Katherine Anne Porter (74 page)

Tadeusz translated this to Hans and Otto, and Hans laughed so suddenly he put his hand to his cheek with a grimace. “Be careful,” said Tadeusz, looking at the wound as he always did, with an air of clinical interest, which he knew Hans liked. Charles went on to say he had never seen such a statement in any history books, which seemed very vague about the Irish until they began fighting with the British. By that time, the books said in effect, they were just a lot of wild bog-jumpers. He had felt sorry for his father, trying to wring a drop of comfort out of the myth of his splendid past, but the usual run of histories on the subject hadn’t borne him out. He was pleased to think he had simply got hold of the wrong books.

“They are very like the Poles,” said Tadeusz, “those Irish, living on the glory of their past, on their poetry and the jeweled Book of Kells and the great cups and crowns of ancient Ireland, the memories of victories and defeats godlike in intensity, the hope of rising again to glory: and in the meantime,” he added, “always fighting quite a lot and very unsuccessfully.”

Hans leaned forward and spoke with importance, as if he were a professor addressing his class: “The fate of Ireland (and of Poland, too, Tadeusz, don’t forget) is an example, a most terrible example, of what can happen to a country when it divides against itself and lets the enemy in. . . the Irish, so nationalistic at this late day, are yet divided. What do they expect? They could have saved themselves in early time by uniting and attacking the enemy, instead of waiting to be attacked.”

Tadeusz reminded him, “Hans, that does not always work either,” but Hans ignored the little gibe.

Charles, ill-informed as he was, floundering in the quicksands of popular history, could not answer, yet the whole notion was offensive to him. “But why jump on a man unless he jumps first?”

Hans, the youthful oracle, was ready. “Why, because he always attacks when you are not looking, or when you have
put down your arms for an instant. So you are punished for carelessness really, for not troubling to learn the intentions of your enemy. You are beaten, and that is the end of you, unless you can gather strength and fight again.”

“The Celts aren’t ended,” said Tadeusz; “they exist in great numbers and are scattered all over and still have influence everywhere they touch.”

“Influence?” asked Hans. “A purely oblique, feminine, worthless thing, influence. Power, pure power is what counts to a nation or a race. You must be able to tell other peoples what to do, and above all what they may not do, you must be able to enforce every order you give against no matter what opposition, and when you demand anything at all, it must be given you without question. That is the only power, and power is the only thing of any value or importance in this world.”

“It doesn’t last, though, any better than some other things,” said Tadeusz. “It doesn’t always work as well as long ruse and intelligent strategy. It goes down in the long run.”

“Maybe it goes down because powerful people get tired of power,” said Otto, leaning his head on his hand and looking discouraged; “maybe they wear themselves out beating other people and spying on them and ordering them about and robbing them. Maybe they exhaust themselves.”

“And maybe one day they overstep themselves, or a new young power rises to put an end to them,” said Tadeusz; “that happens.”

“Maybe they find out it doesn’t pay,” said Charles.

“It always pays,” said Hans; “that is the point. It pays, and nothing else does. Everything else is childish beside it. Otto, you surprise me. That is a strange point of view for you.”

Otto sagged, guilty and uncomfortable. “I am not a soldier,” he said. “I love study and quiet.”

Hans sat very stiffly, an alienated hostile glitter in his eyes. He turned halfway to Charles and said, “We Germans were beaten in the last war, thanks partly to your great country, but we shall win in the next.”

A chill ran down Charles’ spine, he shrugged his shoulders. They were all a little drunk, there might be a row if they didn’t pull themselves together. He did not want to quarrel with anybody, nor to fight the war over again. “We were all in short
pants when that war was ended,” he said. Hans answered instantly, “Ah, yes, but we will all be in uniforms for the next.”

Tadeusz said, “Oh, come now, dear Hans, I never felt less bloodthirsty in my life. I only want to play the piano.”

“I want to paint,” said Charles.

“I want to teach mathematics,” said Otto.

“Neither am I bloodthirsty,” said Hans, “but I know what will happen.” His cheek, under its band of court plaster, was slightly more swollen than earlier in the evening. The fingers of his left hand explored tenderly along the line of angry blue flesh. He said, in a bright impersonal tone, “Look, it is most interesting to remember one thing. We should have won that war, and we lost it in the first three days, though we did not know it, or could not believe it, for four years. What was the cause? One single delayed order, one sole failure of a body of troops to move at a given moment, on that first advance through Belgium. A delay of three days lost us that war. Well, it won’t happen the next time.”

“No,” said Tadeusz, gently, “the next time, there will be another kind of mistake, something else quite different will go wrong, who knows how or why? It is always like that. Wars are not won by intelligence, Hans. Can’t you see that? All the fine planning in the world can’t insure an army against that one fellow who will, when the moment comes, delay, or give the wrong order, or be in the wrong place. Why, the other side did nothing but blunder all the way through, and yet they won, that time.”

“Sea power,” said Charles, “good old sea power. I bet on that. It wins in the long run.”

“Carthage was a sea power, but she didn’t beat Rome,” said Otto.

“The next time,” said Hans, with cool stubbornness, “they won’t win. You’ll see. The next time, there will be no mistakes on our side.”

“I can wait,” said Tadeusz, “I am in no hurry.”

“I can wait, all right,” said Charles, “and meantime, let me get the beer.”

The orchestra, increased by the efforts of guests with their fiddles, flutes and the violoncello, had been making a fine din, so that the four voices had been rising gradually. “Let’s give
it up for the present,” said Tadeusz; “it can’t be settled this evening.”

The actor and his mistress were gone, and Lutte remained the only beauty in the room. She was sitting with several young men and another girl at a table near by, all drinking beer heartily, laughing constantly and falling into each other’s arms at intervals for embraces and smacks on the cheek, the boys kissing boys or girls alike with indiscriminate warmth. Lutte caught Charles’ glance and waved her beer glass at him. He waved back and smiled excitedly. She was a knockout and he hoped quite violently to know her better. And even at that moment, like the first symptoms of some fatal sickness, there stirred in him a most awful premonition of disaster, and his thoughts, blurred with drink and strangeness and the sound of half-understood tongues and the climate of remembered wrongs and hatreds, revolved dimly around vague remembered tales of Napoleon and Genghis Khan and Attila the Hun and all the Caesars and Alexander the Great and Darius and the dim Pharaohs and lost Babylon. He felt helpless, undefended, looked at the three strange faces near him and decided not to drink any more, for he must not be drunker than they; he trusted none of them.

Otto, leaving his beer, wandered away, and one of the brothers handed him a white piano accordion as he passed. The change in Otto was miraculous. From soggy gloom his face turned to a great mask of simple enjoyment, he took up the tune the orchestra was playing and roamed among the tables, the instrument folding and unfolding in his arms, his blunt fingers flying over the keys. In a fine roaring voice he began to sing:

“
MARSCHIEREN
!” roared every voice in the place, joyously. “Ich kann nicht mehr marschier’n.”

Otto sang:

“’
SACK
!” yelled the chorus, “Aus meinen Mantelsack.”

Hans stood up and sang in a clear light voice: “Ich hab’, ich hab’ gefunden, was du verloren hast—”

“
HAST
!” bawled the chorus, and everybody was standing now, their laughing faces innocent and pure as lambs at play, “was du verloren hast.”

There was a great wave of laughter after this, and the orchestra suddenly changed to “The Peanut Vendor.” Lutte, with a serious face as if she were fulfilling her duty, stood up and began to dance alone, something supposed no doubt to be a rumba, but to Charles, it seemed rather a combination of the black bottom and the hoochy-coochy such as he had seen, sneaking off furtively with other boys, in carnival sideshows during his innocent boyhood in Texas. He had danced the rumba to the tune of “The Peanut Vendor” all the way from his home town, across the Atlantic and straight into Bremen harbor, and it occurred to him that here was something he could really do. He took the gourds from the quiet little fellow who was clacking them rather feebly, and began to do his version of the rumba, shaking the gourds and cracking them together with great authority.

He could hear hands clapping in rhythm all over the room, and Lutte, abandoning her solo, began to dance with him. He handed back the gourds at once and took Lutte firmly around her warm, agitated waist, very thinly covered. She held her face back from him stiffly, smiled with a fair imitation of a cinematic
femme fatale
, and rather clumsily but with great meaning bumped her hip against him. He gathered her in, folded her up to him as close as he could, but she stiffened again and bumped him, this time full in the stomach. “What say we give up the technique and let nature take its course,” said Charles, with a straight face.

“What is that?” she asked, unexpectedly in English. “I do not understand.”

“Well,” said Charles, kissing her on the cheek, “it speaks English too.” She did not kiss back, but went limp and began to dance naturally.

“Am I as beautiful as that moving picture actress who was here this evening?” asked Lutte, wistfully.

“At least,” said Charles.

“Would I do for the moving pictures in America, in your Hollywood?” she asked, leaning upon him.

“Don’t bump,” said Charles. “Yes, you would do fine in Hollywood.”

“Do I dance well enough?” asked Lutte.

“Yes, darling, you do. You are a whizz.”

“What is that?”

“Something wonderful,” said Charles. “Come to me, angel.”

“Do you know anybody in Hollywood?” asked Lutte, sticking firmly to her one interest.

“No, but you might,” said Charles; “all Germany and Central Europe are there already; you’d be bound to run into friends. Anyway you won’t be lonesome long.”

Lutte put her mouth like a ripe peach to his ear and blowing warmly upon it whispered, “Take me to America with you.”

“Let’s go,” said Charles, and seizing her more firmly he ran a few steps towards the door. She held back. “No, I am serious, I want to go to America.”

“So do I,” said Charles, recklessly, “so does everybody.”

“That is not true,” said Lutte, severely, almost stopping in her tracks. At this moment Hans cut in. Charles sat down feeling cheated. Lutte’s manner changed completely. She melted towards Hans, they danced slowly and as they danced, she kissed him softly and continually and gently on his right cheek, her mouth meek and sweet, her eyes nearly closed. Over Hans’ disfigured face came that same look of full-fed pride, of composed self-approval—of arrogance, that was the word. Charles felt a flicker of sharp hatred for Hans. Then it passed. “Hell,” he said, aloud, yet to no one, “what of it?”

“I think so too,” said Tadeusz, “I think, hell, what of it?”

“Let’s have some brandy,” said Charles. Otto was sitting quietly, he roused and smiled.

“What a fine evening!” he said. “We are all friends, are we not?”

“Completely,” said Tadeusz, “we are all friends to you, Otto.” He had grown quieter and softer in his gestures, his eyes peered vaguely between his wrinkled lids, his little tight smile was constant. “I am getting damnation drunk, and my
conscience will begin hurting soon,” he said, contentedly. Then the others, listening dimly, heard him telling some story about his childhood in Cracow. “. . . in the old house where my family have lived since the twelfth century. . .” he said. “At Easter we ate only pork in contempt of the Jews, and after the long fasting of Lent naturally we gorged ourselves shamelessly. . . . On Easter morning after High Mass I would eat until I was perfectly round, and in pain. Then I would lie down and cry, and when they asked me what troubled me, I would say, out of shame, that my conscience was hurting me. They would be very respectful and comfort me, but sometimes I thought I saw a gleam in an eye, or just a flash of a look on a face—not my mother’s, but my sister’s, perhaps—she was a horrid, knowing little thing—and my nurse’s. One day my nurse gave me some soothing syrup and rubbed my stomach with that insulting false sympathy and said, ‘There now, your conscience feels better, doesn’t it?’ I went howling and told my mother that my nurse had kicked me in the stomach. Then I upchucked all my Easter pork, so the Jews had their revenge for once. My nurse said, ‘What a little monster it is’; then she and my mother talked in the next room, and when they came back smiling I knew the game was up. I never mentioned my conscience again to them. But once after I was grown up, or nearly, I was very drunk and came home at four in the morning, and I crawled upstairs because it seemed unreasonable, this business of people walking about on their hind legs all the time. The red stair carpet gave me a sense of great security and ease, and I remember feeling that I was a kind of prophet of good for mankind, restoring an old way of locomotion which would probably revolutionize all society once I had proved its pleasures and possibilities. The first obstacle I encountered was my mother. She stood at the head of the stairs holding a lighted candle, waiting without a word. I waved one paw at her but she did not respond. And when I put my head above the last step she kicked me under the chin and almost knocked me out. She never mentioned this incident and I could hardly believe it myself except for my sore tongue the next day. Well, such was my upbringing in that old city, but I remember it dearly now, something between a cemetery and a Lost Paradise, with an immense sound of bells. . . .”