The Art Student's War (37 page)

I suppose I was afraid to speak directly of what is in my heart. I have wronged you, Bea. In the eyes of God, I have wronged you, Bea, and this is something I must live with, like Conrad’s Jim. I do identify the ironies in my circumstances. I too am heading to the Pacific. I could beg your forgiveness; I could plead with you; I could make excuses. But I’ve already done these things and I will not again do these things. I must change the who-I-am. This is the lesson I learned for the first time when I injured my spine in the jungle. And it’s the lesson I learned a second time when I realized the wrong I had done you. I believe in the possibility of human learning. I believe in Resurrection, both divine and human, large and small. I will not trouble you further with my turmoil, at least for a while. Because I don’t deserve to write to you again until I know in my heart I’m no longer the man I was. Then I will write. And then I will ask you, Bea, and maybe even deserve, your forgiveness
.

Henry

The third letter wasn’t really a letter but a poem, although it began with a brief prose preamble. It said:

Dear Bea
,

Don’t consider this another letter after I vowed not to write another letter until I truly purged myself. Consider it a postscript. Here’s another poem from the poet-who-is-not-a-poet:

You have invented beauty;
I have invented sorrow.
I show myself unworthy
But a better soul tomorrow
.

I would take you as my beacon
On the dark seas of Night,
And find my way to landfall
With you as my harbor light
.

“Hen-ry,” Bea sighed, and the act of uttering his name instantly materialized him in his ridiculous hat with its trailing vegetal curlicues, somberly scrutinizing all the captive animals scattered before him. Yes, it was as if—on that wonderful, unforgettable day so long ago!—he hadn’t comprehended that theirs was no journey through Africa on a real train but a trip through the Detroit Zoo on a toy-sized train, and now Bea’s weeping began in grim breathless earnest …

It started not so much with tears as with a single desolate cry, a keening howl torn right out of her heart. Henry Vanden Akker was dead and hers was the cry of a soul riven by that mortal recognition from which, henceforward, life must be refigured: the bare, astounding notion that Eternity itself isn’t large enough to make good the loss you’ve suffered. Some cherished, gleaming nonesuch has disappeared from the Earth and it will not come back. No, never in all the celestial unspooling of the ages, century upon century, never will its like return. Never—Bea had glimpsed the true defining
Never
of the human predicament, and a howl was torn right out of the thumping young heart of her …

All day in her room Bea wept, sometimes quietly, sometimes tempestuously. She did not step outside. She thought about telephoning somebody—Ronny, Maggie—but she owed Henry solitary grief. Through squalls of tears she explained to Mamma her tragedy, but how could Mamma understand, never having laid eyes on Henry?

Mamma carried upstairs a lunch—a meat loaf sandwich and a glass of milk. Bea drank the milk, most of it, but there was no possibility of eating. Later, in the afternoon, Bea recalled how, in the morning, she’d broken the terrible, terrible news to Mamma. Or had she? Memories
of their conversation felt muffled and unreal—as if Bea were recollecting a mere dream, or retrieving one nightmare from a different nightmare.

Bea read and reread Henry’s letters, though Henry’s final poem made her cry so convulsively she scarcely dared pick it up. He’d called her his harbor light. At some point Bea remembered she was supposed to be in class. What was the chance of that? At various junctures she felt as though she might have slept, but it wasn’t sleep so much as a wandering across an enormous baking metallic landscape worse than lifeless—it was all but colorless—while overhead an alien sun raged like a grease fire.

In the afternoon Bea recalled her relief when, three days early, her period had arrived, and only now perceived how unforgivably selfish she’d been, and wept more bitterly than she’d wept all day. Henry would never have children, and yet
she
had felt relief when Henry’s one and only chance for children was lost. What had happened to Henry’s children? Didn’t they, too, perish in that plane crash?

Bea wasn’t to be cajoled down to dinner, though Papa tried and Mamma tried and even Edith tried. Eventually Papa brought up a bowl of ham and navy-bean soup. “You have to eat,” he said, and sat himself down in the desk chair. She promised she would try if he’d only leave her alone—but Papa wouldn’t budge. “I stay until you eat your soup,” he announced. He wasn’t often like this, but nothing was more characteristic of his inner self: intervals of proud doggedness when he declared himself immovable.

Bea’s hands were trembling so pitifully, it wasn’t easy getting the soup to her mouth—and, besides, she wasn’t hungry. But Papa sat silently, steadfastly, until she’d finished half the bowl, then gave a slow, satisfied nod when she set it down on the bedside table. “That’s all,” she said. He asked what was the matter.

For a while Bea couldn’t get the words out through her sobbing. But Papa was patient and in time she managed to relate much of the story. “I’m sorry you lost your friend,” he said.

I’m sorry you lost your friend
, her father said.

Lost her
friend?
How could Papa possibly understand, who had never even met Henry? No—no—no: Papa had scarcely
heard
of Henry, partly because Papa was so busy, and partly because lately Bea had chosen to keep things to herself. As far as Papa knew, Henry was just a boy among boys. How could he comprehend that Henry was the one, the chosen unique one, to whom she’d elected to give herself?

After a while Papa went away, downstairs, leaving the soup behind. Edith appeared eventually and asked if she could sleep in the upper bunk. The request started Bea crying anew. Alone—she needed to be alone …

Then Bea slept and the next morning she woke up early, feeling much restored, and resolved to clean her room. She changed her sheets and Edith’s sheets, and yanked everything out of her bureau and refolded the clothes and tucked them back into the bureau. She was doing much better, but she suffered a serious setback when she found a minuscule scrap of paper, no larger than a quarter, under the bed.

It spoke to her.

Bea’s heart knew what it was, though she didn’t yet know what it was. But in the assimilating, puzzled interval before recognition, it murmured reassuringly against her fingertips.

Bea examined it closely.

It was Henry’s handwriting. This little scrap? It could only be one of those scraps created when she’d spitefully torn up his eight-page letter, so many weeks ago—so long ago. Yes, that’s what she’d done. First, he’d tried to apologize in person, and she had rebuked him:
Henry, haven’t you said enough?
Then, Henry had composed an eight-page letter, in which he’d laid out the lineaments of his soul, and she had methodically ripped it into angry bits … That was the sort of heartless, wretched person she was, and how could he, how could anyone, possibly love her?

Bea had thought she’d discarded every last howling scrap in the two trash bins on Mack, but she hadn’t. One fragment, one stubborn little message-laden token of Henry’s soul, had survived under the bed.

What was the ultimate message from her Henry?

There was an
ied
and a
th
at the top of the scrap—the tail of one word and the head of another. Below lay a complete word,
rut
, though it, too, was probably a fragment. The word had presumably been
truth
—that pet favorite of Henry’s elevated lexicon: he had left her a fragment of the truth. Oh, she could hear him pronouncing it in his distinctive voice—
But the truth is, Bea
, he might begin. Or,
Yet the difficult truth of the matter …
And another flood of tears assailed her.

Afterward, Bea felt much better—better even than she’d felt in the morning, and she headed off toward Ferry with her portfolio. But she had no sooner mounted the steps and found herself enclosed by the green corridors than she began trembling with such severity she had to scurry back out into fresh air. She dropped down—all but collapsed—on the front steps, though as far to the side as possible. And there she
wept, while people went up and down, up and down. At Ferry Hospital, they were used to such sights.

When she finally tottered off the steps, Bea realized only one destination was possible. Home. Simultaneously, she saw that this plan was unworkable. She couldn’t possibly face a streetcar, and it was miles too far to walk. From here, from this hospital where she’d been born, there was simply no getting home.

Though it was an unheard-of extravagance, Bea deposited herself in a taxi and rode all the way home, almost. Obviously, she couldn’t arrive on her doorstep in a taxicab. She crawled out in front of Olsson’s and straggled down Inquiry and through the front door and, explaining to Mamma as she stumbled upstairs that she wasn’t feeling well, finally collapsed on her bed. Where she remained the rest of the day.

When she woke the next morning, Bea knew she couldn’t handle Ferry, or the Institute Midwest, and it occurred to her she might be finished with both forever. But what would substitute for them? If she were no longer an art student, the only sensible path was to find a job, but the very thought of getting dressed and heading off into the city—into the humming sleepless madness of wartime Detroit—injected nauseating chemicals into the churning bag of her stomach. What on earth was she to do? Women in slacks were employed in tank factories, they were running gas stations, they were bus conductorettes—but at the moment Bea could hardly imagine even climbing aboard a streetcar. What was she to do?

It was a relief, mostly, when Ronny showed up. (She had telephoned him in the morning, hadn’t she? Their conversation, like so many recent conversations, seemed more imagined than real.) Anyway, here was Ronny, on her doorstep. This was sweet. Bea could see that: it was sweet of him to come.

They walked to Buttery Creek Park, where they sat on a bench and she leaned on his shoulder and wept recklessly into the front of his shirt. After a while, once she’d calmed down, Ronny said, “I remember you telling me how lucky you felt because you hadn’t known anyone yet who died in the War. Though you did feel it coming closer and closer.”

“Yes.”

Yes, she’d told him that.

“And then the news arrived. And it would turn out to be
him
, of all people.”

“Yes. Though somehow I knew it was going to happen.”

“I’m so sorry …” Ronny gazed at her, fondly, and maybe a little sadly, and he said, “You really loved him, didn’t you.”

Oh: and weren’t these the perfect words? Oh, it was so
good
of Ronny to say such a thing! Now she could open her heart … Yes, of course yes: Yes, she’d
really loved Henry
, and she’d lost her one true love, who had never once heard her declare, and now would never hear her declare,
I love you
.

So Bea wept with renewed anguish on Ronny’s shoulder and dried her eyes and confessed again that yes, she had loved Henry. And Ronny looked saddened but also vindicated: he’d thought as much. He’d known how she felt before she herself did.

Oh, it was all so
sweet
of Ronny, so considerate and
good
of Ronny, who held her hand and walked her through the park and took her out for coffee and a cinnamon roll and didn’t upbraid her when she ate almost none of it. She drank her cup of coffee and most of Ronny’s coffee and then (since Ronny thought more coffee wouldn’t be good for her, even if the waiter would have brought it) a cup of tea. The warmth of the drinks was comforting.

Ronny was back the next day and this time he drove her to Belle Isle, where the light inside the green-tiled aquarium somehow made her feel better than she’d felt in—in how long? She couldn’t say, really. It was a shame they didn’t have some sort of cafeteria set up inside here. The tiles were genuine Pewabic, one of the world’s loveliest greens, and Bea, securely enfolded in their unearthly, watery light, could have lingered all day, and her appetite would have returned, the two of them seated at some table overlooking tanks where pike and trout and shy, boldly colored clownfish stared out from one world into another.

It was unexpectedly liberating—the sensation of peering through glass into another world. Yes, this was odd. A strange giddy giggly joy coursed through her veins as she stared at the four-eyed fish, which didn’t really have four eyes. They had two, split like bifocals. Half above the surface, half below. She recalled a little game she and Maggie used to play, so long ago. She said to Ronny, “If you put your head right at the surface, and watch them swimming at you, they look just like alligators. You know, the ones in the Tarzan movies. Coming to devour you, chomp, chomp,
chomp …”

The phrase—chomp, chomp,
chomp
—had come swimming straight and fast out of her childhood: Bea saw little pigtailed Maggie Szot, eyes ablaze.

And Ronny tried it, hunched his head level with the water’s surface. He stared for quite some time. Then he straightened up and said something at once heartening and a little heartbreaking: “Bianca, I sometimes think you have more imagination than I do. Or at least a wilder imagination.”

He looked stricken, and suddenly she wanted to comfort him … Yes, in this aquarium, anyway, roles could be reversed and she could comfort Ronny. But of course she couldn’t stay indefinitely in the aquarium, and how many days could she possibly expect him to walk her slowly about, like some recovering invalid? What was she going to do now? She had wept herself raw: Bea’s throat, her nostrils, her eyes ached all the time. It hurt just to swallow. To blink.