Rumors of Peace (35 page)

I
ARRIVED AT SCHOOL
early the morning of the twenty-sixth, wearing my good Sunday dress, which was blue and white flowered, with puffed sleeves. Our bus stood waiting. It was yellow, with prominent black lettering along its sides: “Mendoza Unified School District.” The delegates from Mendoza.

I sat down by a window, putting my coat and shoulder bag and lunch bag in the seat next to me, saving it for Peggy. The three teachers who were accompanying us sat up front, nice little wrinkled Mrs. Miller, and Mrs. Pinelli from art class with her hands washed, and Mr. Villendo, all dressed up today in coats and hats, the two women in small white spring hats something like Aunt Dorothy's and Mr. Villendo in a smart gray fedora.

It was a warm morning, with a soft golden haze hanging over everything. I sat looking out, and gradually as it grew nearer nine o'clock, the bus began filling up, and the walks and lawns filled with students going to class, and still Peggy hadn't come. Neither had Don. Don I didn't care about, but what if Peggy had made the wrong crucial decision? And everyone seemed to be aboard now because the motor was starting up. I rolled the window open and craned my neck out. There was Don, racing along the street like a maniac, waving his lunch bag, zooming past my head, and crashing up the bus steps, where Mr. Villendo told
him not to be so god-awful noisy. Then I saw Peggy, but she wasn't running; she was walking with Bev and some other Towk girls, and she had her books in her arms.

I leaned down as she passed, cupping my hands around my mouth. “Peggy! Come on! You signed up!”

She turned and looked up.

“You've got to!”

From the front of the bus Mrs. Miller told me not to shout.

“You'll never have another chance!” I took my hands away.

Peggy looked embarrassed to be shouted at, annoyed. Giving me a small shrug, she went on, the fiery hair battened down, the bobby socks rolled to just the proper length, and around one sock the latest fad, an ankle bracelet with a little locket, giving a final tiny glint as the bus pulled away from the curb.

Don flung my things in my lap and sat down, breathing hard from his run. Like the other boys today, he was dressed in slacks and a sport jacket, the collar of his white shirt spread out over the lapels. “We're off!” he exclaimed as we started down the street.

“And it's perfect weather!” I wasn't going to let Peggy's decision ruin the day. Nothing was going to ruin it.

After a stop at the high school, where we fell in behind their bus, we zipped down Alhambra Avenue into the countryside with its orchards lush and green in the warm haze. The bus crowd was noisy and cheerful, and Don didn't talk about Malthus. We discussed how we would sneak off and find closer seats if we couldn't see well, because the opera house was said to be huge. We discussed the Burma shave signs. We discussed the invasion of Berlin and where Hitler had fled. We had a good conversation all the way.

San Francisco Bay was bigger than Suisun Bay, and not green but dark blue. We sailed high over it on the windy bridge, seven miles long, Mr. Villendo informed us, raising his voice over the noise, and completed in 1937 after five years' labor. Peering out the window with his big double-sized eyes, he pointed out Coit Tower and the Ferry Building as we came down the ramp, and then we wanted to know what street we were on, because it looked like Ferry Street, even sleazier and more interesting, and Mr. Villendo said Third Street as a drunk wavered into the traffic, laughing and talking to himself. Cheer abounded;
flags flew from buildings, on Market Street streetcars clanged and crowds of shoppers bustled along, and then we were driving into an area of green squares and fountains and large white buildings, and now we drew up before the War Memorial Opera House. A big crowd had gathered already, though it was only ten o'clock by Don's wrist watch, and the session wasn't to open till three-thirty.

We were to spend the morning at the Veterans' Building next door, where there was an international art exhibit, then eat our lunches at the civic center square, and then line up and wait for the opera house doors to open. It was to be a very full day, and here we were stepping out one by one under the smart green-striped awning of the opera house, to join this crowd of ladies in three-quarter-length fur coats and men in overcoats and fedoras.

The air was sunny and brisk, and the opera house soared into the sky brilliantly white with great columns and arched windows and flying flags. Military police stood guard by the doors in white helmets and white belts, but you could hardly see them for the crowd, which was very noisy considering that they were mostly adults. They were clamoring about lining up, where and how, and the military police were shouting advice and pointing at the immense glass doors, through which, in the lobby, you could make out a five-abreast line already formed.

“What if we can't get tickets!” I exclaimed to Don; but he was lost from sight, and I stood crushed into the deep fur of a stout lady's coat.

“Hello, Suse,” a voice piped at my side.

It was little Valerie. I was glad to see her, so calm and content, though she could hardly breathe among the tall pressing bodies and had to stand on her toes.

“Did you come with the high school group?” I asked.

“Yes. I think it will be an interesting day, don't you?”

“If we ever get tickets!”

“I certainly hope we will,” said Valerie.

“They can't turn us back!”

But one of the teachers, Mrs. Pinelli, was now pushing toward the doors, looking worried and nervous. Everything was falling apart; we would never see the inside of the opera house.

“If we can't get tickets, we'll sneak in!”

“Oh, I wouldn't want to do that,” said Valerie.

Just then Mrs. Pinelli grinned and waved to someone in the lobby. A minute later Don elbowed his way back. “Mrs. Pinelli's got a cousin getting our tickets. He came down at eight o'clock.”
Brava
for Mrs. Pinelli, a farsighted woman who arranged things well. And now at last we were being herded away from the crowd to the Veterans' Building, which was almost as large and elaborate as the opera house. I introduced my two friends as we walked, and they nodded politely, two serious people bound by a historic event, and we went up the steps into the building. It was crowded here too, and the teachers decided it was useless to form us into a line to look at the pictures, and said we could look on our own, as long as we all met outside at eleven-thirty on the dot.

There were a lot of rooms, and they were interesting at first: art from Mexico, art from Alaska, art from China. But after a while they all began to look the same and we wandered back into the lobby. Official-looking people wearing blue United Nations buttons strode through the crowd to the elevators, and a guard told us that all the offices involved with the meeting were upstairs on the second floor. I looked quickly around, in case Commissar Molotov or Anthony Eden was striding by.

But I didn't see them. I saw Egon. Just a glimpse; then he was swallowed up in the crowd. I plunged after him, feeling a huge, wild grin stretching across my face. “Egon!” I yelled, pushing through to his side. “Hello Egon!”

He turned around and looked at me, surprised. “Suse. What in the world are you doing here?”

“I'm with my school!”

“So.” And he smiled, holding out his hand. “That's nice, that you could come.”

“We just got here!” I said as we shook hands and the electric shock jolted through me. “We came by bus!” I knew that I was talking too loud and not saying anything sensible and that the wild smile was still pasted across my face, but I didn't care. He was here in the flesh, smiling, his blue eyes warm and filled with love.

He was with some friends, whom he introduced me to. They looked like grad students, a couple of fellows and a girl who was attractive but thankfully not with Egon; she had her arm linked with one of the others.

“Are you coming to the meeting?” I asked Egon.

“We had better, after getting in line for tickets at half past six.”

“That's early!”

“It is,” he agreed, and his friends agreed too, but I sensed they didn't want to stand there being knocked against by the crowd, they wanted to move on.

“That's really early!” I elaborated, not knowing what else to say. How could we converse with no privacy? What if his friends dragged him off and this was all we had said? And now, pushed and squeezed by the crowd, he too looked as if he wanted to move on and held his hand out to say good-bye.

“Egon, I've got to talk to you. Privately.” I glanced at his friends, who were looking at me with an expression I didn't like, one of amusement and indulgence, which made me flush. But at least, as they were looking that way, they were moving off, saying they'd meet him later by the door.

“What is it?” he asked, but now all my headlong courage disappeared. I didn't know what to say; my brain whirled. Then I caught hold of something. “I've decided to become a translator. I wanted to ask you about it.”

“Yes, all right,” he said, and we walked on.

“I'm taking French in school. I could take either Spanish or French, but I decided on French. Flaubert was French.”

“Ah, yes,
Madame Bovary.
”

We went over to a corner of the lobby where there was a bench with some people sitting on it. They made room for us. “Did you go skiing?” I asked as we sat down.

“Skiing? No, why? I do not ski.”

“Oh, I thought you did. Have you been busy with your translation work?”

“Yes,” he nodded. “It keeps me busy.”

“I was surprised you quit the university.”

“I may go back,” he said. “I haven't decided what I should like to do.” He seemed preoccupied, gazing out at the crowd, at the important officials striding past with their blue buttons. There was a sadness in his eyes, a deepness, something bitter.

“Aren't you happy about the United Nations?”

He looked surprised, and I realized he had not even been noticing what he looked at. “Yes, of course I am,” he said.

“I am too. And that the war's almost finished in Europe. It could even end today.”

“I suppose it could.”

“But I'm really sorry about Berlin. I wish they could take it all at once instead of smashing what's left of it.”

He gave a nod.

“Egon,” I said suddenly, “I hope your brothers are all right. I hope they're not in the middle of all the fighting.”

“Thank you, Suse. But I think they are not in Berlin.”

“You think they got out?”

He gave not a shrug and not a nod, but a kind of mixture, and said again, “I think they are not in Berlin.” And there was again that preoccupation in his eyes, that look of sadness and bitterness; but now he seemed to push the expression away and concentrate more on me. He asked about my French and what I could say.

“Avez-vous trouvé votre parapluie vert et votre grand cheval blanc?”

“No,” he smiled, “I have not found my green umbrella and great white horse.”

“
Quel dommage!
”

“Yes, a great pity. I need them.”

“Egon, I've written a poem.”

“Have you?”

I recited it for him; only the first two stanzas, I couldn't bring myself to say the third with people around.

“That is a good poem,” he said when I was done. “I like the swans on the sea, that's especially nice.”

“Of course,” I said, reddening with pleasure, “I don't think swans
go
on the sea—”

“It doesn't matter. It is very nice.”

“I've gotten so interested in poetry, Egon. It's because—well, of the things you wrote. I've read your letters over and over.”

He was silent for a moment. “Yes, I'm glad that we're good friends, and can write about the things that interest us. And someday—when you're grown-up and a famous poet—I'll tell people I knew you when
you wrote your first poem.” He was standing up as he said these things, folding his coat over his arm. “And now, Suse, I think my friends are waiting for me. It was good to have seen you again.”

“Maybe we'll see each other at the opera house,” I said as we shook hands once more.

“Yes, perhaps,” he said, and smiling good-bye, he turned to make his way through the crowd.

I wandered around, replaying our conversation in my mind. It had been so short. If only his stupid friends hadn't been hanging around the door. And we couldn't talk freely, because people were listening. If we had been alone, he would have talked of love, not friendship; he would have explained why he hadn't written. But I was pretty sure now it was because he was bogged down by his work. You could see that he was worried and preoccupied. Translating was difficult work.

“Where did you go?” Valerie piped at my side.

“I saw someone I knew.”

“Don's looking for you.”

“Oh, why doesn't he leave me alone? I want freedom. I want to breathe.”

“You seem to be breathing,” Valerie said.

A
T TWELVE-THIRTY
, having eaten our lunches, we lined up with the other ticket holders in front of the opera house. Now we would stand for three hours. Peggy was right, but her decision was wrong; sore feet were a small price to pay for a convention of peace, and even Don felt this way, and he was wearing new shoes that had given him blisters. He had been curt when he found me, as if he owned me—which I told him—but now he was back in a good mood, and another good thing was that he liked Valerie; he seemed to appreciate the way she looked at you without blinking or smiling, then came out with something pipingly to the point. I hoped he would transfer his infatuation to Valerie.

We all stood talking and laughing, listening with half an ear to Mr. Villendo explaining that the opera house had been built in 1932 after three years' labor and could seat 3,200 people. We shifted our feet and stretched and waited, and the hours crept by, and the line grew four blocks long. Mrs. Miller looked tired, but there was no place to sit except on the pavement, and when some of us tried to sit there we were told to get up.

But now photographers and men with newsreel cameras were arriving, and a mob of onlookers was filling up the broad sidewalk so that you could hardly see the street, and Don kindly offered his foot for Valerie to stand on; she said thank you, no—I knew she would consider it
undignified to stand on someone's foot—and remained solemnly content, viewing the back before her. As we stood craning our necks, an electric excitement was building up in the crowd, and now the first cars began drawing up, official olive drab cars and long black limousines which you could only catch scraps of through the mob. Dignitaries must be stepping out under the striped green awning because everyone cheered and applauded and the cameras popped and flashed, and then the military police were clearing a path through the crowd, and you could see better.

There were the Arabs in their dark brown robes and flowing white headdresses like sheets, and other dignitaries in suits, tall dignitaries and short dignitaries, hurrying up the steps talking solemnly together; and then at a roar of applause I turned to see Molotov, short and stocky, hurrying along with his retinue, smiling and raising his arm in a wave at the cheering crowd. Another roar, and it was Smuts of the pointed white beard, and then Stettinius, after which the roar never let up, and now it was Anthony Eden in the flesh, tall and elegant, striding along with a dashing smile, and the newsreel cameras were grinding, pigeons swooped, flags whipped—a crowd-roaring moment in history. I grabbed Valerie and pulled her up by the arm.

After the photographers and movie men had followed the last dignitaries inside, there was another wait. Then the glass doors swung open, and the line moved. It was a palace inside. Marble floors, columns, gold filigree everywhere, lit chandeliers, wall-length mirrors reflecting the gold and glitter and the crowd as it hurried along in a din of clattering footsteps. Mr. Villendo led us forward with an arm held high. We surged up a stairway like a tunnel that amplified the headlong clatter to a mad pitch; then the pitch dropped as we rushed into a lofty hall, swinging sharply to our left and up another clattering stairway; then out into another hall and swinging up another stairway, until it was like rushing up the spirals of a corkscrew, and you dizzily kept your eyes on your feet. But suddenly, as if commanded by fate, I glanced up as we swung into a hall, and there in the crowd was Egon, glimpsing me as I swept by and throwing me his warm, loving smile.

A few stairways later, Mr. Villendo, his arm going up again like a general's, led us into a balcony where the noise left off. All you heard was a vast, hushed murmur of voices. Everything was soft, the velvet
drapes you brushed by as you entered, the carpeted stairs of the steep aisle, the plush red seats you sank into. Before us hung an immensity of space, with the stage very far down at its bottom. I had no time to be disappointed, because Valerie was producing a pair of opera glasses in a neat leather case.

“Are they yours?” I asked, hesitating as she offered them to me.

“Of course.”

“I thought maybe they were your parents'.”

“No, they're my own. I've been to several operas.”

“Here?”

“Yes.”

How modest of Valerie not to have mentioned that she had been here, how admirable. Taking the glasses from their case and putting them to my eyes, I saw nothing. Then Valerie showed me how to adjust the lenses, and the stage was right before my nose. Against a royal blue backdrop was lined a palisade of flags from every nation, set off at intervals by square gold columns. On the stage itself sat an aquamarine rostrum with a bas-relief of green garlands, and before that was a smaller rostrum, below which was a section filled with busy people—court reporters and translators, Mr. Villendo was informing us. The photographers were there, too, running around getting ready for the great moment. Mr. Villendo was informing us that the ground-floor audience was composed of delegates, and I trained the glasses on the backs of their heads; then I swung the glasses to one of the balconies where the newsreel cameras had been set up, and then to the curved and glamorous box seats where I was met, as if only a few feet away, by other opera glasses staring back at me.

“They're powerful,” I said, passing them to Don, who was loosening his shoes from his blistered feet, and I looked around. I noticed with a jolt that Mrs. Miller wasn't with us, and I had a sudden vision of her falling with a heart attack on the way, stampeded—but here she came now, small and wrinkled, carefully making her way down the steep aisle. She had taken the elevator, she told us, sitting down nearby, and she had arrived not a moment too soon, for a man was walking out onstage.

But he only leaned down and talked with the court reporters, and it
was another long half hour before the great moment actually arrived. Six men filed across the stage, five seated themselves at the large rostrum, and one stood behind the smaller one. There was a respectful applause, then silence.

The man at the smaller rostrum began speaking, his voice clear and penetrating even without a microphone. I was anxious to know who he was, but I had to wait because Valerie had the opera glasses. The man was welcoming us to this historic occasion, going on in a manner both flowery and official, so that you didn't care too much if you heard or not, but by the time I got the glasses from Valerie he was saying real things. Adjusting the lenses, I saw that he was Carlos Romulo of the Philippines. He was pausing now for a moment; then he looked up.

“We are here to determine whether the human race is going to exist or is going to be wiped out by another holocaust.”

He didn't mince words. He gave me a chill. I trained the glasses on the men behind him, of whom I recognized only Molotov, whom I studied. He had rimless spectacles, a broad, thoughtful forehead under thinning dark gray hair, and a gray mustache under a small nose. He didn't look like a Russian—Slavic, wild-eyed, exotic—but he looked very nice anyway, and then I had to give the glasses to Don, who was bopping me in the side.

We learned later that the session had lasted three hours. It seemed thirty because every speech, no matter how long, was given again in French, Spanish, and Russian, and during these translations the only interesting thing was the flash of the cameras as the photographers bobbed around, falling on one knee or stretching high with their shoulders hunched, but after a while even that got boring.

It was a different matter when the speeches were in English. Having taken out my Big Chief notebook from my shoulder bag, I scribbled down highlights in the dark.

“Lofty phrases and great promises were forgotten after the last war, but this time they must have full realization!”

and

“Believe me, if you had lived under blitzes and rocket bombardment, you would find it a powerful stimulant to turn your thoughts to world
security. That is something to remember, the range and power of modern weapons. . . .”

and

“For centuries to come, men will point to the United Nations as history's most convincing proof of what miracles can be accomplished by nations joined together in a righteous cause. . . .”

and

“We do not expect to change human nature. All we need to do is draw out the very best that is in it.”

When Molotov spoke, it was in Russian, and as I sat listening to the foreign words, I saw fur-capped soldiers on galloping horses, riding to meet the Western armies, and I saw Red tanks crashing through the ruin of Hitler's Chancellery and the snowy steppes of Stalingrad with arms sticking up like iron, and it seemed odd, like a clap of light, that when the English translation was given, there was no war in it, only the future: “We are confident that the United Nations' aim will be achieved by joint effort of all peace-loving nations. . . .”

There was one other speech, at the end, that I scribbled down: “Let us with all the creativeness of which we are capable, by constructive thought, by willingness to cooperate, in order to keep faith with those who have made the supreme sacrifice, offer ourselves and our sacred honor to the building of a new united world.”

Then came the applause, with everyone getting to their feet. It was like the end of Mr. Kerr's symphony, a thunder of triumph everlasting. Mr. Villendo was completely beside himself, turning this way and that as he clapped, as if he had supervised the entire proceedings, and Mrs. Pinelli lifted her hands above her head in applause, and even little Mrs. Miller beat her old weak palms together with vigor, while Valerie clapped steadily, with sober satisfaction, and Don, standing half out of his new shoes, applauded as hard as anyone, harder—Malthus apparently
parti avec le vent.

The great crowd poured back out into the lofty hall, down the endless corkscrew stairs and into the street. It was dark now, and across the street the City Hall's green copper dome was brilliantly lit. Lights glittered everywhere, traffic flowed by with big-city honks, yellow cabs were
lined up along the curb. The speeches still rang in my ears, and the overwhelming applause, and though I couldn't see Egon in the crowd, I knew he was there, looking back at me with love and longing as he was swept along.