Hitler's peace

“I think I’d rather be a bastard than an apologist for a murdering swine like Stalin. Who knows? Maybe you’re worse than that, Ted. You wouldn’t be the first fellow traveler at State.”

Schmidt stood up abruptly, his fists clenched and his soft, clean-shaven face quivering with anger. For a moment I thought that he would strike Weitz, and I and the two mess attendants who were on duty had to move quickly to intervene before actual blows were exchanged.

“You heard what he called me,” Schmidt protested to me.

“Looks like I hit a nerve,” grinned Weitz.

“Maybe you should shut up,” I suggested.

“And maybe you should be more careful about the company you keep,” replied Weitz.

“That’s good coming from you, you faggot,” said Schmidt.

Given the situation in the State Department-Sumner Welles, and then Thornton Cole-this was not an insult that John Weitz was likely to let pass, and before either I or the mess attendants could prevent him, he had punched Ted Schmidt hard on the nose-hard enough to make his nose bleed. He would have punched Schmidt again, too, but for the intervention of myself and one of the mess attendants.

“I’m going to kill him,” he yelled, repeating the threat several times.

“I’d like to see you try, you faggot,” grinned Schmidt, wiping his bleeding nose with his handkerchief.

The noise of this fracas brought Agents Rauff and Pawlikowski into the mess as Schmidt and Weitz continued to abuse and threaten each other.

“If you two gentlemen are supposed to be diplomats,” said Pawlikowski, pushing Weitz up against the cabin wall when he tried to hit Schmidt again, “then God help us all.”

Rauff looked at Schmidt and then at me. “I think you’d better get him out of here,” he said. “Before the president or any of the Joint Chiefs come in here.”

“Good advice,” I said, and took a firm hold of Schmidt’s arm and moved him smoothly toward the mess room door. “Come on, Ted,” I said. “He’s right. We don’t want the president seeing this. Let’s go back to the quarters.”

“He called me a faggot,” was the last thing I heard from Weitz as I closed the door behind us.

When we were back in the cabin, Schmidt sat down on his bunk and reached for his bottle.

“Don’t you think you’ve had enough of that stuff?” I snapped. “What the hell’s the matter with you, anyway? And why on earth did you call Weitz a faggot?”

Schmidt shook his head and laughed. “I just wanted to get to him. Stick some mud on that Fascist bastard. People around State are kind of nervous about the possibility of there being some kind of organized pansy hunt. God forbid they should ever find a queer who’s also a Communist. They’d probably lynch him from the top of the Washington Monument.”

I had to admit there was some truth in that.

Schmidt was silent for a minute. Then he said, “Are you married, Willard?”

This struck a nerve as I remembered how the president and perhaps the Metro police had asked me the same thing.

“What, are you going to call me a faggot, too? Is that it?”

Schmidt looked pained. “Good Lord, no.” He shook his head. “I was just asking.”

“No, I’m not fucking married.” I shook my head bitterly. “I had a girl. A really nice girl. A girl I should have married. And now-well, now she’s gone. I’m not exactly sure why or even how, but I blew it.” I shrugged. “I miss her a lot. More than I thought possible.”

“I see.” Schmidt nodded. “Then we’re in the same boat.”

“Not for much longer if you carry on like you did just now. They’ll put you off at the next desert island.”

Schmidt smiled, his pudgy face a mixture of sympathy and irony. I didn’t much care for the sympathy, but the irony looked interesting.

“You don’t understand,” he said, taking off his glasses and cleaning them furiously. “The day before I came on this ship, my wife, Debbie, told me that she was going to leave me.” He swallowed hard and chipped me another twitching smile. It landed right on top of the large bag of self-pity I’d been carrying ever since coming on board the Iowa.

“I’m sorry.” I sat down and poured us both a drink. Short of fetching the ship’s chaplain, it seemed like the proper thing to do. “Did she say why?”

“She’s been having an affair. I guess if I’m honest, I knew she was up to something. She was always out somewhere. I didn’t want to ask, you know? In case my worst suspicions were confirmed. And now they are.”

He took the drink and stared at it as if he knew it wasn’t the answer. So I lit a cigarette and fed it between Schmidt’s lips.

“Do you know the other guy?”

“I did know him.” He smiled sheepishly as he caught my eye registering his use of past tense. “It’s a little more complicated than you might suppose. But I have to tell someone, I guess. Can you keep this to yourself, Willard?”

“Of course. You have my word.”

Schmidt swallowed the drink and then took a suicidally long drag on his cigarette.

“The other man is dead.” He smiled bitterly and added, “She’s leaving me for a dead man, Willard. Can you beat that?”