Body & Soul (28 page)

"B
UT YOU
must
come," Ivan said as they entered the hall. "It was great fun last year."

"I'm too busy," Claude said.

"Oh, really. Make time for it."

"And I can't dance."

"Any lummox can dance. Just move your feet around in a square."

Claude was surprised to see a letter in his box—a real letter from outside the school. He drew it out and turned it over. When he saw her name he almost dropped the envelope. It took him a moment to get up the nerve to open it.

Dear Rawlings,

You may escort me to the mixer. Come to the house at 7:30. Charles will take us in the Packard.

Catherine

"What is it?" Ivan asked.

Claude handed him the letter.

"Hmm," Ivan said as he read. "The tone is a bit imperious, wouldn't you say? Who is she?"

"A girl."

"Well, I assumed as much. Catherine who?"

"I forgot she goes to Brearley. Somehow I just don't associate her with—"

"You don't mean Catherine Marsh? Senator Barnes's granddaughter? This is from her?" He was astonished.

Claude looked up sharply. "You know her?"

"Well no, not really." His chubby face frowned. "I know of her. Good heavens, Claude, she's a famous beauty. Boyish hearts breaking left and right. She won't give anyone the time of day, and here she is writing you to be her escort."

Claude studied the letter again, admiring her fluid, vaguely sensual hand. "I suppose I'll go."

Ivan gave a bark of laughter. "I should hope so! You'll be a hero. Now how on earth did you meet her?"

As he approached the mansion, stepping onto the curved driveway, he became concerned about the time. Was he too early? Also, would she have thought his postcard rude? After a dozen drafts of a letter, each of which seemed sillier and more wooden than the last, he had thrown them all away and sent a postcard. He'd written just 7:30 and his signature. Better to err on the side of simplicity, he had thought, than to make a fool of himself.

Isidra opened the door. As he stepped inside she put her hand on his arm. She showed him a small cross made of dark wood, perhaps an inch high, holding it in front of his face, and stared at him intensely.

"You take this," she said, slipping it into his breast pocket. "It will protect you."

Claude was bewildered. Spluttering out his thanks, he realized from her expression that this was no light gesture on her part. "It keeps away spells," she said.

Spells? What was she talking about? He put his hand over his breast pocket, and she turned and walked away.

Peter was in the living room, and seemed not to have grown an inch nor added a pound since Claude had last seen him. "Come on," he said, pulling Claude's sleeve, "you've got to see this."

They entered a long hall. "Where are we going?"

"My playroom." The boy stepped into a room and turned on the lights. "I used to have electric trains in here."

A huge low table under special lighting dominated the room. Claude moved forward and gazed at the multicolored map that was its surface—North Africa, from Morocco in the west to Cairo in the east, with the island of Malta bright orange in the blue-green of the Mediterranean Sea, which ran across the top of the table. In wooden boxes lined up along the edge were lead soldiers, tanks, ships of various sizes, airplanes, and field artillery, all in different colors.

"Rommel is black. The Italians under his command are yellow, because that's what they were," Peter explained. "The British are blue and the Americans are white. You can play out all the campaigns, but my favorite is the summer of 1942. We finished it last night, but it took three whole days. That's why the board is empty now. We haven't decided what to do next."

"You play with Catherine?"

"No, silly. With my mother. She's awfully good with the books. Dewman even got us some secret stuff from the War Department. Those folders over there." The boy pulled up a kitchen chair and sat down by Casablanca. "I'm always General Rommel." He reached under the table, pulled out a German officer's cap, and put it on. It looked to Claude only slightly oversized.

"Is that real?" he asked.

"Sure. And all that other stuff too."

Claude went to the shelves. Books, olive-drab folders, maps, a bayonet, gas mask, Luger pistol, various medals, and a German helmet. A silver death's-head medallion on a small velvet cloth.

"Rommel was a genius. He was going to sweep right across and take Cairo. After that, south, and enough oil to go on forever. It should have worked, it really should."

Claude came back and stared down at the table, thinking. "Why didn't it?" he said, stalling for time.

"Malta." Peter pointed. "The British. He told Hitler to take it, and he was right. But Hitler was worried about the Russian front. He wasted everything. He was good in the beginning, but then he got stupid, or crazy or something."

Now Claude noticed a flag or pennant hanging on an old lampstand behind Peter's chair. "Peter, how much do you know about the war?"

The boy's huge eyes swiveled in surprise behind the lenses. "I know everything about this part," he said rapidly. "I know the campaigns, the ordnance, the time schedules, the troop movements down to patrols, practically. The supply lines, the chain of command, the strategy. I know it all. We play it out right here."

Claude went to the lampstand. "I meant the whole thing." He
reached for the lower edge of the cloth. "Do you know about the concentration camps? The gas chambers?"

"Gas chambers? For what? You mean fuel storage?"

Slowly Claude lifted the cloth to reveal a small flag with a black swastika in its center.

"Peter!" Mrs. Fisk's voice came sharply from the doorway. "I thought I asked you to entertain Rawlings in the library. I'm quite sure I did."

"I just wanted to show—"

She interrupted. "Rawlings is much too old for toy soldiers, dear. Now come along."

"Yes, mother." He got up and she left the doorway, but not before turning out the lights. "Oh, rats," Peter said, moving through the gloom. "Anyway, it's much more fun than electric trains."

Claude followed, his mind spinning. The swastika had been a shock, leaping out at him like something alive. But for Peter it was obviously not of great importance. Just one of a number of props in an elaborate game. Mrs. Fisk, on the other hand, had seemed eager to get him out of there. And why hadn't she told Peter the truth? Did she think he was too young to know about such monstrous evil? Then why did she let him surround himself with the symbols of that evil? It didn't make any sense.

As they entered the living room Catherine appeared at the top of the stairs in a dark blue velvet dress trimmed with lace. As she lifted her arm to the banister, the light caught a thin bracelet of gold on her wrist. She descended slowly, with Dewman Fisk several steps behind her.

"There you are, Rawlings," she said.

"Hi."

"Ready to
cut the rug?
" She accentuated the last three words, made a little circling motion in the air with her forefinger, and laughed.

Mrs. Fisk busied herself with some flowers. Peter threw himself into a large armchair and pulled his knees up to his chest. Dewman came over and shook Claude's hand with mock gravity. Then everyone seemed to be frozen for a moment. There was silence and a curious tension in the air. Claude could hear the soft rustle of the flowers as Mrs. Fisk moved them.

"Let's go," Catherine said.

The Packard was waiting in the driveway. Charles held the door open and they got in. Catherine pressed herself into the corner, sitting
sideways, slipped off her black pumps, and folded her legs up onto the seat under her. She stared out the window as they drove down Fifth Avenue.

"I've never been to anything like this before," Claude said after a long time.

"You're at Bentley. It's part of it."

"I wasn't going to go, until I got your letter." He reached up and held the leather strap behind his window. "You look very pretty."

"You think so? In this ridiculous dress? I look like some little girl out of the BrontÖ sisters."

Below the lace collar he saw the swell of her breasts. "Then why did you wear it?"

Instead of answering, she straightened out one leg and put her bare foot in his lap. He looked at it and then glanced up to see the back of Charles's head behind the glass separating the compartments.

"Don't worry about him," she said. "He can't hear us. Now tell me if my foot is pretty."

He astonished himself by wrapping his hand around her heel. With his other hand he gently encircled her ankle. Unable to speak, he looked up at her. Her expression was attentive, curious, as if watching an experiment in chemistry class. He returned his attention to her foot, which seemed perfectly ordinary, a trifle pudgy. He wondered if she felt his erection underneath it, wondered how she could not.

Very slowly she moved her big toe. "You can put that in your mouth if you want."

In the midst of the soft roar of hot blood suffusing him, his head swelling up, his throat tightening, some part of his mind nevertheless kept operating with a particularly sharp clarity. Her suggestion seemed incomprehensible, grotesque, insane, and frightening, while at the same time intimate and, for reasons he could feel but not understand, shockingly erotic and wonderful. For a split second he considered bending his head.

"No," he said, dazed. And then, foolishly, "Not right now."

He let go of her foot and she removed it slowly and carefully. She watched him for a moment and then looked out the window.

"There are people," she said, "who would give anything for the opportunity. Literally crawl on their knees. Can you believe that?" Her tone was calm, reflective.

"I guess," Claude said. "Sure."

***

Charles guided the Packard around the arc at the end of the street and pulled up in front of the River Club. He started to get out, but Catherine had already opened her door and stepped onto the sidewalk. Claude followed.

Other couples came down from the avenue and moved through the glass doors into the crowded vestibule. Catherine saw them bunched up at the chaperones' table near the entrance to the ballroom and reached back for Claude's arm. She turned to the right and led the way to the iron fence beyond which they could see the river, black as oil. She watched it for a while, her hands on the fence. They could hear laughter, cries of greeting, and high excited voices behind them.

"You know what this is, don't you?" she asked.

"The mixer? It's a dance."

"It's an upper-class marriage market, you idiot. They start early, when you're just a kid, and it goes on year after year. The dance lessons, mixers, coming-out parties—all of it so people will marry inside their class. I think it's vulgar, really. It's more hypocrisy, and they're not fooling me."

"I never had dance lessons," he said. "As you'll soon see."

"At least you know the piano. Most of those jerks in there don't know anything except how to dance and how to spike the punch."

It seemed to him an extraordinarily significant moment. A compliment, freely sprung from those perfect carved lips. A compliment, however faint, at long last. It was so precious to him he immediately moved to cover it up, to go on as if nothing had happened, lest it be taken back.

"I don't know," he said. "I've met some really smart people at Bentley. One guy in particular is the—"

"I said
most,
not all. There are exceptions, certainly."

In the silence it was now possible to savor her recognition of him, to feel the after-echo, like the spinning away of some beautiful chord. Watching her in profile—the slender white neck, the black wing of hair over her cheekbone, the clean line of her brow—he fell into a sort of trance, holding on to the moment, trying to pull it into himself. She turned her head and looked at him, first with an expression of mild annoyance, but then, relenting, with a hint of pity. "Let's go in," she said.

As they approached the chapetones' table to give their names, he was aware of attention from the crowded ballroom. Quick dance music from a small orchestra shimmered in the air. Couples glided
across the floor with impossible smoothness, as if on roller skates. Faces turned as Catherine and Claude walked in, and a group of senior boys gathered around the punch bowl stood frozen for an instant and then rushed forward.

"Lester Lanin," Catherine said. "Good old reliable Lester."

"Who's he?"

"The bandleader. That skinny little man hopping around up there."

Claude looked around for Ivan. "I wonder if my friend...," he began, but Catherine was gone, swept onto the dance floor by one of the seniors. Holding her close, moving with an almost violent grace, he danced her through the crowd and out of sight toward the opposite side of the room. Claude, who had imagined her by his side all evening, was thunderstruck.

"That's the way it works," said Ivan, coming up behind and giving him a clap on the shoulder. "You won't see
her
for a while."

"But we just, I mean, it was two seconds, I didn't even—"

"Punch," Ivan said. "Time for punch. Follow me."

A very large bowl of cut crystal was half filled with pink liquid and a block of ice. Ivan poured out two cups with the silver ladle and handed one to Claude. They sipped.

"Is it spiked?" Claude asked.

"I don't think so." Ivan smacked his lips. "Not yet."

Claude ate a cookie, trying to catch a glimpse of Catherine. Most of the people on the floor danced expertly, but Claude was gratified to see a few couples moving woodenly on the fringe of things. He recognized Platt, the math whiz, marking off the same square again and again, out of tempo, with a tall bony girl at arm's length. She stared stoically over the top of his head. Catherine and her partner burst briefly into view. Claude felt a mild apprehension at the speed with which she moved. Ordinarily she held herself with a certain authority, a calmness, and this seemed reckless, out of character. He felt she was being forced.