Camilla (25 page)

Then Frank seemed to throw his shoulders back and stand up taller. “Well, if you're going off next week, we have this week. Let's make it a wonderful week, Cam. Let's see each other every day. Okay? Shall we make it the week of Camilla and Frank?”

“Yes,” I said, feeling suddenly happy again. Even if Bill and Mona were taking Frank and Luisa to Cincinnati, even if Mother and Father were going to Italy and sending me to boarding school, Frank and I would have a week together. And it was not only that we would have the week, but that it had been Frank's idea. He might be leaving New York forever
but I was the one he wanted to spend his last week with. I was so happy I wanted to throw my head back and sing loudly with the joy of a rooster greeting the morning.

“What shall we do, Cam?” Frank asked me. “I haven't got much money so it can't be anything too terrific, but shall we ride on the Staten Island Ferry? That's one of the classic things.”

“Yes, let's,” I said.

“Do you know Edna Saint Vincent Millay?” he asked me. “I should think you might like her. I feel I've outgrown her but there's one thing kind of apropos right now. ‘We were very young, we were very merry, we rode back and forth all night on the ferry.' I like that. So we'll just ride over and back and then think of something else to do. I wish I could take you for a ride in one of the hansom cabs in Central Park but I'm afraid I couldn't quite swing that.”

“I'd rather ride on the ferry, anyhow,” I said, though I would have adored to ride in a hansom cab with Frank.

It was a gray day with misty clouds hanging low over the city and it was already beginning to get dark when we got on the ferry. One or two soft feathers of snow came dropping slowly out of the sky but it wasn't really snowing. Frank and I went directly to the bow of the boat and stood there looking out over the water. You could somehow tell just by the look of the water that it was terribly deep, that it was so deep that great steamships could navigate in it. It was an iron-gray color and the little waves had somehow the quality of metal. A raw wind was blowing and I put the collar of my coat up.

“Are you cold?” Frank asked me. “Want to go inside?”

“No. No, I like it out here.”

The ferry started moving with a jerk that threw me against Frank. He put his arm around me and we stood there that way, as the ferry pushed out into the dark gray water. As we moved, the mist thickened and we could see nothing but water and then a thick soft blanket of fog and we might have been going out into the open sea; we could see nothing ahead of us. We looked back and behind us the skyline of New York was disappearing into the fog. It was like a mirage or a city in a fairy tale put under a spell and disappearing forever into the mist.

Frank dropped his arm from my waist and said abruptly, “You know, Cam, about God.”

“What?” I asked, startled.

“You know what we need is a new God.” I didn't say anything, so after a moment he went on. “I mean, what we need is a God people like me, or David, or you, or our parents, could really believe in. I mean, look at all the advances we've made scientifically since—oh, well, since Christ was born if you want to put a date on it. Transportation—look how that's changed. And communication. Telegraph and telephones and television. They're all new and a few thousand years ago we couldn't even have conceived of them but now we can't conceive of doing without them. But you take God. God hasn't changed any since Jesus took him out of a white nightgown and long whiskers. You know what I mean. Along about when Christ was born, just a few years A.D., it was time someone should conceive a new God and then have the power to give his new understanding to the world. So what we need again now is a new God. The God most people are worshiping in churches and temples hasn't grown since Christ's time. He's deteriorated. Look what the Middle Ages
did to the Church. All this arguing about how many angels could stand on the point of a needle. All the velvet and gold on the outside and decadence on the inside. And then the Victorians. They tried to put God back in a long white nightgown and whiskers again. That kind of a God isn't any good for today. You can't blame Mona for not believing in that kind of God. We need a God who's big enough for the atomic age.”

He stopped for a moment, staring out over the water into the fog, and then he said, “Listen, maybe all that sounds awfully arrogant. But it isn't all mine. I mean, an awful lot of it I got from David. But I thought out something myself that I think's kind of good, only I don't really believe in it. If I
did
believe in it I think it would be the most logical kind of explanation for things. I mean, I think it would satisfy me. But just because I thought of it myself I can't have faith in it. You know, Cam, we live on a pretty stinking little planet in a second-rate little constellation in a backwash of the universe.”

“Yes, I know,” I said.

“And when you think of all the millions of stars your astronomers see and then all the millions of stars that must be out there somewhere beyond the reach of even the most gigantic telescope that could ever be invented, who are we to say that there aren't stars or planets somewhere else with life on them, and life much better than ours? Why should the Earth, which is, as I said—well, it isn't even second-rate, it's lower than that—why should the Earth be the only planet with life on it when you think of stars and constellations and everything going on forever and ever and ever? I mean, you take space, and space goes on and on and on. And does it end the way Einstein says it does? And if it does, what's beyond
that? So what I figured out was this: nobody ever gets a chance to finish on this Earth. And even if there's a heaven nobody's good enough at the end of life on this Earth to be ready to go to heaven. In the first place, we haven't got the equipment. And I don't think it's fair of God to give us brains to ask questions if He isn't going to let us answer them sometimes. So I figured that when we die, maybe we go to another planet, the next planet in the scale. Maybe we get better brains there that will make us able to learn and understand just a little more than anyone—even someone like Einstein— is able to understand on this Earth. And maybe we might get another sense. I mean, maybe before we got born on the Earth we were on another planet where no one could see. If everybody in the world was born blind, if there wasn't any such thing as sight, we wouldn't have the slightest idea what it was. We couldn't conceive of it even in our wildest dreams. So maybe on the next planet there's a new sense, just as important as sight, or even more important, but which we can't conceive of now any more than we could conceive of sight if we didn't know about it. And then when we'd finished on that planet we'd go on to another planet and develop even more, and so on and on and on, for hundreds and thousands or maybe even millions of planets, learning and growing all the time, until at last we'd finally know and understand everything—absolutely everything—and then maybe we'd be ready for heaven.

“I guess when you're ready for heaven you're able to stop caring about being an individual. And I don't think I could ever stop caring about being an individual unless I'd lived billions and billions of years and really
did
know and understand everything. I mean, then maybe I'd be ready for God.”

“I think that's wonderful!” I cried. “Oh, Frank, I think it's wonderful. I could believe in something like that. I should think anyone could. Did you tell Luisa?”

“Her?” Frank asked scornfully. “She just said she was fed up hearing me talk about the importance of Frank Rowan and thinking of a system where Frank Rowan could go on being important. I didn't mean it that way.”

“Oh, Frank,” I said. Then I asked, “Did you—did you talk to David about it?”

“Yes,” Frank said. “Yes. David was very nice. He liked the idea. But I could tell that he didn't believe in it. Maybe even he thought I was caring too much about being Frank Rowan at all costs again. I don't know. He was just very nice and—and sort of sad.”

We were beginning to see Staten Island now, looming up out of the fog. Frank said, “I told Pompilia Riccioli and she laughed. She just sat down and laughed till the tears rolled down her cheeks. You're the only person who seems to have cared in the right way, Camilla.”

“I do care,” I told him. “I care awfully.”

Now we drew into the Staten Island slip and Frank took my arm and held it very tight and we walked off the ferry into the cold damp air of Staten Island.

“Want to go somewhere and have a frankfurter or something?” Frank asked.

But I wasn't hungry. I shook my head. “No. But you go on and have something if you want to.”

“Me, you think I could eat?” Frank turned on me and his voice was suddenly savage. “You think I could eat when the minute you're born you're condemned to die? When thousands
of people are dying every minute before they've even had a chance to begin? Death isn't fair. It's—it's a denial of life! How can we be given life when we're given death at the same time? Death isn't fair,” Frank cried again, his voice soaring and cracking with rage. “I resent death! I resent it with every bone in my body! And you think—you think I could eat!”

He looked at me as though he hated me. He jammed a coin into the slot and pushed me ahead of him onto the New York–bound ferry and stood with his arms crossed in bitter and passionate anger. He did not look at me; he did not talk. Once when the ferry slapped into a wave and I was thrown against him he pulled away from me as though I repelled him. I had heard Luisa talk about Frank's moods and I supposed that this was one of them, but it frightened me. I stood there beside him and as many millions of miles away from him as one of the planets he had been talking about and tried not to shiver. It was not because I was cold that I was shivering, but because of Frank.

There wasn't any choice anymore. I couldn't say any longer, even to myself, I don't think I'll grow up for a while yet; I think I'll be a child just a little longer. Being a child was something that I was afraid to let go of but that now I had to let go of, because I knew that if I loved Frank I could no longer be a child.

A sudden gust of wind lifted my beret from my head and flung it into the water. Frank did not appear to notice and I knew that if I should cry out “Oh, my hat” or anything, it would anger him even more. So I just stood there beside him and let the wind push my hair back from my forehead and
drive my breath back down into my throat, almost choking me. And there was Frank standing beside me consumed with rage and I was afraid.

Then as the towers of New York began to be visible through the fog I could feel Frank slowly beginning to relax. The terrible tenseness left his body and all of a sudden he said in quite a happy voice, “You know what, Cam, there's something awfully exciting about New York even if you've been born and brought up in it.”

“I think it's even more exciting if you've been born and brought up in it. I think it's the most exciting place in the world to call home,” I said, but even though Frank had relaxed I was still caught up in the tenseness of his rage.

We left the ferry and started to walk through the downtown streets. They were filling up now with people leaving the business district and getting ready to go home, and the next ferry would be a great deal more crowded than the one we had ridden on. A sharp wind was blowing and I wished my beret were not somewhere in the cold waters but on my cold head instead. Frank took my arm and we pushed through the streets until the crowds began to diminish and we were on a quiet street with only one or two other people walking quickly, heads bowed to the wind.

I walked along beside Frank and my own happy mood had gone and I wanted to cry out to him, “Say something comforting!” though I did not know what there was that he could say. Frank and Luisa would be going to Cincinnati and I would be going to boarding school and everything would be over, over. And all because of Jacques, I thought, forgetting in my misery that Jacques had nothing to do with Cincinnati; all because of my father's not—I did not know exactly what it
was that my father had not done that he ought to have done, but I knew it was something; all because of my mother's weeping and sobbing one afternoon and then trying so foolishly to cut her wrists, and why? I knew my mother did not want to die.

“Frank,” I asked, “what would you think of someone who tried to commit suicide?” The wind blew a bitter gust and my words seemed forced back into my throat, as though they would have been better unsaid.

Frank grabbed me by both arms. “Camilla, you're not—”

“No, it isn't me,” I said. “I'm not talking about myself.”

“But you're talking about someone,” Frank stated flatly.

“Well—you can't talk about no one, can you?”

Frank continued to hold my arms. He looked sternly down into my eyes. “I think it's the unforgivable sin, Camilla. If God gave us life He didn't mean us to try to fling His gift back in His teeth. Suicide is murder.”

“You don't think it could ever be right, ever?”

“No,” Frank said. And then he said. “Oh, Cam, I don't know. You aren't talking about David, are you?”

“No.”

“Because I don't think it would be all right for him, and I don't think he does, either.”

“I wasn't talking about David,” I said. The wind penetrated my clothes, through my skin and into my bones. My veins seemed to be running with wind rather than blood.

“The way Johnny's older brother died—it was suicide in a way, I suppose. He died in order to save the rest of his crew. Oh, Cam, all I know is, there isn't any one answer to any question. Cam, why did you ask me about suicide?”

“I—I don't know,” I said.

“Cam, I don't want ever to pry, but—but you worry me when you talk about things like that.”