“I couldn’t agree more.” Mildred pressed a hand to her stomach, suddenly nauseous. Had she said anything that could put her friends or Arvid’s family in danger should those Bund people report it to the Gestapo? “I wonder why they came to my lecture.”
“I was wondering the same thing,” he said flatly, draining his whiskey sour in one last gulp and moving off into the crowd.
After that, Mildred guarded her words, plagued by thoughts of storm troopers apprehending Greta as she strolled with Ule in the Tiergarten, or hauling Arvid’s brother Falk out of a classroom in Munich, or dragging his mother away from her easel at her home in Jena. What might they do to the people she loved in retaliation for anything offensive she said or did? What might they do to her and Arvid the moment they disembarked from their ship at Hamburg?
More than once, as the evening passed, she caught herself glancing over her shoulder in midsentence and turning back to find the person she was conversing with watching her, bemused. These were old friends, she admonished herself. None of them corresponded with Nazis. And yet she could not shake off her cautious reserve. Any hope she might have had that no one noticed was dispelled when, just as she was about to enter the kitchen, she overheard someone within telling a companion that she feared Mildred had “gone Nazi.” Rather than enter the room and calmly reassure them that she had not, she silently withdrew.
It was with heartbreaking relief the next morning that she packed her bags, tucked Martha’s book carefully in with her academic papers, thanked Clara for her hospitality, and departed for Penn Station. She caught the midmorning train to Philadelphia and from there traveled on northwest of the city, where later that evening she spoke at Haverford College. There the reception to her lecture was even more enthusiastic than in New York. “You discussed these contemporary trends in European literature with a charm, power, and vividness that I have rarely seen equaled,” declared one philosophy professor when he and several other faculty members joined her onstage afterward as the audience filed from the auditorium. “You have almost restored my ebbing faith in the function of the interpretive lecture.”
Mildred could hardly have asked for higher praise than that, but her glow of gratitude diminished when she glimpsed members of the German American Bund congregating in one of the aisles, watching her expectantly, no doubt hoping to speak with her on her way out. Fortunately, her hosts instead led her backstage and out a side door to a cab, which quickly whisked her off to the charming inn where they had arranged for her to spend the night.
A similar scene played out at the University of Chicago, except that four men in derivative Brownshirt uniforms approached her podium before her host could escort her away. They asked, politely and in very good German, if she and her chaperone would do them the honor of joining them for dinner. Before Mildred could respond, the event host, a silver-haired professor of Germanic languages, answered in flawless German that Frau Harnack must offer her regrets due to a prior engagement for which she was already five minutes late. “You didn’t look like you wanted to go with them,” she said in an undertone after the men walked away disappointed. “I certainly didn’t, and it would have been inappropriate for you to go alone.”
“Thank you,” Mildred murmured back. “I’d much rather have dinner with you, if you’re free.”
Mildred suggested a restaurant she had visited years before, but the professor insisted upon treating her to a home-cooked meal. Quite serendipitously, Mildred found herself sharing a delicious supper with the professor, her husband, and their eldest granddaughter, and spending the night in their redbrick town house on South Blackstone Avenue in Hyde Park, less than a block away from where the Dodds had lived when Mr. Dodd was on the university faculty.
By the time her tour brought her to Madison, she had learned to spot members of the Bund at a glance even when they were not clad in their full regalia, and to evade their pointed questions.
The lecture at the University of Wisconsin was the event she had most looked forward to, and it proved to be a wonderful homecoming. Many friends and former teachers and colleagues were in the audience, as well as her brother and his family. Her former mentor, William Ellery Leonard, also attended—but he provided the lone disappointing moment of the evening. He damned her with faint praise when a group of former classmates cheerfully asked for his review of her lecture, saying with a shrug that it was precisely what he had expected it to be. Mildred concealed her embarrassment with a smile, but she could not maintain the pretense later when he took her aside and told her that there were no faculty positions available for her in Madison. “You have many splendid achievements as wife, asFrau Professorin, and as an ambassador of American literature, since you’ve mastered a foreign language well enough to translate our nation’s great works for that wonderful culture,” he said, smiling indulgently with only the barest trace of regret. “But unfortunately, we don’t need this in Madison in these wretched days.’’
“I understand completely,” Mildred said, smiling, pleasant, professional. “I trust you’ll let me know if circumstances change.”
She was not surprised to hear that the UW English Department had no faculty positions available; none of the other universities on her tour were hiring either. What troubled her most was Leonard’s dismissive, condescending tone. She did not understand what she had done to disappoint him, but apparently her former mentor no longer believed in her. Perhaps it was the simple fact that she had never completed her doctorate. That, at least, she could put right. As soon as she returned to Berlin, she would resume work on her dissertation in earnest and not stop until she had earned her degree. Even if she could no longer count on Leonard for a letter of recommendation, she would have a much better chance of finding a university position with her doctorate in hand.
Although her job search had proven fruitless, and her encounters with the German American Bund unsettling, she did not regret her tour. Her lectures had been well received, and she had met several fascinating scholars with whom she hoped to keep in touch. She had reunited with old friends, which had been lovely, most of the time. After the Madison event, she spent several days at her brother Bob’s farm south of Madison, enjoying his company and that of her sister Marion, their spouses, and their children. Surrounded by loved ones on the beautiful, rich land thriving beneath the capricious midwestern skies, she felt truly at home for the first time since she had returned to America. But when she walked through the apple orchard where she and Arvid had married, she longed for him so intensely that tears came to her eyes.
Even more urgently than Martha had done, her brother and sister begged her not to return to Germany. They offered her and Arvid a place to stay until they found work and could get back on their feet.
“If we can’t earn a living, we can’t stay,” she said after explaining her futile job search. “Also, we have important work to do back home.”
Her siblings exchanged a look. “You called Germany home,” Marion said sadly.
“Wherever Arvid is, that’s home,” she replied, and when they glanced at their own spouses, she knew they understood.
The visit restored her spirits more than she could have imagined possible. In early August, as she traveled by train east to Washington where Arvid waited for her, she was able to appreciate and admire her country as she had not when she was caught up in the stress of the tour. She admired the pastoral landscape speeding past her window, farms and small towns, creeks and forests. Times were still tough, but thanks to Roosevelt’s New Deal—which the Friday Niters had strongly influenced—people were going back to work. Bridges were being built, roads repaired, art created for public places. There was an air of renewal, of hope and restored confidence. Perhaps the American economy was not rebounding from the Great Depression as quickly as was Germany’s, but no one had to be denied citizenship to improve America’s unemployment statistics. People did not have to be kicked out of professions by the tens of thousands to create jobs for others. Compassion and respect could build an economy too—not overnight, but steadily, and with more enduring results.
Mildred delighted anew in all the things she had missed about America. Overheard conversations and jokes in regional accents. Newspapers free to present the facts as reporters discovered them, with editorials representing a broad political spectrum. Bookstores full of works that uplifted and questioned and instructed and challenged. Baseball. Jazz. City blocks where whites and Jews and Negroes and immigrants lived side by side, if not always in friendship, then at least in mutual respect. The rule of law. Due process. The Bill of Rights. Every mile brought a new reflection, something lost to Germany, rediscovered in the land of her birth.
When her train pulled into the station in Washington, Arvid met her on the platform, swept her into an embrace, and kissed her cheek, murmuring endearments in English and German. They spent the night at the Willard Hotel two blocks from the White House, dining and dancing in the evening, ordering a hearty breakfast in their room the following morning—all expenses paid by the Economics Ministry, since Arvid was officially traveling on business.
Arvid too seemed more relaxed than when they had left Germany. “I feel like a houseplant neglected in a pot on the windowsill, shriveled and drooping, and suddenly some kindHausfrauemptied the watering can over me,” he said in English as they strolled hand in hand along the Washington Mall.
Mildred had to laugh. “What an image.”
He smiled and squeezed her hand. She was happy to see him cheerful again, when he had good reason to be discouraged. His meeting with Heath’s colleagues had gone about as well as her job search. Arvid had warned the Treasury Department officials of Hitler’s intention to invade Poland and had provided copies of incriminating financial records as evidence. Warning them that war was imminent, he had listed significant hidden German assets the United States should be prepared to seize when the day came. The officials had listened politely, examined the documents he had smuggled out of Germany at enormous risk to himself, and promptly dismissed him. His letter to the State Department offering his services in the inevitable fight against the Third Reich would almost certainly never be delivered.
After another day in the nation’s capital, Mildred and Arvid went to Maryland to spend time with Mildred’s eldest sister, Harriette, her husband and children, and their mother. It was a joyful reunion, at least on Mildred’s part, but on the eve of their departure, Harriette took her aside and asked if she would not prefer to stay and let Arvid go home alone. “He can’t make you go back,” she said firmly. “We’ll all stand with you.”
“What are you saying?” asked Mildred, astonished. “He would nevermakeme go back, or make me go anywhere.”
“Mildred, I’m your sister. You can be honest with me.” Harriette fixed her with a loving but stern gaze. “Arvid’s changed. We never had the chance to get to know him well, but now we can see he’s a typical German. He’s a Nazi.”
“That’s not true. He joined the party because he had to, but he’s no Nazi.” He’s in the resistance, she almost blurted, and I am too. But she couldn’t. The risk was too great. “Please trust me. He’s a good man. I wouldn’t stay with him if he weren’t.”
Harriette studied her for a moment in silence, but eventually she nodded, still dubious.
It was an unhappy note to mark their parting, and the uncomfortable reticence lingered as Mildred and Arvid bade the family goodbye and boarded the train for New York. Someday, Mildred silently assured herself, when the Reich was no more and Arvid’s role in the resistance could be made known, her family would realize their mistake. Perhaps as soon as their next visit, she and Arvid would both be welcomed back with warm embraces.
