Rumors of Peace (21 page)

“I don't know anything,” I confessed, looking up tiredly. “I don't even know what a Jew is.”

Again, Egon did not look surprised. “Well, it is no disgrace. I think you consider it a disgrace not to know everything. You know quite a lot of things. I would have no worries; it will all come, by and by.”

Helen Maria was returning across the terrace.

“And the Jews—?” I asked.

“—Have a long and complicated history.”

“I knew it must be complicated.”

“More complicated”—and as he stood up in the slanting sunlight, I was again struck by the contrast between the jet black hair and light blue eyes—“than you can ever imagine.”

We walked back along the deserted campus. The sidewalks and benches shone with an aching gold, filling me with melancholy, with a sense of sun-sinking journeys. I thought of Peter in England, waiting for the invasion. I thought of Aunt Dorothy dead, and Eudene gone, and Peggy at the bottom of the sea, and of the long ride back through the evening hills.

On the street Egon shook my hand. “It has been a pleasure, Suse.”

“Me too,” I said, standing bereft as he took his hand away.

“See you at seven.” He waved at Helen Maria and started down the street.

My eyes flashed from his back to her face. “I have to go to the bathroom!”

“You should have come with me at the restaurant,” she said, heading for a gas station.

“Well I didn't!”

“Are you angry about something? Is it because I was sharp with you at the table?”

See you at seven! While I was snailing through the evening hills, they would be going out together, talking and laughing!

“I'm sorry, but you bring it on yourself. I never know what you'll say in front of people, you're such a mass of peculiar ideas.”

Running off together as soon as they got rid of me, and it was my day, my visit!

“But it all turned out fine. And Egon liked you, he liked you very much, I could tell.”

She spoke with real pleasure, with no jealousy at all, swelling my
wrath to a peak. “I'll wait for you over there,” she said, pointing at a bookstore. I slammed the rest room door behind me. Just like her, couldn't even wait, had to run off to a bunch of books.

But when I joined her there, it was to be presented with a gift, a scholarly volume called
Principia Mathematica,
by someone called Whitehead Russell. As she placed it in my hands, there was on her face that same spontaneous smile, that same warmth and interest that had made me so happy earlier. “You won't understand it now,” she said. “But at some point, if you go on to higher levels, the numbers will stop being reliable, and that's when you'll want to read it.”

I thanked her from the heart, for I knew her look was real, as real as Egon's blue and shining gaze. But in neither of them did it last, and that was real too. There was some gap between me and them, some distance so wide and deep and impassable that I felt tired in all my bones, and was almost glad to be going home.

T
HE INVASION
had become another rumor. Seven long months I had been waiting, torn between impatience and dread. By now I knew it was not going to happen, and I felt a large general disappointment, inside which burned a small particular joy.

One morning during first period a girl from the office came in with a note, an ordinary note, it seemed, since Mrs. Miller read it without expression. But when she had finished, she stood up behind her desk with a certain formality. My heart stood still. I knew what she was going to announce.

“Class, we have just learned that the invasion of Europe has begun. The Allies have landed in France.” A cheer went up, a long, rousing cheer, and when it was over, Mrs. Miller said, “I think we should have a moment of silence. Let us pray for the safety of our men and for an end to this terrible war.”

There was something austere, solemn, in the way she said it, maybe it was because of her grandson. She was silent, looking down at her desk. The class was silent too. I lowered my eyes and prayed for Peter.

At noon I ran home. Mama had gone downtown and bought a paper from the stand.

Invasion Extra!!

                       
Supreme Headquarters, Allied Expeditionary Forces, Tues., June 6—Masses of troops which landed in France with little opposition were fighting their way inland early today along a 100-mile stretch of the Normandy coast between Cherbourg and Le Havre. . . .

My eyes flicked up. Little opposition. The goose-stepping troops were reeling, defeated, their cities bombed, their spirit broken. Peter, helmeted, was running crouched through French lanes, firing his machine gun in every direction. Let him trample them down straight to Berlin; I wanted to be with him, I wanted to smell the smoking ruins, see the hordes of trembling prisoners, hear the burst of fire as Hitler was riddled to a jelly against a blackened wall.

“I kept worrying about Peter before,” I told Mama. “But I have a feeling now, now that it's finally started, that he's going to be safe.”

“Peter will be all right,” she agreed firmly.

I ran back to school, hot with joy. There was a lot of invasion talk on the lawn, but not hot, bursting talk. The only excited person was Dumb Donny, who ran around with an imaginary machine gun blazing, and whose legs the others swacked irritably as he plowed through them. I would have liked to join him but didn't want to be swacked like an idiot.

That afternoon when math period was over, Miss Moose called me to her desk and with a glowing face took both my hands in hers. My final semester grade was an A. In view of this unusual achievement, I would be allowed to try College Prep algebra in September.

I shouted the news at Valerie, collaring her in the hall.

“Well, that's good,” she piped. “That's very nice. Congratulations.”

You couldn't get her excited about anything. But I was grateful for her stern methods, and I had even grown to like her.

“Maybe we'll see each other this summer,” I said.

“Maybe you could come out and visit.”

“When?”

“Well, I don't know.”

“I can come anytime. Just tell me.” And I hurried down the hall for a triumphant glimpse of the beloved.

That night, when Dad came home from work, he was as delighted with my accomplishment as Mama had been. It was an even better moment than when I had feasted my eyes on Mr. Lewis today. Standing there in my parents' pleasure after so many years of miserable grades—puny, bug-low grades that they had worried about, but over which they had never made me feel dumb or belittled—I understood the depths of their long faith, not necessarily faith that I could do better, but faith that even if I couldn't, I was valuable and worthwhile. I felt this with a sense of rushing gratitude, and then they were taking me around the block to a neighbor with a telephone, to let me call Karla in San Francisco. I had never spoken on the telephone before, and I shouted my news into the mouthpiece. I heard Karla's disembodied voice rise high with congratulations; then I shouted a few more things, and Dad said I didn't have to shout, so I spoke with strained moderation, my hand damp around the strange instrument. We talked only briefly, since it was long distance, and I hung up shakily but honored and pleased with all this excitement. At home we turned on the news on the radio, “Men and women of the United States, this is a momentous hour in world history. This is the invasion of Hitler's Europe, the zero hour—” and I realized that my parents had set aside the invasion itself for my moment of glory, and I felt again that deep rush of gratitude.

Losses were light, the next few days' papers and broadcasts informed us. What did that mean? It meant few deaths, but for the one who got killed it was no light loss. I tried not to think of it. I tried to think of the end of school coming up. I tried to write Helen Maria about my math triumph, but my spelling was too bad and I didn't feel like looking up all the words. So I tried to look forward to my visit to Valerie's ranch. At school I kept badgering her to set a date.

The first morning of vacation I was fetched by Valerie and her mother and driven to Rancho Manzanita. It was no ranch at all, just a white modern-looking house with rounded corners and some of its windows
like portholes, which sat on a dry field surrounded by manzanita bushes and big oaks.

“Where's your pond?”

Valerie led me through the trees, and there it was, not very big and already beginning to sink in the summer heat, but dark glassy green and only a little ringed around the edge with yellow scum. White ducks paddled on its surface.

“I won't disturb them,” I said, unbuttoning my shirt.

“What are you doing?”

“Just going for a swim.”

“You can't. It's dirty.”

“It's not dirty.” In my undershirt and underpants I waded out, soft mud squishing between my toes, and dove under. The chilled, enveloping smoothness, the deepening green murk, then cleaving up into a sunburst, into the cool smell of mud and wet ferns, the soft busy barrage of quacks, and diving again.

It was afternoon when I crawled out.

Valerie was in her room, listening to
Concert Matinee
on her radio. “Did you come to visit me or to swim?” she asked.

“Both.”

“You could have brought your suit. You didn't have to be sneaky.”

“Sorry.” But I was prepared to be even sneakier. If Valerie kicked me out, I would come back whenever I wanted—it was only a six- or seven-mile walk—and swim secretly in her pond.

Valerie did not kick me out. With lips only slightly pursed, she suggested a game of two-handed bridge.

I was fetched again by Valerie and Mrs. Stappnagel, in what was to become a weekly visit. I didn't like or do well at two-handed bridge, but Valerie allowed me my swim each time, so I had to allow her her game. In a yellow sunsuit, a well-sharpened score pencil at her side, Valerie played with none of the hilarity that had punctuated Peggy's and my blackjack games, but she did smile at moments—a pensive lip curl accompanied by a slow, strategic upward glance from her cards, as if we were engaged in our own great war. A noble winner and stoic
loser, she would have made a fine general, of the old school, with a plumed helmet.

I liked Valerie, but ours was a friendship without much conversation because of her quality of contentment. She seemed to like her life exactly as it was and to require nothing from the outside. Although she was very intelligent, it was a little like being with Mario.

At home, Mama and I began to share something, though it was never mentioned. It was a fear about the doorbell, that whenever it rang unexpectedly, it might be the Western Union messenger boy. The sudden jangle sent a faint stiffness into Mama's face. She would cross the room, and in the time before she opened the door an unreality descended, a sense of slow motion and soundlessness, though your heart was racing and your eyes felt so sharp they felt they were cutting through the wood of the door. It always turned out to be the paper boy collecting or a neighbor wanting to borrow the mower, their ordinary faces dazzling and beloved through the screen, like those of great biblical saints.

When the Red Cross swimming lessons started, I had four days a week of swimming—three in the rowdy splashing of the pool and one in the dark mystery of Valerie's pond—and I should have been very happy, but I wasn't. The main reason was that I worried over Peter. But another reason was that I no longer loved Mr. Lewis. Instead of absence making the heart grow fonder, it was making him uninteresting. He seldom opened the moonlit door, and when he did, his face was so badly recollected that my thoughts passed on to other things. He was like Mr. Kerr. One day sudden and overwhelming, and one day nothing. Gone.

Parti avec le vent.
And where did it
parti
to, where was it now? Somewhere behind me. I felt there was a place behind me now that had not been there when I was younger, a place filled with faces and scenes and moments. Peter shining his loafer. Eudene running away from us in the rain. Professor Ford raising his spoon of red Jell-O. It was time that had accumulated behind me; it was the feeling of a past.

On my third visit to Rancho Manzanita, I stayed overnight. With
permission I dragged a sleeping bag out onto the garage roof, which opened from a door in the living room and which was used as a terrace and outfitted with garden furniture and potted lemon trees. Valerie had no desire to join me, but her mother said she should, since it was healthy for a person to sleep outdoors in the fresh air. And so from then on, zipped up in her sleeping bag, her bathrobe and spectacles folded neatly beside her, Valerie too became acquainted with the black, star-clustered sky and with the first coral streaks of dawn. But she never became an enthusiast.

It was the day after my third visit that we had a letter from Peter. It said Somewhere in France, June 12, 1944. Well, he said, it's really something, this invasion. Too bad he couldn't write a long letter, he had enough for a book, but he would just get this note off to let us know he was okay. He was writing in the dugout, there were three of them in it, Zafich, onetime butcher from Detroit, who was always talking about his snazzy wife back home, and Dolan, onetime interior decorator and habitué of the theater, and himself, Hansen, onetime shoe salesman, who never missed Buster Brown's till now. It wasn't bad though, the worst part was waiting seasick in the landing barge, he'd rather be shot at than seasick. It was a funny thing shooting and being shot at, hard to get used to, but he was getting used to it. He was lucky too, once a machine gun opened up in front of him, but out of about eight bullets he only got one, just barely grazed his arm. He had a souvenir scar now, which Zafich said was good for a free drink in any barroom in the States. As for France, it was a pretty place, old farms and cows. He was looking forward to Paris. He was beginning to feel like a world traveler, London, Paris, a special cut-rate tour for fifty thousand. . . .

He had a new dashing style, he was getting sophisticated, and he had a bullet scar on his arm. Let him never be hit in the head. Please let him stay lucky.

The month passed with banner headlines.

J
UNE
19:

Nazis Mowed Down

In Cherbourg Trap!

J
UNE
20:

Cherbourg Nazis in Wild Panic!

Confused Germans Reel Back

In Great Tank Fight for Caen!

J
UNE
29:

Bayonets Slash Path to Nazi Base!

J
UNE
30:

Nazis Smashed

In Caen Attack!

Yet by the time Caen was actually captured, by the British, on July 9, I realized that the invasion had progressed exactly thirty miles in over a month. We weren't cutting through the Germans like a hot knife through butter. It was going to be Italy all over again, inch by bloody inch, with staggering losses.