And that settled it. You had to assume a man was telling you the truth or you wouldn’t have any civilization at all.

“There will be no fist fights on these premises while I am superintendent here, do you understand?” the two there beyond his desk, the Southerner more or less on one leg, rubbing his knuckles with his thumb, looking down at his hands, the German with heels together, hands beside him, straight spine, chin up, gazing at a point just over the doctor’s head.

“This guy’s a Nazi, Doctor.”

“I am not a Nazi,” moving nothing but his lips. “I simply said the German Army was invincible, sir. Does that make me a Nazi?”

No. Positively not. With the green uniforms spreading across almost every country you could name, flooding through the broken dikes, it might be just a cool-eyed appraisal of the evidence; on many a dark day it looked like that to himself too.

“How does this man get out of Germany, Doc?” “I am a Jew, Doctor.” It made good sense. A Jew couldn’t be a Nazi. And what of it, anyhow? This was a free country, wasn’t it? We weren’t fighting anybody.

“I am not interested in politics. What matters in this hospital is the way you do your work, and Schurz’s work is—quite satisfactory,” gulping a little before he could get out “satisfactory” in describing a standard of performance that would have done credit to any of the great hospitals anywhere.

He got rid of them. He was no good at discipline. “If anything like this comes up again I promise you I’ll have both of you dismissed from the Hospital,” the Southerner nodding in some relief, and the German’s eyes shifting off the wall in a blue surprise probably at not being dismissed this time.

The boys didn’t like him but that meant nothing. They wouldn’t have liked anybody who clicked his heels. It was that simple. It had nothing to do with patriotism. A little to do, perhaps, with the German’s having a better education than they had, an education that seemed an inherent part of him, not a pasted-on sheet of forced schooling with deep-dyed ignorance showing through it unashamed (proudly, almost); a little to do, perhaps, with the clean, cool job he did, and with his self-sufficient manner, going his way, friendly enough if cornered but not seeking friendship. But most of it was in the click of the heels.

From one of the staff: “He’s a good intern all right, Dr. Meigs, but—”

“What else does he have to be, Howard? Does he have to be a member of the Democratic Party?”

“Why not give the place to some American boy?”

“Find me one who’s a better doctor and if he wants the place it’s his. I’m a doctor first, Howard, and then I’m an American.”

Howard sauntering to the door, jingling his car keys in his pocket, and coming back. “But suppose this man’s not like you and me. Suppose he’s a German first and a doctor second; suppose he’s a Nazi.” “He’s not a Nazi, Howard.” “How do you know he’s not?” “Because he says he’s not. You’ve got to assume a man’s telling you the truth or everything breaks down.”—And so on. Interminable talk about it. Nobody seemed to put any stock in the fact you couldn’t tell the difference between American and German kidneys.

Then one warm summer morning, a Friday—the little calling card. They “just wanted to check up”: where he came from, how long he had been there, and all that, “Does he get much mail, Doctor?” Coldly, “I don’t keep track of the mail.” “Well, Doctor, would you mind calling in the clerk who handles that sort of thing?”

And he sent for her, garrulous widowed “Miss Julia”: not much mail, she had wondered about that herself, he didn’t seem to expect any, never came by the window to ask, if something came in she would send word to him and he would appear, accept it, make a little bow, say “Q” in a kind of chirp and go away. “Handsome young—”

“I want you, if you please, Doctor, to hold up any mail that comes in for him in the next few days. I’ve got to go to Savannah but I’ll be back through here on Monday or Tuesday.” “I can’t hold up a man’s mail!” “Oh, that’s all right, Doctor,” with a barely perceptible tightening of his eyelids; “just hold it here.”

But it wasn’t all right at all. There was something about it he resented. It wasn’t just that there was something shady about watching a man’s mail; that was bad enough, but this went further. You couldn’t have nationalism getting mixed up in medicine without hurting medicine, hurting the whole structure of free inquiry. You hurt yourself more than the man whose mail you watched. He felt like getting his back up, but he didn’t. He nodded; maybe luck would be with him and there wouldn’t be any mail.—And there wasn’t, through Saturday noon when he closed up and drove home (at 24 miles an hour).

Rattling around the empty house in the heavy stillness of Saturday afternoon, the family in the mountains to get out of the heat, feeling rather friendless himself, he started wondering about Schurz and his friendlessness. Friendlessness could do strange things to you, make you take all kinds of false positions to bolster yourself up, show everybody you didn’t care; Schurz might be a different man with a little friendliness. And he got Schurz on the phone, told him he was going to play some of Beethoven’s piano sonatas on the phonograph. “My family is away but I think I can find a few bottles of beer in the icebox and some cheese and crackers.”

He came. Walked up to the door dressed in dark woolens, almost invisible in the falling night, the perspiration on his chin shining in the porch light. Dr. Meigs said, “You’ll have to get you some cotton clothes if you’re going to be down here in the summertime. Don’t get linen. Cotton’s cooler.” “It’s nothing,” with a smile as he passed a handkerchief over his mouth and stuffed it back up his sleeve.

“Take off your coat, Schurz,” the hospitable July greeting to any guest. And he took it off. Obediently. It was all a little awkward, possibly for the simple reason that English spoken like English always made for awkwardness under a Southern roof.

They sat outside on some canvas chairs with the music floating out through the window screens, Schurz with his beer on a table beside him, now and then drinking some, now and then leaning over for a cracker-and-cheese with his black suspenders sharp against his clean white shirt, remote as always, slightly baffling like a marionette when you can’t see the strings.

“You find it difficult here in the South, Schurz?” when he had turned off the machine and brought out some more beer.

“Oh no, sir.”

“I mean, for some reason the usual Southerner is likely to be pro-British.”

“Yes, I’ve noticed that.”

“I don’t know why it is. We don’t get any more British propaganda down here than people in the rest of the country.”

Shurz put some cheese on a cracker and said quietly, as if supplying the approved answer to a college-board examiner, “Because of the delicately balanced racial question, sir, the South wants to preserve the status quo, and in their minds Great Britain represents that.”

It raised the doctor’s eyebrows a little. “You don’t think it’s a sort of inherited affinity?” gazing at him eating the cracker there in the dim starlight. “Because so many of our ancestors were English?”

“Oh no, sir.” Waiting a minute, then, “But it is surprising Southerners do not see there is really less affinity between the South and Great Britain than between the South and the New Germany.”

“Oh, do you think so!”

“And a greater affinity between Germany and the South than any other part of the United States—”

“I don’t see how you figure that.”

“The South was practicing the theory of Master Race long before Germany ever thought of it, Doctor. It is the core of the South.”

“You mean you think we are Nazis but don’t know it?”

“Oh no. But it will be better for the South under a German victory.”

The Doctor loosened his necktie: “will be better,” not “would be”; the night seemed to be getting warmer instead of cooler. He drank some beer in the pause then said he was surprised Germany had given the South a thought, adding with a smile, “The United States hardly gives the South a thought.”

“Germany is very much interested in the South. Nowhere else in America is there such a ready-made cleavage in the social structure. The population of Georgia is over a third Negro. In 1936 there were one million, one hundred and six thousand, eight hundred and fifty-two Negroes in Georgia.”

The Doctor stared, mumbling that he hadn’t known just what the figure was. Shurz ate another cracker as if he hadn’t had any supper and in a minute went on quietly, as though the ideas were so familiar to him as to make him forget they might be strange to someone else, “And also of course, the South is the nearest part of the United States to Central and South America.”

Dr. Meigs found himself lifting his jaw, which had just dropped a quarter of an inch.

“So, you see, the South may look for sympathy and understanding in its concept of Race if it is friendly to the New Germany. And on the other hand—”

The Doctor breaking in with some impatience, “But you, Schurz, you’re a doctor. Why do you care about all this—all this politics?” “Why do I care?” “Yes. Medicine is medicine. There is no ‘master race’ to the man of science.”

“But you do not have Negro doctors in your hospital, sir.”

“Well, anybody but a Southerner would perhaps find that a little hard to understand, but I could explain it—”

“If you will pardon me, Doctor, that is what I mean. You do not have to explain it to me. I understand it quite well.”

When he had gone, putting on his woolen jacket and bowing with that scarcely audible “tick” down at the floor that always took the breath out of whatever Dr. Meigs was saying, the Doctor walked around in the yard trying to sum it all up with I’ll-be-dog-gone! and What-do-you-know-about-that! He was putting the cheese back in the icebox when a comforting thought came winging in, hovered while he examined it and alighted: there was some truth in what Schurz was saying, unpleasant but real, and saying it, regardless of its unpleasantness, could represent just the kind of cool observation he himself put such store in. The times were hysterical, intolerance and suspicion were in the air, men of science were particularly vulnerable because they could not take sides in political movements and still be true to their calling.

And on Monday as he passed through the outer office with his usual, “Good morning, Ladies!”, a feeling of reassurance in his mind that daylight often brought him, the phone rang and Miss Gilbert said, “Long Distance, Dr. Meigs. Savannah.”

He went on to his desk and picked up the instrument. An operator somewhere said, “Just a minute, please,” and while he waited, with his free hand, he turned through the envelopes the mailroom had just sent over—stopping at the third one, which was postmarked “San Francisco,” had no return address and was directed to “Dr. Josef Schurz. City Hospital, Fredericksville, Georgia.” He saw it at just the moment a voice he didn’t recognize began speaking in his ear, annoying him for a second or two at not identifying itself but only saying, “Dr. Meigs?” and then asking how he was this morning. Then clearing up identity with, “Any mail yet for our friend, Doctor?” and his fingers seemed to drop the envelope as if they were listening, eyes shifting away from it to the sweetgum tree on the lawn.

He gazed at the pyramid of star-shaped leaves for a moment without replying, and the voice said, “Hello? Are you there, Doctor?” And the Doctor said coldly, “I have a letter here.”

“Good. Will you just read it to me, please?”