Rumors of Peace (29 page)

T
HE DAYS WENT BY
. I mourned Mario's death. Egon's letter didn't come. We didn't cross the Rhine. Peter wrote from a forest in Luxembourg which he said was very cold and very quiet and which he called the ghost front. It made me nervous.

December 7 was a school day, but exactly the same as that Sunday in 1941: bright, wrong, out of kilter. Sounds held in by the fog were suddenly released: dogs barking, a train rumbling over the railroad bridge, shouts and truck motors from the garrison, and “Invasion!,” a rifle shot, a pounding torrent of water. All this glaring light, a God-made day for bombers. It would happen yet, God's little saved-up surprise, God's little reminder, like Port Chicago.

I remembered in Sunday school long ago a girl described God with a white beard and golden halo, and He had a wise, kind face, and little children were gathered around Him. But in the encyclopedia I saw how everyone slaughtered each other over Him, and it seemed He was just a bad joke, and if you had to give Him a face, it would be a laughing, sharp-toothed one. I'd like to see that girl in London or Berlin crawling through her bombed cellar, with her little sisters and brothers a pile of entrails, and I would like to know if she saw Him standing there in the blood with his kind, wise face; and if she did, that would
be the biggest joke of all, He would laugh so hard it would sound like the bombs coming down again—

—a shock out of the blue; I was being attacked, ripped into.

“What're you doing!” I cried. It was Dumb Donny, tearing my books from my arms.

“Just being chivalrous—”

“Give 'em back!” I was furious. “You came at me like a dive bomber!”

He dumped the books back in my arms and told me to dry up.

“And what about the Rhine?” I said, my heart still racing. “You're such a military genius. We haven't crossed it yet!”

“So what, just a few more days.”

“Huh!” I wanted to hit him, and I wanted to hit the weather, too, all this bright, glaring light. But he was talking on, about ordinary things.

“You want me to quiz you on the Four Freedoms for the test today?”

“Quiz yourself,” I said shortly.

“Okay, I'll recite them in all their glory.” And he held up four fingers. “Freedom of speech. Freedom of religion. Freedom from want. Freedom from fear. Which one's the most important? She'll ask that.”

“Freedom from Dumb Donny.”

He was silent for a moment; then he walked off.

All day he ignored me. In Social Studies I glanced a few times at the frigid face, but I was more involved with the weather, how a certain blue sky and certain slant of light could bring back something so violently, an old moment of horror thrashing up before your face, like a whale breaking from the ocean.

The teacher was passing out our test. “List the Four Freedoms. Which do you consider the most important? Explain in full.” I listed them and then wrote, “Freedom from fear is the most important.” But I could not think of an explanation. I still hadn't thought of one when the bell rang, and I put down, unsatisfactorily, “Fear is terrible.”

It was there, a white envelope lying on the lace cloth of the diningroom table. His name and address were in the upper-left-hand corner. His handwriting was foreign; intricate and graceful. And his ink was blue.

“Suse, who is this person, Egon Krawitz?” Mama asked.

My eyes lifted happily. “That friend of Helen Maria's, remember I told you about? That's studying social science? I asked him to send me the names of some books.”

“Oh,” said Mama pleasantly.

I took the letter to my room. Thudding down on my bed, I tore it open.

            
My dear Suse,

                
I wish I could help you, but I'm not sure what kind of reading your teacher has in mind. I can only recommend
History of Political Thought,
by Gettell, but I'm afraid it is very involved (and very long). Maybe your teacher himself could recommend something better.

                
Thank you, I remain healthy, and I suppose I am enjoying my studies. And you, studying so hard! I hope you will not try to figure out mankind all at once.

                
Yes, the Dumbarton Oaks conference was interesting, and it is to be hoped their goals will be realized. You say you would like to think so but it is more like poetry. That is true, perhaps, but poetry is more than beautiful words. Someday you must think just what poetry is.

                
Please never worry over your remark about Berlin. Of course, I understood how you meant it. Nor should you feel you can't write about the Allies pushing into Germany. I too hope the end will come soon. It has not been foggy here, just cold and overcast. Sometimes I forget where I am and think it will snow. Now I send you best wishes for a happy Christmas, Suse, and thank you for writing me such a good and interesting letter.

Sincerely,

Egon

I read it haltingly, slowed by the alien handwriting. Then I went back and read it again, and the words flowed into my heart. He cared what I thought about Dumbarton Oaks, he soothed me not to worry about my war remarks, he understood everything, and he thanked me
for such a good and interesting letter. We were two hearts that beat as one, he walking beneath the overcast sky and I walking here in the fog—two souls against the world! And as I read it a third time, the dazzling day in the creek flooded through me; if only we were there now, and his arms were around me, his lips pressed hard to mine. . . .

            
Dear Egon,

                
I'm writing right away to thank you for the name of the book. I'll try to get it right away at the library. I enjoyed your letter very much and am glad to know you're fine. I wish you would get snow in Berkeley, though I don't think it ever happened, but I know it is your natural condition in winter and I know how much you must miss it. I am going to think about what poetry really is, and then I will write you what I think, if you wouldn't mind. And so I will sign off now with all my best regards and with many warm wishes that you will enjoy a very merry Christmas.

Sincerely,

Suse

It was strange how it would not come out right in a letter. It was so polite and without a scrap about our dazzling embrace in the creek. But maybe our feelings could not be expressed in letters—for though his was beautiful, it was polite too. Our feelings could only be expressed in person. I must get to Berkeley.

With Egon's letter deep in my shoulder bag, I walked to school the next day in a cold, blowing drizzle. The halls smelled of damp wool and damp hair; everyone's cheeks were stung red; my own felt poreless and tingling, my eyes brightly washed. Buoyantly I banged my locker door open.

“You really burned me up yesterday,” came Dumb Donny's voice at my side.

I turned around. I had forgotten all about him.

“Don't ever call me that,” he said.

“Call you what?”

“Dumb Donny.”

“What d'you mean? It's your name.”

“You think I ever liked it?”

“I never thought about it.”

“A lot of people don't call me it anymore.”

“I didn't notice.”

“Well, notice.”

He was snotty, but I felt too great-hearted to care. And there were good things about Dumb Donny. He could discuss the war; even if his conclusions were wrong, he was more interesting on the subject than Peggy or Valerie or Eudene had ever been. He had even spoken of a map on which he moved around different colored pins representing armies. I would like to see that.

“So what do I call you?”

“Don.”

“Okay.”

I slammed the locker door shut, and with Dumb Donny—Don—at my side, started off for Miss Petain's—Mrs. Lewis's—class. But Egon was Egon forever, and deep inside my shoulder bag, pressed close to my side, his letter shone like buried light.

I
N THE MIDDLE
of December we were routed by a massive attack in a forest called the Ardennes. It was the forest Peter was in, the ghost front, and it was to become one of the bloodiest battle sites of the war, a swollen Nazi protrusion through the Allied lines into Luxembourg and Belgium, pointing us backward, away from Berlin. That was how it was as Christmas approached: our troops, with Peter among them, retreating, scattered to the winds in the Battle of the Bulge.

I wondered if after all this time, after coming so far, we might actually be going to lose.

“Not a chance,” said Don, ushering me over to the table where his map lay. We were in a glassed-in sun porch streaming with rain, like a glass submarine in a gray ocean. In a new raincoat, my old slicker outgrown, I looked down past the pointing finger.

“It's just a matter of time,” he said.

It always was.

“The black ones are them. These blue ones are us. The greens are British. The reds over there are Russians. The way I look at it—”

But now that I was here I couldn't get interested in these pins, these neat little dots of color. I gazed around the porch. Wicker chairs, potted violets, issues of the
National Geographic.
Behind us in the living room Don's younger brother and sister were stretched out on the floor reading
comic books. They were about eight and ten, and I had a sudden urge to leave Don and squeeze in between them. I belonged with them. All I had ever wanted was to lie content on the rug with my comic books. The rain would beat down, then spring would come, and summer, and autumn, and winter again, and nothing would ever change. . . .

“I thought you wanted to see this!”

I swung around, my face flushing red. It was mortifying to want his ten-year-old sister's body and her comic book, unbearable to feel his eyes bore into this infantile relapse. I had to give a casual toss of my hair to get back to fourteen.

“I was looking.”

“You weren't either!”

His face was tense. When people got tall, they seemed to break into raw, touchy spots like a measles rash; they became unpredictable, like overbred horses. You had to humor them.

“I was concentrating. You've got to look away to concentrate. You've got to see things in your mind's eye.”

“All your fancy talk,” he muttered, flinging down a red pin that bounced from the map to the floor.

You didn't have to humor your friends when you were small; you never hung on each other's words and glances and threw things down. I picked up the pin and flung it back on the map. “I was concentrating on the Russians. I was visualizing where they'd meet the Western armies.”

“That's what I was trying to
explain.
”

“Well I'm
listening.
”

He walked me home afterward, his good spirits restored, his big, bony fist punching out through the rain at hedges and bushes. The Bulge would collapse in two weeks; we'd cross the Rhine in three and capture Berlin in four. It would be the Yanks who dragged Hitler screaming from his Chancellery. It would be the Stars and Stripes that flew over the ruined city.

I couldn't see why. The Russians were closer.

“I know,” he said. “But that's my calculations. Wait and see.”

For all his pins, he just went by what he wanted. Well, I wanted it
too. I would like to be there with them when they threw Hitler against a wall and machine-gunned him to a pulp, but I didn't care who did it, the Yanks or the Russians or anybody else. I just wanted it done. But there was no glory in it. Hitler would slide down the wall, the firing squad would crunch off through the rubble, and the rest was smoke and silence, whichever flag flew over it.

“You want to make a bet this time?” Don asked.

“No. But I'll tell you one thing. Those hills will be green by the time anybody reaches Berlin.” The hills stood high in the driving rain, abrupt and massive, a sodden grayish brown. “They'll be green with spring, like tremendous emeralds.”

“That's poetic. That's very beautiful.”

I looked at him to see if he was making fun, but he was serious.

“Thank you,” I said.

“But I think you're wrong.”

“I hope I am.”

We were passing the garrison in its field of mud, where lakes were already forming, pocked white by the downpour. Soldiers slogged around the mired buildings like big bats in their flapping rain capes.

“I'd never put a garrison where it floods,” Don said. “They should've put it on a hill. I could've told them that. I could tell them a few things right now, like about the Ardennes.”

Just give him an army and he'd lead it to instant victory. But I didn't even know what victory was any longer, though once it had been simple: everybody against us dead. Not the Italians, necessarily, I'd never gotten them straightened out in my mind. But the Germans, and absolutely the Japs, every last rotten one in the world, dismembered and burned to a crisp. A pile of burning corpses five miles long, and our armies massed alongside with flying flags and booming cannons. But it no longer did anything for me. Something in me that had been black as pitch and hard as a diamond, something strong and unbreakable, had broken, and in its place was a strange spread-outness, like a thin, flickering sea, pointlessly awash.

Don was talking about the blue pins and the black pins in the snowy Ardennes, but if you looked at their boots, I thought, you wouldn't know what color pin they were, you would just know it was a boot
with a frostbitten foot inside; and that was the thin, flickering sea, that loss of boundaries, that absence of discrimination, all feet the same, all frostbite the same, and Helen Maria was probably right that they had played soccer and exchanged snapshots and there had never been a hard black diamond inside them, just inside me, and now it was gone, and there was nothing.

Hills like tremendous emeralds. I wrote it down in my Big Chief notebook. I wrote down everything that was connected with poetry and had several pages of notes now, including Webster's definition of a poem: “A composition designed to convey a vivid and imaginative sense of experience.” I saw no connection between that and the aims of the United Nations, and I was stuck. Egon must be looking in his mailbox every day, wondering why he hadn't heard. If only I had something really brilliant and amazing to say.

The reason I couldn't concentrate on my poetry notes was Peter. When we listened to the radio, I would look at Mama and Dad. They listened with a special thoughtfulness, and sometimes Dad's cigar would move back and forth in his mouth, as if he were not sitting here in the living room, but were deep in the bitter snow of the Ardennes. More than ever before, the house hung heavy with the threat of a sudden doorbell ring. In that heaviness, Christmas Eve came small and thin, like Pearl Harbor Christmas, as if nothing had changed since then, had gotten only worse.

Then the tide turned. The Bulge began to collapse. By New Year's Day of 1945 it was clear that we had won the battle, though it wasn't yet finished. Battles never stopped all at once; they died away, and many soldiers died with the dying away.

“Hey,” Don said the first day of school, “what'd I say about the Bulge?”

“It's not over yet.”

“You're pretty hard to please.”

“No I'm not. It's just facts.”

“Where're you going? You're going the wrong way.”

“New homeroom, I told you. I'm in College Prep now.”

“Oh, that's right. Hot stuff, up with the big brains.”

“They're not big brains, they just get decent grades.”

“You can have it.”

“You could have it too. You're not dumb. I always thought you were, but you surprised me.”

“You surprised me too. You always struck me as a complete moron.”

“Thank you,” I said, walking away. What was wrong with him, always so insulting? I was glad to get away from him into a new class. But I felt out of place as I sat down among the Towks, lonely for my careless, bogged-down companions of the last two years. There was something prim about these College Prep types, too neat, too much like each other. In dumbbell class you had variety. You had bold, sleazy girls, with penciled eyebrows and greasy lipstick, and boys in pachuco haircuts and leather jackets, who slouched around narrow-eyed like Humphrey Bogart, and you had certain Okie kids who never got rid of their Okieness but still looked unwashed and farm-bred and talked in a gray-sounding drawl, and you had a girl who was more like a boy, with her hair short and slicked back and a leather jacket over her dress, and a boy with a harelip, and then there were some goofy, talkative types like Dumb Donny had been, and some slow dreamy types, and then there was me, and for all our differences we got along, we were joined together in not caring about schoolwork, all bogged down together, cozy. We didn't care about the rest of the school; there was something ridiculous about the way they ran for puny school offices and took it as seriously as if they were Roosevelt and Dewey, and the way they aped college students, screaming themselves hoarse at our dinky basketball games, and how they walked home after school in couples, some of them holding hands, like something they'd seen on a
Saturday Evening Post
cover, whereas our sleazy girls and pachucos punched each other and exchanged racy jokes, which was more lively and real. These others were a herd of sheep, and here I was among them.

At least I was only here on probation, my grades having improved greatly but not extraordinarily, because of the Battle of the Bulge. I could always fall back again.

The middle of January we had a letter from Peter. He said they were stunned by the Germans striking back, nobody thought they had it in them to put up such a tremendous offensive. But it was their last
hope, and now their stuffings were knocked out for good. He said our stuffings had been pretty well knocked out for a while too. Everything was loused up by fog, and then the snow came, and maybe he'd have enjoyed it under other circumstances, since he'd never seen snow before, but it wasn't exactly
Holiday on Ice
when you were in massive retreat. It was the roughest countryside he'd ever been in, it reminded him of a high school field trip he'd taken up around Mendocino, rugged hills thick with trees and brush. And everything snowy and icy. Had we ever seen a bona fide icicle? He was looking at one a foot long from his dugout as he sat writing. Amazing, a real icicle, he'd thought they only existed in Andersen's fairy tales. What an education, join the Army and see the real icicles. He said if he sounded slaphappy, his buddy had found a bottle of wine in what was left of the village of censored, and they were feeling no pain. He was in good shape, not a scratch, and no frostbite either since he'd learned to take off wet boots and socks at night, but it was strange how slow everyone was about learning things, like getting tanks whitewashed and putting sheets over their fatigues. If he never saw the color white again, he'd be happy, but
c'est la vie;
at least the shoe was on the other foot now, and it was the Germans who were in retreat. He said his unit had been reduced to censored; a lot had been taken prisoner the first day. He didn't envy them, but at least they wouldn't be prisoners for long, it was the last leg. . . .

J
AN.
24:

St. Vith, Last Bulge

Holdout, Falls!

We could breathe again. I hoped Peter had another bottle of wine for the long tramp to Berlin, and I hoped I was wrong about its being spring when he got there, but at least he was on his way, unscratched, with the Bulge behind him, and I felt so good that I got my Big Chief notebook out and attacked my poetry letter to Egon.

            
Dear Egon,

                
You are probably wondering why I haven't sent you my thoughts about poetry before now, but there were some extreme reasons why I couldn't get down to it, even though I was very eager to.
I am happy to say that the reasons are gone now, and I am enthusiastically studying all the notes I have been making, in order to consider just what poetry is.

                
First of all, poetry is beautiful, which life is not always, so I think poetry is not like life. I think life is sometimes beautiful, but only certain moments, and it seems that poetry only concerns these moments and not all the other moments in between when you are having arguments or worrying and have a dark feeling or a knotted-up feeling. I think poetry must be written to make you remember the beautiful moments and have faith in them. Therefore, what I meant about the United Nations was that it believes in something beautiful, which is the idea of peace, and it wants to give us hope in peace. But history shows us that peace is only a very brief part of life, and so it seems to me that the United Nations is having faith in one small part and not taking the biggest part of life into consideration.

                
Webster's definition of a poem is: A composition designed to convey a vivid and imaginative experience. I have to admit that this does not make any sense to me. It doesn't say anything about a poem being beautiful, just that it should be vivid and imaginative. With that definition you could write about an explosion or even a dog scratching itself. That doesn't seem like poetry to me, it seems more like those moments in between, the terrible ones and the plain ordinary ones.

                
Maybe I haven't read enough poetry yet, but I've read The Windhover, by Gerard Manley Hopkins, and Alfred Lord Tennyson's The Eagle, and William Wordsworth's My Heart Leaps Up When I Behold, which are all magnificent, and John Keats's Ode to a Nightingale, which is my favorite—Thou wast not born for death, immortal Bird! I think it is so full of greatness, it makes my blood race! Anyway, those are the poems I have been reading, but I will read more in order to see if I have missed something about what poetry is. I am profoundly interested to know what you meant in your letter, because I'm sure if I understand what you meant that it will clear up everything. Unfortunately, the library did not have the book you recommended, but I am sure it would
have been excellent outside reading. I will close this letter on poetry now, hoping I haven't gone on too long. I am sending my very best wishes to you.