Rumors of Peace (37 page)

            
Dear Egon,

                
I have been wanting to write you for a long time, but I haven't known how to say what I would like to say. I think it sounds intrusive, no matter how I say it. I am speaking of what happened in Germany, and maybe to people in your own family. I can only say that I am deeply sorry. It is all I can say. I wanted you to know it.

Sincerely,

Suse

I wrote Helen Maria too, asking her if she was staying on for summer session and if she would like me to come down for a visit. Don I didn't write, though I had his address. If I wrote first, he would misinterpret it. The one thing I had learned from him was that when a person was in love, they blew up out of proportion every ordinary thing the other person did and saw it as a sign of returned passion. There was a name for this kind of love: unrequited. It was the subject of many poems.

Very shortly I received such a poem from Don, along with a letter. The letter told about his train trip and the ranch and was interesting. The poem wasn't.

                   
With eyes so blue and hair so long

                   
You really make my heart go bong.

                   
I know you think that it is wrong,

                   
You'd rather go and play Ping-Pong

                   
Than hear my heartbeats like a gong,

                   
But as you walk among the throng

                   
At home or in far-off Hong Kong,

                   
Remember always my bonging song,

                   
Because my heart's where you belong,

                   
And if you wonder why this poem I prolong,

                   
It's because this train trip's so goddamn long.

He would have to tack on that last line, and didn't he know you never tried to rhyme every single line? Look at the result. It was a horrible poem. I wrote and told him that. I told him he should take his bongs to Valerie Stappnagel, who led an uneventful life. Or to Peggy, since she was bonging for him. As for me, he was right, I would rather play Ping-Pong, and my eyes weren't blue, they were gray.

And so we began a summer correspondence.

Helen Maria wrote back that she was staying on in Berkeley for the summer, taking a couple of courses just to keep busy before leaving for England in late August. Why didn't I plan to come down early in July? She had Mondays free. If I took the train, she would meet me at the depot.

I got permission from Mama and wrote back, setting the date for July 2.

J
UNE
22:

The Battle for Okinawa Is Over!

90,000 Japs Killed in 82 Days!

Again, I was glad it was 90,000 Japs instead of 90,000 Americans, but again it was a number so great that you wished they had left the exuberant exclamation point off; you felt satiation, a vision of the world's crust spongy with blood by now, soaked dark and deep like swampland.

J
UNE
27:

U.N. Charter Signed—And Now

Says Truman: Avoid Disunity!

Two months ago, when I attended their first session, it had not occurred to me that there could be disunity among them; they had sounded in such powerful accord. But since then I had read of their arguments: who should be allowed in, who kept out, how many votes for this nation, how many for that? It had become clear to me that there was nothing miraculous about these men; they were hardworking, dedicated men, but they were not magically equipped to soar over practical problems, just as they were not magically equipped with golden syringes to draw out goodness from such as the black beetle Kramer. Only one thing I knew for sure, and that was that they would never give a go-ahead signal for the black beetles to come crawling out.

Peggy would have been glad to see how realistic I was becoming; to be realistic was a great virtue, she seemed to think, and she was correct. The proof of a virtue was that it was not enjoyable. And it was not enjoyable to make do with common sense and good intentions. Such as the newspaper article about Congress hearing the report of a committee who had seen the death camps. The report said: “Through the spectacle we have witnessed, we realize that the world must come to a fuller understanding that men of all nations and tongues must resist encroachments of every theory and ideology that debases mankind.” It was not a spectacular or miraculous statement; it smacked of good faith, hard work, and nothing more. But it was the spirit behind those things that counted, and that was what we must put our hope in.

As the days went by and I didn't hear from Egon, I felt my new realism taking hold of him too. He was not skiing anywhere. He was not so busy with his work that he couldn't find a minute to write just a line saying he'd received my note and letting me know how he was. He didn't answer because he didn't care.

It was like walking into a meat grinder and walking through it anew each day. The pleasure of the hot summer vacation crumpled; the sun shone, but I didn't feel it. I felt a grieving, as I had felt for Mario,
but even worse, like that of a widow, for it was as if Egon and I had had a marriage of some kind, that no one else would have understood, but that we understood. Mama and Dad asked why I was so droopy, but I couldn't tell them. They would probably be sympathetic, but I feared their sympathy would be set inside a realism even greater than my own, and my own was bad enough.

At night, in bed, I would drag the pillow over my head, the way Karla used to when I plagued her with questions. But these questions refused to be blotted out. Why didn't he write? Because I meant nothing to him. Nothing, nothing, and yet I wondered if real widows, grieving because their mate was dead, somehow did not grasp it; kept some small senseless gleam of hope. For in the face of all my realism, down in my ground-up insides, there remained such a tiny, flickering gleam.

The Saturday before my trip to Berkeley a letter came.

            
My dear Suse,

                
I have just read your very kind letter—thank you, Suse, it is something I appreciate very much and will always remember. I was away on the East Coast, and if things work out I shall return there soon, from there to return to Europe. I will drop you a line from there, I'll be in Nürnberg, and you must write back and let me know how everything is with you. Meanwhile, take very good care of yourself, Suse, and again, thank you for writing as you did.

Egon

The joy of receiving his letter was like a thunderclap, a release of light and life, and yet the contents were confusing—he was going away, when, and why Nuremberg? But of course, it was where they planned to hold a trial for the Nazi bigwigs, Göring, von Ribbentrop, Hess, all those. Was he going there to watch them hang? I understood it, I would like to watch too, but how long would it take before they swung? Weeks? Months? And was he coming back? And when was he leaving, how soon? Maybe already by Monday I would know, because if I saw Ruth, I could tactfully squeeze the information from her.

T
HE TRAIN COACH WAS HOT
, and crammed with soldiers and sailors and duffel bags, the way it must have been for Aunt Dorothy and Roger on that long terrible trip that was the beginning of the end for them. But this trip was like the beginning of a beginning; it was exciting to travel alone, and I felt pleasure to be meeting my best friend at the depot, and outside, as we rattled swiftly along, the sun beat down in a glitter on the green water. Except that the sailor beside me and the two soldiers opposite were all asleep with their mouths open, there was a feeling of hurtling like a rocket to some great and dazzling destination.

I was the only person to get off at the Berkeley station. Helen Maria was standing on the platform, reading. When she saw me, she smiled and stuffed the book back into her shoulder bag. She gave me a hug and stood back, holding my wrists.

“My God, you're right, I wouldn't have known you.
Mai's où sont les neiges d'antan?
Come on, we must make a dash for it.”

I ran after her to a bus around the corner of the depot, just starting up. We flung ourselves aboard, and it rumbled off, a hot breeze flowing through the open windows.

There was no trace of Helen Maria's past sorrow on her face. She looked happy and excited and very fit in a pale green dress that set off a nice sunburn.

“Have you been swimming? You're really sunburned.”

“No. I'm taking a botany class, don't ask my why. We march about campus staring at trees. Not that I need the credits, but I need to keep busy. Whenever my mind's unoccupied, I start worrying that the British Isles will be snatched from under my nose.”

“They won't be. That's unrealistic.”

“I realize that.”

I wondered if the real problem was that she remembered Egon when she wasn't busy. I hoped it wasn't true; I hoped she had a new boyfriend.

We were rumbling up a long street at the end of which I could see the green campus. How long ago it seemed that the three of us had strolled across those lawns, I in my tight plaid dress and T square hair, a Dutch boy midget smoldering with neglect. Now it was the other way around; it was Helen Maria who was on the outside.

“You
are
happy, aren't you?” I asked.

“Of course I am. Very.”

“And you're having a social life too?”

“Well I'm hardly the Miss Campus Queen type.”

“But you go out, I mean with fellows?”

She was silent for a moment. “You probably want to know about Egon, don't you?”

“Egon?” With a heart thud I glanced away, but only momentarily, my long years of pretended calm standing me in good stead. “I've wondered, of course,” I said politely.

“Yes, of course. Well, we came to a parting of the ways a few months back—quite a few months back, actually. It bothered me very much at first, but I'm over it now. I've begun seeing someone else.”

“Oh I'm glad. Do you like him a lot?”

“He's quite decent. He's not Egon, of course.”

“But you're over Egon, you said.”

“Yes, yes, I'm over Egon,” she muttered, pulling the cord for our stop and looking at nothing for a moment. “I think it was Pascal who said, ‘The cause of love is
Je ne sais quoi,
and the effects are dreadful.'” She threw me a smile as we got up. “See what you've got to look forward to.”

“Me?” I asked, following her to the door.

“Yes,” she said as we got off. “You'll fall hard when you fall. Well, be forewarned, but don't be turned aside. One must take life by the horns. Now, shall we just potter about campus, or is there something special you want to do?”

“No, nothing special, but what if you run into Egon?”

She gave a shrug and slouched off across the lawn. “So what? Anyway, Ruth says he's quit school.”

“I know. He has.”

She looked over at me surprised. “How do you know?”

“Remember I wrote to ask him about some books? Well, he wrote back, and I wrote him back, about poetry and the UN and different things, so we started corresponding.”

“How utterly charming. How utterly like Egon.”

“How do you mean?”

“Oh I don't know. I suppose I'm trying to be sarcastic. However,” she sighed, “Egon really
is
charming. Most men I know wouldn't take the time to write some schoolgirl acquaintance, but he would. I can't fault him on consideration.”

“I saw him in San Francisco,” I said, stung. “We had a long talk.”

“Did you? In San Francisco? What were you doing there?”

“It was when I went to the United Nations. He was there too.”

“Oh, I see,” she said, walking toward a bench in the shade of a tree. “Rather ironic, if you think of it. Here I am totally out of touch, and here you are corresponding with him, running into him—”

“But you don't mind, do you?” I asked as we sat down, looking carefully at her face as she answered.

“Of course I don't mind. I think it's very nice. But you should watch out a little, he tends to see life in rather dark shades. You don't need more of that.”

“But he's not like that at all. He has an inspiring view of life.”

“So I thought too, but he doesn't. It comes through. Not that one wants a hebephrenic.” She took her cigarettes from her shoulder bag and lit one.

“May I bum one?”

“Oh, sorry. Here.” She passed me the pack.

I lit up and leaned back, drawing on the cigarette. I still didn't do
it right; but I was improving, and as I puffed, I watched the sprinklers on the lawn swinging around and around. The cool greenness was pretty, but it seemed somehow like a stage set, unconnected with real life; you would never smell the baking marsh here or see swarms of droning gnats or Shell workers tramping home from work, sweat-stained and grimy. . . .

“I only mean,” said Helen Maria, exhaling deeply, “that one doesn't relish being looked upon as insubstantial simply because one happens to lack the qualities of Hamlet. Or what it boils down to, I suppose, as if you were some kind of poor joke because you were eighteen.”

“I don't think age has anything to do with anything.”

“Exactly, but try getting that through his head!” She gave a sigh, then shook her head. “But I'm being unfair, I make it sound as if we did nothing but argue and insult each other. We never did. It was just something I felt more and more, and then one day he said it wasn't working out. He was very nice about it—concerned, you know, and unhappy, I could tell. Because we had been very close. I mean really close . . . like man and wife. . . .”

She lowered her eyes as she said this, maybe sensing that I would be shocked, which I was. Helen Maria was not a virgin. She had done it. She had done it with Egon.

I had never imagined them that way together. I would not dwell on it now; it was done with. She had had a sex experience, which was only natural and good; she herself had said you must grab life by the horns. And he had probably had many sex experiences, and this was just another one. His great experience was still in the future.

“Well, it's done with now,” I said. “I hope you're not brooding.”

“Do you see me brooding? I'm just telling you because you must have wondered why I never mentioned him in my letters. Did he ever mention me, by the way?”

“No.”

“No, I suppose not. Well. Enjoy your correspondence.”

“I'm glad you don't mind.”

“Why should I mind? You don't have a lot of people in that godforsaken town to communicate with. Except what's-his-name . . . Donald? Tell me about this Donald who reads Thomas Wolfe.”

“Oh, he's nothing. We talk, but he's not on any very high level.”

“And Peggy. So she didn't go to the United Nations.”

I shook my head. “
Parti avec le vent.
And she dropped me like a hot potato the next day. Didn't want any more nagging, even if I wasn't nagging, but she knew I was inside. I don't think she'll ever change now.”

“No, I don't think so either.”

“It was as if she closed a door.”

“There's a good deal of door closing in life. It's something that dawns on you.” She blew out smoke, her green eyes reflective.

“I know,” I said.

“Fortunately, there are also doors opening.”

“Like going to England?”

“Yes, like going to England.”

We had lunch at the same terrace café we had eaten at last time. There was no alien language grating on my ears, no anxiety and anger; there were no long blue shadows growing. We talked about Oxford, and the United Nations, and French grammar. We had cigarettes with our coffee, and I leaned lazily back in the sun.

“C'est plaisant ici,
” I said, exhaling.
“Et Rosa Luxury, comment vat-elle?”

“Rosa Luxury?”

“You know, Ruth.”

“Oh, fine. You'll see her later, she's coming to dinner with us.”

“I thought she didn't like me.”

“Don't worry, she doesn't even remember you.”

I took a short puff of my cigarette. It was irritating to inquire after someone who didn't even remember that you had met.

“Of course I don't bracket her with Luxemburg anymore; that was sloppy thinking. She has none of Luxemburg's power and brilliance.”

“I'm sure I fail to understand how you can judge anything about Ruth, since you scarcely know her. I also fail to understand why you keep associating her with Rosa Luxemburg. Ruth is a perfectly ordinary, garden variety socialist who will never accomplish anything spectacular, but she's a very good person.”

“She's got a bad memory, though.”

“Be glad. Incidentally, please don't bring up the concentration camps.”

“What sort of idiot do you think I am?” I asked, flushing.

“I don't think you're an idiot at all. I think you've evolved remarkably. But it's a subject everyone's talking about, and it would be natural enough to—”

“Well, I wouldn't. I would assume she might have had family over there.”

“Yes, she and Egon both. What's become of them they don't know yet. But one can surmise.”

“There's going to be a war crimes trial. In Nuremberg. I suppose you know Egon's going?”

“Yes, I know.”

“I wonder if he'll come back afterwards.”

“I have no interest in where Egon will spend the rest of his days—Berkeley, Germany, or Inner Mongolia. I shall be in England. And just because I brought his name up doesn't mean I wish to discuss him.”

“Well,” I said, “let's discuss poetry then.”

We spent the rest of the afternoon strolling around the shady parts of campus and browsing along Telegraph Avenue, talking mostly of poetry—Homer (Helen Maria's favorite), Keats, Gerard Manley Hopkins, and a name I'd never heard of, T. S. Eliot, whom I didn't like when she quoted him:

                   
I grow old . . . I grow old . . .

                   
I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled

Who cared how he wore his trousers? It was carrying the small ordinary things of life too far; next thing, poets would be writing about brushing their teeth or going to the toilet. I told this to Helen Maria, not without a blush for my coarseness.

“You have a point,” she said, shading her face as we walked along the white, glaring street. “I prefer the grand image myself. But you must read Eliot in context. His rolled trousers are a lament for greatness ungrasped.”

“But you don't like laments, do you?”

“There you go generalizing. I don't like lament as a
way
of life, but it's a part of life. You can't get around it.” And she said it again, slowly, as if to herself, “You can't get around it. . . .”

We had to eat early because I was taking the six-forty-five train back. The street still blazed with light but inside the restaurant it was dim. It was a French restaurant, shabby and scuffed-looking, but picturesque, like the cafés of Paris. There was sawdust on the floor, and French travel posters were tacked on the walls, and on red-checked tablecloths stood candles stuck in bottles rough with wax that had run down. There weren't many people there yet, just a few students; it seemed to be a student hangout. Helen Maria knew them and smiled and said hello as we passed; how different, I thought, from the days in Mendoza when she didn't know anyone and strode swiftly along with her head in the air.

Ruth was already there, sitting at a table with a glass of wine, smoking. She had on the same black turtleneck sweater she had worn before, despite the heat. She looked different, though, because her hair was down, frizzy and loose, and it gave her a younger appearance. But her crushing grip was the same.

“So we have met before,” she said. “I have not such a recollection, or perhaps vague. If you had the hair of a Dutch doll, it crosses my mind. It crosses my mind you asked numerous questions.”

“Suse doesn't ask so many questions,” Helen Maria said as we sat down. “She evolved greatly.”

“I am happy to hear it.”

We were only there a few minutes when the waiter came over. “Look at your menu,” said Helen Maria. “You must speak French with him.”

I was able to say,
“Qu'est-ce que cela?”
as I pointed to this item and that, and then,
“Merci, monsieur,”
when he translated.

“Very good,” said Helen Maria, when he had gone off with our orders.

“I may become a translator,” I announced pointedly, for Ruth's sake, to stir her thoughts around Egon.

But she only said, “You will have some way to go.”

“Of course, you have to have a knack for translation,” I went on, “I know certain people have a knack for it.”