The Man in the High Castle: Chapters 4–6

The old man had a weak, shifty, nervous, even ingratiating manner, as if he regarded everyone as a potential enemy stronger than he, whom he had to fawn on and pacify.

He owned controlling interests in a variety of enterprises, speculations, real estate.

Ostensibly, W-M Corporation was an iron foundry. But in addition, it maintained another business from which its real profits were derived.

W-M Corporation’s stated legal business consisted in turning out wrought-iron staircases, railings, fireplaces, and ornaments for new apartment buildings, all on a mass basis, from standard designs. For a new forty-unit building the same piece would be executed forty times in a row. Ostensibly, W-M Corporation was an iron foundry.

“An imitation of the authentic historic gun. Nothing more. I am afraid, sir, you have been deceived. Perhaps by some unscrupulous churl. You must report this to the San Francisco police.”

I have lost a fifteen-thousand-dollar sale. And my reputation, if this gets out. If that man, Admiral Harusha’s gentleman, is not discreet.

Done by a real pro. See, the authentic gun was given its—you know the blue-metal parts? Those were put in a box of leather strips, sealed, with cyanide gas, and heated. Too cumbersome, nowadays.

Ray, I have a matter of delicacy. I wish to see you, private conference, sometime today in your office or et cetera.

“Sirs,” he said, “please tell me if the carrier Syokaku is in the harbor, and if so, how long. I would appreciate this information from your estimable newspaper.”

They’ll gas the bugger soon as they get him across the Demarcation Line.

She seemed pensive, withdrawn, even a little depressed.

“Did you read this?” she asked, taking a book out.
Nearsightedly he peered. Lurid cover.

“What a man. What dignity and bearing. So I know what I’m talking about,” he wound up.

Carefully phrasing his words, Baynes said, “I—just don’t know enough about religion. It’s out of my field. I prefer to stick to subjects I have some competence in.”

There has been, since I got here this evening, a sort of...gnomish quality about everything. A smaller-than-life quality, with a dash of the droll.

“...He therefore augments it by means here and there.”
“A violation of some petty ordinance,” Mr. Tagomi said.

Perhaps my quixotic remarks on the Lufthansa flight, he thought suddenly.

Nothing has gone wrong; I am being overly scrupulous.

His two older brothers had served in the Ethiopian campaign, while he, at thirteen, had been in a Fascist youth organization in Milan, his home town.

"...said merely that he was grief-stricken by the loss not only of a soldier and patriot and faithful Partei Leader, but also, as he has said many times over, of a personal friend, whom, one will recall, he backed in the interregnum dispute shortly after the war when it appeared for a time that elements hostile to Herr Bormann’s ascension to supreme authority—”

His enigmatic grimace chilled her.

The fool possibly has sniffed out nothing to speak of, Mr. Tagomi thought to himself. Maladroit enthusiasm, combined with romantic doctrines.

This meeting, which will not last long—you will soon be able to go back to your offices—is for purposes of informing you of our evaluation of several contending factions in German political life who can now be expected to step forth and engage in no-holds-barred disputation for spot evacuated by Herr Bormann.

One of the most ruthless early Nazis, yet later sybaritic excesses gave rise to misguiding picture of amiable wine-tippling disposition which our government urges you to reject.

This man although said to be unhealthy, possibly even morbidly so in terms of appetites, resembles more the self-gratifying ancient Roman Caesars whose power grew rather than abated as age progressed.

Brilliant orator, writer, flexible and fanatic mind, witty, urbane, cosmopolitan.

Ideological orientation suggesting medieval Jesuitic viewpoint exacerbated by post-Romantic Germanic nihilism.

Product of elite training and yet anterior to so-called SS Castle system.

Said to be devoid of affective mentality in traditional sense.

Also mitigated vicious policies of racial extermination in Slavic lands in early ’fifties. Pled case directly to German people for remnant of Slavic peoples to exist on reservation-like closed regions in Heartland area.

The other’s face, calm, considerate. No derision. They are all laughing at me, possibly? Mr. Tagomi thought. Down underneath?

“Possibly you noticed my distress at meeting,” Mr. Tagomi said into the phone. “It was no doubt palpable to all, especially my hasty flight.”

The Home Islands take the view that Germany’s scheme to reduce the populations of Europe and Northern Asia to the status of slaves—plus murdering all intellectuals, bourgeois elements, patriotic youth and what not—has been an economic catastrophe.

Only the formidable technological achievements of German science and industry have saved them.

Shocking news has arrived that your leader, Herr Martin Bormann, has succumbed.

“Determination to exhalt and immolate themselves and so obtain a niche in history from which no life form can cast them, no matter what may transpire.”

“Determination to exhalt and immolate themselves and so obtain a niche in history from which no life form can cast them, no matter what may transpire.”

“Although we will wait on specifics, perhaps we could ruminate on general world conditions, in particular—”

A trifle—and yet indicative of my foolish and feckless attitude.

It furthers one to make offerings and libations.