Rumors of Peace (33 page)

            
Dear Egon,

                
I have had a wonderful experience, our music teacher composed a symphony called
Europana,
and it was performed at night. It was so powerful and beautiful that everyone was totally demolished. It was about Europe and the war, and then the dove of peace descended. I believe he's a genius, and I believe you are too. You said you weren't a poet, but your letter was a supreme poem that I will keep forever. You have given me so much to think about and hope for, you have really changed my life and made me a deeper, happier person. I would love to see you in person again, because there's so much that's impossible to say in letters. I could come down by train for a visit, and I could go home on the train too. Transportation is no problem.

                
I want to tell you I understand about the dog scratching, it came to me in a flash of illumination as a dog I know scratched himself. I saw his soul. I think I understand about souls now, thanks to you. I never liked my College Prep classmates because they're trite, but I think each one of them has got a small something in their soul worth enduring. I saw this in a flash of illumination at the symphony when they came through the rain to cheer Mr. Kerr, our music teacher, in his moment of well-earned triumph. I
will always respect them for that. I know I would not have had this illumination if it hadn't been for your letter, which has made me a deeper person.

                
There is so much to answer in your letter that I can't even begin to do it in this reply. If you had a free Saturday I could just jump on the train and be down there in forty-five minutes. I must end this now because I don't want to take too much time away from your translation work. That is why I didn't write all this time, but believe me, that's the only reason! I will sign off now with deepest regards, hoping to hear from you soon about coming down.

Suse

I didn't allow myself to reread this letter. With a racing heart I took it to the corner mailbox and thrust it in. Then a horrible nervousness overcame me, a sense of having done something rash and irrevocable. What would he think of my asking so brazenly to come and visit him? It was true that our two hearts beat as one; but there was such a thing as good manners, and I had thrown them to the winds. It was
Europana,
it had lifted me too high. What if I had undone all his love, if he would see me now as just another pushy, babbling bobby-soxer, hardly worth getting entangled with?

But he could never misread me that badly, not when we were as close as we were.

A few days later I came home from school to find an envelope waiting for me on the dining-room table. It was addressed in Helen Maria's elegant, spiky hand. They were engaged. They had read my letter. She was furious. So was he. I opened it with a sick feeling.

            
Dear Suse,

                
Thanks for your nice note, sorry I haven't had time to answer till now. Yes, it was a stimulating discussion we had that day in the kitchen; I was impressed by your thinking; it struck me as having evolved enormously. I would enjoy picking up that discussion,
and we must do it as soon as I see a free day ahead or next time I come home. Speaking of which, I'm sorry not to have gotten in touch when I was home for Christmas, but I was feeling somewhat under the weather.

                
So you're seeing Peggy again; most interesting. See if you can knock some sense into her head, though I think she's too far gone. She wants pennants (and
pompoms;
I desisted) and squeezes me (implausibly) for all the fine points of campus social activities. This is what college means to her. She's become more consistently trivial than I had ever feared in my worst moments. I allow for fads and tender years, but there's something self-willed in Peggy which transcends ephemera. I agree that she shows a certain ennui, but whether this is one of her many poses or a sign of true boredom I'm not sure. If the latter, bring to bear on it all your resources.

                
It's raining fiercely here today, pouring off the eaves like a waterfall. Your great friend Ruth (who lives on the second floor) just left a minute ago. I know you don't like her—she has an abrasive quality—but she's a good person, and was very kind to me a while back when I was somewhat under the weather for various reasons.

                
But now I want to tell you exciting news. If the war ends in the next few months, I'll be sailing for England in the autumn. I've been waiting so many years that it should come as an anticlimax, but I'm quite beside myself. One of the reasons this letter is so long is that I can't concentrate on my work—but I'd better get down to it! In closing, let me say I'm glad you're beginning to cherish some hopes for mankind. And if you've decided you're not a scholar, so be it. The important thing is to seek, and you are doing that.

Helen Maria

What a relief on all counts. Our friendship was intact. Her split from Egon was absolute. And she was beside herself with joy to be sailing for England at long last. A world of white swans after winter, released across the blue of open seas.

“Helen Maria's going to England!” I told Mama, waving the letter.
I told Dad, too, when he came home from work that night. “At least she will be if the war in Europe's over in the next few months. And it will be, don't you think?”

“I don't know, but it could look like it,” he said. “Maybe even by next month.”

“Then everybody'll be free and going everywhere—”

I stopped one morning before a notice on the bulletin board.

!UNITED NATIONS CHARTER MEETING!

                             
Anyone interested in attending this

                             
historic event, please sign up at

                             
the office. Transportation to San

                             
Francisco by school bus. Leaves

                             
from here 9
A.M.
, Thurs., April 26.

I went directly to the office and signed up. At noon, eating lunch with Don, I learned that he had signed up too.

“It's history in the making,” he said, cracking a hard-boiled egg against his forehead. “We owe it to ourselves to see it. Not that they'll make a dent in Malthus.”

“I don't want to sit next to you on the bus if you're going to talk that way. You know what you don't have? A soul.”

“I've got as much of a soul as you do,” he returned, peeling the egg with his long, clumsy fingers. “Only it's got its feet on the ground.”

“Baloney. Mine are more on the ground than yours—mine got frostbite in the Bulge and all you ever did was shove those little pins around that don't have a toe to get cold.”

He bit the egg in two, giving a slow shake of his head. “I never know what you're talking about.”

“Just don't sit next to me on the bus.”

“Who wants to? I don't want to sit by you. You bore me.”

“Good.”

“Or we'll talk about the weather. You can bore me about the weather.”

“Just don't talk about Malthus. I'd like it to be a nice day.”

“It'll probably rain.”

But it was more than a month away; spring would be in full flower. And the war might even be over by then.

I talked to Peggy in the hall. “Everybody'll want to go because they'll get the whole day off. You'd better sign up now.”

“Who says I want to? You'll probably have to stand in line over there for hours.”

“It's worth it, isn't it? It's history in the making. Even if you don't like Roosevelt.”

“Maybe I'll sign up, but I don't know if I'll go. School excursions bore me out of my mind.”

“Pretty soon you won't have a mind to be bored out of,” I said, remembering Helen Maria's instructions.

“You give me a pain.”

“It's a crucial decision, Peggy. To go or not to go. At least put your name down. Then you'll have a whole month to think it over.”

“Maybe,” she said, walking off to link arms with Jerry.

The end of March we had a letter from Peter. He had crossed at Remagen with the first breakthrough, over the Ludendorff Bridge. He said the Rhine wasn't much, at least where they crossed, brown and still and surprisingly narrow. He said in Remagen, civilians came running to show them where German soldiers were hiding in cellars; the soldiers were so demoralized that they had actually sent the civilians to bring the Americans in. But the bridge itself wasn't such an easy nut to crack, and when they finally set foot on the east bank, they didn't even have time to think about it because they had to take a hill. You'd think climbing a hill would be simple enough, but it was steep and covered with loose rocks, and it was here he met his downfall, wrenched his ankle and knocked two teeth out . . .

Thank God for such a merciful downfall, thank God his luck had broken in that small way, like the Normandy nick in his arm. It would keep the fates satisfied.

. . . so he was off his feet for a few days, taking it easy. It was good weather, the countryside was nice, and he was studying German from an old phrasebook he'd picked up in London. Now he could say such useful things as “Will you please direct me to the opera house?” and “Kindly take my trousers to be pressed.” . . .

I
NEVER KNEW
when the barrage balloons were taken down. Maybe months ago, but the weather was so thick and dark you didn't notice. I only noticed in early April. There hung the sky a deep pure blue, with nothing in it but a couple of sea gulls.

It was a Saturday, and I had gone to the Market Basket to buy some potatoes for Mama, wandering on through empty lots with the sun roasting my shoulders. The tall, springy grass, bright with dandelions and poppies, made me stop every few minutes with my nostrils wide. There was a sharp grassy sweetness mixed with the rich dirt smell, as if the sun had all at once unlocked these smells and released them in a steady, overpowering uprush, while overhead white butterflies tumbled high and low in the breeze, which blew over your face as clear and cool as the sun shone hot. Out on the sidewalk the pavement felt warm through your shoe soles, and the store windows looked newly washed and polished, and everything inside them stood in fresh, bright display.

It was too much to expect the sandbags to be gone just because the barrage balloons were. They still stood shored against Sheriff O'Toole's office: hard, shriveled, streaked, and blotched with long years of sun and rain. But the sky was blue, and the air sweet, and beneath my shirt my chest had put forth two very small mounds, so that I too felt a sense of beginnings.

There was the usual bustle around the train depot and USO, but as soon as you crossed the tracks and started down the long road to the wharf, you walked in midmorning silence. Birds chirped in the trees that lined the road. They were olive trees, small and gnarled, with pale grayish leaves flickering. Behind them stretched the tule marsh with its sharp smell of mud and salt. The water lapped brown among the reeds, but farther out it graded into a smooth sheet of green with a long, broad strip across it like a shining mirror. I looked up at the sky again, holding nothing in its blueness but the sun and a few gulls gliding.

On the wharf radio music and boisterous voices rolled out from the baitshop-saloon, a long weathered shack built on pilings. A group of society ladies carrying boxes was clattering up the gangway to the Bass Club, which was an old ferryboat where social events were held on Saturday nights. Down in the water, laid out in rows along swaying wooden walkways, fishing boats were bobbing, while men in black knitted caps or dirty white yachting caps with gold braid worked on the motors or puttered around with a bottle of beer in their hands. The boats began rocking wildly; it was the ferry coming in, the
City of Mendoza,
sending out a storm of waves. I hurried over and watched it churning into the slip, heaving from one side to the other against the pilings, setting them creaking and groaning, and finally hitting the dock with a tremendous thud as the water below fumed white and gnashing. The steel apron banged down, men leaped off pulling ropes to fasten to the pier, and the cars rolled out with a thump, one by one, while bells clanged and gulls swooped above in wild circles.

After a tour of the people fishing, sitting along the dockside as always, waiting patiently for the bass too oily to eat, I remembered the potatoes I was carrying and started back. The air was clear as glass, and looking across the water at the hills, I felt them close enough to touch with my hand. I would write a poem about their emerald greenness, and the white swans streaming across blue seas, and the United Nations, and the dazzling sun in the creek and Egon's arms crushing me to him. Walking between the olive trees and the marsh, prowling like a sun-warmed animal along the soft dirt path, I wanted suddenly to feel the ground with my naked feet. Stopping, I pulled off my tennis shoes and stood working my toes into the dirt.

“Here, boy,” someone said.

I looked around. Behind some bushes there was a washed-up beam of timber where you could sit and look out across the water. I could see bits of a khaki uniform through the leaves and the white, moving blur of a dog. There was something about the nakedness of my feet, their sudden freedom and freshness, and the feeling of the sun pouring warm all over me that impelled me to prowl around the bush to where the soldier sat and stand nearby with my shoes and bag of potatoes, as if taking in the view.

The soldier looked over. He was throwing twigs for the dog, whom I recognized as the depot mutt.

“His name is Whitey,” I said with a sideways look.

“Here, Whitey,” the soldier said.

“He belongs to Mr. Moroni,” I added, turning around a little, casually. “That's the stationmaster. He's part Alaskan husky.”

“The stationmaster?”

“No, not the stationmaster. Whitey.”

He smiled at this. I didn't think it was much of a joke. But his sleeves were rolled up, and his arms were muscular and hairy. I moved a little closer, small thrills of danger darting through me. “He swims in the slough,” I said, feeling that I must keep talking. “Whitey. He's a good swimmer. He'll swim for anything you throw.” There was a loud toot from the bay. The ferry was starting back. “That's the
City of Mendoza.”

“I thought that was the city of Mendoza,” the soldier said, nodding toward the town.

“It is.” He wasn't a very sharp soldier. “They've both got the same name. One's a town and the other's a ferryboat. The boat's named after the town.”

He smiled again, at what there was no knowing; a dim sense of humor. But under his cap his hair was black, like Egon's, and as he leaned forward to pat Whitey, his khaki shirt stretched tight across his shoulders. I moved closer yet, still talking.

“Whitey got into a train once and rode all the way to Sacramento. It was on the front page of the
Clarion.
That's our newspaper, the Mendoza
Clarion.”

“What's your name?” he asked suddenly, looking up.

“Suse,” I said hesitantly. He shouldn't ask that; it was forward.

“Suse, you're a mine of information.”

I shifted the load in my arms. “It's because I live here.”

“Oh,” he said with a look of illumination, nodding.

He was slow-witted, and it was a pity, because he was so nice-looking, with dark liquid eyes and those nice solid arms. I hoped he had a kind-hearted girlfriend who didn't make fun of his dimness.

“Are you from a long distance off?” I inquired.

“All the way from Camp Stoneman.”

“I mean originally.”

“Originally? From a place called Rye, New York.”

“Oh,” I murmured, concentrating on what I was doing. I was sitting down next to him, in a casual way I hoped, yet with a feeling of stiffness. My eyes were fixed on the ground. I had never in my life gotten into a conversation with a soldier. It was the one thing I had been warned over and over not to do, so that it was second nature not to by now. Yet here I was sitting next to one in the bushes, with my feet naked and the sun hot all over us. But he stood up, and that made me feel easier. He went over and picked up a stick and threw it for Whitey.

“I suppose you're shipping out to the Pacific?”

“That's right,” he said, crouching as Whitey raced off.

“I don't think the Pacific theater will last long after Berlin capitulates. Our troops will outnumber the Japs two to one.”

He glanced over at me. “You seem to have quite an interest in the war.”

I nodded. “I want it to end.”

“That,” he said, opening his arms for Whitey racing back, “is a sound sentiment.”

He didn't sound so dim anymore. And his thighs under the stretched khaki were hard and muscular, too, like his arms. I wished he would pay less attention to Whitey.

“I'm also interested in the United Nations. I'm attending their charter meeting on the twenty-sixth.”

He stood up and threw the stick again. “That should be quite an occasion. Are you going with a school group?”

He needn't have asked that. Instead of answering, I threw a twig for Whitey, confusing him. He didn't know if he should go for the stick or the twig. Then he lost interest in both and began sniffing around the reeds. The soldier seemed to be losing interest, too, brushing the dog hairs off his pants as if getting ready to leave.

“It's a terrific view, isn't it?” I said, putting down my shoes and potatoes and going over to him. “This is the Suisun Bay, well actually it's where the Suisun Bay and Carquinez Straits meet, and those are our big hills over there, that's Port Costa you can see down the way, can you see it down there?”

He nodded, looking. He was taller than Egon, but not as good-looking. If you noticed, his lips were a little too thin, and his nose had a bulge at the end, but a nice bulge, and his bare arm was only a couple of inches from my bare arm; I felt an overwhelming urge to move closer so they would touch, just to see how it would feel.

But he was saying, “I guess I'll be getting on,” and smiling down at me. “Suse, it was nice talking to you.”

“It was nice talking to you, too,” I said, looking up into his face. His dark eyes, in the light of the sun, had flecks of gold in them, like a tiger's, and his lids were heavy, knowing, full of dark nights and passionate embraces. My own eyes felt wide, so wide the sun hurt in them, they felt widely waiting, rigid, and it seemed as he smiled down, adjusting his cap, that he wanted to crush his lips to mine, to grind the hot flesh of his face into mine, to press me down in the bushes and lay his big hands all over my body—my thighs, my stomach, my two new mounds, he lusted for them, horrible, disgusting! I was only fourteen, how dare he come crashing through that barrier with his snorting lust and big hairy arms, was he blind, was he insane? I stepped back, swung around, and ran.

He didn't come after me, thank God, and by the time I had put a good distance between us and thrown myself behind an olive tree he was walking on toward the wharf, Whitey trotting beside him.

As I watched, my heartbeats subsided. The water in the reeds slapped softly, a sparrow pecked peacefully at my feet. After creeping back for my shoes and potatoes, I started home along the path. Once more I drank in the morning silence and salty tang, and the unsettling experience
sank away as I thought again of my great poem—the emerald hills, and the white swans streaming, and the United Nations opening, and the creek's dazzling sunburst, with Egon's strong arms crushing me to him.