Bliss, Remembered (31 page)

“Well, you know, Mom, kissing goodbye. That’s a sweet part: kissing.”

“Oh stop it. You’re just defending Shakespeare because all you theater people have to defend Shakespeare. I knew damn well I wasn’t gonna feel anything sweet about parting from Horst. Damn well.

“But, before that, at the stadium, oh my—all that majesty. It just made being with Horst that much more joyous.” She paused and glanced away, wistfully, and then, still without looking back at me, she reached over and squeezed my hand. She took a breath and began again.

“The hymn. The Beethoven hymn they played was entitled “The Flame Dies.” Talk about on point. And as they played it, the searchlights came down lower and lower until it was like a tent of light. A veritable tent, Teddy. Then, from down at one end of the stadium, here came fifty-two tall German gals, all dressed in white. They must have scoured the land to come up with this bunch, all tall, all blonde, all about the same size. Maybe Leni Riefenstahl found them when she was out looking for the cute boys. Or that creepy Goebbels.

“Anyway, they marched in by twos, like Noah’s Ark, and went over to where the flag bearers were holding the flags of the Olympic nations. Fifty-two of them. That’s why the fifty-two girls in white. Of course, that’s like a drop in the bucket now, fifty-two, what with all those countries that used to be Yugoslavia and all the jack-istans and mack-istans and so forth, but fifty-two seemed like a great deal of countries to me at the time. So the flag bearers lowered the flags, and the girls put laurel wreaths on the flag poles.

“And then they lowered the Olympic flag itself, and there was this whole procession, with about a dozen German fencers as the escort, their sabers drawn, takin’ the flag over to the burgomeister of Berlin, who was sittin’ there with Hitler. The idea was that the burgomeister would take care of the flag till Tokyo. That was the tradition. God only knows what happened to that poor flag. But anyway, when the music ended, everybody rose, and there was dead silence. A hundred thousand souls, and you could hear a pin drop. And the lights began to dim. And that was when, down at the end of the stadium, by the Marathon Gate, the flame began to go out. Down, down, down. Then poof—it was gone. Extinguished. You had to get goosebumps. I snuggled up closer to Horst.

“I know you’re not supposed to say anything good about the Nazis, but let’s give the devil his due: those SOBs could put on a show, Teddy. They were great at massing multitudes. Nobody ever did multitudes better than the Nazis, except maybe the Chinese, but they’ve got the advantage when it comes to multitudes because there’s just so damn many of them, the Chinese. The Nazis could do great multitudes without as many multitudes.

“Then, in the silence, here came the voice of the head Olympic pooh-bah, the chief blazer of them all. He spoke in English. He said”—and here Mom intoned again, like an announcer: “‘After offering to the Führer, Adolf Hitler, and the German people, our deepest gratitude, we call upon the youth of every country to assemble in four years at Tokyo, there to celebrate with us the twelfth Olympic Games.’

“You bet your sweet life I remember that. I was the youth they were calling.

“I couldn’t help myself. I just hugged Horst and whispered, ‘We’ll be there.’ And he answered by kissing my forehead. Oh, it was all so sweet and lovely. I was so happy, Teddy. I was suddenly absolutely sure that whatever would happen to us, me back in America, him at college and then in the navy, by 1940 we’d be there in Tokyo together and I would win my gold medal and Horst and I . . . then, then somehow we would never be apart again.

“My eyes began to mist up just as the choir started to sing the finale. They sang in German, of course, but the lyrics were up on the scoreboard in English. ‘Friends, farewell,’ it said. ‘Even if the sun should sink for us, others will beckon. Friends, farewell.’

“And the music faded away, softly, softly, until it was quiet again. I was breathless from all the beauty, Teddy. In fact, at first, I don’t think I even noticed it, I was so lost in my own reverie, but somewhere in the stadium a chant began, and it grew and grew and grew: ‘Sieg heil,’ it went. ‘Sieg heil, unserem führer, sieg heil.” Over and over, all these right arms outstretched and raised. And louder and louder until it became a roar. ‘Sieg heil, unserem führer, sieg heil.’”

I dared ask: “Did Horst join in?”

“Yes, he did. He even took his arm from round my waist so that he could raise it in salute with all the others. He was proud, Teddy. At that moment, he was so proud to be a German. And it went on and on for quite a while. But here’s the thing: as soon as it died out, I pretty much forgot that part. It’s like: who remembers ‘The Star Spangled Banner’ after the ballgame is over? When it was done, it was gone, and I only kept thinking about everything beautiful that’d come before. ‘Vas you dere, Charlie?’ Ya, I vas dere, Teddy, but I still didn’t get it. And neither did anyone else.

“You see, the irony was that as far as the future was concerned, the only part of that whole beautiful evening that’d ever mean anything was the end. ‘Sieg heil, unserem führer, sieg heil.’ The rest was just cotton candy. But who knew? Pass the cotton candy. Oh my, Teddy, what a glorious time it was for a girl to be in love with a boy.”

She let a big smile play across her face and then, after a moment, reached over and picked up the purple acetate folder and handed it to me. “Now, take this home with you, and after you read it, if you can still stand me, call me.”

“Stand you?”

“If you can.”

I let that pass. “Okay, Mom. I will.” I took the folder and stood up, then leaned back down and kissed her on the forehead, just as Horst must have done that night at the stadium.

I was almost to the door when she called to me, waving for me to come back. She held out her hand, and I gave the purple acetate folder back to her. She unsnapped it, reached inside and pulled out the swatch she’d saved from the magenta gown with the trapunto cording. Without another word, she handed the folder back, and after softly fondling the swatch, she placed it on the table next to her bed. By the time I reached the door she’d already turned out the light.

Could Mother possibly think that I would simply put that purple acetate folder in my suitcase, not to pick it up and read it until, oh, a week or so later when I had some spare time? I’m quite sure she knew exactly what I would do, which was to immediately sit down there in her living room and begin to read.

I slipped the pages out. There was one handwritten page on foolscap on top. It said simply: “HOW MUCH WILL YOU DO FOR LOVE?”—which was, of course, that curiously strained philosophical question Mother had posed a few days before.

I put that aside and found two other pages, typewritten. They were held by a large paper clip to the cover of an old seventy-eight record album (the edges cut a bit so that it could fit into the folder). It was an album of songs of Vera Lynn. The pages were dated fairly recently, May 7, 2003—my father’s birthday—and it read:

And then Mom began her story. Accustomed to neat, clean twenty-first-century word-processor copy, I had to adjust to her old typewritten words on onion-skin paper. While it was not a terribly messy draft, words—sometimes whole sentences—were crossed out, with corrections made by pen. It was clear that Mom had just wanted to get this down, on the record, and wasn’t worried so much about neatness so as to take the time to type whole pages over.

More to my surprise was the date she had typed at the top: August 9, 1984—and then, on the next line, in parentheses, she had added, “upon our return from the Los Angeles Olympics.”

I remember when Mom and Dad had gone there. That Olympics obviously must’ve brought back memories of ’36 and Berlin, inspiring her to tackle this when she got home. And, indeed, she began by explaining:

At that point, Mom began writing her story out, much as she had told it to me. I skimmed through the pages until I found her at the end of the Olympics and began reading there, which was her Chapter Five, Part I.

So, right away, I was irritated again. I had been foolish enough to think that once Mother left Germany, the rest of her story would be Horst-free, but here she was, decades later, still prattling on, still completely infatuated by this teen-age heartthrob. I had to keep telling myself that how ever much her young swain had meant to her way back then, I had been an actual living, breathing witness to so many years of the wonderful marriage my parents had together. I could take comfort that the evident reality of that true love—day after day, year after year, decade after decade—overwhelmed even the most romantic memories of that brief summer’s interlude of youthful infatuation.