by Lore Segal
Oh, but we did, in the subsequent weeks or months intensely care which and how many went down each day after day. One waited as in a sporting match for the headlines that shouted the increasing number of theirs downed by the growing skill of our fighters.
* * *
—
Belcaro might have been a latter day, a last chapter, in the world according to Jane Austen. Children should have their meals with the governess in the nursery or the schoolroom, but because of the absence, in my two old gentlewomen’s household, of these conveniences, I ate my supper with Josie in the kitchen, before joining the ladies in the drawing room. We always “dressed.” Miss Ellis had gotten me a little green silk frock. The ladies wore long velvet. We disposed ourselves around the fireplace and Miss Ellis took up her sewing. Miss Wallace hugged the dog, noticed the cat, and opened the piano to give us a little Schubert—as a girl she had studied music in Germany. At nine o’clock she turned on the radio for the news, and ours had downed two Messerschmitts and the next day four more…
I did not follow the process of the war except to internalize names of places and battles: the Battle of the Bulge, Midway, Guadalcanal, the Maginot Line. And Dunkirk. About the rationing I remember Josie cursing Miss Ellis and wishing her a heart attack for taking the cream off the top of the milk.
My father returned from the hospital after another stroke, and my mother left the McGregors and got a job as cook in a restaurant on North Street. She asked and received a dispensation that allowed her, a refugee, to do her stint as an air-raid warden. Nights she patrolled the neighborhood streets. She observed the play of the searchlights and heard the distant anti-aircraft fire. My mother checked on any slightest infringement of the blackout. She might knock on Miss Ellis’s door to catch a glimpse of me.
* * *
—
And England prepared for the invasion. Signposts that named the roads to the next village were removed or replaced so as to confuse any German division that might be parachuted into the area, or misdirect the stray Nazi, like the one who fell out of the sky and invaded Mrs. Miniver’s kitchen.
Miss Wallace’s Church Committee convened and decided to collect and bury the identifying papers of Guildford’s refugee Jews.
Miss Ellis, with admirable English fortitude, watched the despoliation of her ancient rose garden on one side of the house and on the other, of her plum trees, her apple trees. A contingent of soldiers was at work pouring four rows of waist-high concrete pylons. Out of each pylon protruded an iron post. The posts were connected with coil upon coil of barbed wire. The project—I don’t know if it was ever completed—was to girdle the south of England so as to halt or at least to slow the advance of enemy tanks.
* * *
—
The Doodlebugs
For the last year of the war, Guildford came under direct nightly attacks by a new weapon that could have no tactical use except to unnerve the population. We called it the Doodlebug and became expert at interpreting the behavior of the unmanned flying bomb. It announced its approach by a characteristic throbbing that stopped when the mechanism rebooted to descend, count one two three four five six, and detonate. The explosion was loud because it was nearby. If I was still alive in my bed, it must have hit a neighbor and here came the next—the throbbing sound, it stopped, one two three four five…I prayed to Nobody up there, If You will take away the terror of this death over my head I will never, never ask for anything ever again.
My father had several more strokes. He died the week before the European war ended.
In 1946, when I left Guildford to enter the University of London, the pylons in Miss Ellis’s garden had not been removed, but the barbed wire was overgrown with a creeper. It had the smallest silver leaves, and clouds and clouds of star-shaped white flowerets.
And what of my revelation in the dining room in Vienna before the war we were about to live through? Today I lie in bed and I am conscious that no bombs will drop out of the darkness over my head. And when the skies thunder I exult in the violence that is not man-made and does not hate me. The places in the world where humans are killing each other are, for the moment, elsewhere.
PART II
FICTION
NEW AND UNCOLLECTED FICTION
DANDELION
That Henry James, when he got old, rewrote his early work was my excuse for revisiting, at ninety, a story I had written in my twenties, about a day my father and I spent in the Austrian Alps.
I wished Mutti were coming, but she had woken with one of her migraines. I stood outside the hotel, in the grass, getting my shoes wet with dew, waiting and wanting for nothing. “Light tinkled among the trees,” and the “grasses gleamed sword-like,” says my story. Curious how our language asks for similes. What is something “like”? The sky was “like liquid light,” I wrote. “Liquid” is close, but it’s not quite the right word. “The mountain’s back looked like something sculpted; one had the feel of the distant footpath in the fingertips. Between the mountain and myself, the land cupped downward, containing light like a mist.” How was it “like a mist,” the essence of which is to obscure? I remember it as a white, chilly presence. A dog barked and barked and barked and the purity of the air carried the sound to where I stood waiting.
On the road at the end of the hotel gardens, a group of silent walkers passed at the steady pace of those who have a day’s march ahead of them, young people. I followed them with my eyes. This was the moment that the sun crested the mountain—a sudden unobstructed fire. It outlined the young people’s backs with a faintly furred halo, while here, in the garden, it caught the head of a silver dandelion, fiercely, tenderly transfigured into light. I experienced a bliss of thought, new and inevitable, and I said, “Lieber Gott, if I ever ask you for anything, you don’t even have to listen, because nothing is necessary except this.” I knew that was right because of my vast happiness, and then my father called me and we walked out of the garden and started up the road.
My Vati was a tall man in excellent spirits. In August, the Viennese banks closed. In the mountains, my father wore knickerbockers and an Alpine hat with a feather. In his pocket he had a book in which to look up the names of the wayside flowers, trees, and birds. As we climbed, he pointed through the pines to the village farther and farther away below us. Vati’s plan was to reach the Alm by noon and take our lunch in the Alm hut. Did I know, he asked me, what an Alm was? It was a meadow high in the mountains where the cowherd brought all the cows from the valley to spend the summer eating the healthful upper grass, but I was being the world-famous ice-skating star Lucinda in her velvet dress with a skirt that swirled when I did my world-famous pirouette and I couldn’t listen to what my father was explaining.
* * *
—
Oh, but the sky was blue! It is bluest when you lie on your side and look through the grasses that grow by your cheek. I watched a spider climb a stalk that bent under its weight.
I sat up. People were coming along the path, two men—young men walking together, one talking, using his hands. The other, who walked with his eyes to the ground, brought up his head and said something that made the first one shout with laughter. I watched them. They slowed their steps to look back at the people coming behind them. One of the girls called gaily, and the two groups joined. That was what I wanted to do when I got older—walk with friends, talking together and laughing.
I looked after them with a suddenly sharpened interest. “You know something? Vati? I think those are the people I saw on the road this morning, when I was waiting for you. Vati, do you think they are the same people?”
Vati was asleep. It was rare, it was awesome, to see a sleeping grown-up. His two shoes pointed skyward. Where his trouser leg folded back it exposed a piece of leg above the sock. I averted my eyes.
We resumed our ascent and it was hot and grew hotter. The climb became harder and steeper, until I thought I could not lift my foot to take the next step, and the next, and the next for the se
veral hours it took us to reach the top.
It was many years later, lying in the semidark and stillness, cleaned up and dry, after birthing my baby, my first—I could see where she lay wrapped, not crying, and everything was well—that I remembered sitting at long last, after climbing beyond my strength, under a tree in the shade, breathing in and out.
You know you have reached the top of the mountain when you are looking at a new world, the existence of which, a moment ago, you could not have suspected, ranges upon ranges paling into the blue distance, and here a peak rising and a second and a third, the relation in which they stand to one another becoming familiar under the blue sky. On the green expanse the cows stand, or move a step from here to there. When they lower their slow heads to chew the grass, the bells around their necks softly jingle.
* * *
—
My young folk sat at a long trestle table in the Alm hut. The cowherd, who sat with them, had a pipe between his teeth. The rumble of his voice, interrupted by the young people’s chatter and laughter, made its way to the table where my Vati and I were having our Mittagessen. It was a meal that I still think about and have not been able to reproduce: Kaiserschmarrn (the Emperor’s Pancake) served with blueberries. Alpine blueberries grow low to the ground and are both sweeter and sharper than the fruit you know. And a glass of fresh cow’s milk.
I ate and watched. The girls were pretty and talked; the boys were tall and thin. I could see their knees. I loved how they clapped one another on the back and put pepper in one another’s soup and liked one another. I wanted to talk about them and I asked Vati who they were and where they were going, but he quieted me with a gesture. Vati, a city man, took an interest in the Alpine type and wanted to listen to what the cowherd was saying.
There was a general movement—the meal was breaking up. The young people gathered themselves. Vati and I followed them out of the cool dark of the hut into the sheer heat of midday. One of the boys, whose yellow hair jutted over his forehead, stood by the door adjusting the straps of his rucksack. Vati also took an interest in young people and questioned the boy about his party and their plans. Leaning against my father’s leg, I listened to the boy’s companionable answers and felt that life could offer no better happiness. Vati was reminded of his own young touring days and launched upon an anecdote. It was hot. I squeezed my eyes against the fierce brightness in which the blond boy’s head expanded and contracted among the little waves of heat. Vati’s voice proceeded upon the air, wanting to convey an idea of the exact conical rock formation that had been attempted. He described the attempt, and the failure that he, Vati, had predicted. I watched the boy’s hands play nervously with the ends of his straps and said, “Vati!” saw the boy’s eyes steal to where his companions waited a little way along the path, and said, “Vati, let’s go!” Vati was recounting the witty remark made by himself in connection with said attempt and failure, laughing largely, recalling the occasion. The blond boy cackled foolishly. I saw the boy looking foolish and tugged on Vati’s sleeve. “Let’s go!” The boy excused himself, had his hand wrung long and heartily, dived for his freedom, and was received with laughter and a round of applause.
My face burned and I did not turn to look after the young people. They were going farther on and Vati and I started on our homeward journey.
The intensity of the midday light had burned the color out of things and deadened them. I was angry with the boy who had not wanted to hear Vati’s story and had wanted to get away from Vati. I hated the young people who had clapped their hands and had laughed. My father was walking along in a flow of spirits, and I was sorry for him because I had not cared to listen to the things he wanted to tell me. I resented and disliked this bad feeling, which would not let me be comfortable and be Lucinda the world-famous skating star.
And I began to grizzle. I was tired, I said. There was a stone in my shoe and I didn’t feel like carrying my cardigan. Vati stopped his yodelling and looked at me. There was no stone. Vati put the cardigan in his backpack. I rubbed my right temple with the back of my right hand and said I wanted to go home. We were going home, Vati said, we were on our way home, but I meant home now. Vati said, “We’ll be home soon, we’re almost home, in a couple of hours.” He offered to tell me the story of Rikki-Tikki-Tavi, and the fight between the mongoose and the snake, but he had told it to me before. “How about an ice cream when we get home?” I understood that my father did not know what to do with me when I was like this, and I was afraid. I knew that this was God’s awe-full answer, for hadn’t I told him in the morning, “If I ever ask you for anything, you don’t have to listen, because nothing is necessary except this?”
The sun was gone, all light absorbed by the ring of mountains that stood around us, soft and velvet purple, without the play of color or movement save for our panicked descent. My father had hold of my wrist and hurried me along so that the stones rolled underfoot.
DIVORCE
Lilly is thinking about the morning, a month or so after the final decree, when she called Henry and said, “Can you remember exactly why we got divorced?”
“You always think things can be explained exactly,” said Henry.
“Oh, really!” she said. “Is this one of the things that I ‘always’ think?”
“If you want to argue with me, you’ll have to call back after I’ve had my coffee,” said Henry.
“Anything else I ‘have’ to do?” she said and hung up.
* * *
—
Lilly remembers that it was the day their friends Jane and Johnny were in town. “It’s my fault,” Lilly had said to them. “Henry and I tried three and a half minutes’ worth of counseling, and I told the shrink that I’m a nag. Henry would bring me my coffee in one hand and carry his coffee in the other, and I’d nag him to use a tray and he always said he would but he never did.” The shrink said, “Sounds like a good deal for both of you: Henry got to go on doing what he was doing and you could go on nagging.”
“How’s that again?” asked Johnny.
Jane said, “The two of you are not playing by the rules. You’re supposed to blame each other!” Jane and Johnny had looked in on Henry in his temporary bachelor digs. “Henry says, it’s all his fault. Says he knows it annoys the hell out of you that he keeps editing everything you say. Doesn’t know why he keeps doing it.”
“Yes, well,” said Lilly. “Came the day when Henry sent his wedding ring to the laundry and I threw mine out the window.”
“You what!” said Jane and Johnny.
“Not on purpose. Henry took off his ring when he went to wash up, to prevent it going down the drain. He said he put it in the pocket of his shirt and forgot about it. It must have got sent with the wash. I had lost some weight, because I remember my wedding ring felt loose. I was opening the window and knew the moment it went out. Henry and I took the elevator down and walked the sidewalk and looked for it.”
* * *
—
Lilly’s life has continued in the old apartment, but Henry’s job had required his relocating in London. Both had remarried and had grown children. There was no occasion for them to have connected with each other’s family so it wasn’t until this January that Lilly heard of Henry’s death the previous November. It shook her. Lilly had not been aware of thinking much or often about him, but his being dead makes a difference. She didn’t know that she had relied on Henry’s being alive. It troubles Lilly that she has gone about for three months in a world that Henry has not been in.
It’s not that Lilly is looking for the wedding ring she threw out of the window some forty years ago. Of course Lilly does not believe that a ring—it was a nice hand-hammered one—would have been lying out there all this time where anyone could have found and walked away with it, but she does not cross the sidewalk toward her front door without letting her eye skim the gutter, the building line where the wall meets the ground, these unevennesses in the surface (evidence of our deteriorating infrastructure), and th
e grouting that separates the asphalt squares, for the lost glimmer of gold.
LADIES’ DAYS OF MARTINIS AND FORGETTING
How pleasant to see a cheerful old person.
—Anonymous
“Love your stole,” Lotte said to the handsome old woman at the party. “It’s grand and beautiful.” The woman thanked Lotte and her eyes flicked subliminally to the left, which meant that she didn’t know who Lotte was; nor could Lotte abort the identical tell on her own face. To save her children’s heads she could not have said if she had forgotten the woman’s name or had never laid eyes on her. Lotte carried a cane and the woman in the stole offered to get her a drink.
“Oh, thanks. I’m fine, really,” Lotte told her. “I can get it myself.”
* * *
—
Lotte was pleased to see her friend Bessie by the coatrack and walked over. Bessie said, “I’m going to stow my cane. It has a way of tripping people.”
“You made it in from Rockingham,” Lotte said.
“Made it in,” Bessie said.
“How is Colin?”
“Colin is well enough. Colin is okay.”
Bessie must have known that her friends could not stand Colin, the only one of the husbands still living. Colin owned houses and cars, talked about the inadequacy of the parking, and was dying of something slow and ravaging.
