The Search for Joyful

by Benedict Freedman

  Erich had cast back his mind to the sinkings. “The focus was wrong,” he said. “Time was wasted trying to produce an anti-radar coating for U-boats, using strips of aluminum as a decoy against incoming missiles. Nonsense like that, when they should have been concentrating on measures to counter the search radar on Allied surface ships. When the Allies began to detect, we began to lose.”

  I didn’t know these things still rankled. Erich had never spoken to me about them.

  “Of course,” he went on, “the main problem for a sub is air. It was solved by a German scientist, Helmuth Walter. He developed a turbine propulsion system using oxygen generated from hydrogen peroxide. His demonstration model, the type XXI and V-80, was already built in 1940. But the High Command fooled around with that damn tin foil. We lost battles simply because we couldn’t breathe. Three hundred and twelve Axis U-boats were sunk by aircraft—on the surface. If we’d been able to dive—Now, when it’s too late, I understand we have the snorkel breathing system. Stupid, stupid, stupid,” he murmured at his caviar Beluga/Oscietre.

  “Still,” Elizabeth soothed, “you saw the last of the really big actions.”

  “Do you want to know what a big action looks like? There are no heroes, believe me. We were running on radio blackout, total silence, when we were stove in. You don’t see it, you hear it. Exploding showers of sound, and a high whistling bursts your head. The next thing you are conscious of is cold, a paralyzing cold. I’d been ejected with scraps of metal, bodies, and tinned goods into a sea of oil. I remember wanting to report to Command that their chemically heated, wind-resistant flotation jackets didn’t work.”

  As I looked across at Erich Helmut von Kerll and his mother, I saw, not the panels of the restaurant, but the great hall of Valhalla. There sat Odin with his mead and ale. He feasted where warriors had fallen. There he was, the horn of plenty at his side, dining on joints of pork from a boar whose flesh never gave out. He kept a wolf on a gold chain, and eagles and ravens came to dine. Two ravens he prized above the rest. They were named Thought and Memory. He sent them far and wide to bring him tidings. He sent them also deep into the recesses of his being. What if? he asked them.

  What if this Erich, the Erich who was fluent in French and English, at home among menus and headwaiters, this sophisticated, charming man of the world, was more Erich than the Erich who was my husband? My eyes opened wide like the eyes on a china doll when you’ve screwed off the head and put your finger in to flick the metal rod. I saw everything, Elizabeth as a Valkyrie, her blond hair in braids, wearing armored breastplate, a fierce battling female. She had come from the sky to bring her son Memory, memory of his home, of his family, of his duty.

  She had come to take him back.

  Him.

  Not me.

  Memory was with me too. Memory of Mama telling the twins, “Kathy is to be included.” But there was no way I would be included in Vienna. It wasn’t their fault. It wasn’t mine. I just didn’t fit.

  I’d been through a war. There I was wanted, needed—not tolerated. There I did fit. The war had changed me. Just to be included was no longer enough.

  Elizabeth never had the least intention of introducing an Indian girl to Austrian society. I was not an acceptable wife. I was not an acceptable daughter-in-law. She had come with one mission in mind, to make me see for myself how out of place it would be, how inappropriate. We belonged to different worlds, and she had set herself to demonstrate this.

  How did she do it? With gray suede shoes, tucked out of sight under the table, with a Worth suit now hunched miserably in a chair, wrinkled, the material crushed. And by an evening such as this. He was at home, I was an interloper.

  The final delving brought new torment. Erich had never spoken to me of his pain at the sinking of each U-boat, of his analysis of the war. How could he? I was the enemy.

  Was I? Had he thought of me like that? I had considered him in precisely that way. I remembered my reluctance to go near him when he lay helpless in my ward.

  I pushed myself from the table and stood up. The room swam, wineglasses were filled with swirling faces, with solicitous waiters, with flowers and a fountain, with the twin birds . . . what if?

  “Kathy, what is it?” Erich asked.

  “I’m going to find the ladies’ room.”

  “Shall I come with you?” Elizabeth asked.

  She was so sweet to me, so kind. What if I was wrong? Wrong about the braids and the breastplate? A waiter whispered to me the direction, and I turned toward it.

  It was the last I remember. Like Erich I was shot out of the water, scuttled not by a depth charge but by a Bordeaux la Grange Clairet. How humiliating.

  Had I actually fallen to the floor? Poor Erich. Poor Elizabeth. How embarrassed they must have been. I couldn’t understand it. I had never fainted in my life. I hid under the washcloth on my forehead and kept my eyes closed.

  Sixteen

  ELIZABETH SAT BESIDE me for a long while.

  “Don’t worry,” I said. “I’m not going back with you.”

  “Shh.” She changed the wet cloth.

  After a while her place was taken by Erich. “Are you feeling better?” he asked. Elizabeth was upstairs in the guest bedroom, packing—and repacking—her grips.

  “I don’t know what to say. It was the wine, I think, and the wonderful rich food, and—”

  “You don’t have to explain. It just happened, and I’m sorry.”

  “No, I’m sorry. You see, it was just too much. I’m not used to such—well, I’m not used to any of it. But I’m glad it happened.”

  He gave me a queer look. “What do you mean?”

  “Erich, I’m not going with you.”

  “Of course you’re going with us. Don’t be ridiculous.”

  “Erich, I’m not.”

  “What are you talking about? It’s our vacation.”

  “It’s not. We both know it’s not. We’ve all been pretending, you, Elizabeth, me. Once you are home in Austria, all this will fade as though it had never been.”

  He forced calm into his voice. Even so, it shook as he said, “You’re crazy, Kathy. I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “You do. You know you do. And you know I’m right. I wouldn’t fit in, just like at the restaurant. I hated every minute of it. I hated my wineglass having its own servant. How can a human being think so little of himself? To me, Erich, it’s affectation, a charade, to consult for twenty minutes how a dish is to be prepared, whether or not to add a truffle garnish.”

  “I had no idea you were not having a good time,” Erich said stiffly.

  “I’m not criticizing, Erich. I’m just saying—for me. You understand, for me it is not a way of life. I couldn’t get used to it. I don’t want to get used to it.”

  Erich was regarding me intently. “And if I give up the trip?”

  I was startled that he would suggest such a thing, and touched. “I don’t think I want you to do that. I don’t think I want to be responsible for your life, cut off from everything and everyone you knew.”

  “Let me understand, Kathy. You want me to go?”

  “Yes.”

  “And you stay behind?”

  I nodded.

  “And our marriage? It’s over just like that?”

  I compressed my lips in an effort not to cry.

  “You’ve been unhappy all these months? You were unhappy with this place that we found together and fixed up? You never, never—” He turned away.

  “I did! I do! Oh, Erich, it has nothing to do with loving you.”

  “But it was a mistake?”

  “Yes.” I couldn’t look at him, but rushed on. “It’s my fault, Erich. Totally, completely my fault.”

  “Let me understand. You’re saying it’s one of those things, a wartime marriage, a mistake?”

  “A mistake, yes. Remember how it was, Erich? I didn’t think it was significant then, but looking back, a lot of things become clear. Almost from the beginn
ing there was chemistry. You liked me, flirted with me. But it wasn’t until you were recovering from the amputation that you thought of marriage. That was part of your decision never to go back, to make a new life. I was part of that new life. I’m not part of the old. Neither one of us ever intended that I should be.”

  There was a long silence, which he broke at last. “We’ve been happy.”

  “Yes,” I acknowledged.

  “Kathy, it’s not fair on the basis of one evening to condemn an entire way of life.”

  “Not condemn, I don’t mean it like that. I’m trying to say I’m a fish out of water. I don’t fit in and I never will. And I’m not willing to cut you off, not only from your obligations, but from all those who asked after you and love you. . . . I saw your face when you inquired about your father, your cousin—and it isn’t just one evening. There’s the dress by Worth and the caracul coat, and the suit Elizabeth kindly, and I mean kindly, bought for me. They were all new dimensions, like trying to make a balloon into a certain shape. You press here, it bulges there.”

  I could see he wasn’t angry anymore. His gray eyes were again thoughtful. He was considering what I was saying.

  “You’ve been honest with me, Kathy. I can see I have been less honest with myself. I believed it was a vacation. I believed I was coming back. But you’re right about the obligation part. My family needs me. There is no one else. But you’re wrong about life there. It isn’t just social whirl and glitter. It’s being a player in the reconstruction of my country. I could influence the direction it takes, make the whole scene more open, more democratic. My voice would count.”

  “That’s what I’ve been trying to say. You’d never forgive me if I held you back from all that.”

  A minute ticked between us.

  “I can’t give you up.”

  “And I can’t go with you.”

  We heard the front door. Elizabeth had come down outside, from the guest bedroom above. “I’ve brought you tissue paper to put between the folds of your suit.”

  Erich stood up and faced her. “Kathy is not coming with us.”

  Elizabeth remained very still, looking from me to Erich. She did a strange thing: she kissed me. Then, with a small flutter of a laugh, “In that case I’ll use the tissue paper for my jasmine scarf. It will travel better that way.”

  In the morning the three of us chatted amiably about the hardships of travel, the difficulty of crossing time zones. Erich explained it as the disruption of the circadian rhythm. None of us referred to the fact that I was staying behind. He had thought about it all night. So had I. Morning did not change anything.

  When they left, Elizabeth took my hand and held it. “My dear.”

  I smiled back at her. She understood.

  Erich said, “If you change—”

  I put my finger against his lips. “Goodbye, Erich.”

  In response he bowed over my hand in his most Germanic manner and clicked his heels. It was good he did that, it reminded us both. Irreconcilable differences, those were grounds in some courts.

  Elizabeth left a note for me, in which she promised to try for an annulment. I set about transferring my things from the bedroom Erich and I had occupied to the guest bedroom. I gave the Schiaparelli dress, the gray shoes, and the Suez pink to charity. I am ashamed to say I kept the coat. Winters are so cold here.

  In moving to the second bedroom I uncovered my old wolf talisman. It was a bit mothworn, not so bushy as it had been. But the Cree believe that age implies wisdom. Perhaps the wolf tail had grown in wisdom. If so, why had it imparted none to me?

  Actually I think it had, and I hadn’t wanted to listen. I thought the loss of his leg would keep him here. I thought he needed me. It was I myself who had prepared him to leave, taught him day by day to be independent, to do for himself and not rely on me.

  Had I known what I was doing? I think so. And yet I persisted. Day after day to care for the wound, to balance, to walk without crutches with only the help of a cane. And in mastering these physical impediments his confidence flowed back until at last he could face his family, his friends, and take up a career, take up his old life. He was the only son, and he was going home. In a way I was proud. It took good nursing skills and good psychological bolstering to accomplish what I had.

  And what had it taken to undo a marriage, to break my vows? I stayed late at the hospital and after hours visited the little chapel. With a clicking of his heels he had shown me that he could leave me as easily as I could him. But it wasn’t easy. It was one of the hardest things I’d ever done. It had made me sick. If I got up from a chair too quickly the whole room swam, just as in the restaurant.

  I had always had perfect health. Mama Kathy used to say I was as strong as a little pony. What was this giddiness, this sudden faintness?

  I was a nurse, and yet I didn’t suspect. It didn’t occur to me that I was pregnant. But a second missed period confirmed it, and thought disappeared down a black tarn.

  I went to work. I changed the dressing for cot 4, checked that the acute dysentery case was responding, made a note that 12 was now urinating on his own. Suddenly I stood transfixed. I was going to have a baby.

  That night I began my letter. Dear Erich, . . . I stopped. Dear Erich, what? Come back, we’re going to have a baby? Remembering the final click of his heels, I wasn’t at all sure he would come back.

  What then? I’ve changed my mind, I’m joining you in Austria?

  Austria was no longer the land of what if. It was as alien to me as the Martian plain or the ammonia atmosphere of Venus. Oh, God, what a mess! I stared at my blank letter with its standard opening—and tried to think. How had I come to make so many mistakes? I went back to the beginning trying to figure it out.

  Katherine Mary Flannigan had done her best to ensure that my head was screwed on the right way. “Nothing should be worse because you were there,” she’d told me more than once. And my sergeant Papa of the RCMP, what would he say of my impulse to leave things as they were, to not tell Erich? With a convulsive movement I took hold of the pen. We’d talked about having a baby. Later on, at some unspecified time in the future. He’d said a boy would be Victor after his father. I smiled because I knew it would be a girl and that she would be Kathy.

  My hand held its position above the page. It’s his child. He has a right to know. The child would be part of the fantasy. The question was—which fantasy? Would we go into the woods, trap and fish and live close to nature? That had been his first fiction. He caught at anything not to go home, not to let them know he was a cripple, a man with one leg. Why hadn’t I seen as plainly as I did now that phase would pass?

  The other fantasy was mine—Austria of the waltzes, the Bodensee, and the little blond boy in the sailor suit. I would no longer be Kathy, and of Oh-Be-Joyful’s Daughter there would not be a trace. In their place a Rhine maiden sipping rare vintages from the cartes des vin with the servant of the glass assiduously pouring.

  But what deterred me mainly was a child of mixed ancestry growing up in Austria, subject to what slurs, what discrimination? And if the Naziism in Hitler’s homeland was festering beneath the surface? Did I want my child imbibing that atmosphere?

  I put the pen down without writing a word. Someday, someday I would sing little Kathy the Austrian folk songs her father had taught me. I’d tell her of our marriage, a wartime marriage which held a great deal of love, but not enough to make it right for either of us. I would tell her. And she would make the decision. If she wanted to write him, she would. If she wanted to visit him, she could do that.

  This was probably a terrible decision, I told myself, but for that night at least I didn’t go on with the letter.

  IN THE FOLLOWING weeks my waistband expanded.

  I thought Elizabeth might send me a card. She didn’t.

  What if she had sent a card? Perhaps—perhaps then . . .

  Mental paralysis seemed to have taken over. I needed to talk, confide, tell someone. Egg came immedi
ately to my mind. But how could Egg counsel me? She had never married, never been faced with the prospect of a child. But there was someone else close to me who had.

  It took only two days to arrange a temporary leave, book my seat, and once again be on the long, silver-flashing train. As mile after mile was consumed and I approached my old life, I wondered if I could find my way back into it. I wanted to be Mama Kathy’s little girl, and Connie and Georges’s little sister. Only there was no Georges. No Georges and no Papa. And my father—he was no longer that dark phantom shape, but I needed a woman. I needed my mother.

  The silver and blue train sped on, swallowing the miles, swallowing the years. In Edmonton I left the Canadian Pacific and took a bus into the forests of Alberta. At the familiar crossroads I got out. There was no marker, not even a bench advertising the local mortuary.

  Mama Kathy looked very small against the background of spruce and larch, yet somehow sturdy, timeless even, as she waved a bouquet of wayside flowers she had picked, tall lavender larkspur, fiery red paintbrush, and wild gold buttercups. She didn’t exactly wave it, she shook it at me in her excitement.

  I think I must have flung myself at her, for we rocked backward a moment, our arms tightly locked around each other. What we said was incomprehensible, because we talked at the same time, laughing, almost crying. She didn’t notice I was pregnant. It seemed obvious to to me by now, but people didn’t notice.

  She had borrowed a neighbor’s car for the occasion. We bounced along the narrow, overgrown road, Mama Kathy, me, my suitcase, and my flowers, talking all the while. Then there it was, the small house where we had all fit so snugly, the fields I had scampered across searching for arrowheads, the step I preferred to jump over, the porch where I played jacks with Connie—it all burst on me.

  The past refused to be relegated to the past. It was here, present, overwhelming. Only because I had made the pilgrimage before, when Mama Kathy was in Vancouver assembling replacement parts for planes, could I bring myself to realize she hadn’t always been here in the old familiar setting. She too had been part of the war effort, and her life must have changed as drastically as mine. It was exciting, she told me, but demanding. “I felt the pressure after a while. I’m glad to be back home. My own things, everything familiar. The pace of city life gets to you after a bit.”