by Belva Plain
“You three, Joel and Lore and Caroline, have a lot in common,” said one of the women, meaning to encourage. “Europe is behind you, Europe and sorrow. Now surely you have some good things ahead.”
These kind words, at that moment, went flat. Yet Tessie pursued the subject.
“Why don’t you people get acquainted? Go on out, walk in the park, practice your English. Or speak German, if you want to make it easier.”
“Not I. Let the others go,” Lore said promptly. “No walking for me today. I have new shoes on, and they hurt my feet.”
“Then Joel and Caroline do it. Go ahead, Joel. Buy Caroline a real American ice cream soda.”
This was absurd. They wanted to throw her together with that poor young man, who was probably as unwilling as she was. And surely there was no point in starting a social life when she was going to depart in two weeks. She was about to make a polite excuse, when he stood up.
“That would be nice,” he said.
This time it was her cheeks that flushed. She was being forced to do something against her will. Lore could certainly come along and make things easier. Her feet don’t hurt any more than mine do, she thought.
Joel walked ahead down the stairs, as a man should. At the bottom, he opened the door to let her go ahead of him. At least he had good manners. This judging of him was snobbish, she knew it was, and was sorry about it. But she was just so angry!
They went along the street together. Speaking in German, he asked her whether she would like some ice cream. Actually, she did not, but to sit and pass the time eating was better than this aimless walk, so she told him that she would.
He led her through several turns and corners to an ice cream parlor with a marble-topped counter and small, intimate tables. The wiry little chairs were like the ones she had seen long ago in Paris parks.
By way of conversation she asked him how he knew his way around so well. He told her that he had spent almost every day since his arrival exploring the city; He had gone to the top of the Empire State Building, had visited the Statue of Liberty and the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
“I always wanted to see a museum,” he said. “I come from a small city where we don’t have such things, statues and cups and coffins a thousand years old. No, two thousand, I think, from ancient Greece. Am I right?”
“Yes, from ancient Greece and Egypt.” His naivete was touching.
“Good. I thought so, but I wasn’t sure. You must have great museums in Berlin. I suppose you go there often.”
“I used to. But things have changed—for us, I mean.”
“Yes, I know. It is terrible everywhere for us.”
They stopped speaking. Both laid down their spoons and sat still, staring into the vacant air. Then suddenly Joel broke the silence.
“In a way, it is easier for me than for you. When people are dead, you don’t have to worry any longer about what may be happening to them.”
As always, it was compassion that weakened her. She looked at him with wet eyes.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “Perhaps it’s better if we don’t speak about it at all. Just pray. I go to daily prayers, and it helps me. What about you?”
“I shall probably shock you, but I don’t go.”
“You don’t believe? You don’t pray?”
An innocent question, she thought. He has an innocent, good face, perhaps a bit stupid, and then again, perhaps not.
“I believe in nature,” she answered quietly. And since he looked blank, she went on, “In the beauty of the world, I mean, with everything related to everything else, the trees, and us, too, all living things, all related.”
“That’s not enough for me,” he said, “but each of us must do what’s best for himself.”
She liked him for saying that. And she went on as if compelled for her own benefit to express herself.
“I mean something like the American Indians that I read about. ‘My mother, the earth, my father, the sky,’ they say. I can understand that. The sky, the unknown, that’s where God is. I need only to look up.”
“I don’t know anything about Indians, but then I have never read very much.”
He puzzled her. What a narrow life! And yet he had gone to a museum and been awed by what he saw.
“But you learned German. How is that?”
He shrugged. “We lived near the border. You hear it every day, so you pick it up. And you? How is it that you know English? And French, too, I hear.”
I hear. Again she felt as if her privacy had been invaded. And her anger returned. Heaven only knew whether they had told him, too, what they knew about her.
Still, it wouldn’t be his fault if they had. She explained simply, “At school we had to study languages.” There would be no sense telling about the governess. He would not know what she was talking about.
“You’ve had a very different life from mine. Your father was a doctor, an educated man. My father had a bakery. A large bakery,” he said with some pride. “We had six bakers working for us. In one morning we could bake enough bread for half the city. Well, not quite half, but it was a good business, anyway. And I was learning to run it, keeping the accounts and all that, so my father wouldn’t have to work so hard. And now—” He threw up his hands.
Gloom came down again over the table. The ice cream had melted on the plates. Neither of them had really wanted it.
“Shall we walk back?” she suggested.
“I suppose they will be expecting us.”
He took out an old-fashioned coin purse, counted money, paid, and counted the change as Caroline watched him.
“You already understand American money,” she said. “You’re not confused?”
“No, I told you, I’m a man of business.”
He phrased the words importantly: “A man of business.” He could not be more than twenty-two or twenty-three, she estimated, and yet, in spite of his youthful body, in spite of both his innocence and his ignorance, there was an air of lonely old age about him. She glanced at him sideways as they walked and he kept talking, being sociable, with an account of the view from the top of the Statue of Liberty.
And with a sudden insight, she saw that he could not possibly be as innocent as he seemed. Once you had watched your parents and all your people being gunned to death, you could no longer be innocent.
Before they started up the stairs, Joel stopped at the foot to ask a timid question. “I was wondering whether you would help me with English. I bought a grammar book, but it’s not enough by itself. Aunt Tessie tried to help me, but she’s not a very good teacher. Am I asking too much? If I am, please say so.”
It was unthinkable to refuse, especially since she was already helping Lore every day. “I’ll be glad to,” she said. “But we’re only here two more weeks, you remember.”
“That’s all right. I can learn a lot in two weeks.”
That night, Caroline scolded Lore. “You knew he was going to be there today, don’t deny it, Lore.”
“I do deny it. But what’s so terrible? I don’t know what you’re fussing about.”
“I’m fussing because it’s not a nice feeling to know that strangers have been discussing all your affairs. I suppose even he has heard that I’m pregnant,” she said bitterly.
In her agitation, she walked back and forth through the sliver of space between the two beds.
“Annie’s a bighearted woman, God knows, but she has a big mouth, too. You should especially never have told her that lie.”
“We’ve been over that. I’ve explained why I did it. And I still think it made sense in our circumstances to do it,” Lore said seriously. “But I apologize again if I’ve hurt you.”
Her nostrils quivered, signaling distress, and Caroline at once felt contrite. For who now cared more about her than Lore did?
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I know you meant well; you always do. It’s just that half the time I’m not thinking straight. For a few minutes I can think of something else, something
in the newspaper, for instance, and forget where I am or what I am, and then all at once it flashes back and I know who I am.” Panic, like a huge cold hand, clutched her chest. She wanted to cry out, Oh, Lore, what am I going to do? but did not.
“He’s coming tomorrow for our English lesson,” she said.
JOEL arrived every afternoon all that week. He and Lore were both desperate to learn the language.
“I cannot understand a person who lives here all his life without learning the language,” he said.
And Lore explained how quickly she must qualify for the nursing license.
“Well, I don’t have a profession,” Joel said, “unless you can call business a profession. But I also have a trade. I’m a baker. Nobody ever taught me, but I grew up in the business, and I watched everything. I can make you any kind of bread you want: rolls, twists, wheat, rye, anything. Until I can speak the language really well, that’s probably what I’ll have to do. To earn my bread,” he finished and smiled, pleased with his own wit.
“A nice young man,” Lore observed when he had gone. “He has strong nerves. To have seen what he’s seen, the whole community put to death and not a friend left, and still be sane! Still be able to think of the future. That’s quite something, don’t you think so?”
Caroline agreed that it was indeed “quite something.”
One evening Annie invited Joel to stay to dinner. As on the night of Caroline and Lore’s arrival, she set the table in the front room, spread a white cloth, and put geraniums in the jelly jar at the center.
She was creating a festive atmosphere. It’s for Joel’s benefit, thought Caroline, and felt again the uneasiness that had moved her on that Sunday in Tessie’s house.
Jake, as he came in, remarked that one could smell Annie’s fancy apple pudding in the outer hall. “Fragrant,” he said. “The neighbors will know that we’re having a banquet.”
“Hardly a banquet,” responded Annie, “just a family dinner.” She looked around the table. “Yes, in this short time, you feel like family to us. I’ve told you how we’re going to miss you girls. And you, too, Joel.”
Lore inquired where he was going.
“I don’t know, but somewhere. I can’t stay with my second cousin’s widow much longer. I wouldn’t want to even if she wanted me to, which I know she can’t. She’s done more than enough by signing for me and taking me in.”
“Wherever you go,” Jake said, “you’ll do fine, Joel. Tessie feels she’s gotten to know you pretty well, and Tessie’s a sharp old lady. You have to get up early in the morning to fool Tessie. In her book you rate A Number One.”
This praise, given in a mixture of English and Yiddish-German, was, although probably just half understood, still sufficient to bring another flush, this time of pleasure, to Joel’s cheeks. It seemed to Caroline that he had changed. In these few days, he had become more sure of himself.
He leaped now into the conversation, addressing her and Lore. “You two are lucky to have each other. To be alone in the world, to have nobody, is a terrible thing. It’s a sickness.” He said this not as if he were asking for sympathy, but making a declaration with which anyone must agree.
“Joel, tell me,” Jake asked, “what are your thoughts about the war? Do you think Hitler can win?”
Joel shrugged. “I come from a little place, and I don’t know much. Yes, I think he could win, but he can also be beaten if the whole world will go after him.”
Jake assenting, the two men took over the conversation and kept it up between them until finally Annie made a suggestion.
“Why don’t you people take in a movie? There’s a good one playing over on the avenue.”
“I’m too sleepy,” Caroline said quickly.
“There’s a catch for some smart young girl,” Jake said when Joel left. “Yes, yes, the girl who gets him will be in luck, mark my words.”
Annie nodded. “No doubt about it.”
Lore said nothing. And Caroline had some thoughts that, during the past hour, had taken a definite shape: These people were trying to push Joel Hirsch and Caroline together. But for what purpose? It was ridiculous.
In their room later, she confronted Lore. “Do you realize what they’re doing? Why did she invite him to dinner tonight? And those remarks about the ‘smart girl who catches him.’ Do they really think I would want Joel? That’s the craziest notion I have ever heard. It makes me furious.”
“They mean well. And perhaps it’s not as crazy as all that.”
“What, Lore? You’re really saying that to me, or didn’t I hear you right?”
“I’m not saying anything.” Lore laughed. “Don’t get excited. He hasn’t declared his love, has he? Wait till he gets down on his knees to you and pleads for your hand.”
“Ha ha. Funny. Very funny.”
As usual now, she slept badly. Toward morning, she became aware that Lore was tossing in the other bed.
“Is anything wrong?” she whispered.
“My teeth. My rotten teeth again. I think I have an abscess.”
“Can I get you anything?”
“No. As soon as they’re up, I’ll ask for the name of their dentist.”
“I’ll get dressed quickly and take you there.”
Later Jake said, “I’ve got a job to do right near the dentist’s place. You can ride with me, Lore, and I’ll talk to him for you.”
The front room, where Caroline sat alone, faced west and was dark in the morning. She drank a cup of coffee and listened to a news reporter on the radio. There was nothing unusual: The French, behind the Maginot Line, were still doing nothing, and the Germans, because they were doing nothing, must surely be plotting something dreadful. Therefore, the news was still ominous.
Where were her parents? And where was Walter, the stranger in his uniform under the swastika flag? Shutting off the radio, she sat with the unread newspaper on her lap.
The doorbell startled her. “Who is it?” she called.
“It’s Joel.”
“But your lesson’s this afternoon,” she began as she opened the door. “And Lore—”
“I know. Lore’s gone to the dentist. Tessie told me.”
Did these people run an information service? If she wanted to be sarcastic, she might ask him whether he knew what kind of cereal she had just had for breakfast.
“Do sit down,” she said, for he was standing in the center of the room, holding his hat. And she thought again that he really did have manners.
When he sat down, he still held the hat, twirling it on his knees. He seemed about to say something, hesitated, and said, “I hope Lore will be all right.”
“She always has trouble with her teeth.”
He nodded knowingly, said “Ah” in sympathy, and then nothing more.
She wished he had not come. This was not the time for an English lesson, and as it seemed apparent that he had no other business, he ought to leave. The awkward silence was exasperating, and she broke it.
“It’s because of the war, the last one, I mean. They had no nourishment for their bones.”
“Ah,” he murmured again, and blinked hard.
He needs glasses, she thought.
“It was a fine thing for her when your parents took her in, a poor, twelve-year-old orphan. A very fine thing.”
“You seem to know all about us,” Caroline said, trying to conceal annoyance.
Apparently she had succeeded, or else he did not care either way, because he answered plainly, “Yes, they told Tessie, and Tessie told me.”
For a few moments she said nothing, but sat there feeling her resentment grow along with her awareness of his gaze. It went from her feet to the hand that lay on the arm of the chair, to the narrow gold chain around her neck, and stopped at her face.
“Well,” she said abruptly, “shall we begin the lesson? It’s the third chapter, past tenses.”
“I have to tell you I didn’t come for the afternoon lesson. I came this morning because I knew you were
alone, and I wanted to talk to you.”
“Yes? What about?”
“I’ll get to that. First—well, you just said I seem to know all about you, but—please excuse me—you see, I really do. I know about your trouble. Such a terrible thing. This Nazi, this animal, even to touch you … a terrible thing.”
“Who told you? Who dared?” she demanded.
“The Sandlers told Tessie. Don’t be angry. They only want to help you.”
As so often now, Caroline had the sense that this was all theater. And she did not know what answer to give, although he was evidently waiting for one.
“I was thinking,” he said, “that your child should have a name.” His brilliant flush covered his face up to the uneven fringe of his curls. “A name and a decent man’s protection. So I am willing to marry you.”
She was stunned. Willing to marry you. What? Doing me a favor? She could have cried with the shame of it. She could have thrown something at him or shown him the door.
But he was sitting there almost humbly, still twirling the hat, with a look of gentle concern in his blinking eyes. The man was an imbecile.
“Well,” she replied, “this is rather unusual, wouldn’t you say?” The words came snapping out of her mouth. “People usually know each other a bit longer than ten days, and there is usually some talk of love, I think. Don’t you think so, too?”
He considered the words as if they had been spoken in full sincerity. “This is not a usual situation, though,” he said earnestly. “It would be wonderful if it were; if, for instance, I could say, ‘I am in love with you.’ If I say it now, you will say, as you just have, that people don’t fall in love so fast, and you’ll be right. Or perhaps you won’t be right. If I say that you’re so beautiful that I—but you surely know that already. So what is there left for me to tell you? Only that you have a need, and I have a need, too. I want to have somebody to belong to.” His flush had receded, but he was sweating, overcome with emotion. “It would not have to be marriage in the usual sense,” he said delicately, “only familial, a companionship. I think it would work out very well.”