Poland: A Novel Part 43

As soon as they described this aspect of their plan, Lubonski became excited, for in both the Polish and German versions he was invited to identify by name specific n.a.z.i monsters whom the Poles had marked for death: 'We want to panic them during these days of maximum confusion. We want to goad them into making wrong decisions.'

So during the afternoon Lubonski told what he knew of the terror, reminding them always that he had only partial knowledge: 'I was not myself interrogated Under the Clock in Lublin, but I know two men of the greatest integrity who were. Their escape He fell silent. Anything he might have accomplished in his relatively easy exit was trivial and not worthy of mention when compared to the adventures of someone who had undergone the broomstick treatment Under the Clock and lived to speak of it.

At five, exhausted not by his work but by his memories, he fell into a deep sleep, and at quarter to seven he was awakened to make the historic broadcast which would later be printed in nine languages and strewn from the clouds over occupied Europe by a hundred different bombers: 'Good evening, citizens of Poland and members of the German occupying force, I am Walerian Lubonski, Count of Castle Gorka, which stands on the right bank of the Vistula River between Krakow and Sandomierz. My father was that Count Lubonski who served for many years as a high official of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and who, as you know, loved Germany.

'Yesterday at quarter past noon I dined in my castle with Falk von Eschl, special commander of the secret area known as Polygon. I fed him venison and he served me a fine bottle of Traminer. I give these details so that if he is listening, as I am certain he will be, he will be satisfied that I am who I say I am and that I am telling the truth.

'At half after one he left for Krakow in a Mercedes-Benz driven by the chauffeur Reiglen. What he does not know is that fifteen minutes later I left, also in a Mercedes-Benz, stolen from the high command in Krakow, driven by a member of the Stork Commando wearing a stolen n.a.z.i uniform. With forged papers we drove south to Dukla and through the Carpathian pa.s.ses into eastern Czechoslovakia to a secret airfield at which Allied planes land regularly. One flew me to a French air base eighteen miles from the English Channel, and from there I hopped to London.

'Falk von Eschl will be interested to learn that I brought with me complete drawings and selected important parts of the machine which landed in the Vistula not many weeks ago. They are now in possession of Allied intelligence.

'I give these details for two reasons. To encourage my Polish fellow citizens. Victory moves closer every day. When I flew over the Channel, I saw thousands of Allied vessels waiting for the crusade that will soon free Europe. In London, I have seen reports of great Russian victories which will soon free Warsaw. But I also seek to strike a mortal fear in the hearts of my German listeners. And I will be specific.

'Dr. Hans Frank, ruler of General Gouvernement, I brought out with me a copy of all your commands to the Polish people. Your own words condemn you, and one day soon you will hang.

'Falk von Eschl, guest in my castle, I brought with me details of your ma.s.sacre of villagers at Nowa Polska. For that crime and others you will hang.

'Konrad Krumpf, I have full details of your many crimes during the years you occupied the Bukowski palace. I know you have escaped to France, but for your crimes you will be hanged.

'Walther Nocke, Gestapo commander of the cells Under the Clock, we have a complete dossier of your enormous crimes, and you will hang.

'Hans Fiddler and Ulbricht Untermann, judges at the infamous court in Zamek Lublin, your own people have kept a record of your a.s.sa.s.sinations, and you will hang.

'Arthur Liebehenschel, commandant at Majdanek, your infamous crimes have been reported by prisoners who escaped your charge, and you will be hanged.

'Otto Grundtz, commander of Field Four, escapees who know you well have listed your hideous crimes, and you will be hanged.'

On and on he went, giving specific names, specific crimes for which the accused would be hanged. Then he gave a promise: 'I will spend the rest of my life, if necessary, moving from country to country, from court to court, to testify against you, and I will bring my friends with me to give evidence until you are each and all hanged.

'There are among the occupying forces many fine Germans who have helped us Poles and I want to give them a.s.surances. I shall not recite your names because to do so would hurt you with the monsters who give you orders, but you will be able to identify yourselves, and just as I promised the others I will not die until I have helped bring them to the gallows, I now promise you that I will travel to any court in the world to testify that you were men of integrity and honor and compa.s.sion. You will come to no harm.

'We Poles do not seek revenge for the terrible wrongs that have been done us. We seek justice, and a warning to others that they can never act as Dr. Hans Frank and his General Gouvernement have acted. The day of retribution is close at hand and it will be as remorseless as you were cruel.

'To my guest Falk von Eschl, I suppose you will destroy my castle. Well, in past it was destroyed by Tatars, by Cossacks, by Swedes and by Hungarians, and always my ancestors rebuilt. We will rebuild. Like the other conquerors, you have failed to kill Poland. It will live forever.'

Lubonski's first BBC broadcast evoked so many responses that he was invited to deliver a series on conditions inside n.a.z.i-occupied areas, and this brought him into contact with representatives of many nations seeking to regain their freedom. On some days he felt that he was holding his father's portfolio in Vienna in the 1890s when the situation had been similar.

Customs change, he thought, but not the great basic problems, and nowhere was this truism more clearly demonstrated than in the recurring case of Poland-Lithuania-Ukraine over which his father, Andrzej Lubonski, had broken his heart. The strategic situation was precisely what it had been in 1920: the three isolated and defenseless units must unite as they had done in centuries past, or they must perish individually, but just as rampant nationalism had prevented any such union in 1920, it now forestalled any rational approaches.

His father had conducted exploratory meetings in Brest-Litovsk with Lithuanians and Ukrainians, and now he held his meetings in London, with equally mournful results. Each national unit was afraid of the other two, each was convinced that this time it could walk the tightrope between Germany and Russia, and each conceded privately that such hopes were futile. 'History doesn't repeat itself,' Lubonski lamented one night to a party of experts on eastern European affairs. 'It is the same history, never broken, never halted.'

Despite his despair over the future, he did find rea.s.surance in the present, for he had never known better people than his illiterate cook, who had been so fearless in her partisan activities, or Jan Buk, who had handled the V-2 affair so professionally, and in grat.i.tude for the smooth way in which Buk had led his men to capture the V-2 and then spirited it and Lubonski off to London, the count prevailed upon representatives of the Polish government-in-exile to award Buk a medal honoring his services; so on the next Bridge from Bari to the secret airfield near Krakow, a Polish colonel who was flying in to help direct the uprising in Warsaw asked to be taken to the Forest of Szczek, where he met privately with Buk and Chalubinski and presented the medal.

'Keep it hidden till victory,' the colonel advised. 'The n.a.z.is wouldn't look kindly on a medal like this.'

So Buk kept it buried, but one day Chalubinski said: 'I'd like to see that medal,' and Jan dug it up.

'The last gasp of a Poland that's dead,' Chalubinski said, shoving it back.

'It shows King Jagiello,' Buk said. 'He was our hero.'

'The medal ... Lubonski ... that London gang ... Buk, they're all from the last century. There's going to be a much different Poland, believe me. The ones who come to help us from the east, they're the ones who'll build the real Poland.'

'Who do you mean?'

'The Russians. The Communists. They'll have no truck with such medals.'

'Do you want me to throw it away?' Buk asked angrily.

'No. It suits you, that medal. And a defunct count trying to regain his estates.'

Buk refused to lose his temper, but as a man of integrity he had to defend Lubonski: 'At Majdanek, from what you say, you behaved well. Believe me, at Castle Gorka, Lubonski did too, and this commando is active today only because of the help he gave us.'

'He better stay in London when peace comes. He won't be wanted here.' Although Buk did not seek a confrontation, he felt impelled to say: 'Your new Poland will be a sorry show if it can find no place for men like him,' and Chalubinski growled: 'You don't seem to realize. A totally new kind of man is going to organize Poland,' and Buk asked, almost contentiously: 'Who?'

Then it came out: 'With Russian aid, socialists and men who understand Communism will build a new society here, one that will be gloriously better.'

Very quietly, as if aware of the danger into which he was projecting himself, Buk said: 'I am suspicious of any aid which comes from Russia.'

This infuriated Chalubinski, who asked with reason on his side: 'Do you reject the great victories the Russians are giving us? The salvation which they will soon hand us?'

'I shall accept the soldiers marching in, but I want them to march out again.'

They were back in their camp now, but the idea that Soviet aid could be in any way injurious to Poland was so outrageous to Chalubinski that he kept up his harangue in a loud voice, whereupon an old man among the partisans-he was forty-nine, but years of deprivation made him seem sixty-nine-began to speak hesitantly, but as he proceeded, those about him listened, for he summarized their thinking: 'Always in the village at night when we talked about Poland ... I mean in those days that you did not know, when Poland did not exist. Always we asked: "Which would be better, to live under Russian rule or German?" And our old men who had known both told us the truth.

'They said: "The Germans are the cruelest people on earth. They murder. They slaughter. And they do it all in the name of civilization." They warned us that life under the Germans was to be avoided at any cost.

'But always they said that in the long run, as years pa.s.sed and the first fury subsided, life with the Germans could reach compromises. Continuance was possible. It was never pleasant, but it was possible, for there was music and celebrations and you could travel to Berlin, and if you did things their way, you survived and could even have a good time now and then.

'But with the Russians, there was no hope. Only the dead hand of oppression, the unrelieved weight of Russian insensibility. Work, work, work. One stupid rule after another. Never an alleviation in a special case. Do it their way or die.

'I myself have lived under the Russians, and it's like being in a tomb-a large tomb, yes, with perhaps a little room to move around, but a tomb nevertheless. Russians can make an entire nation a tomb. They're geniuses in building tombs.

'So if I have to choose between Germany and Russia, all I can say is: "I don't want either, but I think I don't want Russia a little stronger." '

With an impulsive swing of his right arm Chalubinski reached out and slapped the man across the face: 'You could be shot for speaking against the only nation that can help us!' A general confusion might have ensued had not Jan Buk stepped forward to end the discussion. 'I think the new Poland will find a place for all of us,' he said, but Chalubinski, with his deep convictions about the future, warned: 'Not for your man Bukowski, who fled with all those treasures. And your silly Lubonski is no better. Good riddance to both of them.'

Buk had no desire to prolong an argument which he deemed fruitless, but he could not keep from visualizing the two men whom Chalubinski had lumped together-Ludwik Bukowski slithering off to Paris in a n.a.z.i train laden with stolen treasures, Walerian Lubonski flying in a small plane to London to continue his honorable warfare: My G.o.d, can't he see the difference?

The war ended along the Vistula almost a year earlier than on the western front, for by 20 July 1944 it was obvious to everyone that Soviet troops would enter Lublin in a day or two, and the Polish citizens of that city who had suffered so cruelly when the n.a.z.is were victorious would now have an opportunity to observe how these same n.a.z.is were going to conduct themselves in defeat.

Suddenly German soldiers began to seek Polish friends, reminding startled housewives of how they, the n.a.z.is, had always befriended the Poles and of how, on a certain day, this n.a.z.i or that had brought children presents. Great fear showed in the German faces, and one captain went from house to house establis.h.i.+ng friends.h.i.+ps and stating his name clearly: 'Gunter Kratzky. I am Gunter Kratzky of a little village near Dresden.' But at the last moment, when he found that Soviet soldiers were only six miles to the east, he panicked and fled.

Others remained unchanged. Walther Nocke went down into the cells at Under the Clock, counted the prisoners awaiting torture or in the middle of it, and found nineteen men and two women. 'Shoot them all,' he ordered, and he partic.i.p.ated in the killing.

In the prison cells at Zamek Lublin four hundred and sixty-three prisoners awaited trial, but the civilian judge with the thick gla.s.ses could stomach no more senseless killing. He said: 'Let them all go,' but the young Gestapo judge who had screamed during the trials held in the chapel handed down an edict that all were guilty, so every prisoner was legally executed by gunfire as he or she stood motionless behind the cell gates.

At Majdanek any late-arriving Jews had already been liquidated during the preceding three weeks, so camp officials decided there was no necessity for a general a.s.sa.s.sination, but individual field commanders like Otto Grundtz were encouraged to clean out everyone they did not like, either by hangings at the gibbets or by point-blank gunfire. Grundtz sought one man he disliked intensely, this Szymon Bukowski who had escaped Barracks Nineteen by maneuvering an a.s.signment to the shoe-repair shop, but he could not be found.

Willi Zimmel, the physical-fitness fanatic, had hidden him.

As Count Lubonski had predicted in his broadcasts from London, trials of the lesser n.a.z.i officials were held in Lublin itself, and at lightning speed. But he was not allowed to partic.i.p.ate; indeed the Russians forebade him to appear, since they had established their own courts and wanted no partic.i.p.ation by democratically inclined Poles fighting from abroad. A few local Poles, selected because of their unswerving devotion to Communism-Tytus Chalubinski was one-were allowed to help the court in minor capacities, but Poles in general were excluded. It was a Russian victory and the Kremlin insisted that there be Russian justice.

Arthur Liebehenschel, the last commandant at Majdanek, was hanged close to the office from which he had issued his b.l.o.o.d.y orders. Reconstructed records would show that his efficiently run camp had been responsible for the deaths of more than 360,000 prisoners. These could be divided in various dichotomies. Religion: 140,000 Jews, 220,000 Christians. Or nationality: 274,000 Poles, 86,000 foreigners. In this last group citizens of fifty-two different nations were represented, from Albania and Austria to Spain, Turkey and Uzbekistan.

Walther Nocke, from Under the Clock, fainted at the sight of his gallows, while the civilian judge who had taken his gla.s.ses off to wait for pistol shots wept and pleaded for mercy on the ground that he was only obeying orders. The young Gestapo judge remained fiercely defiant, and from the gallows he predicted that without German leaders.h.i.+p, Poland would collapse in weeks. In vile language he was describing what he thought of the country and its people when the rope caught his neck.

Otto Grundtz was hanged from the gibbet which he had so often commanded at Field Four. A solemn square of prisoners from the barracks gathered to watch, many too emaciated to stand, and those ghostly figures from Barracks Nineteen who wanted to see their monster meet his death were brought there on stretchers. Grundtz died bravely. With composure he stood on the white stool which he himself had so often kicked away and glared from beneath his dark eyebrows at his prisoners, until a man he had abused most cruelly cried: 'Let me do it!' and this man, too weak to mount the gallows, reached out with an appallingly thin right hand and jerked the stool away.

When the hangings ended, Szymon Bukowski discovered to his amazement that he wanted to remain in Lublin, for Professor Tomczyk had awakened him to larger responsibilities than those available in a village like Bukowo. Within two weeks of the liberation of Lublin a university was operating, for as one of the new professors, a man from Majdanek, said: 'We have so much catching up to do.' A course in architecture was offered, even though for the moment there could be no drawing tables or drafting materials, and Bukowski, remembering Tomczyk's death shout-'Rebuild! Rebuild!'-enrolled.

With seven other students as emaciated as himself, he stayed at the home of Professor Tomczyk's widow, and she did her best to feed the young scholars, but there was still very little food in Lublin, and often they ate poorly, but one glorious day Mrs. Tomczyk found a chicken, and one of the students was able to fetch some bits of pork from the country, and she announced: 'Tonight we have our victory celebration,' and she prepared a real Polish feast, pork and sauerkraut with coriander seeds mixed in, a plate of chicken parts, a fine soup made from the various fats.

But when the students were seated, with Bukowski occupying the chair Professor Tomczyk would have used had he been here, and the soup was served, suddenly Bukowski started to shake, and then lowered his head, and the others were aware that he was sobbing, uncontrollably. No one spoke, for in these days of sudden peace people did strange things, nor could anyone guess what awful memory had a.s.saulted their friend. But after a while the shaking ceased and with some effort he regained control. Pointing to the rich soup on whose surface floated globules of yellow fat, some as big as a golden Austrian crown, he said: 'I would have strangled my brother for a bowl of soup like that.'

German troops were able to retain control of the villages along the Vistula for a few days after the fall of Lublin, and at Castle Gorka, Falk von Eschl, aware that Count Lubonski had predicted in his London broadcast the destruction of his home, refrained from burning it, and even when men under his command appeared with large loads of dynamite salvaged from the polygon, he refused to give them the order. In haughty silence he climbed into his Mercedes with his driver, leaned out to salute the castle, and departed. He crossed the Vistula at Sandomierz and hurried west to the temporary security of a major German army, which was itself retreating. When he was gone his men, guessing at what his wishes must have been, piled dynamite around the tower and under all the stone rooms. They detonated a tremendous blast which threw segments of the battlement into the Vistula, leaving behind only the jagged stump of a castle gaping at the sky, as its predecessors had done in 1241, in 1510, in 1655 and in 1708.

The Bukowski palace, now vacant and denuded, was grabbed at eagerly by two n.a.z.i companies fleeing the Russians. A Captain Plischke was in command, and at first he tried to maintain some kind of order, but since his troops could see only disaster ahead, everyone except Plischke got obnoxiously drunk and stayed that way for several days. One sergeant, loathing everything Polish and scornful of Plischke's attempts to preserve discipline, sat on a box in the big empty hall and stared at the two large canvases which had been left in place, and he became so enraged by the Matejko portrait of Jan Sobieski riding to Vienna that he whipped up a machine gun and started blasting the painting, killing all the Polish warriors. Hearing the shots, other soldiers rushed in, and when they saw what their sergeant was doing, they broke loose what weapons they had and joined the firing. They concentrated on Sobieski's big mustachioed face and blew it apart. They then turned to the Jozef Brandt painting of Czestochowa, riddling all the heads there, too. Then the sergeant shouted: 'It's those b.a.s.t.a.r.ds in the cellar I want,' and he led his executioners' squad down to the long hallway, where the n.a.z.is blazed their guns at the n.o.ble gallery of Polish heroes. Barbara Radziwill's brother had his face blown off. Maryna Mniszech's bold kinsman took fifteen bullets through his ample body. The glorious layman Zamoyski was exploded and Czartoryski had his face shredded.

'That finishes the Poles,' the sergeant bellowed, but in his moment of victory he looked down the darkened corridor to see that Captain Plischke, hearing the fusillades, had come to investigate, and he was obviously disgusted by the behavior of his troops. Grasping his revolver in his right hand, with his left he pointed to the sergeant, as if condemning him: 'You! Halt this destruction!' This was a dangerous moment, when anything might have happened, but a fat corporal who had not partic.i.p.ated in the shooting said loudly: 'Let's go up and see if there's any more beer.'

This dissolved the tension, and the men started to move off, but the sergeant, bristling from the reprimand, swung his machine gun around as if to blast his captain, but he never had the opportunity, for Plischke coolly put two bullets through him, and he fell in a crumpled heap beneath the portraits he had savaged.

The suddenness of the pistol shots and their reverberating echoes down the corridor reminded the men that this was still war, and almost automatically they began firing at a captain they had never liked. Because they were drunk, their first bullets missed, and Plischke said calmly: 'Men, come to your senses!'

But now more bullets, scores of them, came whining past the portraits, knocking Plischke to the dark floor, where three final shots from close in ripped his head.

The fat corporal, awed by the amount of blood streaming from the two dead bodies, cried: 'Leave them! Let's get out of here!' but a tough enlisted man who had done much of the firing gave stronger counsel: 'We'll burn this place before the others see what happened.'

Not realizing that the retreating Wehrmacht would be too preoccupied with its own safety to worry about the deaths of one more captain and sergeant, he rushed upstairs, took what dynamite he could find, and began putting it in those spots where it would cause maximum destruction, and he would have blown up the entire palace had not outposts rushed back to warn: 'Russians coming through the forest.'

Hurriedly he ignited those explosives already in place, rushed outside, and watched with grunting pleasure as large portions of the palace crumbled: 'There's one thing the Russians won't get.' Then, seeing the magnificent stables still untouched, he used the last of his dynamite and gasoline to set them ablaze, so that when he led his remnant in retreat across the Vistula, the n.a.z.is could look back at the blazing ruins along the sh.o.r.e, as if this were the last act of some turbulent and brooding opera.

He had lacked time to destroy the great hall. Headless, but still in command of his troops, Jan Sobieski continued his march toward Vienna.

One of the most touching moments of victory came at the village of Bukowo when the men of the Stork Commando were finally free to leave the Forest of Szczek, for when the villagers saw that this man whom they had believed dead was still alive, and that other man for whom they had prayed was not, there was wild and pitiful weeping; and when the men who had endured so much saw the ruined palace and the charred spots where their cottages had stood, they, too, wept. But the most powerful moment came when Jan Buk, heroic leader of his commando, walked the length of the village square, no longer wary of spies, no longer afraid of being captured by n.a.z.i patrols. He simply walked past a row of cottages bearing in his arms the once-fatal quern which could now be restored to its proper place.

At last he saw Biruta, saw the deep scar across her face, and without calling out he went up to her, holding before him the symbol of their hearth. She took it, and then fierce tears coursed down her cheeks, for she better than most could appreciate the significance of its return; across his shoulder she could see the ravaged cottages from which women no less brave than she had been dragged to the hanging tree. Quietly she led her husband back to the home he had defended so stubbornly, and when she inserted the wooden handle into her top stone, she began to grind wheat from the fields she had tended, afraid no more of the noise she was making, and when the rich brown flour was milled, she kneaded it and baked that fine dark bread which makes men and nations strong.

In the years to come, many Polish communities would erect memorials to the heroism of the resistance, and most of them, seeking to avoid militaristic memories, preferred to feature some gallant woman striding forward with her children, undaunted. Biruta Buk could have posed for them all.

The happiness of the Buks was brief, because a few mornings after surrender a staff car roared into the village and a Russian official descended, with a list of persons to be arrested. Because the selection of these eight was so indicative of what was being repeated throughout liberated Poland, their names will be recited here, with explanations of why they were on the list: Lionel Aksentowicz 32 Schoolteacher and supporter of General Bor Bartosz Wysocki 22 Known member of the reactionary Home Army Lucyna Grabska 20 University student. Member, Youth of all Poland Ja.n.u.sz Glowacki 44 Priest Konstanty Buczek 29 Member, Polish Peasant Party right-wing Mikolaj Konarski 30 Member, Service for Poland's Victory Zdzislaw Daraz 33 Outspoken opponent of the Lublin Committee Obviously these names had been designated not by Russians, but by radical Poles who wanted to be sure the new state would be headed in their direction. It was the eighth name which evoked cries of great protest from the villagers: Jan Buk 27 Accepted medal from

London reactionaries

The only man who could have known about that medal was Chalubinski, the fanatical schoolteacher from Lodz; in their forest arguments he had cla.s.sified Buk as a reactionary and had so reported him to the Russians.

When Soviet soldiers were sent to fetch Buk from his fields, Biruta ran to the official in charge, crying: 'Everyone here knows he was a patriot in the forest,' but the Russian said: 'This is the new Poland now. We identify who are patriots.'

'New Poland, old Poland,' Biruta cried in despair. 'Will it never just be Poland as we knew it?'

'Everything's going to be better now,' the Russian said. 'Everything in order.'

'Five years ago the Germans made the same promise.' She had more to say, but now the soldiers dragged her confused husband into the square and lined him up against a wall with the other enemies of the state, where the official harangued them: 'You are enemies of the Polish people who now own this country and of the Soviet government which has given you your freedom. You will be taken to camp until your reeducation is completed.'

The prisoners were not allowed to say goodbye to their families or to take with them any personal possessions, and when Biruta realized that she was going to lose her husband again, she tried to stand with him, but the Russian soldiers pushed her away so violently that she stumbled and fell. Jan moved to help her up, but was stopped by bayonets.

A military truck now wheeled up, and when it halted before the wall, three young Soviet soldiers in brown uniforms leaped out, formed a cordon, and loaded the Poles into the back of their truck. The prisoners were moved eastward toward Siberia, and were never heard from again.

X.

Bukowski versus Buk

The four weeks during which the Bukowo talks on the possibility of establis.h.i.+ng a farmers' union were in recess were a time of unprecedented excitement for Janko Buk, the farmers' spokesman. j.a.pan television invited him to Tokyo for a pair of broadcasts; with some reluctance the Warsaw government issued him a pa.s.sport and the Kremlin allowed him to fly across Siberia to the Orient.

He was awed by the immensity of Russia, for as he told the Intourist man who accompanied him from Moscow to Tokyo: 'You can fly across Poland in minutes. To cross Russia takes days.'

'You Poles should keep that in mind,' the Intourist man said.

Tokyo was an astonishment. The number of people was staggering, but it was the amount of goods in the stores, the rich variety, the abundance of food and the fact that the j.a.panese people seemed to have money to buy whatever they wanted that impressed him most deeply. The official from the Polish Emba.s.sy who met the plane explained: 'They're living on borrowed time. This is all going to collapse. Capitalism at its exploitative worst.'

Polish officials coached Buk carefully on what he could and could not say on television, but he listened and forgot. On the screen, with a beautiful j.a.panese girl beside him interpreting his simple sentences, he made an agreeable impression: 'I'm a farmer like your rice farmers I saw yesterday. We were damaged by floods last year and are doing our best to recuperate. We do have shortages, yes, and we've been hit as hard as you by the rise in petrol prices. My wife can seldom find the goods she needs, and we're all d.a.m.ned worried.'

The j.a.panese television producers were so pleased with him, they asked if he would fly to Osaka for an additional two performances, and the emba.s.sy people were so relieved that he hadn't upset the turnip cart that they encouraged the detour. From there an American television network invited him to fly to New York, offering him two days' rest in Hawaii, where once more he was staggered by the amount of goods in the stores, by the freedom of action he saw everywhere, but especially by the stores that conducted their business in j.a.panese standing side by side with American ones.