Secret Father (20 page)

"To do what?"

"Apply to college without permission. We both did that, but not starting from the same place. College is a fur piece for someone like me." She grinned. "'A fur piece.' Get it?"

I wasn't sure I did, but I nodded.

"Might as well be a fur coat."

"But you got in?"

"Yep. Ole Miss. Oxford, Mississippi. Full scholarship, work-study, the whole shebang. Next September, whether the great white father likes it or not. And it
will
be not."

"You haven't told them?"

"I'm working on it."

"But they'll be proud."

Kit snorted. "Ole Miss," she said. "My pa thinks it's a football team. Period."

"And you?"

"To me it's Faulkner country, that's all. Faulkner lives in Oxford. I wrote to him. Rick made me do it, just like he wrote to that guy of his."

"Marcuse."

"Right. I wrote Faulkner. I told him I was coming, get ready."

"
Light in August.
" I was about to lie, say "I love that novel" like a callow date.

"What?" She looked at me with such interest that I could not lie to her.

"I know you're reading it," I said.

"'My, my. A body does get around. Here we aint been coming from Alabama but two months, and now it's already Tennessee.'"

"What?"

"The last line of
Light.
"

"Oh. I thought maybe it was yours, what you're writing." She gave me another look.

"I saw you. I saw what you're writing, a glimpse of it."

"A body does git around, big guy."

"'The story of your soul.'"

"Did I say that?"

"Yes."

"And you said Rilke. Thanks for saying that. It made the
Vopo
leave me alone."

"I
do
read Rilke," I said. "
Letters to a Young Poet.
Though I'm no poet."

"Don't be so sure. Who else but a poet would stand out here like this, freezing his durn butt off?"

I laughed, aware of how chilled I felt, but when she turned and opened the door, I was disappointed.

She gestured at the sign: "
Frei Arbeiterschaft Halle.
"

"At least it's free," she said.

Once in the room, our ease with each other evaporated. I went at once to what I thought of as the boys' end, and misunderstood when, turning around abruptly, I found that Kit had followed me there. But she was only going to the wardrobe, which she opened. Inside, she found a stack of folded towels. She took two, tossed one to me, and returned to her end of the room, leaving me to wonder if she had any idea how uncomfortable I'd become. As if I
had
lied to her.

Separately, without comment, we each toweled our wet hair. Then, while Kit went down the hall, I opened the wardrobe and found hangers. I slid one into my damp blazer and hung it up. I went over to the window and watched the rain fall through the cone of light cast by a nearby streetlamp. The window was open a few inches, and I could smell ash in the air—what Berliners had smelled for years, I would be told, every time it rained.

Kit came back, and I took my bag with me to the WC down the hall.

When I returned to the room, the overhead light was off. Now the light from the street was the only illumination, a faint glow. Kit's corner was entirely dark, and it took me a moment to realize that she was already under her blanket. I was crushed that this time alone with her was now going to end in sleep, but relieved that she would not see me without my clothes. I went to my cot, undressed facing away from her, removed my leg braces, careful to put them down without a sound, and slid under my blanket. My good GI blanket. I was equally aware of the scratchy wool on my legs and of the three vacant cots between me and the girl.

I was wearing briefs and an undershirt, which made me wonder what she was wearing. I knew nothing firsthand of the female body apart from the sweet implications of clothing; nothing of breasts, nipples, the curve of the hip. I had pictured it, of course—the camerabook nudes and statues, the furtive sessions with girlie magazines. But what was a vagina to me beyond a fancied wound between legs? Or the clitoris, of which I'd never heard. When I pictured a woman's naked body—as I did then Kit's—it had no hair anywhere except for the head.

"A penny for your thoughts," she said, her disembodied voice floating in the darkness. I almost choked at what I'd have had to answer if the truth was even remotely on my list of things to say.

"Mothers," I said—I don't know why. And at once I rebuked myself. Playing on her pity for a boy who'd lost his mother—is that what I was doing?

"What about her?"

"Not my mother," I said, a lie told to deflect an emotion I wanted no part of. "I meant Ulrich's mother."

"Ulrich's mother? What about her?"

"Her being German. I was thinking of her back there in the club."

"With those German girls?"

"I guess so, yes. I mean—well, not literally. Those girls were hookers, right?"

"Just desperate kids, Michael. I mean, what would we be doing if we lived here? Imagine."

"That's what I was thinking about Ulrich and his mother when they lived here after the war. What they survived, what they went through."

"Mrs. Healy is good to me."

"Me, too."

"You've been through a thing or two."

"Not like that, though. You could see it in Ulrich's eyes today, the way he looked out that train window."

"And the way he's getting blasted tonight."

"I guess I don't blame him," I said. But what I felt was gratitude that he was still out there, gratitude to Tramm for keeping him out. "I just mean, I can't really picture Ulrich's mother acting like those girls."

Kit laughed. "But it sounds like you
did
picture it, big guy. And what the heck, why not? Mrs. Healy
was
a
Fräulein,
and if you know her now, you know she
was
a pretty one. And General Healy, or Major or Captain or whatever rank he was then, was a handsome Yank flyboy. And sure they went to clubs. Why the heck not?"

"Not flyboy, Kit. Spy. Do you know that? Ulrich told me that today in the train while you were asleep. Ulrich's stepfather is a spy in charge of spies."

"I wasn't asleep."

"Jesus, you too?" One unexpected turn after another—why was I loving it so? "You're a spy, too?"

"What, because I pretended to sleep? I just needed a little time to myself, was all."

"But Kit, have you noticed something about this trip? Nothing is what it seems to be."

"Substance versus surface, big guy. Not 'this trip'—life. Nothing's what it seems to be in
life.
The hateful duplicity of all that we experience, which happens to be Faulkner's subject."

"And yours."

"The moral disease of the human condition."

"Incurable."

"What?"

"You said 'incurable' in your book."

"What book?"

"The one you're writing."

"Now who's duplicitous!"

"I told you I glimpsed it. Only glimpsed. You mind?"

"What I write in my accounts is private, bub."

I did not answer. After a long silence, I said, "I'm not talking about your book, or Faulkner. I'm talking about us. Ulrich pretending to be Rick. You and me—a debating club, for God's sake.Josef Tramm—a union rep? Yeah, right."

"Don't get paranoid on me, Michael."

"It's Berlin, Kit. Paranoia everywhere."

"Okay, so maybe we're all spies. Maybe those girls in the club were spies. Maybe when she was young, Ulrich's mother was. Maybe she still is. Let's pretend it's a movie. Ingrid Bergman."

"Marlene Dietrich."

"Romy Schneider."

"But it's not a movie, Kit. Ulrich's whole thing in coming here, what we saw in him on the train—it's more than what you and I are up to."

"Maybe. Maybe not."

"No, for sure it is. I mean, the guy has all these ghosts in his brain. The Edelweiss Pirates, what the hell is that? Adolf Eichmann. Herbert Marcuse. The chocolate bombardier. Rubble women. Talk about incurable."

"No one was talking about incurable, Michael."

"You were."

"Because I said 'disease'? Is that what you're asking?"

"You mean like my polio?"

"I didn't mean that."

"It's okay, Kit. I know I had polio. You don't have to worry if you refer to it. That's obviously no secret, though everybody treats it like it is."

She didn't say anything. It seemed like her turn, and so, for a few moments, neither did I. I could hear her breathing.

Was it over? The day? The time with her? Had I blown it by actually saying the goddamn word out loud? To keep our talk going, I said quietly, "Earlier today, I thought of
The Wizard of Oz,
and then you quoted from it. You were Judy Garland."

"You're Ray Bolger?"

"The scarecrow?"

"We were talking about Rick."

"'The power of negative thinking is a force for human liberation.'"

"If you say so."

"That's Ulrich's motto, Kit. Marcuse. That's what we're doing here. Negative thinking in relation to the German past. Negative thinking in relation to American materialism. Negative thinking in relation to his old man. All that negative shit—'the disobedience of a living body.' You heard him. It's why you and I weren't going to come at first, why we started out this morning by saying no."

"But we do negative thinking of our own, I guess. Huh?"

"Like about
your
father?"

She didn't answer. I pressed. "What was that about the Klan?"

"The Klan is just one tree among many in the woods I come from."

"But you hate it. So you're here."

"Something like that. I was cussing this whole thing on the train, but now I'm glad we came."

"Even if you're headed for a Communist parade?"

"Yes. And you're glad, too, Michael. I can tell. You can't fool Dorothy."

"I am glad. I love it, actually, being here." I paused, admittedly for effect, before adding, "Especially now."

Those two simple words marked a move away from the others and toward us—which is why, no doubt, we each fell silent again, each staring up at the shadowy ceiling, each breathing so the other could hear. You, I thought. Not Ulrich. You. You, Kit. Not me, either. Tell me about you.

At last I said, "Your mother. What's she like?"

"Oh, she's real southern, a country gal. Daisy Mae and all that. Dogpatch. My folks are what you guys would call hillbillies."

"No, I wouldn't."

"No shame in being hill people, Michael. It all depends on where you're starting from. You start in a place very different from me."

"How do you know that?"

She laughed. "Written all over you, big guy. There are mill workers and there are owners. Some differences not even being an Army brat smoothes out."

"I'm not an Army brat."

"Which makes the point."

"No shame in that either?"

"Right."

"But we were talking about your parents. Your mother."

"Daddy whistles Dixie when he wants something from her. And she delivers." Kit's laugh now carried a hint of the lewd, a hint of her parents'raucous pairing. "Sometimes he calls her Dixie Cup." But her jovial esprit had come out of nowhere, and even in the dark it seemed counterfeit.

"What do you call her?"

"Mama. Most of you guys say 'Mom.' But I call mine 'Mama.' I love that word 'Mama.' Mammary. Marvelous. Magnificent. Amazing."

"What do you mean, 'you guys'?"

She laughed again. Kit was enjoying this—what, this dissection of differences? I had been feeling so
like
her, but now she was emphasizing how we were unalike. A way ofpushing me away? "You Yankees," she said. "You Yankees. You say 'Mom, Momm ... Dad, Daad.' We say Mama. We say Daddy." I sensed her in the dark, her head propped on an elbow, facing toward me. "Knock, knock," she said abruptly.

"Who's there?"

"Marmalade."

"Marmalade who?"

"Marmalade everyone but Daddy."

I got the joke, but I did not laugh.

She snorted and fell back on her cot. "Although not in my house. A Dixie Cup can't fight back."

I heard in her inflection an echo of her father's demand, a hint of her mother's surrender. And that said what about Kit? Another way we were alike? The weight a kid feels from the tension between her parents, or his. A mill hand. A racist. The great white father. Her disdain for her father was very clear. And mine?

"I'm surprised at you, Michael," Kit teased. "Laughing at a joke like that."

"I didn't laugh."

"I noticed. Why, because it's raunchy?"

"Was that raunchy?" I asked, trying for fun and affection. If I'd had a pillow, I'd have thrown it across the room at her. "Why does this feel like a game of keep-away?"

"Because there are certain things we are not talking about?"

"Exactly."

"That's the Army brat's way, Michael. You live a lot of different places. You see a lot of different people. You keep having to fit in over and over. You're very careful what you show to folks. Wiesbaden is my tenth school."

"It's my third."

"There you go. An Army brat gets to choose which of her sides to show. When I'm with Ma and Pa, I'm Katey-Ann, Miss Keep-the-peace-at-any-price. With Granny, I'm Katharine, the girl who fetches. My folks think I'm going to take care of her in Montgomery, for my room and board."

"But?"

"I love Granny," Kit said, "but come September, I'm a freshman at Ole Miss, and that's that. And the first thing I'm doing is, Knock, knock—"

"Who's there?"

"—on William Faulkner's front door in Oxford, so I can ask him if he needs help with the chores."

"What do you mean?"

"He's an old man. He's going to need help with his chores, and I'm going to do them for him. And before I'm through, I'm going to get him to read my novel."

"
That's
the thing we aren't talking about, your novel."

"Which you were reading without permission."

"I didn't know it was a novel."

"Bits and pieces of one. Still private."

"I'm sorry."