Rumors of Peace (20 page)

S
HORTLY AFTER
Helen Maria moved to Berkeley I had received a few lines in her elegant, spiky hand. She was very busy, but as soon as she could have me down, she would let me know. The weeks had passed without another word, but in late May, when I had given up all hope, she wrote again: “Terribly short notice, but what about this coming Saturday? Jack and Estelle have to drive to San Francisco in the morning, and they could drop you off on the way and pick you up when they go back around six. . . .”

What had happened to our plans for a whole weekend? With dinner at a restaurant and everything? But I would not quibble; a less than perfect visit was better than none at all.

Saturday morning at ten o'clock I stood waiting on the front porch in my good Scotch plaid dress. I watched as the sun rose higher and higher in the sky. It stood directly overhead by the time the Hattons arrived, two hours late. Then Dr. Hatton had to get out in her slow, meditative way and dally in conversation with Dad and Mama at the door, and it was a quarter past twelve before we were under way.

I sat tense on the edge of my seat, my eyes boring into the back of Mr. Hatton's head. He drove with maddening leisure, now and then tapping an ash from his cigarette, as if still deep in his newspaper at the breakfast table. “Go faster, dammit,” I said under my breath.

“Isn't it a lovely day for a drive?” asked Dr. Hatton, turning around with her pleasant, smoke-wreathed smile. “With the gas rationing, it's been ages since we've gotten out for a really nice long drive.”

I smiled back, clutching my knees.

And then, absentminded as usual, they forgot me. Once she leaned against him, her head resting on his shoulder. Another time I saw him reach slowly across to her neck and squeeze it. And as he drove, she would light his cigarettes for him, sticking one right in her own mouth and lighting it and then leaning over and putting it between his lips. It made me uneasy; I turned abruptly to the window and kept my eyes there. The sky was bright blue, and though past its peak, the sun spread a brilliant sheen across the hills, which were already baked dry by early summer and dabbed vivid bronze and black by grazing cows. I looked at the Burma Shave signs along the roadside.

                     
Slap . . .

                     
The Jap . . .

                     
With . . .

                     
Iron . . .

                     
Scrap . . .

                     
Burma Shave. . . .

At our rate of speed, I could read each sign about eight times.

On the front lawn of a large brown-shingled house shaded by evergreens several girls were sprawled. One of them, wearing a casual print dress and no shoes, jumped up and came over. It was Helen Maria, smiling and slouched. I sprang out, slammed the door, and stood beside her as her mother rolled down the window for a chat. The air was fragrant with the cool smell of cut grass. It was still spring down here, fresh and green. I smoothed my hair and straightened the skirt of my dress. At last the car moved off.

“Well!” said the genius, “Marvelous to see you! Come say hello to everyone!”

And taking my arm, she conducted me swiftly across the lawn. “A little friend of my sister,” she told the others in passing. “Wants to see the campus.” Glimpsed faces as my hostess swept me on, up the steps, into the house. A little friend of her sister? We hurried down a
hall, the bare feet padding ahead, then up more stairs, and down another hall and up more stairs.
“Violà!”
She swung open a door.

It was a true Parisian garret, slant-roofed and fascinating. But it was barer than her salon, and messier, and there was no smell of incense, and how could she say a little friend of her sister?

“Do you want to wash up? It's just down the hall.”

“No.” Why should I wash up? I was very clean, cleaner than she with her black-soled feet, which she was sticking into a pair of scuffed loafers. Slinging on a shoulder bag, she led me back out the door. “You missed lunch, but we'll grab a bite on campus.”

It struck me like a blow; her English accent was almost gone. And I hated the way she walked, with none of her old hauteur, but loose and slouched. I clumped sullenly behind her down the stairs, my Scotch plaid dress suddenly cutting me under the arms. Outside, she once again led me briskly past the faces on the lawn. My mouth settled in a hard line.

But down the street she said, “It's really good to see you, Suse!” And her smile was so spontaneous, so bright and unquestionable, that the little friend of her sister vanished from my troubled soul like a puff of smoke. “And I want you to catch me up on everything,” she went on, taking my arm as we walked.

I looked over at her sideways, with excitement. “Well, the big thing is that I'm being tutored in math by a very excellent tutor, and she says I'm bound to get an A this term.”

This was not strictly true, but Helen Maria's face lit up. “That's wonderful!” she exclaimed. “I'd given up all hope for you, but that's miraculous. Although I'm surprised your interest lies in math, I shouldn't think you had a very mathematical mind.”

“I do, though. I really like numbers, the way they always come out one certain way because they can't come out any other way. You know what I mean?”

“Yes, quite. They're reliable. Which, for me, excludes the possibility of excitement. But that's no doubt my own shortcoming. If you have a mathematical mind, I'm delighted to hear it.”

The air was fresh and bright around us, and there were no soldiers anywhere, no sandbags or barrage balloons or black oil tanks. Students
on bikes pedaled lazily by, tennis rackets in their wire baskets, and from open windows floated soft strains of radio music, and bells were chiming melodiously in the distance.

We passed through Sather Gate into a campus of sweeping green lawns and stately buildings. As we walked, Helen Maria began describing the history and function of each building. It was not very interesting; I looked at the students instead. There weren't many to be seen on a Saturday, and because of the draft, they were mostly girls, sunning themselves on benches or strolling around as we were. It was a sunny, peaceful scene, and I felt content just to walk along, thinking a little about Mr. Lewis and a lot about lunch.

In front of a building being described by Helen Maria as the Main Library, erected 1911, I beheld a beard: small, white, pointed, attached to a book-laden old man with bicycle clips around his trouser legs.

“A beard. Look.”

“Professor Ford, our Shakespeare expert. Please don't stare; it's rude.”

But the next moment she was staring herself; then a radiant smile broke across her face. Coming out of the library was a young man in dark slacks and a white shirt, his jacket thrown over one shoulder, reminding me with a pang of Peter. But though his eyes were as blue as Peter's—even bluer, light and startling—his hair was jet black, combed straight back without a part, and he was much older than Peter, maybe twenty-five or -six, with lines around his mouth. I knew who he was, that fellow she had mentioned a long time ago, the blue-eyed, black-haired 4-F.

With a grin making deep grooves of the lines, he came striding over and stood before us with his hands planted on his hips. The two of them kept grinning and staring at each other.

“So you are here today,” he said at last, speaking in a thick, guttural accent that made my ears prick suspiciously.

“I'm showing Suse the campus,” Helen Maria answered, still grinning like an idiot. “I think I mentioned yesterday she was coming?”

Yesterday? That amazed me; I thought from their expressions that they hadn't seen each other for weeks.

“Suse,” she was saying, “this is Egon Krawitz. And this is Suse Hansen.”

At least she didn't call me a little friend of her sister. She must have gotten that out of the way yesterday. Egon Krawitz extended a large, virile hand with which he shook mine warmly, sending a good-sized thrill up my spine. He was a person who looked directly at you, with great friendliness. His eyes shone.

“Delighted. And you are having a nice visit? You have seen the Campanile?”

“No,” I said politely, bringing back my tingling palm. “What's the Campanile?”

“Ah, then we shall take you there,” he smiled as the three of us walked on. Egon Krawitz was solid and tanned, not like a 4-F at all. His features were large, well formed, and his light blue eyes and jet black hair made a striking contrast, and there was something magnificent about him, something polished and exceptional, foreign. Krawitz, I mused as we walked; it was not German, of that I felt sure. It could be anything, Polish, Czech, Russian. And as we strolled, Helen Maria between us, I curled my fingers in and touched my palm, suddenly feeling—not only toward Helen Maria, but toward Mr. Lewis as well—a pang of treachery, a darkly immoral, yet not unpleasant feeling, and cast lowered, sidelong glances to my left, trying to see around the barrier of my hostess.

We never reached the Campanile, whatever it was. As my precious afternoon dwindled away, we strolled up sunny walks and down dusty paths, through stone archways and over broad lawns, and they walked with their arms around each other and talked so that I couldn't hear. I was hungry. I loathed their private tones. My dress was too short, too small, hideous.

Then suddenly Helen Maria recalled my existence.

“Tell Egon how good you are in math, Suse.”

I gave a sullen shrug.

“It is your field, mathematics?” asked Egon.

I nodded, feeling less sullen.

“Not only that, but she reads Flaubert. Tell Egon how many times you've read
Madame Bovary.
”

“Five,” I murmured, blushing with pleasure at his rich, foreign exclamation of approval. And at that heady moment I realized that our endless wandering had had a destination and that we had arrived.

I
T WAS
the outdoor terrace of a campus restaurant, filled with sunny café tables and the pleasant sound of voices and clinking china. Everything was improving, and with a thrill of familiarity I even recognized one of the diners: Professor Ford of the beard and bicycle clips, forking up a carrot salad. I smiled at him, and as we sat down at a nearby table, I looked with confidence at Egon. Professor Ford's field was Shakespeare; mine was mathematics.

“And what's your field, Egon, if I may ask?”

“Political science.”

“I think that sounds very interesting.”

He nodded agreeably, picking up his menu. “Useless probably, but interesting. But tell me,” he said, and the blue eyes looked warmly across the table at me, “how is it that this little town of yours produces such unusual young scholars as Helen Maria and yourself?”

I glanced horror-stricken at Helen Maria, but she only smiled, lighting a cigarette.

“I really don't know,” I murmured with embarrassment, taking up my menu. A hamburger and root beer float would have been to my liking, but it was not what an unusual young scholar would order, especially with Professor Ford looking over at me now and then, stroking his beard. We had salad, tuna sandwiches, and coffee, and while we ate, everything went wrong again.

They talked in German. I had heard enough movie Nazis to know. A harsh, nasty language, as if they had sore throats. Shamefully my eyes went around the terrace, but no one was listening. Returning to my food, I chewed ignored and unhappy, listening to the horrible language, my eyes on the pair. Their eyes were on each other; when one chewed, the other talked, and sometimes they both talked at once, and laughed. I clattered my fork, I set my cup down resoundingly, there was no reaction; I might have been air, and it was
my
day,
my
visit. With a mental slash I disowned the tingle, a dirty Axis thrill—she could have him, they deserved each other. And she was shameless; you could see she had her hand on his knee under the table. When I was finished, I sat back and folded my arms in a large gesture.

This had an effect. Egon looked over at me.

“Ah, see how rude we have been. Here Suse has finished already. You have enjoyed it? Good!” And settling back in his chair, he gave me his attention. “Do you know, I wish you would tell me something about
Madame Bovary,
for I read it so long ago I have forgotten it.”

Blankness and terror. Those blue shining eyes. Helen Maria sipping her coffee. I had only one wish, that they would ignore me again.

“Well?” said Helen Maria.

Under the table, my feet came nervously together. “Well, Flaubert was an unvarnished realist . . . he wasn't romantic, romantics are sloppy thinkers, he didn't like them . . . he didn't even like Madame Bovary too much because she was a sloppy thinker . . . but what he really hated was the priests and notaries, and so did she, because they stifled her. And so she took poison . . .” Vainly I racked my brain for more details. “It's beautifully written.”

“I am relieved to hear it,” said Egon, and smiled. “Well, I must reread it now, upon your recommendation.”

My heart flew to him. And Helen Maria, sipping her coffee, seemed pleased with what I had said. My eyes darted to Professor Ford, who was raising a spoon of red Jell-O, and raising his eyes too, which met mine with depths of silent congratulation. It would have been a perfect moment if only Egon weren't a German. But my mind was spiraling with accomplishment, and now I realized that he probably spoke several languages, as Helen Maria herself did, and that two such linguists might
speak anything at random, German, French, ancient Greek. It didn't mean a person was German just because he spoke German. After all, no German would be attending an American, an enemy university. He was from Poland, Czechoslovakia, or Russia. I put my money on Russia.

“Where are you from, Egon, if I may ask?”

“Berlin.”

I dropped my eyes. Berlin. The black heart of the Reich. He went on, not even lowering his voice as the waitress came over and poured more coffee. “That is to say, Dahlem, it is a suburb of Berlin, and a very pleasant one. It is very much like Berkeley, with all its trees . . .”

The waitress moved off. I could hear Professor Ford's spoon clinking in his dish as he listened.

“. . . not that Berlin is old, in the sense of Nürnberg or Cologne, but it is a very beautiful city, nevertheless. . . .”

“It isn't anymore,” I said coldly, looking up. “It's been bombed a hundred and twenty-seven times.”

“Too true,” he said sadly.

“Egon,” Helen Maria said, “please don't let her get started on the war. She'll never stop.”

“A young lady of so many interests,” he remarked, brightening again. “That is unusual, to know the exact number of raids on Berlin.”

“I read the papers. And there's going to be an invasion. Then your whole Germany will be wiped out. Totally.”

“Will you please get off your hobbyhorse!” Helen Maria snapped, and turned to him. “All Japanese are spies, and all Germans are Nazis. You haven't had to listen to it for years. It becomes boring in the extreme.”

I felt a rush of resentment, looking at her annoyed, superior face. She had no understanding of war. She had never been blown up in her cellar, she didn't know the Polish family in the potato field, she didn't have a brother waiting to go in with the invasion. She knew nothing except that place, Verdun, where they had played soccer because war is a game. She wouldn't care if Egon were Hitler. She had no inkling of anything. How dare she sit there insulting me because I did know something and was honest?

But Egon himself seemed amused. “No, Suse,” he said, “I'm afraid
you're a bit off the mark. For I happen to be a Jew.”

Jew. Though he said it casually, it seemed to be a word that settled everything, and Helen Maria looked from his face to mine with a righteous air. “And now,” she said, “I for one would like to talk about something else.”

“I never said anything about Nazis. How do you know what I think, Helen Maria? You're always doing that. It's unfair.”

“We're dropping the subject.” She spoke quietly, even pleasantly. You could tell she wanted everything to be smooth and nice. A woman was coming up the steps waving at us.

“It's true,” I told Egon, “I never thought you were a Nazi.”

He nodded, as if he believed me.

But what was a Jew? From Sunday school they were mixed up with bulrushes and date palms, and that's where they were, in the Bible. I didn't know they still existed. But here was Egon. How did he fit in with Germany up in the north? How could he be from Berlin and the bulrushes both?

The woman had pulled up a chair and flopped down, vigorously shaking hands with Egon and Helen Maria. Her face was plump and smooth, with sharp brown eyes, her thick brown hair swept carelessly into a bun, her heavy figure clad in a brown cotton skirt and black turtleneck sweater. I knew who she was, one of those Rosa Luxury women, for the name had stuck in my mind along with Helen Maria's description: buns and burning eyes. They were refugees who had gotten out before the war. Even though it was not logical to have refugees without a war, I was looking with my naked eyes at a refugee.

“My cousin Ruth,” Egon introduced us, and I realized that if they were cousins, then she must be a Jew, too, and that Jews must be refugees, and Egon must also be a refugee. Things seemed to be fitting together.

Her handshake was more violent than her cousin's, and her accent harsher. “So, you are visiting the campus. You have been to the Campanile?”

“Not yet.”

“You must. A splendid view.
Atemberaubend!”
She reached over and pulled a cigarette from Helen Maria's pack of Fleetwoods.
“Dreck,
”
she murmured, lighting up with a grimace, and began conversing in German.

The sunlight was still warm on my tight plaid shoulders, but as my eyes wandered around the terrace, I saw that the tables cast long blue shadows and that Professor Ford had gone, leaving behind only a crumpled napkin, which cast its own long blue shadow. The day was slipping away. I sank my chin into my hand, but no one noticed. I wondered if Egon knew that Helen Maria's feet were dirty inside her shoes. I wondered if anyone was ever going to order dessert. I wondered how long they were going to sit there using up my visit without a glance in my direction. I wasn't just anyone to be treated so shabbily. I was a mathematics scholar, I read Flaubert, and not only did I know the exact bombing score on Berlin, but on Hamburg and Bremen as well. I heard a pause in Ruth's loud voice and took my hand confidently from my chin.

“Are you a Jew, Ruth, if I may ask?”

She looked me sharply up and down. “What does she say?”

“Who knows?” said Helen Maria lightly, but her eyes slitted dangerously across the table at me. Once more my feet came nervously together.

“Why do you wish to know?” Ruth asked, and her sharp brown eyes were unpleasant.

I managed to say, with a shrug, “Just curious,” but to my alarm, the unpleasant look deepened.

“We have here a young lady of many interests,” came Egon's voice, calm and even genial. “What is it exactly you wish to know?”

Helen Maria's eyes closed.

But Egon's tone gave me courage. I would ask something that could not possibly make Ruth's eyes more unpleasant and that would also show that I already knew a thing or two.

“Well, I would like to know what year you got out before the war.”

“What year?” said Egon. “Late in thirty-eight. You have heard of Crystal Night?”

It brought to my mind ice, snow, crystal stars. German Christmas Eve. I nodded.

“So you know then. Jews were beaten and arrested; shops and synagogues were destroyed.”

And on Christmas Eve, that was horrible. Did it happen every Christmas Eve, a monstrous German custom? And had Egon himself been beaten and arrested? And Ruth? Ruth I didn't care about, let them beat her. But Egon . . . I felt a surge of anger.

“I'd like to beat
them,
didn't anybody beat
them?
”

“A little difficult, under the circumstances,” he said dryly, and even smiled, but it seemed that as he spoke, a memory of the purest loathing flicked across his face and was gone.

“I think it's horrible that they do it on Christmas Eve.”

“Christmas Eve?”

“Crystal Night. . . .” But even as I spoke, I realized with a cringe of my toes that I had misunderstood and had now released a profound stupidity.

Egon did not seem at all surprised by this. “No, that is not quite it,” he explained. “There is no connection between Christmas Eve and Crystal Night, though I see that it might sound that way.”

Helen Maria was calmly finishing her salad; she seemed relieved. As for Ruth, she had sat silent all this time, puffing on her cigarette. She no longer looked unpleasant; she didn't even look interested. She blew out a stream of smoke and looked at Egon.

“Do you always air the matter to schoolchildren?”

“Not always.”

“It is in poor taste.”

“I have poor taste.”

But to me she seemed the one with poor taste, with her straggling bun and loud voice and the way she took cigarettes without asking. But she seemed in a better frame of mind now, so I asked, “Are you from Berlin too?” And to point out my knowledge of the city, I added, “From Dahlem?”

“Berlin, yes,” she snapped, grinding out her cigarette and glancing at her watch. “Dahlem, I am afraid not. I am not quite so grand. Do you always ask so many questions? I pity your teachers.” She stood up and shook hands with the others, then turned and shook hands with me too, and surprised me with a brief pleasantry. “I hope you will enjoy fully the Campanile.”

I watched her go down the steps with her straggling bun. I did not
really dislike her, and I hoped she had not been beaten.

“I must go too,” said Egon.

My heart sank at this, but Helen Maria said we would walk with him partway, and then he and I were left alone while she went to the ladies' room—a place I needed badly to visit myself, but for which I was not willing to give up this private moment.

It was he who spoke first. He asked if I was looking forward to summer vacation. I said yes, and confided that summer was my favorite season. He said it was his too, and this, I felt, was something special between us, a bond. I asked if he liked America, and he said yes, although it was, well, very different of course. I asked if his family was here too. He said his mother was in New York, but his two older brothers were still in Germany. His father had died a few years after the war.

“Was that the First World War?”

He nodded.

“Helen Maria insists they played soccer together at Verdun, the enemies together.” I watched for a scowl of denial.

No scowl appeared. “Verdun? No. But things like that happened at other places. Senlis, for instance.” And to this crushing reply, he added, “My father spoke of it. Or so they tell me; I was too young when he died to have heard about his experiences.”

I hesitated. “You mean he was there? He fought in the war?”

He nodded. “He won the Iron Cross, First Class.” And just as a flicker of loathing had crossed his face earlier, a flicker of pride crossed it now. I looked down. He was the enemy after all, with his passion for Berlin where the Führer raved from a balcony, and with his father slaughtering Yanks in the mud and getting the Iron Cross for it; but why would his father, who was a Jew, fight for the Germans, who beat up Jews? And why did they beat them up? And how were they from the Bible and Germany both? My brain creaked with confusion, and I had an eleven-year-old tutor, and all I had said about
Madame Bovary
was what Helen Maria had once said, and Professor Ford didn't know I existed, not even when he raised his spoon of red Jell-O and looked at me.