Rumors of Peace (24 page)

I never went back to the Stappnagel house, even though I didn't like giving up Valerie. She was an unexciting person, but likable, and I had liked her very much. Now, thinking back to our last conversation, I felt bad because I knew I had smashed her cloudless spirit forever. She sat alone in her room, with the dog's grave outside her window, and she had nothing to turn to but her equations, and their answers would never satisfy her now because she knew, as I did, that math was only marks on paper. If the
X
of an equation stood for one absolute number, what good did it do? What did it tell you about anything else? My feverish involvement with numbers seemed a pointless dream I had emerged from. The thought of my math text filled me with impatience. The thought of Mr. Lewis in September left me unmoved.

August, and the stagnant marsh smell hung briny and pungent in the air. Brassy music rolled in waves from the USO. The buckled sidewalk of the courthouse had been repaved, the great fluted columns set back straight. Sea gulls drifted in the hot sky. The huge catastrophic night was gone.

I
T WAS ON
S
UNDAYS
that I noticed I was shooting up like a weed, because on that day I had to wear a dress and its hem seemed an inch higher every week. Possibly that was why Valerie had seemed to get smaller all summer. Possibly it was why grown people seemed less towering. Now when I thought back to that awful day in Berkeley, brooding over my tuna sandwich in my tight plaid dress, I saw myself as an altogether different person then, a short, unworldly bore, an imbecile perhaps rightly ignored.

I went to the library and wrote Helen Maria a letter. I went to the library because they had a book there called
Roget's Thesaurus,
which was a book of synonyms for every word that existed. I also consulted the dictionary, looking up the spelling of every word I used, even ordinary ones I wasn't sure of, like
goeing
and
chainge;
and was attentive to my grammar, although I was surprisingly good at grammar, maybe because I had listened so long to Helen Maria's crystal intonations that they had only to be transferred to paper.

            
Dear Helen Maria,

                
I forgot to write and thank you for having me down. Thank you. I saw Peggy on the street the other day but I didn't stop. As you know, she is an erstwhile friend who I ceased
communicating with a long time ago. I believe people change. In Peggy's case she changed into a sugar plum, that is your own term, and I find her unbearably boring, which of course you do too. In my own case I have also changed but for the better. Many things have happened since I saw you. I received an A in math and got a special promotion into College Prep algebra, but I am not interested anymore. It is my belief that mathematics are dust and ashes as far as real truth is concerned.

                
Of course you are well aware of the Port Chicago explosion which caused so many deaths and casualties. It was a disaster that was horrible to go through, and it makes you think deeply about things. However, I know you don't like how I am always interested in the horrible things caused by war so I will not dwell on this subject any longer. But trusting you will not be offended, it is my belief that your attitude toward war is cavalier and always has been.

                
However, you are right about many other things, and I give you exceptional credit for that.

                
I hope your friend Egon is well and that he is enjoying the summer, which is his favorite season. You may tell him that I am going to study the history of the Jews, which we discussed in your absence. I may also read up on Rosa Luxury who seems to have impressed you very much, although your Rosa Luxury friend Ruth did not impress me very much. I trust you are in good health and doing well as usual in your studies, meanwhile I will sign off with hearty regards,

Suse

It took almost three hours to find the exact words I wanted, to check all the spelling, and to write a neat copy. I liked it. It was a clear and honest letter, and I had said what I planned to say—except for the Jews and Rosa Luxury, who had appeared on the page unexpectedly and whom I would now have to look up in the
Encyclopaedia Britannica.
But I would put that off for the time being. After taking the letter down the street to the post office, I put it in the mail slot with a feeling of accomplishment.

The spine thrills had left me. I checked on them now and then, bumping casually against soldiers, grazing the grocery clerk's hand as he took the ration book, slipping into the warm chair just vacated by our insurance agent. Maybe it was the explosion that had blasted the tingles from me. I felt it had blasted much from me; some last unsteady footing had been demolished, leaving no footing at all, only a sharp, bitter airiness, as if I hung in space. Yet there was this sharpness, something that was new and in a way untrammeling: think of that letter, so certain, so pointed. As for the tingles, I was glad to be rid of them. They had taken up too much time and emotion. Now I was uncluttered, free, with a bitter sharpness.

The cause of the blast was never settled. It could have been carelessness; it could have been sabotage. Many favored sabotage, especially Sheriff O'Toole in his
Clarion
column, and there was no doubt in my own mind. One of your harmless Nisei released from camp to come back and do his dirty work, to turn the white-uniformed sailor and his 267 companions into shreds of black flesh. In the privacy of my room I did my gory artwork, and at night the holocaust of the Jap house crackled behind my closed lids. But more often than not it was whiskered Mr. Stappnagel and his wife in her flowered housecoat whose necks were severed, and it was their house surrounded by manzanitas that went up in flames. And sometimes it was the bigwig emissaries whose heads went rolling, and their Lisbon conference room that was gutted, and sometimes the movie star heroes and their flimsy studios, or the newspapermen and their type-clacking offices.

            
Dear Suse,

                
What a pleasant surprise your letter was. People do indeed change. You have no idea how astringent it was to hear you contradicting me outright on my attitude toward the war. Your belief happens to be incorrect, but I give you credit (perhaps even exceptional credit) for stating your opinion so honestly. I must also congratulate you on your success in and disavowal of mathematics, which, though in its highest form incorporates the highest truths,
would seem a metier unsuited to your nature. My own studies, thank you, are going well.

                
You imply that I was unaffected by the Port Chicago disaster. That is not quite the case; it was the most horrifying night of my life. Radio reports led me to believe that Mendoza was devastated and my family dead, and when I learned the truth, my relief was submerged by the realization of what had happened to so many others. Do not think that you have a monopoly on human feeling. You have an obsession with war. There is a difference.

                
So you are spending your summer immersed in worthy projects, unlike our former consort, who is beleaguering Jack and Estelle to redo the Dungeon on behalf of cheerier jitterbug parties. Thank God I am no longer living there. But who, may I ask, is Rosa Luxury? Do you mean Rosa Luxemburg? I don't remember mentioning her, but you will find her an interesting person to study. I've promised my parents to come home for a visit during semester break, so I'll look forward to seeing you then.

Helen Maria

            
P.S. Egon is very well, and sends his regards.

It was a wonderful letter, even if my face burned over Rosa Luxury and even if my concern with the sufferings of war was questioned as to its sincerity; she was wrong there, but she had a right to her opinion, as I had a right to mine. It was the letter of someone writing an equal, and it was a letter of friendship, and not least of its delights was its reference to Egon, whose name I touched with my finger, feeling the warmth of his eyes and smile radiate through the ink.

I sat defeated over the encyclopedia. Rosa Luxemburg was a German revolutionist born a Jew in Russian Poland. This was of unnatural complexity, as was the whole essay, of which I understood nothing except the last sentence where she was beaten to death and thrown in a canal.

I sat fidgeting for a while. It was a hot morning; the library was warm and stuffy. If I investigated this tight-packed column of baffling terms, I would be here all day. Still, I had to know what I was talking about when Helen Maria came home. Getting the dictionary and
borrowing a pencil and some paper from the librarian, I began rereading the essay and listing the words I didn't understand—
revolutionist, theoretician, agitator, Communism, faction,
and many others—winding up with over twenty.

Then I began looking them up and writing out their definitions. This was painfully slow work, since the definitions also contained words I didn't know and I had to look them up too; and those definitions contained more unknown words that had to be looked up; and so on in a spreading plague until I had scribbled down so much I had to borrow more paper. At noon I went home for lunch, wishing I had never heard of Rosa Luxemburg. But I remembered Peggy's rapture over her encyclopedia adventure, how one thing had led to another and they all wound up fitting together like rose petals and opening in a blaze of wonderful sense. When I had finished my sandwich, I walked back through the blistering heat to finish my work.

At four o'clock I finished. My hand was stiff with writer's cramp; sheets and sheets of scribbled paper covered the table. Now, with every last word tracked down, I would reread what I had written and then reread the essay.

I did so, and when I was done, I sank back in my chair. Either Peggy was smarter than I was or she was a bag of wind. There was no wonderful sense here, just the same confusion that had greeted me on my first reading. The whole day had been wasted.

But dimly, as I sat glaring at the littered table, I sensed something happening. I saw something in my mind that seemed to be large and convulsive, like a giant pot of mush seething. I watched as it bubbled and boiled and heaved. It was the masses, the proletariat. And over there was a bowl of smooth custard; that was the wealthy people, the capitalists. Mush pot and custard bowl. And now, as if in a vision, they began to move around, and other words began taking shape. Exploitation was the custard bowl making the mush pot do all the work. Class struggle was the pot trying to explode off the stove and the bowl trying to keep it there. Revolution was when the pot finally did explode.

My eyes dazzled. So much for Peggy and her piddling triumph; it couldn't match this. And eagerly, confidently, I read through the essay once more. There were many subtleties that I would ponder at my
leisure, but for the moment I relished the essentials:

Rosa Luxemburg gave revolutionary speeches which were highly agitating, agitation meaning to excite and disturb. She was head of the Spartacus party, Spartacus being an ancient Roman slave who led a slaves' rebellion, which was why the party was named so. But it was not the only revolutionary party, because of factionalism. Factionalism was many little mush pots seething and arguing because their theories differed. Rosa Luxemburg argued the best because she had brilliant theories and was a brilliant orator, and she led the proletariat to revolt and riot. Unfortunately she was beaten up by reactionary troops—reactionary was being against progress—and when she was dead, they threw her in a canal. And that was Rosa Luxemburg.

It was a tragic story, yet I felt tiredly happy. With hard labor I had wrested free the flower of knowledge, and now I sat spent and illumined in its golden light.

I
PLANNED
to tackle the Jews the next morning, but it was so hot that I went down to the creek instead, to cool my feet in one of its stagnant sumps, a poor substitute for my Red Cross swims, which had just ended, but at least water.

The heat was always more intense in the creek, more dusty and dry and piercing than anywhere else. Crackling and powdery, it stung the nostrils and eyes, prickled in little hives all over the body. Beds of gravel glared; dragonflies glittered in tall, chalky weeds; cicadas droned, broke off, droned again. Sweat rolled down my ribs as I walked, patching my shirt and gathering damply in the band of my shorts. When I saw a swarm of gnats, I plodded over to it and with the toe of my tennis shoe splashed aside the scum of a sunken pool. Then, after pulling off my shoes, I stepped in and stood immersed to the ankles. The water was sun-filled, warm, the clear golden brown of cider. I scratched my prickling body, rubbed my stinging eyes until little stars revolved, then slowly took off my shorts and shirt, and then my undershirt, and stretched out full length in the shallow water, rolling with lazy greed until I was wet all over. After getting up again, I stood looking down my glistening body for a while, then, picking up my clothes and shoes, walked on in my underpants. I felt sun-dazed, reckless, like an African animal, sleepy,
yet somehow intent and ready for anything, a hot, loose-limbed beast prowling.

My stomach swept down smooth and flat into my low-slung underpants; I liked that, and I liked the golden tan of my skin and the slim roundness of my forearms, which I lifted, first one, then the other, and gazed at as I walked, my heart beginning to pound. Someone stood hidden in the bushes, watching, and now he would step out in front of me. . . . A crackle spun me around. Two blue jays flew noisily from a bush. On weakened legs I turned and went on. What if schoolmates were down here exploring and saw me like this, half naked, primitive, shameless? Their eyes would pop from their heads; they would tell everyone that Suse Hansen sneaked around in her underpants, looking for men.

Let them, I was too hot to care; the sun poured, pounded, quivered; it was drugging, intoxicating, so that this dry creekbed, gravelly and weed-choked, seemed a garden of paradise, seemed radiant, shimmering, eternal. And there was the footbridge hanging overhead, its weathered wood shining like silver, and he would walk across it and climb down the bank and come up to me, his blue eyes filled with the sun, his black hair shining.

I put my clothes down and stood waiting, my hands loose on my hips, my long smooth stomach curving slightly to one side in a sleepy, brazen stance. My bangs were glued itchily to my forehead, my bare feet burned in the gravel, but I didn't move. In a drugged rapture of exposed flesh, my ears ringing with the steady, drilling hum of the cicadas, I waited.

All at once the bridge overhead wobbled. Whirling, I plunged into the bushes and stared out wildly to see if it was some schoolmate who might have recognized me by my green hair. But it was just a woman carrying a bag of groceries, and she wasn't even looking.

Shaking, as if awakened on the brink of disaster, I waited until she was gone and rushed out to retrieve my clothes. I pulled them on hurriedly and climbed up the bank to hide myself under a eucalyptus tree. After a while, when the fright had died away, I lay back in the foxtails and gazed up at the leaves, where the sunlight burst through in great blinding
punctures. I was hot and sleepy again, and I was thinking of Egon. For it was he who had been down there with me in that strange paradise of shimmering light and nakedness, that hot and sweetly aching moment of time everlasting. We were linked forever. It was Egon and I.

And it was odd that my thoughts about flesh were suddenly different, no longer dark and unsettling and vaguely repulsive in a Eudene-like way, but vast, golden thoughts, filling me with light and love and the feel of Egon's arms around me as I sprawled warm and brown in the foxtails.

The next morning I went to Reed's stationery and bought a new Big Chief notebook for fifteen cents. Then, going to the library and getting out the ITA to KYS encyclopedia volume, I tackled the Jews.

They filled forty-four pages; I noted that before I began. Then I decided not to begin. But I had told Helen Maria I was studying the Jews, and also, I wanted very much to know all about Egon. At least everything was neatly broken down into historical sections, which would make it easier to follow. And I could skip the first section, which was the boresome Bible all over again, and start with the “Hellenic Influence.” Nor would I track down every word to its bitter end, as I had done with Rosa Luxemburg. I must settle for rough impressions or be here the rest of the summer.

How appropriate Helen Maria's first name was; Hellenic meant Greek! How fascinated she would be by the Greek influence on the Jews; but a quick glance was sufficient for me, and I leaped on to “Diaspora in the West,” diaspora, I discovered in the dictionary, meaning spread out, and West not meaning California but west of Asia, specifically Europe. Scribbling these things down, I sped on to the Roman Empire, to
pagan, schism, papacy,
and a few other recurring terms, which I looked up and wrote down, then flew on to the Dark Ages, to
feudalism, Crusades, infidel, rapine,
and then to the Renaissance, to
pogrom
and
mercantile
and
ghetto,
and then to the Reformation, the French Revolution, the Industrial Revolution, and here I was right up to the modern period, sweeping through recognizable surroundings, greeting old friends such as Marx and Rosa herself, then coming abreast of Hitler and a new spate of unfamiliar terms—
anti-Semitism, conspiracy, racism,
disenfranchisement
—whose definitions I hurriedly found and dashed off, whipping on to the last paragraph, where I was bidden farewell by the violent German riots of November, 1938.

“Crystal Night!” I scrawled in triumphant conclusion, and shut the volume with a thud. From the Bible to Egon in two hours. Flexing my cramped fingers, I glanced with pride at the librarian, but she was absorbed behind the
Ladies' Home Journal.
The only other occupant was a small girl turning the pages of a storybook. How little and dim the library seemed, how poky these two other occupants, with their simpleminded interests. I had the whole history of the Jews between my notebook covers, 2,000 tumultuous years
—tumultuous
being one of the words I had looked up.

Now I sat back and waited confidently for everything to fall into place. And soon I sensed something taking shape in my mind, something big and dim and convulsive. This time it was not a mush pot seething; it was a great tide of some sort, that swept out in all directions. It was the Jews. And now I began to see them running, chased and massacred like infidels, and this was because they had killed Christ centuries before and people were still against it.

But here I hit a snag. It was not believable that people had remained upset over Jesus' death for so long. It was like being upset over the price of shoelaces. Jesus was boring. Religion was boring. How could they get upset in the first place, much less stay that way for several centuries?

I would have to put that aside. It was better to concentrate on the later centuries when religion had been forgotten and it was economics and politics that everyone was upset over. That was the mush pot and custard bowl and made sense. That was when the tide was poured into dingy ghettos where it had no rights and where it became mush pots.

But here was another snag. Some of the largest custard bowls were Jews, like the Rothschilds, who had popped up regularly for a whole page. Who was on which side? If Jewish Rosa Luxemburg was against the Jewish Rothschilds, and vice versa, why did everyone lump them together? And they did. That was what racism meant, lumping people together because they looked alike. But they did not look alike, or Egon and Ruth would look alike and they were completely different. The
only thing they had in common was that their ancestors had killed Christ, and no one had been upset over that for many centuries. So why were they all lumped together, rich and poor Jews, Communist and capitalist Jews, short and tall Jews, brown-eyed and blue-eyed Jews, and beaten up on Crystal Night?

It was too complicated. Egon himself had said, “It is more complicated than you will ever understand.” So maybe I should leave it at that and go out of this stifling cave into the sunshine. But I was challenged now. I would reread these forty-four pages painstakingly, tracking every last reference to its source. I would sit upright and full of labor, and I would triumph in a burst of light.

It took five days. When I was done, I put my filled notebook under my arm and my blunted pencil in the pocket of my shorts and went slowly out the door into the abrupt heat. I had more than the Jews between my covers; I had the world's history, and I looked in a new way at the people on the street, almost staring. They were terrible and frightening. They were the same as their ancestors, and their descendants would be the same as they. It was the terrible thing I had learned. Each century was the same; history was the same record played over and over. War was war, and peace was preparation for war; it was as if man were crazy, had always been, would always be, and the people on the street were man in his daily and abiding craziness. And the Jews summed it up with their complicatedness. Their complicatedness was like a maze of chambers they had been forced into down the centuries, and why they were pushed into the first chamber no one even knew or cared about anymore. But if you came from that long maze, you were beaten up, even if you were as unlike as Ruth and Egon. It was the pure form of senselessness that was history. And I realized now that even Rosa Luxemburg made no sense, sinking to the bottom of the canal while time was already rushing on without her, already piling up more riots and governments and elections and famines and wars, and now she was only a name in a book, and that was the flower of knowledge.