Live Bodies

by Gee, Maurice

  I can’t say what those pieces were. I knew her at once. I knew Nancy. That was the music I heard. And I do not mind the Hollywood violins playing here, for it is true; I knew that I would marry Nancy Brisbois and we would live in my house on Wadestown hill. It is not knowledge, of course, but a kind of wishing. There could have been a weeping of stringed instruments that day and a crashing of discords on the piano – but no, she was not married, not engaged, and she had no prejudice against small men. When I had the chance I said, ‘We’ve met already,’ and she didn’t mind my cheek. ‘You sent me a message with your semaphore.’

  ‘I don’t remember you. Were you a prisoner there?’

  I told her I had been interned for four years, almost three of them on Somes Island, and had watched the Wrens come and go and they were the only women I had glimpsed in all that time.

  ‘But you can’t have been a …’ Remembered not to say ‘Nazi’ in this room full of refugees.

  ‘No. I come from Austria. I’m not a German.’

  She smiled at me. ‘I love the Jews.’

  ‘I didn’t say I was one.’

  ‘I think you are though, aren’t you?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I think you’re so musical.’

  I forgave her that. And she forgave me for being a baker, and for being non-musical, although she did not find that out till later. She asked if she could visit the bakehouse. She had seemed a practical person at the keyboard, sitting square, although in her body she was round, and playing her notes without the usual high-jumping with her hands, and I thought I might impress her doing practical things; so I said yes.

  ‘Come tomorrow if you’re free.’

  Then I slipped out the door at the back of the room as the Steiner Trio prepared for the second half of its concert, and walked home to Berhampore, looking in at the bakery on my way to see how Henk was getting on, and I lay in my narrow bed while soft rain fell on the iron roof. It played a private concert for me. I slept until Benjamin called me at eight o’clock. He had made bread dumplings, with Kaiserschmarrn for pudding, and he behaved as though our meal was a celebration.

  ‘Be quiet, Benjamin, or I’ll go to work.’

  ‘Miss Brisbois will not make music her career. Her playing is too square.’

  ‘Have you told her that?’

  ‘I am not her teacher.’

  ‘Don’t tell her anything. Button your lip.’

  He smiled with delight.

  And I’m sure,’ I said, ‘that Miss Brisbois could be a concert pianist if she liked. I just don’t think it’s the life she wants.’

  ‘I think she will learn baking bread,’ Benjamin said.

  Nancy came to the bakery next morning. I had the mixer going and we could not talk. I sat her in a warm place by the oven, put my ear muffs on her, and went on with kneading a small dough. She watched for a minute, then came to my side. ‘Can I do some?’ she shouted.

  ‘Wash your hands. Lesson one.’

  She laid them for inspection on my palms when she came back, and I felt their weight (like bread) and saw their strength. Then I watched as she worked dough in the trough, a large young woman, taller than me by an inch or two, and perfectly made: rounded, muscled, sinewed, strongly boned – breasted too, hipped too; and I thought with no concupiscence but only recognition, a woman who was open not closed, and moist not dry, and was ready to be loved. I told myself, She’ll do; and several months later, when I confessed it to her and she’d laughed, she said that her feeling as she worked had been the same – he’ll do. We did not understand that we were falling in love, for we were both of us unromantic. Romance did not come into our lives till later on. We remained practical and excited; and that I recommend as a course, even if now and then you hear violins play.

  She walked home with me to Berhampore and we ate lunch with Benjamin at the kitchen table. He talked about music, trying hard not to embarrass us, and so embarrassed us a little.

  ‘He’s a lovely man,’ Nancy said as we went back to work. ‘His wife gave him a hard time with all that baking bread.’

  ‘I’ve saved him from that. But I should tell you, I don’t like music much myself.’

  ‘Hmm,’ Nancy said.

  ‘But of course I can learn.’

  I timed things so I could see her home to Island Bay, where she boarded with an aunt. We walked up past the rugby ground, then I sat her on the bar of my bicycle and doubled her all the way down the long road to the sea. She did not ask me in to meet her aunt, or the friend who boarded with her – that little sharp Wren with the porcelain cheeks who had ordered me to scat. (She, Moira Williams, never liked me and thought Nancy mad for marrying me, but Aunt Alma came on to my side once she had decided I was ‘a Christian Jew’.)

  I rode back up the hill, fit and strong, and coasted down to Newtown, where I worked till 2 a.m. I put on my ear muffs because Nancy had worn them – and that is romantic, I suppose – but soon took them off because they turned my ears hot. I had given her two loaves (she had earned them) and I thought, Nancy is eating my bread for lunch tomorrow. That, I see, is romantic too.

  She worked as a clerk in a government office and she began to catch an early tram and get off in Newtown and spend half an hour each morning in the bakehouse with me. I put gloves on her, armed her with a paddle and let her take loaves from the oven, her favourite job. She turned them from their tins and set them to cool, then with a grin was off to work – and came back scarlet one day because she had joined the tram queue wearing her apron. I kissed her cheek to feel its warmth and thought with amusement when she’d gone, I’ll always be kissing uphill.

  I make a joke of that time because it is too much for me. I do not wish to peel myself, or reveal Nancy, whom I knew then and cannot know again. I would simply make her pirouette. Anecdotes are another matter. I could talk about her till the cows come home.

  She borrowed a bicycle to ride out with me and one Saturday afternoon we pedalled along the Hutt Road, with a southerly wind pushing us into the base of the hill, and walked to the end of Petone wharf. I pointed out Wishart’s launch and the part of the beach where Willi and Steinitz and I had come ashore. She remembered the escape, she had been in her last year at school.

  ‘There was a man, I can’t remember his name …’

  ‘Willi Gauss.’

  ‘His photo in the paper was so good-looking. We didn’t want him to get caught.’

  ‘What about me?’ I was trying to put aside the fear that if Willi met Nancy he would steal her from me.

  ‘I don’t remember you. Was your picture there?’

  ‘Yes. They said I had thick lips. But Willi’s got thicker lips than me.’

  She looked at me, startled. Then she laughed. ‘Yours are thin. And rather mean-looking at the moment.’ She touched my mouth. ‘Smile. That’s better. Tell me about your escape.’

  I told her; and for a moment she joined the other side. Germans had to be captured, good-looking or not. Then, hearing me, and seeing me, she swung, quick and easy, on to my side. I told her how we had been caught, and then how, next spring, I had dug a tunnel.

  ‘You could have been killed.’

  ‘I was pleased when someone pimped on us.’

  ‘I bet you were. I’m glad too.’

  I kissed her. It was the first time we had kissed, and I thought, We should do this lying down. I pulled off her woollen gloves – in the southerly! – and we held hands with naked palms.

  ‘Can you still talk in semaphore?’

  ‘If I tried. It’s just the alphabet. We used to say some rude stuff – about men we liked.’

  ‘Did you like some?’

  ‘Of course I did. I’m a normal girl.’

  ‘What’s degaussing?’

  ‘Oh, it’s for repelling mines.’

  ‘I know that. But how does it work? What did you do?’

  ‘Well,’ she said, ‘when a convoy came in –’ and she talked nonstop for ten minutes – F coils and Q coils
, plus and minus settings, and calling ships on the radio for length and beam and draught – and I saw how she had enjoyed being in the Wrens.

  ‘We didn’t know what you were doing,’ I said, not telling her Will’s joke that the degaussing hut was a brothel for the guards.

  ‘We had to keep away from you prisoners,’ she said. ‘They told us you had some baddies there.’

  ‘Hoch was bad. Von Schaukel was bad.’

  ‘I met a bad man,’ she said. ‘He wasn’t on Somes Island.’

  ‘Who? Where?’

  ‘He was a Yank. A sailor. I didn’t know Wrens were only supposed to go out with officers. He was just an enlisted man. I’m sorry, I don’t mean just.’

  ‘What did he do?’

  ‘He wasn’t even drunk. And he said, “Come on, baby. Let’s increase the population of the coming generation.” I mean, what a way to talk to a girl?’

  ‘What did you do?’

  ‘I punched him.’

  ‘Slapped him.’

  ‘No, I said I punched. I broke one of his teeth. The Yanks are very careful with their teeth. So he punched me back. He knocked me over.’

  ‘Good God,’ I said.

  ‘He tried kicking me on the floor but I got behind the sofa. I think he would have killed me if his friends hadn’t come in and stopped him.’

  ‘Is this the hand you punched him with?’

  ‘Yes. See the little scar there, on my finger.’

  ‘Did you ever have to punch anyone else?’

  ‘I know what you’re asking. I don’t believe in it till after marriage.’

  We rode home, away from Somes Island and the war, into a gale that very nearly stopped us dead, and although we had not used the words, or kissed more than once, I had asked her to marry me and she had said yes.

  I had learned that Nancy was not always mild.

  Benjamin sacked her from the Ascher Trio and gave her place to a girl of fifteen. She wasn’t offended.

  ‘I wasn’t good enough for them.’

  ‘Don’t give up the piano.’

  ‘I won’t. But I’m going to spend more time baking bread.’

  ‘Why don’t you spend your whole time?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I need someone to look after things. Do the buying and the orders and accounts. Could you do that?’

  ‘I suppose I could.’

  ‘And manage the place when I’m not here. You can even do some baking. Henk’s going up to Auckland next week.’

  ‘If I come you’ve got to keep this place a bit more tidy.’

  I smiled at her. ‘You’ll get what you’re earning now. Plus as many loaves as you can carry. But you’ve got to start this morning. Right away.’

  ‘What about my notice?’

  ‘Take a sickie. And then take leave. One of my drivers isn’t in. I’ve got to go on the road. So, you start.’

  ‘I like bosses who say please.’

  ‘Please,’ I said.

  The missing driver came in ten minutes after I’d gone. He had been at an all-night party.

  She said, ‘You’re late. And you stink of beer. And you’re not shaved. Do you really think I’m letting you deliver bread like that?’

  ‘Where’s Joe?’ he said.

  ‘Joe’s out on the road, doing your job. Which you don’t have any more.’

  ‘Like hell!’

  ‘Go and see your union. Right now. While you’re drunk.’

  Something like that. Henk described it, laughing all the while. The man spat on the floor and walked out, and Nancy ran a bucket of hot water and got down on her knees and scrubbed him away.

  ‘She is good wife. Marry her,’ Henk said.

  We travelled by train to Masterton to meet her parents. It was no small thing for us to take the whole Saturday off and we were cross, thinking about the bakehouse, as well as nervous and edgy about the meeting. They were not going to like me, we knew that. Already they had called on the telephone to say how appalled they were that she should leave her ‘nice job at the ministry’ to be ‘some sort of slavvy in a baker’s shop’.

  She played a jumpy tune on her knees all the way along the harbour front. I put my hand on hers. ‘Stop it,’ I said.

  ‘You’ll hate them.’

  ‘Are they so bad?’

  ‘They’re pretty awful.’ She looked at me and grinned and whispered in my ear, ‘They eat white bread.’

  ‘How did they have you, then?’

  ‘They found me floating in a basket in the reeds.’

  ‘Ha,’ I said. ‘You know I’m not a Jew by religion. We don’t have to have a rabbi marrying us.’

  ‘That will really please them. Josef, before you meet, I want to know about your parents please.’

  I told her about our apartment on Gluckgasse, a good address, only five minutes walk from the Graben. I could look out from my window over the roofs and see the flying buttresses of St Stephen’s Church. I described growing up with a maid and a cook, and driving in a Mercedes, and walking in the parks, swimming in the river, camping in the Woods – and none of it was alive for me. We reached the hill, where Fell engines coupled on. ‘Yes, Josef,’ she said, ‘all that’s very interesting. But what about them, your family?’

  I said that I had a brother, Franz, who lived in America. We wrote to each other once a year.

  I felt Nancy’s hand grow slack in mine, and I thought, I’ll lose her unless I tell. If I know hers she’s got a right to mine.

  ‘I had a sister called Susi,’ I said. ‘She was fifteen when I left. She and Franz escaped from Vienna when the Nazis came. But then she died in Paris.’

  ‘Died of what?’

  ‘I don’t know. Franz said she just couldn’t breathe any more. He went to New York and he’s still there.’

  She swallowed. I saw her throat swell and wanted to touch it with my hand and feel the passage of her blood.

  ‘What about your mum and dad?’ she said.

  I had never called them that. It moved them so close I felt they might sit down in the seat across from me. I said, ‘They’re dead.’

  ‘Tell me about when they were alive.’

  ‘Yes, all right.’ I swallowed too, and she said, ‘Only as much as you want to, Josef.’ She said ‘Josef’ with the proper Austrian sound.

  ‘Their names were Anna and Benno,’ I said. ‘He was a coal merchant and she played the piano, but not as well as you. They were …’

  I talked about my parents all the way to Masterton, and when I came to their deaths I said, ‘My father went to Dachau. They sent all the socialists and communists there. And anyone else they didn’t like or wanted to rob. Lots of Jews. My father went so some Nazi party man could steal his business. They didn’t murder them all in Dachau, only some.’

  ‘Don’t,’ she said. ‘Don’t tell me how.’

  ‘They starved them and shot them and made them work sixteen hours a day. Old men too. It wasn’t an extermination camp. Not till later. They sent his ashes to my mother and made her pay. She – I don’t know how she lived. She stayed in Vienna three years. Then they rounded them up and sent them to a ghetto in Poland, at Lodz. She must have been too sick to work. She was only there a few weeks and they sent her to the death camp at Chelmno.’

  ‘That’s enough, Josef. No more please.’

  ‘They gassed them in trucks on the way to the graves.’

  ‘Josef.’

  ‘You started me.’

  ‘And I’m stopping you. Here’s Masterton. It’s my parents now.’

  They were more awful than she had prepared me for. Mrs Brisbois had a false-teeth smile and eyes that hated me on sight. She hated Nancy too, for ‘doing this to her’. I could not believe that there had ever been love. As for the father, he was Roy Cooksley again – the same pumped-up belly and oxblood cheeks. He had been a great rugby player in his day and photographs of him in his black jersey adorned the walls. Huge hands. Shoulders huge. Ears cauliflowered from locking the scrum. ‘Bri
sboy, none of that fancy stuff.’ He was in insurance, he let me know in the five minutes before we broke our news. Insurance, bloody Cooksley, I thought. And because I must say something: ‘That’s what Kafka did.’

  ‘Who’s he? Some wop?’

  ‘A writer,’ I said – and Nancy stared at me, amazed. ‘He was a Czechoslovakian. And a Jew.’

  ‘So, they’ll have got rid of him,’ Brisbois said.

  ‘We’re not too keen on foreigners in Masterton,’ said his wife. ‘But if you’re a friend of Nancy’s …’

  ‘There’s a good halfback in Auckland called Tetzlaff,’ Brisbois said. ‘They’re little jokers, most foreigners. Do you know what I weighed in my playing days? Sixteen stone. I could pick Vi up under my arm and run the length of the field with her. What you think of that?’

  ‘What for?’ I said.

  Brisbois grinned at me, or bared his teeth. ‘To score three points. You’re some sort of baker, Nancy says.’

  ‘Yes, I am.’

  ‘Do you make any money or just dough?’ It was a joke, he’d thought it out, and I was so startled that I laughed.

  ‘I’m doing all right. Nancy brought a loaf of bread for you and Mrs Brisbois.’

  ‘Yes,’ Nancy said, and took it from her bag, wrapped in a cloth.

  ‘Give it here,’ Brisbois said. ‘Jesus – sorry, Vi – that’s a weight. Enough of these and you could build a house. You sell this stuff?’

  ‘Lots of it,’ Nancy said. ‘You’re behind the times, Dad.’

  ‘What’s your part? How much does he pay you?’

  ‘More than I used to get. I do all the buying and the accounts. I do the books.’

  ‘It’s not as nice as working in the ministry. That was a salary,’ Mrs Brisbois cried.

  ‘Yeah. You chuck it, Nance. Monday you get your old job back.’ He turned his eyes on me and I saw I was wrong to suppose that joking made him capable of good humour. ‘I think this feller might be stringing you a line.’

  ‘No, he’s not,’ Nancy said. ‘Mum, Dad, there’s something you should know. Josef and I are getting engaged.’