Then after the funeral her mother went to Müllerhof to stay with Charlotte, her brother’s wife, in the house of Charlotte’s father. But Kathe would not go. She was seventeen and she dreaded sitting at night, in the kitchen in Charlotte’s father’s house, nothing but women and old men, night after night, just waiting. Her mother did not try to make her come. Her mother went to Müllerhof because Charlotte took her, but she did not seem to mind what she did, with her son disappeared and her husband dead.
The cousin who worked in the bakery near the fishmarket found the room at the Hefferichs’. Mrs. Hefferich bought her bread at the bakery so the cousin knew that Mr. Hefferich, who was a bank clerk, couldn’t afford a maid any more because everything was so expensive and they would just as soon rent the back room to a quiet decent girl. Kathe got her job in the restaurant by herself; the only things she knew how to do were work on a farm or in a kitchen. Monsieur and Madame Steller told the Germans Kathe was their niece, their only near relative, and that they could not run their restaurant alone because they were growing old and if their niece could not stay and help them they would have to close it. That way she avoided the Labor Service and Germany but Kathe thought she would have killed herself rather than go to that country which was only a few miles away across the river and looked entirely different, and dark and cruel.
At the start it was exciting to be grown-up and independent and earning wages every week and seeing new people. It was a good respectable restaurant too. The same people came there to eat year after year. The German soldiers or officers could come if they wanted, but when a German sat at a table the regular customers ate very fast, not speaking at all, and left; and this lawful hostility and the modesty of the restaurant chilled the Germans, so that for the last year none of them patronized the Stellers. The Etoile customers were all nice old people, nice the way everybody used to be before the Germans came, and Kathe liked them and the work was easy. Still, she only worked and went home; that was all she had of her life. It was waiting again, and the waiting began to hurt her, the time passing hurt her. She could almost feel it going by, the way you could feel every step if you had a nail in your shoe.
There were no young men that she could go out with, to walk or skate or have a beer in a café. The good ones were gone like her brother, or the Germans had taken them; those who stayed were poor things who got on with the Germans or else they were too sickly to be worth taking. Kathe did not notice the hardships the war brought because she was used to very little, and now there was only a little less. She did not care about that anyhow; she only cared about the four years, her four years that were going by without joy in them, winter or summer.
The Hefferichs did not own a radio and Kathe never read the newspapers and she did not follow or understand the war. She would hear things in the restaurant, the old customers talking together prudently, but she did not understand. She knew, from school, how Luxembourg looked on the map: it was so little you could barely see it and the map of Europe was enormous, with all the great far off countries in different colors. The Germans were everywhere; it was hard to believe that anybody would ever come to Luxembourg and drive them away.
Kathe had begun to think it would be like this forever, for her whole life, with those grey uniformed men in the streets and the city silent and sad and the little country forgotten and rotting. Then she heard the Americans were coming. The French would have been everyday, though heaven-sent as anyone not German would be. She had no ideas about the English. But she had seen a moving picture before the war, before she was fifteen even, and it was American. That was when her father brought her to Luxembourg City, perhaps because he had to have a tooth pulled or maybe it was a question of taxes, and gave her money and she went to the theatre. Kathe had this one vision of Americans who lived in a land made of splendid beaches, long fields of sand with the crested sea coming in, and they were a golden brown race, like the finest bread, tall, slender, and almost naked. They laughed together, the girls and the young men, and ran and played on the beach. Kathe imagined that when the Americans came, they would come across the fields of Luxembourg like a great wave, tall, glorious, sunburned, and singing.
The Americans did not come as quickly as expected and they were preceded by panic rumors which everybody in the city heard and repeated. It was said that the Germans would shoot one out of ten of the people of Luxembourg, if they saw they were losing the city; and that they would poison the water; and destroy the castle and the cathedral. But above all, they would dynamite the Adolphe bridge, so that the Americans could not cross into the heart of the town.
It was this rumor which started Kathe’s great daydream.
She was going to save her city and the beautiful Americans. She would be on the Adolphe bridge, and she would find the package of dynamite the Germans had left; she would throw it back on them, and it would explode and they would not be able to come across the bridge to fight the Americans. The Americans would be marching down the Avenue de la Liberté, forty abreast, you could not even see the street they would be so thick on it, a wide river of them, all tall and young and singing. They would sweep on to the bridge and the most beautiful one would be leading, and he would come to her and give her a rose. Kathe knew this was a silly story, she told herself it was silly and selfish too; why should she be the main one, in the saving of her city, and besides it was stupid, really stupid, even in her thoughts to pretend that anything about Kathe Limpert mattered when the whole world was so unhappy. But she could not renounce her dream: she needed one fine and memorable event in her life, after all the years of nothing.
Then the Americans did come and Kathe did not see them, being in the kitchen with the Stellers at the restaurant, with the iron shutters down and the lights off, hushed and listening and terrified like everyone else. Later she saw the jumble of tanks and jeeps and guns and trucks and ambulances, everything looking used and dirty as it had to in war. No one seemed to be marching. The Americans were young and cheerful and noisy and they were fine brave boys, the saviors of her country, but they did not look like the ones she remembered from the moving picture. They were not really very good looking or very tall and they wore hideous metal pots on their heads. When the city was entirely cleared of Germans the young Americans stood around together, near all their strange automobiles, and whistled at every girl who passed which was clearly a custom of their country and allright since that was their manner but it was not what she had dreamed; not the beautiful respectful one, coming forward with such grace to give her a rose. Kathe could not speak to the American soldiers and besides she had her work to do and the war was not over and presently she was waiting again. Though she thanked God they had come to free her country, and she prayed for them in church on Sunday and she was grateful with her whole heart and she knew that it was shameful to think of herself and be disappointed.
When the soldier came into the restaurant Kathe felt it was no accident; he came because she was waiting. He had come alone, with no one to show him, directly to her, and he looked at her with love. He brought no flower but in every other way he was the one she had dreamed of meeting on the Adolphe bridge.
It doesn’t matter, Kathe said to herself, I will find another room and another job and I will tell my mother that I am sorry but she would understand if she was nineteen and had waited her whole life without even anyone to think of or remember or write a letter to, and he came all this way for me as I knew he would, and I am not ashamed, not ashamed.
Her soldier had come suddenly and he would go suddenly, she was sure of that Kathe could tell he was of those who fought, not of those who worked in the big office buildings across the river. The ones who fought were a different kind of man. He had only a little time too. She saw this in his eyes. God will not punish us, Kathe thought, let them say what they want, I don’t care. I know it is not wicked. We have no time.
“Kathe,” said Madame Steller, peering over the coffee machine, “what is the matter with you, child?”
>
Kathe did not realize that she was beating the table softly with her fist and snuffling to keep the tears back.
“I think I’m getting a cold.”
“Take an aspirin,” Madame Steller said.
“Yes, I will. Thank you.”
Kathe turned her head away so that Madame Steller could not see her. She would wait for him inside the big street door and they would go up the stairs hand in hand and not make a sound.
5
Jacob Levy began to sorrow for his Colonel. The poor bastard, he thought, Dotty’s stringing him along. She’s making him buy her drinks and she won’t say yes or no. I’d like to go in there and tell her a thing or two. I’d like to tell her all the time she’s been sitting in a fine warm house, he’s been up there in that death-hole forest. About the least a nogood, spoiled, rich bitch of a Red Cross girl could do would be to make the Colonel happy for a while.
Here it was eight thirty and still they didn’t show. Jacob Levy sat bowed over the steering wheel and ached with cold. Slowly he realized what this meant to him. The night would not go on forever. And what he wanted was sweet and willing and put her arms around your neck like a child.
But if Dotty said no, they would drive straight back to Weilerburg and he couldn’t even tell Kathe not to wait. He imagined Kathe sitting on a chair in her room, waiting all night. He’d like to choke that Dotty.
This would teach him to let himself get happy, as if there was anything good in war. This would teach him to make plans. Cold and despairing, Jacob Levy said to himself, stick to your calendar. All you can expect is for a day to finish.
Then suddenly the Colonel and his girl were there. They must have sneaked out of the door so no one would see them or hear them. Lieutenant Colonel Smithers helped the girl in the back and jumped in beside her. He had his arm around her already; Jacob Levy could feel this, without seeing it. It was all going to work out for the best.
“72 rue Philippe, Levy,” Lieutenant Colonel Smithers said. “You know where that is?”
“Yes sir.” Jacob Levy had heard Lieutenant Gaylord giving the address to the Colonel last night, and he had located it on a street map. No time would be lost in transit, if he could help it.
It didn’t look much different from Kathe’s house and it wasn’t even too far from the rue de la Boucherie. Perhaps he could find a car park up here somewhere and save time. He was cold all through. That was bad. That would feel bad for Kathe.
“When shall I tell him to come back?” Lieutenant Colonel Smithers asked the girl. She had walked ahead towards the door of the apartment house, and was a shadow in the bare lightless street.
“Oh, about one, I think.” Her voice upset Jacob Levy. She sounded as if she didn’t care whether she stayed or went.
“Two will be allright,” Lieutenant Colonel Smithers said softly, and crossed the pavement.
Jacob Levy grinned and saluted the Colonel’s back. That was a man who couldn’t be discouraged, that Colonel, and why should he? He’d sweated out worse things than one Red Cross girl.
Lieutenant Colonel Smithers followed Miss Dorothy Brock of Des Moines and Miss Leighton’s Finishing School and the Junior League, into the hall of 72 rue Philippe and up the stairs. She has nice ankles, he thought. Not even those flat-heeled black oxfords could spoil her ankles.
“I don’t know what this place is like,” he said.
“All the houses here are very comfortable.” Ugly, heavy, overstuffed, color of mustard, Dorothy Brock thought, with scratchy cloth on the chairs, glaring chandeliers and oil paintings in gold frames. She had been in a good many of these apartments with various officers. The Germans pinched the apartments in the beginning; then we took them from the Germans. Thus everyone is cosy except the natives, Dorothy Brock thought.
“He said it was good and warm.”
“Fine.”
He, being Major Havemeyer, had also told Lieutenant Gaylord who relayed the information, that the beds were big and soft and to use the room down at the end of the hall. If there was anybody home now, Lieutenant Colonel Smithers would introduce himself and they’d hang around and have a drink and act casual, until the other guys got the pitch and went to their own rooms. Much, much better if no one was home. He was not sure of Dotty, though she ought to have a rough idea of what this was all in favor of.
Lieutenant Colonel Smithers rang the doorbell and a maid opened it. She asked no questions. Strangers barging in must be S.O.P. here, Lieutenant Colonel Smithers thought. The maid showed them the living room and disappeared into a long greyish hall.
“Nice place,” said Lieutenant Colonel Smithers.
“Lovely,” she agreed. It was exactly as she had imagined it. Suddenly she thought, these are the bordels for ladies.
“What’re you smiling about?” Lieutenant Colonel Smithers asked. He didn’t know if he liked this girl.
“Nothing,” Dorothy Brock said. “Are there drinks?”
Major Havemeyer had also said to help themselves. Lieutenant Colonel Smithers saw bottles in the dining room that led from this parlor. What a soft life. As far as he was concerned, they could drink all the liquor and tear the place down. Lieutenant Colonel Smithers felt these rooms belonged to him; he had earned them, not the two Intelligence Majors and the other one from the Public Relations office. It was nice of Havemeyer to loan his apartment, but Lieutenant Colonel Smithers understood the self-imposed guilt that forced the offer, and that released him also from gratitude or responsibility. You’re damn right they’re generous, he thought.
“Pick up a nice comfortable chair,” he said. Dorothy Brock had taken off her cap and was combing her hair. She’s got pretty hair, I like that color brown, Lieutenant Colonel Smithers thought, pretty ankles, a good build, the kind that went all to the chest and nothing to the hips. She’s not too hot in the face, he went on, weighing what he’d got; sort of sallow, and there was something disturbing about her face too, or her eyes, as if she thought different from what she was saying. Lieutenant Colonel Smithers poured a big drink for Miss Brock, as he was in a hurry.
“Here’s to you, sir.” She smiled at him over the rim of the glass. What we use nowadays instead of a fan, Dorothy Brock told herself, and furthermore flirting is done with a hammer in the ETO. Not that he had to be warmed up, this handsome hunk of bravery. It was only politeness that made her shine her eyes that way.
“Here’s to you, sweetness,” Lieutenant Colonel Smithers said.
Mother of God, she thought, I really can not take “sweetness”.
“Tell me some more about Georgia,” Dorothy Brock said, and stopped listening immediately. Lieutenant Colonel Smithers talked of Georgia, but without enthusiasm. Georgia would not lead them down the hall to the last bedroom and the advertised soft bed.
It was very easy to smile, to nod, to widen the eyes, to say “Oh, My!” to say “Honestly?” and hear nothing. It was so easy that if there was anything worth hearing, she would probably miss it. Dorothy Brock had stopped listening almost two years ago, and men found her perfect to talk to. Dotty seemed to know what you meant, even when you couldn’t say it right.
Two years ago, when Dorothy Brock came to England, she had listened earnestly and tried to give each one what he wanted, sympathy, jokes, advice. She had been convinced that without the Red Cross girls, standing behind the men, their everpresent tireless friends (mothers, sisters), the war would fail. They needed her and her only desire was to help them.
Two years was a long time, or else you learned the technique and it required no further attention. Like working in a button factory, she thought, you could punch button holes all day long but you wouldn’t have to think about buttons. And how boring they were, how endlessly and drearily they repeated themselves. Dorothy Brock did not blame them. She had lived in the camps in England and, since coming to France, in the bleak villages where Divisions rested or trained. If their lives were so limited, you could hardly expect these men to make scintillating conversation. They see
med to Dorothy Brock to be trapped animals, trying to make the best of it; and when they left the security of her coffee, doughnuts, magazines, games, and went away in trucks, they exchanged the boredom for something, to her, unimaginable. She had worked in hospitals too, and where the men went in trucks was the place that gored and gouged and chopped them up, ready for the hospitals. Dorothy Brock was always sorry for the soldiers but that did not make it necessary to listen. They liked her just as well when she never heard a word.
She took a professional pride in her clubroom, all the same, and in making the men as contented and comfortable as she could. This war wasn’t a scream of laughter from anybody’s point of view, and she would not tolerate complaints from herself. She no longer believed that her job had much effect on the outcome of the war, and she did not care. They were all in an endurance contest; she meant to perform as well as the next person.
The officers were another matter. Some unwritten law restrained Red Cross girls from going to bed with enlisted men. With the officers, however, it was a permanent open season. Dorothy Brock had a private taboo on the rearguard; if they were lonely, sex-starved, homesick or overworked, that was their business. It seemed to her they took a lot of unjustifiable liberty, making passes to right and left, as if they did anything more hazardous than travel between their offices and their billets. The fighting types had their own excuse. A man was not automatically attractive because he flew a Thunderbolt, rode in a Sherman, or commanded infantry in battle, but he was explained; he had all the necessary reasons. It was then up to her to decide whether she was going to be eager, compassionate or a good friend. They did not repel her with their insincerity and their haste; she would have been the same in their place. They very often bored her. Dorothy Brock thought perhaps everyone in armies was always boring. They were certainly predictable. But what they had, finally, was their bodies. They had them at least for however long they could keep them. And since, really, there was nothing else they wanted of her, she would settle for that too. It might make them both happy for a while, or take their minds off their problems, and anyhow it passed the time.
Point of No Return Page 6
