“Tell you what, go over there and tell Tiny, the big bartender, to give you a hamburger and a soda, on the house.”
“Gee, thanks!”
“Sure.”
The boy rushed off and Keegan turned back to Beerbohm. The editor’s face was suddenly drawn and bloodless.
“What the hell happened to you, Ned?” Keegan said. “You look like World War Two just started.”
“Almost as bad,” Beerbohm said and slid a cablegram across the table. Keegan knew before he read it. He knew what it was going to say. He had feared this telegram for four years.
“I’m sorry as hell to be the one to show you that,” Beerbohm said.
The cable was simple and to the point:
BERT RUDMAN KILLED NOON TODAY DURING BOMBING RAID ON ALICANTE. RUDMAN WITH THE FIFTH VICTORY DIVISION. ATTACKED BY GERMAN DIVE BOMBERS. KILLED INSTANTLY. MORE FOLLOWS. PLEASE ADVISE RE REMAINS. MANNERLY, MADRID BUREAU CHIEF.
Keegan stared at it for several minutes, reading and rereading it, hoping perhaps he was missing something in the sparse message. His throat began to ache and the old anger welled up in him again.
“Goddamn them,” he said in a cracked voice. “Goddamn those miserable bastards.” He slammed his fist on the table.
“I’m awful damn sorry, kid,” said Beerbohm. “I know how close you two were.”
Keegan was silent for a minute or two and then he shook his head. “No you don’t,” he said, and there was misery in every syllable. “We haven’t been close at all since I left Europe.”
“I just thought. . .“ Beerbohm said with surprise.
“That he was my best friend? He was. He was one of those people who make life a little sweeter for you, who care about you.”
He stopped and took a deep breath, trying to control the hurt. He began to babble, about Rudman and Jenny and that summer in Paris. About von Meister and Conrad Weil and the dirty little hunchback, Vierhaus. About friendship and betrayal and the dumb things we sometimes do and never undo.
“I’m not sure I ever told him how really good I thought he was. Used to kid him all the time . . . fact is, he had more guts than anybody I ever knew. Just kept . . . going back for more. It had to happen sooner or later. Ironic, isn’t it? He probably wrote more about what’s really going on in Germany than anyone alive and a goddamn German plane kills him in Spain.”
He paused for a moment and took several deep breaths.
“Can I keep this?” Keegan asked, holding up the cable.
Beerbohm nodded.
“I don’t feel very sociable right now,” Keegan said.
Keegan sat for a long time staring off toward the front of the bar. His chest hurt and his throat hurt. Faced with the sudden death of his friend, he wished desperately for just five minutes to tell Bert how much his friendship had really meant to him. How much he had missed him these last few years. How much he admired his talent and courage and insight. How much he had learned about love and devotion from him and from Jenny.
Too late. Too late for anything. He folded the cable several times and stuck it in his pocket. “I’m sorry, pal,” he said to nobody. “I’m so sorry.”
Finally he got up, walked across to Fifth Avenue and up past St. Patrick’s. Then he crossed over to Third Avenue and wandered back down, thinking about his two best friends. Beerbohm was right, he wanted to hurt somebody, to get even. But who was there to hurt? He picked up the News at a corner stand. Bob Considine’s story was on the front page.
“Listen to this, buddy,” it began, “for it comes from a guy whose palms are still wet, whose throat is dry and whose jaw is still agape from the utter shock of watching Joe Louis knock out Max Schmeling
Christ, he thought, what am I doing reading about a prizefight? He threw the paper in a trash can and went back to the Rose, seeking the security of his back booth. But the joy of the crowd was more than he could handle and he went up to his apartment. He got a bottle of champagne from the walk-in refrigerator, took three tulip glasses from the cabinet, went into the living room and took a scrapbook from the bookcase. He sat down on the sofa, popped the cork and poured three glasses. Keegan clinked his glass against theirs.
“Salud,” he said.
He had started the scrapbook when Rudman went to Ethiopia, carefully pasting each dispatch in its pages. He had planned to give it to Bert as a peace offering when he finally returned from the wars. He started turning the pages, stopping occasionally to reread a particularly poignant or significant story.
Mussolini Invades Ethiopia;
Bombers Attack Civilians
by
Bert Rudman
ADOWA, ETHIOPIA, Oct. 3, 1935. The barefoot tribes of Haile Selassie, Lion of Judah, Emperor of Ethiopia, direct descendant of the kings of the Ras Tafari, and Prince of the ancient tribes of the Nile, were attacked today by the tanks, bombers and booted legions of Benito Mussolini, the barber turned Dictator of Italy. In what may very well be an Apocalyptic vision of modern warfare, bombs and incendiaries shrieked down from the night sky on helpless civilians. In the chaos that followed, great fires swept the city and the confused and wounded raced through the blazing city like mice in a maze
And less than six months later
Ethiopia Falls in Italy’s
Slaughter of the Innocents
by
Bert Rudman
ADDIS ABABA, ETHIOPIA, Feb. 2, 1936. The Lion of Judah has been caged and tamed by the Roman Legions of Dictator Mussolini. But in winning this victory, Italy has fouled its own house .
By the summer of 1936, the civil war in Spain had become a reality and Rudman was in the thick of it, where he would stay almost continuously until he died.
Death Rains on Spain’s Capital
As Fascists Declare War
by
Bert Rudman
MADRID, SPAIN, July 22, 1936. Spain finally erupted into Civil War last night as the Fascist Rebels of General Francisco Franco attacked this stronghold of the Loyalist . .
Innocents Die by Thousands in
Brutal Fascist Reprisal Raid
by
Bert Rudman
GUERNICA, SPAIN, Apr. 27, 1937.. German dive bombers and fighter planes without warning swept out of the skies over this Basque city today, strafing and bombing schools, hospitals, farmhouses and the marketplace and killing thousands of innocent people.
His work was a devastating mosaic of a world gone mad. It was as if a great cloak of darkness had been draped over Europe and down into Africa. And as the darkness spread, Dachau was lost in its core, a mere spot in the center of the growing fascist empire.
Triumphant Hitler Marches into
Austria as Crowds Cheer
by
Bert Rudman
VIENNA, AUSTRIA, Mar. 14, 1938. Adolf Hitler, who left this Austrian city as a penniless yos.ith, returned in triumph today and claimed this nation as his own.
To cries of “Heil, Hitler” and “Sieg Heil,” the dictator drove through the streets of this city as crowds cheered and threw flowers in his path . .
And even more ominously . .
Germany Readies Several
New Concentration Camps
by
Bert Rudman
BERLIN, AUG. 7, 1938. The Nazis have opened three new concentration camps in Germany and have several others under construction, according to confidential sources