Homecoming

by Belva Plain

  He shook his head. “It’s all insane. Insane and evil. This whole country—”

  “It’s dangerous to talk that way.”

  “I know that. I don’t usually talk that way.”

  “Except at home? One has to talk someplace.”

  Again he shook his head. “Never at home.”

  For a few moments he was silent. Three lines were drawn across his forehead. She wondered, and had never noticed, whether other people as young as he was ever had such marked lines. When he spoke again, it was with sadness.

  “We don’t argue. I respect my father. Besides, he is a man with whom people never argue. This has troubled our relationship because I can’t speak openly. Still, he must know how I feel about affairs here. It is often what one does not say that expresses things as clearly as what one does say.”

  Then, brightening as if with an effort, he changed the subject. “Well, Caroline, since we find ourselves in rather special circumstances, where are we going to meet from now on? It can’t be always in the middle of the park, especially because”—and he held out his hand—“it has started to rain.”

  “We will go back to my house,” she said.

  AND SO, Caroline’s life reached a divide: There was before Walter and then there was after Walter.

  Lore, who had been at home that first afternoon, was intensely curious. “You go for a walk in the park and look what you bring back! His manners, his looks. Real elegance. But tell me, does he know—know about—”

  “About Mama? Of course. He doesn’t care. He’s a cultured, intelligent man. What do you think, that he’s some kind of Brownshirt thug?”

  Lore teased, “Look at you, defending him already. Have you fallen in love so fast?”

  “What’s wrong with you? I have not fallen in love, Lore.”

  “Maybe not yet, but I’m sure you will. It’s only natural. And they say it’s wonderful,” she added wistfully. “Still, in these times, you have to wonder.”

  There was great confusion within Caroline, a dread of appearing foolish, as if her thoughts could be visible to other people. She embarrassed herself with the thoughts that were taking shape in her head.

  When the week passed and there were no more daily walks in the park, Walter began the evening visits that introduced him to the family.

  “A fine young man,” her father said cordially. But after the first two or three times, he expressed his doubts. “I don’t have to tell you that we are living on the thin edge. Walter should be more careful, too. I’m surprised that he comes here at all.”

  Mama says nothing, thought Caroline, because she feels such a weight upon her. A heritage that she had always been proud to hand on had now, in this mad time, become a danger to her daughter. Her husband had lost his career and was leaving his country for her sake.

  “What do you know about his family?” Father asked, meaning: What is their work and do they belong to the Party? “No, of course they can’t, or else he wouldn’t—” he said, thinking aloud, and then stopped, resuming a moment later. “Anyway, we shall be leaving soon. And you are so—”

  So young, he meant. Father’s little girl. He had developed this new habit of spilling half a thought into a broken sentence. And Caroline remembered how he had used to be, positive and sanguine, a doctor, a father who knew all the answers to whatever you needed to know.

  One day she took Peter for his walk in the direction of Christina’s house. As little girls up to the age of twelve, they had gone to school together. After that, when Caroline changed to a school run by Jewish teachers, they had, in memory of that first childhood intimacy, kept hold of a tenuous friendship. Nostalgia now drove her simply to walk past the house without having any intention of going in.

  It happened that Christina was coming along the street from the opposite direction, and glad to see each other they rushed to meet. Yet after the first few greetings, each felt some constraint. Christina was a university student. She was going to Italy over the holidays. There was little else to say, and they were about to part when a long black official-seeming car with a chauffeur stopped at the next house.

  Christina grimaced. “Litzhauser. Ball bearings. With a swastika on his lapel. Big Party man,” she said contemptuously. “My parents detest him, although I don’t have to tell you, he’ll never know it.”

  Caroline understood: Christina’s people had always been religious Christians. Also, she understood that Christina would not have dared to talk like that to any of her current friends. Caroline had an impulsive wish to trust and confide, to ask about Walter, to ask anything. But, almost instantly thinking better of it, she did not, and watched with a hidden shudder as Walter’s father, bulky, important, and with his close-shaven head a caricature of his kind, walked into his house.

  So she embraced Christina and went home with foreboding like a chill all through her body.

  To tell or not to tell. This was too crucially important to keep secret. On the other hand, once her parents knew, it would be the end of Walter. And there was no other place for them to meet besides her house, which in itself wasn’t wonderful; her parents sat and sat, as if he had come to visit them. When finally they did go upstairs, it was almost time for him to leave, anyway.

  At dinner that night, very casually, her father inquired, “Is Walter coming again this evening?”

  Her reply was equally casual.

  “I don’t know. He might just drop in.”

  “He has been here five times in the last two weeks,” Mama said.

  Lore winked at Caroline. Take it easy, her wink meant.

  “We only mean,” Father said, “that you shouldn’t be getting any ideas. I certainly don’t have to give you reasons why.”

  “Goodness, he’s only a friend. We talk, and it’s fun. And I don’t have—”

  Father interrupted. “You don’t have any fun, and young people should have it. We know that all too well. That’s why the sooner we get away, the better. God knows we’re trying,” he finished wearily.

  There had been no replies from the United States to any of the appeals that they had been sending, the so-careful letters that, because of censorship, dared not reveal the fear, the terrible urgency, and the terrible truth.

  “It’s almost like putting a message in a bottle and floating it out to sea,” Mama said.

  But Father, true to his nature, reminded them that other people had received answers and had even been taken into American homes by total strangers.

  “It happens, although I admit it’s asking an awful lot and there can’t be too many people in the world who will do it. Still, I have a feeling we’ll be lucky.”

  “What shall we do for money?” asked Mama. “They’ve frozen everything. Frozen. Stolen is more like it.”

  “We can raise some when we sell the furnishings, and buy some jewelry to hide. We’ll see. We’ll work it out somehow.”

  But Mama had no faith. Sometimes, whenever she was not doing some chore around the house, and constant reader that she was, she would sit with a book; but it was only to put it down on her lap and stare into space. After a while she would rise abruptly and go to the piano, filling the rooms with waves, a tumbling ocean of music.

  “Poor Eva. She drowns her sorrows in it,” said Lore, who saw through everyone.

  Walter arrived one evening while Eva was still playing. “I stood at the front door until you finished the sonata before I rang the bell,” he explained. “It was too beautiful to be interrupted.”

  “You shouldn’t have done that, standing in the cold,” Eva said. But she was pleased.

  “Am I interrupting anything else?” he asked. For the little group looked as if it had gathered for a purpose.

  “Not at all,” Mama assured him. “We were only having our usual discussion about emigration, and as always, since we were getting nowhere, I decided to make some music. Come, Arthur, we’ve some things to look at upstairs.”

  At last they are taking some pity on me, thought Caroli
ne. For once I can talk to him without them.

  Yet suddenly now, alone with Walter, she could not think how to begin. She was too aware of him and of the way he examined her, making her wonder whether her hair and her dress were right, making her awkward.

  “There’s a beautiful feeling in this house,” he said, “with the pictures and the books lying around, books that people actually read. It’s almost a religious atmosphere.”

  “Religious? No. My parents have never declared themselves one way or the other.”

  “I meant it in a different sense, in a truer sense that belongs to all religions. The way your father talks about his work, his calling. And your mother’s music. She plays with her whole soul. I think she must be a very gentle woman. Am I right?”

  “Yes. But she can be lively, too, and very funny. Not lately, though. Not for a long time.”

  “Affidavits and visas. A frustrating business. I understand.”

  “We don’t know what’s going to happen.”

  “They mustn’t wait if they can help it.” Walter spoke soberly. “People are talking, not too loud, of course, about war by next summer. After Austria and the Sudetenland, anything’s possible.”

  “I know.”

  “I shall miss you,” he said.

  There was an ache in her throat. An ache and a yearning for things lost, as if the future had already happened, as if she had already lived through the coming together, the joining, and the parting. Then she said a thing that she had not intended to say.

  “I saw your father going into your house.”

  An instant later she had no idea why she had told him. To what purpose had it been? Perhaps because all things must be truthful and clean between them?

  She saw that he was startled, even alarmed. “When was that?”

  “A while ago. He came home in a car.”

  “A government car?”

  “I thought it was.”

  “So now you know.”

  She was looking at the lines on his forehead, the three painful lines above the level brows and the kind, beautiful, translucent eyes.

  “Have you told your parents?”

  “No.”

  “It hurts you to keep secrets from them?”

  “Yes, but they would be terrified if they knew. And you? What would your father do?”

  “To you, do you mean?”

  “And to you.”

  “God only knows, Caroline.”

  “Have you always been afraid of him?”

  “Mostly because of my mother, to keep peace in the house for her sake. It’s not pleasant to be there when he’s angry. And now, with this powerful national cause …”

  The space, the warm room that contained them, seemed very small; the night, so full of unknown danger, peered through the windows and pressed the very walls.

  “Come here,” Walter said. “Sit with me.”

  On the small sofa between the windows he took her hand. “I haven’t held your hand since the day we sat on the bench in the park.”

  “Because we are never alone.”

  “I understand. Your parents are afraid for you. I would be, too, if I were your father.”

  She smiled. “But you are not my father.”

  For a long minute he stared at her. “My God,” he said.

  When they kissed, she felt the strong, racing beat of his heart, and was struck by awe. His living heart. So they stayed unmoving for long minutes, unable to draw away.

  “It’s like coming home,” she murmured, “as if I have always been like this with you, all my life.”

  Smoothing her long hair away from her forehead, he gazed at her face. “How beautiful you are. Rebecca at the well. So tender and so young.”

  “No, Walter. I’m not tender. I’m very strong. And I’m very old, too. Old enough to know what I want.”

  “Six weeks, and I have thought of nothing else but you. I love you so, Caroline.”

  There were footsteps on the stairs, and Mama called her name. “Is that you, Caroline? I saw the light and I wondered.”

  Walter stood up. “I’m sorry, Mrs. Hartzinger. It’s my fault. We have been talking and I had no idea it was so late.”

  “That’s all right, Walter. I was just wondering about the light.”

  Mama was still partway down the stairs when he left. As soon as the door closed upon him, she came the rest of the way.

  “What are you thinking of, Caroline?” she reproved.

  “I don’t know what you mean. We simply didn’t look at the time.”

  “You must consider appearances. A young man and you alone, so late …”

  It wasn’t really appearances or the lateness that Mama minded. It was her suspicion that they were in love.

  “Lore thinks you are in love with him.”

  “Lore doesn’t know anything about it.”

  “But she cares about you so much, and she knows you. She doesn’t want you to be hurt.”

  “I won’t be hurt.”

  Her mother was looking at her with pity. “Even if there were nothing else to hinder you, you’re too young to experience love,” she said.

  “I’m eighteen, and you were nineteen and of a different religion, too. But you fell in love. That was twenty-two years ago, and you’re still here together.”

  “The times were different, Caroline. There was no terror.”

  “Mama, this is ridiculous. I hardly know him.”

  “That’s true enough. What do you know about his family? He never mentions them. I have a feeling that he doesn’t want them to know he comes to this house.”

  She thought with dread, If her parents knew about his father … To look at her, you wouldn’t think Mama was so sharp.

  “It could be dangerous for all of us. We don’t want to attract attention.”

  “Mama, don’t worry. I tell you, there’s nothing to it. He’ll soon get tired of coming, anyway. In fact, I think he’s beginning to already.”

  But no one was fooled. In the kitchen, not thinking they could be overheard, Mama and Lore were talking.

  “Caroline is an innocent,” Lore said. “He should leave her alone and find somebody a few years older, nearer his own age, more experienced. Still, in the end, I don’t think anything will come of it. We mustn’t worry too much.”

  Mama sighed. “I hope you’re right. What can I do? The more you talk against these things to a young girl, the more you are apt to make matters worse.”

  THE New Year came, winter turned toward spring, and Walter had become an unacknowledged member of the house and of the establishment, although not of the family. He appeared routinely on most evenings after dinner; occasionally he accepted an invitation to dinner, to which he always brought a small, proper gift, some chocolates or flowers, and once, a history of the opera for Caroline’s mother.

  Conversation roamed all over the globe and touched on every subject from architecture to zoos, on anything except politics. There was a tacit agreement to leave politics alone.

  Plainly the two men enjoyed each other, which Caroline thought would have been a very good thing if so many other things had been different.

  One morning before going to work, Father took her aside in the hall to ask rather delicately whether Walter was serious. “It’s obvious that I like him very much, but that’s not the point. I’m not comfortable. I hope you have no crazy thoughts about marriage. You must be open with me, Caroline. Have you?”

  “We’ve never even mentioned it,” she said, feeling as though her back were against the wall.

  “You must see that it would be impossible.”

  “What shall I do? What do you want me to do? Shall I tell him to stay away?”

  She saw in her father’s sorrowful gaze that her heart, where the pain lay, was transparent.

  For a moment, he did not answer. “No,” he said tiredly. “No. Just don’t do anything foolish.”

  “What does he want with a baby like you?” said Lore, mixing teasing with love
. “He’s a man, an exceptional man, and you’re just a pretty baby. Don’t tie yourself down. You have the whole world to explore. You’ll have a dozen men before you finally choose one.”

  “Lore’s a smart woman,” Walter said when Caroline reported this comment. “But she’s wrong this time.” He had driven Lore to the hospital on several evenings when he was going into the city, and had remarked that she could talk like a professor. “Yes, she’s very smart, but not this time.”

  On the sofa under the soft lights, they kissed and listened to music and talked about everything except reality. Once, while his arms were around her, Caroline had a vivid recollection of the day he had said, I shall miss you, and she would have cried out to him, What are we going to do? if she had dared. But perhaps it was better not to know.

  Soon, though, they would have to speak out. How carefully they were walking around in a fog of denial, as if the fearful future were not looming, as if they could keep on as they were! And all the time, they were only longing to be completely alone. They were longing for each other.…

  THEN one day there came a letter from America. It was a simple note written on lined paper that had been torn off a pad. Mama read it aloud.

  “My name is Sandler, like yours, Mrs. Hartzinger. I don’t believe we can be related by blood unless your people also came from Lithuania. But in times like these, we are all related. My wife and I cried when we read your letter. I am not a rich man, just a worker, but our children are grown. We have food and beds for you in our apartment. It’s small, not grand, but it is yours for as long as you need it. We have been talking it over every day all week. I will sign papers for you that will satisfy the authorities.”

  The letter was signed “Jacob Sandler,” and there was a postscript: “We are religious people.”