“How much?”
“I was going to ask for two thousand dollars.”
Mr. Starin stopped swiveling and gave Rolf a speculative look. Then he turned and looked out the window, then back to Rolf again.
“How much would you pay back every week?”
“Say, fifteen dollars?”
“With interest, that could take three years to pay back. What if you leave before three years?”
“I wouldn’t do that. Anyway, I don’t want to leave.”
“You might. Somebody might offer you a better job.”
“I wouldn’t leave owing you money.”
“Okay, okay, don’t get huffy.” Mr. Starin was silent for a moment, puffing out his cheeks and sucking them in again. Then he placed his hands squarely on the blotter and leaned toward Rolf. “How’s about this? You don’t have to sign anything. I give you the money, and you give me your word you stay with the company until it’s paid off. Or five years, because you might pay it off quicker than you think. Mr. Price is about to retire in two years; you could wind up general manager. And then you’ll get a raise, and you could pay it off quicker. But you still have to stay five years. What do you say?”
“You gave me my first job in this country. I’m not going to quit on you. But you can still have papers drawn up.”
The man brushed this aside. “I have a hunch it’s better not to deal like that with someone like you. Then you’ve got to keep your word, I’ll have trusted you. That’s right, isn’t it?” He didn’t wait for Rolf to answer. “I’ll call my bank manager; you should have the money in a few days. That good enough for you?”
“Of course. I can’t thank you enough.”
“Don’t worry about it. You’re going to make me a lot more than two thousand dollars.” He became expansive, leaning back in his chair, talking about his problems with the lumber suppliers; they were raising their prices, they were delaying shipments; they had too many customers right now to care about him. “So I think we should go ahead with buying that yard in Oregon. Guaranteed supply. I think he’d give me a good price. But I need to find out what it would take to run the business. Maybe you could go out there. Check things out. What do you say?”
“Of course,” Rolf said. “If you think I could do it.”
“I know you could do it. The question is just whether you can get away, what with the situation at home right now.” It was the first time he had ever referred to it.
“How long do you think I’d need to spend?” Rolf asked him.
“Say, two weeks.”
He hesitated. He would have to talk to Mrs. Sprague, and Franz; someone would have to look after Emma on Mrs. Sprague’s day off.
“You could go twice if you wanted,” Starin said. “A week at a time.”
“That would be better, I think.”
“The problem is, you’re too good for this place. I’ve been waiting for you to quit ever since the war. You could go work for General Electric, one of the big boys; they love guys like you, smart straitlaced gung-ho types that take work home every night. They’d jump at the chance.”
“Perhaps not with my accent. Have you thought that might be a problem in Oregon? A man with a German accent asking questions?”
“I’ll tell the guy why you had to leave. But you ought to change your name one of these days. Call yourself Ralph First or something like that.”
“I’ll think about it.”
“No, you won’t.” Mr. Starin laughed again; he was positively jovial. “Let me know when you can go to Oregon. The sooner the better. Here”—he opened his top drawer—“here’s the file, with all the projections from October. You’d better refresh your memory.”
“Well, you’re looking more cheerful,” Miss Maggiore said when he stepped out into the corridor again. “Did you get a raise or something?”
“No, no,” he said, “nothing like that.” He was walking down the corridor to his office when she called out to him. “Hey. You were right.”
He turned around. “About what?”
“It has two e’s. I got my dictionary back.”
“I’m glad,” he said absently. His thoughts were on backward integration, pricing models, the difficulties of selling wood to their competitors. But somewhere at the back of his mind was an image of the plane flying west, over the Rocky Mountains. He would visit the redwood forests, the Pacific Ocean; he would be surrounded by the light-filled vistas he had dreamed of as a child.
Maybe, after all, America was not lost to him for good, though for the past few months he had been thrust back into the Old World, or that was how it felt, with all its weight of helpless suffering. And this time there were no visas out, no papers to submit that could restore Louisa to what she had been. What was happening to them could have no part in an American life.
CHAPTER SEVEN
I love this one like she was my own baby,” Mrs. Sprague announced, which Sophie wasn’t sure was in good taste. She wasn’t sure, either, that Emma’s face was any cleaner than it had been when Katy was in charge, but the child was obviously happy, almost aggressively so, banging lustily with a serving spoon on the little tray of her high chair. Meanwhile Mrs. Sprague was putting away the fruits of their recent excursion to Dyckman Street: brightly colored packets and tins, Wonder Bread in shiny red-white-and-blue wrapping, pressed turkey, and other things that Sophie had never seen before.
As she moved around, chatting animatedly, she paused frequently to make little noises at Emma, who became agitated and held up her hands. “How’s Aunt May going to get her work done with you on her shoulder, you little devil?” Mrs. Sprague cried, but she picked her up nonetheless. When Sophie offered to take her from her to free up her hands she surrendered her reluctantly, laughing in admiration as the baby grabbed a lock of Sophie’s hair and pulled at it. “She’s such a smart little thing, isn’t she,” she said proudly, and then took her back uninvited, Emma squirming toward her in her excitement.
“Yes, you want your Aunt May, don’t you,” she said with satisfaction. She shook some frosted cookies from a packet onto a plate. Since Sophie’s last visit, the kitchen table had acquired an oilcloth covered with red and orange squares; a sampler hung on the wall that said, in shaky cross-stitches, Hope springs eternal.
“Where is Louisa?” Sophie asked her; it was Louisa she had spoken to on the phone earlier, to ask about coming.
“Oh, she’s in her room,” Mrs. Sprague said. “I thought she needed a little rest. She’s got herself a typewriter now, she says she’s going to learn to type, although what she wants to do that for I really couldn’t say.” Then, when Sophie was silent, she asked her in a not entirely friendly voice how she liked America.
“I like it very much,” Sophie said levelly. “It is a wonderful country.”
“Because I guess you had to get out of your own country, didn’t you,” Mrs. Sprague said. “Mr. Furchgott was telling me about it. Oh, the wicked things that man Hitler did, I’ve read about them in the papers. You can’t believe there are such wicked people in the world, can you?”
No, Sophie said, it was hard to believe. They sat in silence for a moment. The baby’s cotton shirt had worked its way up her chest, leaving her little stomach exposed; suddenly Sophie remembered her children’s small bodies, how she had kissed their stomachs and their pudgy legs while they squealed with joy.
Well, she for one couldn’t understand taking against people that way, Mrs. Sprague said. “Look at Mr. Furchgott, nobody could be more of a gentleman. It’s a real pleasure to work for him, I can tell you.” She sat down, bouncing Emma on her knee, and reached for a cookie: one of her grandsons always loved that kind, she said, and so Sophie asked about her grandchildren, and Mrs. Sprague explained about her three sons, and the girls they had married back home, and the mischief her grandchildren got up to. Several of her stories, which set her laughing, were about her laconic neighbors back in Maine: where she came from, she said, nobody used two words when one would do. Ye
t she herself seemed the most loquacious of women; it was hardly necessary to contribute anything beyond an occasional murmur.
Finally Sophie managed to excuse herself and went to knock on Louisa’s door. “Who is it?” Louisa asked, in a wary voice, and then told her to come in. She was sitting at a small desk in the corner. In front of her was the typewriter Mrs. Sprague had mentioned, a heavy old Remington with a sheet of paper in it; another sheet, covered with typing, lay beside it.
“How are you coming along, Louisa?” It seemed more tactful than asking, “How are you?”—it couched the question in terms of progress, of moving into the future. Things were bad and then, however slowly, they got better; they came along.
But Louisa brushed the question away with her good hand, as though it weren’t worth discussing. She seemed different from when Sophie had last seen her, not huddled and slow but with an air of nervous defiance that Sophie found disquieting. “I’m finding new ways to amuse myself. One-handed typing. Not that I was ever much good at the two-handed kind. Do you know how to type, Sophie?” No, Sophie said, she didn’t. “It’s quite satisfying in its way. You ought to try it.”
“What is it you type?”
“Just this and that,” Louisa said craftily. “It strengthens my hand. Have you been discussing me with Mrs. Sprague?”
“You know I would not do that.”
“She thinks it’s silly, my learning to type. She thinks I should just lie there.”
“She seems very fond of the child.”
“Yes, I know. I know all her virtues. How is Gustav?”
“Very well, thank you,” Sophie said. “He sends you much love.” She tried to think of something to add, some cheerful detail, but Gustav was getting less cheerful all the time.
“Please give him mine.”
“You must not let this woman bully you. Shall we go out together, and tell her we will bathe Emma? I would like that very much, and you would enjoy it too.”
It was Sophie who spoke to Mrs. Sprague, while Louisa smiled and waved at Emma. “It would give me great pleasure,” Sophie said, conscious that she was asking permission of the other woman, that she felt the need to charm her. “I haven’t done it in such a long time, since my own children were small.” Mrs. Sprague was gracious in her assent; she even filled a little basin for the purpose, which they placed in the bathtub. Emma wriggled and splashed and clapped her hands, sending water all over the bathroom, while Louisa blew kisses at her from behind Sophie’s shoulder, her mouth quivering in nervous excitement. Afterward they sat with her between them on the sofa, and Louisa, looking flushed and happy, stroked the baby’s wet hair back from her forehead. But when Mrs. Sprague came in, proffering more cookies, she excused herself, returning to her room.
“You have seen her?” Gustav asked, when he came home from the office, looking gray with exhaustion. Sophie nodded once and turned away, opening the door of the oven to peer at the calf’s heart within. She was expecting a call from their son Kurt, who was studying for his law degree in Ohio now; she wanted Gustav to be steady in his mind when he spoke to him. There had been some shameful scenes lately, with Gustav sobbing over the Kindertotenlieder on the radio, or an item in the paper about a panda grieving for its mate in the Bronx Zoo. She was glad their children were far away—Kurt in Ohio, Gabrielle in Pennsylvania, where she was teaching German and Latin in a private school. She would not want them to see their father like that.
The first time it had happened—a mother of two had thrown herself in front of a subway train when her husband deserted her—she spoke to him sharply: “Look here, you must get yourself under control.” But more recently, if she found him with tears running down his face, she simply looked away, or left the room to fetch a clean handkerchief.
“And how did you find her?” he asked now.
“Not too bad. We bathed the baby together, I think that was enjoyable for her.”
He sat at the little dining table in the alcove, from where he could watch her. He had not even removed his suit jacket. “She always seemed so eager to seize life. I wonder if she knew,” he said then.
“Knew what? What are you talking about?”
“Maybe she sensed she did not have much time.” It was what some of the women had said too, at the time they learned of Louisa’s tumor.
“That’s nonsense. It was her character, that’s all. And she’d had it easier than others, don’t forget. She left so early for England, she didn’t see the worst things.”
“You sound as though you are blaming her for that.”
Just then the phone rang: it was Kurt, punctual as always. He thanked her for the food parcels she had sent, while teasing her for believing that he could not possibly be eating properly in Ohio. Kurt was like her: nothing he had seen—either back in Europe or while he was serving in the Pacific—would destroy his nerves, she was certain of that. It was Gabrielle, the quiet one, she worried about.
Then Gustav spoke to him, taking on the mantle of the father again, standing very straight by the little table where the phone was kept. “You must show me some of this one day, I would like to see it,” he said. “I would like to see what these laws are, in America.”
But when he replaced the receiver and sat down again, he returned to the subject of Louisa. “You never really liked her.”
“I didn’t dislike her,” she said.
“But you disapproved of her.”
“I never spoke against her. It was the other women who complained. She could have helped them with so many things, the shops, the subway, the English words they needed, but she preferred her American friends. She only ever visited when Rolf did, on the weekends, never during the week.”
“I seem to remember she gave you presents when we first came. And something for Gabrielle.”
“Ribbons,” Sophie said. “She sent me French ribbon with embroidery. And a string of green beads.”
“And that was wrong of her?”
“Of course not. It was her nature. But not very helpful. We had no winter coats, or pots for cooking. I would not have brought someone beads in that situation.”
He patted her hand. “No, you would have cooked a good stew and brought warm clothing. That is your nature.” But she was not sure it was a compliment.
“She is learning to type.”
“Louisa?”
“Yes, with her right hand.”
“The poor child,” he said in German, and she knew he didn’t mean Emma.
The typing was a foolish idea, such as only a thoroughly impractical person would come up with—in that way, at least, Louisa had not changed. But perhaps there was something gallant about it too; she wished now that she had said so to Louisa. She hoped that Rolf would say it, and doubted that he would.
When her children were young, and like all children wailed, “It isn’t fair,” she used to tell them, “Never expect that life will be fair,” believing it the most important lesson she could teach them, the root of her own philosophy, on which she had prided herself for as long as she could remember. Even later, in the worst of times, she had refused to complain. Instead she had done what was needed: standing in line, sending telegrams, bribing officials to get their exit stamps. Once in America she had told herself to be grateful for all the terrible things that hadn’t happened, or not yet: for their children’s safety, for the friends who had managed to get out, for any kindness she received or heard of. She had learned how to darn socks, how to clean a toilet, telling herself, and believing it, that she was lucky to be performing such chores. When she heard of the death of her beloved cousin in the back of a mobile gas van, she had gotten on her hands and knees, like someone praying, and scrubbed the floor.
But now, with the war over for almost two years, something in her had started rebelling; she herself wanted to howl, like a child, that it wasn’t fair. That must be why this business with Louisa had affected her so badly: it seemed one loss too many; it seemed unnecessary for Louisa to be sacrificed like t
hat, in what felt like an afterthought, a careless postscript to the general destruction. And all she could do was to pay another visit, which she would do very soon, bearing presents approximately as useful as French ribbons and beads made of glass.
CHAPTER EIGHT
They were in the living room together, Mrs. Sprague having gone into the kitchen to prepare dinner. Emma was in her playpen, and Louisa was waving and smiling at her. In between blown kisses, she told Rolf that Otto was coming to visit—to be introduced to Emma, he’d said. But Rolf wondered if she had summoned him.
“Will he want to stay here?” Rolf asked, for something to say, and Louisa said no, no, he had a friend in New Jersey, someone he’d met in the army, who was putting him up. She wrinkled her nose at Emma.
“Well, you’ll be pleased to see him.”
Only then did she look at him. “I thought you might be pleased too.”
Of course, he said. Of course. It had been too long.
But he wasn’t pleased; he imagined that Otto was coming to judge him. When they were children, he had sometimes had the feeling that Louisa and Otto did not really like him as they liked each other; they had allowed him to dominate in most things, but almost as though they were sorry for him—sorry that it should matter so much to him. If he grew very adamant, insisting that something be done in a particular way and no other, he would catch them giving each other secret smiles.
Otto would not flinch at the sight of Louisa; he would only be full of sorrow, and love her more than ever. But then it was easy for Otto. He would not have to see her naked body, or feel the old hunger stymied, remembering her as she had been. Otto would go home and make love to his wife, full of judgment against his old friend for his hardness of heart.
The next morning Rolf got to the office early again, to work on his proposal, but for the second time Miss Maggiore was there before him.
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