Authors: Belva Plain
She was still in hospital white with the Red Cross insignia. Her walk looked confident. Her homely, wide face was strong. She knew what she was about. And Caroline had a sudden thought: If I were sick, I would want Lore to take care of me.
“I saw you from the kitchen window. Since you’re doing nothing else, anyway, you might as well help me peel these leftover vegetables for soup. It’s a shame to waste.”
This was an oblique reference to Mama, of whom Lore was otherwise fond. But Mama was a poor cook. Mama played the piano most beautifully and read good books. Ever since the servants had been dismissed, she had, with Caroline’s help, been preparing the meals and doing her best. Nevertheless, it was always a relief when Lore was home taking charge.
“Cut the carrots finer, Caroline.”
The sun was almost as warm as in spring, a freakish comfort with Christmas only a month away. Basking in it, they sat silently, with a sense of being talked out. The talk, the subjects, were always the same, either the anxious unknowable future or the wistful past.
Lore spoke suddenly. “I remember every single detail
of my first day in this house. You were three months old, asleep in the perambulator right here in this garden. I even remember the pink coverlet with the ribbon bow in the center. Like a rosette, it was.”
Caroline could hardly count the times she had heard this story and all the stories: how one of Father’s patients had told him about an orphaned twelve-year-old niece—such a bright, good child—how the patient could no longer afford to keep her, having eight children of her own and an unemployed husband, and how Father, having himself met the child Lore and been touched by pity, had taken her into their home.
From her parents, Caroline had heard their side of the story. Lore, at twelve, had been such a cheerful, obedient little girl! She had been so grateful for everything, for good food and clothes, a pretty room of her own, and kind attention. She had been a hardworking student. At nursing school she had done very well. Indeed, she did everything very well.
More than that, she was the elder daughter of the family; midway in age between Caroline and her mother, she was the confidante of both.
“My teeth,” Lore said now. “Look at them crumbling away. I was six years old when the war began in 1914, just in time for scarcity. We never had proper nourishment. No wonder my bones are soft. And then all the men were killed, my father and my two older brothers.” She looked around the yard, and seeing no one there, leaned toward Caroline,
whispering, “That’s why I have to get out now before the next war comes.” Then she laughed. “And before all the young men die and I’ll never be able to find a husband.”
Caroline felt sad for her. Poor Lore! She never went out anywhere except with other women. Nature was very uneven when it handed out eyes or noses or human skeletons, she reflected. Lore was short and large boned; she had scanty dull-brown hair and a large, flat nose with large nostrils. Unfair. Men would not bother to find out how smart and competent and good she was.
“There. The peas are shelled. I’ve already done the beans, and you have the carrots. Now, with yesterday’s leftover meat, we’ll have a fine soup. There’s nothing like a thick soup and some fresh bread.”
They went back into the house. Already, though no furniture had been moved, it had begun to feel deserted and temporary. Many of the rooms were never used anymore; the English governess had gone home the year before, and the French one, being Jewish, had left long ago for France. Five-course dinners in the long, formal dining room had given way to simple meals in the breakfast niche. In the glass-walled sunroom one felt too exposed to the bands of roving toughs who sometimes came through the neighborhood. The little library at the back of the house felt safest, and there they all huddled in the evening to read or listen to concerts over the radio, or to Mama playing softly on the piano.
Now, especially since Crystal Night, in their very own house they were afraid.
“EXCELLENT
soup, Lore,” Father said.
“On Sunday, I’ll be free and I’ll make apple charlotte for you.”
“There’s nothing like your cherry strudel,” Mama said, sighing. “I remember last summer on Caroline’s birthday, it was good enough for a king’s banquet.”
So they talked for a while about food, recalling dinners that none of their friends—of those who were left—ever gave anymore. And restaurants to which they never went anymore. They talked about a book that Mama had finished and recommended, or about a surgical case that Lore was tending. Quite obviously, they were trying to skirt the one question that was on all their minds.
Lore, whenever she did private duty nursing, was sure to bring back a few tidbits of interesting gossip, most of it harmless stuff about forbidden romances. Sometimes she had more than gossip to relate. And then, inevitably, they would return to what was foremost in their minds.
“Yes,” she said now, addressing Father. “They really are building that airport you heard about. A man who was visiting my patient this afternoon is working on it. But I only heard a bit because someone shut him up.”
“What difference?” Father said glumly. “We all know what’s coming.”
“You had better hurry,” Lore warned, as always.
“What are you talking about? Visas for England are impossible. And as for America, it’s wait your turn on the quota. Hurry up and wait. Wait, especially for poor Eva, who was born in Poland and has a filled-up quota. Please don’t tell me we should have applied a long time ago because I already know it.”
“The world is closed,” Mama murmured.
Our ancestors, Caroline thought in the silence. God alone knows how long Father’s people have been in what is now Germany; from prehistoric times, most likely. And Mama’s have been in Europe for how many centuries? Before 1492 they were in Spain, perhaps since the destruction of the temple in 70.
“Maybe you should leave now, Lore,” Father said thoughtfully. “Why should you be stuck here with us if we can’t get out?”
“No, you’re my family and I go where you do. Right now, I’m going to bed. I’m on duty early tomorrow.”
“God bless her,” said Mama, when Lore went upstairs. “She’s a princess, a saint.”
It was true. Lore was Caroline’s older sister and her best friend.
“Poor soul,” said Father. “That nose of hers is her main enemy. Well, other things besides. If she ever stops living with us, I’m afraid she will live alone for
the rest of her days. Men are such fools.… Play something, Eva. Play some Bach. He is hopeful and filled with faith.”
Long after Caroline had gone to her room, the piano sounded faintly from below. Because it was routine, it was reassuring. Peter’s warm little body pressed against her feet was also reassuring.
Then her thoughts traveled back to the meeting in the park. She felt vaguely troubled. Had she been curt when he asked her whether they would meet again tomorrow? Or if not curt, exactly, perhaps just dismissive? Or cool? A teacher had once remarked, kindly enough, that she should stop analyzing herself. Perhaps, he said, she had been very strictly brought up, with heavy emphasis upon manners, and so she had a fear of giving offense.
Yes, carried too far, that business could become ridiculous. You spent a few minutes with a total stranger, and now you are worried that you hurt his feelings. You will probably never see him again. And if you do, what difference would it make? He walks his dog, you walk yours, and that’s the end of it.
Yet she knew she would see him again.
He was standing across the avenue from her house the next afternoon, and it was obvious that he had been waiting for her. Indeed, he told her that he had.
“I would like to know you,” he said.
“Well, I walk here every day, unless it should be raining too hard.”
“That’s not what I meant. I would like to go
somewhere with you, to a concert or to the opera, since you said you like music.”
Had she said so? She did not recall. Although they had begun to walk side by side and she was not looking at him, she felt that he had turned toward her with expectation.
“Your neighbors, the Cassells at the end of your street, are friends of my family. You can ask them about me.”
“Oh, no, I don’t need to. I can tell for myself, I—”
“Can you?” There was a slight amusement in his tone, and as she looked up at him, a slight, appealing twinkle in his eyes. “From the first minute yesterday, I was sure we would get along. That happens sometimes, you know, not only in fairy tales.”
“Yes, I know.” She hesitated, and then, diving into cold, unfriendly waters, said directly, “You shouldn’t even be talking to me. I’m half Jewish.”
For a moment as she watched, he stood still, regarding her. Then he said quietly, “It doesn’t matter.”
Even though she had not known what to expect from him, the stillness, as though he was disappointed, and also the words, were startling.
“I don’t understand,” she said. “How can it not matter, the way things are?”
“It is only a complication. One finds one’s way around complications. That’s all there is to it.”
Their eyes were looking into each others. In his, she saw a sympathy that would have made her cry if
she had given way to it. There was so little kindness these days.
And she said gently, “I wouldn’t want you to have any trouble because of me.”
For an answer, he took her hand, saying only, “Let’s walk.”
Already, they were behaving as if there was going to be a
connection
. Neither spoke. They arrived at a place where the path sloped toward a small lake on a wide sward, where in fine weather people walked and children played ball games. There were benches. To one of these he drew her, and they sat while the dogs lay down willingly at their feet, as if they, too, sensed the mood of the day.
Unlike the day before, there was no sun, and it was very cold. Bitter November had finally settled itself upon the world. All was quiet. In the windless air, the topmost elm twigs made a delicate black pattern against the pale gray sky.
“Look. Like a Japanese print, or calligraphy,” Walter said, pointing upward.
He was still holding her hand, and she was still holding back tears. Why? What was happening?
From the lowest branches of the trees, there sounded a sweet twittering of birds, little winter creatures with dark heads.
“Hunting berries, going their cheerful way as usual, in spite of everything,” he said. “Yes, nature. Nature and art. Nothing else lasts, so in the long run, nothing else matters.”
“Nothing matters? How can you say that?”
“In the long run, I said.” Letting go of her hand, he faced her to ask abruptly, “What are you going to do in the short run?”
“My family, you mean?” She had not needed to be warned against putting trust in strangers. Yet this time, she did just that. “We are trying to emigrate to America. But we are very late, and you need to have people over there who will support you so you will not be a public charge. My mother has gotten hold of some New York City and Chicago telephone books. People are all passing them around. She writes to people with names like those in her family, although we have no relatives abroad. Perhaps generations ago they were relatives. Who knows? But perhaps they will have a heart anyway.”
He shook his head. “It’s all insane. Insane and evil. This whole country—”
“It’s dangerous to talk that way.”
“I know that. I don’t usually talk that way.”
“Except at home? One has to talk someplace.”
Again he shook his head. “Never at home.”
For a few moments he was silent. Three lines were drawn across his forehead. She wondered, and had never noticed, whether other people as young as he was ever had such marked lines. When he spoke again, it was with sadness.
“We don’t argue. I respect my father. Besides, he is a man with whom people never argue. This has troubled our relationship because I can’t speak openly.
Still, he must know how I feel about affairs here. It is often what one does not say that expresses things as clearly as what one does say.”
Then, brightening as if with an effort, he changed the subject. “Well, Caroline, since we find ourselves in rather special circumstances, where are we going to meet from now on? It can’t be always in the middle of the park, especially because”—and he held out his hand—“it has started to rain.”
“We will go back to my house,” she said.
A
ND SO
, Caroline’s life reached a divide: There was before Walter and then there was after Walter.
Lore, who had been at home that first afternoon, was intensely curious. “You go for a walk in the park and look what you bring back! His manners, his looks. Real elegance. But tell me, does he know—know about—”
“About Mama? Of course. He doesn’t care. He’s a cultured, intelligent man. What do you think, that he’s some kind of Brownshirt thug?”
Lore teased, “Look at you, defending him already. Have you fallen in love so fast?”
“What’s wrong with you? I have not fallen in love, Lore.”
“Maybe not yet, but I’m sure you will. It’s only natural. And they say it’s wonderful,” she added wistfully. “Still, in these times, you have to wonder.”
There was great confusion within Caroline, a
dread of appearing foolish, as if her thoughts could be visible to other people. She embarrassed herself with the thoughts that were taking shape in her head.
When the week passed and there were no more daily walks in the park, Walter began the evening visits that introduced him to the family.
“A fine young man,” her father said cordially. But after the first two or three times, he expressed his doubts. “I don’t have to tell you that we are living on the thin edge. Walter should be more careful, too. I’m surprised that he comes here at all.”
Mama says nothing, thought Caroline, because she feels such a weight upon her. A heritage that she had always been proud to hand on had now, in this mad time, become a danger to her daughter. Her husband had lost his career and was leaving his country for her sake.
“What do you know about his family?” Father asked, meaning: What is their work and do they belong to the Party? “No, of course they can’t, or else he wouldn’t—” he said, thinking aloud, and then stopped, resuming a moment later. “Anyway, we shall be leaving soon. And you are so—”