Point of No Return

by Gellhorn, Martha;

  “Nothing surprises me anymore,” Dorothy Brock said. “I don’t suppose anything a man could dream up would surprise me. But I hoped, after the war, they’d get over it. I guess not. First heroes, now martyrs. My theory is that men like to die. If they can’t manage that, they think of some other way to do themselves in.”

  Jacob Levy said nothing. He did not know what she was talking about.

  “They’re noble, men are. They’re brave. They’ve got principles or loyalties or something. They go out, noble as hell and proud as punch, and get killed or smashed to pieces. But what about the women? What are they supposed to do?”

  She sounds crazy, he thought; she looks bad too, maybe she’s had the jaundice.

  “I’m not sure I even care about the men anymore. I used to but I could have saved my pity. I think they enjoy it. I think it makes them feel good. Anyhow, it doesn’t seem to me they pay. It’s their women who get it. No one gives a damn about the women. Mothers, wives, what do they matter, anyhow? Let them rot.”

  “Would you like a cigarette?” Jacob Levy asked. He wished he could stop her. Her words fell all over the room, clattering like dropped china or tin pans, and the sound beat on his nerves and on the broken bones of his skull.

  “Thank you.” Dorothy Brock lighted a cigarette and went on, talking for herself. She did not look at him to see whether he was listening.

  “Maybe it was allright the way they had their wars in the old days. But now women get mixed up in it and they can’t take it. I don’t mean the danger; I mean what you see. After you’ve seen enough of it you get frightened. What’s the use of loving a man and having children and trying to make a life, if it’s all going to be wasted? Men don’t love women, you know,” she said, conversationally. “Sex, yes, that’s different. But not love them. Or else how is it they can always invent something that finishes any life a woman could be happy in? Like wars and concentration camps and whatever they’ll think up next? I know the men get massacred while they’re about it but I tell you, honestly, that’s their nature.”

  As if the people in Dachau wanted a place like Dachau, Jacob Levy thought, trying to follow this hostile voice. She was crazy and stupid and mean, and he stared at her without friendliness.

  “You’re a good example,” Dorothy Brock observed. “The person who censored your letter didn’t close it, the one to Kathe, so I read it. Straight curiosity and I shouldn’t have but anyway I did. So you ask a girl to marry you, you let her get her hope up and plan and look forward to a lovely life and then, as soon as you can, you fix it so she’ll have nothing. See what I mean?”

  “I’m sorry I sent you those letters,” Jacob Levy said. If he wasn’t lying down he wouldn’t feel so weak and helpless, with her taller than he was and slamming words at him. “I shouldn’t of asked.”

  “Oh that’s allright, Levy. I was glad to do it. I haven’t had a chance to forward the second one but I will when I get back.”

  Kathe didn’t know. Kathe was waiting for him to come. He knew about hope. He knew how you paid for every day of hope, after the hope failed, with anguish. He had tried to spare Kathe that, but Dotty couldn’t be bothered. He turned from Dorothy Brock then because, if he saw her, he would curse her out loud, to her face.

  “Or maybe you’re scared of going home. Jail’s safe. You don’t have to decide anything there. Maybe it’s a good idea; maybe I could use it myself. Because God knows,” she said softly, “I cannot see what I’m to do next.”

  She looked at her watch. Levy was not listening and she had stayed longer than she meant to. Levy had made up his mind and nothing she said would change him. Besides, she had spoken in anger because of his face and because she hated to see extra waste and suffering. There was no need for any more; the world was sufficiently spoiled without Levy adding himself to the disaster. But anger was wrong and she had muffed it. She could help no one. One way or another, she thought, we’re diseased. You could, perhaps, not expect to come out of a war fresh as a daisy and sound as a dollar. She ought not to keep Tommy waiting. What was the sense in trying to think, for herself or Levy; where did it get you? The best system was to flit about, chattering like a monkey, or else work until you dropped at some simple job like tacking paper streamers in a dome over a dance floor. Keep moving, keep busy, wake up in the morning, go to bed at night and occasionally, before you remembered to stop yourself, hope something would appear out of this ratrace that you could believe in.

  She pushed the chair back, but as Jacob Levy did not turn his head, she walked around the cot to say goodbye. His eyes were closed and tears had squeezed under his lashes. The pain in his arm was more than he could handle.

  How do I know what anyone else thinks or feels or goes through, she accused herself, who am I to stand around laying down the law? I might at least have noticed he’s sick. She put her hand over his, on the khaki blanket, and said, “I’m sorry, Jake.”

  Then she stooped quickly and kissed his hand because his forehead was all bandages. “Jake, believe me, there are enough unhappy women already.”

  He did not open his eyes or speak. She crossed the room, careful to keep her heels from clicking on the cement floor, and closed the door.

  27

  He lay with his good arm across his face as if he were shielding himself. He felt sicker now than he had at the very beginning, from fever and the different pains in his head and in his left arm. They talked to him until he thought he was going crazy. He wanted to shout at them all: I’d do it again. But he was too tired and besides they were his friends. No one blamed him so why should he shout at them? They did blame him, only not for what he had done.

  Bert said: if it’ll make you feel any better I’ll go out and shoot some of the sons of bitches myself, but you got to admit, Jake, we’ll never get them all. It stands to reason, everybody’s been fighting them for more’n five years and there’s a lot of them around. The Colonel says that Major’s a regular lawyer and he’s bound to know what’s best when it’s a trial. I don’t see how it hurts the krauts if you’re shut away somewheres. The guys feel bad about it, Jake, they don’t want to see you go to jail.

  The Colonel said: Major Jarvis knows his business, Levy, you ought to let him decide. We’re all sticking with you and I don’t care if a steering rod busted and you killed fifty krauts. But it’s done and over with and there’s no sense being stubborn. It’s a hard thing for the Battalion, Levy. You’ve been with us a long time and it’s your outfit too and I know you don’t want to foul up the record.

  Dotty said: Kathe.

  Dotty was right; he knew she was right. Every time he thought of Kathe he stopped himself because he felt it would be like running out on the people in Dachau and in the train if he only missed Kathe and grieved for their life. So he ran out on Kathe: that was what Dotty meant. How could you do what was decent if either way you had to cheat somebody?

  He moved a little in the bed but he could not ease his arm. The doctor had been in a hurry, with some guy brought in for an operation, but he said the place where the bone came through was infected and later tonight they would take off the plaster. The infection was what made his face so hot and gave him this empty shaking in his stomach. The doctor’s been swell to me, Jacob Levy thought, he agrees with Major Jarvis too.

  Kathe, Kathe, he said in silence, I never wanted to spoil your life. I love you. I wouldn’t of written you unless I was sure I could build you a home and take care of you. But you see how it is. I have to think of those poor people too. I tried to help them, Kathe, I can’t go back on that. Then he thought, suddenly and finally: nobody can give them back their lives. He was too late. He should have tried to help them long ago. Now he was lost again in his confusion.

  He knew he would not be able to get it straight, no matter how often he went over it, because it was too big for him. He would never understand how such a place as Dachau came to be and was allowed to go on for twelve years. Governments decided those things between themselves; governme
nts didn’t explain to people what they were really doing. Even if he had known about Dachau all along he didn’t see how he could have helped, except he would have volunteered for flame throwers.

  They said it wasn’t murder but he had intended it to be murder. They called it manslaughter and Major Jarvis said he was certain he could get him free if he would keep his mouth shut but if he pleaded guilty he would go to jail for ten years. You might as well die as go to jail for ten years. What could you do and what would you be, afterwards? You could not offer yourself to Kathe, ruined and dirtied with ten years of jail. And Momma would be there, all that time, trying to hold her head up and maybe dying of it herself.

  He had expected the army to hang him because that was the law but he believed what he had done was right. Now he believed what he had done was useless: one man could not teach the krauts to be ashamed. Maybe nobody could if they didn’t feel it themselves. He had not helped the people; he had only killed three more krauts. He was not sorry about the krauts and he never would be. Even now, remembering, he hated them as much. They knew what was going on; they lived there; they heard it, saw it, smelled it. If they’d had any human feelings, they’d have pulled the people out of the train; they’d have attacked the barbed wire where it was open to anybody with fields around it, and let the prisoners out. The Nazis would shoot them for trying, but that was when you had to get shot. If you didn’t, if you sat in your house and didn’t notice or thought Dachau was okay or were too scared, you were filth the way the S.S. guards were, only slimy hiding filth. He would never be sorry about them, though he had not planned to escape himself. It was a fluke he was thrown from the jeep instead of flattening against that tree. If he’d thought at all, he wanted it to be even between them, the same as if he’d killed them with his bare hands. And still it had not helped the people; that was what he came back to. If I had a million dollars I’d take all those poor people and put them on a fine farm, he thought. But he did not have a million dollars and the band was pressing tighter around his forehead and he was not thinking clearly as he needed to.

  I don’t know, Jacob Levy said to himself, I can’t understand it all. He couldn’t save the people before and he couldn’t look after them now. Once in his life he had done something, of his own will, for nobody he knew, not caring what became of him after, and it was no use. And maybe the reason he didn’t tell Major Jarvis please to fix it so he’d be free was because he wouldn’t admit that he was wrong, and he might as well sneak out of it the way you always tried to if you’d made an ignorant mistake. Now he had nothing left for himself because his faith was gone. He foundered in this despair, thinking: I should of hit that tree harder.

  He lay for a while, given over to pain, and drifted into not sleep but a feverish dozing rest. Then he forced his mind back, saying to himself: I oughtn’t to be like this. I can’t run out on Kathe. I’m all she’s got too. He had to get it straight about Kathe. Even if he couldn’t handle the big things, he loved Kathe and he was sure he could make her a home and see that no harm came to her. But was he? It wasn’t a question of sure. What happened once could happen again. Look how it was in the war. First the krauts bombed women and children and then we bombed women and children. How could you guarantee there wouldn’t be a Dachau again?

  The idea came by itself, unexpected and menacing, and he lay still between the sweaty sheets, feeling a new fear. How can you be sure, he asked himself, and it seemed that the voice in his brain was whispering. I’m a Jew, he thought and remembered the faces in the prison, I’ll always be a Jew. He was getting cold, underneath the fever, and a weight heavier than plaster pinned him to the bed. He could not move, imagining the world which had grown ugly and strange, after Dachau, change and widen so that all of it, everywhere, was dangerous with a danger you could not see. The danger was poisoned, spreading, and you would not know from what direction it came. The people must have waited in their houses, on their farms, and never known what day they would be called for nor where they would be taken. What happened once could happen again.

  The city was silent and there was no sound of nurses walking in the halls or men calling or talking in the wards. The plaster over his ribs was crushing him; he could not get enough air in his lungs. He had discovered something he shouldn’t know; he must not speak; he would let no one see he had guessed. He must wait.

  But what if you didn’t wait? What if no one could make you wait? He lashed his legs, ripping off the blanket. When he tried to sit up the pain seized him and he had to lie back. I’ll keep my carbine, he thought; and the room was a trap like a prison cell. I won’t take a thing from anybody and if they come to get me, I’ll fight. They’ll never get me or anybody of mine in a death transport; they’ll never put us behind barbed wire. I learned a lot in this war; I learned plenty. I could organize a place so they’d have a rough time coming for us.

  Only Kathe doesn’t know. She doesn’t know it’s not the same anymore. It isn’t the way I thought when I wrote to her. You don’t know, Kathe, you haven’t seen it. He had to get her now quickly and take her away where she would be safe. But where was safe? There hadn’t been any place for the people to hide. Nowhere was sure but he still had time, at least for now. He could buy their piece of land, if he hurried, and fix up the shack with everything she’d want and watch over her and see she was happy, for as long as he had. But he couldn’t guarantee anything, that was the difference. And maybe she’d be better off without him. She was just a girl: alone, no one would trouble her.

  I love her, he thought, and now the voice in his brain was shouting. I love her and she loves me. What can people do if it’s not safe for them to love each other?

  You can’t get excited, he warned himself, and rubbed the sweat and the tears from his eyes; that won’t do Kathe any good. I’ll explain it to her. I’ll tell her it’s bad. I’ll ask her if she wants to take a chance with me and I’ll show her it’s a big one. I wouldn’t want her to get into this unless she knows what we’re up against. I’ll tell her about the Dachau people and how it was with them. And then I’ll say: Kathe, we’ll go ahead with our life but if they come for us, I’ll fight. I’m never going to wait any more.

  That’s the one thing you got to know, Kathe. I’ll fight for you and Momma and Poppa and anybody else they come after. I don’t care if they’re not Jews the way Major Jarvis says. It’s the same thing, Kathe, I saw it with my own eyes and I’ll fight for them too. Kathe darling, I never meant it to be like this. I thought it would be the two of us, with nothing to bother about, there by our stream. You don’t have to if you don’t want to, Kathe. I’d understand it if you said you couldn’t, now it’s all different.

  He got up, slowed by his weakness, and held to the bed for a moment. Then he walked to the barred window, as he did every night, and looked at the smooth blue evening sky.

  “You want to, Kathe?” Jacob Levy said, aloud. “You want to take a chance?”

  The air felt cool against his injured body. The city was closed in, under the curfew. It was so quiet you might think you were in the country, the wonderful country of woods and mountains that he remembered and longed to see. She will, he thought, I know she will; and found his hope again.

  Afterword

  I knew the title of this book before I began to write it; the title has always been the last thing I know about a book. I heard the words in a briefing of Lancaster crews at a British bomber base on a dark cold late afternoon in March 1943. An R.A.F. officer stood by a small table and spoke to rows of young men sitting on benches, like a school class. The officer told them, in a way I failed to understand, where they were going, probably he gave map co-ordinates, and what they were expected to accomplish when they got there. All I really understood was how long they had been doing this, night after night, and how quiet and tired they were. Then he said, “The point of no return is.…”

  I didn’t ask questions of men engaged in the heavy, appalling tasks of war; I listened and watched, and if anyone want
ed to explain anything that was fine. Perhaps someone explained then, but I had already taken in what I needed. The point of no return was a specific time limit, stated in hours and minutes. When reached, the pilot must head the plane back or it would have insufficient fuel to stay airborne and land in England. Turn or die; if other causes of death such as anti-aircraft fire or enemy fighters had not supervened.

  The time between briefing and take-off was hard; they had accepted that, too, night after night. The young men sat in their cold, scruffy common room and read. The call for departure was matter of fact. The crews were driven to the ungainly black bombers that looked like giant shoe boxes or maybe coffins. The planes climbed into the sky one by one and circled until they had come together in formation, then they disappeared in the dark. The people on the ground waited through the endless, freezing night until they came back, one by one, not as neatly as they had taken off. It was a good night; they all came back though there was a strained silent listening, that lasted for five or ten fearful minutes, until the last two, stragglers, could be seen, black against black. I felt half sick from cold and sadness for the young men and was careful not to show it, while I thought about those powerful, ominous words, “point of no return,” a technical phrase concerned with the fuel load of an airplane.

  When this novel started to ferment, or whatever novels do, it had its name. And it had Jacob Levy, who suddenly emerged as a complete presence. I saw where he was going but not how he was going to get there. He settled in with me, a good, simple, unthinking young man, hardly a man yet, wonderful looking though he was unconscious of his appearance. He had not looked at himself or at anything much. I figured he was eighteen in the September before Pearl Harbor, in his last year at Soldan High. He was so constant and so real that for an uneasy while he invaded my sleep and I thought I was dreaming his dreams not mine.