Rumors of Peace (36 page)

A
FTER SCHOOL
the next day I went to the library to read about yesterday in the San Francisco papers and to look at the pictures. But the picture on the front page was of a mass of white tangled worms, extremely large, with a couple of people standing in them knee deep, each pulling a worm out. Then I saw it wasn't worms they were pulling, but a pair of long arms. In shabby overcoats, leaning over, the two men were trying to extricate a corpse.

They were standing on a pile of them, and the worms were the corpses' long arms and legs tangled up. They were so scrawny and crazily meshed that it didn't seem they could be bodies, but they must be because they had heads, unmistakably they were heads, for they had mouths, slack holes, black against the whiteness.

I looked abruptly away. I knew the Army had found work camps filled with starved prisoners, many of them dead, but these weren't prisoners; they seemed more to be things; flung down like things, tangled up like things, stood on like things. I felt an urgent need to turn the page and never look back, but I forced my eyes again to the picture, then to the caption below: “Townspeople of Belsen are ordered to bury concentration camp dead.” There was an article underneath, which I read quickly, skipping, for it gave me the same feeling as the picture had.

                       
Political prisoners, slave laborers, civilians of various nationalities . . . 30,000 believed to have died at Belsen, near Bremen . . . 21,000 liberated at Buchenwald . . . the camps were run by a policy of calculated brutality . . . in Buchenwald, prisoners were mostly Polish Jews brought there to work . . . almost all Jews in prison camps have been destroyed . . . after them the most cruelly treated were Russians and Poles . . . bodies stacked like cordwood . . . hanging from hooks . . . shoved into furnaces. . . .

Jews. Then, that was why Egon had looked as he did yesterday. That was what he meant when he said he didn't think his brothers were in Berlin.

The next day there was a picture of the Yanks and Russians meeting on the Elbe.
Historic Junction at Torgau!
the caption said.

“Did you see the picture?” Don asked me at school. “All hugging and shaking hands? It was historic!”

“I know.” And they had worn fur hats, the Russians, and were on horses . . . but I couldn't get the other picture out of my mind. “Did you see the other one, the day before? Those bodies at that Belsen camp?”

“I saw it. It made me sick.”

“It made me sick too,” I said, thinking of the gaping mouths, the wormlike arms and legs; things that had been people once. “It makes you realize one thing—the UN's got to work out.”

“Agh, the UN—they're already arguing. I thought you read the papers.”

“It doesn't mean anything—they're just minor things!”

A
PRIL
29:

Mussolini Assassinated!

Nazis in Italy Giving up!

“I see old Benito got it!” said Don.

“About time.”

“His girlfriend too, strung 'em up by their feet.”

“It's too damn good for them.”

M
AY
2:

Hitler Killed

Nazi Radio Says!

Fell at Chancellery!

“Well, old Schicklgruber's done for!”

“He should've been done for against a wall.”

“I think he committed suicide. That's my theory.”

He probably had, the coward. Afraid they'd tear him to pieces, now the concentration camps were discovered. But you couldn't put the blame on him alone; it took hundreds of Nazis to run those camps, maybe thousands. And if that was so, if it was in the human nature of so many people to commit such a crime—even if they were Nazis—if it could be done by anyone at all, what hope was there?

M
AY
3:

Hitler a Suicide,

Nazi Officials Say!

Berlin Garrison

Gives Up!

A City of Flames!

“What'd I tell you? Suicide.”

“I hope he took arsenic. I hope he suffered.”

“They don't use arsenic. Those guys all have cyanide capsules. Two seconds and kaput.”

“It's wrong. They should suffer.”

“I thought you were Miss United Nations—peace and goodness.”

“So what? Why shouldn't they suffer anyway?”

M
AY
4:

1,000,000 German Troops

Surrender: War in Europe—

The Last Act!

The last act. The bombed cities, the Polish family, Peter dodging his way through machine-gun bullets, it would be over. A last shot, and silence would fall across the Continent.

But what about human nature?

M
AY
5:

Nazis Wail for Peace!

North Reich Falls!

Denmark, Holland

Freed!

“Skaal!”
said Dad.

“Skaal!”
said Mama.

“Skaal!”
said I, and we clinked our glasses.

I hadn't seen my parents so happy for a long time; maybe I had never seen them so happy. They were truly from another country, I realized in a kind of dawning light; their hearts were there, they didn't belong to the soil of this town, the way I did. I had never caught that accent Peggy had mentioned, but I believed now that she had spoken the truth. It was there. It was strange to know this, that they were foreigners. Yet it didn't mean anything. It didn't change them in any way from what they were the day before, when I didn't know they were foreigners. They were who they had always been, even as they sat there listening to the liberation news with their wineglasses, and they would always be who they had always been.

But it was a curious thought that the Japs in the valley were less foreigners than my parents; they had worked the soil here for generations. The young ones had grandparents born here. I didn't. What if they had argued that truth with me while I was dragging them to the firing squad? What would I have said?

A blackness of realization: I was no better than the Nazis. For I would have said nothing. I would have kept dragging them.

M
AY
8:

Full Surrender!

5 Years, 8 Mos.

Of War Ends Today!

We were in Mr. Lewis's class when we first heard. The door opened, and the same office girl who had brought the note about Roosevelt's death came in. This time the importance on her face was open and exuberant. Mr. Lewis took the note, beaming as much as that hard face could beam.

“It's over in Europe!”

We went wild, clapping and cheering, reaching around to grab arms and swing hands—Towks that I'd never before had an urge to grab—and at this glorious moment it came back to me with a burst of light, what that UN speaker had said: “You don't have to change human nature; you only have to draw out the good that's in it.”

It was true, and I was the great case in point, brutal as a Nazi once, but look at me now, the good had been drawn out; I would never drag anyone to the firing squad anymore. I had thrown out my burned Jap head long ago. And if good could be drawn out of someone like me, as black and hard as I had been inside, it could be drawn out of anyone!

On the radio that night Mama and Dad and I listened to a reporter on Market Street in San Francisco. The mobs were so thick that streetcars and autos couldn't move. People cheered and waved their hands with Churchill's V for victory sign; drunken soldiers and sailors waved bottles and grabbed girls they didn't know and had long, passionate kisses. A woman pulled off her clothes and jumped in a fountain. They had been there all day, yelling and laughing themselves hoarse. “For one joyous moment,” the reporter said over the roar, “our nation feels entitled to forget the other war still waiting to be won. . . .”

But the Jap war would be over quickly; the victory in Europe made you feel Axis doom in an avalanche—huge, unstoppable.

M
AY
10:

Japan to Get

More Bombs

Than Reich!

M
AY
11:

38,857 Japs Killed

On Okinawa!

“Want to bet on V-J Day?” asked Don.

“I don't mind this time. I'll bet a dime. Three days.”

“Three days? Are you crazy? Six weeks!”

“You're the crazy one.”

“Okay, peaches, it's your dime.”

“Don't call me that. And don't grab my hand!”

“I can't help it, baby, you do something to me—”

“Why don't you go out and visit Valerie Stappnagel?”

“Why should I visit her?”

“You liked her, didn't you?”

“Aha—jealous!”

M
AY
15:

Yanks Split Jap Line,

Take Okinawa Airfield!

“You owe me a dime. It's three days.”

“You'll be wrong too.”

“I won't be wrong. But I won't be here to collect in six weeks.”

“Good, where are you going?”

“Nevada. Work on my grandfather's ranch for the summer. You gonna write me?”

“I don't know. If I have time.”

But it was Egon I wanted to write. The day I realized what had happened to his brothers, I had sat down and tried to write him a letter. But no matter what I said it sounded wrong, intrusive, and I had torn it up.

“Well, find time, baby.”

“There you go again—don't keep grabbing my hand!”

“You know what you are? An ice cube.”

“Well, I know somebody who's not. You want to know who I heard rave about you once? Peggy. You should hear the terrific opinion she has of you.”

“I don't like redheads. I like blondes.”

M
AY
16:

Yanks Beating

Back Banzai!

Beating back. It didn't sound like an avalanche, it sounded like slow work. Italy, Normandy, the Bulge again; after all this time I hadn't learned to keep my hopes from sweeping out my brain. Suddenly Don's six-week date sounded overly optimistic; it could be months, even with reinforcements from Europe. And as I realized this, all my fears for Peter came rushing back.

M
AY
17:

U.S. Okinawa Dead—3,781,

But Jap Loss Is 47,543!

It was a gloating headline. I was glad it wasn't the other way around, but it was a gloating headline. Gloating was human nature. There was too much about human nature that set your teeth on edge. Thank God it didn't have to be completely overhauled, an impossible job. Just draw the good out of each person.

Even the Nazis. Commandant Kramer of Belsen had said, “I love my wife and children. I love children. I love God.” You had to have hope; you had to believe that even in the blackness inside Commandant Kramer there was a drop of good. And every tiny drop was going to be drawn out, on a grand scale, throughout the entire world. It would be the first time in the history of our miserable world that such a thing would take place.

Peter wrote from near Leipzig, and the first thing that crackled through my brain was that he wasn't being sent to the Pacific. He talked about a point system, one point for each month in the Army, one for each month overseas, five for each battle you fought in, five for each wound, and five for each medal. If it added up to eighty-five, you'd be sent back to the States for demobilization in the first batch this summer. He fell two points short, but it wouldn't be long anyway, probably late fall, he hoped his clothes would still fit. . . .

Mama stopped reading aloud, lowering the letter. “It's the first time it's real to me,” she said slowly, almost as if to herself, looking across the room, but not seeming to see it.

I thought she was going to cry, but after a few moments she took up the letter again. Germany was a shambles, refugees, black marketing, ruins everywhere, but as for himself, he had to say life was like one long rest period now, and by God it was nice just to walk around in the sun—nice wasn't the word, there was no word for it, and there was no word for what it had been, for everybody, the whole of Europe, and why and for what. . . .

I thought of this letter often, the picture he painted of the ruins, the desolation; not a country, not a person untouched. And the deepest scars of all, the death camps. I began feeling something disgusting and cowardly about myself, how I lied inside. How could I have persuaded myself that Commandant Kramer had good inside him, except that it was too frightening not to think so? But he was a mutation, a monster, and not the only one; there were the thousands who ran the camps, and maybe thousands or millions in the world that we didn't know about, like black beetles under a log that would scurry out at any go-ahead signal. For good to be drawn out, there had to be good there. What would Commandant Kramer yield? Not even blood, but some kind of yellow juice like an insect's. And my whole idea of drawing good out seemed not only false and disgusting, but overwhelming in its stupidity. Had I imagined that the UN would go around with syringes, lining people up and drawing the good from their arms? Like a community blood bank? A community goodness bank?

The social studies teacher was right. I didn't think my ideas through. I had great hopes, wild fears, and a miserable brain that never caught up.

W
E HAD A GRADUATION CEREMONY
, not a real one with diplomas, but a farewell ceremony with parents invited and stout Mr. Grandison present. We were in our best clothes, and some of the girls tottered to their seats in semi-high heels and their older sisters' nylon stockings. You had to hold them up with a garter belt or girdle. I didn't want either, or a brassiere, and planned never to get one. To be strapped up from chest to thighs was an insult to good firm flesh.

I had plenty of opportunity to think about these things, and many other things, because there was never anything important to listen to on important school occasions. Don told me his thoughts also grew interesting on these dull occasions, and once, staring at the back of Miss Moose's head, he had even grasped the meaning of life, but lost it later.

I would miss him, but I wouldn't tell him because he would grab my hand, maybe even try to kiss me. I was Egon's. My hand had already been grabbed too often by Don, I felt the keen newness of hand-holding already used up before I had even twined fingers with Egon; but by God the first keenness of a kiss wasn't going to go down the drain the same way, wasted on that big fool butting in. I would suck my lips between my teeth; I would hit him in the face. But I liked the part of him that was just a friend, and that part I would miss.

I wouldn't be seeing Valerie either this summer. I didn't want to set foot in her parents' house, and I didn't want her coming to mine if her mother had to bring her. I would miss our long hot afternoons of two-handed bridge, her eyebrow slowly going up like that of a great general, pondering in a plumed helmet.

Nor would I be seeing Peggy. The day after the United Nations she had ended our tottering friendship. Cordial and pleasant in passing, she made it clear that that was to be all. And strangely I didn't care very much; I had never gotten back my old fat Peggy, and even old fat Peggy wasn't real anymore, but hazy, far-off, like Ezio and Mario.

It would be a solitary summer but I had things to do. Swimming lessons, poetry to write, trips to Berkeley; I must write Helen Maria right away and ask about coming down. And I must write Egon, even if I still couldn't find the right words . . . and now it must be the end of the ceremony because Mr. Grandison was giving his speech, was in fact ending it, and Mr. Kerr was coming onstage and sitting down at the grand piano; and now Mr. Grandison took his “Mandalay” stance, setting his feet firmly apart, loosening his arms at his sides, a deep breath expanding his chest. This was the part of assemblies I liked best, and now it came—Mr. Kerr's rousing overture that sent his long hair leaping and Mr. Grandison's powerful silver voice bursting over our heads.

I looked around at the teachers I was leaving and felt an unexpected pang. Little Mrs. Miller with her kind, tired wrinkles. Mother Basketball, misguided, but vigorous and happy with her great powdered feet. Mr. Villendo, who had burst with pride on the United Nations balcony. Miss Moose of mathematics, whom I had given the happiest day of her career. Hard Mr. Lewis in his everlasting gray suit. Mrs. Lewis, our Miss Petain, who had put on pounds and never wept into her hankie. And Mr. Kerr, our Liszt, our shining glory, flinging himself up and down the keyboard as Mr. Grandison's arms rose high, his silver head thrown back:

                   
and the dawn comes up like thunnnnnnnder

                   
out of China 'cross the bay!