Rumors of Peace (32 page)

“And after that,” Peggy went on, “you'll get your period.”

There was nothing romantic about menstruation; it was just disgusting. “Who wants it?”

“You don't ask, kiddo, you just get it.”

“Well, I'm going to ignore it.”

“Just try to,” she sneered, “when you're moaning and groaning with the cramps.”

“I won't be getting the cramps. I don't believe in all that Mother Basketball junk. Anyway, I'd like to change the subject. I'd like to talk about something inspiring.”

“Like what,” she said shortly. She would rather have talked about menstruation. Maybe it was something she couldn't discuss with her other friends. If so, I was with them.

“The United Nations,” I said. “You know where they're having their first meeting? Next month? San Francisco. The public's invited and everything. President Roosevelt will be there in person.”

“He doesn't cut any ice with me. I'm a Republican.”

“I never knew that.”

“I'm a Republican because everybody in my family's a Democrat. I believe in freedom. And I believe in freedom of speech. So I'll tell you something. I know who you're in love with. Egon.”

It was like those days after Pearl Harbor when I never showed anything on my face. Bombs exploding everywhere, death all around, I never gave a twitch. “Really? I'd like to know where you got that silly idea.”

“Because you know his name as well as I do, but you keep pretending you can't remember it. And you keep asking who Helen Maria's going with. It's plain as day—”

“It's none of your business—what're you sticking your big nose in for!”

“I'm not.” She looked offended. “I thought we were letting our hair down. I thought we were sharing our deepest thoughts.”

“Baloney!” I said, getting to my feet. “We've had to start over three times—we don't even know each other anymore. And if you tell Helen Maria about him and me, I'll kill you. Or if you dare write
him,
I'll strangle you with my bare hands!”

“Don't you talk like that to
me,
you assy moron!” she snapped, jumping up.

“I mean it! If he thought I was going around blabbing to everybody—it's unfair! I didn't blab anything, you just stuck your big nose in! Well, it's between him and me! It's private!”

“Do you think I care about your stupid crushes?”

“It's not a crush!”

“Don't you yell at
me,
you assy moron!”

“You call me that again, and I'll smash you!”

“I'll call you anything I want! We're not friends!”

“You've made that clear enough!”

“
You've
made it clear!”

We stood breathing in each other's faces while Rudy gazed up from the floor, his tail thumping worriedly. Peggy wiped her mouth angrily with the back of her hand.

“You must think I've gotten pretty low if you think I'd go talking behind your back to Helen Maria or Egon. That was insulting. Because I'll tell you this, whatever else I am, I'm no informer. That was a low thing to say!”

I looked away from the injured face. “All right, I'm sorry. I apologize.”

“All right. I accept your apology.” She crossed her arms. “Do you want to start over again? I don't think it's worth it.”

“It's up to you.”

“I don't give a damn one way or another.”

“I don't either.”

We stood in silence, each waiting for the other to decide. Then warily, both at the same time, we finally lowered ourselves to the rug again.

                         
—EUROPANA—

                         
by Raymond Ken

                     
Performed by the Mendoza

                     
Jr. High School Symphony

                     
Orchestra, under the

                     
direction of Raymond Kerr.

                     
March 16, 1945—8
P.M.

                     
Jr. High School Auditorium

—Admission Free—

D
AD NEVER GOT HOME
early enough from the shipyard to go anywhere, so on Friday evening Mama and I walked over together, putting up our umbrella under a heavy downpour; this boded ill because no one would want to come out in such weather. But a block or two before the school, I saw that it was going to be a full house; the sidewalk was alive with people hurrying along under their umbrellas like those crowds you saw in the movies rushing to the opening night of Carnegie Hall. Ahead of us, in the rain, the building was bright with lit windows, stately and gala, and as you crowded up the wet steps to the open doors, you could hear the busy, heart-thrilling toots and pipings of the orchestra warming up.

We got good seats on the aisle, and pulling off my galoshes and coat, I looked around to see who was here. I didn't see any of my
dumbbell friends; but every Towk in school had shown up, some in groups, some with parents, and every single teacher was present, sitting with husbands or wives never laid eyes on before. Mrs. Miller, for instance, had a flesh and blood mate with a stiff gray mustache and bald head, and Mr. Villendo of the double-sized eyes sat right next to me holding hands with an enormously pregnant wife in a flowered smock.

There were outsiders, too, mostly society women whose pictures you saw in the Local Events section of the
Clarion,
and there were a lot of soldiers, sitting quiet and self-conscious with their caps in their laps. And there—I pointed her out to Mama—was the famous Mrs. Kerr, whom I recognized by her purple eyelids and because she was the center of attraction. She was sitting in an aisle seat, wearing a long wine-colored gown with a white corsage pinned to her shoulder, and people kept stopping and shaking hands with her and laughing and talking and then patting her hand in congratulation as they made way for the next well-wisher. She had blue-black hair worn in a very unusual style, pulled straight up on top of her head in a shiny tight bun. Her purple lids were big and droopy, with black spiky eyelashes, and she was gaunt and haggard-looking, with long teeth under her red lipstick. She wasn't pretty, but she was striking—so ruined and yet passionate-looking, for under the purple lids the eyes flashed, and the great toothy smile was dazzling in its pleasure and excitement, and yet there was something tragic about that smile, something that cut my heart—

Some people had stopped at our side. It was the Stappnagels, bland and smiling as always, talking pleasantly with Mama and greeting my lifted eyes with friendly hellos. My ferocious hatred of them was gone, but like the Japs, they were people I would never be able to give a spontaneous smile; something of them was embedded in my flesh like old pieces of shrapnel, no longer painful, but not to be forgotten. I ignored them as they talked. I didn't notice Valerie at first. She was at their side, but being so small, she was half lost from sight in the streaming crowd. I had feared that my last conversation had left her disillusioned and empty, and I was relieved to see her looking the same as ever, very serious and mathematical and content. We exchanged a brief hello, and then the three of them passed back into the crowd to find their seats.

Then it was Peggy leaning down to chat, while Jerry, the highest of all Towks, stood next to her, patient and courteous, with her raincoat over his arm, smiling brightly as he was introduced to Mama and smiling at me, too.

“What a nice boy,” Mama said when they had gone on.

“He's student body president. She likes to impress people with him.”

“Now don't be like that. I'm sure she likes him for himself. He seems very nice.”

It was true. He did. But I knew Peggy better than Mama did; she only got Peggy's sweet side, I got the dozen other sides. We had had another afternoon session since the first one, but for all our shared confidences there was still a circling-around quality that I felt might go on forever, like a basically false equation that could never be worked out.

Up on the stage the orchestra players were dressed in neat white blouses and dark trousers or skirts. They looked serious and professional as they warmed up, trilling and blaring and turning the music sheets on their stands, seemingly unaware of the audience, and there was a special and festive smell throughout the room, a mixture of perfume and brilliantine and wet umbrellas, which added to the feeling of drama and gaiety.

I took up the program I had been handed at the door. “EUROPANA,” it said, “A SYMPHONIC POEM.” There was a good deal underneath about a wanderer coming under the spell of many different countries, and how he begins to hear the tremors of war and then its terrible clash, and then at last how through the smoke he glimpses the dove of peace descending. It was a wonderful theme, my kind of theme. How right I was to have sensed something great and remarkable in Mr. Kerr. And now everyone began to clap, and I looked up.

Mr. Kerr was crossing the stage, his face sterner than I had ever seen it, the nostrils positively gigantic. He was not in his velvet jacket and old woven sandals, but wore a dark suit and black shoes. His long gray-streaked hair was combed smoothly back along the sides. Turning his back to us, he stood waiting as the claps died down. You could hear a few coughs and the sound of seats being settled into more comfortably. There was silence. Then Mr. Kerr raised his baton.

A thin flute note blossomed through the auditorium, so weak and
wobbly that it was a relief when the string instruments joined in, not exactly on time, but quickly getting straightened out as Mr. Kerr leaned forward pointing his baton at various players and with his left hand making deep, scooping movements. It was a nice melody and you could feel yourself wandering over hill and dale, and then the whole orchestra came rushing in and you weren't sure where you were—maybe being carried down a turbulent river, over a huge waterfall—and Mr. Kerr stood on his toes and threw his arms out quiveringly, so that it was thrilling and inspiring, and I glanced with excitement at Mama.

But then I lost track of where we were. There seemed to be a lot of modern zigzags and repeatings, like the records of Alban Berg that Helen Maria sometimes played; it got more and more complicated and mathematical until all at once it tangled up in a knot, and all the eyes of the players hung worriedly on Mr. Kerr's face. Somehow, with skids and lapses, they were dragged out of the tangle onto a dark mountaintop, and you were filled with the music's sadness, a sadness that became slower and softer until it was as desperately forlorn as Mahler; in fact, it sounded exactly like Mahler. These soft passages seemed hard to do, because you could hear flat notes twanging through like hiccups, making Mr. Kerr's neck stiffen each time; but after a while Mahler disappeared and we were back with the zigzags.

My mind drifted. I thought of the headlines a week ago—“Yanks Cross Rhine at Remagen”—and wondered again if Peter had been among them. I thought of the Russians advancing from the other direction. I thought of Hitler trembling in his Chancellery and of the hills around Berlin growing more emerald green every day, as our own hills in Mendoza were growing.

I was brought back to the music by the wobbly flute again. It was going on in a long solo, which made you feel sorry for the player, an eighth-grade girl with black bangs who looked cross-eyed with nervousness. The passage was torture to listen to, but at last the violins came sweeping in again, this time in unison, ominous, reminding you of gray skies and swirling wind. Bassoons and tubas sounded through, deep and fateful, and a girl in the back row holding a triangle now gave it a great bop, and it sounded like the peal of a bell, echoing bodefully,
and very slowly the violins faded away to a whisper, and then suddenly there was a crash of cymbals.

The war had begun. It was the longest part of the symphony, and the best—brilliant with trumpets and trombones, the kettle drums booming—and Mr. Kerr was directing with his whole soul, crouching, leaping, arms shooting in every direction, his long hair flying.

He had a wonderful lead trumpet, just a short old seventh grader but he knew what he was doing and his solos flashed and shimmered, sweeping the other trumpets into magnificent fanfares like something from the medieval age, with banners and plumes and glinting armor—war as it should be, thrilling the soul—and now the cymbals clashed again and the kettle drums boomed, and unfortunately a clarinet player knocked over his music stand in his haste to turn a page; but even this could not mar the tremendous crescendo that was building up, and now it came, an earsplitting blast that sent chills down your spine, and Mr. Kerr was on his toes, his elbows tight against his sides, his whole body quivering.

Then a slash of the baton. Abrupt silence. The flute player lifted her instrument to her lips again. The long, wobbly note again, but this time growing steady, gradually gaining resonance. She lifted your eyes upward, for you could see the dove of peace flying overhead; it swooped and careened in a sweet, clear melody, and slowly, very slowly, it descended, its wings fluttering, folding, settling, and with infinite grace, the sweet, clear melody shaded to silence.

Mr. Kerr brought the baton down. He stood as he was for a moment, then turned around as the auditorium exploded with applause. His face shone with sweat, and it was still stern, the nostrils huge. He bowed. He bowed again. He gestured to the flute girl and trumpet boy, and they bowed, embarrassed, but covered with smiles. Mr. Kerr bowed again, deeply.

It didn't seem that the deafening applause could grow greater, but it did. My palms hurt with the glory of their beating, my heart was pounding, and I exchanged delighted looks with Mama, who was clapping almost as hard as I but in a more ladylike way. Across the aisle, people were urging Mrs. Kerr to stand up, and now she did. She must have
been an actress once because she was thrilling—she threw her arm out at the audience and then at Mr. Kerr, and then she bowed graciously, her smile radiant with pride for her husband, a pride that shone with the most naked, unabashed love, and even if all this glory was taking place in the Mendoza Junior High School auditorium instead of Carnegie Hall, I saw no tragedy in that smile now. As my palms throbbed and stung, I looked around me. There was Notebook Jean giving her all, and Powder Jean, too, and Bev and Peggy and Jerry and every last Towk in the place. For all their pleats talk and stupidities, I would forever respect them for coming here and giving Mr. Kerr his moment, for honoring and appreciating those eight long years of labor.

Still stern, passing his hand through his wild hair, Mr. Kerr bowed again and turned to accept from the principal's wife, who came swishing across the stage in a blue evening gown and a tremendous smile, a bouquet of red roses, which he held stiffly, bowing to her, and then to us again, and then to the orchestra. Then he strode offstage, and with a final surge the applause died, replaced by new excitement and commotion as people began getting up, most of us leaving but others hurrying backstage—Mrs. Kerr, of course, and teachers, and the parents of the players, and the society ladies, and even a photographer from the
Clarion
, holding his flash camera high above him in the crush.

Leaving Mr. Kerr to his triumph, we filed back up the aisle, down the hall, and into the wet night. The rain pounded off the umbrella, but I was lit up in my blood.

“Wasn't it beautiful!”

“It was. It was absolutely beautiful,” said Mama, linking her arm in mine as we walked. “Your school is lucky to have such a talented person teaching.”

“I know.”

I loved Mr. Kerr, and I even loved my school—every bright window gleaming through the rain, and every teacher and student I had ever cursed.