The Honeyed Peace (4 page)

'What do you think of collaborators?' Anne asked the French Captain, suddenly.

'They should be shot,' he said at once, 'and all of them. And make this country clean again, for the clean people.'

Anne excused herself early, saying with truth that she was tired. The French Captain looked sad but she could not help that. She could not handle everyone's troubles at the same time. Her bed was cold and she felt drearily wakeful. Something nagged in her brain, which she could not catch and give shape to. Finally, she knew what it was; it was a hurting, unanswerable question. If you did not love as Evangeline did, and never had, and surely never would, what had you lost?

The telephone woke Anne, and she answered in the hoarse morning voice of the cigarette smoker.

'Anne?' said Lady Elizabeth. 'Are you awake?'

'Not exactly.'

'Anne, Renaud killed himself last night.'

Then Anne thought, No, I am not awake, this has not happened, and she held the silver-plated telephone horn away from her, staring at it.

'Did you hear me?'

'Yes,' Anne said.

In the silence, the telephone operator suddenly announced, '
Vous avez terminé?
'

'
Non! non!
' Anne shouted. '
Ne coupez pas, Mademoiselle - ne coupez pas ...
'

Elizabeth Beech's voice returned, not so much faint as grey.

'Cut off,' she said.

'Yes. Is it true what you said?'

'Of course.'

'The pig,' Anne said. 'Oh, the filthy pig!'

'I couldn't agree more,' said the grey voice. 'The last wretched trick to play on Evangeline.'

'
Mademoiselle
,' said the telephone operator, '
il y a une communication pour vous.
'

'Ne coupez pas!
' Anne shouted wildly. 'Leave us alone! Are you still there, Liz?'

'Yes.'

'Why did he? Why? He was going to be all right.'

'No one knows. He didn't leave a message. Not even that,' Lady Elizabeth said and the grey voice brightened with hate.

'But why?'

'Lucien says perhaps he thought he was going to be shot. You know there is a place out there where they do shoot people. And Lucien says perhaps he was afraid of standing up and being shot. Or Lucien says perhaps he thought he was going to get a long term in gaol and couldn't face it. But I think he decided there wouldn't be much future for him in France, and obviously no place else, and it discouraged him ...' Her voice trailed away.

'We must talk,' Anne said stupidly, 'or that bitch will cut us off.'

All right. Say something.'

'I don't know,' Anne murmured. 'I don't know.' She would have to ask now and she did not want to hear. 'Evangeline?' she said.

'Lucien came for her early this morning and took her to his mother. That place they have near Tours. They're so strangely practical, the French; he kept talking about the country food and the air doing her good.'

'Did she want to go?'

'Evangeline? She didn't say anything, she hasn't said a word, nor cried, nor moved, nor done anything. She died really, at once; she just heard it and opened her eyes and died.'

'Don't talk like that.'

'It's true, why not talk like that? There isn't any point to her without Renaud. She hasn't anything to be or do.'

'It's so hateful,' Anne said, 'it's so idiotic.'

'Like everything else,' Lady Elizabeth remarked bleakly. 'Well, that's all I had to say. I'm flying to London this afternoon.'

'I thought you'd come over for weeks.'

'I had. But it's no use, is it? I don't fit in and there isn't anything to fit into.'

'I won't see you then. I have to get back to Berlin in a few days.'

'And dispense doughnuts?'

'Yes. It's a nice trade when you get used to it.'

'Well, have fun.'

'Same to you.'

'Lucien's address is La Faisanderie, Blaireaux. That's Seine-et-Loire, I think.'

'Thanks. Goodbye, Liz.'

The room was cold with all the unheated winters before and with the unheated winter to come. Beside her bed was a little box of push buttons, and if she pressed the button that was marked by the figure of a waiter, with a napkin on his arm, no one would come For there was no café au lait, and no croissants with pale unsalted butter. If she got up, there would be no hot water in the bathtub She could lie here until the end of the week, if she liked, and it would make no difference. But then she would have all that time to think, and she would not know where to begin or how to finish.

She decided to go to the ATC Booking Office in the Place Vendôme and catch the next plane for Berlin. Berlin was a fine city, bombed flat and full of soldiers. And there was her canteen at the Tempelhof aerodrome and hundreds of khaki men who came to it, every day. They were simple and rowdy or simple and sad, and she would be flirtatious or motherly according to need, but always friendly in her heart and they friendly to her. It was so easy because it was like the war, except for no one getting killed now, and a climate they all grew in naturally. It was really a pleasant place, her canteen at the Tempelhof aerodrome, and she could still endure the smell of doughnuts no matter what little luxuries of nerves she might allow herself.

She thought of the green and gentle Loire valley, and Evangeline, in it, waiting as if it were a desert.

EXILE

He came from Germany with three trunks. They were the old-fashioned kind, which have humped lids, and they were tied with cord. As he had no intention of returning to his home, he brought everything he could with him. He brought towels and old frying-pans, and there was his desk lamp and his books and his fur gloves and two pieces of statuary, a portrait bust of Beethoven and a portrait bust of Goethe. He planned to settle in America, as he had been settled in Tübingen, and go on with his life, ignoring the vulgarities of history.

As for money, he had a little, and money had never been a problem so no doubt it would never become a problem. He had inherited from his father, who had inherited a little in his time also. This money meant that you could live in Tübingen, in three rooms, which were tended by the youngest of the maiden aunts. You could read, sometimes even buy books, take walks in the afternoon, and year after year you could prepare a work on the Origins of the Postal System. This work was never finished, because there was always more to learn.

He was leaving Germany principally because the Nazis were disgusting about Heine. He himself was neither a Jew nor a Communist nor even a Pacifist. The Nazis would never have noticed him, because he said nothing, had few friends and no following, and spent all his time in the University library. But Heinrich noticed the Nazis. There were no new books in the library, and the newspapers grew unreadable. He did not care for brutality and he hated noise; there were parades all the time in front of the library, parades with songs and brass bands, and it confused him as he worked. But one day he read that Heine was a Jew and therefore not a poet at all. That was the end. These Nazis were distorting truth and history so that one no longer knew what was right and what was not. He was fifty-five and had lived in Tübingen all his life. He decided to leave. Aunt Lotte was dead, so nothing hindered him except packing. It took him eight months to pack and make arrangements, and all the time he thought about Heine and how they said he was not a poet at all because he was a Jew. The country was not fit to be lived in any more.

He remembered his cousin, the daughter of his father's brother, when he read about Heine and knew he would have to leave. He had never seen the cousin, a married woman now, somewhat younger than himself, perhaps forty-five. She was the wife of a shoe salesman, had no children, and lived in Kansas City. Her name was Mrs Luther Morton. He wrote and said vaguely that he would have to leave Germany, in order to continue his studies. His cousin, who had heard some lectures on Nazi Germany, had a terrifying vision of Heinrich persecuted; those awful things the Nazis did. She invited him to come to America.

Erna Morton walked along the station platform and stared anxiously at everyone. She had no clear idea even of Cousin Heinrich's age. She imagined a tall German, with sabre scars on his face preferably, and maybe a monocle and a polished manner. She had left Germany when she was five years old, and had gone frequently to the movies since.

But when she saw Heinrich she knew him, and tried not to feel cheated. He was puzzling over his luggage, wicker suitcases, bulging oddly. He was fumbling inside a vast black coat for a tip to the porter. His grey scarf, knitted by Aunt Lotte, hung in lank streamers from his neck. His glasses slipped forward on the bridge of his nose as he leaned over. And he was fat, but not jovial-fat: just fat from sitting in libraries all his life. Erna Morton said, shakily, 'Welcome to Kansas City, Heinrich.'

'Erna,' he said, with tears coming to his eyes. 'Erna.' It had been a long journey; it was good to get home.

They walked out of the station. The porter was frivolous with the wicker suitcases and winked at the other porters, and Erna was ashamed. In the taxi she said, 'You must come and stay with us, Heinrich.'

'But of course, Erna.' Where else would he stay?

Erna had expected him to say: 'I don't want to give you any trouble, that's very kind, are you sure ...' and then accept. He just took her sacrifice for granted. It meant that she would have to sleep on the sofa in the parlour, so that Heinrich could sleep in the other twin bed in the bedroom, with Luther. And Heinrich wasn't even thanking her. She answered him crisply when he asked questions about buildings they passed, or a park.

Luther was not home; he would not be back until evening.

'You'll sleep in here with Luther,' Erna said. 'And you can have this closet, and here are two drawers emptied for you. Shall I help you unpack?'

Heinrich muttered something. He had begun to feel like a visitor from a very far place. There were two of them and they had less room than he'd had all alone in Tübingen. A bedroom, with some silky stiff stuff on the beds, and a doll sitting on the pillow. Why a doll? There were no children in the house. And then a parlour, with lots of things in it, and a little room more like a closet, with a small painted wooden table and four chairs. They ate there. It was a dinette, Erna said. And a bathroom you couldn't turn around in. You couldn't get clean in it, surely; it was too little. It was like the train.

'I have my trunks, Erna,' he said dimly.

'Trunks? But you've already got three suitcases.'

'Yes, but you see, I brought everything. Since I'm not going back. I have my books ...'

'Oh well, we can leave them all down in the cellar. The janitor won't mind. You don't even need to open them.'

'But, Erna, you see, I need the books. I have to have the books for my work.'

'What work?'

He had never said this sentence before in his life, though he had often thought it. 'I am writing a book.'

'Oh.' It wasn't anything much, that 'Oh', unless it was suspicion.

Heinrich stood uneasily in the room. He saw no place where a man might sit, securely. He thought of his books, the busts of Goethe and Beethoven, his fur gloves, and all the other things he had had for some time, and needed and wanted with him. There was scarcely room for him here, and there was Erna, waiting for something. How nervous women made you: they were full of questions, just standing and looking.

'Well,' Erna said, and there was desperation in her voice. 'Well, what shall we do now?'

Heinrich stared back at her, nearsightedly. 'I don't know,' he said.

'Maybe we ought to unpack, and then you can tell me about those awful Nazis and all the things they did to you.'

She got a suitcase, pulling and dragging it into the bedroom.

'You take the things out, and I'll put them away,' she said. He unwound his scarf and drew himself out of his massive coat. He put his coat on one of the beds, and it mussed the taffeta spread, and Erna saw herself having to iron it tomorrow. So he was messy, too, was he: a dirty, messy old German. He undid his suitcases so slowly that Erna wanted to scream, push him aside, and do it herself. He fumbled because he had taken eight months to pack them, and now everything was happening so fast. He would rather have talked a while, and then had some coffee, and then presently done a little unpacking. No need to attend to all three suitcases right away.

'I must get my trunks,' he said.

'Have you got the baggage checks? We should have done that at the station, while we were there. If you'd only told me, Heinrich.'

He began heavily to paw into his pockets looking for a wallet, and Erna said to him: 'Oh, not
now
, Heinrich, there's no sense in doing that now. Since we didn't do it anyhow when we were there at the station.'

When the three suitcases were unpacked, Erna said she had to go out and do the marketing. This was a lie; she always did the marketing first thing in the morning, when you had a better choice. Heinrich watched her from a window - a narrow window, entirely submerged in ruffled net curtains. He saw a stout, middle-aged woman, walking away from him, down the street; she wobbled on high heels, and her dark red coat blew about her legs. She was thinking about Luther and how it would be when he came home. And suddenly she was trying not to cry.

'Heinrich,' Luther said, being very genial, 'what are your plans?'

Heinrich hadn't enjoyed supper much; it seemed so frail. A salad with a slice of pineapple was the main plate, as far as he could make out, and spaghetti, which was an Italian dish and not very healthy.

Besides it was hard to understand Luther; not that he spoke fast, but he swallowed his words, so Heinrich had to say: 'Excuse?' and lean forward and listen all over again. Now Heinrich was startled. He had just come. Why should he make plans?

'But I will do my work, Luther.'

'Oh,' Luther said. Erna had told him about the book. 'Well, what's your book about? Maybe it'll be a best-seller like
Anthony Adverse
or one of those things Erna's always reading, and then we'll all be rich and go to California.' He laughed and Erna laughed too, without conviction, and Heinrich looked at them, solemn and not understanding.