“Are you angry?” he asked.
“Let’s go to bed. You’re tired.”
He watched sullenly, and not without excitement, as one by one she shed her underwear, hung them on the back of a chair, and got into her pyjamas.
He sat down on the edge of the bed. “Forgive me,” he said.
Sally continued to brush her teeth.
“I didn’t know what I was doing.”
She came to him at last, forcing his head against her flat warm stomach, his scalp a pressure just under her breasts. Her fingers, running like roots through his hair, discovered the running scar in his neck. “What about this,” she asked. “Where did you get this scar?”
“In a fight with another boy.”
“And the other boy?”
“He’s dead.”
She drew away from him.
“I had no idea that you had actually.…”
“The first boy I killed was a Werewolf. Do you know what a Werewolf is?”
“I don’t want to know.”
“During the last days of the war the cream of the Hitler Youth was organized into special battalions for a last ditch defence of Berlin. I got into a fight with one of these boys several days after the end had come.”
“Why are you trying to frighten me?”
It’s true, he thought. I’m trying to frighten her.
“What will become of us, Ernst?”
“I don’t know.”
“We could get married.”
“The others would say I did it for your passport.”
“But it wouldn’t be true.”
“Why not,” he said, “you have a passport.”
“But you love me,” she said. “You’ve said so.”
“You have a passport. Maybe that’s one reason why I love you.”
“Do you believe in God?” Sally asked suddenly.
“Who?”
“GOD.”
“I don’t know. I never thought about it. Is it important?”
“I was brought up not to believe. My parents are socialists. But I believe in God.”
“So you believe in God,” he said, “so what?”
“It’s no use. You don’t understand.”
“Yeah. That’s right,” Ernst said, slipping into his jacket, “but we will never be able to understand each other. Our lives have been too different.”
“Where are you going?”
“For a walk,” he said. “I don’t feel well.”
“Ernst!”
But he was gone.
When she woke the morning after their first night together Sally, although they had not made love, was overcome by shame. Ernst was a pick-up. Ernst had awakened that first morning with a feeling of rejection. He had not really expected Sally to allow him to spend the whole night on the floor.
“My shirt isn’t dry yet,” he had said. “I’ll go when it’s dry.”
“I thought you had a little suitcase. I thought you were going to bring it.”
“You don’t want me to stay.”
“Yes,” she had lied. “I do.”
Ernst had washed and polished her floor as he had promised and that afternoon Sally had arranged with Karp for him to occupy the vacant room down the hall.
When they made love for the first time three days later Ernst had employed so much technique that, even if he had with one gesture succeeded in expunging from her memory the two or three hasty boys who had preceded him, he had also aroused the fear in her. She had been startled to discover that she had been able to shout imprecations and whisper endearments to a man who was not only a stranger but a stranger who probably didn’t care. But after he had begun to yield to her in little things, after they had given up the farce of separate rooms, she had recognized that his claims on her were larger than sexual. Those first few weeks, however, had been too taut with terror and pleasure and pain. Each day she had resolved to tell Ernst to go and each night they had made love more violently than the last. At times her fear of Ernst had made her physically ill. Yet there had always been the inner assurance that this could never last. This was an adventure: no more.
A week after he had moved in Ernst had come to an arrangement with Karp about doing work around the house. Two weeks after he had moved in he was doing odd jobs for other people on the street and, once again, he had been able to send money to his parents. When he had begun to share Sally’s room he had contributed two pounds weekly to their living expenses.
Yet he remained an enigma. Games fascinated him, he collected stamps haphazardly, and he was an addict of Westerns and the most sentimental Hollywood musicals. Scaramouche was his favourite novel. His insights, however, were alarming.
Once, when she had been ill with the flu, Sally had discovered something else about him. This child of violence could sing to make you weep. Somehow, somewhere, between theft and brawl and flight, Ernst had picked up the songs of Mozart and Schubert. But as the snake, perhaps, is ashamed of its beautiful colours, so Ernst was loath to admit to his gift. He made her promise not to tell anybody. But when she bought him a guitar he was hard put to conceal his delight. He sung for her almost every evening.
“You ought to take lessons,” she said.
“I can’t,” he said. “It’s impossible.”
In order to survive Ernst had seemingly drawn the line nowhere. But his one beautiful possession he would not exploit. Sally understood. She stopped pushing him.
And there followed for the two of them a loud time of pleasure, discovery, foolery, and dream-castles. A time when Sally had always run the last block home from school and begun to discard her coat, unzip her skirt and quake inside, even before she had thrust the door open to kick off her shoes one-two-three and leap into his arms. A time when she had pitied the sodden unlit faces of the others in the tube. When to touch was more than she could rightly have asked of life. A time of endless, talkative nights filled with loving and shared cigarettes and fantasies and wines. A time when she embarrassed the other girls at school with sudden and unaccountable gifts of laughter that sprang from heated memories. Yet she knew it was temporary. The joy that was his and hers would have to be swiftly harvested. He was a night person, a doomed one.
When Ernst had met Sally all he had wanted was to get to America and to become rich. He had been realistic about his chances. On the one side were his intelligence, his good looks, his proficiency in bed, his knowledge of languages and, above all, his indifference to others. Against him were his lack of formal schooling, a tendency to cough that might be consumption, and the police. The one thing he had not counted on had been the possibility of his falling in love.
Ernst knew what lovers were reputed to feel about one another and so gradually he had realized that he was, so to speak, in love with Sally.
When he was with Sally he began to suspect that happiness was more than an old man’s tale, like peace. He began to feel that it was good to make love, be hungry, stay up all night, rub your face against the damp belly of your loved one, sing, and play the fool. He studied his songs, he learned to live with hope and appetite. But there were the times when he awoke at three a.m. from a nightmare of Nicky and contemplated her plump and dead to him in their bed with such fear that he eventually poked her awake and back to him. There were also the times to be suffered alone. As he plastered a ceiling next door or mended a brick wall down the street or waxed the floor around the corner an especially beautiful posture of hers, a secret caress or taste, would come to him and suddenly his breath would falter, his legs would ache and, making one feeble excuse or another, he would run home to wait through the thirty-six hundred seconds of an hour for her when, at each tick of the clock, the police threatened to come to claim him first.
Ernst decided that he would like to give Sally a gift, so he took a photograph of her to an Australian painter who had exhibited a picture of a girl with a dog on her lap in the Hampstead Open Air Exhibition and, after some haggling, the Australian agreed to take the commission,
his first, for twenty-five guineas. For ten days Ernst watched the man in his studio each afternoon, complaining, disputing the choice of colours, and criticizing where the likeness was untrue. They quarrelled over the frame. The Australian wanted another ten guineas for it, but Ernst, who was not satisfied with the likeness anyway, refused to pay a penny more. Not only that, but he insisted that the Australian paint a bowl of roses in the right hand corner which, otherwise, was sort of empty. A bowl of roses, the Australian said, would destroy the portrait’s balance, but Ernst came up with another five guineas and in it went. The next afternoon Ernst took the picture home and hung it above the bed before Sally came home from school.
The picture was so bad as to be beyond criticism. But Sally guessed correctly that this was the first time Ernst had ever given anyone a gift.
“It’s beautiful, darling. Absolutely beautiful.”
“You are being kind.”
“Really, darling, I think it’s superb.”
Ernst jumped up on the bed. “The likeness could be better, but the eyes, I think, are very good. We can give it back if you don’t like it. I don’t care.”
She wouldn’t hear of giving it back. That’s what she told him.
When Ernst came back, about an hour after he had walked out on her, Sally was sitting up in bed addressing a letter. Ernst had returned resolved to tell her the truth about Nicky. But as soon as he came in she rushed into his arms, she hugged him, she kissed him, and murmured words of endearment. “You must never walk out on me like that again,” she said. “I thought you’d never come back.”
Ernst sat down wearily on the bed. “That might be best,” he said.
“I’ve written to my father about you. A letter a mile long. I told him that you asked me to marry you.”
“But I haven’t.”
“I was anticipating.”
“Anticipating?”
“It means looking forward to. Aren’t you going to marry me?”
“Yeah. Sure.”
“We’ll get married,” she said, “and go back to Montreal.”
That would mean applying for papers, he thought. If he applied for papers they would learn that he was here illegally. They might also find out about Nicky. There must be a police record.
“Your father,” he said, “would not be pleased.”
“All right,” she said. “We don’t have to go back. We can stay right here.”
“Yes,” he said heavily, “we can stay here.” Then, to her astonishment, he turned on her savagely. “If you see a dead man on the street in your Canada then you stop, a crowd collects, the police are called, but where I come from you hurry on. You don’t dare look.”
“Ernst. Ernst, love. All that is past. Why must you –”
“Your people will hate me before they have even met me.”
“We don’t have to go back. I told you that. As long as we’re together.”
“Stay here?”
“Yes.”
Sure, he thought. Stay here. With Norman downstairs.
“We’re in love, Ernst. The others can go to hell.”
“Lots of people are in love. So what?”
“The others can go to hell.”
“You are a child.”
“They can go to hell, I said. The others can go to hell.” Then, in a calmer voice, she added. “We’re in love. Isn’t that something fine?”
“We are in love,” he said wearily.
“Yes.”
“My father wanders from zone to zone. He will not stop until the day he dies.”
“We will take him with us.”
“Yes,” he said, “and my mother too. I think she is with a British sergeant now. He is from Blackpool.”
“And the sergeant from Blackpool.”
“Yes,” he said, “and we’ll take my Uncle Hans too. He’s an idiot, Hans is. The war lasted too long for him.”
“We’ll take him with us.”
“And the children,” he said. “We must bring the children. We’ll turn them loose in the fields. There’ll be no youth movements or self-criticism notebooks. Just jam-trees and carrot sticks. Carrots are excellent for children.”
“Excellent for children? That’s the beginning, isn’t it?”
“You’re right, darling, no carrots. But where,” he said, “where are we all going?”
Sally made no reply.
“Where?”
She thought hard.
“It doesn’t matter,” she said, “as long as you’re there.”
“As long as we’re together.”
“That’s it.”
“We can even stay right here,” he said cynically.
“Yes,” she said, “if you like.”
Ernst rose hastily and was sick in the sink. Sally held his head. He was sick twice more. She made him tea.
“What is it?” she asked.
“I may have to leave you.”
“Leave me,” she said. “What have I done to hurt you?”
Ernst rose once more. Sweat broke from every pore, then the shaking came. He tumbled on to the bed and brought his knees up to his chin and hugged himself tight. Sally held his cold shaking body close. “Shall I call a doctor?” she asked.
“A minute,” he said. “I’ll be O.K. …”
An hour passed before he quietened down again.
“There is something … something I should tell you.…”
“Not now,” she said. “Tomorrow.”
She made more tea. “Come,” she said, “I’ll brush your hair.”
“I hate myself,” Ernst said vehemently. “Oh, if you only knew how much I hate myself.”
“Sleep,” she said. “Please sleep.”
Sally woke again at three a.m. when Ernst let out a wild scream. He had had a bad dream, he said. He was feverish with a tendency to tremble, but he gradually quietened down again. He fell asleep with his head on Sally’s breast.
VIII
When he woke the morning after Winkleman’s party Norman remembered enough to be deeply embarrassed. He phoned Bella and wrote letters of apology to Horton and Graves. Bella was happy to forget the whole incident, but neither of the men replied to his letters.
Norman was concerned. Although he hadn’t been a party member for several years he remained a Marxist yet. This gave him the benefit of a code, a system of responses, that was of singular value to him. Helping Ernst was contrary to that code. For the first time Norman began to feel the sands shift under him.
I’m getting involved, Norman thought, and for what? Ernst is possibly everything Horton says he is. Sally will never be mine.
Sally, he thought.
The day after the party Sally and Ernst invited Norman to their room for dinner. He ate with them three more times within ten days. That week Norman was working very hard putting the finishing touches to Charlie’s film script – All About Mary – but he was curious, glad for the diversion, and so he accepted their invitations. At first it was painful for him to see Sally and Ernst obviously making a go of it when he wanted her so much himself, but he reluctantly came to accept his position as a fellow conspirator. To begin with Ernst appeared to be uneasy in Norman’s company. He hardly ever spoke. But two weeks after the party he began to relax more.
One evening after the three of them had had far too much to drink Ernst picked up his guitar and, without being asked, sang for Norman. He had a remarkable voice. Norman, taken by surprise, demanded more and more songs and Ernst obliged with enthusiasm. Norman went out for another bottle of whisky and when he returned Sally made up outrageously and came through with some hilariously shameful dances. When Karp’s other tenants began to complain about the racket they were welcomed into the party. Even Karp himself, when he finally appeared at one a.m., failed to inject his customary chill into the gathering. He sang naughty German music hall songs using his cane nattily. Mr. O’Brien, an otherwise dour water-works clerk, enriched the party with his repertoire of filthy limericks. Miss Kennedy, he
r hair in curlers, danced the Charleston with Norman. Sally sat on Mr. O’Brien’s lap. But Ernst, a guitar on his lap and his back to the wall, was the soul of the party. He sang again and again.
Before going, Norman took him aside. He told Ernst about the wood in the cupboard of his flat, reminded him of his offer, and asked if he would build him a bookcase.
“I’ll go first thing tomorrow morning,” Ernst said.
But alone with Sally again, rejecting her tired happy smile and her embrace, he felt as though he had been judged. You’ll come to hate me, he thought. Both of you will come to hate me.
“You sentimental people,” Ernst shouted. “You make me sick.”
IX
Early the next morning, Ernst, saw and tool kit in hand, left for Norman’s Kensington Church Street flat. He was exhausted; he’d had enough. He decided, as he had before, to tell Sally the truth about Nicky when he got home. This time, though, he would go through with it. No matter what.
Sally stood on a chair and emptied the wardrobe. Clothes, old magazines, socks, suitcases, were dumped on the bed. When she reached the top Sally came across Ernst’s torn little black suitcase. She clutched it to her bosom affectionately. This, she remembered, had been his only possession when he had first come to stay.
Karp loomed smiling and obese in the doorway. “What goes on here?” he asked.
“Spring clean-up?”
“In September?” he asked.
“Come in, Mr. Karp. I’ll give you a cup of tea.”
Sally dumped the little black suitcase on the bed.
“That would be a pleasure,” Karp said, producing a little box of pastries.
Sunday morning tea had become something of a ritual for Karp and Sally. Karp came when Ernst was out and spoke to her of his flowers, the other tenants, and sometimes asked her advice on a choice of patterns for new wall paper. He was fond of Sally. Of his other new friend, Charlie Lawson, he was not fond. With Charlie he played the tease. He delighted in telling him dreadful stories about Norman, most of them fantasies, just to arouse him. Charlie he found an amusing fool. Sally was a comfort.
“Oh, damn, I’m out of milk. Look,” she said, “the milkman just passed. You wait here and I’ll catch him.”
A Choice of Enemies Page 11