In the Garden of Beasts

was safe yet for him to return; for that matter, whether it would ever be safe.

CHAPTER 18
Warning from a Friend
    M artha grew increasingly confident about her social appeal, enough so that she organized her own afternoon salon, modeled on the teas and evening discussion groups of her friend Mildred Fish Harnack. She also threw herself a birthday party. Both events unfolded in ways markedly different from what she had hoped for.
    In selecting guests for her salon she used her own contacts as well as Mildred’s. She invited several dozen poets, writers, and editors, for the ostensible purpose of meeting a visiting American publisher. Martha hoped “to hear amusing conversation, some exchange of stimulating views, at least conversation on a higher plane than one is accustomed to in diplomatic society.” But the guests brought an unexpected companion.
    Instead of forming a lively and vibrant company with her at its center, the crowd became atomized, small groups here and there. A poet sat in the library with several guests clustered near. Others gathered tightly around the guest of honor, exhibiting what Martha termed “a pathetic eagerness to know what was happening in America.” Her Jewish guests looked especially ill at ease. The talk lagged; the consumption of food and alcohol surged. “The rest of the guests were standing around drinking heavily and devouring plates of food,” Martha wrote. “Probably many of them were poor and actually ill-fed, and the others were nervous and anxious to conceal it.”
    In all, Martha wrote, “it was a dull and, at the same time, tense afternoon.” The uninvited guest was fear, and it haunted the gathering. The crowd, she wrote, was “so full of frustration and misery …of tension, broken spirits, doomed courage or tragic and hated cowardice, that I vowed never to have such a group again in my house.”
    Instead she resigned herself to helping the Harnacks with their regular soirees and teas. They did have a gift for gathering loyal and compelling friends and holding them close. The idea that one day it would kill them would have seemed at the time, to Martha, utterly laughable.
    THE GUEST LIST forher birthday party, set for October 8, her actual birth date, included a princess, a prince, several of her correspondent friends, and various officers of the SA and SS, “young, heel-clicking, courteous almost to the point of absurdity.” Whether Boris Winogradov attended is unclear, though by now Martha was seeing him “regularly.” It’s possible, even likely, that she didn’t invite him, for the United States still had not recognized the Soviet Union.
    Two prominent Nazi officials made appearances at the party. One was Putzi Hanfstaengl, the other Hans Thomsen, a young man who served as liaison between the Foreign Ministry and Hitler’s chancellery. He had never exhibited the overheated swoon so evident in other Nazi zealots, and as a consequence he was well liked by members of the diplomatic corps and a frequent visitor to the Dodds’ home. Martha’s father often spoke with him in terms more blunt than diplomatic protocol allowed, confident that Thomsen would relay his views to senior Nazi officials, possibly even to Hitler himself. At times Martha had the impression that Thomsen might harbor personal reservations about Hitler. She and Dodd called him “Tommy.”
    Hanfstaengl arrived late, as was his custom. He craved attention, and by dint of his immense height and energy always got it, no matter how crowded the room. He had become immersed in conversation with a musically knowledgeable guest about the merits of Schubert’s
Unfinished Symphony
when Martha walked to the family’s Victrola and put on a recording of the Nazi hymn to Horst Wessel, the anthem she had heard sung in Nuremberg by the parading Storm Troopers.
    Hanfstaengl seemed to enjoy the music. Hans Thomsen clearly did not. He stood abruptly, then marched to the record player and switched it off.
    In her most innocent manner, Martha asked him why he didn’t like the music.
    Thomsen glared, his face hard. “That is not the sort of music to be played for mixed gatherings and in a flippant manner,” he scolded. “I won’t have you play our anthem, with its significance, at a social party.”
    Martha was stunned. This was her house, her party, and, moreover, American ground. She could do as she pleased.
    Hanfstaengl looked at Thomsen with what Martha described as “a vivid look of amusement