Max in the House of Spies: Chapters 15–23

Meanwhile, Mr. Montagu had leaned over to Uncle Ewen and was saying, “If this is a moving-picture version of The Communist Manifesto, I’m leaving. Are you with me?”

The only word of the paper’s headline that was legible read ETERNITY.

“Are you going to fix the film, Ivor?” Mrs. Montagu asked. “It was...intriguing...so far, anyway.”
“Actually, I had already nodded off,” said Uncle Ewen.

“It was a good beginning!” Mrs. Montagu ventured bravely.

“You don’t get it! That was art! You bourgeois pigs!” he shouted, his face turning red.

“You don’t get it! That was art! You bourgeois pigs!” he shouted, his face turning red. “You utter cretins!”

Smoke slowly billowed up over the buildings.

“You, being a twelve-year-old boy, are made of very delicate flesh and bones that snap like dry grass when they are hit by a bomb, or shrapnel, or flying bricks.”

“Well,” Ewen said, “shall we survey the battlefield?”
And so the family marched upstairs, followed by the staff. A quick inspection revealed that the house was unscathed.

It was just three doors down and across the street. Half a building, intact from the street level to the middle of the first-floor windows. And then, above that, lead pipes stuck up at strange angles, as if searching for the sinks and tubs they used to feed, and forlornly failing to find them.

Some leafy streets of Kensington were as pristine as they had been that morning. And then there were lanes that looked like mouths after a boxing match, random teeth shattered.

Max was perched on a grassy bluff overlooking a gray river.

And then, strangely, Uncle Ewen had invited the whole family—except for Ivor—to join a Sunday-afternoon fishing excursion with him and his boss, Admiral John Godfrey.

Max could just hear him over Beethoven’s Ninth and the burbling of water over rocks.

“Give him a radio and he tends to do that,” drawled Mr. Montagu.

“You’ll get no argument from me that the Nazis are nasty, brutal beasts. But we still have rules of war, you know, and murdering political prisoners is not done. Even by the Germans. If I’ve told you once, I’ve told you a thousand times. Focus on winning the war. That’s the way to help your beleaguered Jewish tribe in Germany. Not these fantasies about mass murder. It’s just not happening.”

Max clambered into the front seat of the car.

“Do you know what our little mischief-maker is up to?”
Stein just shook his head and gazed at Max’s small deft hands.

An hour later, Uncle Ewen had four trout in his hamper—enough for Mrs. Henshaw to panfry a feast for dinner that evening.

Mr. Montagu had caught exactly no fish, so between the lack of fish and Max’s astonishing breach of protocol, Max expected Mr. Montagu to be in a very sour mood indeed.

Mr. Montagu had caught exactly no fish, so between the lack of fish and Max’s astonishing breach of protocol, Max expected Mr. Montagu to be in a very sour mood indeed.

He shook hands vigorously with Admiral Godfrey while saying, “Glad to be of service, Admiral!” and then he called, “Brood! Into the Phantom!” Which meant Family! Get into the car!

Finally, Admiral Godfrey’s rheumy gaze fell on Max, who was standing silently, looking at his feet.

“Stuart!” Mrs. Montagu chided him. “Language!”

The reception on the radio was getting better.

They drove toward a ramshackle sprawling old building.

Ewen brought the car to a stop in front of the building’s main entrance. They got out and Max peered up at the looming edifice.

The man was peering at Max, his square face jutting out so far his jaw was over the threshold of the old building, though the rest of his boxy body was still inside.

He smacked a folder he was gripping in his left hand. “In this dossier I have your entire life history. I’d like to go over it with you, if you don’t mind.”

Why had he not told even Ivor about them? Why did he never reminisce about his parents aloud at the dinner table?

“Domiciles! Homes! How many homes did you live in between your birth and the time you came to England?”

“Professor Goldenschaft told us that we were racially inferior. That the Germans were the greatest of all the races, that the Russians were awful, and that Jews were the worst.”

“Quailed under pressure. Just like a Jew. No offense, Montagu,” he added hastily.

Englishmen conquered the globe, from Hong Kong to Boston. We have subdued every race under the sun. The French. The Zulu. The Malay.

“So,” Tin Eye began, glancing at a file folder that he had pulled out of an attaché case, “your father was Jacob David Bretzfeld, and your mother was Miriam Wohl Bretzfeld, and they lived at 182 Oranienstrasse, in—”

"I..." Max said, and his voice faltered.

Rabbi Kolski’s hat and yarmulke had fallen off.

Tin Eye looked uncomfortable. Uncle Ewen was riveted.

Colonel Roberts put a thick, calloused hand on Max’s arm.

“I cannot fathom how you’re managing. Your parents held hostage by the Nazis, and you forced to spy for Hitler and his lunatics in exchange for keeping your parents safe. No need to deny it!”