by Belva Plain
“Oh, it’s very hard. So many men were lost in the war. There aren’t enough to go around. And I’m thirty-two, I can’t compete with the nineteen-year-olds. Not that I even want to,” she added quickly.
She was a contradiction. The exotic eyes were sensual and promising, while the easy, comfortable posture and plain dress were domestic.
“You look puzzled,” she said, startling him.
“I am, a little. You’re hard to figure out.”
“Why am I?”
He felt a soft compassion for her, but pity—she was far too strong to be pitied—seemed unnecessary.
“You haven’t answered.”
“I can’t. Why don’t you tell me something about yourself, so I won’t be so puzzled?”
“It’s boring to talk about oneself.”
“Not if someone wants to listen,” he said gently.
“All right, I’ll make it short. I had a husband, David. We were very much in love. We were wonderful in every way together, in body and mind. We were one. Nobody else existed.… When I lost him, I lost the world. Do you understand?”
“Of course,” Paul said.
“Not of course.” Ilse shook her head. “Not all marriages—or love affairs—not even most are like that. I can always recognize, at least I imagine I can, one of those rare pairs who are really perfect together. I think you have to have known something like that yourself to see it in others.”
Her quiet words cut and probed. She seemed to be waiting for an answer, but he could say nothing. And she went on, “I keep looking for what I had, which is probably foolish. Still, one has needs … I’ve had a few men here and there, I’m not ashamed to say. The sex can be good enough, but there’s no feeling for the person. I’m always sorry afterward because I know what it could be.”
Although she had made no move at all in that direction, he was becoming aware of her powerful sexuality. Or was it only his own that was stirring? He felt confusion.
She frowned. “Why am I talking like this to a stranger? I never have before.”
“I don’t know. Why are you?” he asked.
“Oh,” she said, “perhaps because there comes a moment when you need to speak out just once, and it’s better to talk to someone you’ll never see again. Also—” She stopped.
“Also?”
“Because—you won’t be angry, I hope—because you seem kind, and sad.”
He was offended. The impression he always gave, so he was told, was of authority and vigor.
“Sad!” he cried.
“Elisabeth says so too. Or maybe not sad, but lonesome.”
“I am not sad, and I am not lonesome, regardless of Elisabeth or anyone.” Women! Gossiping about him, invading his privacy!
“You are angry … I’m truly sorry. I speak too frankly. David always told me to be careful about that.”
She got up to fill his glass, but he laid his palm over it, and she moved back across the room to replace the bottle. Her slender skirt was tight, spanning the curve of her hips; he saw that her legs were very long, the long, strong legs of an athletic woman. And again there came that stirring, a contradiction and a fusion of reluctance, surprise, and anger.
She was leaning against the bookcase. The lamplight struck across her face, making an art photograph of the eyes, all the rest receding into shadow; the extraordinary, barely slanted, jet and brilliant eyes were all he saw, and they were fastened on his own.
For a minute, a long minute, the eyes held as if, having discovered, they were considering something. It was Ilse who broke the silence, repeating, “You are angry.”
He rose half out of the chair and sank back. “No.”
“My trouble is,” she said, “that I don’t know how to talk properly to a normal man anymore. Most of the men I see are either bitterly unemployed or crippled. It makes a difference. You don’t flirt, you can’t dance with a man who has no legs.”
She moved; the lamplight blazed first on a glistening mouth, then shifted down to a white cleavage between dark mounds of concealing cloth. He became suddenly conscious of his heartbeat and knew he had better leave.
“Do you want to go? Say so if you do.”
“No,” he said.
“Well, then, what shall we do? Would you like to dance?”
He was hypnotized. It came to him that if she were to ask whether he’d like to jump out of the window, he would say yes.
“Yes. Dance,” he said.
She put on a record. The music scratched, while a male voice quavered in English, “Rose Marie, I love you, I’m always dreaming of you.”
Paul got to his feet and took her in dancing position. Tightly held, they moved around the little room. Her body was hot against his, as if she had a fever. He was trembling.
“My son loves American records. He saves his allowance for them.”
He didn’t answer. Her fingers moved on the back of his neck. Her legs moved against his thighs.
He heard her say, “This awful music. It’s absurd. I’ll turn it off.”
She reached behind her and the music squealed to a stop. Still they stood, not disengaging. Afterward he was not sure whether it was she who first turned her mouth up to his, or he who had bent down to find hers, but in any case it did not matter; the long kiss led to the bedroom.
He remembered that she had murmured something about her son’s being away on a weekend visit. He remembered her voice, urging him who needed no urging, and the clamor within him, all the pulses, and the perfect culmination.
Her head was lying on his shoulder when her whisper awoke him.
“It’s after midnight. They’ll be wondering about you.”
“I’m wondering about myself.” He laughed. “Believe me, I didn’t plan this.”
“Nor did I. Shall we just blame it on fate?”
“Why ‘blame it’? I’d rather thank fate.”
“Yes.” She kissed his neck. “It was quite, quite wonderful.”
He was trembling again. “It wasn’t enough.”
This time she pulled away and got out of bed. “We can’t. You have to go back. But I have an idea. Tomorrow’s Saturday and I can take the day off. I can borrow a car, we can go to the country and get you back in time for Elisabeth’s big Sunday dinner. If you want to, that is.”
“You know I want to.”
“Can you make an excuse?”
“Yes. Business. A client has invited me overnight. Herr von Mädler, it will be, if I’m asked. I handle his American investments.”
“Tomorrow, then. Be here as early as you like. We’ll have the whole day.”
What had struck him? he asked himself, and answered: sex, purely and simply. Unbelievably, he had forgotten what sex could be. The tepid couplings with Marian had become habit. This joy, this marvel, he had not felt since—since Anna.
They had been hiking and eating and driving all day. Now, just before dusk, they passed through a village street between a row of medieval houses with mullioned windows and pots that, in summer, would be filled with geraniums. They crossed a wooden bridge over a stream and turned up a slope where, in a barnyard, a troop of dachshunds was barking at an old, patient horse.
“Why, I’ve been here before!” Paul exclaimed. “This is the place I’ve been telling you about. We bought a dachshund puppy at that farm. And there’s the inn where I stayed with Joachim that summer before the war.”
It might have been the same room, he thought later. The windows faced the dark hill behind the building. The four-poster bed was curtained, and a comforting fire burned in the porcelain stove.
“Shall it be early dinner and bed?” Ilse wanted to know. “Or bed first and late dinner?”
“Bed now, late dinner, and bed again,” Paul answered.
So, in the great, soft feather bed they made love, slept, and woke to the rumble of a wagon, the clink of harness, and homecoming voices on the road. For a while they lay and talked about whatever came into their heads: Beethoven versus Mozart,
impressionism versus abstract painting, dogs versus cats, and French cooking versus Italian. After a while they got up and dressed again for dinner.
They were the only city folk at the inn; the dining room was deserted, and they ate at leisure. Facing Ilse across the little table, Paul reflected how strange it was to be feeling so relaxed with a woman whom he had first met only three days before. His other casual liaisons, on business trips, had answered a physical need alone; he hadn’t ever felt pleasure in being with the lady afterward.
Her voice interrupted his thought. “You’ve done something very important for me, Paul.”
“I have?”
“Yes. You remember what I said about feeling the person? And that I never did after David? Well, it’s happened with you.”
“I’m glad,” he said genuinely. And knowing that, quite naturally, she was expecting to hear from him, he said, “It was the same for me.”
She raised her eyebrows. “The same? Then you’ve been missing someone too?”
Missing the warmth that my wife doesn’t have, or missing something even more, before and beyond it.…
“In a way,” he said guardedly. And aware of the need for explanation, he added, “My wife’s a good woman. I could never hurt her in any way.”
Ilse put out her hand to cover his. The touch was gentle, almost maternal. “You would never hurt anyone, I think, if you could help it.”
The naked kindness of her touch moved something in his chest. And something burst open. At once he recognized the need to reveal himself that he’d had only once before, when Hennie had come to his house on the night Marian lost their baby, the need he had stifled then and ever since. Now, here, in this foreign room with this foreign woman, it overflowed.
He began to speak rapidly and very low. “I had someone once, who was to me what your David was to you. She was the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen.… Excuse me, I didn’t mean … you’re very lovely, too.”
She smiled. “You don’t have to treat me like that. I’m not beautiful and I know it.”
He lowered his eyes to the wineglass and fondled it for a moment, reflecting, letting the past emerge from behind its curtain.
“She was Polish, not an educated woman like you, but with us, to use your words, it was as if we were one mind and two halves of one body. I didn’t marry her, as I should have done.” He stopped. He had been about to say, “We have a child, a little girl whom I have never seen and cannot see.” But the words, sharp as pins, were too painful in his mouth and he could not speak them. Instead, he finished his short tale. “We’re parted, permanently parted. And yet, she will be with me for the rest of my life.”
He raised his eyes from the wineglass to meet Ilse’s intense gaze.
“It must be very hard for your wife, then,” she said.
It was not the response he might have expected. And he replied, “I don’t think so. She doesn’t know. You’re the only person I’ve ever told, from the day I married her.”
“You don’t think she must feel it, even though she doesn’t know it?”
Paul shook his head. “I’m very good to her,” he insisted.
“Yes, you would be. But surely you must be depriving her of something.”
“Nothing that she misses. Marian is—she’s the salt of the earth. But cool, like salt. She’s not like you.”
“Or like the other one.… Now I understand the sadness in you, Paul. You see, Elisabeth and I were right. We saw it.”
He drew back. Something, some male need to be invulnerable, reasserted itself. He had perhaps said too much.
A silence followed. A coal fell with a clink in the stove; somewhere upstairs a door closed. Still neither spoke. In such stillness moods are volatile: rapture, enchantment, or melancholy can absorb each other.
But no doubts or melancholy must tinge his last hours with this extraordinary woman.… And he stood up so abruptly that his chair fell with a clatter. “Come! Enough! Let’s go to bed.”
The morning was cold, with snow in the clouds waiting to fall. In the close warmth of the tiny car with their thighs and shoulders touching, their spirits varied and flowed. They chattered and laughed and fell still. Once they even sang a silly ballad. The nearer they came to the city, the greater grew Paul’s sense of the unreality of the last few days’ events. He glanced over at the woman who had moved him to so much delight. If only that quality, that magic, could be transferred to the good and faithful woman he had married! How changed would their nights become, how different a man would he be in the mornings! He glanced again at Ilse, who was looking straight ahead with a thoughtful expression. He must remember her carefully, the serenity of her forehead, the curious upward slant of her eyes, the lower lip’s delicate protrusion—
She turned to him. “I want to tell you something before we leave each other, Paul. You’ve taught me something. You didn’t mean to, but you did. Do you want to know what?”
“Yes, my dear. Tell me.”
“That I can go on now to a life after David. That another man can give me what he gave.”
He was too moved to answer.
“Only, I have to find him … I wish he could be you.”
The right reply to that would be: And I wish so too. But it would not be a truthful answer. If anyone could take a permanent place in his life, it could only be Anna.… And because that was so, he would not sully the beauty and honesty of these hours with Ilse by lying. Instead, he put out his hand, took hers, which was lying on her lap, and held it warmly.
“We won’t ever see each other again,” Ilse said, “so I’m going to say something that may make you angry once more.”
He smiled. “Go ahead.”
“All right. I think you should try to forget that other woman. You didn’t tell me her name … I think you should forget her as if she had died like my David, since you can never have her.” She turned her face up to Paul’s. “You’re not angry with me yet?”
“I don’t want to be angry this morning, Ilse dear. I’ve never been a man who enjoys being angry anyway.”
“Well, then I’ll finish. I lay awake this morning while you were still asleep and I watched you. I could love you, Paul. But I won’t, because you have to go home. I know you don’t love your wife, not in the real way. But you ought to love someone, not a fantasy, not a woman-who-might-have-been. You must find someone, Paul. You really must. And that’s all I have to say.”
He saw that her eyes had brightened with tears. You’re wonderful, he thought, wonderful. And yet, you don’t understand. If you could move beyond your David because of me, I’m glad for you.… But in spite of all you gave me, you still don’t understand about Anna.
He leaned over and kissed her cheek. “You’re lovely, Ilse, and I’ll never forget you. A ‘queen among women.’ Isn’t there something in the Bible like that, or is it Shakespeare?”
She dried her eyes and resumed a gay voice. “I’ll be sure to look it up. Now watch the turns. Next left. You can stop here and walk around the corner to the house, so Joachim won’t see you with me and be scandalized.”
So they parted.
Joachim said, “I wish you could stay over Christmas. We’d show you a really good time. We go down to the country and tramp through the snow. Friends come in and sing carols in front of the fire … but I forgot, you don’t approve.”
“No,” Paul said. “My parents did the same. I didn’t approve then.”
Joachim said easily, “It’s a German thing. Tradition. It may seem silly, but tradition is comforting. Year after year, the food and gifts, the music and the fragrance.”
Paul answered quietly. “It’s a deep religious holiday. Don’t you think it insults believers when you make it into a light entertainment?”
“My dear fellow, I’m the last one to make light of it! On the contrary, I respect it. But each can take from it what he will.”
Paul let that go. Again there was no use in argument. “I’ll come back some summer,” he pro
mised.
“Do you remember how we went walking through the Odenwald?”
Yes, he remembered. The villages with their peaked roofs and red geraniums. The cherry orchards, and the pine hills rising. It had been such an innocent time for him, when he was loving the last of his total freedom and also looking forward to his marriage.
“Yes, some summer,” he repeated.
“Good! Bring your wife next time and don’t wait eleven years!”
The last he saw as the train pulled away was Joachim’s waving arm; the other arm was laid around Elisabeth’s waist.
How different they were from one another! And yet they pulled so well together. This was what living ought to be.…
The weather had turned abruptly cold and the sky had a wintery look as the train sped northward. It passed through somber Teutonic towns and cities; their granite was the color of bone in the thin light; their massive Romanesque brick piles were blood-brown. An ominous sense of doom lay gloomily on all these places. It lay like a heavy hand on Paul’s head. Closing his eyes to shut the dreary landscape away, he tried to doze.
The only relief during the whole somber journey came when, after buying a newspaper at a station stop, he learned that Adolf Hitler had been caught and arrested.
In Hamburg, he made his business calls and then went for a walk. Passing the American Express office, he stopped to inquire for mail, although he expected none the day before his sailing date. But there was a letter from Marian. It was short and he scanned it quickly.
“Paul dear, I have been sitting here all afternoon thinking about us. I know how you have felt these past years about not having children … I’ve watched you with Hank … you would be a wonderful father … I know how many children there are who need a home and I wish I could be like you, and could be happy to adopt a child … I wish I could, but I just don’t want a baby who isn’t my own, and I suppose that’s wrong, and I’m sorry, but then I tell myself that there are many people who feel as I do … It wouldn’t be right to take a baby into your life when you truly don’t want to … I keep hoping you will get used to the idea of living without a child. Please, please try. Let’s not spoil our lives because of it. We’re still young, and there is so much in life that we can do.…” There was more, much more, in the same vein.
