The Man In The High Castle

At the bench in their basement workshop, Frank Frink sat at the arbor. He held a half-finished silver earring against the noisily turning cotton buff; bits of rouge spattered his glasses and blackened his nails and hands. The earring, shaped in a snail-shell spiral, became hot from friction, but Frink grimly bore down even more.

“Don’t get it too shiny,” Ed McCarthy said. “Just hit the high spots; you can even leave the lows completely.”

Frank Frink grunted.

“There’s a better market for silver if it’s not polished up too much,” Ed said. “Silverwork should have that old look.”

Market, Frink thought.

They had sold nothing. Except for the consignment at American Artistic Handcrafts, no one had taken anything, and they had visited five retail shops in all.

We’re not making any money, Frink said to himself. We’re making more and more jewelry and it’s just piling up around us.

The screw-back of the earring caught in the wheel; the piece whipped out of Frink’s hands and flew to the polish shield, then fell to the floor. He shut off the motor.

“Don’t let those pieces go,” McCarthy said, at the welding torch.

“Christ, it’s the size of a pea. No way to get a grip.”

“Well, pick it up anyhow.”

The hell with the whole thing, Frink thought.

“What’s the matter?” McCarthy said, seeing him make no move to fish up the earring.

Frink said, “We’re pouring money in for nothing.”

“We can’t sell what we haven’t made.”

“We can’t sell anything,” Frink said. “Made or unmade.”

“Five stores. Drop in the bucket.”

“But the trend,” Frink said. “It’s enough to know.”

“Don’t kid yourself.”

Frink said, “I’m not kidding myself.”

“Meaning what?”

“Meaning it’s time to start looking for a market for scrap.”

“All right,” McCarthy said, “quit, then.”

“I have.”

“I’ll go on by myself.” McCarthy lit the torch again.

“How are we going to split the stuff?”

“I don’t know. But we’ll find a way.”

“Buy me out,” Frink said.

“Hell no.”

Frink computed. “Pay me six hundred dollars.”

“No, you take half of everything.”

“Half the motor?”

They were both silent then.

“Three more stores,” McCarthy said. “Then we’ll talk about it.” Lowering his mask he began brazing a section of brass rod into a cuff bracelet.

Frank Frink stepped down from the bench. He located the snail-shell earring and replaced it in the carton of incomplete pieces. “I’m going outside for a smoke,” he said, and walked across the basement to the stairs.

A moment later he stood outdoors on the sidewalk, a T’ien-lai between his fingers.

It’s all over, he said to himself. I don’t need the oracle to tell me; I recognize what the Moment is. The smell is there. Defeat.

And it is hard really to say why. Maybe, theoretically, we could go on. Store to store, other cities. But—something is wrong. And all the effort and ingenuity won’t change it.

I want to know why, he thought.

But I never will.

What should we have done? Made what instead?

We bucked the moment. Bucked the Tao. Upstream, in the wrong direction. And now—dissolution. Decay.

Yin has us. The light showed us its ass, went elsewhere.

We can only knuckle under.

While he stood there under the eaves of the building, taking quick drags on his marijuana cigarette and dully watching traffic go by, an ordinary-looking, middle-aged white man sauntered up to him.

“Mr. Frink? Frank Frink?”

“You got it,” Frink said.

The man produced a folded document and identification. “I’m with the San Francisco Police Department. I’ve a warrant for your arrest.” He held Frink’s arm already; it had already been done.

“For what?” Frink demanded.

“Bunco. Mr. Childan, American Artistic Handcrafts.” The cop forcibly led Frink along the sidewalk; another plainclothes cop joined them, one now on each side of Frink. They hustled him toward a parked unmarked Toyopet.

This is what the time requires of us, Frink thought as he was dumped onto the car seat between the two cops. The door slammed shut; the car, driven by a third cop, this one in uniform, shot out into traffic. These are the sons-of-bitches we must submit to.

“You got an attorney?” one of the cops asked him.

“No,” he said.

“They’ll give you a list of names at the station.”

“Thanks,” Frink said.

“What’d you do with the money?” one of the cops asked later on, as they were parking in the Kearny Street Police station garage.

Frink said, “Spent it.”

“All?”

He did not answer.

One of the cops shook his head and laughed.

As they got out of the car, one of them said to Frink, “Is your real name Fink?”

Frink felt terror.

“Fink,” the cop repeated. “You’re a kike.” He exhibited a large gray folder. “Refugee from Europe.”

“I was born in New York,” Frank Frink said.

“You’re an escapee from the Nazis,” the cop said. “You know what that means?”

Frank Frink broke away and ran across the garage. The three cops shouted, and at the doorway he found himself facing a police car with uniformed armed police blocking his path. The police smiled at him, and one of them, holding a gun, stepped out and smacked a handcuff into place over his wrist.

Jerking him by the wrist—the thin metal cut into his flesh, to the bone—the cop led him back the way he had come.

“Back to Germany,” one of the cops said, surveying him.

“I’m an American,” Frank Frink said.

“You’re a Jew,” the cop said.

As he was taken upstairs, one of the cops said, “Will he be booked here?”

“No,” another said. “We’ll hold him for the German consul. They want to try him under German law.”

There was no list of attorneys, after all.



For twenty minutes Mr. Tagomi had remained motionless at his desk, holding the revolver pointed at the door, while Mr. Baynes paced about the office. The old general had, after some thought, lifted the phone and put through a call to the Japanese embassy in San Francisco. However, he had not been able to get through to Baron Kaelemakule; the ambassador, a bureaucrat had told him, was out of the city.

Now General Tedeki was in the process of placing a transpacific call to Tokyo.

“I will consult with the War College,” he explained to Mr. Baynes. “They will contact Imperial military forces stationed nearby us.” He did not seem perturbed.

So we will be relieved in a number of hours, Mr. Tagomi said to himself. Possibly by Japanese Marines from a carrier, armed with machine guns and mortars.

Operating through official channels is highly efficient in terms of final result…but there is regrettable time lag. Down below us, blackshirt hooligans are busy clubbing secretaries and clerks.

However, there was little more that he personally could do.

“I wonder if it would be worth trying to reach the German consul,” Mr. Baynes said.

Mr. Tagomi had a vision of himself summoning Miss Ephreikian in with her tape recorder, to take dictation of urgent protest to Herr H. Reiss.

“I can call Herr Reiss,” Mr. Tagomi said. “On another line.”

“Please,” Mr. Baynes said.

Still holding his Colt .44 collector’s item, Mr. Tagomi pressed a button on his desk. Out came a nonlisted phone line, especially installed for esoteric communication.

He dialed the number of the German consulate.

“Good day, Who is calling?” Accented brisk male functionary voice. Undoubtedly underling.

Mr. Tagomi said, “His Excellency Herr Reiss, please. Urgent. This is Mr. Tagomi, here. Ranking Imperial Trade Mission, Top Place.” He used his hard, no-nonsense voice.

“Yes sir. A moment, if you will.” A long moment, then. No sound at all on the phone, not even clicks. He is merely standing there with it, Mr. Tagomi decided. Stalling through typical Nordic wile.

To General Tedeki, waiting on the other phone, and Mr. Baynes, pacing, he said, “I am naturally being put off.”

At last the functionary’s voice once again. “Sorry to keep you waiting, Mr. Tagomi.”

“Not at all.”

“The consul is in conference. However—”

Mr. Tagomi hung up.

“Waste of effort, to say the least,” he said, feeling discomfited. Whom else to call? Tokkoka already informed, also MP units down on waterfront; no use to phone them. Direct call to Berlin? To Reichs Chancellor Goebbels? To Imperial Military airfield at Napa, asking for air-rescue assistance?

“I will call SD chief Herr B. Kreuz vom Meere,” he decided aloud. “And bitterly complain. Rant and scream invective.” He began to dial the number formally—euphemistically—listed in the San Francisco phone book as the “Lufthansa Airport Terminal Precious-Shipment Guard Detail.” As the phone buzzed he said, “Vituperate in high-pitched hysteria.”

“Put on a good performance,” General Tedeki said, smiling.

In Mr. Tagomi’s ear a Germanic voice said, “Who is it?” More no-nonsense-than-myself voice, Mr. Tagomi thought. But he intended to go on. “Hurry up,” the voice demanded.

Mr. Tagomi shouted, “I am ordering the arrest and trial of your band of cutthroats and degenerates who run amok like blond berserk beasts, unfit even to describe! Do you know me, Kerl? This is Tagomi, Imperial Government Consultant. Five seconds or waive legality and have Marines’ shock troop unit begin massacre with flame-throwing phosphorus bombs. Disgrace to civilization.”

On the other end the SD flunky was sputtering anxiously.

Mr. Tagomi winked at Mr. Baynes.

“…we know nothing about it,” the flunky was saying.

“Liar!” Mr. Tagomi shouted. “Then we have no choice.” He slammed the receiver down. “It is no doubt mere gesture,” he said to Mr. Baynes and General Tedeki. “But it can do no harm, anyhow. Always faint possibility certain nervous element even in SD.”

General Tedeki started to speak. But then a tremendous clatter at the office door; he ceased. The door swung open.

Two burly white men appeared, both armed with pistols equipped with silencers. They made out Mr. Baynes.

“Da ist er,” one said. They started for Mr. Baynes.

At his desk, Mr. Tagomi pointed his Colt .44 ancient collector’s item and compressed the trigger. One of the SD men fell to the floor. The other whipped his silencer-equipped gun toward Mr. Tagomi and returned fire. Mr. Tagomi heard no report, saw only a tiny wisp of smoke from the gun, heard the whistle of a slug passing near. With record-eclipsing speed he fanned the hammer of the single-action Colt, firing it again and again.

The SD man’s jaw burst. Bits of bone, flesh, shreds of tooth, flew in the air. Hit in the mouth, Mr. Tagomi realized. Dreadful spot, especially if ball ascending. The jawless SD man’s eyes still contained life, of a kind. He still perceives me, Mr. Tagomi thought. Then the eyes lost their luster and the SD man collapsed, dropping his gun and making unhuman gargling noises.

“Sickening,” Mr. Tagomi said.

No more SD men appeared in the open doorway.

“Possibly it is over,” General Tedeki said after a pause.

Mr. Tagomi, engaged in tedious three-minute task of reloading, paused to press the button of the desk intercom. “Bring medical emergency aid,” he instructed. “Hideously injured thug, here.”

No answer, only a hum.

Stooping, Mr. Baynes had picked up both the Germans’ guns; he passed one to the general, keeping the other himself.

“Now we will mow them down,” Mr. Tagomi said, reseating himself with his Colt .44, as before. “Formidable triumvirate, in this office.”

From the hall a voice called, “German hoodlums surrender!”

“Already taken care of,” Mr. Tagomi called back. “Lying either dead or dying. Advance and verify empirically.”

A party of Nippon Times employees gingerly appeared, several of them carrying building riot equipment such as axes and rifles and tear-gas grenades.

“Cause célèbre,” Mr. Tagomi said. “PSA Government in Sacramento could declare war on Reich without hesitation.” He broke open his gun. “Anyhow, over with.”

“They will deny complicity,” Mr. Baynes said. “Standard technique. Used countless times.” He laid the silencer-equipped pistol on Mr. Tagomi’s desk. “Made in Japan.”

He was not joking. It was true. Excellent quality Japanese target pistol. Mr. Tagomi examined it.

“And not German nationals,” Mr. Baynes said. He had taken the wallet of one of the whites, the dead one. “PSA citizen. Lives in San Jose. Nothing to connect him with the SD. Name is Jack Sanders.” He tossed the wallet down.

“A holdup,” Mr. Tagomi said. “Motive: our locked vault. No political aspects.” He arose shakily to his feet.

In any case, the assassination or kidnapping attempt by the SD had failed. At least, this first one had. But clearly they knew who Mr. Baynes was, and no doubt what he had come for.

“The prognosis,” Mr. Tagomi said, “is gloomy.”

He wondered if in this instance the oracle would be of any use. Perhaps it could protect them. Warn them, shield them, with its advice.

Still quite shaky, he began taking out the forty-nine yarrow stalks. Whole situation confusing and anomalous, he decided. No human intelligence could decipher it; only five-thousand-year-old joint mind applicable. German totalitarian society resembles some faulty form of life, worse than natural thing. Worse in all its admixtures, its potpourri of pointlessness.

Here, he thought, local SD acts as instrument of policy totally at odds with head in Berlin. Where in this composite being is the sense? Who really is Germany? Who ever was? Almost like decomposing nightmare parody of problems customarily faced in course of existence.

The oracle will cut through it. Even weird breed of cat like Nazi Germany comprehensible to I Ching.

Mr. Baynes, seeing Mr. Tagomi distractedly manipulating the handful of vegetable stalks, recognized how deep the man’s distress was. For him, Mr. Baynes thought, this event, his having had to kill and mutilate these two men, is not only dreadful; it is inexplicable.

What can I say that might console him? He fired on my behalf; the moral responsibility for these two lives is therefore mine, and I accept it. I view it that way.

Coming over beside Mr. Baynes, General Tedeki said in a soft voice, “You witness the man’s despair. He, you see, was no doubt raised as a Buddhist. Even if not formally, the influence was there. A culture in which no life is to be taken; all lives holy.”

Mr. Baynes nodded.

“He will recover his equilibrium,” General Tedeki continued. “In time. Right now he has no standpoint by which he can view and comprehend his act. That book will help him, for it provides an external frame of reference.”

“I see,” Mr. Baynes said. He thought, Another frame of reference which might help him would be the Doctrine of Original Sin. I wonder if he has ever heard of it. We are all doomed to commit acts of cruelty or violence or evil; that is our destiny, due to ancient factors. Our karma.

To save one life, Mr. Tagomi had to take two. The logical, balanced mind cannot make sense of that. A kindly man like Mr. Tagomi could be driven insane by the implications of such reality.

Nevertheless, Mr. Baynes thought, the crucial point lies not in the present, not in either my death or the death of the two SD men; it lies—hypothetically—in the future. What has happened here is justified, or not justified, by what happens later. Can we perhaps save the lives of millions, all Japan in fact?

But the man manipulating the vegetable stalks could not think of that; the present, the actuality, was too tangible, the dead and dying Germans on the floor of his office.

General Tedeki was right; time would give Mr. Tagomi perspective. Either that, or he would perhaps retreat into the shadows of mental illness, avert his gaze forever, due to a hopeless perplexity.

And we are not really different from him, Mr. Baynes thought. We are faced with the same confusions. Therefore unfortunately we can give Mr. Tagomi no help. We can only wait, hoping that finally he will recover and not succumb.