She told him about Georgia and her bike ride as he towed her along down the dark hallway.
“You left the bike on the street?” Herb demanded, sounding almost angry. He left her, ran down the hall, and out the front door. The bike leaned against the brick wall. Herb picked it up and carried it inside. “Nothing is safe here. You have to remember, people will scavenge anything, they need everything. A working bike with all its parts is like gold.”
She said, “I didn’t know.”
“No, of course not, I’m not scolding, I’m just telling you.”
He led her into a warm room smelling of baked bread and bacon. A kettle steamed softly on the stove and a cat lay curled in one of the kitchen chairs around a long wooden table. Herb shut the door to the hallway and gestured to a chair.
She laughed. “Herb! Herb, I don’t want to sit down! I didn’t just come three thousand miles in order to sit down and have some bacon! I want to hold you, Herb, my goodness, I want to cover you with kisses. I’ve missed you so much, I couldn’t live one more minute without you!”
His face did not lighten. He frowned. He moved away. He ran his hands through his hair. “Well,” he said, and a weight of guilt was in his tone. “Well. It’s not—” He looked at Anne. “How do I tell you this?”
“Just say it.”
“That woman you met. Ilke. She’s carrying my child.”
Now Anne did sit down, because her legs would no longer support her. The information flew into her like a flaming arrow, piercing her with flame.
“I’m sorry, Anne. I never meant—you have to understand. The war, the winter—it was hard. So much death and devastation, the world was black to me. And then to be here in a kind of civilization, and Ilke was so kind—and you have to understand, Anne, I was so weary. So stunned. Even then I didn’t know for sure that I would live another day.”
Anne nodded. She was gripping her hands together, but she struggled to keep her voice pleasant, not accusing, not injured. “So was it comfort with this Ilke? Comfort, not love?” If he says yes, Anne thought, even as her belly burned with jealousy, I can survive this.
“Yes. Yes, Anne, it was comfort, not love.” His skin went blotchy with emotion. “I’m not proud of that fact.”
“And she got pregnant.”
“Yes.”
“Did she know you are married?”
“Yes. She knows all about you. I showed her your picture.”
The thought of Herb and the other woman bent together over her picture, the two of them in a kind of conspiracy, increased the pain in her heart. For a moment she was too overwhelmed to speak. Finally, she asked softly, “And what are your plans?”
Herb surprised Anne by laughing, a bitter laugh she’d never heard from him before. “My plans? My plans are simply to live through this day and the next.”
“The war is over,” Anne protested.
“But not the danger. We are occupying German territory. Unexploded bombs are everywhere. Some Germans hate us, and who could blame them? Three days ago a sixty-year-old cobbler killed the American who was billeted with him, in revenge for the death in the war of his own son.” Seeing the alarm on Anne’s face, he hurriedly continued. “No, I fear no harm from Ilke.”
“Because you are lovers.”
He didn’t reply.
“When is her baby due?” The words were glass shards in her heart.
“In six weeks.”
“It is your baby.”
“Yes.” He looked at Anne with old and weary eyes. “Her parents were killed during a bombing of Bremerhaven. Her fiancé was killed at Normandy. Her brother was killed in the Bulge.” He made a gruff noise. “For all I know, my men could have been the ones to kill him.”
“What will you do once the baby is born?” Anne asked.
“I haven’t thought that far.”
“Do you plan to divorce me? To marry the mother of your child?” Please, Anne prayed, please God, help me.
“No,” Herb said, quietly. “No, of course I don’t want to divorce you. I love you, Anne. But the baby—I don’t know.”
Anne buried her face in her hands. Tears poured from her eyes. She thought the pain would destroy her. Desperately she wondered what to do next: flee this house where her husband had been living with a beautiful German woman? Try to live in this town with Georgia and work at Stangarone’s? After all, her own situation was hardly significant in the scope of the damage wrought by this war. She didn’t even know where she would sleep tonight.
How many bedrooms were in this little house, how many beds? Was Herb sleeping with Ilke? Would he lie down next to the beautiful blond woman while Anne lay awake, writhing with jealousy, in the next room?
“Herb,” she choked out, because she had to say it, “Herb, that woman is German. How could you sleep with a German? How could you?”
Herb said sadly, “The war is over. Ilke is not just a German. She is, first of all, a human being.”
“Oh, damn you and your piety!” Anne grabbed the first thing she saw—a small cut-class bowl of sugar on the tabletop with a matching small pitcher of cream—and threw it across the room. It smashed against the wall. With a yowl, the cat leaped up and darted out. “How convenient for you, to see her as a human being. You are not King Arthur, Herb, you are not a damned knight in shining armor, an open-minded, generous, kind-hearted saint! You’re just another man who’s played around on his wife and got caught!” Her rage was fully unfolding within her. She rose and paced the small room, flailing her arms in the air. “Don’t you think I longed for comfort, too? Don’t you think I had opportunities to sleep around? Not every attractive man was overseas, you know. There were plenty—but I wanted only you!” Her final words cut through her anger with a broad swath of grief, and she collapsed, knees buckling, sobbing. “I wanted only you.”
Herb came to her. He wrapped his arms around her and helped her stand, and he held her close to him, patting her back, murmuring softly, “Anne, oh, Anne.”
“Why couldn’t you want only me?” she cried.
“It was the war, Anne. It was the war.”
His embrace soothed her. Hearing his voice with her ear pressed against his chest reassured her. It was so familiar. And it was loving, she could feel his love like a balm, soothing her burning pain. After a while, her tears stopped. Herb asked her to sit down. He put food on plates for them both—an odd little meal of bread and bacon and potatoes fried in bacon fat. Anne couldn’t eat hers, but she finally drank the tea, and when Herb saw that she really had no appetite, he put her food on his plate, and ate it all.
“You learn never to waste food here,” he explained.
He asked about his parents, and her parents, and Gail, and the island, and he seemed to come into focus as they spoke. Anne sat back in her chair and studied him. He was very thin, almost gaunt. Blue half-circles of tiredness lay across his cheeks. She felt a twinge of guilt for her own selfish tirade. What did she really know about the war, about the conditions of his life these past months?
When he’d finished eating, he pushed his plate away and leaned back in his chair. For the first time, he relaxed. “I can’t believe you’re really here.” He looked at his watch. “You must be tired.”
She shook her head. “I suppose. I’ve got so many emotions raging inside me, I don’t know how I feel.”
“You should sleep. I should sleep. I have so much work to do tomorrow.” Seeing the alarm on her face, he said, “There are two bedrooms upstairs. Ilke is in her parents’ room. You can have the back bedroom. No one has been sleeping there.”
Meaning, Anne understood, Herb hadn’t been making love to Ilke on that bed.
“I’ll sleep on the couch in the front parlor,” Herb continued. Again he picked up on her reaction. “I don’t suppose you want me sleeping with you tonight. And no, I haven’t been sleeping in Ilke’s bed for some time now. She’s too restless with her pregnancy. I’ve been on the sofa. I actually like the sofa. I like having the secur
ity of the back against my back. It makes me feel safe.”
Once again Anne felt a stab of guilt that opened her up to a kind of understanding of what Herb’s life had been like during the war. She wanted the security of him in her bed. He wanted only the security of a safe place to sleep. So things were reduced to the elementary here, to primitive needs. The desire to console him fought with her jealousy and anger.
“Yes, all right,” Anne said. “I understand.”
They both rose. She was surprised when he carried their dishes to the sink and began to wash them. She found the dish towel and dried the dishes.
After a moment, Herb said, “I don’t know how we’re going to work this out, Anne. I feel responsible, I am responsible, for the baby Ilke is carrying. She has lost so much; her best friend died in the bombing of Bremerhaven. I want to be here to help her until she has the baby.”
“And afterward?” Anne asked.
“I don’t know. She has other friends, a married couple who live on the edge of the city. And she is a librarian; she worked at the library until a month ago.” He ran his damp hand through his hair. “I hadn’t thought, Anne. It’s been a matter of living day to day. I suppose I mean to support her financially, support the child financially. It’s the least I can do. More than that….” He sagged against the sink.
Anne touched his arm. “You’re tired. Show me where I should sleep.”
She followed him up the stairs and down a carpeted hall into a surprisingly large room filled with handsome furniture. The bed was covered with a fat down quilt, unlike any she’d ever seen before, and she felt a visceral knock at this reminder that she was in a foreign country. Herb showed her the one bathroom in the house—an unimaginable luxury, he said—and took a fresh towel from a wardrobe in the hall.
As they moved around, Anne’s senses were alert. Would Ilke come out to talk to them? What would she say? What would Herb say? If Herb spoke to the other woman in German, Anne thought she would die of jealousy, she would throw something at him, and not a sugar bowl. But the door was closed tightly on the room at the front, and all seemed quiet within.
“I’ll see you in the morning, Anne,” Herb said. He looked at her for a moment; then he briefly, quickly, kissed her forehead. “We’ll work this out, somehow.”
He went down the stairs. Anne had carried her toothbrush and her comb and brush in her purse. Her luggage had been transferred, she hoped, to Stangarone’s. Tonight she would sleep in her underwear and slip. She remained dressed as she used the bathroom, for the house was cold.
She stepped out of the bathroom. Across the hall, the door to the big bedroom was open. Ilke stood there, clad in a rose-colored flannel nightgown. She looked like a very large fat child.
Anne hesitated. What could she say to this woman, her husband’s lover? I hate you. I wish you didn’t exist. You have ruined my life.
Before she could say anything, Ilke spoke. Her voice was low but compelling. “He always choose you,” Ilke said. “I know he always choose you.” Then she shut the door.
Anne waited, feeling unfinished, wanting to say or do something—but what? If she were Gail, she’d snap back, “You’ve got that right, toots.” But she wasn’t Gail. She stumbled to the bedroom, dropped her dress, peeled off her ruined nylons, and slipped under the down quilt. She was asleep at once.
In her dreams, a woman was crying. Anne woke slowly. For a moment the dream stayed with her and she wasn’t sure just where she was. In her Boston bed? On Nantucket? On a rocking bunk? No, in a German bed.
And a woman was crying. From the other room came a deep and primal lowing, almost a mooing. Anne sat up and swung her legs over the bed. Some instinct inside her, something she’d never known existed, urged her to listen. To react.
Through the window, the sky was bright blue. She glanced at her watch. It was after nine! She pulled on her clothes and hurried into the bathroom, then down the stairs and back to the kitchen. A pot of tea had been made, but it was cool now. Herb had already gone to work.
Upstairs, the urgent sounds, deep and primitive, continued.
Buck up, Anne, she told herself. She climbed the stairs and knocked on Ilke’s door.
“Come!”
Cautiously, Anne peered into the other woman’s room. Ilke was lying on her side, her arms wrapped around a pillow. She had part of the pillow stuffed into her mouth.
Anne asked, “Are you all right?”
Ilke’s body suddenly arched and stiffened. Her fingers went white as she clutched the pillow like a life preserver that would keep her from drowning in her pain. The bed linens were tousled, the quilt fallen in a heap on the floor at the foot of the bed. Ilke’s flannel nightgown had ridden up in a bunch around her hips, exposing long thin legs and a thatch of pale brown pubic hair. Anne looked away, embarrassed. Then the long low moaning began, partly stifled by the pillow. Anne clasped her hands. What should she do? What could she do?
After a moment, Ilke relaxed. Panting, she said, “My labor has started.”
“But isn’t it early?”
“Yes. But it happens.”
“We need to call the doctor.”
To her amazement, Ilke laughed. “I don’t need a doctor. I am only having a baby.” She began to moan again.
Anne found herself wringing her hands in response. “What can I do?”
When she could catch her breath, Ilke said, “This could go on all day.”
“Good God.”
“You could bring me water.”
Anne took the glass from the bedside table and hurried across the hall into the bathroom. She had heard stories about the agonies of labor, but this was the first time she witnessed someone enduring it. It frightened her; it made her wonder whether she would ever want to bear children herself, if it meant undergoing such extreme pain.
Back in the bedroom, she knelt by the bed, slipped her hand beneath Ilke’s head, and supported her as she drank thirstily from the glass. Ilke’s hair was as soft as silk.
“Thank you,” Ilke said. “It is a help to me that you are here.”
“Is there someone I could call?”
Ilke grimaced. “We have no telephone.”
So this was up to Anne. She couldn’t go off and leave the woman alone. She pulled a chair up to the side of the bed. For the next two hours, Ilke writhed and panted and growled, no longer bothering to stuff the pillow into her mouth, but groaning, her throat arching upward, her head falling backward, her hands clutching the sheets. Her hair grew damp with sweat, and from time to time Anne would lean over to dab a moist cool cloth against Ilke’s forehead. It seemed a foolish, silly thing to do, in the face of the woman’s pain, but Ilke, when she could talk, thanked her.
When the contractions eased, Ilke rested. Anne surveyed her surroundings. The floor was covered with a thick wool Persian carpet, so Anne assumed Ilke’s family had had money before the war. The drapes were heavy and glossy, patterned with cabbage roses and swirling vines. Framed portraits of relatives hung on the wall, and on the dresser stood a photograph of what must have once been Ilke’s family, parents and brother, all of them standing on some seashore, smiling in the sun. Ilke had lost them all.
Anne bent her head. What would she do if she lost her parents? She seldom saw them, wrote to them only occasionally, but they were the center of the spinning earth to her, they were gravity. Herb was—at least Herb had been—her sun, her moon, her stars, her wind and weather. But her parents were the profound security of her sense of life; they provided the reliable ground she walked upon. To lose them? Unbearable.
Her thoughts were interrupted by a new noise from Ilke, a shout.
Ilke rose up in bed, now obviously frantic. She yelled at Anne in German, loud, guttural, gut-wrenching noises.
“What can I do?” she asked.
“Help me!” Ilke screamed. “Gott in Himmel!”
To Anne’s surprise, Ilke propelled herself off the bed. She leaned her arms on it, bracing herself as she planted her
feet wide on the floor. She was bellowing now, and she did not rest; her yelling was long, continuous, agonized. Anne saw that the bed linens were soggy with blood and mucus and water, and Ilke’s legs shone with moisture. Ilke pulled her gown up to her chest, exposing her taut swollen belly and her thin flanks. Anne was embarrassed and helpless and terrified.
She knelt next to Ilke. She had to yell to make herself heard. “How can I help you?”
“Get blankets. Get scissors. This baby is coming. You must catch the baby.”
Catch the baby? Anne stared, confused.
“Scissors on the dresser. Now! Scheiste!”
Anne was surprised people weren’t pounding on the door, running up the stairs, demanding to know what was happening here. Ilke’s screams were earsplitting. She gathered herself, stood up, found the scissors, and brought them back. In the moment that she had stepped away from Ilke’s side, the other woman’s face had turned scarlet, almost purple, as she expelled her breath in a long continuous grunt.
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