The Major's Daughter

by J. P. Francis

  “Thank you, Mrs. Emhoff.”

  “Who’s playing tonight?” her father asked.

  “The Jefferson City Two Tones,” George said, his voice a tad watery. “They’ve got a smashing brass section.”

  “Do they?” her father said. “I’ve never heard of them.”

  “Yes you have, dear,” her mother said. “You’ve even danced to them, but you don’t remember. They have that Puerto Rican trumpet player who everyone admires.”

  “You can’t beat Puerto Ricans on horns,” George said. “You know the band, don’t you, Estelle?”

  “Yes, sure. Didn’t they play last New Year’s?”

  “No, that was the Walker Brothers,” said George.

  He passed along a highball to Estelle’s mother, then raised his glass.

  “Here’s how,” he said.

  “It’s so nice to see you again, George,” her mother said. “And doing so well.”

  “It’s a dog-eat-dog world, but it turns out I’m a bit of a dog myself.”

  That brought a laugh. Estelle smiled and drank. She decided she would need several drinks to make it through the night. She looked at the faces surrounding her. This was the path she was meant to take. Her mother stood between the two men on one side of the circle, directly across from where Estelle stood. Boy-girl, boy-girl, like a game on a children’s playground. For an instant she tried to imagine Mr. Kamal standing here. He would not drink, for one thing, and he would wear his turban and pass his doleful eyes over everything. Like a crow trooping among doves. Wasn’t that what Shakespeare said? She drained her glass and passed it to her father.

  “Knock me again, please,” she said.

  “Steady on, old girl,” George said, smiling.

  Chapter Thirteen

  In the center of his barracks August stood on the outside of the circle of men, listening to the stories told by the newcomers. They were all hungry for news of the war, news from their side, not the versions given by the American press, and now, almost by magic, two newcomers had arrived from Normandy. They were young men, nearly identical, with red cheeks and golden hair, both with dented chins as if screws had been inserted into their jawlines to secure something deeper in their skulls. Their arrival had caused a stir; even the American guards had been interested in their reports, because they brought firsthand knowledge of the fighting. They had been captured near Coutances in France. It was a hellish battle, on that everyone agreed, but here were two young German soldiers, fresh from the Fatherland, their fates bringing them to this tiny camp thousands of miles away. So miraculous was their arrival that some of the men had believed them to be infiltrators. If they were, August decided, then they possessed theatrical skills beyond anyone’s comprehension.

  “We killed over a thousand Americans and Allies, and they gained a mere two hundred meters of ground. They paid with blood, believe me,” the youngest of the pair said. “Our tanks are better than theirs.”

  “They outnumber us, though, isn’t that true?” a voice from the ring of men asked.

  “Yes,” the older of the pair said. “Like ants on a wedding cake.”

  “The British Second Army tried to forge into the Cotentin Peninsula, but we pushed them back,” the younger said. “You would be proud of our forces. They are fighting like demons.”

  “We never hear that from our guards,” Liam said.

  He was a short, blunt man who had moved onto August’s cutting team the week before.

  “What of Germany itself?” August asked. “What news do you have of our countrymen?”

  “They are Germans. They stand united,” the older boy said.

  “Yes, but are there supplies and food?” Gerhard, August’s friend, asked.

  “Not as much as is needed . . . and medicine is in short supply. Very short supply. But we soldier on. You will not hear protests.”

  August studied the speaker. He could not determine if the young soldier, the one who had finished speaking, told the truth. Or, rather, he could not say if the young soldier merely repeated things he had been told or heard.

  He met Gerhard’s eye and motioned with his chin that he intended to step outside. Gerhard nodded and went with him.

  “What do you make of those two?” Gerhard asked when they had moved a safe distance from the barracks. Gerhard lighted a cigarette. Night had come at last, and a soft rain fell and made tiny explosions on the camp’s metal roofs. It smelled wonderful and fresh and August thought of his parents’ kitchen garden for an instant, the earthy scent of newly turned soil and manure.

  “They believe what they’re saying, but they don’t know any more than we do,” August said.

  “That’s how I took it. But I believe them about the fighting. Even the Americans say it’s bloody.”

  “We’re lucky to be out of it, really,” Gerhard said, blowing smoke into the air. “We’re not supposed to say that, of course.”

  “I wonder if my brother is in the middle of it,” August said. “He was too young when I left, but he’s at least as old as those two.”

  “They’re babies.”

  “We were babies once.”

  “I don’t think Germany can hold out forever, and Hitler is too prideful to strike a peace agreement. He’ll lead us off a cliff, I’m certain.”

  “The time to sue for peace may already be gone. The Allies will want revenge. It’s only human nature.”

  Gerhard shrugged. At that moment August spied a familiar shape coming through the guarded gate. Collie ran past the guards and jangled a key, obviously coming to open something in the administration building. August put his hand on his friend’s shoulder and turned him slightly. Gerhard strained to see, then nodded. August left him and went to see what had brought Collie to the camp so late in the evening.

  A guard stepped forward and challenged him.

  “What do you want?” the guard asked.

  Then the guard, a middle-aged man named Howard, recognized August, because he lowered his rifle.

  “It’s you,” the guard said. “I still can’t let you approach the gate.”

  “I wanted to speak to the commandant’s daughter.”

  “Who doesn’t?” Howard asked with a quiet leer. “She’s in to use the phone.”

  “Is something wrong?”

  “Well, if it is, she didn’t tell me.”

  “We’ve talked sometimes,” August tried to explain.

  “Yes, and I’m Kaiser Wilhelm. Go back to your barracks. I don’t want to put you on report.”

  August started to turn, but Collie reappeared on the porch. August could not see her well, but she seemed in distress. Her usual calm had been eradicated, and she paced on the small porch, obviously impatient for something.

  “Collie?” he called. “It’s August Wahrlich.”

  She came to the edge of the porch and peered into the darkness.

  “Let him pass,” she said quietly to the guard. “I know him.”

  “It’s against regulation, miss. At this time of night . . .”

  “He may be of help to me. Now, please, do as I say. I won’t keep him more than a minute.”

  The guard moved off to resume his usual position near the center gate. August stepped quickly to the small porch where Collie waited.

  “What is it?” he asked. “You look upset.”

  To his astonishment, she walked into his arms. He heard the loud wracks of sobs passing through her body. He wondered for a moment if something had happened to her father. At the same moment, the sensation of having a woman in his arms, even with such sadness attached to it, felt overwhelming. It had been years since he had experienced such comfort. He couldn’t help it; he kissed her hair and tightened his arms around her. In time her crying slowed and she pushed away, bringing a handkerchief out of her pocket to dab at her eyes.

  “I
’m not usually like this,” she said, “but Marie . . . the young girl. You know her, don’t you? We talked about her.”

  “Yes, the one I danced with?”

  Collie nodded.

  “What is it? Is she all right?”

  “She’s very ill and they’re not sure she will make it through the night. The family doesn’t have a phone, so I came here to use the office phone, but now the doctor is out delivering a baby. He is supposed to call and I’m to wait here, but I feel as though I’m about to explode. She’s raving. Her fever is horrible.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “The doctor is at least an hour away, and that’s if he could leave this moment. The delivery could go into the small hours. It’s a first birth, his wife said, and those are typically the slowest.”

  “We have a medic who could look at her,” August said. “His name is Schmidt. Wilhelm Schmidt, and he’s a good man.”

  “I’ve seen the name, but I didn’t know he had a medical background.”

  “He was a doctor, or a medical student in Hungary. I don’t know which. But he takes care of the men here. I could fetch him and ask if he would go see the little girl.”

  “Yes, please, would you do that? It can’t hurt. I’m afraid she’s going to die and we won’t be able to do anything for her.”

  “I’ll be back in a moment. Stay here and I’ll bring him.”

  August hurried off. He hoped he had not promised too much. He found Schmidt in the middle of a chess match against another Hungarian. They sat on opposite bunks, cigarettes burning, a cloud of smoke obscuring the checkerboard propped on an empty bucket between them. The game appeared advanced; only a few pieces remained on the board.

  “It sounds like the Spanish flu,” Schmidt said when August finished describing the situation. “If it is, she’ll be lucky to survive it. I’ve seen many cases.”

  “Will you come and look at her?”

  “The doctor may not like such interference.”

  “I think it’s critical.”

  August watched Schmidt weigh the information. He was a good, kind man, August knew, but he suffered in camp life. He was older, for one thing, and the work exhausted him. Apparently he felt some apprehension; if the girl died, August realized, then the fault might be laid at Schmidt’s feet, and who knew where that might lead? But eventually Schmidt stood and ran a hand through his bushy gray hair. He stubbed out his cigarette in an old B&M bean can. He knelt with difficulty to retrieve a suitcase from under his bunk. He handed it to August.

  “Where is the girl?” Schmidt asked.

  “In a house nearby.”

  “Will they let us off grounds?”

  “They must.”

  Schmidt stopped in the latrine for a moment, and when he emerged he had obviously washed his face and run a wet comb through his hair. He looked better, more groomed, and his demeanor had become crisper. August spotted the glimmer of what the man must have looked like before the war, before Africa and the dirt and heat. It heartened him to see it.

  August led him to Collie and introduced him.

  “Do you think you can help?” Collie asked.

  “I can look. I make no promises,” Schmidt said in German.

  “She’s very ill.”

  “We need to break the fever or she won’t survive. I’ve seen this illness before.”

  August stood beside Schmidt as Collie went to speak with the guard. He heard Howard’s reluctance; it was against protocol. August could not imagine what it required on Collie’s part to persuade an American guard to permit two Germans to wander off from the prison at night. He heard her speaking emphatically, her voice slightly raised. She mentioned her father, who was apparently unavailable at the moment. That much he overheard.

  In the end, August listened as they summoned a second guard, a young man named Jules, to accompany them to the girl’s house. The young guard appeared nervous as a kite string. He stood with his hands roaming over his rifle as if he expected the Germans to make a break for the woods at any moment.

  It rained a little as they walked to the white house at the base of the orchard. August realized he had not been off the camp at night in months, and then only to return from a job that had taken them far away. He looked up at the stars; rain obscured them, but the moon, a half-horn, rolled slowly through the passing clouds. When the wind blew, the trees rocked and sent down showers of water from their boughs. The ground underfoot felt sodden and slippery with summer grass.

  “You can keep watch on the porch,” Collie told the young guard. “I’ll call out if they make an escape attempt.”

  Schmidt laughed. The young guard, August saw, seemed troubled but lacked the confidence to suggest anything else.

  August followed Collie inside. A young woman met them. It looked to be an older sister to the little one he knew as a frequent passerby. The house, August realized, had become abnormally quiet.

  “It’s not good,” the woman whispered.

  “This is Amy,” Collie said, to introduce the young woman. “Marie’s sister. Marie is the sick girl.”

  Schmidt bowed slightly from the hips. August did the same.

  “This man, Herr Schmidt, he is a medical man. A medic.”

  “Where is the doctor?”

  “Dr. Shepherd is delivering a baby. I spoke to his wife. He will be here as soon as he can make it, but in the meantime I thought it wouldn’t hurt to let Herr Schmidt take a look. He’s familiar with Marie’s condition.”

  August watched Amy study the old medic. Here, exactly here, the entire war resided, August understood. All the deaths, the combat, the blood pouring into the rivers of Europe, were represented by the look of mistrust that sugared the appraisal of the young women gazing at a German doctor. What hope did any of them have for peace if they could not even trust one another in this providential moment? He watched as Collie squeezed Amy’s hand and nodded. It was meant as reassurance. Amy took a breath and whispered that her mother was upstairs and that her father had gone out, unable to stand the agony of watching the illness advance. They suspected he had gone for the priest, but they didn’t know for certain.

  Amy led them upstairs. The temperature in the house seemed to rise the higher they went. It was a poor house, August thought, but clean. He had always wondered what the inside of an American home looked like, and now he knew. They were constructed of wood, unlike the homes in Austria, and they felt insubstantial as a result.

  Marie’s mother met them at the door to the sickroom. She looked vexed that Collie had not brought Dr. Shepherd.

  “Where is he?” the mother asked, referring to the doctor.

  “He’s over near Littleton, delivering a baby,” Collie said. “I’m sorry, but this kind man has agreed to take a look.”

  “He’s a German!” the woman said violently.

  “Yes, Mama,” Amy said, “but he is a medical man.”

  “I won’t let a German touch my daughter. I don’t care what it brings.”

  “You’re tired, Mama, and not thinking carefully,” Amy said. “Dr. Shepherd will not get here until midmorning at the earliest. That’s our guess. This man . . . Herr Schmidt . . . he has kindly offered to do what he can.”

  “I don’t want Germans in my house,” the mother said. “Get them out. Get them out now. I never agreed to this.”

  “It’s for Marie,” Collie said. “Think about Marie. Whatever can help her . . .”

  Then Schmidt, to everyone’s surprise, slowly reached into his vest pocket. Carefully, so as not to ruin it, he held out a photograph toward Amy’s mother. August glimpsed it briefly; it was a portrait of a young girl.

  “My daughter,” he said in broken English, holding the picture so that the woman might examine it. “She died in the first weeks of the war . . . in bombardment. . . . Death has no friends.”

  Augu
st watched the mother deliberate. Eventually she nodded and stepped away to let them enter the room.

  “Be done before my husband returns,” she said, “or there will be hell to pay.”

  • • •

  Estelle waited for George to come around and open her car door. The Duck Pond Country Club looked festive in the evening air. Through the windshield, she watched couples moving toward the front door, their calls and greetings merry and filled with promise. When George popped open her door, music met her. It came as a bright, happy sound, drifting out over the eighteenth hole of the golf course and filling everything with rhythm. She recognized the song as something by the Andrews Sisters, though she could not remember its precise name. She wished for a moment to have the intrepid Marie by her side, because Marie knew every song that tumbled out of the radio. How Marie would love the sparkle of the country club, the white pillars, the trimmed hedges, the glint of automobiles coming to discharge their passengers! Estelle made a mental note to write her and tell her all the details. Marie had already written twice, and Estelle, in her painful self-occupation, had been too blasé to answer back. She promised to change that tomorrow.

  George held out his hand.

  “The place is hopping!” he said, smiling. “Soldiers are coming back, and the young folks are taking over.”

  “It sure looks lively.”

  He tried to steal a kiss. Just like that. He leaned in, trapping her between the door and his arm, and he kissed her. It was all she could do not to pull away, so she stood rigidly and let him rub his lips against hers. Then he smiled.

  “You look like you’re taking medicine you don’t like,” he said.

  “I hadn’t expected to be kissed.”

  “Loosen up, Estelle. Tonight’s about fun.”

  “Yes, of course,” she said, and when he ducked in for a second kiss she forced herself to meet his lips squarely. His hand brushed discreetly over her hip and up toward her left breast. She broke off the kiss and pushed him gently away.

  He held out his arm for her to take, and she did, glad to have fresh air after the staleness of the automobile. George, Eternal George. As children they had danced together at this club; they had escaped the summer heat in the pool, and, yes, she had kissed him plenty of times before. Several times as teenagers they had petted while lying in sand traps, or on the hills leading up to greens. He was within his rights to expect a kiss or two, but she wished she felt more in return. He was George, Eternal George, a solid, dependable wheelbarrow of a man. He squeezed her arm several times with his elbow as they approached the front door, like a rider, she thought, spurring on a horse to greater speed.