Ellis Island & Other Stories (8 page)

When the two men left in the puffing automobile, Martin felt uncomfortable. He thought they were very high and brave, and he might even have wanted to be like them, but the equilibrium of the place had disappeared. They were attractive precisely because they were subject to the caprice of war. They had about them the uncertainty of a frontier, and were unsettling. He did not want them to come on Sunday, especially since Lydia had been magnetized like a needle on a lodestone, and suddenly looked as if she knew something that no one else knew. For Martin, the Marines were like night and cold.

But that Sunday was like summer, and, in ranging the far stretches of beach in search of landed sharks or the magnificent sight of a Coast Guardsman galloping his mount along the water’s edge, Martin forgot about threats from outside. Even looking to the ocean’s horizon, he did not sense beyond the rim the haunting battles which, at other times, were felt by all as if they were the approaching storms of the hurricane season. That day was hot and blue, with a magnificent cold wind.

Almost part of the landscape, Martin wandered down the beach. He wanted to go as far east as he could and then turn to make his way home. A breeze came from the sea, tossing spray off the tips of clear waves. Beach and surrounding duneland were abandoned to autumn. Martin crested the top of a high dune and looked over a pine forest and the multiple intrusions of sounds, bays, inlets, and broken spits with the risen water surging through to make pools in the midst of scrub trees. On the partly sand-covered macadam road, he saw the Marine colonel’s empty automobile.

They must be swimming, thought Martin, or scouting the coast. Then his heart jumped as he saw two figures disappear beyond a wavelike hill of roseate voluted sand. He ran to join them, breathless and afraid, and, although he did not hesitate long enough to discover why, he felt drawn inevitably into something that he suspected would make him appear foolish. When he came near to where they had been, he stayed low among the sharp grasses. Then he felt as if he had come upon a momentous and terrible truth. The young lieutenant and Christiana Friebourg were swimming together in the sea, having left their clothing on the beach. The air was dry and it snapped at wave crests. The lieutenant and Christiana appeared and disappeared over the plane of white beach as they were lifted entwined and turning in the waves. They kissed, and seemed to dance buoyantly, like swans, in a field of azure. They never wet their hair, and always were grasped together and revolving. Christiana threw back her head. Her body, shining from seawater, was nearly as glossy as the brine.

Not wanting to be seen, Martin crept in prodigious low-coursed leaps to a channel between the hills, and ran toward the hotel convinced that the only way he could save himself from a fate unknown at the hands of the lieutenant was to pretend that he had spent the entire day in the opposite direction. He ran for miles, appearing at the hotel as heated as if he had been firing boilers. For about fifteen minutes Mrs. Bayer had watched him running in from the east. “Where have you been, Martin?”

“I was down there,” he said, pointing straight to the west. In a frenzy he went inside and opened a box of stereoscopic views, shuffling them for an hour without memory of a single scene, until Christiana entered casually and went to the kitchen to help her mother. Martin was shaking, sure that she had found him out. How he pitied poor Friebourg and feared for Lydia, since there was no way for him to protect her from the possession which had come over Christiana. When he imagined Lydia naked in the waves, spinning in ecstatic circles with the tall Marine, he blacked out (or perhaps fell asleep) and remembered nothing until the long shadows of Sunday afternoon and a mad rush in the kitchen told him that the Marine was really going to appear, that he would have the daring and contempt to sit at table with the fallen Christiana and her parents. How could anyone be that cruel? And Christiana seemed so happy. Even Martin’s sparkling images gave him no comfort. He prayed that dinner would be short, war break out, and the Marines suffer immediate recall. When they were late, he felt moments of relief in imagining that they were already out on the dark hurricane-covered sea, pushing without any lights toward France and oblivion.

The Marines arrived at early evening—the lieutenant, the colonel, a major, and two other lieutenants. Almost in panic, Martin tried to pull Lydia away from the gathering. He went about, shifty-eyed and breathing hard, attempting to separate her from the Marines. “Lydia! Lydia!” he cried, holding up a dime book. “Read me about Captain Strumpet!” Everyone looked at him in the most peculiar fashion—especially his mother and father, since in normal times Martin would not allow anyone even to touch the Captain Strumpet book.

“Martin,” his mother said, “let’s not have another Turkish Carpet.” No one except the Bayers themselves understood this, and they were glad that it seemed to quiet Martin down. Mrs. Bayer had been referring to Martin’s punishment after they had all gone to buy a Turkish carpet at a fancy rug showroom in one of the new skyscrapers. As they entered the elevator, Martin had come face to face with the elevator boy—who was really a midget.

“Fourteen, please,” Mr. Bayer said.

Martin took an immediate dislike to this fake boy. He did not approve of the uniform that made the little man look like an organ-grinder’s monkey or a jockey in military dress, so he said, “I’ll take seven.”

“No,” said Mr. Bayer. “Don’t pay any attention to him.” He glowered at Martin, and the elevator boy sneered triumphantly. On the third floor, they stopped to pick up a diva wrapped in tubular white furs.

“Eleven, please,” Martin said in falsetto.

The elevator boy tipped his little cakebox hat at the diva, but she said, “Take me to five.”

“Nine,” said Martin, moving to the back of the car to avoid his father.

“Fourteen,” repeated Mr. Bayer.

“Eight!” shouted Martin.

The fake boy was so confused that he had to halt the elevator and ask each person in turn what floor was desired. Later, after they had bought the rug, Martin sweetened his victory by running down fourteen flights of stairs and pushing the elevator call on each floor.

An ocher-colored cloth covered the table, and to the side was a marble-topped cart laden with champagne and bowls of fruit, and shining from the clear electric lights. Christiana stood behind this cart, in a beautiful dress. Her hair was drawn up and this full exposure made her look a bit awkward and sad, but when the lieutenant came in he stared at her gentle imperfect face as if there were nothing finer in the world. He helped her open the champagne, which overflowed onto the marble. They then drank toasts to Britain, France, the Marines, and the U.S. Even Martin had two glasses, but held off at that for fear of another concert-hall disaster. He looked out into the smoky darkness and the rows of trees, thinking of nearby farmyards and their populations of raucous, jovial hogs, sarcastic chickens, and bleating lambs. He ate large amounts of black bread and smoked fish.

One of the Marines went out to the automobile and returned with his guitar, on which he played exciting Spanish songs. He had left the door open, and before they knew it a swarm of flashing insects circled the lights. In the middle of September there was always a renaissance of summer insects. They came in waves from the brown grasses and the silent, still forests, their movements urgent and overheated, as if they knew that soon nights as clear as spirit would fell them and they would quickly become only crackling shells among the frail leaves.

It seemed to Martin that the lieutenant paid excessive attention to Christiana. Before dinner they stayed together in a corner, on a velvet divan, talking as if being close and in love were a patent on the world. He pulled out her chair when they sat down. Martin felt less and less apprehensive, for the lieutenant seemed not to be an exploiter or a philanderer but, rather, a good man acting from his heart. This made Martin almost carefree as he began, like the others, to enjoy the lieutenant’s and Christiana’s mutual infatuation. The young soldier noticed that he was drawing Martin’s attention and, almost pained to look away from Christiana, turned to him and asked, “What do you want to be when you grow up?”

Martin reddened and stared at the bronze buttons on which were engraved a globe and an anchor. He had never known how to answer that question. “I want to be a painter,” he said.

“And live in a garret!” boomed out Mr. Friebourg.

“And live in a
palace,
” said Martin, strongly, besieged from all sides. A vision of a life of colors came to him, and he saw himself laying-on the smooth lateral white of snowfields, beyond which a blue river cut straight as a rail and steamers were strokes of black, gold, and brown followed by billows of icy mist.

“Mr. Bellows doesn’t live in a garret,” said Lydia. “If Martin says he wants to be a painter, then he
will
be a painter.” Martin nodded his head in approval, of course, and there was silence but for the cicadas outside.

Mrs. Friebourg burst out of the kitchen with a tureen of soup. They drank beer as they pulled apart boiled lobsters and burned their fingers on ears of hot corn. Though the Marines got their own clams and did a lot of surf casting, they seldom had lobster. Perhaps because of the beer and the struggle against the lobsters, talk turned to war. The major had studied closely reports of the fighting, and he opposed the colonel and the lieutenants. “This war,” he said, “is by no means like others. Never before have machine guns, aeroplanes, and mines been such a threat to survival in battle. I fear that the casualty rates will eventually make those of the War of the Rebellion seem charitable.”

“Nonsense,” said the colonel. “What about Gatling guns in the War of the Rebellion and after?”

“Never used in large-scale battles, sir,” answered the major.

“I think you’re exaggerating,” said a lieutenant. “For in open country we should be able to outflank the trenches and barbed wire. When the U.S. enters the War, its character will change.”

“Indeed,” said the major.

Mrs. Bayer interjected. “Do you think we
will
enter the War, Colonel?”

“As certainly as history, Madam. The Germans cannot sink American ships with impunity, and there are political and moral reasons which demand our participation. I believe that with the spring we will declare war, and I hope that this battalion will be among the first to go to France.”

Talk of war vanished as quickly as it had come, when Mrs. Friebourg brought dishes of ice cream garnished with waffle cookies and sprigs of mint. Martin looked at his portion and turned to his father with an air of offended innocence. “Take this leaf out of my ice cream,” he commanded.

“Why can’t you take it out yourself, Martin?” asked Mr. Bayer.

“I didn’t put it there.”

“I didn’t, either.”

“I put the leaf, Martin,” said Mrs. Friebourg. “We always had mint with the ice cream in Denmark. Do you know what is Denmark?”

“Of course I do,” answered Martin. “I’ve been there.”

“You have?” Mrs. Bayer asked, knowing that Martin had never been out of New York State. “When?”

“Before I was born,” Martin said, matter-of-factly. “I remember,” he continued, closing his eyes and tilting his face like a medium (he even grasped the table with both hands), “I remember… butter… lots of butter. And little herring boats in the ocean, turning on the waves. They had beaches there, just like here, but not as big. And there was a circus that I went to; it was very small, they played violins, there was a tiger, the costumes were old-fashioned, and the tent was lit by candles.”

Martin opened his eyes. He had made up the butter and the herring boats, but he had really seen the circus. It had come at him from nowhere, and was very real—he had heard the music and seen the tent gaily lit by candles.

“Yes,” said Mrs. Friebourg, “I have seen a circus like that,” and, for a moment, the room was silent.

Then they got up and had tea, and danced to a player piano and the guitar. The air was cool and beautiful, washed with white, the fields quiet and settled after a summer of growing. The lieutenant danced with Christiana. They were in love. Then, when everyone was red from the dancing and delighted by the near-autumn evening, the lieutenant asked Mr. Friebourg to go out on the porch. Soon Mrs. Friebourg and her daughter followed. The remaining military and the Bayers did not know what to make of it. When the Friebourgs returned, they were beaming. Perhaps it was because the lieutenant was a handsome young man who had gone to university and whose family was known in the South. Perhaps it was because he was wealthy. Perhaps it was because they saw that he and their daughter were genuinely in love. They went to the marble-topped cart and poured champagne. Unable to restrain herself, Mrs. Friebourg said, in her thick Scandinavian accent, “Christiana and Lieutenant Thomson are to be married!” Lydia gasped with pleasure. Everyone smiled, and the Marines made little bows. The prospective bride and bridegroom were young and beautiful.

Martin’s painted scenes danced before his eyes. He remembered the gaiety of the azure water and how unknowing he had felt. But then a picture of uniforms appeared (of course, it was easy) and he saw something in the bright colors which was sad. As the adults gathered to congratulate the lieutenant and his bride-to-be, Martin stepped out on the porch where they had watched him, a little boy, foolishly chasing a horse. The picture inside, through the large window, was active and full of life. He saw the lovers on an azure sea, and he saw white foam tossed by dry winds. He saw them perfectly in love, innocent. Christiana was again behind the marble, serving happily. The lieutenant was tall and stood like a prince.

On glowing boards flooded with moonlight he stared at the fields and could hear the ocean beyond. It was like an end-of-summer dream. But despite the iridescence of the moon, and the delight of middle September’s solid blue fields alive with crickets, Martin saw frightening scenes and sad scenes, of ships fighting darkly across a hurricane-covered sea.