Shining Through (59 page)

I got into the bed. They gave the SS such soft sheets. “Ed?”

“Yes.”

“How is your daughter?”

“Well, she’s going to make me a grandfather.”

“From her…”

“Yes. She went back to him soon after you left. Well, back and forth. Nan seems to thrive on marital crises, and her husband puts up with them. She goes off to think things over and then comes back. The last couple of times, at least, her SHINING THROUGH / 439

distress was genuine. She didn’t run back to John. She had a lot to think about, and it seems that for the time being she’ll stay with Quentin and be a wife and mother.”

“Well, congratulations, anyway.”

“Thank you.”

“How old are you?”

“Fifty-five.”

“I thought it would be about that.”

“Rapidly approaching fifty-six.”

“I hope you live to see your grandchild.”

“Linda, go to sleep.”

The awful thing was that right from where we were sitting, we could see the Swiss flag. But we were inside the German customhouse, with an army officer at an official desk, across from us. He had a thin face, like a hatchet. “I am sorry, General Steinhardt, but we have been ordered to stop all women of the description of Miss Ingeborg Hintze.” Edward stared at him.

The officer inched back in his chair, uneasy but not afraid. “And if
you
will be so good, General, could you please unwind your scarf so I might take a look at your wound.”

Edward just kept eyeing him. And with the officer eyeing me, I couldn’t even move my finger to my neck as a signal. But just then, Edward sensed what was expected; he opened his collar.

He kept the scarf tied, but slowly he unbuttoned three buttons and pulled open his uniform. As the officer tensed, his chair squeaked. Short, thick red scars covered Edward’s chest and shoulder. A livid one, like a crater, was dug into the top of his chest; the surgeons who had put his face back together hadn’t even tried with the rest of him.

The officer averted his eyes—not enough to seem unmanly, but enough so that he was looking just beyond Edward’s shoulder. He was a deskman. Edward began to unwind his scarf.

The officer said, “Please, that is not necessary, General Steinhardt. I hope you will accept my profound apologies.” Edward began buttoning his uniform, ignoring the man, 440 / SUSAN ISAACS

which only made his apologies more profuse. “It was simply that your not being able to speak…I—we—there was some concern that perhaps you were hiding a foreign accent.”

Beyond the small window, the Swiss flag fluttered in the breeze. A perfect spring day over there. “Can we go now?” I asked.

“The general can go, Miss. I am afraid we must detain you.”

I got emotional. Well, I was. To see the flag, no more than a couple of hundred feet away…“
Please
. I have an appointment at the clinic in Basel. I must be there. Some…some surgery.”

“I am sure it can be postponed a day or two.”

“It’s really very important, and the general has been kind enough to accompany me. I can’t ask him—”

“I am afraid you will have to.” He reached under his blotter and offered me a sheet of paper. A handbill from the Gestapo.

Attention! it said. And beneath it was Lina Albrecht’s passport photo. I took it and handed it to Edward. He glanced at it, made a face—such a dreary little girl—and threw it back on the officer’s desk.

“I regret to say, General, there is a certain vague resemblance.”

He wasn’t sure; the general, with his perfect papers, perfect uniform, perfect bearing and perfect scars, wouldn’t…but any man can be duped. “You, sir, are free to go, but I must phone my superiors and ask that they send an investigator to scrutinize Miss Hintze’s documents.”

Edward nodded, as if he understood completely.

“May I see you out, General?”

It couldn’t just end. I looked over at Edward and remembered when I thought it was all over for me at Margarete’s apartment.

I’d said to myself, Remember one wonderful thing. And what had comforted me, and then flooded me with pleasure, was the memory of sitting in the Packard beside Edward on an ordinary day, almost touching, having a long conversation comparing Churchill and Roosevelt, and his brilliant half smile when I’d said, “Ha! Got you!” after he admitted the two men had a lot in common. I remem-SHINING THROUGH / 441

bered his suit, the smell of starch on his white shirt, his hands resting on his briefcase, and I remembered not letting myself think about how I felt about him.

The officer shrugged his apologies to Edward. And Edward seemed to understand. He put his hands on the desk and pushed himself up from his chair. As he did, the officer leapt to attention.

Edward smiled. The officer moved to go to the door, but Edward put a hand on the man’s shoulder: Stop. The man’s pale, thin face began to darken at this abuse of military etiquette. But suddenly the face brightened.

Sticking out from under the blotter was a souvenir from Edward: a thick wad of cash. As they used to say in Ridgewood, enough to choke a horse. Enough to buy a German officer, plus, I thought, some extra. The officer reached out for it and stuffed it into his pocket.

Then he picked up the handbill with my picture, crumpled it, and stuffed it in his other pocket. “So many people pass over this border. Naturally, we are always besieged by papers such as these. The dull, bureaucratic mind at work.” The officer smiled. Edward turned toward the door. “Please, allow me, General! Miss Hintze. If you will follow me, I will escort you to Switzerland.”

2 7

M
y bed was like a crib, with high white railings on four sides.

When the nuns in their white habits and their head coverings that looked like upside-down canoes came sweeping in to change my bandages or give me pills for the pain and the infection, they’d lower the side, go about their business and then raise it again. If I hadn’t been so sick, I probably would have thought of it as a prison, but with my fever at a hundred and four for a few days, I was a baby again, and all those German-speaking nuns were like sugar-coated Grandma Olgas, straightening my blanket, feeling my forehead, making sure I was all right.

I wanted all the comfort I could get.

Edward came to visit me, and he brought me American presents: a Hershey bar, a Coke and, on the third day, an Ever-eady flashlight. He said the only other American object he could find was the American consul’s Oldsmobile, and he couldn’t fit it into the elevator.

I asked him how much it had cost to get me out of Germany.

About twenty thousand dollars—in Swiss francs.

I know we talked now and then, but I don’t remember what we said. The second afternoon, he brought in the head of the OSS in Bern, and they asked me all about Margarete. I guess I was speaking for a while, because finally Edward turned and said, “Really, this is too much for her.” I hadn’t thought it was, but I must have fallen right asleep, because I never saw them leave.

He came at night, and he’d sit in a chair next to the bed.

442

SHINING THROUGH / 443

When I’d wake up, he’d ask me how I was, and I’d say fine. I could have said a few things more, but what was I going to say?

I love you? I love you now, and to make it worse, I probably loved you for ages and didn’t even know it? Somewhere between New York and Washington, my awe turned into understanding and my respect into love? On the third night I asked, half hoping for something, “Aren’t you bored, sitting here?”

“Yes. Excruciatingly. If you go back to sleep, I can leave.”

On the fifth day, my fever was down. The doctor took off the heavy bandage and covered my wound with a gauze pad. I ate boiled eggs and toast for breakfast. And at ten o’clock, Edward Leland came to say goodbye.

“I’m going to Madrid later this afternoon. And then back to Washington.”

It had to happen. I knew it. I was prepared. “Well, have a good trip. I’ll see you in Washington or, more likely, New York.”

“Yes. I’ll look forward to it.”

“Edward.”

“Yes?”

“You’re really going?”

“You’ll be fine. In a few days, you’ll be out of here. Back to…wherever.”

“And you? You’ll be back to wherever?”

“Yes.”

It still wasn’t easy for me to move, because of the intravenous needle, but I edged over to the side of the bed and managed to grab a lever; the bedrail came crashing down. “Sit down,” I said.

He sat beside me, all dressed for the plane. Suit, striped tie, wingtip shoes, a gray felt hat in his hands. “Your Republican uniform.”

“Better than SS.”

“You look nice.”

“Thank you.”

“Very businesslike.” He rotated his hat on his lap. “You want to get out of here, don’t you?” He didn’t answer. “Why? Why do you want to leave me?”

444 / SUSAN ISAACS

“Linda, I have to—”

“You love me, you know. I figured it out last night.”

He stood up. “Please don’t do this. There’s no point—”

“I love you too.”

“No you don’t.” He sat down again and took my hand. “Any feelings you have for me are just an outgrowth of our…adventure.”

“I’ve loved you at least since Washington. Maybe even in New York.”

“Linda, don’t subject both of us to—”

“When did you start loving me?”

He lifted my hand and kissed my fingers. “In New York, I suppose.”

“You suppose? Come on, Ed. We’re having a crucial conversation.”

“In New York!” he boomed in his deepest, loudest voice. “Is that better?”

“Yes.”

“There were at least twenty bright, German-speaking lawyers I could have asked to come to Washington and work for me.

Why do you think I chose John Berringer? I came to your apartment that day, a Saturday or a Sunday, telling myself how stupid I was, that I should just get the hell out of town and forget about you. It was right before Christmas. You were wearing a yellow robe when you answered the door. A fluffy sort of thing, beautiful, and your hair was so soft…I desired you. And I desired your company.”

“Last night,” I said, “lying here, I was thinking how much I want you. Not only that way. Every way. I wish you could take off that suit and just lie under the covers with me and hold me for a while. Wouldn’t you like that? To feel each other—”

He got up. “No!”

“No?”

“I think this should end now.”

“Edward, I love you. You love me.”

“I’m twenty years older than you are.”

“Big deal. Sit down.”

SHINING THROUGH / 445

He sat, but stiffly, on the very edge of the bed. “I want to tell you something,” he began. “Something…humiliating, but I want you to understand. In Washington. It was one of those times I’d blown up at you: just being next to you in the car all day, joking about something, talking…and then the frustration of knowing you were going home. So I behaved badly. You left. I knew you were upset. I sat at my desk trying to understand myself: I don’t attempt to captivate her and I can, on occasion, be captivating as hell. But instead, I don’t even try. I alienate her. It’s certainly not because of my belief in the sanctity of marriage, or at least not that marriage, because it’s a sham. I push her away whenever she gets too close because I know she can never love me—”

“But I do.”

“—never love me as I love her. Passionately. Obsessively. That night, and several other nights…I called a man known in Washington. A procurer. I arranged for a room at a hotel and asked him to send me a woman. I described her. I described you. What he actually sent me was someone with bleached hair and an overripe figure, but I paid her twice what she had expected, on the condition she didn’t say a word. And in that dark room…” His eyes filled with tears. “…I pretended she was you.

I made love to her and called her Linda. The next day, I said, Good morning, Linda, and gave you a list of telephone calls to place.”

I reached out for his hand and put it against my cheek. “But now you can have me.”

“It won’t work out.”

“Why not?”

“Because you can never feel about me the way I feel about you.”

“This is the first time in all the years I’ve known you that you’ve talked down to me. What’s the matter? You think I don’t feel passion for you? You think I’m not capable of the same deep, true love you’re capable of feeling? Damn it, I want you!”

“I’m going to be a grandfather.”

“How about being a husband?”

446 / SUSAN ISAACS

“You need someone—”

“Why won’t you marry me? Because you went to Yale and I went to Grover Cleveland?”

“Linda!”

“Because I’m a Jew? You’re afraid to say to your partners,

‘Here’s my wife, the lusty Jewess’?”

“You’re a Jew now?”

“Yes. You called me that, and I said I wasn’t, but I changed my mind in Germany. Listen, if I can love a Republican, you can love a Jew.”

“This is a ridiculous conversation.”

“Is it because of John, Nan, that whole business?”

“No!” But he was starting to smile. “Although you must admit it might make for an awkward Thanksgiving dinner.”

“Just the first year.”

“And after that?”

“Nan, Quentin, the baby. You, me…and maybe the baby.”

He lifted up the cover and, wing-tips and all, got under the covers and pulled me close to him. “The man is supposed to propose to the woman.”

“But he’s not going to be able to if he’s crazy and hysterical that she doesn’t love him enough. So let her do it for him. Edward, will you—”

“Quiet! Things should be done properly. So I am going to make a short speech. My dearest Linda, you and I, we’re two of a kind. I think…no, I truly believe we were made for each other.

Will you marry me?”

“Oh, Edward! Yes!” And I kissed him. What a kiss!

“I love you.”

And God, what a man!

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I sought help from the people listed below; they gave it freely and cheerfully. I appreciate their generosity: Arnold Abramowitz, Consuelo Saah Baehr, Jonathan Dolger, Sheldon Elsen, Janet and Robert Fiske, Phyllis and Milton Freeman, Helen Isaacs, Inga Joseph, Rita Kashner, T. Barry Kingham, Edith and Herbert Mendelsohn, Otto Obermaier, Frank Perry, Mary Rooney, Angelica Rosa, Cynthia Scott, Jeff Stolow, Hilma Wolitzer, Hon. Inzer B. Wyatt, Susan Zises, and the staff of the Port Washington (New York) Public Library.