Camilla

by Madeleine L'engle

  “Of course I won’t desert you,” I said, but in a way I knew that I already had. Luisa was my friend, but suddenly she had become my responsibility instead of the other way around. And I knew that this was because of Frank.

  Saturday, I thought. I will see Frank on Saturday.

  8

  SATURDAY MORNING I put on my nicest, newest skirt, a full green wool one, and a clean white blouse and a green cardigan. I didn’t dare put on my Sunday coat and hat so I just put on my navy blue school coat and my red beret; but instead of just pulling my beret on my head any old how I stood before my mirror for about five minutes trying to get it on the way Michèle Morgan wore hers in a French movie Luisa and I had seen.

  Just as I was getting ready to leave, my mother called me into her room. She wore a dress with long sleeves to cover the marks that still showed on her wrists. “Are you going out, darling?” she asked.

  “Yes, Mother.”

  “With whom?”

  “Frank Rowan.”

  “Is Luisa going to be with you?”

  “I don’t know,” I said, and this was the truth. Frank hadn’t told me whether or not Luisa was included in his plans, though I doubted it.

  My mother frowned for a moment. “Oh, darling, I can’t get used to the idea of your having dates. I know it’s terrible, but I can’t realize I’m old enough to have a daughter who’s almost— Sometimes I think I wasn’t ever meant to be a mother—I know I haven’t been a proper mother to you—but I do love you, my baby, oh, I do, I do.”

  “I have to go,” I said. “I told Frank I’d meet him at ten o’clock.”

  “I wish I knew whether it’s right or not—of course everything’s changed nowadays since—but is it all right for you to go out with Frank alone? Do the other girls go out with boys alone?”

  “Of course,” I said. “Of course it’s all right, Mother.”

  “I ought to talk to Rafferty about it, but I hate to worry him about anything else. When will you be home, darling?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “Frank said we might have supper with Mr. and Mrs. Stephanowski.”

  “Who are they?”

  “Parents of a friend of his.”

  “Well—would you telephone me about six o’clock? Then I’ll feel easier about you.”

  “I’ll telephone you,” I said.

  “Promise.”

  “I promise, Mother.”

  “And please don’t be late, darling, or you’ll upset your father. And me too.” She pulled me to her and kissed me, saying, “Oh, darling, I love you even if I haven’t been a very good— You do know that, don’t you? No matter what . . . I’ll always love you.”

  I kissed Mother good-bye and left. Frank was waiting for me on the steps of his house. “Hello, Camilla,” he said. He looked at me very seriously, not smiling or holding out his hand in greeting. Then he said, “You look nice,” and my heart felt warm and good inside me. He took my arm. “I told David we’d be over this morning. Okay?”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “I didn’t tell his mother. She always makes a fuss when David sees anybody new. Says it tires him. My gosh, he’s got to have friends. Now is when he needs friends.”

  We walked over to the apartment on Perry Street where David lived. It had an elevator and we went up to the top floor, the seventh. Frank rang the doorbell and a middle-aged woman in a dark red woolen dress answered it. Her hair was gray and her face was sad; she looked nervous and anxious as she answered the door. Her face fell into long droopy lines; I tried to think what it reminded me of and it was a very old basset hound we had had one summer up in Maine.

  “Oh, hello, Frank,” she said. “He’s not feeling very well today.”

  “Would you rather we didn’t come in, Mrs. Gauss?” Frank asked.

  “I don’t know. He’s always glad to see you, but—” and she looked doubtfully at me.

  A voice from inside the apartment called then, “Who is it, Ma?”

  “It’s Frank and a friend,” the woman answered.

  “Well, send them in. Don’t keep them standing out in the hall.”

  “Go on in,” the woman said.

  We followed the sound of the voice into the apartment. Frank went first and I followed him, and because of the apprehensive manner of David’s mother, I began now to be frightened. I had never before seen anyone who was maimed in body, and I was afraid that my fear might make me, like Luisa, say the wrong things.

  David was sitting in a big armchair. Almost all of his legs had been cut off and a blanket was wrapped around the stumps, which did not reach the edge of the seat of the chair. He had a book in his hand, which he threw down on the table next to him as we entered. In the corner was a folding wheelchair. Frank went over to him and shook his hand and I followed.

  “David, this is Camilla Dickinson,” Frank said. “She’s a friend of mine. I wanted her to meet you. Camilla, this is David Gauss.”

  David held out his hand to me and I took it. His hand felt very firm and strong and I stood there with his hand over mine, looking down at his face.

  He looked older than twenty-seven. Twenty-seven is certainly grown-up, but it ought not to be old, and David seemed old, in spite of a great deal of dark brown hair that looked as though it needed combing. His face was very thin and his eyes seemed to be set too far back in his head. There were deep grooves around his mouth as though he had often to hold his teeth clenched in order to keep from crying out. His nose was thin and delicate and arched like an eagle’s.

  “So you’re a friend of Frank’s?” he asked me.

  “Yes.”

  “How did you become friends with him?”

  “His sister and I go to school together.”

  “No reason for being friends. Tell me more than that.”

  “We talked,” I said.

  “Better reason. Luisa your friend too?”

  “Yes. She’s my best friend. I mean—”

  “Mean she was your best friend?” David asked me, and smiled an odd smile.

  Yes, that was exactly what I meant, although it was not until I told David that Luisa was my best friend that I realized it was no longer true.

  “Yes,” I said, and I looked very hard into David’s gray eyes. They were the color of water on a sunless day in winter when the clouds are low and the wind sharp and the water is icy cold, about to freeze.

  “In other words,” David said, “you like Frank better than Luisa.”

  “Yes.”

  “Going to be tough on Luisa, but it’s life; sooner or later Luisa’s going to have to accept life. Frank, go ask Ma to bring us all in some coffee.”

  “I’ll make it,” Frank said, and went out of the room, leaving me alone with David.

  But now I wasn’t frightened anymore. I did not want to look at the blanket hiding the terrible remains of what had once been two legs as active as Frank’s or mine, but as long as I looked at David’s face I was not afraid.

  “Sit down,” David said. “Tell me about yourself. Name again? Camilla what?”

  “Camilla Dickinson.”

  “Call you Miss Dickinson or Camilla?”

  “Oh, Camilla,” I said. I sat down on a chair just across from David so that I could continue to watch his face. The room we were in was evidently his bedroom, living room, and study combined. There was a hospital bed in one corner covered by a dark red bedspread. There were a lot of books and a big reproduction of a white de Chirico horse and a couple of abstract paintings, very geometrical and with a somehow frightening quality. There was an oriental rug on the floor; and at the windows hung dark red curtains matching the bedspread.

  “Are you any relation to Karl Friedrich Gauss?” I asked David.

  “The mathematician? No. Not that I know of. Like math?”

  “Yes,” I said, “and Gauss did the calculations for Piazzi when he discovered the first of the planetoids.”

  “Mathematician, hunh?” David said. “How old are you?”

/>   “Fifteen. Almost sixteen.”

  “That’s a good age,” David said. “First fell in love when I was fifteen. Year behind Stephen Dedalus. Ever read Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man?”

  “No.”

  “Ought to. Get Frank to lend it to you. Anyhow, Stephen was fourteen and I was fifteen. Mine was my violin teacher. She was twenty-four. Beautiful as a Siamese cat. Look something like a cat yourself, Camilla, with those big green eyes. Been in love yet, Camilla?”

  “No.”

  “Not in love with Frank?”

  When David asked me that it was as though he had taken his clenched fist and hit me with all his power in the stomach. “I hadn’t thought about it.”

  “Why not think about it?” He looked at me with a friendly sort of grin.

  “I—I don’t know,” I stammered, and felt myself blushing. Then I said, “I don’t think it’s something you have to think about. I think if you’re in love you know about it.”

  “Wise words from one so young,” David said, and I could not tell whether or not he was laughing at me. “But sometimes thinking about it does no harm. Get you away from mathematics. Going to be a mathematician like Gauss?”

  “I’m going to be an astronomer,” I said.

  “No kidding?”

  “No kidding.”

  “Math’s a good foundation for it.” Then, suddenly, David’s voice was eager. “Good at cards, by any chance? Like to play cards?”

  “Yes. I adore cards.”

  “Like to come over and play with me sometimes? Frank tries occasionally, like the good kid he is, but he hasn’t any card sense; no fun if you win all the time. Papa Stephanowski plays chess with me, but he won’t let me lose, either. You play chess?”

  “Yes,” I said. “I used to. I had a governess once who taught me, and I loved it, but I haven’t had anyone to play with me since.”

  “Oh, good, good,” David cried, a real light coming into his eyes for the first time. “What a find you are, Camilla. Bless Frank for bringing you over. Camilla, tell me something. I don’t frighten you?”

  “No,” I said.

  “Not—repulsive to you?”

  “No,” I said.

  “Sure? Could wear my imitation legs if it bothers you, seeing me like this.”

  “No,” I said.

  “Since there’s no hope of my ever being able to use real prosthetics and they’re just for looks, don’t see much point in wearing them. Always depresses me to put them on. Understand that?”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “Bring your chair up closer where I can see you better,” David commanded. “There. That’s fine. Don’t mind being close to me?”

  “No.”

  “If I could paint I’d like to do your portrait. Why hasn’t Frank brought you around before?”

  “We’ve only really known each other for a little while.”

  “New discovery, hey? Exciting discovering somebody new, isn’t it? Camilla, Camilla, glad Frank brought you over this morning. Been—God, been all the way through to China this morning, I’ve been so low. For some reason you’ve brought me at least back to limbo again.”

  Frank came in then with a pot of coffee and some cups on a tray. “I don’t make as good coffee as Mrs. Gauss does,” he said, “so if it isn’t any good you can gripe at me. Dave and I like ours black. How about you, Cam?”

  “I’ll have it black too.” I’d never had coffee black before. Mother doesn’t like me to drink coffee and I always have cocoa for breakfast or sometimes tea; the few times I’ve had coffee it’s been with plenty of sugar and cream, or French fashion, with half hot milk. This tasted awful.

  “How about some cookies, Frank?” David asked.

  “Okay.” Frank went back on out. I noticed how long his legs were. They seemed extra long because of David’s having no legs. Long and thin and awkward as he walked. I am tall for my age, but Frank is much taller than I am.

  “Oh, yes, Camilla,” David said as soon as Frank had left the room. “By far the nicest of the girls Frank has brought to see me.”

  “Has he brought other girls to see you?” I asked. “I mean besides Luisa?”

  David looked at me and raised one of his dark, peaked eyebrows. “A few. Very pretty, most of them. But without any importance whatsoever. Glad Frank found you. Better if you were ten years older, but child or not, I’m glad he’s found you. Didn’t care for that little Italian girl he was going around with. What was her name? Yes. Pompilia Riccioli. No, you’re better for Frank than Pompilia, ewe lamb though you are.”

  I was beginning to hate the name of Pompilia Riccioli. Riccioli of Bologna named most of the craters on the moon, and I wished I could banish Pompilia to one of them.

  Frank came in then with the cookies and he and David started talking about the country, about the world. Somehow the things we learn in Current Events at school aren’t any closer to me than the things we learn in history. The French Revolution seemed far closer to me than what was going on here or in Europe. But as Frank and David talked it began to become something much nearer to me; it was no longer required reading for school; it was something that had to do with me, personally, Camilla Dickinson. It was something that might affect my entire future life.

  I remembered then what Frank and I had talked about in the park, how to be alive is to be happy. I remembered it because right at this moment I felt more alive than I had ever felt before, and I felt terribly happy.

  I wonder why it is so much easier to describe sorrow than it is to describe happiness, even happiness so great that it can make you forget sorrow. I couldn’t ever put into words the happiness that I felt whenever I was with Frank, and that I felt that morning talking with Frank and David, even though the things talked about weren’t happy. Perhaps it wasn’t right to be filled with joy while Frank and David talked about tragic things and with David himself a symbol of these things, but I couldn’t help it.

  The atmosphere of the room, though they were talking about death and destruction, seemed to me to be full of life and construction. These were the kind of people who belonged to life, to the kind of world I wanted to grow up into; and it was people like my mother who did not like to talk about the war or the future or anything unpleasant who belonged to death and the past. I must have looked very solemn thinking these things because Frank broke out of a long speech and said, “I’m sorry if we’re distressing you, Camilla, but I think when you come to the end of a civilization you ought to be aware of it.”

  But sitting there, listening to Frank and David, civilization seemed for me not to be ending, but to be beginning.

  And now the amazing thing was that while they were talking about the war, and about hate and evil and love and life, I suddenly stopped hating my mother. It wasn’t that I felt about her the way I used to, the old secure uncomplicated way; but now I no longer resented her being Rose Dickinson. Sitting there and being excited because I was Camilla Dickinson and alive, I knew suddenly that I would be able to put my arms around my mother and kiss her good night again with love. I could love her in spite of Jacques. Then I tried not to hate Jacques, but the best I could do was to make my mind a gray blank about him. I turned my mind back to Frank and David and the things they were talking about, and I asked David, “Is there going to be another world war?” And I forgot my mother and Jacques and began to shiver inside myself.

  David looked at me and there was dark rage in his eyes. “What do you think?”

  “I—I don’t know.” I held myself very still in my chair because I didn’t want either David or Frank to see my fear.

  David looked at me for a long moment and his mouth was very tight with pain, but I could not tell whether it was his body that was paining him, or his heart. “Always another war,” he said. “Always has been, always will be. Frank will go off to it and he’ll come back looking like me, or he’ll come back blind, or without hands, or arms. Or not at all. Or perhaps I am being optimistic. Maybe there won’t be an
ything to come back to. Just a gaping hole in the universe to show where our particular brand of fools lived and committed suicide. I shock you, Camilla? I make you unhappy? Can’t help it. You’re old enough to realize these things.”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “No man can participate in mass murder and not lose his understanding of the value of human life. But it has a value, Camilla. Even a life like mine. Life is the greatest gift that could ever be conceived, but before any of us ever were born those who had gone before us had already deprived it of half its value. A daffodil pushing up through the dark earth to the spring, knowing somehow deep in its roots that spring and light and sunshine will come, has more courage and more knowledge of the value of life than any human being I’ve met. Model yourself after the daffodil, Camilla. Have the courage to push your head up out of the darkness.”

  Frank said with a grin, “I told Camilla her education had been neglected. You’re making up for it even faster than I’d expected, Dave.”

  “Too much for you, Camilla?” David asked.

  “No,” I said, and this was true. I was frightened, but I felt also a tremendous grateful awe that they should be talking to me in this way, that they should be taking the trouble to try to educate me. David had said that all the other girls Frank had brought to see him were completely unimportant. Did that mean that he thought that I was not unimportant?

  “After the last war,” David was saying, “I mean the one before mine, there was the lost generation. Difference was that then everybody was so conscious of being lost. They wanted to be lost. Enjoyed it. Weren’t really afraid. Still had a future. We’re the ones who’re really lost. Don’t mean me, or anybody else who was personally ruined by the war, but all the kids today. You, Camilla. Frank. You don’t want to be lost.”

  “No,” Frank said.

  David held out his empty cup. “Pour me another cup of coffee.” And as he took a sip out of his fresh cup and put it back on the table he said, “Do you suppose God feels about his creation—world and its people—the way a writer feels about his work? Same joy of inspiration, and then the horrible depression when it goes wrong, when it loses its nobility of conception? Wouldn’t blame him for ripping this one out of the typewriter and stuffing it into the incinerator.” Then he looked sharply at me. “Nothing to say, Camilla?”