What Love Sees

by Susan Vreeland

  But she knew she didn’t. Sally Anne’s sugary voice sounded just like Mother’s had in the dining room when she had ironed that dress herself.

  “Tell me the truth.”

  “I am, Jean. Don’t you believe me?”

  “No.”

  In June, 1936, after two years at Andrebrook, Jean was officially “finished.” There was a small ceremony out in the garden for the girls leaving, and Miss Weaver gave a speech about the value of culture and the need to stay alive by continuing to learn and to experience all they possibly could.

  Jean listened intently, feeling as though Miss Weaver was speaking especially to her. At the first cocktail hour back home, she repeated it to Father. In the same breath she added, “and Miss Weaver has more space this summer. She always takes five girls to Europe and she only has two so far. It’s an educational experience.”

  She heard him light his pipe. “Europe. Well. What countries?”

  “Mainly Germany. Austria and Italy, too, and maybe France. But Miss Weaver likes Germany best. She always says ‘The roots of western civilization penetrate deep in the Teutonic world.’” Jean pulled in her chin and mimicked Miss Weaver’s deep voice, stretching out the “o” in roots and trilling the “r.”

  “Seems a suitable finishing off. You worked hard. We’ll see.”

  “There’s only one thing.”

  “What’s that?”

  “I’d be a bother to the other girls. And if I’m alone, Miss Weaver will drag me through every museum and explain every painting inch by inch.”

  It was a little easier speaking to Father now. She heard him pouring another drink. Evidently, he was thinking. Time to be quiet and wait. Things had to settle with Father on his own terms.

  Two days later at breakfast he asked, “Who was that girl with you at Camp Hanoum, the one you liked so much?”

  “Do you mean Icy Eastman?”

  “Is that the one who always described everything for you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Have you kept in contact with her?”

  “Oh yes. We write letters, and she came to my birthday party last year.”

  “What’s she doing now?”

  “Working at a bank. She lives in Litchfield.”

  “Why don’t you call her up today? If she can take off from work, I’ll send you both to Europe.”

  “Oh, Father, do you really mean it?”

  “Wouldn’t say it otherwise. And Lucy too, if she wants to.”

  “Oh, thank you, Father,” both girls chorused in their rush around the table to hug him.

  “Don’t ambush me from both sides.” He chuckled. “Can’t a man eat his breakfast in peace?”

  Mother cleared her throat. “What about the trouble there?” she asked. “You know on the radio they say there were civilians murdered in Madrid, nuns and children and—”

  “Irrelevant,” Father declared. “Weaver isn’t taking them to Spain. That’s just a rumor anyway.”

  “I hope you’re right. But in Germany there were troop parades.”

  “Those bluffs strutting around Europe are only putting their manhood back together after losing the war. Let them,” Father said. “Why shouldn’t they go?”

  Chapter Eight

  Miss Weaver and five girls walked the cool, dim passages of Cologne cathedral.

  “Our footsteps echo.” Arm in arm with Icy, Jean knew she didn’t need to say it. Undoubtedly Icy was aware of it, too.

  “Can you feel how big it is in here?” Icy asked.

  “Not exactly, but sounds come from a long way off.”

  “The ceiling seems a mile away. It has stone arches, kind of pointy, and they cross.”

  “The stone even smells damp. Are we passing a window?”

  “Yes. A tall one. The stained glass glows like jewels. How’d you know?”

  “I just had an eerie feeling of light or something.”

  Suddenly, the organ began, a sustained full chord. Instantly, Icy and Jean stopped. Sound filled all space. Jean turned around. “Where are the pipes? I can’t tell.”

  “Behind us.”

  The resonant chords and ranks of voices bounced off the vaulted ceiling so that the music, overlapping measure upon measure, lost its distinctness.

  “Don’t you feel small?” Lucy asked, catching up behind them.

  “That’s by design,” Miss Weaver said. “Gothic church architecture was calculated to minimize the individual and maximize the loftiness of orthodoxy. Easier to mold the illiterate into obedience.”

  LCW had something to say about everything. To Jean, it all seemed so absolute, so logical. She was an authority on all matters.

  The last chords from the organ lingered. Jean still didn’t move. A startling quiet sucked up the echo and it seemed as if she’d forgotten how silence felt. She wanted to absorb the hushed stillness and the sense of space. Too soon the mood was broken by people talking and moving around. The girls and Miss Weaver passed through the heavy doors into the brightness of the cathedral square. Jean’s eyes watered. She waited while the others adjusted to daylight.

  “Four months ago Hitler’s troops marched here to show his presence in the Rhineland,” Miss Weaver said.

  “What’s so important about that?” Lucy asked.

  “My dear, he violated the Treaty of Versailles, arming the country in outright defiance of an arms limitations agreement. That’s what’s important about that.”

  “I’m hungry,” Jean said. “That’s what’s important about me. Can’t we eat soon?”

  Down river at Koblenz they stayed at the Hotel Fürstenhof. LCW had always stayed there. It had a broad balcony overlooking the wide boulevard. This Sunday morning it was a popular place because breakfast was served outside in the sun. All the tables were crowded, and Jean bumped into several chairs before she got situated. Miss Weaver insisted that at every meal a different girl would order for the group. This time was Jean’s turn. The girls told her what they wanted and she stumbled through with her Agnes Jennings pronunciation of German. “Adequate but not brilliant,” Miss Weaver remarked. They were served. That was all Jean cared about.

  A clock tower struck ten, unleashing chimes from churches all over the city. The resounding clangor was so deafening the girls couldn’t hear Miss Weaver’s lecture about the surrounding architecture. Chimes rolled layer upon layer, like an ocean wave rolling on top of another wave. Eventually, the wild disorder of noise took on a low, heavy, staccato movement, dull and thudding, coming from one direction. The throbbing became more distinct, reducing the chiming bells to tinny decoration in comparison with the reverberating base rhythm.

  “What is it?” Jean raised her voice.

  “Soldiers,” Lucy shouted in her ear.

  They came closer, a million lead weights pounding the boulevard below. Jean felt the balcony vibrate in response to the measured thud, thud, thud. She held onto the edge of the table in front of her. It vibrated, too. Quick, hard, sharp, the beats thundered in her head. She barely took a breath until, gradually, the pulsing retreated.

  “They walk so funny,” Lucy said after they passed. “They keep their legs straight in front of them and march like wooden soldiers or stick figures.”

  “The goose step,” said Miss Weaver.

  “What did they look like?”

  “They were just boys, but they looked so stern,” Icy said. “They all wore brown shirts and black boots.”

  “And red arm bands with some kind of emblem,” Lucy added.

  “It’s a swastika,” said Miss Weaver, “and when it’s on a flag it’s called die Blutfahne, blood flag. It’s the Nazi party symbol.”

  “The whole thing gives me the creeps,” Jean said.

  The girls described the emblem when they saw it again, a black twisted cross in a white circle on a field of red. In Heidelberg, two-story banners hung along the streets. Each time Jean heard them flapping in the breeze every thirty paces, her stomach felt unsettled. “How many are there, anywa
y?”

  “I stopped counting,” Lucy said.

  “What are you doing—counting the men in uniform instead?” Jean chided.

  Heidelberg was honoring the 500th anniversary of its university. The ancient town went wild. There were music festivals, sword dances, boisterous speeches in squares. Rowdy singing poured out of beer halls into the streets. It all gave Jean an uneasy feeling of dread that the world had become so loud and strident. In order to get something to eat, Miss Weaver and the girls joined the shouting throngs of students shoving their way across a stone bridge. Lucy and Jean got separated from the others in the narrow passageway. People couldn’t move ahead. They were stuck, stomach to back to stomach.

  “Can you see the others?”

  “No, but they must be up there,” Lucy shouted.

  They braced themselves against the crowd and plowed ahead. Jean held onto Lucy’s elbow with both hands. There were bodies touching all sides of her. Everyone inched his way across the bridge. Her clothes felt tight and the air was stifling. Here was that terror again, feeling like a newborn calf being shoved ahead in a stampede.

  “Aren’t we near the end yet?”

  “I can’t tell.”

  A sudden heave of toppling people threatened to push them against the passageway wall, but a man behind them quickly interfered, cushioning them when they were pushed. Jean felt his chest against her shoulder struggling to push back the other way. “Bleibt zuruck,” he muttered sharply in the opposite direction. She didn’t know whether to be thankful to him, or to be afraid. She’d come to trust people, but maybe he was a Nazi. She held on more firmly to Lucy’s elbow.

  “Ouch!” Lucy cried. “Don’t pinch.”

  “Do you see Icy?”

  “No, I told you that.”

  Even the New York crowds coming out of Madison Square Garden didn’t have this frenzy. A long half-hour later, they met the others at the restaurant, but Jean didn’t breathe normally until she was back in the pension that night.

  Germany swelled with nervous motion that summer, and it seemed to Jean that Nazism was in a great hurry. In Dinkelsbühl in northern Bavaria a Youth Day parade took over the annual Kinderfest.

  “They’re only kids,” said Icy. “So young they’re still in short pants and knee socks. Some are carrying swastika flags.”

  “Is it the children beating on the drums?” Jean asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Sounds like little toy drums.” Ranks of children sang “Deutschland, Deutschland uber alles.” “It’s a thrilling song, isn’t it? So spirited.”

  “They look kind of menacing to me,” Lucy said. “Puffed up and too serious to be kids.”

  “They should be riding bikes and fishing during the summer, not out marching,” LCW said. “Something’s awfully wrong.”

  The remark made Jean feel ignorant. Miss Weaver’s voice lacked its usual husky authority. That, in itself, made Jean uneasy. The next day they left Dinkelsbühl by train. As they neared Munich, Jean sensed Miss Weaver’s spirit rally. “We’re going to have a marvelous time in Bavaria,” Miss Weaver declared. “In the Teutonic world lie the roots of Anglo-Saxon culture, much deeper than any boys marching around for a summer, and Bavaria, Munich especially, is the center of the Teutonic world. It’s the seat of schmaltz and students, high art and oompah. So for the next three weeks I expect you to absorb its spirit.”

  They did. Jean and Lucy bought quilted jackets, dirndls, long aprons and black velour hats in the style of Tyrolean mountain climbers. They all ordered beer in the Hofbrauhaus. They took side trips out of Munich to see the opera Jederman in Salzburg and a medieval street pageant in Innsbruck. The longest side trip was to the Wagner opera festival, the Bayreuther Festspiele.

  On day trips Miss Weaver never let the girls stop to go to the bathroom. While trooping through museums or riding in hired cars, she never stopped. She was Iron Lady. “You must learn control,” she’d say. “In all aspects of life, even this. Master your bodies with self discipline and it will elevate your character.” They didn’t stop from Munich to Bayreuth.

  The little troop checked into a third-floor room at a second-class inn. They rarely stayed in first-class hotels. Miss Weaver was firm on that. “We’re going to mix with the people,” she declared. By the time they got to the inn, the girls were squirming, concentrating on keeping their muscles tight, not on mixing with any people. As soon as the innkeeper gave them directions, they rushed upstairs to the single bathroom.

  “I don’t know how waiting forever to go to the bathroom will improve my character,” Lucy snapped, holding onto her arm at the elbow. Jean felt Lucy stop suddenly at the top of the stairs.

  “Don’t stop, Lucy. I can’t wait.”

  “Ssh.”

  Jean felt Lucy shift her weight back and forth. Jean did the same. Lucy fidgeted in silence. “Where’s Icy?” Jean whispered. Lucy’s arm muscles tightened and told her not to ask questions. She heard a toilet flush, heard a door open and shut, heard it flush again and heard heavy boots walk away down the wooden corridor.

  “What’s the matter?” she whispered.

  “There was a man ahead of us in a Nazi uniform.” Lucy darted for the toilet, leaving her with Icy.

  “So? Why did you shut me up?”

  “He was scary looking,” she said through the door. “He stood like he had a board in his back. No expression to his face. Didn’t even smile at us.”

  “And didn’t offer to let us go ahead, either,” Jean remarked.

  Icy giggled. “Even with his uniform he had to wait in line like anyone else.”

  “He was sort of handsome,” Lucy said through the door. “Too bad he’s a Nazi.”

  On their last trip to the bathroom that night they found rows of boots lined up down the hall. “There’s an army of Nazi officers on our floor,” squealed Icy. “They all must be over six feet tall to have boots that big.”

  “And all of them blond Adonises,” Lucy added.

  First thing the next morning Lucy gave her the hallway report. The row of tall boots gleamed.

  “Probably the job of the innkeeper’s wife to polish them during the night,” said Miss Weaver, none too cheerfully.

  The festival opera was Der Meistersinger. They had fine seats in the orchestra, right under and slightly in front of the imperial box. “Wagner’s daughter-in-law, Frau Siegfried Wagner, is supposed to make an appearance tonight, so watch that draped box,” she said.

  The opera house was packed. At an unseen signal, a hush settled through the audience. Three figures stepped from behind heavy velvet drapery into the imperial box. Immediately, everyone rose in silence and faced them. Jean heard sharp footsteps come out to the edge of the box, and the others craned their necks to see. Icy gasped. “Turn around, Jean. I think it’s Hitler.”

  “Quit teasing,” Jean whispered.

  “No, I mean it. I think it’s him.”

  “What’s he look like?”

  “He’s just standing there scowling with his chest puffed out and his lips tight.” From somewhere in the orchestra a voice shouted, “Heil Hitler.” Then the thunderous response, “Heil Hitler.”

  Above them, the man clicked his heels and his right hand shot out over the balcony. “Sieg Heil,” he bellowed, more a command than an acknowledgment.

  The audience thundered back, “Heil Hitler! Heil Hitler! Heil Hitler!”

  The passions rose in the close, oppressive air of the opera house. Jean felt suddenly hot in her heavy quilted jacket.

  “We don’t have to do this. We’re Americans,” Miss Weaver muttered.

  Below the Führer, the six stood silent, arms at their sides. The Führer noticed and his scowl lines deepened. When the chanting stopped, he pursed his lips together, scowled down at the frozen American schoolgirls and their white-haired leader, muttered something and clamped his mouth shut just as the orchestra swung into the overture.

  Soon they were lost in the opera and its wealth of characters. The stage w
as alive with color, movement and song. Jean was swept away from the politically charged present. What did it matter to her, anyway? She thought of Madame Flagstad and surrendered herself to sound.

  After the performance they walked to a nearby restaurant. Seated by the window, the others could see the surge of life in the street. Against the hum of traffic, Icy described the river of people rushing by. “There’s a short woman with a paisley scarf tied under her chin. She’s being pulled by a dog on a leash. An errand boy carrying a package wrapped in brown paper and twine is trotting down the street. A thin woman is selling flowers at the corner. I can’t tell how old she is. Young, sort of, but already old. Drawn cheeks and sad eyes. A man with knife-sharp creases in his trouser legs is hailing a taxi for a lady. He’s leaning in, saying something to the driver. Oh, he just spotted the flower seller. She’s coming toward him. Looks like he’ll buy. Yes, he’s handing a spray of violets through the cab window. The taxi is moving out into the traffic and he’s just standing there at the curb.”

  “Can you see his face?”

  “No, just his back. He’s walking away now.”

  A wistful smile played over Jean’s face. She was there. She was part of it. The world was full and alive and spirited.

  A Nazi officer stepped abruptly into the restaurant doorway. Silver and glasses fell silent and all conversation stopped. In mimicry of his Führer, he clicked his heels and shot out his arm. Again, “Sieg heil.”

  Jean stopped chewing the bite of sauerbraten in her mouth and swallowed it whole. She heard Miss Weaver and the other girls put down their forks. The whole restaurant responded in unison—“Heil Hitler!” Jean heard the boots come closer. Standing tall over their table, the officer waited for a response. The restaurant was silent. Her heart pounded like a tom-tom. She felt the stares of everyone in the restaurant riveted on the back of her neck. She held her breath, confused, waiting for some direction.

  “Sieg heil.” The voice above their table was deep, commanding, impatient. Her chest ached where her bite of food lodged. Slowly, Miss Weaver mumbled the hated response. The girls followed in flat voices. Then Jean did, too. Her mouth tasted sour and her chest throbbed. The boots stomped out the door and down the street.