by Herman Wouk
“Good evening, sir.”
“Well! Return of the warrior!” said Rhoda. “You remembered you had a FAMILY! How nice! Are you busy next Saturday?”
“Not that I can think of, no.”
“Oh, no! Well, fine. How about coming to Saint John’s Church, then, and giving Madeline away to this sailor boy?”
Mother, daughter, and suitor burst into joyous laughter. Pug seized Madeline in his arms. She clung to him, hugging him hard, her wet cheek to his. He shook hands with Sime Anderson and embraced him. The young man wore the shaving lotion Warren had used; the smell gave Pug a small shock. Rhoda jumped up, kissed Pug, and exclaimed, “OKAY! Surprise is over, now for the champagne.” Practical talk followed: wedding arrangements, trousseau, caterer, guest list, accommodations for Sime’s family, and so forth; Rhoda kept making neat notes in a stenographic pad. Then Pug took Anderson off into the library.
“Sime, how are your finances?”
The young man confessed to two expensive hobbies: hunting, which he had learned from his father, and classical music. He had put more than a thousand dollars into records and a Capehart, and almost as much into a collection of rifles and shotguns. No doubt it hadn’t been sensible to clutter up his life that way; he could hardly turn around in his apartment; but then, he hadn’t bothered much with girls. Now he would store the stuff, and one day sell it off. Meantime he had saved only twelve hundred dollars.
“Well, that’s something. You can live on your salary. Madeline has savings, too. Also some stock in that damned radio show.”
Anderson looked very uncomfortable. “Yes. She’s better off than I am.”
“Don’t live higher on the hog than your own salary warrants. Let her do what she likes with her money, but not that.”
“That’s my intention.”
“Now, look, Sime, I’ve got fifteen thousand dollars put aside for her. It’s yours.”
“Ye gods, that’s marvelous!” An innocently greedy pleasure lit the young man’s face. “I didn’t expect that.”
“I’d suggest you buy a house around Washington with it, if you plan to stay in the Navy.”
“Sure, I’m staying in the Navy. We’ve talked that all out. R and D will be very big after the war.”
Pug put his hands on Anderson’s shoulders. “She’s said a thousand times, down the years, that she’d never marry a naval officer. Well done.”
The young couple went off in a happy flurry to celebrate. Pug and Rhoda sat in the living room, finishing the wine.
“So,” said Rhoda, “the last fledgling takes wing. At least she’s made it before the mother flew off.” Rhoda blinked archly over the rim of her wineglass at Pug.
“Shall I take you out to dinner?”
“Oh, no. I’ve got shad roe for the two of us. And there’s another bottle of champagne. How was your trip? Was Hack helpful?”
“Decidedly.”
“I’m so glad. He has got a big job, hasn’t he, Pug?”
“Couldn’t be bigger.”
Fresh-cut flowers from the garden on the candle-lit table; a tossed salad with Roquefort dressing; perfectly done large shad roe with dry crisp bacon; potatoes in their jackets, with sour cream and chives; a fresh-baked blueberry pie; obviously Rhoda had planned all this for his return. She cooked and served it herself, then sat and ate in a gray silk dress, with beautifully coiffed hair, looking like a chic guest at her own table. She was in a wonderful mood, telling Pug her ideas for the wedding, or else she was giving a superb performance. The champagne sparkled in her eyes.
This was the Rhoda who, for all her familiar failings — crabbiness, flightiness, moodiness, shallowness — had made him a happy man, Pug was thinking, for twenty-five years; who had captivated Kirby and Peters, and could ensnare any man her age; beautiful, competent, energetic, attentive to a man’s comforts, intensely feminine, capable of exciting passion. What had happened? Why had he frozen her out? What had been so irreparable? Long, long ago he had faced the fact that the war had caused her affair with Kirby, that it was a personal mischance in a world upheaval; even Sime Anderson had shrugged off Madeline’s past, and made a happy start on a new life.
The answer never changed. He did not love Rhoda any more. He had no use for her. He could not help it. It had nothing to do with forgiveness. He had forgiven her. But a live nerve now bound Sime Anderson and Madeline, and Rhoda had severed the nerve of their marriage. It was withered and dead. Some marriages survived an infidelity, but this one had not. He had been ready to go on with it because of the memory of their lost son, but it was better for Rhoda to live with someone who loved her. That she was in trouble with Peters only made him pity her.
“Great pie,” said Pug.
“Thank you, kind sir, and you know what I propose next? I propose coffee and Armagnac in the garden, that’s what. All the iris have popped open, and the smell is sheer HEAVEN.”
“You’re on.”
It had taken Rhoda a couple of years to weed out and replant the neglected quarter-acre. Now it was a charming brick-walled nook of varied colors and delicious fragrances, around a musically splashing little fountain she had installed at some cost. She carried the coffee service out to a wrought-iron table between cushioned lounge chairs, and Pug brought the Armagnac and glasses.
“By the bye,” she said as they settled down, “there’s a letter from Byron. In all the excitement, I clean forgot. He’s fine. It’s just a page.”
“Any real news?” Pug tried to keep relief out of his voice.
“Well, the first patrol was a success, and he’s been qualified for command. You know Byron. He never says much.”
“Did his Bronze Star come through?”
“Nothing on that. He worries and worries about Natalie. Begs us to cable any word we get.”
Pug sat staring at the flower beds. The colors were dimming in the fading light, and a breeze stirred a rich scent from the nodding purple iris. “We should call the State Department again.”
“I did, today. The Danish Red Cross is supposed to visit Theresienstadt, so maybe some word will come through.”
Pug was experiencing the sensation of a slipped cog in time, of reliving an old scene. Rhoda’s “By the bye, there’s a letter from Byron” had triggered it, he realized. So they had sat drinking Armagnac in twilight before the war, the day Admiral Preble had offered him the attaché post in Berlin. “By the bye, there’s a letter from Byron,” Rhoda had said, and he had felt the same sort of relief, because they had not heard from him in months. It had been the first letter about Natalie. That day, Warren had announced he was putting in for flight training. That day, Madeline had tried to go to New York during the school week, and he had stopped her with difficulty. In hindsight, quite a turning point, that day.
“Rhoda, I said I’d report any personal talk I had with Peters.”
“Yes?” Rhoda sat up.
“There was some.”
She gulped brandy. “Go ahead.”
Pug narrated the conversation in the dark train compartment. Rhoda kept taking nervous sips of her brandy. She sighed when he described Peters’s subsiding into snores. “Well! You were very, very gallant,” she said. “It’s no more than I expected of you, Pug. Thank you, and God bless you.”
“That wasn’t the end of it, Rho.”
She stared at her husband, her face white and strained in the gloom. “He went to sleep, you said.”
“He did. I woke early, and slid out of there for some breakfast. The waiter was bringing me orange juice when your colonel showed up, all shaved and spruce, and sat down with me. We were the only two people in the diner. He asked for coffee, and right off he said — in a very sober and calm way — ‘I take it you preferred not to give me a straight answer last night about Dr. Kirby.’”
“Oh, God. What did you say?”
“Well, he caught me off guard, you realize. I said, ‘How could I have been any straighter?’ Something like that. Then here’s what he answered — and
I’m trying for his exact words — ‘I’m not about to cross-examine you, Pug. And I’m not about to throw over Rhoda. But I think I should know the truth. A marriage shouldn’t start with a lie. If you get a chance to tell Rhoda that, please do. It may help clear the air.’”
“And what did you say to that?” Her voice shook, and her hand shook as she poured her glass full.
“I said, ‘There’s no air to clear, except in your mind. If poison-pen letters can get to you, you don’t deserve any woman’s love, let alone Rhoda’s.’”
“Beautiful, darling. Beautiful.”
“I’m not sure. He looked me in the eye and just said, ‘Okay, Pug.’ He changed the subject and talked business. He never referred to you again.”
Rhoda drank deeply. “I’m lost. You’re not a good liar, Pug, though God knows you tried.”
“Rhoda, I can lie, and on occasion I do it damned well.”
“In the line of duty!” She flipped her hand in scorn. “That’s not what I’m talking about.” She drank, and poured more, saying, “I’m sunk, that’s all. That accursed woman! Whoever she is, I really could kill her — oops!” The glass was overflowing.
“You’ll be blotto.”
“Why not?”
“Rhoda, he said he’s not throwing you over.”
“Oh, no. He’ll go through with it. Soul of honor, and all that. I’ll probably have to let him. What’s my alternative? Still, it’s all ruined.”
“Why don’t you just tell him, Rhoda?”
Rhoda sat and peered at him without replying.
“I mean that. Look at Madeline and Sime. She told him. They couldn’t be happier.”
With some of her old feminine sarcasm she said, “Pug, my dear dumb love, what kind of comparison is THAT? For God’s sake, I’m a HAG. Sime’s not thirty years old, and Madeline’s a luscious girl. Hack’s fastened on to me, and it’s all been terribly charming, but at our age it’s mostly mental. Now I’m CORNERED. I’m damned if I do and damned if I don’t. I’m a good wife, you know I am, and I know I could make him happy. But he had to have this perfect picture of me. It’s GONE.”
“It was an illusion, Rho.”
“What’s WRONG with illusions?” Rhoda’s voice strained and broke. “Sorry. I’m going to bed. Thank you, darling. Thank you for trying. You’re a grand man, and I love you for it.”
They stood up. Rhoda took a lithe step or two, put her arms around him and gave him a sensuous brandy-soaked kiss, pressing her body to his. They had not kissed like this in a year. So far as it went, it still worked. Pug could not help pulling her close and responding.
With a husky laugh, she broke half-free. “Save it for Pamela, honey.”
“Pamela turned me down.”
Rhoda went rigid in his arms, opening eyes like saucers. “Is THAT what was in that letter last week? She DIDN’T!”
“Yes.”
“My God, you’re close-mouthed. Why? How could she? Is she marrying Burne-Wilke?”
“She hadn’t yet. Burne-Wilke was wounded in India. They’re back in England. She’s been nursing him and — well, Rhoda, she said no. That’s it.”
Rhoda uttered a coarse chuckle. “You accepted that?”
“How do I not accept it?”
“Honeybunch, I’m potted enough to TELL you how. Woo her! That’s all she wants.”
“I don’t think she’s like that. The letter was pretty final.”
“We’re ALL like that. I declare, I am STONE drunk. You may have to help me up the stairs.”
“Okay, let’s go.”
“Just fooling.” She patted his arm. “Finish your brandy, dear, and enjoy that gorgeous moon. I can navigate.”
“You’re sure?”
“Sure. Night, love.”
A cool gentle kiss on the mouth, and Rhoda walked unsteadily inside.
When Pug came upstairs almost an hour later, Rhoda’s door was wide open. The bedroom was dark. The door had not been open since his return from Tehran.
“Pug, is that you?”
“Yes.”
“Well, good-night again, darling.”
It was all in the tone. Rhoda was a signaller, not a talker, and Pug read the signal, loud and clear. Clearly she had weighed her chances again, in the light of Peters’s suspicions, Pam’s refusal, and the family glow of Madeline’s happiness. Here was his old marriage, asking him back in. It was Rhoda’s last try. “They play a desperate game,” Peters had said. True enough. It was a powerful game, too. He had only to step through the doorway, into the remembered sweet odors of that dark room.
He walked by the door, his eyes moistening. “Good-night, Rhoda.”
81
PAST midnight. Overhead the full moon rides, silvering the deserted streets; silvering too the long, long freight train that comes clanking and squealing into the Bahnhofstrasse and jars to a halt outside the Hamburg barracks. Reverberating through the straight streets, the noises awaken the restless sleepers. “Did you hear that?” In many languages these words are whispered through the crowded rows of three-tier bunks.
There has not been a transport in a long time. The train could be bringing more materials for the crazy Beautification. Or perhaps it has come to take away the products of the factories. So the worried whispers go, though trucks and horse-drawn wagons, not trains, usually haul in and out everything but human beings. Of course it could be an arriving transport, but those usually come by day.
Aaron Jastrow, poring over the Talmud in his preposterously well-furnished ground floor apartment on the Seestrasse (it is to be a stop for the Red Cross visitors) hears the train. Natalie does not wake. Just as well! The Council of Elders has been wrestling for days with the transport order. The controlling figures are burned in Jastrow’s brain:
All Jews now in Theresienstadt 35,000
Protected by Germans 9,500
Protected by the Central Secretariat 6,500
Total protected 16,000
Available for transport 19,000
Seven thousand, five hundred persons must go — almost half of the “available,” one-fifth of the whole ghetto. The grating irony of the dates! The expectation of an Allied landing on May 15 has swept Theresienstadt. People have been waiting and praying for that day. Now the Transport Section is frantically shuffling and reshuffling index cards for the first shipment on May 15 of twenty-five hundred; the transport will go in three trains on three successive days.
This transport will badly disrupt the Beautification. The Technical Department will lose much of the work force that is repainting the town, laying out flower beds, putting down turf, building and renovating. The orchestras, the choruses, the drama and opera casts, will be cut to pieces. But the SS is unconcerned. Rahm has warned that the work will be done and the performances will shape up, or those in charge will be sorry. The Beautification is the cause of the transport. As the Red Cross visit draws nearer, the commander is getting nervous about his ability to steer it along a restricted route. The whole ghetto is being cleaned up, and to relieve the overcrowding, the sluice to the east has once more been opened.
Jastrow is heartsick over the general tragedy, and over a private bereavement. Headquarters has ordered all orphans in the town shipped off. Red Cross visitors asking a child about its parents must not hear that they are dead or — forbidden word — “transported.” Half of his Talmud class are orphans. His star student, Shmuel Horovitz, is one: a shy gaunt lad of sixteen with long hair, a silky beard, huge infinitely sad eyes, and a lightning mind. How can he bear to lose Shmuel? If only the Allies will indeed land! If only the shock will delay or cancel this transport! Saving seven thousand, five hundred Jews out of the massacre would be a miracle. Saving Shmuel alone would be a miracle. In Jastrow’s fond view, the blaze of this boy’s brain could light up the future of the whole Jewish people. He could be a Maimonides, a Rashi. To lose such a mind in a brief horrible flare over Oswiecim!
Natalie departs for the mica factory in the morning, unaware of the
waiting train. Jastrow goes to the newly located, superbly equipped library, which would not disgrace a small college: whole rooms full of new steel book stacks, bright lighting, polished reading tables, good chairs, even carpeting; and a richly varied collection of books in the major European languages, as well as the stunning Judaica collection, all smartly indexed and catalogued. Of course nobody is using this luxurious facility. Readers and borrowers will be suitably rehearsed in due time, to make it all look natural for the Danish visitors.
Nobody on Jastrow’s staff mentions the train. The day fades into late afternoon. Nothing has happened, and he begins to hope that all will be well. But they come, after all: two shabby Jews from the Transport Commission, a big fellow with wavy red hair carrying the bundle of summons cards, and a yellow-faced gnome with the roster to be signed. Their expressions are bitter. They know they move in an aura of hatred. They plod about the rooms, hunting down each transport recruit, serving him with his card, and getting his signature. The library is badly hit; out of seven staff workers Jastrow loses five, including Shmuel Horovitz. With the gray card on the desk before him, Shmuel strokes his youthful beard and looks to Jastrow. Slowly he turns his palms up and outward, his dark eyes wide, black-rimmed, and grieving as the eyes of Jesus in a Byzantine mosaic.
When Jastrow returns to the apartment, Natalie is there. Regarding him with eyes like Shmuel Horovitz’s, she holds out two gray cards to him. She and Louis are assigned to the third train, departing on the seventeenth “for resettlement in the direction of Dresden.” Their transport numbers are on the cards. She must report with Louis to the Hamburg barracks on the sixteenth, bringing light luggage, one change of linen, and food for twenty-four hours.