Camilla

by Madeleine L'engle

  “I thought we’d have a cup of hot chocolate,” he said, “even if it isn’t very cold. I thought it would taste good anyhow. Hot chocolate always goes with November to me. Oh, listen, have you had any lunch?”

  “No.”

  “You’d better have a sandwich and some soup, then. What kind of a sandwich?”

  “Oh, I don’t care. Anything. Lettuce, tomato, and bacon, I guess.”

  Frank ordered for me and I was worried. Worried about the things he and Luisa had said and worried because I didn’t know whether he got any more allowance than Luisa or not, and I thought he probably didn’t. And he’d paid for the movie the night before. I wanted to offer to pay for my food but I was afraid it would make him angry.

  But then he said, “I’ve got a job, Camilla. I’m tutoring the son of one of Mona’s friends in Latin at fifty cents an hour. So from now on I’ll have a few bits of silver to rub against each other in my pocket. Not much, but we can do a couple of things together. Listen, this astronomy business. How serious is it with you?”

  “Completely serious,” I said.

  “Well, tell me something, then,” he demanded as my soup and sandwich were put in front of me.

  “Tell you what?” I asked blankly.

  “What do you do about it? I mean to prepare yourself.”

  “I read. I study mathematics. An astronomer has to have a terrific foundation of mathematics.”

  Frank nodded. “That’s true enough.” And then he took a swallow of his hot chocolate and he seemed to go miles and miles away from me. I put my hands around my cup and my fingers were cold and the warmth was comforting.

  Then Frank said, “I hadn’t forgotten—what Luisa said. I just didn’t want to talk about it. Not even to David. I’d like you to meet David, Cam. He’s twenty-seven. Exactly ten years older than I am. He’s the best friend I have in the world. Was your father in the war, Cam?”

  “He did camouflage.”

  “Did he go overseas?”

  “He was in France for a while.”

  “Bill went to the Pacific. Mona and Bill don’t like me going to see David. They think it’s neurotic. It’s not neurotic. I don’t go to see David because he lost his legs. I go see him because he’s just a wonderful person, and the wisest one I know. Has Luisa talked to you any about David?”

  “No,” I said, and in spite of my pity I felt a pang of jealousy for this David who took up so much of Frank’s time and thought.

  “Luisa came with me once to see him but they didn’t like each other. Luisa always asks too many questions. The wrong kind of questions. David has a pair of artificial legs he wears when he goes to the park, but he can’t ever wear them to walk with because he was wounded in the stomach too. I don’t exactly know why, but it would put too much strain on his stomach for him to use artificial legs.” Then Frank stopped and looked at me. “You wouldn’t be afraid to see him, Camilla?”

  “No,” I said.

  “Luisa was. With all her talk about being a doctor, she was afraid. I think that’s why they didn’t get on, why she said all the wrong things. The thing is, though, when you’re with David you don’t think of anything but David. You don’t think about his legs.”

  No, for some reason I was not afraid at the prospect of meeting David. I knew that Frank would never take me to see anyone like David in order to frighten me, as Luisa might possibly have done.

  “Okay. We’ll go there next weekend. Listen, let’s walk.”

  When we walked we never seemed to talk. We walked in silence to the Square and sat down on one of the benches. Frank began to speak as though suddenly the silence was bothering him and he had to fill it with words. “I used to want to be a pianist. But you have to be a lot younger than I am really to get anywhere. And sometimes I think I would like to be a scholar. I love curious facts. Do you know how Aeschylus died? An eagle dropped a tortoise on his head. And Alborak was the name of the white mule Mohammed went to heaven on. But now I think I’d better be a doctor.”

  “Like Luisa?” I asked.

  “No. Not like Luisa. I don’t know exactly why Luisa wants to be a doctor, but she talks about it in such an odd way that I know it’s not for my reason.”

  “What’s your reason?”

  “A very simple one. To be a doctor is to be on the side of life. I’m against death. I resent it. I want to do everything I can against it.” Then he said, as though everything else he had said since we had left the apartment had been a painful preliminary:

  “Camilla, I—I have to go see the Stephanowskis. I—I was being a coward. I didn’t want to go today. But I have to.”

  “All right,” I said.

  “Camilla, maybe one reason I like you so much is that you’re so different from Luisa. Luisa would have been all full of questions, but you just wait.” He looked down at a pigeon picking up some Cracker Jacks that had been spilled on the walk.

  “It’s about Johnny,” he said. “Johnny Stephanowski. He was my best friend. I haven’t ever talked to anybody about him. Not to Luisa. Or Mona or Bill. Only David a little but not much because he—somehow he doesn’t quite understand the way I feel about Johnny even though he does about everything else.” He stopped talking for a moment; his teeth were clenched and the line of his jaw was tight and strained.

  “We’ve only really known each other since Thursday, me and the Stephanowskis—but time doesn’t have anything to do with it.” He stopped, and his silence was louder than words. Then he said, “Johnny and I were real friends. Not kid stuff. Real friends. I knew him since we were kids. His mother and father own the store where Mona buys all her records. I never knew his parents very well. Johnny and I always had too much to do to be bothered with older people. Then last year when Mona and Bill sent me off to school, the Stephanowskis sent Johnny too. It meant a lot to them, sending Johnny away to a prep school. It was—I don’t think you could understand how important it was to them, Camilla. It was as though—as though they were opening some kind of door for him. At least they thought about it that way. We had a wonderful time at school. The kids all liked us and we were both good at football and baseball but even when there was a gang of us kidding around or something it was still Johnny and me. We used to sneak off at the end of study hall into the chapel and listen to Mr. Mitchell, the music master, practicing the organ. He knew we did it, but he was a good egg and never reported us. We used to lie stretched out on the wooden pews and listen to him playing Wachet auf, ruft uns die Stimme,O Bone Jesu, the St. Matthew Passion. I think maybe that’s why I’m not like Luisa or Mona or Bill. About God, I mean. You know, Cam, you could actually feel the pulse of the music vibrating through your body from the boards of the pew. I listened with my body as well as with my ears, and everything seemed clear and wonderful, God and man and the universe, and I thought everything would be all right because I had books and music and Johnny and when I was at school, away from Mona and Bill and the apartment, I could forget about how awful they are to each other, and see them in my mind loving each other, the way people who are married ought to. The way the Stephanowskis do. They really do, Cam, in spite of—in spite of everything. Johnny’s older brother—the one who knew David—died in the war. Now there’re only the two kids, Pete and Wanda. People oughtn’t to have to die, Cam. There’s something awfully unfair about being born if you’re going to have to die. It’s like being born knowing you have a fatal illness. Johnny—”

  He paused for a long time, staring down at a squirrel busily eating a peanut.

  Then at last he said, “One of the kids on our hall got hold of a gun. Of course they weren’t allowed and he kept it hidden. Johnny was crazy about guns and he went over to look at this one and it went off.” He paused again, a long moment of black silence. Then he said, so low that I could scarcely hear, so that I almost had to guess at his words, “He didn’t die right away. He kept saying ‘Frank, Frank, Frank,’ over and over and they let me stay with him. Cam, I don’t see how anyone can see someone die
and ever be the same again.”

  He stopped talking completely and this time the silence had a finished quality to it; it was the complete white silence that comes after a snowfall. We sat there on the bench and the squirrel scurried up a tree and the pigeon picked up a last piece of Cracker Jack and then flew off clumsily over the grass. It was almost as though Frank’s words about death had sent them away from us, fleeing to the safety of little girls playing hopscotch and nurses knitting as they sat by sleeping babies in baby carriages.

  I don’t know how long we sat there, not talking, but when Frank spoke again his voice had lost that frightening quality of death, and I wanted to call to the squirrel and the pigeon: It’s all right now, you can come back.

  “I got kicked out of school a few weeks after that,” Frank said. “I’ll tell you about it sometime. I’d seen the Stephanowskis when they came up after—after Johnny, but when I got back to New York it was a long time before I went to see them. I didn’t want to talk about Johnny to anyone, and I thought they might want me to. Then Mona made me go over to buy some records—and then I just got into the habit of seeing them. I had the—the effrontery to think that I might help them, but they were the ones who helped me. If you don’t mind, let’s go over there now. Johnny died a year ago today. Snow’s late this year. It was snowing this time last year.”

  Then he said very softly, “Johnny was alive all the time, you see. That’s what I don’t understand. I don’t understand how Johnny could be stopped when he wasn’t ready to be stopped. It isn’t fair, it isn’t right! Johnny was just beginning, everything was still in front of him; he had so much that he wanted to do and he didn’t get a chance to do any of it. It’s wrong, Camilla, it’s horrible!” His voice was very loud and excited.

  Then he said more quietly, “Camilla, you’re the only person I’ve been able to talk to about this. I couldn’t talk to the Stephanowskis because of course having Johnny die was much more terrible for them than for me. It’s helped to be able to say it out loud in words for you. Is it okay about going to the Stephanowskis? I mean, will you go with me?”

  “Yes,” I said.

  We walked slowly to the music shop and this time the silence was all right. It was the kind of silence that you find in the country and on quiet streets in early evening, a kind of silence that is complete and full in itself and has no need to be broken because there is nothing that needs to come out of it. The silence itself said everything that needed to be said between us.

  The music shop was empty when we went in and a gray-haired man and woman were sitting behind the counter. The woman came around the counter and put her arms round Frank, and just said, “Franky, Franky,” and kissed him as though she were his mother.

  Frank kissed her and just said, “Hi, Mrs. Stephanowski,” and then he shook Mr. Stephanowski’s hand and then he said, “This is Camilla. I brought her today because I want you to know her.”

  They both looked at me and I felt somehow that what they thought of me was terribly important and I was filled with relief when Mrs. Stephanowski smiled and took my hand in hers. Some customers came in then and Mr. Stephanowski said, “Take Camilla into one of the booths and give her a concert if you feel like it, Franky.”

  “Thanks, Mr. Stephanowski,” Frank said. “I’d like to.” He picked out an album and we went into the last of the small listening booths. Frank had me sit down in the chair. “Do you know Holst’s The Planets?” he asked.

  I shook my head. “No. What is it?”

  “It’s kind of queer,” Frank told me, “but it’s kind of wonderful. I thought maybe it might be interesting to you. Of course it isn’t scientific or anything, but I think it’s sort of interesting to listen to a musician’s conception of stars. There’s one place that sounds to me like the noise the planets must make grinding against space.”

  He put the record on and it was different from anything I knew. I knew Bach and Beethoven and Brahms and Chopin and I loved them, especially Bach; but this music—it was like stars before you understand them, when you think an astronomer is an astrologer, when they are wild, distant, mysterious things. And as I listened I realized that the music had a plan to it, that none of the conflicting notes came by accident.

  “Why haven’t I heard this before!” I cried, and Frank smiled at me and changed the record. When he smiled, his face lit up in a way that I have never seen Luisa’s light up, and he seemed to me completely beautiful.

  When The Planets was finished, Frank said, “What next, Camilla? You choose something.”

  But I shook my head. “I’d rather listen to something you like particularly.”

  “Well,” Frank said, “I have a game I play. I have music for everybody. That was Johnny’s idea, doing that, and now David and I do it too. I’ll play yours.” He went out into the shop, where several customers were now gathered about the counter, and came back with another album.

  “What is it?” I asked.

  “Prokofiev’s Third Piano Concerto. Particularly the andantino. You probably won’t think it sounds like you.” His voice was suddenly gruff and embarrassed.

  I listened and it didn’t sound to me like me, but it was as exciting and different as The Planets had been, and as I listened I was filled with a great tremendous excitement. Oh, I love I love I love! I cried inside myself. So many people, so many things! Music and stars and snow and weather! Oh, if one could always feel this warm love, this excitement, this glory of the infinite possibilities of life!

  And as I listened to the music I knew that everything was possible.

  “I think that’s enough for a start,” Frank said, and we went back into the shop. As Frank put the records back on the shelves Mrs. Stephanowski excused herself from a customer.

  “Franky, you’ll come for dinner tonight?”

  “Sure,” Frank said. “Sure, yes.”

  “And you, Camilla? Could you come along maybe? It would be a pleasure for us to have you. Maybe Franky’s said something to you about Johnny, but don’t let that—I wouldn’t want to ask just anyone over tonight but I’d like to ask you.”

  “Thank you,” I said. “I’d love to. But I’ll have to ask my parents.”

  She pushed the telephone over to me and I dialed. Carter answered, so I told her to ask Mother if I could stay out to dinner. There was silence and then Carter told me that my mother wanted me to come home.

  “Let me speak to Mother,” I asked.

  But Carter said in that voice of hers that never has any more warmth than a goldfish, “Your mother doesn’t feel very well, Miss Camilla. I don’t want to disturb her again. She said you was to come home and I think you’d better. It’s time you learned some consideration.”

  “Let me speak to Mother, please,” I said again, but she had hung up on me.

  Mrs. Stephanowski put her hand on my shoulder. “If your mother wants you home you run along. Franky’ll bring you over another time. I’m glad Franky brought you in. You’re a nice girl. Pretty too. Good for him. Bring her in soon, Franky.”

  “I will,” Frank said. “I’ll take you home, Cam. See you in about an hour, Mrs. Stephanowski.”

  When we reached my apartment building Frank said, “Listen, you can get all your weekend homework done tonight, can’t you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then I’ll meet you at the obelisk at ten tomorrow morning. Okay?”

  “Okay,” I said.

  He gave me a quick handshake and left me and I went into the apartment building. Neither the doorman nor the elevator boy said anything to me beyond “Good afternoon, Miss Camilla,” but it seemed to me from the way they looked at me that Jacques must be there and I wanted to run out of the house and race down the street after Frank.

  But when I got into the apartment Mother was lying in bed looking at a magazine and she kissed me and sent for Carter to bring in some tea for us.

  “Who were you with all day?” she asked.

  “Luisa and Frank.”

  “Frank?
”

  “Luisa’s brother.”

  “You haven’t talked about Frank much.”

  “I’ve only been seeing him lately,” I said.

  “Did you come home alone?” she asked me.

  “No. Frank brought me.”

  “Do you—do you like him?”

  “More than anybody I’ve ever met,” I said, and it seemed that I was still walking through the streets with Frank instead of standing by my mother’s bed. “I have to do my homework now,” I said. “Will Father be home for dinner?”

  “Yes,” Mother said, and reached out for my hand. “Oh, Camilla, you’re such a clam. And you used to be such a warm, affectionate little girl. What is it? What happened to you?”

  “Nothing,” I said. I left Mother and went into my room and did my homework. Then I called Luisa, but she wouldn’t speak to me, and I was angry with her for being angry with me. My father came home and I sat with him while he had his cocktail, but neither of us talked. And all I wanted in the world was to go to the park and wait by the obelisk till morning.

  7

  ON SUNDAYS BOTH MY PARENTS had breakfast late so I ate alone in the kitchen and then went to the park and to the obelisk. It was too early for Frank to be there and I watched some children playing Giant Steps up and down the obelisk steps. I felt terribly old. A year ago I was still sometimes playing Giant Steps with the children in the park, but now I just stood there and watched them. I knew then that I had lived longer since last Wednesday than all the rest of my life added together. You can add up the same number of days and get different answers: two and two does not make four. Even the truth of mathematics is variable. I sighed, and a sailor walked by and whistled at me.

  Frank was early too. I hadn’t been there long when he came up and said, “Hello, Camilla.”

  I said, “Hello, Frank.”

  He asked me, “How are you this morning?”

  And I answered, “I don’t know,” even though I was afraid it might sound like a silly answer; but I felt that I must always be honest with Frank.