Did no one retire? Was it so impossible to change one’s feet, so futile to change one’s shoes?
He had fresh tea made when she rang the doorbell. How fresh she looked, he thought, as he often did. How young, how untroubled.
“I almost didn’t come,” she said.
“Then I should have had to drink both cups of tea.”
“I can’t have a lesson, really. I mean, I can’t pay you. Not today, at least. I’ll probably have the money next week, and I could pay you then, but I can’t be positive, see.”
“It doesn’t matter. Come in the kitchen, see my baby birds.”
“Oh, yes,” she said. “I was thinking about them the other day. They’re all right?”
“They seem to be.”
She sipped at her tea after exclaiming over the birds. “Oh, it’s peppermint,” she said.
“Spearmint, actually.” And then in German, “I found it growing in the yard. It makes nice tea, don’t you think?”
They went on talking idly in German. She had a surprising facility for the language, doubly surprising in that she seemed quite without motivation for learning it. She was his only pupil, one of three who had responded to a note he’d hung on the bulletin board at the Student Union. The other two were young men, both interested in learning French as preparation for a year at a French university. He had given them several lessons each before discovering that the lessons bored him immeasurably. Since he had undertaken them as an antidote to boredom, there was little point in continuing them.
But when Jocelyn came, there was an immediate mutual sense of mental stimulation. She was planning no junior year in Cologne or Munich. Indeed, she had already dropped out of the university and continued to live in town and spend time on the campus only because there was nothing else she cared to do.
“I would like to learn a language,” she had told him. “Only I can’t decide which one. French, German, Spanish, Serbo-Croat. Was Russian on the list, too? I can’t remember.”
“Yes, Russian also.”
“I think it would be sensational to know Serbo-Croat, but what would I do with it? I don’t suppose I could ever find anyone to talk to.”
“Only in Yugoslavia.”
“Is that where you’re from?”
“Yes, from Croatia.”
“How do you pronounce your first name? Is it Anglicized or what?”
“It was originally Mee-lesh. There was a diacritic mark over the s. But I pronounce it Miles. It’s simpler for everyone, and after all this town is rather far from Croatia.”
“Miles from Croatia. What language should I learn? What language would you most enjoy teaching?”
He told her it ought to be one she liked the sound of, and spoke paragraphs of each. In the other languages he said nothing significant, but in German he found himself saying, “You have spun gold for hair and pink cream for skin. Were I not beyond such things I would lift your skirt and spend hours kissing your pudenda.”
After she had selected German and had a first lesson, he found himself wondering at his words. Such private jokes were not usual behavior for him.
In the months that followed he found himself taking increasing pleasure in the time they spent together. She came once a week at the start, then increased to Tuesdays and Fridays. Although the lessons were theoretically to last an hour, she generally stayed the full afternoon. He charged her five dollars a lesson. He would have been happy to forgo payment—ten dollars a week was an expense to her, and of no importance to him—but he had been careful not to suggest this lest it alter the structure of their relationship. She was the only friend in his present life and he did not want to do anything that might deprive him of that friendship.
Her facility with German impressed him. She retained vocabulary easily and had a remarkably good accent. A Prussian might have been as apt to take her for a Swabian, perhaps, as for an American.
“I may not be staying here much longer,” she said at one point. “I don’t know.” She switched abruptly to English. “The thing is, my father found out that I dropped out.”
“You hadn’t told him?”
“No. I suppose I should have, but somehow I couldn’t get around to it. We don’t communicate very well. We did once, I think, but something happened to us. It’s funny, the way things happen to people.”
“Was he very upset?”
“I’m not sure. I talked to him on the phone. Just last night, as a matter of fact. He went right into the heavy father number, but I think that may have been just a reflex.
Der gross Vater.
It doesn’t translate, does it? It just means grandfather. Both of my grandfathers are dead. I have one grandmother living. I’m sure I told you that.”
She had told him many things about herself—age, family background, childhood experiences. He told her about different places he had been without disclosing much about the person he had been while in those places. It was a special sort of conversation, the information serving primarily as vehicle for the words and phrases themselves. One could not pass hours chatting about an aunt’s pen on an uncle’s table. She spoke of classes and boyfriends and movies and things she had done as a child. She lived in Connecticut. Her father manufactured beads for dress manufacturers. Her mother was secretary-treasurer of the local chapter of the League of Women Voters, and had collected funds for Biafran relief. She had a brother in high school. A sister two years older than she had drowned seven years ago at Cape Cod. She had had a dog for several years in Connecticut. Now she had a cat named Vertigo. She often talked about the cat and had several times said she might bring it to Dorn’s house. She had never done so.
On one occasion Dorn told her of a town in Slovenia where he had spent a day and two nights twenty-five years ago. He described the town and talked about the Slovene language and the local architecture. He told her of the meals he had eaten there, and of the wine, which was good but extremely tart. He did not tell her that he and two other men had gone to the burgomaster’s house in the middle of the second night. They searched the house but could not find the man. They knew he was there. Dorn held the wife’s arms while a man named Gotter hit her in the breasts and belly with his fists. She wept but insisted her husband was not home. Dorn went into one of the bedrooms where a child had been sleeping. He brought the little boy out and told the woman he would put out the boy’s eyes. It wasn’t necessary to do this. The burgomaster was in a steamer trunk in the cellar. They had seen the trunk earlier but had not thought to open it—it looked too small to hold a man and the lock was rusted. They smashed the lock and took the burgomaster out of the trunk. He was a small plump man who wept soundlessly until Dorn shot him in the center of the forehead. They left immediately. Gotter wanted to rape the wife—the widow. Violent death acted as a sexual stimulant upon him. Dorn was never able to understand this. But on that occasion there was simply no time, and Gotter was disciplined enough to repress his lust.
Now Jocelyn was saying that she might go to Washington for the weekend. “There’s a demonstration,” she said in German, not having to hesitate for the noun. “Friends of mine are driving up, and I might go with them.”
“A peace demonstration?”
“A memorial for Landon Waring.”
“He was killed?”
“It was all over yesterday’s paper, and on the radio all the time.”
“I haven’t seen a paper in several days. He was what? A Black Panther?”
“I’m not sure whether he was a Panther or just worked with them. He was in Jacksonville for a rally. Why would he come to the South? It seems so suicidal. The Gestapo killed him. Isn’t that funny—we call them that, the police, but in the middle of a conversation in German.”
“The police killed him?”
“The official lie is that he was trying to escape, and that he grabbed a pig’s gun.” Back to English. “I can’t see how that could possibly go down with anyone. Even the Silent Majority has to know better than to believe it. He was a beautiful man, you know. I saw him speak once. Everybody’s being killed. The kids I know, we were talking, and there’s all this paranoia. Like it’s a conspiracy. I don’t know if it is or if it’s just the way the whole country is going in two different directions, and each side hates the other side. There was a riot in Jacksonville last night. They had the National Guard. First the Gestapo and then the Brownshirts. I don’t know, I just don’t know. You want to do something, but you wonder what’s the point, what good will it do. Like what good does it do to put one more body in Washington when no one pays any attention anyway. What good does it do.”
“I don’t think you should go.”
“Why do you say that?”
He smiled. “For selfish reasons. Landon Waring is just a name to me, and a dead man’s name in the bargain. You are a friend. It could be dangerous for you, and to no purpose.”
“They can’t kill everybody.”
“No, of course not.”
“Sometimes I feel guilty because I didn’t go to Chicago. Of course I was only seventeen but I could have gone, some friends of mine did go. Nothing happened to them. The guilt—I don’t feel guilty because I didn’t go, but because I’m secretly glad that I didn’t go. If that makes any sense. Sometimes I wonder what Megan would be doing now. She would be twenty-one, but she’s fourteen forever now, and there’s no way to guess who she would have grown into. She was always two years older than me and now she’s frozen at fourteen while I get older and older. That’s how death takes people away from you. It steals the people they would have been.” She gave her head a sudden shake. “I’m sorry, Miles. This is terrible. I was very down last night and I keep slipping back into it. Let’s talk about something else. I don’t know what. The baby robins? Anything.”
Not long before she left, she said, “What’s that smell? I keep noticing it.”
He had to consider. “Oh. A Turkish cigarette.”
“You haven’t started smoking?”
“No. I had a visitor earlier today.”
“A student?”
She didn’t know he had no other pupils. “Not a student,” he said. “He smoked I think two cigarettes. The smell of Turkish leaf lingers.”
“At first I thought it was grass.”
“Marijuana?”
She nodded, and he laughed at the thought.
“You’ve never tried it?”
“Oh, no, no. I don’t even drink coffee. A glass of wine at dinner, that’s all.”
“And spearmint tea.”
“And spearmint tea.”
“Maybe you should try it, someday.”
“You use it?”
“Sometimes. Not often. So many people like to be high all the time.” She caught her knee with her folded hands. Her expression turned impish. “I could turn you on,” she said. “If you ever wanted.”
“Don’t you suppose I’m too old for that?”
“You never seem old to me.”
There was something hard to read in her eyes. He shifted position. He said, “I thank you for the offer, but I don’t think I’ll accept it.”
“It’s a good feeling. And it lets you, oh, get into yourself, sometimes in new ways.”
“Is that good?”
Her face clouded. “It depends what you find. But if you find something bad, you tell yourself
I’m high, it’s just the drug, and when I get straight again it won’t apply
.”
“And that works?”
“For me.”
“I was with several men once who used hashish. I mean that they used it in my presence, but I didn’t partake. They didn’t seem to be affected by it, and yet I gather they were very high.”
“I had hash once.”
“It’s the same idea as marijuana, isn’t it?”
“Well, like an orchestra is the same idea as a tin whistle. It’s tons stronger. Where was this, that you were?”
“Morocco. No, Tunis.”
“It must have been total dynamite. Tunis? What were you doing there?”
“Negotiating. There was an interest in mineral rights.”
“You were with some corporation or something?”
“I represented them. Just in that series of negotiations. Nothing came of it.”
She said, “I wonder about you, you know. For hours at a time. About your life. Who are you. You paint all of these pictures, but I can never quite see you in any of the pictures.”
“There’s really nothing to see.”
“Just a sweet quiet man who drinks mint tea.”
“And watches robins.”
“You know-”
“What?”
“Nothing,” she said. She got to her feet. “I can’t even pay you today and look, I stayed three hours, almost four. I guess I better go.”
There was a brief moment when he could have asked her to stay for dinner. He recognized the moment and willed himself to let it pass.
“I’ll be over Tuesday, then.”
“Yes, good. And don’t worry about the money. Please.”
“I should have it by then.”
“If you don’t, it’s no matter.” He walked her toward the door. “I may be out of town,” he said. “I can’t be sure, and I don’t know how long I would be away.”
“The Turkish cigarette?”
“Yes. Something I might have to do.”
He thought of the man who had smoked the Turkish cigarettes, and of the letter from Heidigger. Tampa. Jacksonville. Washington. His mind jumped through cities and time.
He said, “A favor.”
“What?”
“One I’ve no right to ask. And can’t honestly explain. Don’t go to Washington tomorrow.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Call it a feeling I have. I’ve learned to live on my intuition. I find it more reliable than pure reason. You’ve said your presence won’t affect the demonstration any more than it in turn will affect policy. Indulge an old man. Spend the weekend here.”
She looked at him. “All right,” she said finally.
Twice more before the sky darkened he went to the kitchen window to watch the robins. The amount of work required of the parent birds was prodigious. They were constantly flying off and returning with worms to be thrust into gaping mouths.
He wondered why they bothered. Because they were robins, he thought, and that was what robins did.
Could they think, he wondered. Could they in any sense muse on the instinct, the irresistible urge to fill up the planet with copies of themselves? He decided they could not. The musers, the ponderers, would miss too many worms. They would build shaky nests. Cats would stalk them and pounce upon their reveries. And their seed would die, while less intellectual birds killed off the more thoughtful worms.