“I don’t know how much of an event it’s gonna be,” Marson said.
“Well, Monica wants to see whatever it’ll be, and so do I.”
“The fireworks on the Fourth of July don’t upset me anymore,” he surprised himself by telling her. “You know, I used to plug my ears with cotton around that holiday.”
“No, I didn’t know.”
“Your mother kept all that stuff from you guys.”
III
Patrick met him at Reagan National on the afternoon of the third. From the airport, he drove to Brookland—the old house, 1236 Kearney Street NE. It was a whim, he told his father. He wanted to see it. That was Patrick, with his obsessions about the past. Marson was tired from the journey but decided to endure it for him. He had not been there since 1963 and was sure it would be unrecognizable. And withal, he felt a thin, nostalgic curiosity about it, like a man courting some sort of dangerous thrill. Surprisingly, it was still there. It had been completely remodeled, of course, and looked brand-new, not much like its old self: the two floors and the gabled roof, the porch, the tall narrowness of it. The street was even more thickly overladen with trees and shrubbery, the lawns perfectly tended; it all looked very exclusive and expensive. “We used to play horseshoes in the side yard,” Marson said almost to himself. “It was a working-class neighborhood.”
“Every house has been redone. It’s an exclusive neighborhood, now.”
There was a white swing on the porch, big oak trees flanking the place, with its bright blue façade. A child’s bike stood in a shaft of sun at the bottom of the porch steps. Everything seemed perfectly still. He looked at the street. “Right there,” he said, pointing. “Your grandfather stood and watched me go off in a taxi to the train station and the war.” He looked at the house again. “Your mother was pregnant with Barbara. She and your aunt Mary and your uncle Jack stood there, waving. From that porch. That very porch. It’s amazing that it’s still there. My God.”
Patrick was silent.
“Your mother’s old place?”
“Torn down a long time ago. I drove over there for a dance recital of a friend of mine. There’s a run-down apartment building there now.”
Marson put the back of his hand to his lips and wiped across. For a moment he felt this street as it was then. The Surround, as he had thought of it. His place in the world. And it was gone, truly, someone else’s now probably far longer than it was ever his. But he had grown up there. He said, “ ’S’a short trip through here.”
His son sighed. “I remember you telling us that.”
“Now you know.”
They were quiet for a time. He was experiencing a heaviness in his chest, the signature of grief for him his whole life. “Nothing here anymore,” he got out, then cleared his throat. “Well, we all have to make room for somebody else. That’s what your mother used to say.”
His son stared at him.
“Glad these folks have it, whoever they are.”
“I remember the long backyard. And the horseshoe pit.”
“You were ten.”
“I remember it.”
“Eight years later we were in Memphis.”
“I hated it at first.”
“I was forty-six and I knew then it was my last house.”
“Maybe on Sunday I could drive you across the river, and you could see my new apartment.”
“Maybe. I’m tired, Son.”
Patrick drove him to the hotel, where Noreen and Monica would meet them the following morning. Patrick, at seventy-one, was unmarried and would stay in the hotel room with him. Since there probably wouldn’t be time to visit the new apartment he’d just bought, a rooftop corner unit with a wraparound window overlooking the street, Patrick took the trouble to describe it. He was clearly excited about this visit, and Marson strove to be up for it all. Then Patrick began talking about all the publicity around his father and the old German. He had never lost the penchant for artless enthusiasms. TV! Radio! And, as was his nature, he voiced the obvious: that the human-interest element of the story was much stronger today because Marson and Eugene Schmidt had both survived so long.
Marson said, “It wasn’t something we accomplished. Was it. It was just chance. Don’t make it more than it is.”
“I think it’s amazing.”
“Well, stop touting it like it’s some kind of circus stunt.”
“I’m not touting it.”
“All right. But it’s not like we deserve any awards.”
“But you wouldn’t be here,” Patrick said. He had seen the original clipping, when he was sixteen years old, in 1961, and had forgotten it, really, until Hans Schmidt called. It had been such a wonderful surprise, finding out his father’s rescuer was alive. “Think of it. You’ve both survived this long.”
“Okay, okay,” Marson said, thinking that it was merely odd, as it was odd to be within months of your hundredth birthday. “Sure. Surviving.”
But there had already been phone interviews and articles about the concurrent personal histories, and some people even suggesting that Congress and the president might get involved. So, Marson thought, perhaps Patrick was right to be enthusiastic. It was true that the old German’s grandson had created a small media storm.
They had dinner in the mezzanine restaurant. They each had lobster, and they drank a beer in honor of Marson’s father, who used to brew his own. He had only lived to be seventy-three. Patrick had searched out the article about the rescue, paying an online archive service for the privilege. He read it aloud over coffee, and the old man let him, though he couldn’t listen fully. It seemed like someone else’s story. There was a blemish on his son’s left wrist, some form of nevus or liver spot that he had not noticed before. The boy, his boy, an old man now, was seventy-one years old. How could it be that he could still feel about him that he was the boy he once was? The sight of the little blemish filled him with a sudden, reasonless sense of mournful shame, as if the imperfection were in some way ominous, and also a violation of the other’s privacy. He looked away, and then took the last of the beer. His legs ached. He determined to be less short with him, yet there it was as he announced that he couldn’t stay up all goddamn night talking; he had to get some sleep now.
IV
Hans Schmidt told his grandfather about the possibility of some further ceremony coming from the government. “Even the White House,” he said. It was a bright morning, and out the window, past the canopy of the hotel entrance, you could see men in green uniforms unwinding red, white, and blue ribbons along Pennsylvania Avenue to funnel the crowds toward what would be the site of the fireworks on the mall. Sun shone through the diaphanous white curtains framing the window. The weather was cool, and there were breezes, and on the muted television a man in a blue suit was tracing a pattern of airflow from the north. Then there was a screenshot of the five-day forecast: temperature in the seventies today. A beautiful Fourth of July.
“The fireworks make so much smoke,” Hans said. “You won’t believe it. Or maybe you will. It must be the way things are in real battle.”
Schmidt gazed out. The grass shimmered with sun. Under the canopy in front of the hotel an SUV had pulled up and two women climbed out. They appeared at first glance to be arguing. But one of them laughed, and he realized they were just animated. It had always seemed to him that people in this country had more quick force, more velocity, just moving through things. The older one was blond and held a cigarette in her hand the way a man would. She said something emphatic and then headed into the hotel.
“The whole city comes out for it,” Hans said. “I was here last year. Wait till you see.”
“Such expense,” said Eugene Schmidt.
“Every year the same.”
They were sitting side by side on an oversoft divan in their wide, white room on the first floor of the hotel. The divan had polished wooden claw-feet, like an old bathtub. On the walls were spare prints of sticklike figures in attitudes of striving, with fa
ded blue-and-orange backgrounds, like some sort of dream dawn, repeated in two separate rows. It made the old man think of hunger. His wheelchair was parked next to the divan. Before them was a low table with a French press and two cups of coffee on it. They looked at the muted TV, a woman now, talking and smiling. There was a drawing of an exploding firecracker behind her. Such a pretty face, but he could not believe anything substantial might exist behind it. Something blank in the eyes. Well, it was a face on television, and he was wrong to make judgments. He shook his head slightly and turned his attention to his grandson’s open, innocent face. They were both waiting for whatever this would be: Smalley and the NPR people would arrive soon. The reunion would be filmed in a small ceremony at two o’clock in the sunny yard in front of the hotel. Both Hans and his grandfather knew that Robert Marson and his son were four floors up.
“What iss this, a vedding?” Schmidt said. “Vee cannot see each ozer?”
“They’re probably still sleeping. They got in late.”
The old man leaned over and with surprising fluidity of motion, even to his grandson, poured more coffee into his cup. He brought the cup to his mouth and drank.
“Think of it,” said Hans in German. “The president.”
“Ziss president. A baby. So young. Ein Schwarz. In America.”
“In my opinion he’s the best in a very long time.”
“I didn’t sleep,” Eugene said. “Can I have orange juice. I need energy.”
Hans went to the desk against the wall, where there was a phone, and called room service. When he came back Eugene looked at him with an air of expectation.
“Es wird in fünf Minuten hier sein, Großvater.”
He sighed. “Sprich Englisch. Speak. English.”
“It’s on its way. Five minutes.”
“I’m tired,” the old man said. Then, in German: “He could die in his sleep. Should we have a translator?”
“I can do that, Grandfather,” Hans answered, also in German.
“Ich bin müde. Sorry. Englisch: I’m tired. Let’s please speak Englisch.”
“Do you want to sleep?”
“I can’t sleep. Hef you talked to him yet?”
“Last night after you went to bed. They flew first class. His son. A nice man.”
“Wie ist sein Name? Agh! Sorry. His name.”
“Patrick. Very pleasant gentleman. Robert was a little out of breath.”
“You—already you call him Robert. I never called him zat.”
“He asked me to.”
“A healthy man?”
“He was a little out of breath.”
“Me too,” Eugene said. “A little out of breath.”
“We could order breakfast. More than this coffee and orange juice,” said his grandson.
“No. Ich bin müde. I got very little sleep. My Englisch iss not vut it vas.”
“It’s very clear and good.”
“Mein mu—my muzzer.”
“I know.”
“Girlhood time in Leeds.”
“I know that. You’ve said that.”
“The var ztill frightens. Zo big and terrible. I vas cowardly. I remember it like ziss morning.”
“You were afraid.”
“Everybody. I gave up. Others depended on me.”
“You saved a man’s life and he’s here. You’ll see him again, the man whose life you gave back to him. A beautiful thing.”
“I vas a soldier. As a soldier it vas ze vrong sing.”
“You did a good thing. Don’t talk like that.”
“Vell. Ziss iss how it feels zumtime now.”
They waited.
“I vas a fool ven vee met in Naples. A chaser of vimmen. A drunk. Vee did not get along. I offended him and his vife.”
“Vor fünfzig Jahren.”
“Englisch. Englisch. Please.”
“Fifty years ago. And you hadn’t seen each other in more than twenty years.”
“You sink I don’t know ziss? And you accuse me auf repeating sings.” The old man smiled dryly at him, this strange boy, his grandson, from the daughter who left his house in Ansbach because she had gotten pregnant by an American navy man, she wouldn’t say who. She never even told this navy man about his child. She went to America and broke her mother’s heart. Her mother, who had been able to see her grandson so seldom, and became so sad. The woman he had left alone so many times, and she had been subjected to the rages that rode with him when he did come home after days of drinking and living in other rooms, paying hollow attention to other women, and one of them—was it really so? could it have been so?—had nearly starved to death on the streets of Berlin, fourteen years old at the beginning of the bombing, and four years later all she wanted to do was ficken. Her name was Elise.
No, wait. Elise was far ago, 1946. Far past.
Hans’s mother had come from Em. Emma, the love of his life—young, thick-bodied, worried Emma, whose sister Brigitte used to hate him for his drinking and his infidelity. And Brigitte lived in America and took the pregnant girl into her house. Emma was never the same. None of the women in his life were ever really the same after they lived with him. He did nothing for them but take what they were willing to give. It seemed to him now that there were many. Elise had been the first adultery, and he went to the priest to confess it. Vergib mir Vater, denn ich habe gesündigt. I have sinned. But he went back to her and back to her. No one more wildly carnal. There were times, holding her after the erotic fits were expended, when she would talk about wanting to see through death into the future, that she could almost believe she would never die while it was all going on. But she did die, half starved and full of black-market heroin she had acquired with her body and its uses. And she had given him TB.
Nineteen forty-six. The whole world exacting reparations, as if the ordinary citizen were also a criminal. He was not a criminal, and like many other former soldiers he was working slave labor, as those people had in the camps. And he had been with Elise and caught the TB from her, and, oh yes, Elise was 1946, not this boy’s grandmother, not that late wife, not Emma.
Poor Elise, from his twenties. And this journey to see the American was bringing everything back, a lot that he had forgotten and did not want to look upon anymore. Elise a little girl in a war who came of age while the bombs were falling and the streets were burning, and he had used her, as everyone used her. That first year of peace, he had gone through days asking for food, wandering hungry and wine-sick, a man who had wanted a family. And finally he was ill with the TB that Elise had picked up in some little corner of the wrecked city. He, Eugene Schmidt—who today would be honored for quitting, and for using the American to keep himself safe, and for getting too old to keep his own memory straight—he had spent days stealing and cheating and wanting to die or kill someone. And then the feverish days in a United States hospital near the Russian zone, and the other wife, the first, Melicent, yes, Melicent, whom he hardly knew, and who left him for some English soldier. Melicent, a girl, too, from a family with money, and her father became a Gauleiter, who died in a bomb raid on Essen in 1944. That was right. He had it now. The hero of her grown life, Melicent’s father, and Eugene never understood her devotion to him, a stern, looming, dyspeptic official with a thin unsmiling mouth and a perpetual air of having just received news of some approaching catastrophe. Well, the catastrophe had indeed swept over everyone. But he would not have to talk about all this today. Would it be necessary to explain?
The second wife, mother of the boy’s mother, Emma, yes, she was the one who gave him back to himself for a time.
Em had made him, for that small while, feel like the idealistic Catholic boy he had once been, who went to confession every week. He became the version of himself that he had been at twenty, for a few spare and beautiful months. No drinking. Going to church. Confession and communion. The boy he was before the war. He remembered now, though there were muddles. He called Emma “Elise” sometimes in those last years, especially when drunk
. After he had started up again with it. He could be drunk and no one would see it. He knew how to carry it, like a kind of vivid energy, a good mood. He could still discern when to say or do certain things, could still walk straight. It was not an illusion. Emma would only know if she smelled it on him, and there was something about the way he slept, something in the breathing. She tried to understand; she was not a bad person. She went to Mass and communion every day of her life and she forgave and forgave and forgave. And her daughter Agnes going away was the end of her, really. He told her, “That was not me. Agnes can say it was me, but I was willing to go on and forgive and let her have it and accept the illegitimate child. She wanted to leave. She wanted out of my house.” Emma sat looking out on the street from the second-floor window, her bedroom, where she slept apart, and her face was lined, looking older than it was. But suffering seemed natural to her. Ich bin nicht dein christliches Jungen. Not your Christian boy, he would say. I’m not your creation.
Or was that Melicent? He had said it outside a church, in sunlight, a Sunday morning, after a bottle of kirsch. No, that was another occasion. A baptism. What year?
Everything ran together. And sometimes it all seemed to rush at him when he was on the edge of sleep, all of life, a speeding blur, a hurrying.
He was in no hurry now, but Hans was anxious to keep him moving.
“I don’t repeat zings so much,” he told the boy. “I confuse zem. A little.”
“I’m sorry,” said his grandson. The boy had his mother’s eyes, that strange shade of light brown. Agnes had always been a stranger to him.
“Ich bin müde,” he muttered. “Tired. I’m tired.” The phone rang. Hans went and answered it.
“Hello, are you up?” It was Smalley. Schmidt could hear it all the way across the room. He had a moment of absurd pride in his good hearing. At ninety-five.
“Yes,” Hans said.
Living in the Weather of the World Page 21
