Marc, however, having been brought up with it, barely gave it a glance. He said, “By the time I got cured of that idea it was too late to change my mind,” and then asked immediately, reverting to his own gaps again, “What did you want to do when you grew up?”
“I wanted to be a conductor.”
“On a tram?”
“Certainly not,” said Erica indignantly. “I wanted to conduct an orchestra.”
“And what happened?”
“Nothing, that was the trouble. I took theory and harmony and tried awfully hard, but no matter how hard I tried, I always ended up at the top of the class in English and at the bottom in music, so finally I got discouraged.”
“Did you collect anything?”
“Yes. Later on I collected rocks.”
“What kind of rocks?”
“Any kind of rocks. After giving up music, I’d decided I wanted to be a geologist.”
“And what happened that time?”
Erica sighed, leaned over to reach the ashtray on the side table beside him, then back on the pillows again she remarked sadly, “Nothing happened then either. I took various courses at McGill and tried awfully hard, but I still ended up at the head of my year in English and the bottom in geology, so then I ...”
“You decided to be a journalist.”
“No, I decided to get married.”
He looked at her, rather startled, and then said, his face clearing, “Oh, yes, I remember. You told me you were engaged to someone who was killed in a motor accident. That must have been pretty tough ... How old were you?”
“Twenty-one. We were supposed to be married in June after I’d graduated. Well, I did graduate, but he was killed two weeks before the wedding.”
“Do you want to talk about it?”
“Yes,” said Erica.
At the end she remarked, “It seems now as though it had all happened to someone else, because I’m not the same person now that I was then. My whole life would have been different if I’d married him. I like it better the way it is, not just because it is this way, but because I’ve had to develop more and work harder and adapt myself to life, rather than arrange things so that it would more or less adapt itself to me. You see, he had quite a lot of money, and I don’t know what would have happened to us, but we would probably have been much too comfortable for our own good.”
“How old was he?”
“Twenty-six.”
“What was his name?”
“Eric Gardiner.”
“Any relation to John?”
“Yes, his older brother. That was the way John got to know Miriam, though we’d always vaguely known each other.” Leaning across him toward the bedside table again, she said, “You might put that ashtray where I can reach it, darling.”
This time he caught and held her against him, murmuring into her hair, “Why should I? It’s much nicer this way.”
When he finally let her go he said reflectively, “You know, Eric, this is one of the best things in life ...”
“What is?”
“Just talking. Maybe it’s the only time when it’s really easy to talk, because you’re so mixed up with someone else that you’re not sure which of you is which, and it’s like talking to yourself.”
“Is it always like this?”
“No, of course it isn’t. Why?”
“Because I don’t mind the idea of your having made love to other women before you met me — at least, not much — but I would object to your having got mixed up with them so you didn’t know which was you and which was several other people. I mean it sounds sort of collective.”
“Yes, it does, doesn’t it? It sounds awful. I think I’m insulted, as a matter of fact, or I would be if there were any truth in it.”
“Isn’t there any?” asked Erica hopefully.
“Not an atom of truth. I’ve never been mixed up with anyone but you.”
“How do you like it?”
His expression changed as he looked at her and he said under his breath, “You know how much I like it, darling.”
“Yes,” said Erica faintly, and putting both her arms around him she said, “Well, kiss me, for heaven’s sake.”
After a while he said, looking up at the ceiling, “I wasn’t just talking, when I told you that you’d never happened to me before and I know nothing like you will ever happen to me again. Life is pretty average, on the whole, and even when you fall in love, you feel the way most everybody else has felt at some time or other. You only hit perfection by accident. It’s like a sweepstake, trying doesn’t get you anywhere and the odds are a million to one against the accident taking place. Have you ever been absolutely happy?” he asked suddenly. “I mean as though the whole world were an orchestra and instead of playing more or less off key, for once in your life you managed to be in complete harmony and for one day or just maybe for a couple of hours, everything was exactly right?”
“Yes, once,” said Erica.
“Once for me too.”
“Tell me about yours first.”
He said, “It was four years ago, in October 1938, when I was staying with David on a fishing trip. At least I was fishing but he wasn’t. Morning after morning we’d start out together and then someone would fall off a horse or decide to have a baby or something and I’d end up going alone. Finally, the second to last day I was there, by some sort of coincidence nobody needed a doctor for once and off we went. It was early October, one of those autumn days when everything seems to be standing still, holding its breath and waiting ...”
He broke off, trying to remember, with his eyes fixed on the mirror over the chest of drawers. The mirror dissolved into a window through which he could see, not the soft rise and fall of the Laurentians all around them, but the high, clear-cut barrier of the Algoma mountains, guarding the North. He said, “I’ve got it. Listen:
‘Along the line of smoky hills
The crimson forest stands
And all the day the bluejay calls
Throughout the autumn lands.
Now by the brook the maple leans
With all his glory spread
And all the sumachs on the hills
Have turned their green to red.’
“It was like that. We walked through the bush and fished for a while and then had lunch and fished some more. We came out by a small lake just at sunset, and then we went home. That was all.”
His eyes left the mirror and came back to her face and he said, “What about your day?”
“It wasn’t a day, it was an evening in Paris the last time I was there, when Mimi and I were walking down Champs Elysées all the way from the Arc de Triomphe to Place de la Concorde. Every time a car went by it lit up the lower branches of the trees and then it was dark with just the street lamps and the moon again. Mimi was as happy as I was. We couldn’t even talk.”
“Paris will never look like that again, Eric ...”
“It wasn’t just Paris, it was the whole world.”
“... or the woods back of David’s place in October 1938.” A moment later he said, looking straight ahead of him, “Or anyone else after you.”
Days later, when she was trying to locate the exact moment at which she had received the first warning, the moment which marked the beginning of the final stage in their relationship, she was to remember the way he had said, “Or anyone else after you.” There was no hope in his voice at that moment, either for a future with Erica or a future without her, only the first indication of his acceptance of a world in which the chances were still a million to one against his ever managing to be in complete harmony again.
The moment went by unnoticed at the time, for immediately after he said, “October 1938,” in a different tone, and after another pause he repeated it a third time, as though the words were the key to another memory of which all he could recall so far was its purely evil associations.
Not October, Erica thought. He was a month out.
She said, “May I have a cigarette, pleas
e?” He handed her the package and she took one, and after waiting a little, she asked for a match.
He said absently, “I’m sorry,” and gave her the packet of matches.
“Our whippoorwill’s back again.” There was another pause and she asked, “Who wrote that poem?”
“Wilfrid Campbell.”
It was no use. You could not hope to keep it out, even out of a hotel in the Laurentians at three o’clock in the morning, by talking about whippoorwills and poetry and asking for cigarettes and matches, and at last she said, “I know what you’re thinking of. You’ve got the wrong date; it wasn’t October, it was November 1938.”
“Yes,” said Marc. “Yes, of course it was.”
He put the ashtray down on the bed between them and remarked, “I’m glad it wasn’t October, that would have been carrying escapism too far. Besides, I’d hate to have my pet memory go sour on me.” He turned his head and smiled at her and said, “I don’t know what I’m talking about.”
“You hadn’t any relatives in Germany, had you?”
“Yes, some of my mother’s family, particularly my first cousin. He was about my age, and when I was over there in 1932 I stayed with them and he and I went on a hiking trip in Switzerland together. We were both students then. Afterwards he took a degree in science and another one in law and got a job working on patents in one of the big chemical firms. He was pretty brilliant and I guess the Nazis just decided to overlook him — anyhow, he and his family managed to get along somehow or another until November ’38.”
He said aimlessly, “I was always arguing with them about getting out but they wouldn’t, of course, because even in 1932 there were fewer restrictions in Germany than here. I mean, they were a part of things.”
“What happened to him?”
“I don’t know. They said he’d been ‘shot trying to escape’ from a concentration camp. My uncle was arrested at the same time and last year my aunt and Hedy, the daughter, were sent to Poland. They were the only ones left.”
As soon as she had heard him say “October 1938” the second time, she had known that there was something more than the fact that November 1938 had been a black month, by far the blackest until much later, but she had not known that there was a family with whom he had lived and a cousin about his own age with whom he had gone hiking in Switzerland.
He was lying on his back looking up at the ceiling, and she could feel him drawing steadily farther and farther away from her until he seemed to be wholly detached. There began to be something strange and unfamiliar about him, and she was seized with panic, wondering what she was doing here beside him where she so obviously did not belong. His isolation was so complete that it was as though he had entirely finished with her. In despair, and overwhelmed by the one impulsion to cover herself with something beside the sheet which covered both of them, in a single movement she caught up her nightdress which had been thrown across the foot of the bed and slipped it over her shoulders.
“What are you doing that for?”
She was so startled by the sound of his voice that she stopped, transfixed, with her arms over her head. “Because — because you — Oh!” said Erica helplessly. “The damn thing’s got twisted. Help me on with it and don’t ask silly questions.”
“Not until you tell me why.”
“I feel indecent.”
She got her head out at last and their eyes met. They looked at each other in silence until Marc said, “I’m sorry, Eric.”
“It’s all right.”
“No,” he said, shaking his head. Still looking at her he said, “You certainly do get it both ways, don’t you?” and a moment later he suddenly pulled her down beside him and said again with his face against hers, “I’m sorry, darling, I’m an awful fool. I didn’t mean to desert you like that ...”
“Particularly with nothing on,” she said in a muffled voice. She clung to him until it was really all right again, and then raising her head so that she could look into his eyes she said, “I want to tell you something, Marc. I’m not afraid of other people, nothing they say or do can get inside me where it really hurts if I don’t let it. I’m only afraid of one thing ...”
“Yes, go on.”
“I’m afraid of being shut out.” She sat up, holding his hand tightly in both hers and said, “Please start by assuming that I can understand and not that I can’t. It’s terribly important, I think it’s more important to me than anything else. If you say or even let yourself think that I can’t understand something simply because I’m not Jewish, then you put me in a position where I’m utterly helpless. It’s like ...” She stopped and then said, “It’s like tying me to a chair and then blaming me because I can’t get up and walk. I’ve got quite a lot of imagination and I don’t think I’m stupid or insensitive ...”
Her grip on his hand tightened still more and she said, “Give me a chance to understand and if I let you down, then — well, then you can shut me out. I guess I’ll have deserved it. It’s not my fault that I’m not Jewish and I can’t do anything about it, but surely ...” She stopped again, and with her eyes and her voice full of tears she said, “Surely the fact that I love you so much makes up for it!”
He had not once taken his eyes from her face. He said roughly, “Eric, for God’s sake!” and took her in his arms again.
She said at last, “Darling, you’ve got a grip like a steel trap and you’re hurting me.”
He relaxed a little, smoothed back a strand of fair hair which had fallen over her forehead and smiled down at her. He was still somewhat unnerved. “Are you all right?”
Erica nodded. “Are you?”
“Well, almost,” said Marc. “You have an awful effect on me, Eric. Whenever you say that you love me, I feel as though I’m being turned inside out, only this time it was worse because of the build up. Do you know what we need?”
“No, what?”
“Some kind of insulation.”
“Why?”
“I mean just to protect ourselves when we’re together so we won’t feel so much.”
“I don’t think I want to be insulated,” said Erica, after considering it. “Probably it all goes together, so that if ...”
“You have the most irritating habit of starting to say something interesting and then stopping in the middle. However, I see what you mean.” He kissed her and then asked, “Do you still feel indecent?”
“No.”
“All right, take that thing off again then.”
He got up and went over to the window. “It’s a marvellous night, Eric,” he said, his eyes following the course of the Milky Way through the sky until the stream of stars disappeared over the dark shoulder of the mountain across the lake. The lake itself was full of moonlight and there was a light breeze which had turned the water in the path of the moon to frozen silver.
He came back and stood looking down at her face and her hair spread out on the pillow.
“You belong to a museum,” said Erica, for there was such perfection of line and form in the moulding of his body that he seemed unreal in the dimly lit room, like a figure out of Greece two thousand years before. “Except for your face,” she added. “Your face doesn’t go with the rest of you. One of your ancestors must have got mixed up with a good Austrian peasant ...”
Her voice died away in the stillness of the room as he went on standing there, and then suddenly took the top of the sheet with one hand and pulled it down to her feet. “I want to remember the way you look,” he said, his voice so low that she could hardly hear it.
She lay motionless under his eyes and then turned over on her face and began to cry again. He dropped down on the bed beside her and put his arm around her and said, his voice shaking, “Don’t, Eric, please, my dearest, please don’t. You can’t cry now, it’s only Friday.”
But it was not because there was so little time left that she was crying, although that was part of it. There was something else which she did not know how to explain, even to herself, e
xcept that in this one night she seemed to have lost what little had remained of her detachment; she had taken on his vulnerability without his endurance, and she was crying for herself as well as for Marc.
She put both her arms around him and went on crying until there were no more tears left, and after a while both of them had forgotten how it had started or what it was all about. When the church clock struck five in the village at the other end of the lake, neither of them heard it.
VIII
“Our government is really wonderful,” remarked Sylvia as the telephone rang on Erica’s desk at half past eleven on Monday morning.
“You take it, Bubbles,” said Erica. The train from Ottawa where she had spent Sunday night with Marc had been late arriving in Montreal; the first edition had gone to press ten minutes after she had reached her office and she was still struggling to catch up. “I won’t talk to anybody.”
“The Consumer’s Division of the Department of Agriculture,” continued Sylvia, although no one seemed to be listening, “has just produced another masterpiece in the form of a cake which takes no butter, no eggs, and no sugar. Now why not just no cake, and be done with it?”
“You might write and ask them,” said Erica absently.
“It’s for you, Eric,” said Weathersby, adding as Erica was about to protest, “I know, but it’s someone who claims she’s your sister. You’d better investigate.”
“Tell her to hold on a minute,” said Erica, still typing. “Bubbles ...”
“Yeah?”
“Have you got my cigarettes again?”
“What do you mean, ‘again’?” he demanded, looking injured.
“Never mind. Hand them over.”
“It probably is her sister,” Sylvia pointed out to him as he passed her desk bearing Erica’s cigarettes. “At your age, you’ve no reason to be so suspicious. You ought to be in a good school somewhere,” she added vaguely, “learning about cricket, instead of learning about life in a newspaper office. Where are those wedding pictures, Bubbles?”
“On Eric’s desk. And I already know all about cricket, I finished school last year. Eric ...”
Earth and High Heaven Page 21