Tomorrow Is Forever (11 page)

Without looking at Arthur, Jacoby said, “I thought it might be possible to get her a message. Through the Red Cross.”

Arthur did not answer. After a pause Jacoby asked,

“You do not want to tell me who she is?”

Arthur said, “She is my wife.”

Jacoby turned his head toward the bed then, involuntarily. He knew no words to speak and even if he had been using his own language there could have been nothing to say so eloquent as the pity he could not keep out of his eyes.

He crumpled the slip of paper in his fist. There was a silence. At length Jacoby said, “Very well.” He turned and went away.

But in the depth of his own despair Arthur felt a stir of astonished warmth. “My God, the man is a human being. There are some things even he can't take without a shudder.”

After that, slowly but unmistakably, he began to discover that Jacoby wanted to be his friend. He began, dimly at first, through those days and nights of desolation, to grasp what Jacoby had meant when he said, “You are a man, but also you are mankind.” It was a hard realization, and at first he was doubtful that it had any meaning. “He can make me stay alive,” Arthur said to himself wearily. “But can he make me find any reason for doing it? Can anybody? I don't believe it.”

Jacoby came back to his bedside often. He never again mentioned the woman Arthur had called for in his delirium. But there was more work on the arm, more on the jaw; the rest had to wait on the patient's strength and the doctor's opportunities. Arthur still had very little hope. Now that he understood Jacoby's purpose, he tried to sympathize with it, but he found this hard to do.

For after all, even after years of labor and pain, even with the highest success, what was the utmost Jacoby could give him? Power to use his right arm; power to sit up and write a letter; possibly, after a long time, power to hobble from place to place with a crutch. Power to look on hopelessly while healthy men and women went ahead with their healthy affairs, doing useful work and enjoying the rewards of it. Not even Jacoby's genius could restore him the sense of knowing he could take care of himself no matter what happened, the old happy forthrightness of being able to look the whole world in the face and tell it to get out of his way. Jacoby could never restore him his marriage. He could never give Elizabeth the children she wanted, or even the security and companionship she had had with him. Lying in a helpless huddle on his cot in the intervals of being fed and washed by strange hands, Arthur had nothing to do but look ahead into the sort of life-sentence he would be giving her if he let Jacoby communicate with her. No doubt he had been reported missing in action. When they found him, the Red Cross would have means of notifying Elizabeth he was still alive. After the war, as soon as Jacoby had repaired him sufficiently to make it possible for him to go home, he would have to go.

And then? Elizabeth would offer him everything she had. She was too loyal, and she loved him too much, to dream of doing otherwise. She would work, and use everything she could earn for his support. She would spend her life nursing him, amusing him, taking care of him, himself a broken wreck of a creature who could give her nothing in return except a doglike gratitude. Her splendid vitality would be spent in a twilight of half-living until she was dry and withered like fruit that had been broken off the tree before it had had a chance to ripen. As he thought of it he knew more and more surely that no matter what would become of him, he could not let this happen to her.

His decision was not entirely unselfish. Arthur was too clearheaded to imagine it was. Not only could he not do this to Elizabeth, but he could not do it to himself. Bearing his tragedy alone would be easier than requiring her to share it.

He knew, almost as if he were with her, what she would suffer at being told of his death. But that would not last forever, though at the time she would undoubtedly think it was going to. She would pick up the broken pattern of her life and set about putting it together again. Elizabeth was young, vital, alert, and there would be another man who would find her as lovable as he had found her. She would have again the sort of mating she should have. He tried instinctively to clench his fist with decision, and the pain that went like a bayonet-thrust into his shoulder, reminding him that he was not even able to make such a simple gesture, served to strengthen his resolve. When a man dies, he told himself, with more fierceness in his mind since there could be none in his body, it is like taking a teaspoonful of water out of a river. The water closes up, it is gone, and after an instant nobody notices it any more.

When Jacoby came in again, Arthur told him what he had decided to do. He had to speak slowly, repeating often and waiting until Jacoby's intelligence had limped through to comprehension. The effort to make Jacoby understand took his attention away from the bleak import of what he was saying.

“I will make you a promise, Jacoby, if you will do one thing for me. Do it, and come back and tell me you have done it.”

“I understand you. Go ahead.”

“When I was brought in here, you found the metal tag of identification? And other things, maybe? Take those to the International Red Cross. Tell them your stretcher-bearers brought in an American who died of his wounds. You do not know his name. But you took these objects from his body. You will sign a death certificate, or whatever you have to sign. The American army will take care of the rest. If you will do this, and bring me some sort of proof that you have done it, I promise you that I will let you do whatever you please to me. But if you will not do it, I swear to you that I'll make you do it because I'll end my life as soon as I have a usable hand to do it with.”

Deliberately, further to relieve his attention, he fixed his eyes on Jacoby's eyes, tender as the eyes of a mother; on Jacoby's strong, wise, gentle face; and while he repeated his sentences he noticed again what a thin face it was, the skin showing the waxiness of malnutrition, and guessed as he had guessed before that this man was denying himself part of his own rations to provide more nourishment for the men he was trying to save. At last he said, slowly and carefully, “You understand me? You will do what I ask, Jacoby?”

Jacoby nodded. While he sought for his answer his right hand covered the right hand that could not yet be clenched, friendly across the wall of language. He said, “Yes, Kitt. I will do that.”

It was all he could say, but by that time they had learned to do a good deal of communicating without language. Jacoby did not have a wife of his own. Until now his life had been too full of work and war to give him much chance to think of personal happiness. Later he was to find out what it meant to have a woman's suffering mean more to him than his own. But he did not hesitate before Arthur's request. Arthur continued,

“You will not communicate with my wife. You will not try to find her.”

“I understand what you are saying. I will not try to find her.”

“She will marry again,” Arthur said. “Another man will love her, she will have children, she will be happy. Do you get it, Jacoby? She's a splendid woman, I'm going to get out of her way. Oh, you don't get all this, do you?—but I know I'm right.”

Jacoby tried to answer. “You are—” he hesitated, reaching into his pocket for the dictionary he always carried now—“you are most completely right, Kitt.” He looked down at the bundle of bandages before him, and added, “I do understand.”

“You—” Arthur's voice broke in a sob, and the sob came from so deep that it sent points of pain through him and he had to wait till they subsided before he could go on—“you don't understand. You never loved a woman.” Again the sob rushed up, and again he had to wait till the pain of it went down. “You never loved a woman,” he said, “enough to die for her.”

Whether the barrier was language or experience, this time Jacoby did not try to answer. But he went and did what Arthur had asked him to do.

6

J
acoby used one of the precious night hours when he should have been asleep to rig up a sort of shelf across Arthur's cot, and set the dictionary up on it. “My English is so faulty, Kitt, and I have no time to improve it. Why do you not learn to talk to me?”

He read the first words aloud to him, slowly, so Arthur could begin to learn their pronunciation. While he was taking a hasty meal of turnips and potatoes Jacoby drew rough sketches of various objects in the room, writing their names beside them, and set the sheet up for Arthur to study during the day. Arthur blessed him for it. He was not yet able to push his thoughts forward into what he might be going to do with the future Jacoby was forcing upon him. This occupation was enough for the present. He filled up his mind with German words to keep it from being filled up with thoughts of Elizabeth. When Jacoby came to see him he talked in simple sentences, proudly, and felt a childish delight when Jacoby and the nurses began to understand him.

Long afterwards, when they were looking back on those days, Jacoby said to him, “You did not know how you were encouraging me then.” Arthur answered, “Maybe you never knew how often I nearly gave up.” “Yes I did know,” said Jacoby, “but you did not give up. That is what I mean, Kitt.”

To the very end, Jacoby sometimes called him Kitt. If anyone asked why, he said, “Oh no, Herr Kessler's first name is Erich. Calling him Kitt is an old bad habit of mine, from years back.”

They were both so used to it they generally forgot it was an abbreviation of his old name. The new name was provided by Jacoby after Arthur had been moved to the hospital in Berlin, while he was convalescing from another of the surgical operations Jacoby inflicted upon him. He had been very ill and Jacoby had given him a blood transfusion. When he was better and tried to express his thanks Jacoby retorted, “My blood isn't good enough for gratitude, Kitt—made of nothing but turnips and a carrot or two. But I have something else for you, more important.” He produced a document, offering it with an air of triumph. “Here is your birth certificate.”

Arthur laughed at that. Birth certificates had not been important in the United States before the war. He had never had one. But Jacoby was a German and thought like a German, and to him his beloved Kitt's physical welfare was no more essential than the records which the Germans demanded even in their most chaotic days. Jacoby explained,

“Listen carefully, Kitt. From now on your name is Erich Kessler. I have lost sleep over wondering how you could identify yourself, until one morning about three o'clock I found the solution. When I was a child, my parents knew a couple named Kessler. They had a son named Erich. While the boy was still a baby, the Kesslers went to the United States. They lived in a town called—” he consulted his notes, and pronounced incorrectly—“Milwaukee. You have heard of it?”

Arthur nodded. “Yes. I grew up in a town called Chicago. They are very near each other.”

“You have been to Milwaukee?”

“Frequently.”

“That is good. While he was still a small child, Erich Kessler died. I know that, because his mother and mine used to correspond. But there is no official record of that in this country, because the Kesslers stayed in the United States and were naturalized. For all I know they may be there to this day.”

“Making beer, perhaps?”

“Why? Do you know them?”

“Never heard of them. But I know Milwaukee. Go on, Jacoby.”

“I have obtained Erich Kessler's birth certificate. I have recorded that Erich—you—naturalized without his knowledge or consent when his parents were naturalized, was drafted into the American army. The rest follows. You have returned to the land of your birth, and can stay here now until you want to leave.”

“I shall not want to leave, Jacoby.”

“I hope not. But anyway, this makes you a German and at the same time takes care of your American accent. However, please listen to me and try to speak like me. Erich Kessler would have heard his parents speak German at home and would pronounce it better than you do.”

“I'll do my best. Correct me whenever you please.”

Almost automatically, Jacoby was massaging the muscles of his patient's right arm. “These are flabby,” he observed. “While you are lying in bed, for a few minutes at a time, clench your fist slowly and relax it slowly. Slowly, remember? That won't tax your strength, and you must take care of this arm. You will need it.”

“For a crutch?” said the new-made Erich Kessler, with a note of his old bitterness.

“I hope there will be a crutch,” Jacoby answered quietly. “Remember, I've promised nothing about your legs except to do the best I can with them.”

“All right, all right, I know. A man isn't hoping for too much in this world when he hopes for a crutch, is he?”

Jacoby addressed him sternly. “My friend, until you can face what you're up against
now
,
you aren't fit to try to go further.”

There was a long silence. At last the patient said, “I get it, Jacoby. And—ah—thank you.”

Jacoby stood up. ‘Thank
you
,
for not being angry with me.”

“Oh, shut up, will you?” He felt like changing the subject. “By the way, Jacoby, this Erich Kessler—me—am I a Jew like you?”

“No, why? Were you a Jew at home?”

“No, that's why I asked. I thought if I was to be one here you'd better teach me something about the religious rituals. But if I'm not, then it's not important.”

Startling to remember now that there had been a time when one could say “It's not important,” so carelessly, and then forget about it. There was nobody then to tell him that Erich Kessler's not being a Jew was going to be so important later on that it would enable him to save Jacoby's child.

When he was up in a wheel-chair, he went to live with Jacoby. It was almost like living in a hospital. Jacoby had his own laboratory and surgery as part of the Berlin hospital. Patients came and went all day and half the night. There was still lack of food, drugs, trained assistants. Jacoby worked like a demon. Watching him work threw Kessler into dark periods of dismay at his own uselessness. When he spoke of this to Jacoby, he received one of the quiet, direct replies he had learned to expect from his friend.

“Kessler, no man who genuinely wants to be of use in the world is ever useless for long. But that is a question you must answer for yourself. If I tried to answer it for you, I should be doing you an injury greater than any you have suffered. I should be telling you that it is no longer necessary for you to be responsible for your own conduct, and that is a crime I won't commit against anybody.”

Still trembling from the storm that had shattered him, Kessler found this hard to take. Later on he blessed Jacoby for having made him take it, refusing to let him sink into the childish dependency which at first seemed so comfortable a cushion for his tortured spirit. But since Jacoby did refuse, and his own bodily lassitude made his mind eager for activity, he had to search for a place he was capable of occupying. His first suggestion was made timidly.

“Jacoby, I don't know a thing about medicine or surgery, but if there's one thing I do know it's chemistry. Do you think I could learn to do some of these routine analyses that take up so much of your time? Blood-counts, and things like that?”

“Why not?” Jacoby returned eagerly. “If you only knew how much I need a technician! I'll be back in a minute.”

He hurried off, and came back with an armful of books which he dumped by the table he had rigged up to match the wheel-chair. “Start with this one. If you have trouble with the vocabulary let me know.”

Kessler felt a tingle of returning vigor. This would not be much, but it would be something toward repaying Jacoby. The prospect of making any kind of return was an immeasurable impetus.

He went to work. He worked as hard as Jacoby would let him. Within a couple of weeks he was surprised to find his study interesting for its own sake. “I always thought I was burning up with curiosity about the universe,” he said to Jacoby, “but I'm ashamed to find how I neglected my own species. You don't know how glad I am you're letting me do this.”

Jacoby shrugged. “Where did you get the impression I was ‘letting' you do it? I need you. One of these days, when the country is normal again, maybe I'll be able to get enough technicians. But now—!”

Though at first Kessler undertook only the simplest routines in the laboratory, they absorbed all his energy. He was still far from strong. The work was new, his reports had to be made in a language he still found unwieldy, and learning to make one hand serve the purpose of two required a thousand adjustments. But it meant that he was back in the sphere of active men, doing something that needed to be done, and occupation relieved him of leisure for brooding.

Much of Jacoby's practice at this time dealt with reconstruction of wounded soldiers, and he got into the habit of coming to the laboratory for advice, at first to bolster his analyst's returning assurance and later because he needed his counsel. For as the embittered wreck Arthur Kittredge

gradually turned into the confident scientist Erich Kessler, the youthful violence of the first changed to the gentle wisdom of a man who had sunk into the ultimate hopelessness and had come back. Arthur Kittredge had wanted to die; Erich Kessler, after a long hard battle, wanted to live. Kessler wanted to live because at last he found other people more important than himself, and this came about because he found, at first to his own amazement, that he had something valuable to give them. While he still had to be carried to his wheel-chair and lifted out of it, his efforts to be of some use to Jacoby widened into his being of use to a great many others.

As he progressed from elementary routines into tasks of more complexity, Kessler began to act as amanuensis for Jacoby as well as technician. He sat in a corner during Jacoby's interviews with his patients, taking notes of their symptoms. As he never said anything, his presence came to be accepted like that of the furniture in the consulting-room. Then, gradually, he fell into the habit of letting the patients talk to him if they called when Jacoby was otherwise occupied. He began to learn how many others there were besides himself who had to recover from the impact that physical disability had made on their lives. Jacoby had profound wisdom for these people, but sometimes, looking at Jacoby's healthy body, they did not believe it. When they looked at Kessler, still limp in his wheel-chair, they knew he knew what they were talking about.

So they talked to him, bringing him their own experience of despair. As he listened to all these men and women who wanted to die he began to see with startling clearness how little reason many of them had ever had for wanting to live. They had never been interested in anything but their own sensations. In a world sick with confusion, they were aware of nothing but their personal despondency, and they angrily resisted being made aware of anything else. As he heard them he thought he heard himself, bounded by tremendous trivialities, crying out against a destiny that forced him to look beyond these for a reason to stay alive. So many of these people could expect far more bodily power than he could. So many of them could take a real step in the march of civilization if they could first be persuaded to carry their own burdens. He tried to tell them this.

Often he failed, for he learned that there were a great many men and women in the world who would literally rather die than admit that their own characters had room for improvement. But sometimes he succeeded, and when he succeeded he felt the ecstasy of creation. Even when he was allowed to stand up, with a crutch on his right side and

Jacoby's arm supporting him on the other, and he actually walked a couple of steps on legs that had been idle four years, his sense of triumph was not as great as when he had managed to convince another human being that there was no real defeat except that of giving up the battle. He had not won his own battle yet. He never would win it completely. By this time he had become reconciled to the knowledge that no matter how he fought there would be periods when he would sit alone in his room sobbing like a child that he couldn't take it; but he knew also that these periods were temporary, and that he could take it.

When Germany had entered into a season of quiet that deceived innocent persons like himself and Jacoby into believing that it was recovering from the war, he got in touch with a private investigating agency and found out what had become of Elizabeth. He was told that she was living in California, married and the mother of a son. The news hurt him a great deal more deeply than he had thought it would. Was it conceivable, he asked himself, that he had expected her to spend her life remembering him? Yes, it was conceivable; that was exactly what the primitive, possessive part of himself had wanted her to do, and now this part of himself was leaping up from where he had buried it, enraged that she had accepted her freedom. He tried to bury it again, though it was a long time before he succeeded in doing so. But during that time, pretending to himself that he had done so helped him go on about his business.

This business had become writing case-histories of the patients whose lives had come under his own and Jacoby's care. Disguising their personal circumstances, he had drama enough for a thousand volumes. His only experience of writing had been in putting out technical pamphlets for the oil industry, but he had learned from this to say what he had to say plainly enough to be understood. Without any literary genius, he had learned to think clearly, and fortunately his present subject required clearness rather than rhetoric.

His books were widely read in Germany before Hitler had the power to order them burnt, and two of them were bought for motion pictures by French studios. With his hospital consultations and his writing, Kessler had more work than he could do. He was not as happy as he had been. This he did not expect, but he had the triumphant knowledge that he had built a worthwhile career on the ruins.