Mila 18 - Leon Uris [86]
Christopher de Monti, a quiet boy who had formed a love of truth long before he was a man, had been betrayed by his mother and disillusioned by his father. He had destroyed his own relations with a fine woman and he hated himself for that. But this was to be the crudest disillusion of all.
He left Spain with his faith in the human race gone.
Chris had always been a sensible and hard-working journalist. He was particularly sober and responsible in a fraternity of the not-so-sober and sometimes irresponsible. His one binge had been with reason—when he broke his marriage with Eileen.
His second was worse. Oscar Pecora bailed him out of a Paris police station after a month’s solid drinking and packed him off to his villa on the lake at Lausanne.
Oscar Pecora was a patient man who loved Christopher. Christopher was his own protégé. Like a son, Chris sulked bitterly until the boiling within him could not be contained.
And one night it all exploded.
Chris was drunk. Madame Pecora, Oscar’s beautiful former-opera-singing wife, had retired. They were sitting on the balcony and there was a full moon on the lake and Chris was coming to the end of a fifth of scotch whisky.
“Why, Oscar, why! Why did they do that?”
“Tell me about it, Chris.”
“Saw them killing women and children. Dirty bastard Italian fliers sitting in their dirty bastard clubs bragging about it ... Watched them torture soldiers. Ever seen a Moroccan torture someone? By putting his testicles in a squeezer ... Oscar ... God dammit ... I got all that over the border to the Americans!”
“Christopher. Every report that you sneaked out of Spain was planted in newspapers and wire services. All we can do is give the facts to the people. We cannot force them to stage a rebellion in righteous wrath.”
“You are so right, Oscar. The whole goddamned human race sat on its hands and watched them murder Spain. Lemme tell you something, brother. They’ll pay for not stopping Mussolini and Hitler in Spain. Pretty soon they’ll run out of hiding room and, Jesus Christ, will they get clobbered!”
Oscar Pecora’s sympathetic hand fell on Chris’s shoulder. “We journalists are like garbage cans, Chris. Everybody sends us their filth. Through us comes all that is rotten in man. Christopher, what you are going through now ... You were a single small voice that cried out for justice in a dark and angry sea and no one heard you. Until a man is struck in his own face he does not want to believe the attack on his brother concerns him.”
Chris stumbled from his chair, staggered to the rail, and hung onto it. “Shall I tell you why I became a journalist? Do you know Thomas Paine? ‘The world is my country, all mankind are my brethren ... to do good is my religion.’ ”
Oscar Pecora recited, “ ‘In a chariot of light from the region of day, The Goddess of Liberty came. Ten thousand celestials directed the way. And hither conducted the dame. A fair budding branch from the gardens above, Where millions with millions agree, She brought in her hand as a pledge of her love, And the plant she named Liberty Tree ... from the east to the west blow the trumpet to arms! Through the land let the sound of it flee; Let the far and the near all unite, with a cheer ... in defense of our Liberty Tree.’ ”
“Bravo, Brother Pecora! Bravo! And now I give you William Lloyd Garrison ...” Chris stood upright and thrust his finger into the air. “ ‘With reasonable men, I will reason; with humane men I will plead; but to tyrants I will give no quarter ...’ Now how’s that for a goddamn quote?”
Chris reeled into his seat. “Little Jefferson ... we need a little Jefferson to round it out ... Oscar, I’m drunk ... God damn I’m drunk.”
“Come, Christopher. You’re tired. You have lost a hard battle, but you are my best soldier and tomorrow we must go out to the field again.”
“She’s in Jersey ... married that guy. They’ve got two kids ... nice little home, I hear. Me ... I’m the