The Trespassers Read Online Free
Author: Laura Z. Hobson
darling, this new sudden cruelty—the streets, the windows smashed—what is to become of us all?”
He held her closer. She was seeing the small personal tragedies—God knows they are enough; if one sees and feels them deeply enough one is seeing and feeling history.
But he knew she was not relating any of it, really, to the sweep of the future. She did not know that they had already arrested many thousands, not only Jews, but also thousands of Catholics who supported Schuschnigg, hundreds of labor leaders, scores of journalists. She did not even wonder yet about the world beyond these smashed homes, these tinkling slivers of windows on pavements. She had not thought what it meant that England and France were politically shrugging their shoulders, speaking politely about “the internal affairs of other countries” as none of their business. Probably Christa did not even know yet—
“Did you listen to the radio?” he asked.
“No. I can’t bear to turn it on any more.” She leaned away from him to search his face. Her eyes opened wider. “What, Franz, anything new? Oh, tell me, is there any hope—”
“Hitler entered Vienna late this afternoon. Entered in triumphal procession, the Conqueror.”
She gasped. Her mouth made a small oblique O like a yawning baby’s.
“He will speak tomorrow from the Hofburg. From the balcony he will shout to the people that they are now a part of his glorious Reich.”
That night they cabled Ann Willis.
As in a Bach fugue, one melodic part or “voice” makes its solo entrance, establishes its theme, and engages the attention, then is followed by a second voice, crossing and mingling with it, and then duly by a third voice and finally a fourth, so the flight of humankind from Germany, from 1933 onward, was only the first major statement of the theme of the great migrations of the 1930’s.
In the summer of 1936 the second voice issued forth from Spain, swelling to fuller volume in 1937. And now in Austria, in March, 1938, still a third was coming in to join its stately and harrowing melody to the other continuing parts.
Each part or voice was played not by a dozen human beings, but by hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands, half millions. The listening ear of Europe and of the world knew by some tense and unwilling instinct that the fugue was not yet squared, that another voice was still to be heard in the tragic counterpoint. And perhaps not only one other, as in the classical fugue, but many others were yet to come, to widen the fugue form out into a world-enveloping symphony.
From the East, from Hangchow and Nanking and Shanghai, where sixteen millions were now in that other kind of flight upon their own soil, crawling through fields and along choked roads from province to province—from the East came the strident, brassy assurance that this would be so.
CHAPTER TWO
I T WAS FROM A portable radio, instrument for picnics and holiday hours, that Vera Marriner learned of Anschluss.
For a second she scarcely took in the meaning of the news. The quiet British voice went on with the Reuter’s dispatch, and a moment later she sat up violently and searched about her on the blinding white sand for the source of the hateful words.
There it rested, just one of innumerable similar portable sets, this one under a bright beach umbrella at Montego Bay, Jamaica, in the British West Indies. The innocent, indifferent box went on tossing out into the yellow sunshine its black message of calamity.
Her heart contracted, as with a purely personal pain. She didn’t know Austria, as she had once known Germany, but she had heard so much of so many people there, from Jasper, from Ann Willis, that she could not feel impersonal now.
“So here he goes, this is it, this is the real beginning,” she thought. “All that about the Ruhr and the Rhineland was just winding up…but this… now he’s really begun scooping up great chunks of Europe into his Reich. Damn him, damn him—”
For
He held her closer. She was seeing the small personal tragedies—God knows they are enough; if one sees and feels them deeply enough one is seeing and feeling history.
But he knew she was not relating any of it, really, to the sweep of the future. She did not know that they had already arrested many thousands, not only Jews, but also thousands of Catholics who supported Schuschnigg, hundreds of labor leaders, scores of journalists. She did not even wonder yet about the world beyond these smashed homes, these tinkling slivers of windows on pavements. She had not thought what it meant that England and France were politically shrugging their shoulders, speaking politely about “the internal affairs of other countries” as none of their business. Probably Christa did not even know yet—
“Did you listen to the radio?” he asked.
“No. I can’t bear to turn it on any more.” She leaned away from him to search his face. Her eyes opened wider. “What, Franz, anything new? Oh, tell me, is there any hope—”
“Hitler entered Vienna late this afternoon. Entered in triumphal procession, the Conqueror.”
She gasped. Her mouth made a small oblique O like a yawning baby’s.
“He will speak tomorrow from the Hofburg. From the balcony he will shout to the people that they are now a part of his glorious Reich.”
That night they cabled Ann Willis.
As in a Bach fugue, one melodic part or “voice” makes its solo entrance, establishes its theme, and engages the attention, then is followed by a second voice, crossing and mingling with it, and then duly by a third voice and finally a fourth, so the flight of humankind from Germany, from 1933 onward, was only the first major statement of the theme of the great migrations of the 1930’s.
In the summer of 1936 the second voice issued forth from Spain, swelling to fuller volume in 1937. And now in Austria, in March, 1938, still a third was coming in to join its stately and harrowing melody to the other continuing parts.
Each part or voice was played not by a dozen human beings, but by hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands, half millions. The listening ear of Europe and of the world knew by some tense and unwilling instinct that the fugue was not yet squared, that another voice was still to be heard in the tragic counterpoint. And perhaps not only one other, as in the classical fugue, but many others were yet to come, to widen the fugue form out into a world-enveloping symphony.
From the East, from Hangchow and Nanking and Shanghai, where sixteen millions were now in that other kind of flight upon their own soil, crawling through fields and along choked roads from province to province—from the East came the strident, brassy assurance that this would be so.
CHAPTER TWO
I T WAS FROM A portable radio, instrument for picnics and holiday hours, that Vera Marriner learned of Anschluss.
For a second she scarcely took in the meaning of the news. The quiet British voice went on with the Reuter’s dispatch, and a moment later she sat up violently and searched about her on the blinding white sand for the source of the hateful words.
There it rested, just one of innumerable similar portable sets, this one under a bright beach umbrella at Montego Bay, Jamaica, in the British West Indies. The innocent, indifferent box went on tossing out into the yellow sunshine its black message of calamity.
Her heart contracted, as with a purely personal pain. She didn’t know Austria, as she had once known Germany, but she had heard so much of so many people there, from Jasper, from Ann Willis, that she could not feel impersonal now.
“So here he goes, this is it, this is the real beginning,” she thought. “All that about the Ruhr and the Rhineland was just winding up…but this… now he’s really begun scooping up great chunks of Europe into his Reich. Damn him, damn him—”
For
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