasped, and a party in evening clothes, cheerily chattering in German,flanked by three bobbing, ducking waiters, came to the big table by the fire. Slote was jostled; glancing over his shoulder, he looked straight into the face of the Gestapo chief, who amiably smiled and bowed. With him was the man with the scarred forehead they had seen in the hotel, and another German with a shaved head, and three giggling Portuguese women in bright evening dresses. "End of philosophy seminar," muttered Bunky Thurston. "Why?" said Byron. "Because for one thing," Natalie snapped, "I'm bored with it." As the Germans sat down, conversation died throughout the restaurant. The Jews were looking warily toward them. In the lull, only the boisterous and oblivious British parties sounded louder. 'Who are those English people?" Natalie said to Thurston. 'Expatriates, living here because it's cheap and there's no rationingAlso, I guess, because it's out of range of Luftwaffe bombs," Thurston said. 'The British embassy staff isn't crazy about them." 'That's a remarkable quote from Heine," Byron said to Slote. 'I wrote a paper on Hegel and Heine at Oxford." Slote smiled thinly. "Heine was fascinated by Hegel for a long time, then repudiated him. I translated that passage for an epigraph. The rhetoric is rather purple. So is Jeremiah's. Jewish prophets have one vein." As they were drinking coffee, a pink spotlight clove the dark room, striking a gray curtain on a little platform. Bunky Thurston said, "Here he comes. He's the best of the fado singers." 'The best of what?" Byron said. A pale dark-eyed young man, in a black cloak with thick fringes, stepped through the curtain holding an onion-shaped guitar. "Fado singers. Fate songs. Very pathetic, very Portuguese." At the first chords that the young man struck-strong sharp sad chords, in a hammering rhythm-the restaurant grew still. He sang in a clear high florid voice, looking around with his black eyes, his high bulging forehead pink in the spotlight. Natalie murmured to Thurston, "What song is that?" "That's an old one, the fado of the students." 'What do the words mean?" Oh, the words never amount to anything. just a sentence or two. That one says, 'Close your eyes. Life is simpler with your eyes closed."' The glance of the newlyweds met. Byron put his hand over Natalie's.
The young man sang several songs, with strange moments of speeding UP, slowing down, sobbing, and trilling; these evidently were the essence of fado, because when he performed such flourishes in the middle of a song, the Portugu in the room applauded and sometimes cheered. "Lovely " Natalie murmured to Bunky Thurston when a song ended. "Thank you." He smoothed his mustache with both hands. "I thought you'd find it agreeable. It's something different." "Spielerl Kennen Sie 'O Sole Mio' singen?" The shaven-headed German was addressing the singer. He sat only a few feet from the platform. Smiling uneasily, the singer replied in Portuguese, gesturing at his oddly shaped guitar, that he only performed fado songs. In a jolly tone, the German told him to sing "O Sole Mio" anyway. Again the young man made helpless gestures, shaking his head. The German pointed a smoking cigar at him, and shouted something in Portuguese that brought dead quiet in the restaurant, even among the British, and froze the faces of the three women at his table. With a piteous look around at the audience, the young performer began to do "O Sole Mio," very badly. The German leaned back, beating time in the air with his cigar. A thick pall fell in the restaurant. Natalie said to Thurston, "Let's leave now." "I'm for that." The singer was still stumbling through the Italian song as they walked out. On the counter at the entrance, under a picture of him, phonograph records in paper slipcovers were piled. "If that first song is there," Natalie said to Byron, "buy me a record." He bought two. The streetlights outside were brighter than the illumination in the restaurant, and the wind was cutting. Leslie Slote, tying a muffler around his neck, said to Byron, when do you leave?" "Not till day after tomorrow." 'Years hence, the way I'm counting time," said Natalie with a note of defiance, hugging her husband's arm. "Well, Natalie, shall I try to get us on a plane to Rome Saturday?" "Oh, wait. Maybe he won't leave. I can always hope." "Of course." Slote held out his hand to Byron. "If I don't see you again, congratulations, and good luck, and smooth sailing.""Thanks. And thanks for that suite. It was brash of us to put you out of it." "My dear fellow," said Slote, "it was quite wasted on me." All her limbs jerking, Natalie woke from a nightmare of Gestapo men knocking at the door. She heard real knocking in the darkness. She lay still, hoping that a trace of the nightmare was hovering in her fogged brain, and that the knocking would stop. It did not. She looked at her luminous watch and touched Byron's warm hairy leg. "Byron! Byron!" He raised himself on an elbow, then sat up straight. "What time is it?" "Quarter to two." The knocking became faster and louder. Byron jumped from the bed and slipped into a robe. "Briny, be careful about letting anyone in! First make sure who it is." Natalie left the warm nest of the bed and was putting on a negligee, shivering in the chilly night air, when Byron opened the bedroom door. "It's only Aster, so don't be scared." "What does he want?" that's what I'm finding out." The door shut. Natalie went and leaned her ear against it, and heard Tobruk mentioned. Humiliated at having to eavesdrop, she rattled the knob and went in. The two young men rose from the sofa where they sat hunched in talk. Lieutenant Aster, in a blue and gold uniform and white peaked cap, was eating an apple. "Hi, Natalie. This is one terrible thing to do, breaking in on honeymooners," he said cheerily. "Talk about extrahazardous duty!" "What's the matter?" Byron said, "Change of orders, nothing serious or urgent, no sweat 'Right. Matter of fact I was just shoving off." Lieutenant Aster dropped the apple core in a tray. "I have to round up some crew members that had overnights. It's going to be an interesting tour of Estoril and Lisbon after dark. See you, Byron." With a grin at her, and a brief tip of his rakishly tilted hat, the lieutenant left. "Well? Tell me." Natalie confronted her husband, arms folded. Byron went to the red marble fireplace and touched a match to papers under a pile of kindlingand logs. "The S-45 leaves this morning." "This very morning, eh? Too bad. Where to?" "I don't know. The fall of Tobruk has changed the mission-which to tell you the truth, I never exactly knew in the first place. Something about surveying submarine facilities in the Mediterranean." "Well. A-11 right. I guess I asked for this. My entire married life-as it may yet turn outut short by one third." "Natalie, stir married life starts when you get back from Italy." He put his arm around her and they stood watching the fire brighten. "It's going to be very long, happy, and fruitful. I plan on six kids." This made the young wife laugh through her gloom and put a hand to his face. "Oh lord. Six! I'll never last the course. jimmy, that fire feels Marvelous. Did we finish the wine before we went to sleep? Look and see." He brought a glass of wine and lit a cigarette for her. "Briny, one thing you should know. Back in November, Aaron was so sick he thought he might die. I had to take him to a specialist in Rome. It was a kidney stone. He lay in the Excelsior for two weeks, really in torture. Finally it cleared up, but one night, when he was very low, Aaron told me that he'd left everything he has to me. And he told me what it added up to. I was amazed." She smiled at him, sipping her wine. Byron looked at her with slitted eyes. "I guess he's sort of a miser, like most bachelors. That's one reason he moved to Italy. He can live handsomely there on very little. Aaron's actually kept nearly all the money he made on A Jew's Jesus, and it brings in more every year. The book on Paul earned quite a bit too. And before that he'd saved a lot of his professor's salary. Living in Italy, he hasn't even,paid taxes. Aside from the value of his house, Aaron's worth more than a hundred thousand dollars. He lives just on his interest. The money is invested back in New York. I had no idea of any of this. Not the slightest. That he would leave anything to me never crossed my mind. Nevertheless, that's how things stand." Natalie took Byron's chin in her hand and pushed it this way and that. 'What are you looking so grim about? I'm telling you you've married an heiress." Byron poked a fallen red coal back into the fire. "Damn. He's really cute. Cuter than I thought.""Are you being fair? Especially with your plan for six kids?" "Possibly not." Byron shrugged. "Do you have enough money to get home with? You're coming home in two months, no matter what." "I know. I agreed to that. I have plenty. Whew, that fire's beginning to scorch." She reclined on a couch before the blaze. The negligee fell away, and the light played warmly on her smooth legs. "Briny, does your family know you intended to get married?" "No. No sense making trouble when I wasn't sure it would come off. I did write Warren." 'Is he still in Hawaii?" "Yes. He and Janice love it. I think you and I may well land there. The Navy keeps beefing up the Pacific Fleet. Warren thinks we'll be fighting japan soon. That's the feeling all through the Navy." "Not Germany?" 'No. It may sound strange to you, sitting here, but our people still don't get excited about Hitler. A few newspapers and magazines froth around, but that's about it." He sat on the floor at her feet, looking at the fire, resting his head against her soft uncovered thigh. She caressed his hair. "Exactly when do you leave, and how?" "Lady's going to corue back for me at six." "Six? Why, that's hours and hours. Big big chunk of our marriage left to enjoy. Of course you have to pack." "Ten minutes." "Can I go with you to the boat?" "I don't see why not." With a deep sigh, Natalie said, "Why are you sitting on the floor? Come here." There was no dawn. The sky turned paler and paler until it was light gray. Mist and drizzle hid the sea. Lieutenant Aster picked them up in a rattling little French car; the back seat was packed with four glum sailors smelling of alcohol and vomit. He drove with one hand, leaning far out to work a broken windshield wiper, keeping the accelerator on the floor.
The foggy road along the river was empty, and they reached Lisbon quickly. The submarine was dwarfed by a very rusty tramp steamer berthed directly ahead, with an enormous Stars and Stripes painted on its side, an American flag flying, and the name Yankee Belle stencilled in great drippy white letters on bow and stern. Its grotesquely cut-up shape and crude revetted plating looked foreign, and thirty or forty years old. It rode so high in the water that much of its propeller and mossy red bottom showed. Jews lined the quay in the drizzle, waiting quietly to go aboard, most of them with cardboard suitcases, cloth bundles, and frayed clothes. The children-there were quite a number-stood silent, clinging to their parents. At a table by the gangway, two uniformed Portuguese officials, under umbrellas held by assistants, were inspecting and stamping papers. Policemen in rubber capes paced up and down the queue. The rail of the ship was black with passengers staring at the quay and the Lisbon bills, as freed prisoners look back at the jail to savor their liberty. "When did that ocean greyhound show up?" Byron said. "Yesterday morning. It's an old Polish bucket, and the crew are mostly Greeks and Turks," Aster said. "I've tried talking to them. The pleasanter ones seem to be professional cutthroats. I gather the Jews will be packed in like sardines in five-decker bunks, for which they'll pay the price of deluxe suites on the Queen Mary. These fellows laughed like hell about that." He glanced at his wristwatch. "Well, we cast off at 0715. Good-bye, Natalie, and good luck. You were a beautiful bride, and now you're a beautiful Navy wife." The exec stepped aboard, smartly returning the salute of the gangway watch. On the dock near the gangway, unmindful of the rain beginning to fall, a sailor was hugging and kissing a dumpy Portuguese trollop dressed in red satin. Byron held out his arms to his wife, with a glance at the sailor and a grin, She embraced him. "You fool. Your trouble is, you went and married the creature." "I was drunk," Byron said. He kissed her again and again. A boatswain's whistle blew on the submarine, and a loudspeaker croaked, "Now station the special sea details." "Well, I guess this is it," he said. 'So long." Natalie was managing not to cry; she even smiled. 'Getting married was the right idea, my love. I mean that. It was an inspiration, and I adore you for it. I feel very married. I love you and I'm happy." "I love you." Byron went aboard the submarine, saluting as he stepped on deck.
In the thickening drizzle, her raincoat pulled close, her breath smoking in the damp frigid air, Natalie stood on the dock, smelling wharfside odorstar, machinery, fish, the sea-hearing the bleak cry of the gulls, and feeling for the first time what she had gotten herself into. She was a Navy wife all right! Three men in black trench coats and oversized fedora hats came strolling along the quay, cy inspecting the refugees, who either tried to ignore them or peered at them in horror. Women pulled their children closer. The men halted near the gangway; one pulled papers from a black portfolio, and they all began talking to the officials at the table. Meanwhile on the submarine sailors in pea coats pulled in the gangplank. The boatswain's whistle blew; the loudspeaker squawked. Appearing on the narrow little bridge in foul-weather clothes, the captain and Lieutenant Aster waved. "Good-bye, Natalie," Captain Caruso called. She did not see Byron rome out on the forecastle, but after a while noticed Men standing near the anchor among the sailors, in a khaki uniform and a brown windbreaker, hands in his back pockets, trousers flapping in the breeze. it was the first time she had ever seen Byron in a uniform; it made him seem different, remote, and older. Aster was shouting orders through a megaphone. Colored signal flags ran up. The sailors hauled in the lines. Byron walked along the forecastle and stood opposite his bride, almost close enough to reach out and clasp hands. She blew him a kiss. His face under the peaked khaki cap was businesslike and calm. A foghorn blasted. The submarine fell away from the dock and black water opened between them. "You come home, now," he shouted. "I will. Oh, I swear I will." "I'll be waiting. Two months!" He went to His duty station. With a swish of water from the propellers, the low black submarine dimmed away into the drizzle. Craaal Craaal Craaal Mournfully screeching, the gulls wheeled and followed the fading wake. Natalie hurried up the quay, past the Gestapo men, past the line of escaping Jews, whose eyes were all fixed in one direction-the gangway table they still had to pass, where the Portuguese officials and the three Germans were comparing papers and laughing together. Natalie's hand sweatily clutched the American passport in her pocket. "Hello, old Slote," she said, when she found a telephone and managed to make the connection. "This is Mrs. Byron Henry. Are you interested in buying me a breakfast? I seem to be free. Then let............