Matters of Honor (10 page)

I wasn’t entirely sure whether I should believe her but found it easy to say that I was very pleased too. That was, after all, the truth.

It was Henry, however, who was on Mrs. Standish’s mind. How well that boy dances, she exclaimed. I haven’t waltzed in years. He made me quite dizzy. I believe that he told me he was Polish and came here with his parents after the war. That must account for the waltz and for that lovely little accent. I meant to ask him about it. Where did he prepare?

The extraordinary thing, I said, was that for all practical purposes he didn’t. There had been one year in Poland, and two years in a high school in New York. It was all the fault of the war.

How perfectly remarkable. Three years of schooling and then Harvard College. Those schools he attended must be very good. But yes, he is, of course, exceptional.

Although this wasn’t a question, I answered, Yes, he is!

She was clearly going to ask more questions, but Mr. and Mrs. Livingston, a couple no less exalted than the Standishes, sat down at our table, and I hurried off to get an eggnog for Mrs. Livingston. When we were alone again, Mrs. Standish asked whether White was a Polish name; the Poles who settled in Berkshire County all seemed to be called Kowak or Nowak. There are so many of them, she pointed out, in West Stockbridge they even have a Polish social club of their own. They are good workers, some of them, and serious churchgoers.

The parents changed the name, I said, shortly after they arrived. They have adopted the English translation of Weiss.

Weiss? she said. Jack guessed right away it was something of the sort, she continued. Oh dear, he thinks that Henry must be Jewish.

It was impossible to play dumb. Accordingly, I nodded cheerfully and said that Mr. Standish had guessed right.

Oh dear, she said. Of course it can’t be helped. He is a very nice young man.

And very gifted, I interjected.

She smiled gently and continued. There are a good many of them at Harvard now. That’s what Jack says. They’re even at Groton. That has made some alumni upset, for instance that dreadful man, Cousin Hoyt. How lucky we are that he has decided to live in Tucson. We never have to see him. Oh dear! Henry’s family must be very nice too. He seems so very well brought up.

Further discussion of this subject had to be suspended. Henry returned from the dance floor, bringing Margot.

VIII

S
HORTLY BEFORE MIDNIGHT
, the president of the club had the band play a fanfare to get the crowd’s attention and proposed a toast to our fighting men holding their own against Chinese human waves and their leader, General MacArthur, under whom he had himself had the honor to serve. Someone called for a minute of silence, after which the band struck up “The Star-Spangled Banner” and we all sang. Some people were crying. The band segued into “Some Enchanted Evening,” and dancing continued until it was time for whistles and other noisemakers, wishes, and embraces. All the while the band played first “Auld Lang Syne” and then “Green-sleeves” over and over. Mr. and Mrs. Standish began to say their good-nights. As I was thanking them, Mrs. Standish invited me to lunch. One o’clock, as always on New Year’s Day, she said. Oh my, we will have to soldier on even in this awful time for the nation, she said. It would be too depressing to cancel. And then she added, You really must stop calling me Mrs. Standish. It’s May. You may call Jack Cousin Jack, if you like, but he would prefer Jack,
tout court.
He has told me so. She offered me her cheek to kiss. Mr. Standish held out his hand and said, Quite right. You’ve just heard
la patronne.
Call me Jack! Best to the parents. Tell your old man about the toast. He’ll be happy to know a glass was raised to our boys in uniform.

The dance floor was still crowded. Henry was dancing with Margot, and George with a girl I didn’t know. She wasn’t a Berkshire person. Feeling suddenly very sleepy, and not wanting to wait until they had finished, I caught George’s eye, waved farewell, and drove home. My parents were still out when I went to bed, and they were still in their room when I came downstairs in the morning. There was ample evidence, however, of their being at home. Odd pieces of clothing were scattered on the floor of the front hall and in the living room; my mother’s panties hung over the banister. On the kitchen table, I found the remnants of a meal they must have eaten after getting in late at night. It was my father’s firm belief that cheese and sausage consumed just before bed palliated the next day’s hangover. Seeing and smelling the stuff discouraged me from making breakfast, but I scraped their plates and put the leftovers in the fridge. My father’s Oldsmobile was in the driveway. He had not bothered to put it into the garage, but at least he hadn’t cracked it up. The key was in the ignition. Despite the bitter cold, the engine turned over on the third or fourth try. I let it idle for about ten minutes and backed into the garage. This would be my second good deed for the day. I scribbled a note reminding my mother that I was taking her station wagon and, unable to think of any other place that would be open, drove to the drugstore in West Lee for coffee and toast. I didn’t want to arrive at the Standishes’ too early or with an empty stomach.

O
NE LOOK AROUND
the Standishes’ living room sufficed to confirm that this event was reserved for the crème de la crème of Stockbridge, Tyringham, and Lenox. I knew many of the faces, even if I couldn’t pretend to greater familiarity. No one but George, Margot, and Henry was roughly in my age group. Perhaps families were not necessarily invited as units, a circumstance that should have made me less queasy about being without my parents, who as the regulars would immediately realize upon seeing me, if they bothered to think about it, had always been excluded. But I remained uneasy, although I was grateful to be spared the embarrassment of greeting contemporaries and had no cause to complain about any lack of cordiality on the part of my hosts, or about the number of hands that reached out for my own as I crossed the living room. I found Margot in the library, on a window seat, face turned toward the Standishes’ back lawn, which was blindingly white under drifts of virgin snow. Beyond were lines of black pine, and farther beyond the white bulk of Monument Mountain. She seemed lost in thought and didn’t notice my approach. Perhaps because she wasn’t wearing lipstick, her face seemed smaller, less outrageous, and oddly sad. I said I hoped she had slept well and asked about George and Henry.

Oh, she answered, just check the Ping-Pong table on the glassed-in porch over there. She gestured vaguely toward the side of the house. George is trouncing Henry. It’s sickening to watch. Why does Henry want to play with him?

I said I could think of at least two reasons: to be polite to his host, who could never sit still, and to get good enough at the game to be able to beat him eventually.

She shrugged and asked me to get her a drink. Not this ghastly stuff, she specified, pointing at my cup of eggnog, I’d like a bourbon.

The previous evening’s manservant was again on duty and brought the drink on a small silver tray. As soon as he was out of earshot, I asked Margot whether she thought that he was the Standishes’ butler or someone hired for the occasion. You and Henry ask the same questions, she replied. Who cares? Judging by his clothes, I’d say he works here.

We clinked glasses, she said chin-chin, and unexpectedly gave me a big smile, like the one I saw that first day in the Yard, though without lipstick. Then, without another word having been said, the smile vanished, and she went back to looking at Monument Mountain. I was going to ask whether something was the matter, but the manservant—I wondered what it was she saw in his clothes that marked him as the Standishes’ permanent employee—announced that lunch was served. Mrs. Standish, or May, as I was trying to think of her, directed us to our table. George and Henry were already there, as were the sisters Appleton, the elder of whom, Ellen, was the headmistress of a girls’ school in Brookline. I had a dim recollection that the other one, Susie, wrote children’s books that regularly won prizes. They were Mr. Standish’s cousins on his mother’s side and lived together in Boston, in a house on Beacon Hill. They also shared in Tyringham a Shaker house of great beauty that had belonged to their parents, where they spent summers and, out of season, long weekends and holidays. By putting the sisters with us, Mrs. Standish had achieved a balanced table without resorting to an equivalent of a children’s table or seating George and Margot away from Henry and me. But at what cost? The sisters had the reputation of being ferocious and unapproachable bluestockings, especially Ellen. Perhaps they would only speak to each other, and to George, because he was a relative. But I needn’t have worried. As soon as George had named the girls’ school in New York that Margot had attended, Ellen put to her a series of questions about the former headmistress and the programs in modern foreign languages and music. Margot hardly bothered to answer, speaking in negligent monosyllables. I wondered why she was sulking. Perhaps it was in order to bait George, but so far as I could tell he had been very attentive at the dance and was trying to be a good host at this table. I kept my eye on Ellen. It seemed impossible that she would tolerate disrespectful behavior from a girl who could have easily been one of her own charges. There was going to be an explosion, but what form would it take, the usual punishments, such as keeping Margot after school or sending her home with an unpleasant note, not being available? George should have been coming to the rescue, but he didn’t seem to notice anything amiss. Fortunately Henry was creating a distraction so surprising that I thought it might preserve Margot from the headmistress’s wrath. He had told me that he really liked the Standishes’ eggnog. Perhaps he had had one too many. That was, in any event, my explanation for the rather loud and peculiar conversation in which he engaged Susie. He wanted to know to what extent her stories had been inspired by the bodies of work of such writers as the Brothers Grimm and Hans Christian Andersen. He expressed at length his surprise at her dislike of these authors and asked more questions, the result of which was that Susie acknowledged one influence, Louisa May Alcott. Henry confessed that he had never read
Little Women
—for a moment I had feared that he would try to fake familiarity with it—and declared that he would now put it on his reading list. Then, as though determined not to yield the floor, he began, without transition, a discourse on the subject of a Polish fairy tale about a certain Pan Twardowski, the nobleman who sold his soul to the devil, lived like a king while the devil did his bidding, and in the end cheated the devil out of his due by fleeing to the moon. The figure of the man in the moon that you can see when the moon is full, he concluded, is none other than Pan Twardowski. He’s laughing his head off.

A primitive retelling of the German Faust legend, observed Ellen.

Henry blushed. Yes, of course, he answered, I should have said so right away.

It was obvious to me and perhaps to everyone else as well that he had never considered the connection, and I wished he had simply said so. Susie decided to be merciful. But Ellen, dear, she said to the headmistress, isn’t it true that Faust-like figures exist in most cultures? Perhaps it isn’t a retelling at all.

Most may be an overstatement, was the somewhat grumpy reply. How is one to know whether there is a Zulu Faust?

With that, the headmistress turned her attention to Henry and inquired whether he was by any chance of Polish origin. She thought she was hearing a slight and very pretty Slavic accent, and added to that was his knowledge of a Polish fairy tale.

It is a Polish accent, answered Henry.

Really! And how did that come about?

I was born there, in Poland.

But you must have been very little when you left.

That depends on how little I seem now. We left Poland three years ago.

Really, the headmistress said again. And where did you go after you left Poland?

We came here, Henry answered.

Where is here? she pursued. Not the Berkshires, I imagine.

Oh no, we went to New York.

When you say we, do you mean you and your family?

Henry nodded. Yes, my parents and I. I’m an only child.

And you prepared for college in New York?

Yes, said Henry. And before that, for one year I attended a Polish secondary school in Krakow. That was right after the war.

The headmistress became very pensive and said she supposed that the high school in New York was St. Ignatius Loyola, well known for its high standards. She had seen the rector in October, at a philological society meeting.

No, no, replied Henry, and named his high school.

How extraordinary! the headmistress exclaimed. I’ve never heard of it. Hasn’t May told me that you and George are classmates? Is it possible that you went to Harvard College directly from there?

And on a full scholarship, Cousin Ellen, interjected George.

To my surprise, Margot gave him an unequivocally dirty look. Perhaps she thought that he was patronizing Henry. I doubted that George noticed, the response of Cousin Ellen being so striking that it must have diverted attention from Margot. That formidable lady stretched out her hand over the table, patted, and then squeezed Henry’s hand, and said that she was going to tell May Standish how especially grateful she was for having been given the opportunity to meet such a remarkable young man. Would he come to dinner at her and Susie’s house in Boston? she asked. Oh yes, she added, of course I will want you to bring this lovely young woman, your charming roommate, and dear George.

There was a large handbag on the floor next to her chair. She brought it onto her lap and, having extracted a notepad and a fat fountain pen, asked Henry to write his name, address, and telephone number, and Margot’s too. After he had handed the pad back to her, she examined it, and with an air of puzzlement read aloud: Henry White. Henry White.

How odd, she said at last, I wouldn’t have thought that White was a Polish surname.

It isn’t. My parents changed our name when we arrived here. It had been Weiss. The name isn’t necessarily Jewish, but in this case it was.

Remembering how Archie had been obliged to pull this information out of him, I was astonished. The setting then had been in a sense private: three roommates chatting as they walked through the Yard on the way to dinner. Here, Henry could be justified in thinking that he was on public display, and in enemy territory. Dragged along behind a victor’s chariot, was the way he might have put it. Had he gotten into the habit of revealing himself? I doubted it; in fact, I wondered whether he had ever told Margot or George what his name had been. I couldn’t be sure about Margot, but George would never have asked, and I didn’t believe Henry would have volunteered. It occurred to me that if Henry had not said anything to those two, that might be a strong reason to get the disclosures over with quickly, the headmistress being most unlikely to relent until her questions had been answered. He was killing two birds with one stone: forestalling the continuation of questions that I was sure humiliated him and clearing up an ambiguity in his relations with Margot and George.

You poor boy, said the headmistress, once again reaching for his hand. You and your parents must have suffered greatly. Were you in a concentration camp?

Henry told her that they hadn’t been. We all saw that he wanted to leave it at that, but the headmistress’s long habit of sounding the depths of her girls’ souls prevailed over her sympathy—sympathy vivid enough to require her to dab at her eyes with a little handkerchief. She went on prodding him, very gently to be sure, and at last I heard Henry speak of the grubby indignities endured during the years at Pani Maria’s, which he had told me so firmly he wouldn’t discuss. He showed no emotion. At first I admired his composure, which in a way seemed well suited to the comfortable room and the refinement of the lunch table. Then I saw that it wasn’t composure at all. He was absent. He talked as if in a trance, not entirely aware of those around him or his own presence in their midst. Perhaps he had learned to abstract himself from his own past. Perhaps the faculty through which we feel outrage and self-pity had been cauterized in him.

When the story had been told, Susie asked Henry whether he had read John Hersey’s new novel,
The Wall.