Tomorrow Is Forever

by Gwen Bristow

  “Smart and comfortable at the same time?” Elizabeth asked. “That’s what I need now—shoes wear out so fast with all this walking.”

  “Remember how we used to take the car out every time we wanted to go three blocks?”

  “Do I! It’s probably going to do wonders for us, walking and bicycling instead of driving everywhere, and all these vegetables from the Victory gardens.”

  “Yes, I suppose we’ll stay young and beautiful forever. They say the English are really getting a more balanced diet now than they did before the war, though it’s frightfully monotonous. They never were as vitamin-crazy as we were.”

  Spratt was saying, “But you can’t cast Blakeney as a juvenile, Stern! Those pouches under his eyes.”

  “They’re learning to do a lot with gauze since the army took all the young ones. We’re testing him tomorrow.”

  Kessler chuckled. “Gauze won’t help that face. A thousand up-all-nights have left tracks on it.”

  “Aren’t there any pretty juveniles,” exclaimed Mr. Stern, “with just a slight heart-murmur?”

  “The army takes ’em for desk duty,” Spratt said sadly. “Why not rewrite the script to make him a romantic lover of forty?”

  “You’d think,” Irene said to Elizabeth, “those men would get fed up with pictures sometime.”

  “They never do. You should know that by now. It’s like eating, one meal is hardly over before you want another. I have a brilliant idea, but nobody will listen to it.”

  “What?” asked Kessler.

  “Shakespeare had to present all his plays without any women. It’s no sillier for a girl to play Romeo than for a man to play Juliet. If the war lasts two more years you’ll be driven to it.”

  They found this so funny that two aged waiters paused to glance at their table wistfully, wishing that they had heard the joke so they could repeat it to a columnist dining in another booth, who was known to pay liberally for quips by well-known persons.

  “Real French brandy,” Mr. Stern observed with appreciation. “Not much of this left.”

  “We won’t suffer too badly when it gives out,” said Spratt. “Some of the California brandies are very good.”

  “I wonder if the Japs are rationed stiffly,” said Irene. “I hope they are.”

  “They don’t need to be,” said Spratt. “They never ate much besides rice and dried fish, did they?”

  “Serves them right,” said Mr. Stern. “I detest meat rationing. I never did learn to like fish. We always had such a lot of meat at home. We would, of course, being there in one of the meat capitals of the world.”

  “Where was your home, Mr. Stern?” asked Kessler.

  “Kansas City. Those Kansas City steaks!” he sighed reminiscently. “Have you ever eaten steak in Kansas City, Mr. Kessler?”

  “I believe not. That’s one of the pleasures I’ll look forward to after the war.”

  “You probably got one on the train, on your way to California,” suggested Mr. Stern. “Coming from New York you must have changed trains in either Kansas City or Chicago. Which was it?”

  Kessler tasted his brandy. “Chicago,” he said.

  Something clicked in Elizabeth’s head. He had pronounced it Chicawgo. A hot summer day in Tulsa, herself by the pool, the extraordinarily vivid young man on the grass beside her. “Chicawgo. I can’t seem to say it any other way. It’s like a birth certificate, isn’t it?”

  “My God,” she thought, “am I drunk or is this the way you feel when you’re about to faint?”

  The others were still discussing ration points. Their words were a bumble of sound around her. Talking to them with his habitual unobtrusive geniality, Kessler was giving her no particular attention. Elizabeth’s eyes clung to him, her lips slightly parted and her whole body tense as she stared. All the details of his appearance suddenly fitted into a pattern, so evident that it was as though some voice within herself, unheard by the others but loud in her own ears, was crying out Arthur.

  She saw, as though for the first time, the way his eyebrows grew, those crinkles about his eyes, that vertical line above the bridge of his nose, which had been very faint when she knew him. She saw the way his finger stroked the handle of the cup while he talked. She heard his voice, thicker and deeper than it used to be, the words spoken with a faint German accent, but Arthur’s voice.

  Arthur had died in a German hospital. But there he was, so close that she could have touched him. She did not touch him, for in that first moment of recognition she was paralyzed into immobility. What a fool she had been—for six months she had been seeing him and hearing him speak, and she had not seen him or heard him. But there he sat at her elbow, Arthur who had been dead for nearly twenty-five years.

  Chicawgo—what a tiny key to unlock such a tremendous door! She remembered Dick and his problem in physics. “You can’t do the problem, you try everything and you can’t make it, then a tiny detail, and there it is.”

  Had she ever before heard Kessler pronounce the name of Arthur’s native city? That first evening at their house something had been said about his trip from New York to California—had he mentioned then that he had come by way of Chicago? She could not remember. But she had heard it now, it had fitted with everything else that hitherto had been a puzzle, and now she knew.

  Kessler was making a casual remark to Spratt, something about being nearly ready to submit the treatment of a new story.

  “He doesn’t know I know,” Elizabeth was thinking. “He has lied and lied to me. I asked him if we had met before, and he said no. Good heavens—is it possible that he doesn’t know? Is it conceivable that Arthur, who was my husband, doesn’t know me? I didn’t know him. But I have changed a great deal less than he has. I’m not crippled or bearded, I haven’t got so used to speaking a foreign language that there are traces of it on my tongue. Of course he knows me. He said he didn’t, but he does. How did he stay alive? Why didn’t he tell me then? Where has he been? Aren’t we ever going to get out of this place? I’ve got to get away from here, I’ve got to think. Shall I tell Spratt?”

  The thought of Spratt gave her power to move. She changed her position slightly, and glanced across the table at him. Giving superficial attention to something Mr. Stern was saying, Spratt was watching her with an inconspicuous but unmistakable expression of concern. His eyes were saying, “Careful, you’ve had too much to drink.”

  Elizabeth nearly laughed out loud. Too much to drink—that would be his interpretation. Possibly he was right. Those Manhattans had amounted to more than she generally took in an evening. She had to behave normally now, for Spratt’s sake as well as her own. There was nothing he detested more than noticeable conduct in a public place. She had to move, to say something.

  “This can’t last forever,” Elizabeth told herself desperately. “Somebody will suggest that we leave, we aren’t going to sit here all night. I can get out soon, I can speak to him, but not now. For the next few minutes I must be ordinary. If I’ve had too much to drink so have they all, we had the same cocktails, their attention is a bit blurred too and they won’t notice me as much as if nobody but me had had those Manhattans—except Kessler—Arthur—he didn’t have the second round. He may notice.”

  She picked up her coffee and took a sip from it. The coffee was nearly cold. Evidently it had been quite a while since the waiter brought it. She drank the coffee quickly, hoping it would sharpen her attention, and with a great effort she forced her mind to focus on what they were saying.

  “When it’s today in America is it yesterday or tomorrow in Japan?”

  “Yesterday.”

  “Tomorrow.”

  “It’s tomorrow,” said Elizabeth, “because we sometimes get Tokyo on the radio shortwave band, and they always refer to Pearl Harbor as having happened December eighth.”

  (“There now, I’ve spoken. I’ve answered quite
as if nothing had happened.”)

  “I don’t believe I have ever heard the Tokyo broadcasts directly,” Kessler was saying. “What do they say about Pearl Harbor?”

  Spratt answered, evidently relieved that the drinks had not made Elizabeth as hazy as he had feared. “They call it a glorious victory,” he said, “undertaken in self-defense, since the Americans were going to attack Japan any minute.”

  “The rats,” said Mr. Stern.

  Spratt agreed and continued, “And they call General MacArthur the laughing-stock of the Orient, and Roosevelt a paranoiac warmonger leading his befuddled country to destruction, and ask why we don’t give in now and make peace, since we can’t possibly win—most of it in a beautifully modulated feminine voice. She speaks perfect English, probably went to college in Seattle. They wind up by playing Old Black Joe.”

  “Why Old Black Joe?” Kessler asked.

  “Don’t ask me why the Japs do anything, Kessler.” Spratt gave a short ironic laugh. “Why don’t you all come over some evening and listen? We can usually pick up the broadcast around ten.”

  “Speaking of time,” said Irene, “do you know it’s getting very late? We really must be getting along,” she suggested, turning to her husband.

  To Elizabeth’s inexpressible relief he agreed with her. Spratt asked for the check, and Kessler asked a waiter to get him a taxi. Elizabeth got up with the others. She heard the Sterns telling her it had been a pleasant evening, and heard herself answering. Holding her handbag tight so that the pressure of the clasp on her hand would keep her aware of her surroundings, she went with them toward the checkroom at the front, where they paused while the girl brought their coats. Spratt held her coat for her. As he slipped it around her he bent to speak to her in a low voice.

  “How do you feel, Elizabeth?”

  “I’m all right.” She made herself smile at him reassuringly, hoping he could not hear the pounding of her heart.

  “That brandy hit you for a minute, didn’t it? Sure you’re all right now?”

  She nodded. Dear Spratt. But Arthur—somehow she had to speak to him.

  A waiter approached them. “Mr. Kessler?” he said, and Kessler turned. The waiter said there was some trouble about getting the taxi. They were hard to find these days, fewer taxis in service, and so many people using them to save gas—

  There would be no problem, Spratt assured Kessler. He himself had to go by the Sterns’ to get a script from Mr. Stern, but he would take Kessler home with Elizabeth, and if Kessler didn’t mind waiting there he’d come back and pick him up, no trouble at all.

  Little as he liked making his friends play chauffeur for him, Kessler reluctantly accepted. So they would have a few minutes alone, Elizabeth thought as she got into the car with Kessler and Spratt. But could she speak to him tonight? She was not sure she could say anything coherent.

  They got home. Kessler said to her, “Don’t stay up to entertain me, Mrs. Herlong. I’ll wait in the garden, by the pool.”

  Elizabeth said good night, and went upstairs while Spratt drove over to the Sterns’. In her room she looked at herself in the mirror. Her face looked back at her, strangely ordinary. She had to speak to him now. It might be more sensible to wait till tomorrow, to be alone first and do some thinking. She could go to bed, and when Spratt came in she could pretend to be asleep; he would stop by her room, glance in a moment, and tiptoe to his own without disturbing her. That might be better. But she could not wait. That man in the garden was Arthur and she had to tell him she knew it.

  She went downstairs through the quiet house, out of the back door into the garden. Kessler was there, but apparently he did not hear her footsteps on the grass.

  He was sitting with his back to her, relaxed comfortably in a deck-chair by the pool, where a moon in its first quarter threw a faint rippling trail of light. The garden was cool and full of fragrance. Elizabeth halted a few feet behind him.

  “Arthur!” she exclaimed sharply. “Arthur!”

  Did he give a start? There was not light enough for her to tell; besides, the back of his chair was between them. But he heard her, and turned. His hand sought his cane and he got slowly to his feet.

  It seemed to her that it took him a long time to speak, though when she remembered the scene later she thought it might have seemed so because she was too distraught to have a sense of time. He only said,

  “Were you looking for someone, Mrs. Herlong?”

  For an instant she could not answer. That voice of his—that she could have heard it so often and not have known!

  When she did not answer, he said, “There is no one but me in the garden.”

  Elizabeth came toward him, and walked around to the edge of the pool so she could face his chair.

  “Stop this nonsense,” she exclaimed. “I’m looking for you and you know I am. Arthur—why did you lie to me? Why didn’t you come back before?”

  She was looking at his face, but she could not see its expression. Even the faint moonlight came from behind him. Again it seemed to her it took him a long time to answer.

  “Mrs. Herlong,” he said, “you are making a puzzling mistake. I don’t know what you are talking about.”

  “You don’t know!” she repeated. “Of course you know. Stop this, won’t you?”

  “Stop what?”

  It might have been her fancy, or it might have been agitation on his part, or merely his German accent, but his words sounded so thick she could barely understand them.

  “I didn’t know you before,” she exclaimed. “All of a sudden tonight I knew. Arthur, please, please stop it!”

  He stood like a dark shadow against the stars, his shoulders bent as he leaned heavily on his cane. That figure as she saw it was not like Arthur, who had been erect as an Indian. A vague shadow of doubt flitted across her mind, but it was gone as quickly as it had come. No, she was right, this man was Arthur.

  “And please sit down,” exclaimed Elizabeth. “Stop being so exasperatingly polite, I’ll sit down if you want me to.” She jerked up another deck-chair and dropped into it, twisting her hands in her lap. He sat down too. Now she could hardly see him at all.

  “Mrs. Herlong—” he began, but she interrupted him.

  “Why don’t you call me Elizabeth? You know me well enough!” She began to laugh, and checked herself. “Don’t tell me I’m under a strain from Dick’s going away, or that I’ve had too much to drink. They’re both true, but they don’t matter right now. Maybe it took that to stir up all the old memories that suddenly tonight showed me who you were. So stop this idiotic pretense, can’t you?”

  Elizabeth did not know it, but her own talking had given him time to get control of his emotions. Kessler was thinking now that all the time he had been assuring himself that she would not recognize him, he must have been unconsciously expecting this, for he was more ready for it than he knew. His fierce grip on himself made his voice very low when he replied.

  “Mrs. Herlong, I repeat that I don’t know what you are talking about. You think I am somebody else. My name is Erich Kessler.”

  “Your name is no more Erich Kessler than mine is. Please, please—I can’t bear this! Tell me the truth!”

  “I can’t tell you more than I’ve told you,” he answered.

  Elizabeth wet her lips. “Were you shell-shocked?” she asked incredulously. “Did you lose your memory? Don’t you know what I’m saying?”

  “No, I was not shell-shocked, and there is nothing wrong with my memory.” In the dark she could barely see him restlessly poking at the grass with his stick, as he had done before.

  “Listen to me,” she exclaimed. “You are Arthur Kittredge, you were born in Chicago, you came to Tulsa, Oklahoma, as a research chemist for the Lerith Oil Company, in 1916 you married a girl named Elizabeth McPherson, in 1917 you joined the army—don’t tell me you have forgotten!”
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  Kessler’s answer, when he spoke, was like the answers he had given her that other time they had sat outside in the dark talking to each other—steady, rigidly controlled, his only evidence of agitation that restless poking at the grass with his stick.

  “I have not forgotten,” he said.

  Elizabeth sprang up. “Then you do remember me, Arthur!”

  “No,” he returned quickly. “Sit down, Mrs. Herlong.” He spoke so forcefully that she obeyed him. “You interrupted me,” he went on. “I was about to say I have not forgotten anything that happened to me before the war. My name is Erich Kessler, I was born in Berlin. I was in this country many years ago, but I was never in Tulsa, Oklahoma, in my life, and I never saw you until your husband brought me here for dinner one night last October. Now believe me.” He spoke to her earnestly. Elizabeth sat listening, half convinced by his insistence. “You told me,” he continued, “that I reminded you of someone you had once known, and you couldn’t remember who it was. Now you have remembered; something about me—I don’t know what, since I never saw him—calls your first husband to mind. Tonight, under a great strain, you suddenly realize who it is I recall to you, and your surprise is so great that you are even persuaded not only that I have some traits in common with that man, but that I am that man.” He paused a moment, then resumed his argument. “Talk to me about it now, if that will be any relief to you. But there is one thing I beg of you.”

  “What?” she asked breathlessly.

  “Don’t say anything to your husband about this.”

  “Good heavens above, you sound as if I were a lady in a crinoline!” She heard herself beginning to laugh again, and again made herself stop. “Do you think I’m sitting here aghast at the notion that my second marriage isn’t legal, that my children—I’m not such a fool as that. There’s nothing wrong with my present marriage, Arthur. You’re legally dead, the United States Government says you are, they even wanted to pay me a pension. That has nothing to do with it. But you’re you.”

  “Yes, I am me,” he returned with an attempt at lightness. “But I am not that other man.”