The Last Summer of the World

by Emily Mitchell

  He bows to them each in turn, Charlotte first, then Clara. Now that she has a chance to look at him up close, she sees that he really is quite handsome. He is simply dressed, but his clothes hang easily on him, as though they were aware of the good looks of their owner. She feels a flutter cross through her. She straightens up, and pushes her lips out into their most fetching pout. She looks at him, his hair falling over his face as he bows to Lottie, and she wonders, idly of course, whether she could make him fall in love with her. It would certainly be amusing to try.

  Back in Missouri, she could make almost any boy fall in love with her just by smiling at him, or by looking his way for a minute. So many boys came calling on weekends, only to sit awkwardly on the porch, sipping lemonade and saying nothing. Once she received three marriage proposals in one month, none of them from boys that she liked even the least little bit. Two were farmers’ sons, slow-spoken and heavy-limbed, who told her they would take care of her, provide a good home and a steady income, as if this was the most enticing thing that they could imagine in the world. In private, she and Lottie imitated them, lumbering across the floor and saying “errrrrr” and “uummmmm” between every other word, until they fell about laughing, or until Lottie said it was too mean-spirited and they must stop. The third suitor was a boy from town at least, the son of a department-store owner, who was known locally as something of a dandy, which meant his clothes were too flashy and he had a reputation for getting girls into trouble. But she didn’t want him any more than she wanted the other two. In the end, they were all the same to her: they were just dead weights pulling her down, down, into the ground of this awful small town where she knew perfectly well that she didn’t belong. Clara’s music teachers had been telling her for some years that she must go to the city and study with someone who could develop her talents fully. She was leaving, moving to New York, and she had already talked Lottie into coming with her, and nothing so dull and usual as marriage would spoil their plans. She told her suitors that she wouldn’t have them. But she kept the rings they’d given her. Those, after all, were gifts, and what would they do with them if she did return them? Give them to other girls?

  Mr. Steichen bows to her next, and as he takes her hand, she feels again that brief flutter, like a bird stretching its wings out inside her. He presses her knuckles to his lips, which are dry and soft, the skin around them a little rough from traces of beard. A sweet shock travels up her arm from the place where they are touching, and she is surprised, almost frightened by it. She has only just time to compose her face before he looks up at her. His eyes are implacably blue. She puts on the expression she has practiced for meetings like this, the one where her eyes say that she could be just as happy anywhere, really, in the company of anyone. A slight indifference is what men find most alluring. She wouldn’t want to seem too enthusiastic: it would betray a lack of sophistication. Yes, she decides, it would be great fun to try to charm him. But then she sees a fleeting look of amusement cross his face, and for a second she’s convinced that he is thinking the same thing about her.

  “Miss Smith is a pianist and a singer of immense talent,” says Mildred. “We are all expecting great things from her.”

  “Is that so?” Mr. Steichen hasn’t looked away from her, and she finds herself smiling under his gaze in spite of herself. Somehow she cannot seem to rid her face of this ridiculous grin.

  “It would be wonderful to hear you play something,” he says.

  “No, I’m afraid not tonight,” says Mildred. “Clara has made us promise not even to ask her …”

  “Well, I was only teasing, really,” Clara says quickly. “I’d be delighted to play something a little later.” And Mr. Steichen smiles, but before he has a chance to reply, Alfred bursts in from the back drawing room, looking more animated than he has all evening. He strides across the floor toward them, his eyes dancing.

  “The prodigal returns!” he cries.

  “He’s hardly prodigal,” says Mildred. “Just tardy.”

  “Well, I have not seen him for months,” Alfred replies. “You must tell me about the show.” He draws Edward away into a corner of the room, and in a minute the two of them are deep in conversation. Mildred stares after them, her arms folded across her chest.

  “That’s our Stieglitz,” she says, looking toward Alfred’s stooped back and gesticulating arms. “Brilliant, but no manners whatsoever. Honestly, we all owe him such a debt. He is our champion. The only reason we have art photography in America to speak of. But he really doesn’t seem to have any sense of when he is stepping on people’s toes.”

  “I suppose that is part of what allows him to stand up for what he believes in so well.” Marion has come up beside them, quietly, and now stands watching the two men conversing in the opposite corner.

  “Yes,” Mildred says, “it helps him to be so stubborn and a little blind to social niceties. Well, my dears,” she turns back to them, “before he got swept away, that young man was Edward Steichen. A very promising photographer and painter. Alfred discovered some of his work among the entries to the Philadelphia Salon three years ago. He is studying now, here in Paris.”

  “I should like to talk to him about where he studies painting,” says Marion. “Do you think I could?”

  “Oh, certainly, if you can pry him away from Alfred. Which I’m warning you is no easy task.” Marion nods. She goes over to where Alfred and Edward are still standing and talking, ignoring everyone else, and waits patiently for an opening.

  Lottie leans over and tugs Clara’s sleeve. “Let’s get another glass of wine.” And so they go into the next room where the glasses are all lined up being served by waiters in dark ties and long white aprons, and they run into Judith, who wants to talk to them about all the sights they simply must see while they are in Paris, as if Mildred hadn’t been here before and knew perfectly well where to take them, and it is all very dull. Clara’s mind keeps wandering back to the strange way that Edward had looked at her, laughing but not laughing exactly, curious, self-assured.

  “What do you think of that Mr. Steichen?” she asks Lottie, when Judith finally lets them go.

  “He seems nice,” says Lottie. “He’s a friend of Mildred’s, so he’s probably clever.”

  “He seems a bit conceited to me,” Clara says.

  “Why? Clara, he hardly said anything at all.”

  “I don’t know. Just an air he gives off. He is used to getting his own way.”

  They pass back into the front salon and see that Edward and Alfred are still in the same place that they were twenty minutes before, but that now Marion and Mildred have joined them and they are all four talking animatedly together. Edward turns to Marion and asks her something, then cranes his neck down to hear her answer. Marion is smiling as she replies.

  “I think that if I am going to play,” Clara says, “I better do it now before I am far too tired.”

  “Really? Now? Oh, how terrific,” says Lottie. “Judith will be so pleased. I’ll just go and let her know.”

  They all arrange the chairs in the front parlor around the piano. Judith comes to her and squeezes her hand. “I’m so glad you have decided to entertain us. You seemed so set against it. Whatever was it that changed your mind?”

  “Oh, just a mood that took me,” Clara says. “I can never tell when I’ll feel like playing. The inspiration is rather mysterious even to me, you know.” She settles herself on the bench and looks around the room to see who is there.

  At last she finds him. He is sitting near Alfred and Emmy, but a little pulled away by himself, with his legs crossed and his chin in his hands. He is watching her with that same curious, amused expression, and when she catches his eye, he smiles and doesn’t look away. She chooses a sonata by Beethoven and a Chopin nocturne. Then she will sing, something short, perhaps a song by Haydn, though Haydn might be too sensible for this evening, when she feels so dark and dizzily excited though she cannot understand quite why. She turns to face the piano, but
she is still aware of him watching her from across the room.

  When she plays, her arms join the instrument and become wings. She described this to Lottie once, how the keys are feathers along an arch of bone, how the world vanishes once she begins. Lottie, who was honestly never much more than a competent pianist, said that she knew just what Clara meant when obviously she didn’t understand at all. Clara doesn’t mean that she actually grows feathers or anything ridiculous like that. But all the snagged colors and thoughts that have been in her head that day, words people have said, what she has felt and seen, even the things she’s half-forgotten already—all of this stuff inside her flows down her arms and out of her hands into the keys. When she is playing, even the faces of strangers she passed on the street are in it. She is borne up on this, her hands pulling the notes out of the keys so the sound blooms around her into something bigger than she could ever be, and she feels terribly bright and clear. The music goes out and fills up the room and drowns everything in it. And she loves this sensation more than anything in the world.

  Tonight, then, she begins from the curious dizzy feeling of being looked at by this boy, who hadn’t been content to just see her face, but wanted to look inside it, too, and as she plunges down into the first notes of the sonata and then calls up the swollen broken chords with her left hand, she remembers how she had wanted to draw back from him but instead, she had stared right back into his face as though she was not afraid. The music complicates, brings in more and more fragments of the day: there is Judith’s scratching voice in the high notes; there is Emmy Stieglitz’s slow meandering in the adagio. Mildred and Lottie are there, too, and she feels how she has bound them all together in this. They will be part of each other, and of her, whenever this piece of music is played. They will not be able to undo it, even if they want to.

  When she is finished, she is quiet inside, and, as she stands and bows, she can hear them applauding but from far away, as if they’re in another room. She looks over to where Edward is sitting. He shakes his head as he claps slowly. “Beautiful,” she sees him mouth to Alfred on his right. And then he does a curious thing. He raises his hands with the thumbs and forefingers at right angles to each other, so he is looking at her through a rectangular frame. What is he doing? How odd he looks with his hands up in front of his face that way. She smiles, and decides that she will sing Mozart, Susanna’s song “Deh vieni, non tardar” from The Marriage of Figaro.

  When she finishes the song, there is more applause. As it fades, Edward stands up and comes slowly over to her.

  “What did you think?” she asks. She feels bold at that moment, aware of her own loveliness. For a minute he is actually at a loss for words. Later on, she will remember this as one of the few times when he really did not know what to say. She will recall exactly the way his voice cracks when he finally speaks.

  “I would like to photograph you. While you are playing,” he says. “Do you think that I could?”

  “Well,” she says, slowly, drawing out the moment, “let me consider it.”

  FROM HER CHAIR near the back of the room, Marion sees Steichen go over to the piano while the applause and shouts of bravo from the assembled company are still dying away. He touches Clara gently on the elbow, and she turns her flushed, bright face toward him and, my goodness, how beautiful they are together! It is really quite astonishing. One wants just to look and look at them. She has to tell herself forcefully that it isn’t polite to stare just to get herself to tear her eyes away.

  She gets to her feet but doesn’t know what to do with herself after that. She does not want to go over and interrupt whatever conversation is passing between her friend and the man beside her. She looks around for someone to talk to but sees no one she knows nearby. So she sits awkwardly down again and folds her hands in her lap, and as she does so, a familiar feeling of disappointment wells up inside her. She has been here before. All of the light has gone over to the other side of the room and left her here among the middle-aged ladies and gentlemen who are beginning to talk of taxis home, the wretched weather, how the food did not agree with them. She feels the ordinariness of it all very keenly in contrast to the wonderful expanse of the music just minutes before. She feels it, too, in contrast to the mysterious energy moving between the couple by the piano.

  It is not that she envies Clara her beauty or the ease of her talent; she sees already that these things bring with them their own kinds of trouble. Besides, she likes Clara, likes the way she has of making everything she does seem special, illuminated, demanding of particular attention like a theatrical performance. To be around Clara is to feel like one is at the center of things.

  And she certainly isn’t, she assures herself, jealous of the attention of that particular young man, Mr. Steichen. True, they had been having an interesting conversation before Clara said she would play. He is pleasant and he listens to what is being said to him, something which young men, especially those in the midst of their first success, cannot always be relied upon to do. But it would be silly to be jealous on account of someone one had only just met and about whom one knew almost nothing.

  No; really, it is only this: for her somehow that world of mysterious flight, the kinds of emotions so powerful they are visible, tangible, seems to be something she can have only at one remove. She can observe but not participate—that is her role. It is why she is a painter, someone who spends her time looking at things outside herself, while remaining invisible. She is not, she senses, intended for any grand drama or passion. That she is not a beauty may have contributed to this, and perhaps her nature is too sensible in any case for such things.

  Still, she cannot help but feel lonely for that brightness she does not possess, as she watches part of someone else’s story unfolding across the room.

  She shouldn’t stare, she reminds herself once more. She stands up again, and this time determinedly goes to find Mildred, who is in the dining room talking to Lottie Smith.

  “Wasn’t that terrific?” Mildred says.

  “Oh yes,” Marion agrees. “She is extraordinary.”

  “We won’t be able to keep her to ourselves for long, I fear. Look—here she is. Brava!”

  Clara is smiling as she enters.

  “Oh, you are spoiling me,” she says. “It was really only just serviceable. I wobbled terribly on the high notes.”

  When there is a break in the conversation, Clara pulls Marion off into a corner where they won’t be overheard.

  “I am going to model for Mr. Steichen,” she confides. “He wants to take photographs of me playing the piano. What do you think of that?”

  Marion takes her hand. “That is exciting. I’m sure the photographs will be very good indeed. You can tell that Mildred and Alfred think the world of him.”

  “So you think it is a good idea?”

  “Ye-es.”

  “You don’t sound very certain.”

  It is true, but when she thinks about it, Marion isn’t sure why she has hesitated to give her blessing. Why should Clara not model for Steichen’s camera? What could be bad about it?

  “Oh no. It’s only that I don’t like to have my photograph taken,” she says. “But you will look beautiful in his pictures, I am certain.”

  FOUR

  June 12, 1918

  THESE MEN HAD never been to war. Edward could tell from the way they were disembarking, the way they filled up the small station at Épernay with excited chaos that belied their small numbers. They climbed out of the train, passed bags and cases through open carriage windows, collected in small groups, smoked, talked in loud voices to hear one another over the din. One of the men dropped his pack as he handed it down, making the soldier below him jump backward out of the way, the abrupt movement of a startled animal. The men around them laughed. The sound was warm.

  “Hey, careful with that,” said the man whose bag it was, leaning out of the window. “Clumsy idiot!”

  “Why? What’s in there that’s so damn special? Your mo
ther’s best china?” The jumper folded his arms and stuck his chin out defiantly.

  “No. Your wife’s wooden leg,” said the man at the window. Again laughter, and this time the man on the platform rushed to the window and swung upward with his fists at the face that vanished, grinning, into the interior.

  “Kelsey, hurry it up over there!” called one of the sergeants, a broad-shouldered man with a dark mustache. The noncoms were circling the confusion like sheepdogs. “Save your fight for the Huns, for God’s sake.”

  Three men wearing lieutenant’s high collars and insignia on their shoulder straps came over to where Edward was standing at the end of the platform.

  “Captain Steichen?” asked the first of them. Edward nodded. They saluted smartly.

  “At ease,” Edward said, feeling foolish as he always did with formal military gestures. He looked down at the mimeographed list of names he’d received from Barnes. “Which one of you is Eric Lutz?”

  “I am, sir,” said the man who had spoken previously. He was tall and heavy-set, and his square, ruddy face was a mask of earnest enthusiasm.

  “And you are …?”

  “John Dawson.”

  “Lewis Deveraux, sir.”

  Dawson was dark-haired, with a sleepy, handsome face; Deveraux was short, wiry, with a nervous restlessness about him. He shifted his weight from foot to foot as he stood. They all looked, to Edward, excruciatingly young.

  “OK. When your men have disembarked, take roll and make sure everyone in your section is present. It’s four miles to the airfield. Have them form up for the march. Extra baggage can be put in the tender that is waiting outside the station. Make sure you pack the cameras so that they won’t move around too much during the ride and don’t pile any heavy baggage on top of them …” The three lieutenants were exchanging anxious looks. “What is it?”

  “Well, sir,” Lutz spoke up. “Which cameras would you be referring to?”