Dark Angel

by Sally Beauman

  Frank Gerhard moved his bishop in a deep diagonal, the width of the board. Wexton parried, but was fenced in. Frank Gerhard continued to hold my hand. I continued to hold his. Some five minutes later Wexton resigned. An ingenious checkmate. The game was over.

  I think Wexton left the table at that point and went to rouse Steenie. I remember that he disappeared. I remember Steenie’s protesting that it was too soon to return to the hotel, and I suppose Wexton must have insisted, because both of them certainly left, and on his way out Uncle Steenie managed to knock over the microscope.

  I suppose that more must have been said; it must have been agreed, for instance, that I would follow them later. I have a vague recollection of Frank Gerhard’s saying he would walk me back. But it was all very brief. My uncle Steenie was too drunk to see what was happening; if Wexton saw (and I am sure he did) he was too wise to interfere or comment.

  I remember the door closing. I remember Steenie, in the courtyard outside, caroling. But such things were peripheral. I continued to hold Frank Gerhard’s hand; I continued to look at him.

  He had risen—I think when the others left. Despite my height, he was considerably taller. I looked up at him; he looked down. He looked at my face in a strange way, as if he quantified the features there, perhaps measured the length of my nose or the space between my eyes. I felt quite blind. Happiness stole upon me; it made his face a haze. I remember wondering what the source of this happiness might be, and deciding it was the grasp of his hand.

  I continued to stare. The clock continued to tick. The features of this face were delightful to me. He frowned. I thought that frown a marvelous thing. I intended to look at that frown forever.

  “Seventy-two,” Frank Gerhard said.

  I was concentrating so deeply on the frown that speech was unexpected. I jumped.

  “Seventy-two,” he said again, in a stern way. The frown deepened. “You used to have seventy-two. Now you have seventy-five. There are three more, all on the same side, under your left eye. Freckles, that is.”

  I suppose I must have said something; perhaps I just made another startled and incoherent sound. Whatever it was that I did, it appeared to make him impatient, and joyful. An expression that was familiar to me came upon his face.

  “It’s perfectly simple,” he continued, and I could see the effort it cost him to speak in this reasonable way:

  “You had seventy-two freckles. Now, you have seventy-five. I didn’t mind them then, and I don’t mind them now.” He paused; the frown deepened. “No, this is wrong. The truth is: I love them very much. Your freckles, and your hair and your skin and your eyes. Especially your eyes—”

  He stopped. I said:

  “Franz-Jacob.”

  “You see, when I look at your eyes …” He hesitated; he was struggling. “When I look at your eyes—it has been hard, so very hard, not to tell you. Not to say, and to do, so many things. I—What did you say?”

  “I said: Distance is of no object between the hearts of friends.”

  There was a silence. Color came and went in his face. His hand lifted, then fell. He said:

  “It mattered to you? You do remember?”

  I began to tell him, then, how much it had mattered, and how many things I remembered. Such a strange list: greyhounds and algebra, Morse code and waltzes, Winterscombe and Westchester, the children we had been and the adults we were now.

  I did not progress very far with that list. When I had reached greyhounds, or perhaps algebra, Frank said:

  “I think I have to kiss you. Yes, I have to do it now, at once—”

  “No algebra?”

  “No algebra, no geometry, no trigonometry, no calculus. Another time, perhaps—”

  “Another time?”

  “Possibly.” A determined look had come into his eyes, tempered by amusement. He put his arms around me. I knew I would not finish that list.

  “Possibly. On the other hand, maybe I won’t care very much if your mathematics goes to the dogs. Maybe I am indifferent to your progress, or lack of it, in mathematics—”

  “You’re sure?”

  “Not quite. I am, however, very sure”—he drew me closer—“very sure indeed, about this.” He paused one last time before he kissed me. He looked into my eyes; he touched my face; when he spoke, he did so very gently:

  “Versteht du, Victoria?”

  “Ich verstehe, Franz,” I said.

  That was how it was. There you are. I felt: all the equations came out. Q.E.D.—in my life, this was the arithmetic.

  I stayed with him all night; we talked all night—or most of it. Frank said:

  “Two of Rosa’s children are adopted. Daniel came out from Poland. I came out from Germany. We never speak of this. It would hurt Rosa if we did. Rosa never speaks of it, to anyone—well, you know this. We are all … her children. That was her choice. I had to decide …” His face became closed.

  “Either I could be Franz-Jacob, with no family, or I could be Frank Gerhard. I decided to be Frank Gerhard. I admired her husband, Max. I came to love them both. It was a way of thanking them for what they had done.”

  “And now, which are you? Frank Gerhard or Franz-Jacob?”

  “Both, of course. I never tell Rosa that.”

  “And which shall I call you?”

  “Whichever you choose. You see, it does not matter. As long as you are there, nothing else matters. Names least of all.”

  He had turned away from me as he said this. Turning back, he took my hands and held them tightly.

  “Do you know how many letters I sent you? I wrote once a week, every week, for three years. To begin with they were short letters, very dry, full of sums—that was the kind of boy I was. I didn’t find it easy to express what I felt. I still don’t, even now. I can want, so much, to speak from the heart—and then, I don’t. I fail. A scientist, you see.” He shrugged, in an angry way. “Poor with words. English words, anyway.” He paused. “I can be a little more eloquent, occasionally, in German.”

  “I find you very eloquent. You are eloquent—to me. Words don’t matter, not when I look at you.” I stopped. “Frank, tell me about your letters.”

  “Very well. They were … boy’s letters, to begin with. What was happening then, when I went back to Germany—I couldn’t describe it. So I wrote about other things. I was twelve then. I imagine, if you’d ever had those letters, you would have found them very dull. You might have said: ‘This friend Franz writes like a timetable, a textbook….’ Those letters, anyway. Not the later ones.”

  “The later ones were different?”

  “Very different. Very … desperate. I was fourteen, fifteen by then. I poured out my heart to you. I had never done that before. I have never done it since. I said … Well, it doesn’t matter now what I said.”

  “It matters to me. It will always matter to me.”

  “It was a long time ago. I was a boy still—”

  “I want to know, Frank.”

  “Very well.” He rose and turned away from me. “I said that I loved you. As a friend—but also not just as a friend. I said that.”

  The admission was made with the greatest reluctance, in a stiff way. I said gently:

  “You sound ashamed. Why sound ashamed? Is that such a terrible thing to have said?”

  “I am not ashamed,” he replied fiercely. “I won’t let you think this. It is just—”

  “I said it, too, you know. I expect, if I could read now what I wrote then, I’d find it embarrassing. Does that matter? I meant what I said.”

  “You said that?” He stared at me.

  “Of course. In very bad prose. Too many adjectives. Adverbs everywhere.”

  Frank had begun to smile. He crossed back to me. He said, “Tell me some of these adjectives. And these adverbs …”

  I began on some of them. Like my earlier list, it was a brief one. I might have reached dearly, or perhaps passionately or maybe (I’m afraid) eternally before I was silenced.

 
; Some while later, Frank took my hand. I was too dazed with happiness to think very clearly, but I could see that despite everything, he was still troubled.

  “I still cannot understand. All these letters—your letters, my letters. Where could they have gone?”

  I think that even then, at the very beginning, it was that question above all which I wanted to avoid. I said, the letters were gone; I said, now it need not matter.

  “But it does matter. The logic of it matters—you must see that. You wrote throughout the war. How many letters was that?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “I know how many I wrote. Once a week, every week, for three years. Work it out! That is one hundred and fifty-six letters. To the correct address. In war, maybe one letter might be lost, five, ten—but one hundred and fifty-six? That is against all laws of probability.”

  “We know now, what we said—”

  “That’s not the point! Don’t you see the consequences? You might have believed your letters went astray, but what about mine? What did you think, when I had promised to write and I never did?”

  “I thought you were dead.”

  “Oh, my darling, don’t cry. Please, listen. Look at me. Try to imagine: You thought I was dead—what did I think? I knew you weren’t dead. I knew you were alive. I knew where you lived. Listen.” His voice became more gentle. “You haven’t asked me one obvious question. You haven’t asked why I stopped writing when I did.”

  “It makes me afraid. That’s why—”

  “Don’t be afraid. There’s nothing to fear now.” He paused, looking across the room. “It was the middle of the war, late in 1941. I was in New York by then. I had been with Rosa and Max a few weeks. And one afternoon I crossed town. I knew where you lived—such a very grand address! I stood outside that apartment building, trying to summon up the courage to go in. And while I was standing there, across the street, you came out, with your godmother. You were arm in arm. You had cut your beautiful hair. You had a dog with you—a huge dog, like a black bear—”

  “Bertie,” I said. “His name was Bertie. He’s dead now. You were there? You can’t have been there—”

  “I watched you walk up Fifth Avenue, arm in arm. You were laughing and talking. You walked very fast. I saw you go into the park. I followed you, as far as the zoo. It was a fine day—there were a lot of people. You never looked back. It was easy to do.”

  “And then?”

  “Nothing. That was the end. I stood there in the park, and I decided. I would never write to you again.”

  “You made up your mind—just like that? I couldn’t have done that. If that had been me, I would have rushed after you and caught you by the arm, and—”

  “Would you?” Frank turned me to look at him. “Are you sure? I thought … You can imagine what I thought.”

  “Tell me.”

  “I thought you had forgotten me, obviously.” His face stiffened. “I thought that … you couldn’t be bothered with that friendship of ours. That our promises meant nothing to you. A little death of the heart.” He shrugged. “I did not think so well of you then. I said: one hundred and fifty-six letters; enough. I went home. I shut myself in my room. And I worked. When I was unhappy, that was what I did then.”

  “You worked? Oh, Frank.”

  “Mathematics, I think. Sum after sum. It was effective, up to a point. I still find it effective, even now.”

  I looked away. I thought of a boy, shut in a strange room in a strange house in a strange city, a boy who had already lost a family as well as this friend. I could understand, now, how that boy could grow up into the man who sat next to me, a man who found it difficult to trust and painfully hard to admit the strength of his feelings. All those episodes from our more recent past fell into place, incident after sad incident. I reached for his hand.

  “Frank, if I had recognized you, that first day I came to your house—would it have been different then?”

  “It would have been different for me. I hope I would have behaved better, then and afterwards.”

  “And in Venice—you almost told me then? You were about to tell me—and you stopped?”

  “I might have told you. I wanted to do so—very much.”

  “Were you jealous?”

  “Oh, yes.” That glint of amusement returned to his eyes. “I can be intensely jealous. This is another fault of mine.”

  “I don’t mind it. I don’t mind it at all—”

  “It is not so very easy to sit opposite a woman you love, to find you are not recognized, to think—even if you were, it would make no difference. It is especially not easy when you also know you are being touchy, and arrogant, and very, very obstinate—”

  “You could have—”

  “Oh, I’m very well aware of what I could have done. I could see the possibilities, very clearly, while I did the very opposite. So … I left. I went to Oxford. I thought I could teach myself to forget—”

  “And you didn’t?”

  “No. That lesson, I cannot learn.” He gave one of his shrugs. “For better or worse, that is the kind of man I am.”

  I hesitated. I looked toward the window, and saw that morning began. I said:

  “But you did change your mind. You must have changed your mind. Why? When?”

  “When I was away. When I asked you to come here. And tonight, I think. Yes, when I was playing chess with your godfather—”

  “Then? Why then?”

  “I had had enough of opening gambits. I saw the next move. It was a risky one, perhaps—”

  “You thought it was risky?”

  “Oh, yes. Very much so. Until I took your hand—”

  “And then?”

  “I knew,” he replied. “It was not just the correct move—it was the only move. I saw that then.”

  Wexton and Steenie and I traveled back from New Haven by railroad. On the train, I babbled. I babbled to Wexton, who was trying to read, and who occasionally smiled. I babbled to the train windows, to the air, to the paper cups of watery coffee. I babbled to Steenie, who had a hangover. He winced. He groaned.

  “Love? Vicky darling—please. My head aches. There are these furry little spots dancing up and down in front of my eyes. My left leg could be paralyzed. I don’t think I can bear to hear about love. Besides which, you’re repeating yourself. People in love are not only egotistic, they’re the most terrible bores.”

  “I don’t care. I’m not going to stop. You’re going to listen. I love him. In a way, I’ve always loved him. Steenie, please listen. He isn’t Frank Gerhard—well, he is, but he’s also Franz-Jacob. You must remember Franz-Jacob.”

  “I don’t remember anything. I’m not sure I recall my own name. What were we drinking last night? Was there port? Or was it brandy?”

  “Never mind all that. Did you like him?” I tugged Steenie’s arm. “Steenie, did you like him? What did you think of him?”

  “I thought him … a most alarming young man.” Steenie gave a sigh. “He had a wild look in his eyes. Also, he walks very fast. He walks at an immoderate pace.”

  “But you liked him—you did like him?”

  “I can’t remember if I liked him. I went to sleep. He keeps microscopes on chairs—I do remember that.”

  “You were drunk,” I said. “You were tight as a tick—you said so yourself. If you hadn’t been drunk, you’d have noticed how wonderful he is. Wexton, did you notice?”

  “He plays very good chess.”

  “And? And?”

  “He can hold hands with you and checkmate me in three moves—I guess that’s impressive.”

  “Wexton, you’re teasing me.”

  “Not at all. I wouldn’t think of it.”

  “You are. Both of you. You and Steenie. You’ve forgotten how it feels—”

  “I resent that,” said Steenie strongly. “I resent that very much. I remember how it feels exactly. Don’t you, Wexton?” A glance passed between them, affectionate, a little wry.

  “
Sure,” Wexton replied. “Now and again.”

  “Though on the whole …” Steenie felt about in his pockets. He produced another silver flask, twin to the one I had confiscated the day before. He took a restorative nip. “On the whole, I prefer not to remember. It’s too exhausting. Being in love is all very well at your age, Vicky my sweet—but it uses up so much energy. Look at you, fizzing away. It’s very charming, my dear. In fact, it suits you. But it makes me feel beige. Washed out. Washed up. Besides which”—he sighed—“I see rocks ahead. I advise you not to fizz quite so much, Vicky dear, when you tell Constance.”

  “Constance? Why not?”

  “I don’t know. Just a feeling I have.”

  Steenie tapped his nose in a ridiculous way. He took another nip. Wexton closed his book, opened it again, then put it away.

  “Constance will be pleased,” I said into the silence that followed. I leaned forward. “Steenie, why should Constance mind?”

  “I didn’t say she’d mind,” said Steenie. “I just advised you not to fizz. Try to look a fraction less happy. Constance can find other people’s happiness very irritating. She’s allergic to it. It makes her want to scratch.”

  I thought this unfair. Considering Constance’s recent kindness to Steenie, I thought it disloyal as well, and said so. Steenie sighed.

  “Vicky darling, you do flare up. Calm down. It was just a remark. You’re probably right, anyway—I’m thinking of Constance as she used to be, years and years ago. When she was a child.”

  “Steenie, that isn’t fair, either. Constance is the same age as you. You said last night that you had changed. Well then, Constance must have changed too.”

  “I’m sure she has. I’m sure she has.” Steenie made pacifying noises. He lit a cigarette. He inserted it in a long holder. He puffed in a contemplative way.

  “One hundred and fifty-six letters,” he said at last as we approached the dereliction of outer New York. “One hundred and fifty-six. That’s an awful lot. And to disappear like that. It is odd, wouldn’t you say, Wexton?”

  Once more he and Wexton exchanged glances. Wexton looked at me in a worried way.

  “Well, yes,” he said finally. “I would say it was … odd.”