American Romantic

by Ward Just

  Do you think the French are romantic?

  Oh, no, Joseph said. The French are worldly. That’s a different thing.

  Americans are romantic, she said.

  I would not say romantic. I would say optimistic. Yet it is true that optimism is a precondition of the romantic temperament. So I cannot disagree with you entirely.

  Americans can be anything, Sieglinde said. They take pride in their makeovers, a nation of actors, or should I say playwrights, each examining her own story. That’s the myth, anyhow. A nation in an eternal state of rewrite. She thought then of Harry Sanders, wondering if she was right in thinking of him as a romantic. Well, of course he was. But she could not imagine Harry on a mountaintop staring into fog, a wanderer. She did not think he was in any way a wanderer, but she conceded also that she did not know him well. She did not know his heart. She certainly had never had a conversation with him that resembled this one. Such a conversation with Harry was unthinkable owing to his nationality. She had never before considered nationality as an ingredient of loving someone or thinking about loving someone. Could it be true that nationality was destiny? Americans would surely think so, accustomed as they were to living among so many tribes, all of them with a claim to freedom—of movement, of worship, of anything that came to mind. Why, they believe their nation is under God’s protection! Or was it destiny, in a way that a recessive gene determined hair color or mental illness. Germans were bound together by their language, not an easy language to learn and, once learned, impossible to forget altogether. Nationality was surely destiny if you were a German of the twentieth century. So many ghosts.

  He said, What are you thinking about? You have a strange look.

  Do you think nationality is destiny?

  If you are German it is.

  That’s what I think too.

  No one lets us forget. Not that it is possible to do so. Our history is our companion, not always but sometimes.

  But we, you and I, were but children—

  That’s true, German children who endured terrible times.

  We are not the only ones. Polish children, Russian children, children of the Balkans. Jewish children. Even British children.

  We were defeated.

  Yes. So were they. So many dead. The cities in ruins. Everyone except the Americans.

  I was involved with an American.

  Tell me about him, Joseph said.

  No, Sieglinde said. It’s over now.

  Did his Americanness bother you?

  It did, in a way I can hardly describe. I was very—fond of him. But I feared that we would never understand each other. The important things. I thought, Sieglinde said, giving a little abashed laugh, that he would never be able to read my mind, whereas I was able to read his with no trouble. He wore his heart on his sleeve, that one. He was a lovely man.

  So you did understand him. He didn’t understand you.

  He was not as interested in his history as I was in mine.

  What did he do? Your American.

  He is a diplomat.

  Did you love him?

  I think I did.

  And where is he now?

  I don’t know, she said. He is somewhere in the world, attending to the diplomacy of the American empire. I imagine he’s good at it. I expect he will go on to a brilliant career, and in a couple of decades I will pick up a newspaper and find that he’s secretary of state. Wouldn’t that be something? I’ll write him a note: Remember me? Sieglinde, your German girl.

  That would be something all right, Joseph said.

  Sieglinde was looking at Joseph’s sketches. She said, You do not draw people. You draw landscapes.

  Sometimes I put a person in my landscapes. Not often. Not if I can help it. I can put an American in the next one if you like.

  I like your landscapes, she said.

  I’m glad you do.

  And don’t make snide remarks about my American.

  Not a snide remark, he said. I meant it.

  I’m worried about the absence of people in your work.

  I like nature, he said. And naturalness. German naturalness.

  Maybe here and there a woman, she said.

  All right, he said. I’ll put you in the next one.

  As an example of German naturalness?

  Why not?

  Don’t be foolish. Not me.

  Who then?

  An old woman.

  An old woman, he said. All right. He plucked a sketch pad from the hook behind him, and a pencil from the bedside table, made a few quick strokes, and handed the result to Sieglinde. She looked at it and nodded in admiration. He had drawn a portly woman from the rear. She leaned on a walking stick and gazed off in the distance to a ruined colosseum. Her hair was gathered tightly into a bun, her shoulders bowed under the weight of sticks tied with a rope. In her posture was the very essence of endurance. Sieglinde stared at the sketch a long moment, marveling at what could be made of a few short strokes—a bun, roped sticks, heavy shoes, a broad back.

  Joseph was sitting in half-light, sharp shadows cast from the kerosene lamp dividing his face. The shadows were all around him. His skin had an artificial glow and now he appeared lost in thought, a kind of midnight reverie. Joseph looked up when the tent billowed, the canvas snapping in the wind. More dust was in the air and Sieglinde wondered if they were on the leading edge of a sandstorm. If they were, Joseph did not seem alarmed. He was lost in thought, his expression unreadable as if carved in mahogany. The canvas rippled in the wind and Sieglinde rose to leave. They had said what they had to say. The conversation was at an end, for the moment anyway. Sieglinde peeked out the tent flap. All the tents were dark.

  He said, Don’t leave.

  She said, I must go. We work tomorrow.

  This is not work. It’s a fantasy. Ted’s fantasy.

  You mean there’s no colosseum.

  No colosseum, Joseph said. Oh, there’s something. Dig long enough in Europe or North Africa or the Middle East and you’ll find something. But I doubt that it’s a colosseum or anything else of significance. Ted is a genius at raising money. He raises their hopes and they give him money.

  Sieglinde said, I must go. Really. She opened the flap and stepped outside. The wind died. The sky was full of stars. She located the Dippers and Orion’s belt. The night air was cool. Joseph stood behind her, his fingertips touching her elbows.

  He said, Can I ask you one thing?

  Yes, she said.

  He said, Did you ever spend time in Berlin?

  No, she said. I have never been to Berlin.

  Oh, you’ve missed something. On the first day of spring, if it isn’t snowing or otherwise disagreeable, the beer gardens arrange their tables and chairs outside in the light. Prussian light is as clear and delicate as fine crystal, a pale light but warm all the same. The light has hibernated during the winter, gone to wherever the sun goes to. The terrible Berlin winters when weeks go by without the sun, and when it deigns to shine it is thin, a thin light, more a suggestion than a conclusion. You can feel it on your face, a grueling wind and a sun that delivers no warmth. All that changes in a day, a page turned. Springtime is something else, something almost—epic. The girls pull their skirts to their knees and the men open their coats and loosen their ties. I will take you to Berlin some March and you’ll see. No place in the world is like it. You cannot mistake it for another city in another region of Germany or anyplace else. That, too, is what it means to be German. A spring day, a glass of pilsener, perhaps a little cake. Berlin on that day is—prodigious.

  Sieglinde smiled. She had always thought of Berlin as coarse. Also promiscuous, but even the promiscuity had its coarse aspect.

  Someday it will be our capital once again. Not in our lifetime. But sometime.

  When that happens I will join you there.

  Have you really never been to Berlin?

  No, she said, never.

  His fingers pressed harder on her elbows. She was undecided
whether to return to Joseph’s tent or move along to her own tent with its threadbare blanket and hard cot. His fingers fell away but she could feel his closeness. Sieglinde looked at the dark outlines of the tents and the barren land reaching to west and south. First Madagascar, now this. She had no idea what she was doing in Tunisia except getting on from day to day. This was not a normal life. Her plight, if that was what it was, suddenly amused her and she laughed out loud. There was nothing to fear here. Joseph’s fingers returned to her elbows and they turned together and retreated into his tent.

  PART II

  Seven

  THIS was her first visit to Washington and the first time she had seen Harry since his home leave from Asunción the year before, two strenuous weeks in the West—Yosemite, the Grand Canyon, one expensive weekend in Las Vegas, a peripatetic holiday. Now they were in Washington for briefings before taking up their new post in central Africa, the journey via Paris, where they would be married. They put up at the Mayflower and late in the afternoon on their second night Harry explained about the reception for the British chancellor of the exchequer at one of the downtown clubs, the invitation thanks to Ambassador Basso Earle III, now retired, Harry’s boss during the war. Harry went on and on about Basso, a boss who had become a good friend. There would be grandees aplenty at the reception, the French ambassador, the American secretary of state. Her eyes grew wide—my God, she had nothing to wear! So at the last minute they took a cab to Georgetown, to the little dress shop on Wisconsin Avenue, where she found a black shift off the rack that fit perfectly. Of course she was nervous, who wouldn’t be, entering this recondite world of Harry’s, a world that seemed to have its own language and customs, its specific rituals and manners. She stuck close to Harry, who was careful to introduce her around, always supplying a title and a posting—the Washington bureau chief of The Times of London, the Japanese ambassador to Washington, the deputy assistant secretary of state for East Asian affairs. How do you know these people? she asked. Oh, Harry replied, you see them around. You meet all kinds in this business. She thought, All kinds?

  Soon enough Basso Earle took them in hand and suddenly they were at the top of the food chain—the French ambassador, the director of policy planning at the Department, and then she found herself shaking hands with the vice president of the United States, a beefy figure with huge hands and a crooked smile. She was standing with the Saudi ambassador and the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. The conversation appeared to flag, and when she looked around Harry was nowhere in sight. She was standing in a cone of silence without a word to say for herself. And then she was alone, the vice president and his suite disappearing down the marble staircase. She looked about her in a panic and realized then that there was no need to panic. She was twenty-five years old. She was a young woman in a room filled with old men and their capable wives, and so, with a spring to her step, she took a glass of champagne from a passing waiter’s tray and looked for someone interesting to talk to. She decided to avoid the circle of women standing a little apart. She had the idea they were talking about their children.

  May had a wonderful time at her first diplomatic reception. Later in her life, when these events became as familiar as old shoes, she would confess that she liked listening to the grandees, the ones who had known Stalin, met Hitler, sipped wine with Mussolini and champagne with Churchill, advised Roosevelt, took instructions from Marshall, played bridge with Eisenhower, and sat at the feet of Mao, waiting for a gnomic pronouncement. They were very old now of course. But they had phenomenal memories, conjuring the texts of cables sent decades before. They were attractive men, well turned out in bespoke suits cut in a prewar style, suits of heavy serge or pinstriped flannel, wide lapels often displaying a mysterious button or tiny band of cloth. They wore white hankies situated just so in the breast pocket, a vest and often a watch chain, more often than not a bow tie. Also, they were forever quoting or citing other men she had never heard of, like Walter Lippmann or the poet Miłosz or Arthur Koestler. That was the way it had gone at that long-ago reception at which she had made but one gaffe, mistaking Dean Acheson for the chancellor of the exchequer; laughter all around except for Mr. Acheson, whose mustache bristled. She had been introduced to an especially attractive older man, an ambassador somewhere, George Kennel or Kenner. She did not catch the name but the title alone always did the job. They never got her name straight either, May Huerwood. She was forever being called Mary or Margie with a hard g. Mostly they called her “young lady.”

  She was standing in a group with Harry, Basso Earle, the Polish ambassador, and Ambassador Kennel, who was apparently a statesman of some renown. Harry stood a little taller when he spoke to him. The Polish ambassador, in high good humor, was explaining that he and his wife had a parlor game, identifying the causes of World War I. They had a dozen or more causes, the development of the battle tank, the murderous example of Antietam, the general boredom in the chancelleries of Europe among them. And now they had a fresh candidate, utterly unexpected, most interesting.

  Ambassador Kennel raised his eyebrows.

  Walt Whitman, the Polish ambassador said.

  This was the thrilling insight of his compatriot the great poet Miłosz. Miłosz proposed that in the years before the Great War, Walt Whitman was widely known and revered throughout Europe but had a truly fanatical following in just one country: Yugoslavia. The revolutionary anarchists of Sarajevo were inspired by Whitman’s songs of democracy, his faith in the virtue of multitudes, his evident disdain of the ruling classes, his unorthodox sexual arrangements, altogether a new American man. They believed Whitman a much greater soul than the hypocrite slave-owning capitalist Jefferson, whose deeds did not match his words. One of the Whitman-drunk anarchists who had taken to the streets of Sarajevo on June 28, 1914, was Gavrilo Princip, and when Archduke Franz Ferdinand mit frau arrived in a horse-drawn coach, Princip produced a revolver and shot him dead. This, the spark that set all Europe ablaze. What was the statistic? Fourteen million perished. All of it the responsibility of Walt Whitman.

  May watched Kennel’s mouth approach a frown, which after a moment seemed to dissolve into something resembling a smile. Kennel did not look like a man who appreciated whimsy. Whimsy would not be in his repertoire. Yet there it was, a small tight smile—and then he turned to Harry.

  Basso tells me you’ve been posted to Africa.

  Yes, sir, I have, Harry said.

  Looking forward to it?

  We are, yes, Harry said, nodding at May. Very much.

  It’s a good place to begin.

  Do you think so? Is there room for diplomacy?

  Yes, I do. But very difficult. Not much room.

  Harry nodded.

  So few structures.

  Yes, Harry said.

  The logic of the African situation must be allowed to work itself out, the ambassador said.

  Harry looked at him blankly. Sir, could you develop that thought?

  But the eminent diplomat did not elaborate. A brooding look came over him, a look almost of grief. He seemed wrapped in a tremendous stillness, as if time itself had come to a halt. He ambled away to say hello to the Soviet ambassador, a frosty handshake and a few mumbled words, and then he was gone.

  In the years to come May thought often of that evening at the downtown club in Washington, her introduction to Harry’s neighborhood. She had never before been in company whose milieu seemed to be the world itself, its enmities and alliances, its instability and bother, its evident danger. The world’s troubles seemed to float in the room, a part of things no less than the high ceilings and chandeliers, the curtained windows and daffodils in cut-glass vases, and the waiters with their trays of champagne. She supposed that the object of it all was to seize the future, make it predictable, bring it to heel—or otherwise leave the logic of the situation to work itself out. A parlor game that turned on the causes of World War I! Did that keep them busy in the evening? The reception was breaking up, a line formi
ng near the marble staircase where the chancellor of the exchequer was shaking hands, offering a particularly warm smile to May, holding her fingers a little longer than was strictly necessary. So good of you to come. I hope my little party wasn’t a bore. His silver hair was combed in little wings over his ears and his blue eyes sparkled. He was quite tall and lean. He bent close to her to say something but May did not catch what it was. She thanked him and moved off, looking for Harry, but Harry was nowhere to be seen. May did notice the Polish ambassador’s barely concealed look of contempt as he watched Kennel and the Soviet diplomat in a tête-à-tête before the Soviet abruptly turned and disappeared into the crowd waiting to shake the chancellor’s hand. May knew so little of this world and its contents and discontents, waters she had never navigated or thought to navigate. This was her first reception after all. She knew there were shoals but did not know where they were or what they looked like, and then she had an inkling. The chancellor of the exchequer continued to shake hands with departing guests but now and again he looked across the room at May with a private smile. She noticed that his hair wings had lost altitude. Lecher, she thought, and turned her back. My God, he wasn’t a day under seventy years old. Whatever was he thinking? Well, what he was thinking was plain enough and that caused a private smile of her own. Receptions of this sort would be her milieu from now on and May knew she was equal to it. More than equal. At the same time, wouldn’t it be wise of her to keep her distance? As she watched the company move en masse down the staircase she made a resolution to keep her wits about her as she and her newly minted ambassador husband-to-be moved from one posting to another. They would grow old together but she was determined never to lose her essential self, her particular way of seeing the world, the fundamental Mayness of May. It would be so easy to become entangled in this seductive atmosphere, so worldly, populated with outsize personalities—“figures.” It was not celebrity. It was something beyond celebrity, this inside world, a kind of private club, the members’ faces recognized in Washington and nowhere else. The Undersecretary of State. The Chief of Naval Operations. The Chairman of the Federal Communications Commission.