Rumors of Peace (26 page)

“. . . A
ND SHE WOULD
have gone on till dawn,” Helen Maria was saying, setting the coffeepot down.

“I don't doubt it,” Egon laughed as we all seated ourselves around the cramped table.

Helen Maria addressed me pleasantly, as if nothing had happened. “Grandmother and Aunt Margaret were here last night. Aunt Margaret was in powerful voice; she started at nine and was still going strong at midnight—Jack had to wrestle the accordion out of her hands.”

“A remarkable woman,” said Egon.

“Egon thinks it's a very odd family.”

“Not odd, colorful,” he corrected her amiably. “Anyway, your aunt has a fine voice.”

“Like Enrico Caruso,” said Peggy. She was right on her toes being witty, but I felt too sobered to be witty; relieved to be welcomed back, but pensive and formal.

“How was your grandmother?” I asked Helen Maria politely.

“In peak form. Regaling Egon with tales of old Berlin.”

“Believe it or not,” he said, “she was there in the summer of 1869.”

“My gosh,” I marveled, “that was even before the Franco-Prussian War.”

“I see,” said Peggy, making a thin sandwich with no mayonnaise,
“that you're still preoccupied with things military.”

I ignored her; that wasn't even her own wit, it was Helen Maria's. “Did she see Bismarck?” I asked Egon.

“She did not mention it.”

“I don't like him anyway. He was against socialism.”

“Oh yes,” Helen Maria told him, “Suse has been studying Rosa Luxemburg.”

“And by the way,” I said to her quickly, “Rosa Luxury was an ironic pun. Because the socialists didn't go in for luxury, they were just the opposite. It was the bourgeois they were fighting who had luxury. That's what the whole struggle was about.”

“I seem to have heard something along those lines,” she nodded.

Egon's eyes were warm and interested again. “So, you are a socialist,” he said.

This startled me. I had not considered if I was one or not. But I thought for a moment. “Yes, I am. It seems fairer to poor people.”

“What if you were rich?” asked Peggy. “It's just because you don't have any money, so you may as well be a socialist.”

“You don't even know what socialism is. Define it.”

She shrugged. “Being fair to the poor.”

“You're just repeating what I said. You don't even know anything about it.”

“Maybe I do and maybe I don't, but you didn't answer my question. If you were rich.”

“If I was rich I'd share with the poor.”

“I bet.”

“Suse probably would,” said Helen Maria, passing the potato salad around. “She has the nature of a fanatic. She would go about like St. Francis of Assisi.”

“I'm not a fanatic,” I said, stung. It was one of the words I had looked up. It meant irrational zeal, and irrational was the one thing I wasn't. I wanted things to make sense, it was like a hunger. How could she say I was fanatical, like this St. Francis of Assisi? And I wasn't religious either, I hated religion.

Peggy was telling Egon that we were starting back to school next week. “Ninth grade,” she said. “That's the first year of high school,
except it's in the junior high building. But it's really high school.”

As if that would impress him. “It's no big achievement,” I told him. “They pass everybody.”

“Lucky for you,” Peggy murmured.

“Well, not everybody,” I backtracked, flushing. “Like our friend Eudene, who wasn't very smart. They wouldn't have passed her.”

“Ah, Eudene,” smiled Helen Maria. “How is
La Grande Horizontale?
”

“Oh, she's married and has a baby. She's completely delirious.”

“She always was,” Peggy said. “She's cracked. She's the sort of person,” she told Egon, widening her eyes as of old, “who
smashes
you in the ribs with her elbow and
screams
when she laughs. To me that's insane.”

“Well maybe it's good to be insane,” I said, “if it makes you happy.”

“Our Suse championing happiness?” Helen Maria asked, giving me a smile.
“Brava!”

I wasn't sure what she meant, but her enthusiasm lifted me. For the first time since my arrival I began to feel confident, and pouring myself more coffee, I looked across at Egon. “I've been studying the Jews. From the destruction of Jerusalem to Crystal Night.”

“Have you?” he said, and waited for me to go on.

“I think the Jews are a pure form of the senselessness that is history.”

He nodded reflectively, lifting his coffee cup. “It sounds interesting, I must say. But I don't know what you mean.”

“Neither does she,” said Peggy, peeling an orange.

“Be quiet,” said Helen Maria. “Go out and play.”

Peggy's lips tightened. I held the floor. I took another sip of my coffee. “Everybody keeps persecuting the Jews because they started doing it a long time ago and now they can't stop. They've got a lot of fancy religious and political reasons, but the reasons don't mean anything, they just like to do it. It's like a habit. That's what I mean that it's the purest form of history's senselessness. Because history's the same old record played over and over, nobody thinks about anything or learns anything, it's like they're all stuck in a crazy machine.”

“Well,” said Egon, finishing his coffee and setting the cup down, “I suppose it's as valid an interpretation of history as any.”

“It is utterly black,” countered Helen Maria. “The old saw, man
the absurd. It makes me impatient. It's all very good and fine to see life as a random joke, which it is, but to remain at that level of perception is perfectly useless.”

“No doubt.”

“You don't advise that kind of perception, certainly.”

“No, I do not advise it.”

“And you don't practice it, either.”

He didn't answer. His eyes held something like humor, but it was not his usual warm, direct gleam; there was something distant about it, yet indulgent, something both removed and paternal. It made Helen Maria seem suddenly small next to him, the way she had seemed suddenly small when Aunt Dorothy had come staggering into her room.

“Well, you don't,” she insisted. “You needn't look so mysterious.”

“I just think we are perhaps getting off the track.”

“Because you won't confront the issue.”

“And what is the issue?”

“That you uphold this weltschmerzian view of life simply to give Suse her due, which isn't helping her at all. Given the slightest encouragement, she'll remain on that level forever.”

“Aren't you being an alarmist?” He smiled.

“Not at all. She's been wallowing in the slough of despond for years.”

“So? You have been wallowing about for years, Suse?”

“Well, it's not really funny. And here you are, Suse, taking up the study of history, and what do you do? You use it to confirm your temperament.”

“I don't know what you mean.”

“You read into it what you want to see.”

“I don't
want
to see it that way, I
hate
it. But it's how it is. You said so yourself. You said it was a random joke.”

“It's a great deal more than that.”

“How can it be more than that if that's what it is?”

“It's what you put
into
it, don't you see?”

I tried to see. I wanted to see. I even closed my eyes to concentrate.

“Well, think about it,” she said. “But not here. It's not exactly stimulating to watch.”

My eyes opened. “You mean bright spots? Like going
swimming—or if you're good at something, like you being a scholar? Or having a good lunch? Things like that?”

“You've got the drift, in a primitive sort of way.”

Was that all it came down to? Those bright spots that were better than nothing at all?

“It's not enough,” I said.

She gave a sigh. “Let's drop the subject.”

I sat back in my chair. I had undone all the good of my bold, dazzling letter—my astringent letter, as she had so admiringly put it. Which word I had looked up: harsh, severe.

“You're confirming
your
temperament,” I said suddenly, leaning forward. “Why do you study the Greeks? Because they saw everything balanced and whole, and that's what you like. The rest of history's a mess, but the Greeks are a big bright spot. That's what you want, so that's what you see. Well, that's not truth, that's just
your
truth. But you want everybody to think like you and the Greeks. And why should I? They collapsed like everybody else. The Romans ground them under, and then the barbarians ground the Romans under, and that's what
I
see. And it's as good as what you see!”

Helen Maria looked excited. “Good thinking, Suse! Good thinking! Maybe not right thinking, but good thinking! No sloshing about, right to the point!
Brava!
” And she looked with enthusiasm at Peggy and Egon. “Well,” she went on, “someday we'll have to go on from here, but just now I think we've bored everyone sick.”

Peggy nodded in agreement. Egon didn't look bored, exactly, but as if he had gone off into his own thoughts, and not especially sunny ones, for I saw that the lines around his mouth were etched deep. It was odd how sometimes you noticed them and sometimes you didn't. It was because his face, I realized, had many different things flickering and shading and changing in it all the time, very quietly. It was because he was complicated, like the rest of the Jews.

And what had happened to our conversation about the Jews and about Rosa Luxemburg? Now that I was doing so brilliantly we should return to them. But chairs were scraping back, and the lines around Egon's mouth were folding in pleasant creases as he thanked his hostesses for lunch.

In the gloom of the Dungeon we sat as before, talking of this and that. I felt very good, and even though Helen Maria had her hand in Egon's, and I could see one finger stroking his wrist underneath, I was filled to the brim with my love for him.

“Did you have a nice summer, Egon?” I asked.

“Very nice,” he said, and I felt his gaze tender and deep on my face.

“Did you swim?”

“A few times,” he said, and in filmy silence we dove, we drifted with touching hands.

“So did I.”

“That's why her hair's green,” said Peggy.

I looked down, flushing. “Chlorine,” I said.

“I see.” He nodded. That was all. He was not repelled. Nothing about me could repel him. I gave Peggy a calm glance. Her hair tended to frizz in hot weather. I felt very sure of myself, very comfortable, and was about to settle more deeply into my chair when the visit ended.

“If the train leaves at two, I suppose we'd better get ready,” said Helen Maria, looking at her watch. We all stood up, but I couldn't bear to leave Egon yet. I said I'd walk to the depot with them; if they didn't mind, of course.

“Fine, come along,” Helen Maria said. “We'll be a few minutes.”

I waited with Peggy.

“I like your dress,” she said after a while.

“Thank you. Yours is nice too.”

“Yours is really nice, though.”

She wanted to be agreeable, in spite of her remarks at the table and the way she had pointed out my green hair. That was for Egon's sake. But now that he was out of the room, she was friendly. There had always been something good-natured about Peggy, bighearted, and now, suddenly, I thought again of the day I had been so cruel to her about Aunt Dorothy's death and felt a pang of old guilt. I wanted to tell her I was sorry.

I said instead, “It's nice. Talking again.”

She gave a nod. “I know.”

There wasn't enough room on the sidewalk to go four abreast, so Peggy and I walked behind. Carrying their overnight bags, Egon and Helen Maria walked leisurely, not pressed for time; the trains were always late anyway. The sky was white and blazing; there was a wonderful smell of melting street tar in the air, and hot pavement and dry grass. I feasted my eyes on Egon's tan neck and on the back of his white shirt. He had a strong back and a wonderful way of walking, relaxed, yet slightly military. Though not especially tall, he would look good in a uniform, better than most.

“Did he say why he's not in the Army?” I whispered to Peggy.

“Helen Maria said he had rheumatic fever,” she whispered back, “It's nothing too bad, but you can't get in the Army. She's glad.”

So was I. Peter should have been so lucky. And the soldiers on Main Street, waiting to be shipped to the Pacific.

I made my whisper smaller yet. “Did she say if they were in love?”

“She'd never tell us anything like that.”

“I don't think they are.”

“Estelle says Helen Maria's too immature for him,” Peggy whispered. “She says you can see it on his face. I heard her tell Jack that. He thought so too. And so do I.”

My eyes returned to the couple before us. I had a feeling of lightness and hope, followed by a black thought. If Helen Maria was too immature for him, where did that put me?

“I think you're wrong,” I whispered.

“She's smart, but it's all book learning. He's lived. That's what Jack said.”

I nodded thoughtfully. “I think you're right.”

It wasn't the years that counted; it was the living. I had been blown up in my cellar, I had run fourteen miles through the darkness, and I knew what the Jews and history were all about, and so did he, and Helen Maria didn't. His love for her had died, just as my love for Mr. Lewis had died. We had long since begun clearing the path to each other.

“It's there!” cried Helen Maria as we turned the corner of Ferry Street. Three blocks away, for once on schedule, the train was already moving. She and Egon broke into a run, their overnight cases held
out from their sides; Peggy and I ran too. It was exhilarating to race madly down the street, with the soldiers cheering from the moving windows of the train, and steam hissing and bells clanging. We sped past the depot alongside the big turning wheels, and with a final exuberant cheer from the soldiers, Egon leaped into the moving door, pulling Helen Maria up after him. I caught a last glimpse of his face as he leaned out with a wave. He was laughing, and his eyes shone down into mine with love and promise.