“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?”
“It’s not opened.”
“Just open it, please.”
“Open this man’s letter and read it to you?”
“It’s all right, Doctor. It’s on me.”
“Look here, I can’t open a man’s mail.”
“I’ll send you a formal authorization tonight. I’ve got to go to Brunswick this morning and it’ll be a week or more before I get back through there. I want the information now. Go ahead, please, sir. Steam it, Doctor; I’ll hold on.”
He stared at the envelope for what seemed a long time. The fact of being “authorized” to do something he wouldn’t have done as a civilized man, that didn’t make it all right. Really made it just so much worse because it put authority itself on the wrong side—
“Are you there, Doctor?”
He slit the envelope neatly with a knife and read him an undirected, unsigned note on a plain sheet of paper telling “you” that in the event it should seem to “you” desirable to return to Germany “you” were instructed to communicate with the consulate at San Francisco where transportation would be arranged via Japan.
And it was, “All right, Doctor.” And, “Thanks for your cooperation; just a routine checkup.” And, “Hold the letter for me.” And, “Suggest you leave him right where he is.” And so forth. But that wasn’t the point. He would have to report all this to the Board and the Board would unquestionably call for Schurz’s dismissal—for the dismissal of intelligence, skill, training, and general all-round competence of the highest order. And maybe that was the only thing to do; the world was sick and you couldn’t behave the same way with a sick man as with a sound.
