The Book of Knowledge (11 page)

‘Italian pig,' said Ib.

He went back to the bakery and soothed his rage with a long draw on the bottle of ale. He floured his hands, began work on the dough for lunch rolls, put the layers for one birthday cake for tonight into the oven, expressed his opinion loudly to the hot oven concerning the driver's unlawful origins, and then sealed his view with another insult-quenching drink.

After the water-sports contests of last week, the Grays were twelve points behind the Blues for the summer's total. Roslyn was a Gray and happy not be on the winning side. To her, Gray represented the uniforms of the courageous, radical rebels of the War Between the States, the gallant subjects of a school paper she had written this year. Only a few competitions remained to be played in these final days. They would decide the Blue-Gray struggle: junior field hockey, freshman volleyball, mediate handball. Roslyn hoped she would be overlooked in the final handball pairings-off, for inevitably she would lose, and the winners would gloat. She would hate the whole exultory conclusion, especially the banquet with its stupid awards and medals. And the silly singing of victory songs. Oh jeepers.

But Rae insisted. ‘You've done nothing at all for the Grays, Roz. Time to get out and show some team spirit.'

‘Jeepers,' Roslyn said under her breath. ‘
Team spirit
.'

She walked as slowly as she could down to the handball court, bearing witness, she hoped, by her slumped shoulders and clenched fists, to her disdain for the world of competition. For a moment, as she passed the Amusement Hall, where she knew Fritzie was going to meet with other counselors to plan activities for the next day and for the departure, she looked in. There she was, the lovely Fritzie, and here she was, the captive Roslyn. Suppose, by some miracle, she were to win. The Grays would gain a much-needed point, she supposed. But how could this possibly happen? Well, stringbean Loo, who was sure to be her opponent, a Blue who was good at this game, might sprain her ankle and concede to her. Or God would perform a miracle, endowing her own weak right hand and willowy wrist with Amazonian strength. Then, in a series of amazing acts, one
firm
stroke after another, hard palm to rubber ball to cement wall, her game might turn out to be a masterpiece of strategy and strength.

Roslyn sat down on the grass, crouching low, hoping she would not be noticed. On the side bench, sitting with Will, Roslyn imagined she saw her beloved Fritzie. Will was the athletics counselor who refereed most of the games. Roslyn's burning eyes squinted against the sun: her fantasy bloomed. Fritzie will watch her admiringly as she swings and swoops and slams. She will applaud the clever moves that lead to the final point, until Roslyn's heart explodes with love for her generosity. Her life's blood will leak from her palms as a result of glass-hard contact with the ball, coloring her sweat, covering her with the glowing sheen of a victor.

She will bow gallantly to her disabled opponent, nod humbly to Will and then to her beloved, cutting the air with her CCL cap in one glorious sweep of cavalier grace. She will bow again, very low.

Halfway through the match Roslyn tired. The long summer of relative inactivity had not prepared her for this last challenge. On the bench, Will appeared bored, looking often at her watch. Roslyn lost badly. Good, she thought. Another Blue point, and perhaps ultimate defeat for the Grays to which she had now contributed. Now she had good reason to skip the banquet and celebration by the gloating bad winners and the noisy good losers. She would stay in her bunk and try to finish up all her old newspapers, maybe even take a look at
Ben Hur
. But of course Fritzie probably would not let her.

Will stood up, said she had a meeting, and left abruptly without congratulating Loo, who looked hurt. Roslyn shook hands with her and said: ‘Good game.'

Loo raised her clasped hands above her head and said into the air: ‘Yessirree bob. Yay for the Blues.'

To Roslyn she said, confidingly: ‘You know what? It's a wonder I played so good. I feel lousy. Last night I fell off the roof.'

‘Falling off the roof' was the popular camp expression for menstruation. Roslyn had learned it from Aggie. Jo, Loo, Aggie: all of them talked about their monthly troubles in this way. At first hearing, Roslyn had taken it literally and was startled. Then she reasoned it was most unlikely that three kids all would have suffered the same accident. What were they all doing up there, anyway?

‘Why do you call it that?' she had asked Jo.

Jo didn't know. Nobody in the bungalow knew. Their disdain for Roslyn's immaturity ruled her out of the suffering sorority. So they made no attempt to invent something or venture a guess at a reason. Roslyn was not offended at their conspiratorial silence. She had already worked out her own explanation. If you fell off a roof you were very apt to bleed uncontrollably. So the expression must be yet another description of the cursed affliction. It was all so stupid, really. Because, her plan locked firmly into place, she would never have any part in the whole mess.

Grete made beds and scrubbed the bathrooms and kitchen while Mrs. Ehrlich in her fresh white dress sat at her dressing table and applied powder and rouge to her cheeks.

‘Nothing like a Swede for cleanliness,' she had told Amiel Hoffer, the camp doctor, at the start of the summer. He agreed, wanting to stand in well with the directors and so not correcting her about Grete's place of origin. To Mrs. Ehrlich all persons from Scandinavia were Swedish, and surely the doctor must respect that nation's reputation for hygiene.

Dr. Amiel, as Mrs. Ehrlich called him, had come to the camp this summer as a result of chance. A June graduate of Bellevue Medical School, he had filled in at the last moment for the regular doctor, whose skill at treating poliomyelitis through the winter would keep him busy in the City during the threatened epidemic summer, sadly depriving him of his usual Cats-kill vacation. So relieved were the Ehrlichs to be able to fill this essential position that they did not inquire into the inexperienced young graduate's credentials. (For what parents would permit their child to be away from them for any length of time without the firm promise of on-the-grounds medical attention?) And Fate had been kind to Dr. Amiel: no difficult-to-diagnose ailments had developed during the eight weeks of camp. The most serious was Oscar's gastritis, caused, the doctor was quick to see, by the boy's overeating.

‘But he eats like a bird,' his mother protested.

‘Then why is he so fat?'

‘It's all glands. It runs in the family.'

Dr. Amiel, who possessed common sense, even if his medical experience was limited, repressed his disbelief. Oscar's first stomach ache had occurred on the fourth day of camp. Even then the doctor had suspected him of being a secret eater. But he knew he had the rest of the summer to get through peaceably, so he made no comment on this diagnosis. Oscar continued to have spells of constipation, pain, and nausea all summer. The doctor prescribed diet, exercise, and milk of magnesia. Oscar refused to change his diet and avoided all physical effort. But he did allow himself to be dosed periodically, in this way garnering his mother's loving sympathy and care.

To the doctor's immense relief, no one had ever had to remain overnight in the Infirmary. Complaints expressed at morning sick call were limited to shin bruises from hockey sticks, splinters, and headaches caused by the arrival of ‘my period.' There were a few cases of tennis elbow and a number of occurrences of baseball fingers and bee stings, scraped knees and toes. But nothing happened that could not be treated with Midol, aspirin, Band-Aids, Ace bandages, and tongue-depressor finger splints.

‘My future practice should be this easy,' thought the doctor, knowing the impossibility of this wish but still grateful to the Gods of Summer for their forbearance in not putting his ignorance to a test.

At the end of the summer his record was clear, thanks to his one fortunately prescient action. In late July, Ruth Kress, one of the twins, developed a persistent fever. When it did not respond to aspirin and rest in her bungalow and when, on the fourth day of her fever, she complained of arm and leg pains and a stiff neck, Dr. Amiel suggested that she be sent home, ‘as a precaution.'

Mrs. Ehrlich agreed, having been assured by Mr. Ehrlich that Ruth's parents would not be due any refund, since the first three weeks of the season had passed. At August's end, with camp about to close, no word had reached the directors about Ruth's state of health. Muriel was told by her parents that her twin was all right. Everyone else knew only that she had not returned.

The silence made good, self-serving sense for everyone. The Kresses did not wish Muriel sent home to a polio-infested City. So they did not alert the camp to its danger. The Ehrlichs and the doctor had been blessed with luck—no fevers or other suspicious symptoms developed among Ruth's bunkmates. The fearful disease had departed from CCL with Ruth, leaving none of the dread viruses behind. They had concentrated themselves in the twin, who was taken from the train to the Lenox Hill Hospital in the City, where she fought hard for life and, in mid-August, breathed her last in an iron lung.

Seated on camp chairs in a semicircle at the front of the Amusement Hall, Rae and the upper-group counselors held their final meeting for the season. While they waited for Mrs. Ehrlich and the doctor to arrive, they planned their private celebratory outing into Liberty (a town well named, Fritzie thought) tomorrow evening after the banquet. Then, when Muggs arrived, they changed the subject and began to decide about the medals and pins to be bestowed upon their thirty campers tomorrow night. Loo would receive the ‘gold' for general athletic prowess. Another gold would go to Frannie in Bungalow Fourteen for being the most improved camper.

‘That's an easy one,' said Hozzle. ‘Last year she couldn't learn to do the dead man's float. Now she can paddle on the top of the water pretty well.'

Will said: ‘Yep. She used to get so tangled up with the hockey stick I had to take her out of every game. Last week she played wing. It's true she never managed to hit the puck, but at least she stayed on her feet.'

Rae said: ‘I recall an inning of softball I watched last year. She beaned one hitter and struck another in the chest while she was running to first base. Then Will retired her to the bench. But fine. Most improved camper she is.' She wrote Frannie's name on her clipboard.

Viwie, in Bungalow Twelve (there was no Thirteen, for superstitious reasons), would be given the medal for best swimmer. Jo would be rewarded with a gold for her skill in arts and crafts. The other twenty-six mediates were to receive copper-colored pins, in recognition of their ‘efforts': Mrs. Ehrlich was always firm in her view that not a single camper should return home undecorated. She wished to guard against resentments that might fester during the winter, adversely affecting the decision of parents to re-enroll their offspring in February.

Rae went to the porch to look down the line, as the road between the directors' cottage and the farthest bungalow was called, to see if Mrs. Ehrlich was on her way. They'd all been waiting more than an hour for her, and there was a great deal to do now that the end, thank God, was almost upon them. When Rae saw her approaching, as wide as a sail in her white dress, teetering over the rough path on her tiny white high-heeled pumps, Rae waved, and waited. She helped her up the uneven wooden steps and linked her arm with hers as they walked to the circle of counselors. Mrs. Ehrlich was fond of Rae, because she had run the camp without any help from her for fifteen years. If she ever failed to return, the directress thought, the whole efficient and profitable enterprise might be threatened.

Rae was aware of this. But she was a gentle, kindly, unassuming woman who used her power discreetly to benefit her friends, many of whom she hired regularly from the faculty of an athletic college in Maryland where she had taught for many years. She took care to remain in Mrs. Ehrlich's good graces, enjoying her right to hire congenial athletic counselors who happened to be of her own sexual persuasion.

It was left to Mrs. Ehrlich to hire three counselors, for nature, arts and crafts, and dramatics. Unlike Rae, she had a poor eye for capable and amiable teachers. Muggs, hired to do arts and crafts, had disappointed her with her continued cantankerousness through three summers. She had decided she would look elsewhere next year. The new nature counselor, Amanda, called, inevitably, Manny, had developed a repugnance for snakes, bugs, and salamanders and had to be replaced in mid-season by a more intrepid camper-counselor. And Dolly, the longtime dramatics counselor, who was responsible for providing the Saturday-night entertainments, grew less ambitious each week, doing revues and ‘an evening of skits' through most of the summer until the last Saturday night, when she mounted an elaborate Gilbert and Sullivan operetta. She believed this last effort would leave the Ehrlichs with an impression that the whole theatrical season had been an unvarying success, a notion, she hoped, that would carry over to the next hiring period.

The directress searched in Greenwich Village for these teachers. But her choices usually ran counter to Rae's, creating a subtle division in the staff between her artsy choices (as Rae's friends called them) and Rae's sturdier, more athletic types. Other, more subtle splits often occurred. This year Dolly, a good-looking unemployed actress, had become close friends with the camp doctor, thus alienating herself from the teachers of sports by what seemed to them to be a perverse interest in men.

The subsidiary member of the medical staff, Nurse Jody, as Mrs. Ehrlich insisted on calling her, had been badly disappointed in her hopes for a summer romance by the doctor's choice of another partner. She then developed a noticeable disaffection with camp life. She had ‘turned odd,' Mrs. Ehrlich told Mr. Ehrlich in mid-July. Any day they had expected to hear that she was leaving. Indeed, she had threatened the doctor with premature departure, hoping to redirect his interest to her. She did not succeed, but she stayed on, secretly enjoying her displays of bad humor and her status as one of the upper people, above the rank of counselor, almost on a par with the directors, the doctor, the visiting parents. Having little to do in this healthy place, and no opportunity for dalliance, she made herself useful as the camp spy, Mrs. Ehrlich's secret agent. She sought out instances of malfeasance and reported them promptly when she could get the directress's ear. If she could not, she went to Rae.