Rumors of Peace (39 page)

S
UNLIGHT LAY HOT ON MY FACE
. I opened my eyes, stretched powerfully, yawned, groaned, and flung my arms down. Helen Maria's bed was empty; the garret was silent, heavy and still with heat.

“Good morning!” Helen Maria called from the door, kicking it shut behind her. She came over in a pair of shorts and an old shirt, carrying two mugs of steaming coffee.

“Is it morning?”

“No, actually. Going on three. Here, this will wake you up.”

It was black and bitter, not to my taste, but it seemed a perfect thing to be lying in bed in your slip drinking black coffee after a wild night of partying.

“I only just got up myself.” She yawned, sitting down on her unmade bed with her mug. “I'm totally fagged. What do you say we just potter about today?”

“That's fine with me. I had enough excitement yesterday.”

“Good. Maybe we'll take a walk or something. And you can have dinner here before you take the six-forty-five.”

Then we began talking about the party. I learned many interesting things, such as that Pendleton was carrying on with the Scotsman though he was donkey's years younger, and that Ruth and her intended were moving to Palestine, and that the turban I danced with was sick—

“With what?”

“A
Sikh. It's a religion; they're not allowed to cut their hair.”

Under the turban his hair was all wound up, yards long, fascinating; and even the boyfriend was fascinating, an author, for he had written a novel that was going to be published, about growing up in Pasadena.

But Helen Maria hadn't read it.

“I would rather, as Alexander Woollcott once said, fall facedown in a pile of Italian garbage.”

“Why? Why Italian?”

“I have no idea, rancid olive oil perhaps. Preferable, in any case, to reading about Pasadena—come in,” she called at a knock on the door.

A girl poked her head through. “Did you have your radio on? I just caught the tail end of a broadcast, something about a bomb they dropped on Japan.”

“A bomb? Aren't they always dropping bombs?”

“I don't know,” she said, withdrawing her head, “it sounded different,” and she closed the door behind her.

Helen Maria took her mug over to the radio and turned it on, but there was no news. “Well,” she said, finishing her coffee, “I guess we'd better have something to eat. Here, I'll give you some shorts and a blouse. Have a shower if you want. I'll be down in the kitchen.”

Under the shower I contemplated this bomb the girl in the door had spoken of. It sounded as if it were a special one. Which meant that we hadn't been bluffing after all. Which meant that the surrender would take place quickly now and that this bomb would be the last, the final bomb of the war to drop.

Awake, refreshed, I hurried back to the garret and dressed, looking out the window at the motionless evergreens, not a breeze in the heavy, glaring air. A broiling day, but I felt light and cool thumping down the stairs barefoot, my hair damp and slicked back. While we had eggs and toast, Helen Maria tried to get a news station, twisting the dial around. She left it on, at a music station, in case there was a bulletin.

“I have a feeling this means the war's finished,” I told her. “They'll give up.”

“It could be,” she said. “Let's hope so.”

“Do you think people would dance in the streets?”

“In this heat? Only mad dogs and Englishmen.”

“I will. I'll dance with a mad dog.”

“Such oomph. I'll watch from the shade.”

I looked around the empty kitchen. It would be nice to have people here for the excitement of the surrender broadcast. “Where's everybody gone?”

“To class, mostly. It's Monday.”

“You'd never know by you!” Pendleton boomed, coming through the door. “Sleeping half the day away! What degenerates!”

Helen Maria laughed and poured her some coffee as she sat down with us. She looked rather bleary-eyed, though she hadn't been present at the late party, and I wondered if she had come from a long night of passion with the Scotsman in his blue blazer. I sat thinking about this and also keeping track of the radio music with one ear, while with the other ear I took in their party gossip. Then I heard the music end and a news broadcast come over the air. I didn't like to interrupt them as they rattled on, but at last I couldn't restrain myself. “I think they're talking,” I said, pointing at the radio.

“. . . that the hour of final victory seems near in history's most horrible war. The United States has unleashed against Japan the terror of an atomic bomb more than two thousand times more powerful than the biggest blockbuster ever used in warfare, ushering in a new epoch in science and war, the age of push-button warfare. The atomic weapon, harnessing the basic power of the universe, struck squarely in the center of the industrial city of Hiroshima with a flash and concussion that brought an exclamation of ‘Oh my God' from a battle-hardened Superfortress crew ten miles away. The returning fliers' report gave reason to believe that the Jap city has ceased to exist. . . .”

Helen Maria and Pendleton sat staring at each other as they listened, but I couldn't hear more for the rush of blood in my ears. Suddenly standing up, I murmured, “I think I'll go outside.”

In the backyard I sat down on the lawn and began picking blades of grass, kneading and shredding them. What did it mean, a city that had ceased to exist? The basic power of the universe? A new epoch of push-button warfare? Dropping the grass, I clasped my arms around my knees and sat rocking to and fro, trying not to hear the radio voice,
a faint buzz from the kitchen. After a while the music came back on.

“I thought you wanted to hear it,” said Helen Maria, coming down the back stairs.

“Not really.” I unclasped my shaky knees and lay back on the grass, my arms behind my head. “I want to get some sun.”

“Not exactly what I had in mind, splitting the atom,” she said, sitting down beside me and shading her eyes with her hand. “But I guess we shouldn't be so surprised; they've been talking about it for decades.”

“Splitting the atom . . . what does it mean?”

“Don't ask me, I have no grasp of atomic physics. But basically I suppose it's breaking the smallest unit of an element, which somehow releases a huge natural force. Want a cigarette?”

I shook my head.

“Gives you the shudders, actually,” she said, taking her cigarettes from her shorts pocket and lighting one. “Still, it's just as well we had it, rather than the Axis.” She blew the match out. “Curious, though . . . we should be the ones to use it.”

“Curious. You could say that.”

“Horrible.”

I lay looking at the sky.

“I must say you're taking it well,” she said. “It's rather a nasty windup.”

I shrugged, not wanting her to know how I felt, tightened up and sick inside, with a light, airy, trembling feeling in my arms and legs. I wondered how she could smoke, how she could keep her hand from shaking.

“Anyway,” she said, “I guess that's it. The end of the war.”

The end of the war. All these years I had waited, and now it had come, like this, with the power of the universe unleashed.

“Maybe the end of everything,” I said. “What if the world blows up?”

“I don't know, I doubt it will.”

“The power of the universe—why didn't they leave it alone?”

“I don't know. But maybe we should think what the alternative might have been. Probably a long invasion, thousands of lives—”

“What about the people in that city? A whole city!”

Helen Maria shook her head.

A whole city of people, ceasing to exist. And who had done it? Not the Nazis or the Japs themselves, but us, the good ones, the ones we were supposed to have faith in, who talked of constructive thought, creativeness, cooperation, drawing the good out of people. They themselves were the black beetles. I felt my throat ache; the sky blurred and sparkled. I closed my eyes so Helen Maria couldn't see them.

“I don't know how you can take this heat. It's too much.”

“I like it,” I managed to say.

“Well, I'm going in.”

I followed her a few minutes later. It had been such a wonderful party, and it was still her day; I didn't want to ruin it lying bitter and solitary in the backyard.

I passed through the kitchen, where some of the girls had returned from class and were sitting around the table with Pendleton, listening to another broadcast. The words followed me as I went out the door.

“. . . If the European war had gone on another six months, it is quite possible that this planet would have ceased to exist, because it is quite possible that someone would have learned to break the atom without controlling it. . . .”

I had to stop for a moment and lean against the banister.

In the garret, Helen Maria was lying on her unmade bed with a book. She looked sleepy.

“I think I'll have that cigarette now,” I said, trying for a normal tone.

She gave me one and took one herself. I lit my own, turning away, because my fingers were trembling, and sat down on the cot, stretching and rubbing my face. “That was the best party I've ever been to.”

“It was smashing, wasn't it? I'll miss them; they're a wonderful crowd.”

“But think of the wonderful crowd at Oxford. And those cool mists.”

She nodded, looking at me through her cigarette smoke. “I'm glad you're not too upset. It
is
upsetting, it's terribly upsetting, and I know how you are about these things.”

“Things military?” I said, managing a half smile. “No, I've evolved past that.”

“So you seem to have. I must admit.”

“Parti avec le vent.”
I yawned, setting my cigarette in the ashtray, because it was making me nauseated.

Helen Maria yawned too, putting her book aside. “If you're as fagged out as I am, what do you say we have a nap?”

“Sure,” I said. But I couldn't bear the thought of lying still with my tight, sick feeling, just lying and thinking. “Or maybe I'll take the five o'clock train back. I'm so fagged out, I think I'll just go home and go to bed early.”

“It's a shame I wore you out.”

“It's no shame,” I said, reaching down for my dress, which lay crumpled on the floor. “It was the best party I ever went to.”

When I had dressed and combed my hair and gotten my overnight things together in my bag, Helen Maria said she would come with me to the depot and got up from bed. But there was no need; she might as well have her nap. She walked me to her door, where we said goodbye; not the ultimate good-bye, though, because she was coming home before leaving.

“Get a good rest,” she called as I started down the stairs.

“You too! Thanks again for the wonderful time!”

Then I was alone with the tight, sick feeling, going down all the sunny stairs.

A
FTER A BLOCK OR TWO
of walking I stopped and snapped open my shoulder bag. It was done suddenly, as if out of the blue, yet maybe it had been there in my mind all along. Pulling out one of the letters, I looked at the address on the corner of the envelope.

I asked directions of someone walking along and was told the street was on the other side of campus. It took endless time to find; first, I lost my way on campus and couldn't discover where it came out the other side and had to ask more directions; then, when I finally came out the other side, the streets there were winding and confusing, and when I asked more directions, they took me in circles, until my despair of ever finding him grew as great as my other despair.

I knew by the length of its shadow how late it was when I found his house. It was a tall white stucco building, a little run-down, and not a boardinghouse like Helen Maria's but more like an apartment house, with mailboxes by the front door and names and room numbers on them. The door was unlocked. I went inside, and on the third floor I found number nine.

He was typing. I knocked, and the clacking stopped. I could hear his chair scraping back, his footsteps crossing the room. Then the door opened, and I was looking into his blue eyes.

“Suse,” he said, and the eyes were not lit up, but quizzical. “What are you doing here?”

I hesitated, not having expected questions, expecting only that he would see the need on my face at once and take me inside.

“I just . . . wanted to talk.”

“But you have not come all the way from Mendoza? Alone?”

I nodded, then shook my head, unable to concentrate, wanting only to be inside with him.

“Yes? No? What do you mean?”

“. . . I was at Helen Maria's,” I managed to say, looking at the not unkind but not welcoming face.

“I see,” he nodded. “So you are staying over there?”

Again I shook my head, and suddenly the undelivered baseball picture swirled down and took its place with the skiing trip and all the other lies I had served up to myself. And with my eyes going to the floor, I saw, as if it were an old fact I had always known, that he had not written because he didn't wish to encourage me. It was as simple as that. And strangely, it was of no importance now. I wanted to tell him that. He needn't fear being arrested; I wouldn't expect him to hug and kiss me; he didn't have to do anything at all, if only he would let me come inside and be near him for a while.

“What is it?” I heard him ask at last. “What's wrong, Suse?”

“The atomic bomb,” I said, my eyes still on the floor.

“So.” I could hear a small sigh through his nostrils. He opened the door for me, and I stepped into the room, a warmth of relief and comfort unloosening the tight, sick feeling. It was a small room, but that was as much as I noticed, all my awareness taken up by his presence, the touch of his hand on my elbow as he offered me a chair.

“Now, let me understand. You are visiting down here?”

“No, I was,” I said, sitting down, “But I left to go to the depot . . . only I came here instead.”

“But aren't your parents expecting you? They will be worried.”

“No, I was taking an early train, because I was upset . . . about the bomb . . . but I'm supposed to be on the six-forty-five.”

“I see. Then I shall take you at that time to the depot.”

“You don't have to.”

“Yes, of course I will,” he said, sitting down in the chair by his desk. There was a clock ticking on the desk; it was already twenty past five. I would not have much time with him before I had to go back out into the world again. But at least I was here. It was a room drenched with the late-afternoon sun, its two windows open, and the curtains pulled aside, so the light could pour through.

“It's a nice room,” I said.

“It is not so bad.”

Mostly it consisted of books, books in bookcases, and leaning along the floor against the wall, stacked on the desk. The furniture wasn't much, a couch with a green spread, a spindly table with some loose change, some notebooks, and a box of Ritz crackers on it, the small plain desk, and a bureau. On top of the bureau I could see a silver-backed hairbrush and a smaller silver-backed clothes brush gleaming in the light. There was also, in a heavy old-fashioned silver frame, a large photograph of three young men standing with their arms around each other. Egon was the youngest, maybe in high school then, thinner in those days, but with the same smile. The two brothers looked like him.

He was looking at the window, through which you could see the green clustered trees of the Berkeley hills, bluish now in the late-afternoon haze. They held a great sense of stillness.

“You'll be leaving soon. Ruth told me.”

He nodded. “Next week.”

“Will you be coming back here afterwards?”

“I don't know, Suse. Perhaps not. Perhaps I'll stay somewhere in Europe.”

I looked away from him, down at the carpet.

“Suse,” he said after a silence, “there's something you should realize. . . .”

“I do realize it,” I said quietly, still looking at the carpet.

“Do you?”

“I understand perfectly,” I said, and looked up at him. I felt a deep wrench inside, but I was glad to have everything out in the open and cleared up, so he wouldn't sit there worrying that I would throw myself at him and embarrass us both. But now that it was cleared up, I wished never to speak of it again.

“I came because of the bomb.”

He leaned back in his chair, closing his eyes. It was strange to see his face without the startlingly blue eyes in it. He must look like that when he slept, with the dark lashes down, and the lines around the mouth finely etched, except that he was moving, slowly taking from the pocket of his white shirt a pack of Fleetwoods, the eyes opening now as he reached to the desk for a box of matches.

“I see it has been put in my lap.”

It was true. The bomb, the world, all life.

He lit his cigarette and sat back again, blowing the smoke out. “You're quite a taskmaster, Suse.”

I thought about this. I nodded.

“You deal in absolutes. Black and white. Mostly black.”

“No I don't, Egon,” I said, sitting forward. “At least I wasn't doing that anymore. You made me see things differently.”

His face, with all its complex shadings of expressions, was hard to follow. He seemed almost dryly amused, and at the same time he seemed to be contemplating, in a tired sort of way, as if he would rather talk about the weather. My warm, comforted feeling began to diminish, like a circle closing.

But these expressions resolved themselves into a smile: small, quiet, reassuring. “Well, I'm glad. You're too young to go around with heavy thoughts all the time. It's a time of life to be free in; you should never waste it.”

“But if it's all going to end anyway! If the world's going to blow up—”

“Suse, look. I don't think it will blow up.”

“You don't?” The circle of warmth stopped narrowing. “You really don't? But are you sure?”

Once more I heard a small sigh through his nostrils. “I am not a physicist. And I am not a prophet either, though you seem to think I am. I can only say I don't think it will happen. There is too much at stake, too much to lose and nothing to gain.”

“But that's the same reasons as not to have war, and it never stops war. And what about mistakes? If they break the atom without controlling it? What about accidents?”

He ground out his cigarette in his ashtray, mashing it unnecessarily
hard, it seemed. “Do you want the world to blow up?”

“No. My God, no.”

“Then maybe you should think that it won't.”

“What good will that do!”

“It will do good, believe me.”

“How? So I tell myself it won't—how can that help anything? It can't keep me from being destroyed.”

“It will, Suse,” he said with a quiet nod. “That is just what it will do.”

“I don't understand that,” I murmured, sitting back in my chair. “It doesn't sound realistic.”

“It is the most realistic thing I can tell you.”

“To believe it won't. That's realistic.”

He nodded again.

“And you believe that way.”

“Well,” he said, and smiled, “you don't see me climbing under a table.”

It was true. He was unfrightened, as Helen Maria was unfrightened, and the people I saw on the streets; not that their normality gave me comfort, but Egon's did. The circle of warmth began expanding, widening and widening, filling me with a kind of golden weariness, as if I had been running for hours and I could finally stop now and fall asleep. I felt my eyes actually closing as I sat there; but I opened them and sat forward again. There were other things that must be settled.

“There's that whole city, though. All those people killed.”

He said nothing. He looked weary too, as if he would like to stop talking. But I could not leave these terrible things up in the air. “The ones who did it, I thought they were the ones we could depend on. That's what you said. To have faith in the spirit that moved them.”

Still he said nothing.

“But their spirit's no good; it's rotten. There's nothing to depend on.” I kept looking at him, afraid he would never contradict me. “I was right about history, it just goes on and on, and there'll be another war—”

He spoke at last, but with a rough edge of impatience. “This one is just ending, and already you start a new one.”

“I don't
want
to, it's all I've waited for all these years, just for it to
be finished! I thought it would be such a wonderful day—”

“It is. It's finished. And it's a wonderful day.”

He got up suddenly and came over to me, taking my arm and pulling me up sharply, startling me. He took me over to one of the windows, where he stood behind me, his fingers hard around my arm.

“Are you looking out there? Do you see what's there? Hills and trees and houses, a blue sky? How much do you want?”

His voice was as hard as his fingers, making my eyes blur, so that I could hardly see what he was pointing out.

“It's a beautiful day. And the war is over. You say that you have waited all these years, well I have waited too. And now I want to be glad that it's over.”

His hand loosened and came away. “Are you looking?” he asked again, more quietly.

I nodded, trying to keep the blur from spilling, trying to see through it.

“Then remember it.” And he put his hand on my head and gave my hair a slow, downward stroke to my cheek, where he left it, firm and gentle, and warm as the sun, sending a rush of happiness through me.

“Well, Suse,” he said with a pat, “I think the time has come for us to go, if you're to catch your train. It's getting late.”

The train was already there when the bus pulled up in front of the depot, and as we climbed out, we could hear bells clanging and the conductor calling, “All aboard!” Running around the building to the platform we saw that the train was moving, steaming and hissing, the wheels slowly turning as the conductor leaned from the door, waving us on.

There was time for nothing as we ran, not a word, not a look, and I suddenly realized that none of the mysteries I had brought him had been cleared up, that his words had in a way been like air, the black beetles were still with us, the bomb still hung overhead, nothing had been settled; there was just a window with some hills outside that he said to remember, and the feel of his hand on my cheek, and now as we ran, he was swinging me up onto the steel step, and I couldn't see
him when I turned around because the conductor was blocking my way, steering me up the steps as if I were a child, bustling and guiding me inside. Breaking away, I rushed down the aisle of the coach behind me, turning sharply at the first open window I saw, squeezing in and sticking my head out between the elbows of two leaning soldiers.

Egon was walking now, a distance back, his white shirt bright in the low rays of the sun. He saw me leaning out and waving, and he lifted his arm, waving back, how much do you want? he had asked, and the true answer was everything, peace, glory, love, life everlasting, and all he had shown me was a window, a summer day, and what he meant I didn't know, but I would remember it, I would remember it and keep it.

“I'll remember it, Egon!” I shouted.

If he heard me or not through the noise of the train I couldn't tell, but I felt in my bones that he did, still waving his arm back and forth as he grew more and more distant on the platform, and then we passed some boxcars and he was cut off.