What Love Sees (9 page)

“I’m hungry,” Jean said. “That’s what’s important about me. Can’t we eat soon?”

Down river at Koblenz they stayed at the Hotel Fürstenhof. LCW had always stayed there. It had a broad balcony overlooking the wide boulevard. This Sunday morning it was a popular place because breakfast was served outside in the sun. All the tables were crowded, and Jean bumped into several chairs before she got situated. Miss Weaver insisted that at every meal a different girl would order for the group. This time was Jean’s turn. The girls told her what they wanted and she stumbled through with her Agnes Jennings pronunciation of German. “Adequate but not brilliant,” Miss Weaver remarked. They were served. That was all Jean cared about.

A clock tower struck ten, unleashing chimes from churches all over the city. The resounding clangor was so deafening the girls couldn’t hear Miss Weaver’s lecture about the surrounding architecture. Chimes rolled layer upon layer, like an ocean wave rolling on top of another wave. Eventually, the wild disorder of noise took on a low, heavy, staccato movement, dull and thudding, coming from one direction. The throbbing became more distinct, reducing the chiming bells to tinny decoration in comparison with the reverberating base rhythm.

“What is it?” Jean raised her voice.

“Soldiers,” Lucy shouted in her ear.

They came closer, a million lead weights pounding the boulevard below. Jean felt the balcony vibrate in response to the measured thud, thud, thud. She held onto the edge of the table in front of her. It vibrated, too. Quick, hard, sharp, the beats thundered in her head. She barely took a breath until, gradually, the pulsing retreated.

“They walk so funny,” Lucy said after they passed. “They keep their legs straight in front of them and march like wooden soldiers or stick figures.”

“The goose step,” said Miss Weaver.

“What did they look like?”

“They were just boys, but they looked so stern,” Icy said. “They all wore brown shirts and black boots.”

“And red arm bands with some kind of emblem,” Lucy added.

“It’s a swastika,” said Miss Weaver, “and when it’s on a flag it’s called
die Blutfahne
, blood flag. It’s the Nazi party symbol.”

“The whole thing gives me the creeps,” Jean said.

The girls described the emblem when they saw it again, a black twisted cross in a white circle on a field of red. In Heidelberg, two-story banners hung along the streets. Each time Jean heard them flapping in the breeze every thirty paces, her stomach felt unsettled. “How many are there, anyway?”

“I stopped counting,” Lucy said.

“What are you doing—counting the men in uniform instead?” Jean chided.

Heidelberg was honoring the 500th anniversary of its university. The ancient town went wild. There were music festivals, sword dances, boisterous speeches in squares. Rowdy singing poured out of beer halls into the streets. It all gave Jean an uneasy feeling of dread that the world had become so loud and strident. In order to get something to eat, Miss Weaver and the girls joined the shouting throngs of students shoving their way across a stone bridge. Lucy and Jean got separated from the others in the narrow passageway. People couldn’t move ahead. They were stuck, stomach to back to stomach.

“Can you see the others?”

“No, but they must be up there,” Lucy shouted.

They braced themselves against the crowd and plowed ahead. Jean held onto Lucy’s elbow with both hands. There were bodies touching all sides of her. Everyone inched his way across the bridge. Her clothes felt tight and the air was stifling. Here was that terror again, feeling like a newborn calf being shoved ahead in a stampede.

“Aren’t we near the end yet?”

“I can’t tell.”

A sudden heave of toppling people threatened to push them against the passageway wall, but a man behind them quickly interfered, cushioning them when they were pushed. Jean felt his chest against her shoulder struggling to push back the other way. “
Bleibt zuruck
,” he muttered sharply in the opposite direction. She didn’t know whether to be thankful to him, or to be afraid. She’d come to trust people, but maybe he was a Nazi. She held on more firmly to Lucy’s elbow.

“Ouch!” Lucy cried. “Don’t pinch.”

“Do you see Icy?”

“No, I told you that.”

Even the New York crowds coming out of Madison Square Garden didn’t have this frenzy. A long half-hour later, they met the others at the restaurant, but Jean didn’t breathe normally until she was back in the pension that night.

Germany swelled with nervous motion that summer, and it seemed to Jean that Nazism was in a great hurry. In Dinkelsbühl in northern Bavaria a Youth Day parade took over the annual Kinderfest.

“They’re only kids,” said Icy. “So young they’re still in short pants and knee socks. Some are carrying swastika flags.”

“Is it the children beating on the drums?” Jean asked.

“Yes.”

“Sounds like little toy drums.” Ranks of children sang “
Deutschland, Deutschland uber alles
.” “It’s a thrilling song, isn’t it? So spirited.”

“They look kind of menacing to me,” Lucy said. “Puffed up and too serious to be kids.”

“They should be riding bikes and fishing during the summer, not out marching,” LCW said. “Something’s awfully wrong.”

The remark made Jean feel ignorant. Miss Weaver’s voice lacked its usual husky authority. That, in itself, made Jean uneasy. The next day they left Dinkelsbühl by train. As they neared Munich, Jean sensed Miss Weaver’s spirit rally. “We’re going to have a marvelous time in Bavaria,” Miss Weaver declared. “In the Teutonic world lie the roots of Anglo-Saxon culture, much deeper than any boys marching around for a summer, and Bavaria, Munich especially, is the center of the Teutonic world. It’s the seat of schmaltz and students, high art and oompah. So for the next three weeks I expect you to absorb its spirit.”

They did. Jean and Lucy bought quilted jackets, dirndls, long aprons and black velour hats in the style of Tyrolean mountain climbers. They all ordered beer in the Hofbrauhaus. They took side trips out of Munich to see the opera
Jederman
in Salzburg and a medieval street pageant in Innsbruck. The longest side trip was to the Wagner opera festival, the
Bayreuther Festspiele
.

On day trips Miss Weaver never let the girls stop to go to the bathroom. While trooping through museums or riding in hired cars, she never stopped. She was Iron Lady. “You must learn control,” she’d say. “In all aspects of life, even this. Master your bodies with self discipline and it will elevate your character.” They didn’t stop from Munich to Bayreuth.

The little troop checked into a third-floor room at a second-class inn. They rarely stayed in first-class hotels. Miss Weaver was firm on that. “We’re going to mix with the people,” she declared. By the time they got to the inn, the girls were squirming, concentrating on keeping their muscles tight, not on mixing with any people. As soon as the innkeeper gave them directions, they rushed upstairs to the single bathroom.

“I don’t know how waiting forever to go to the bathroom will improve my character,” Lucy snapped, holding onto her arm at the elbow. Jean felt Lucy stop suddenly at the top of the stairs.

“Don’t stop, Lucy. I can’t wait.”

“Ssh.”

Jean felt Lucy shift her weight back and forth. Jean did the same. Lucy fidgeted in silence. “Where’s Icy?” Jean whispered. Lucy’s arm muscles tightened and told her not to ask questions. She heard a toilet flush, heard a door open and shut, heard it flush again and heard heavy boots walk away down the wooden corridor.

“What’s the matter?” she whispered.

“There was a man ahead of us in a Nazi uniform.” Lucy darted for the toilet, leaving her with Icy.

“So? Why did you shut me up?”

“He was scary looking,” she said through the door. “He stood like he had a board in his back. No expression to his face. Didn’t even smile at us.”

“And didn’t offer to let us go ahead, either,” Jean remarked.

Icy giggled. “Even with his uniform he had to wait in line like anyone else.”

“He was sort of handsome,” Lucy said through the door. “Too bad he’s a Nazi.”

On their last trip to the bathroom that night they found rows of boots lined up down the hall. “There’s an army of Nazi officers on our floor,” squealed Icy. “They all must be over six feet tall to have boots that big.”

“And all of them blond Adonises,” Lucy added.

First thing the next morning Lucy gave her the hallway report. The row of tall boots gleamed.

“Probably the job of the innkeeper’s wife to polish them during the night,” said Miss Weaver, none too cheerfully.

The festival opera was
Der Meistersinger
. They had fine seats in the orchestra, right under and slightly in front of the imperial box. “Wagner’s daughter-in-law, Frau Siegfried Wagner, is supposed to make an appearance tonight, so watch that draped box,” she said.

The opera house was packed. At an unseen signal, a hush settled through the audience. Three figures stepped from behind heavy velvet drapery into the imperial box. Immediately, everyone rose in silence and faced them. Jean heard sharp footsteps come out to the edge of the box, and the others craned their necks to see. Icy gasped. “Turn around, Jean. I think it’s Hitler.”

“Quit teasing,” Jean whispered.

“No, I mean it. I think it’s him.”

“What’s he look like?”

“He’s just standing there scowling with his chest puffed out and his lips tight.” From somewhere in the orchestra a voice shouted, “
Heil
Hitler.” Then the thunderous response, “
Heil
Hitler.”

Above them, the man clicked his heels and his right hand shot out over the balcony. “
Sieg Heil
,” he bellowed, more a command than an acknowledgment.

The audience thundered back, “
Heil
Hitler!
Heil
Hitler!
Heil
Hitler!”

The passions rose in the close, oppressive air of the opera house. Jean felt suddenly hot in her heavy quilted jacket.

“We don’t have to do this. We’re Americans,” Miss Weaver muttered.

Below the
Führer
, the six stood silent, arms at their sides. The
Führer
noticed and his scowl lines deepened. When the chanting stopped, he pursed his lips together, scowled down at the frozen American schoolgirls and their white-haired leader, muttered something and clamped his mouth shut just as the orchestra swung into the overture.

Soon they were lost in the opera and its wealth of characters. The stage was alive with color, movement and song. Jean was swept away from the politically charged present. What did it matter to her, anyway? She thought of Madame Flagstad and surrendered herself to sound.

After the performance they walked to a nearby restaurant. Seated by the window, the others could see the surge of life in the street. Against the hum of traffic, Icy described the river of people rushing by. “There’s a short woman with a paisley scarf tied under her chin. She’s being pulled by a dog on a leash. An errand boy carrying a package wrapped in brown paper and twine is trotting down the street. A thin woman is selling flowers at the corner. I can’t tell how old she is. Young, sort of, but already old. Drawn cheeks and sad eyes. A man with knife-sharp creases in his trouser legs is hailing a taxi for a lady. He’s leaning in, saying something to the driver. Oh, he just spotted the flower seller. She’s coming toward him. Looks like he’ll buy. Yes, he’s handing a spray of violets through the cab window. The taxi is moving out into the traffic and he’s just standing there at the curb.”

“Can you see his face?”

“No, just his back. He’s walking away now.”

A wistful smile played over Jean’s face. She was there. She was part of it. The world was full and alive and spirited.

A Nazi officer stepped abruptly into the restaurant doorway. Silver and glasses fell silent and all conversation stopped. In mimicry of his
Führer
, he clicked his heels and shot out his arm. Again, “
Sieg heil
.”

Jean stopped chewing the bite of sauerbraten in her mouth and swallowed it whole. She heard Miss Weaver and the other girls put down their forks. The whole restaurant responded in unison—“
Heil
Hitler!” Jean heard the boots come closer. Standing tall over their table, the officer waited for a response. The restaurant was silent. Her heart pounded like a tom-tom. She felt the stares of everyone in the restaurant riveted on the back of her neck. She held her breath, confused, waiting for some direction.

“
Sieg heil
.” The voice above their table was deep, commanding, impatient. Her chest ached where her bite of food lodged. Slowly, Miss Weaver mumbled the hated response. The girls followed in flat voices. Then Jean did, too. Her mouth tasted sour and her chest throbbed. The boots stomped out the door and down the street.

“Mindless,” Miss Weaver muttered.

The word stabbed at her. The other girls spoke only in undertones during the rest of the meal, about anything but what had happened. Jean didn’t follow the conversation. Something had collapsed inside her. Miss Weaver, the invincible Miss Weaver, had revealed a crack. A Nazi, nothing more than boots and a gruff voice, had bullied her and for one moment, control wasn’t within her grasp. A bigger authority, hard, cold and foreign, shrank her. Jean wished that just for this moment she could see. Miss Weaver’s face might tell her things, how the ordered world that she always explained so logically had become jangling. How something wasn’t right in her beloved Teutonic civilization. But looking at Miss Weaver now might be like Lorraine looking at her over the cups of cocoa, a violation of the privacy politely given at moments of failure. For the first time, Miss Weaver seemed vulnerable to something, more like her own unsure self. For those moments in the restaurant, with the hum of traffic and the tramp of human feet outside, she felt unutterably close to her, though she doubted if Miss Weaver would ever guess.

Afterwards, back in Munich, the girls avoided walking under the arch that led into Marienplatz where the glockenspiel on the town hall chimed at noon. A Nazi officer was always stationed there and gave the
Heil
to everyone who walked through the passageway into the square. He expected the proper response. The girls learned a little cutoff to get to the square by another route. “You know, other people are taking this route too,” Icy remarked. “And they’re German.”