The Tender Hour of Twilight

by Richard Seaver

  I listened, mesmerized, as Paul described the background of postwar French Communism, of which I was still woefully ignorant.

  “For Blum to constitute a unity government, however, he had of course to include the Communists, and there was the rub. Many—maybe most—Frenchmen thought of Communists as potential traitors who took their orders from Moscow, and to some degree they did. But they were also proud Frenchmen, and as Blum pointed out, doubtless echoing Shylock’s famous speech: ‘If worst came to worst, and were we forced into war once again, would we exclude the 1.5 million Communist workers, peasants, and small shopkeepers and the various worker organizations throughout this land? Of course not, for at the same time, if war comes, these men will bleed for France, die for France, just as will the rest of our countrymen.’ I paraphrase of course.

  “And when war came, these workers and peasants did rally to the flag, without hesitation. Of course, you know the rest. After the year of phony war, in June 1940 the Germans overran the country in a matter of weeks, the French army in disarray. But during the occupation—and this is key—many former Communist soldiers, and indeed civilians, joined the Resistance movement early on, and their efforts were generally heroic, as opposed to many of their rightist fellow citizens, who collaborated with the Germans, not because they too were evil, but because their fear of Communism was so deep-rooted they saw Hitler as their bulwark against the Bolsheviks. So to answer your question: today the Communist Party here is still strong both because the workers still look to it as their protector and because their conduct under the occupation was generally exemplary.” He glanced around at his captive audience. “Please excuse me for monopolizing the conversation,” he said. “That was inexcusable, but I’m afraid our American friend inadvertently set me off.”

  “On the contrary,” our hostess said with a laugh, “I must say you clarified it for me as well. Now, who will have coffee?”

  I spotted Jeannette and Jeanne in deep conversation at the far end of the table, and I asked Frank, as casually as possible, how old Jeannette was. He looked at me strangely, as if the question were gauche or out of place. I know, one doesn’t ask a woman’s age, but I could not tell for the life of me whether this young lady, of a rare beauty, was fifteen or twenty-five. Physically, she looked closer to the latter, but there was something about her that made me think she might still be a teenager. “I honestly don’t know,” Frank said. “Seventeen or eighteen, I think.” Then, as if to turn the world back on its proper, even keel, he asked suddenly: “By the way, what do you hear from Patsy? When shall we see Patsy back in Paris?”

  “Soon,” I said, “soon. Probably by early summer.” But in truth I did not believe it, not for one moment. “Don’t ever forget,” she had warned me more than once, “I’m a leaf in the wind. A wanderer. One day you’ll look up and I’ll be gone.”

  12

  Patsy of My Youthful Heart

  VIENNA, late summer of 1950. I had in my infinite spirit of adventure decided in early spring that I wanted to experience firsthand the daily workings of the four-power occupation. It was already eminently clear that a seismic political shift was taking place, that our former Soviet allies, whom we had so recently embraced and toasted, were fast becoming enemies, as Communism became the West’s, or at least America’s, new bugbear.

  Berlin was the obvious choice to experience that four-power cauldron firsthand, but after several efforts to obtain credentials, including the fact that I was freelancing for two New York newspapers, I settled for Vienna, a city that had long intrigued me.

  Money as usual was a factor—perhaps the factor—but life in Europe was still cheap, and, I was sure, my infallible nose for finding inexpensive food and lodging would stand me in good stead there, despite my relative lack of language. Frank and I had been studying German the past winter, but we both seemed to have a slight but distinct Deutsche-block about these guttural sentences filled with nouns, adverbs, adjectives, now and then a preposition, climaxing with a stentorian verb.

  At the Vienna train station, as I looked at the hotel listings posted there, my unerring eye fell immediately upon one: a former air raid shelter now converted to a hostel, not for youth especially, but for anyone with shallow pockets and mole-like proclivities. A tram ride away, and, voilà, there was the answer to my prayer: the reception, one floor below ground and therefore Stygian, announced single rooms for the equivalent of thirty-five cents a night, doubles for sixty. My initial thought was to look for a roommate to take advantage of the bargain double, but I quickly put that thought, mean even for me, out of mind. Running water, mind you, though not in the room, actually pretty far down the hall, about a football field away, but that no deterrent, given my room on the rue Jacob, a real character builder. Gazing down the corridor, painted all in black, lit every few yards by a single bulb, ensconced in a mesh of metal, hanging from the ceiling, I wondered, mentally dismantling the walls, how many Viennese this vast underground might have held in those worst of times. Thousands, surely. I could see them sitting there, on hard benches that lined both walls, silent and stoic, listening to the dull thuds above as bombs rained down, as they had for more than a year, the biggest of which, I knew, had been on the night of March 12, 1945, roughly five years before. Did they, in their inner musings, blame and condemn the evil little man their soil had spawned, they who had welcomed him with flowers and adulation only seven years before?

  My room, a flight down from the reception, was cell-like: a single metal bed, a wooden chair, a rickety table that no manner of leveling with folded paper, cardboard, or wood would render stable. A washstand with a porcelain bowl and a pitcher half-full of water, with which presumably to shave and brush one’s teeth, perhaps to wash up if one were into that. But where to empty said water? A hundred yards down the hall, I had to presume. And, needless to say, no closet for my clothes, which mattered little, since I traveled light. (Not till years later, almost twenty in fact, did I find a man who traveled even more lightly: the poet and playwright Jean Genet, Chicago 1968. But that, as they say, is a whole other story, in a country far away.)

  Emerging from my lair, I took several minutes to adjust to the light of day, although between my arrival at the station, where bright sunlight had greeted me, and my reappearance aboveground, dark rain clouds had scudded eastward, burying the sun. My first impression was that the city looked like an ornate tomb. Past grandeur everywhere, but the streets were virtually empty even at this hour, mid-afternoon, and the few trams in operation seemed to move at a crawl. To remind me of my mission, half a dozen jeeps bounded by, filled with GIs sitting stiffly and looking grim. None of the few pedestrians paid them any heed. I headed for the American Express building, to signal my presence at the mail section and cash some dollars. On my way I passed the American embassy, the entrance to which was guarded by two blue-coated marines, rifles poised outward at exactly the same angle. I marveled at their rigor. Then it happened.

  Heading toward the entrance, not walking, but bounding, her blond hair cut fairly short, her bright green skirt cut radically high, her suede jacket, once beige but darkening with use, snugly hugging her waist and hips, her legs athletic but totally feminine, her feet shod in penny loafers scuffed beyond redemption, was a young lady, obviously American, who, for reasons I cannot fathom to this day, caught not only my eye but my being. Perhaps it was the guitar case slung blithely over her shoulder. She approached one of the marines, smiled, and uttered a few words, which melted his military bearing: not only did he smile back, but he allowed his rifle to dip a good five degrees, heaven forfend! He asked her a question, she responded, again with a smile, and he waved her in.

  Suddenly I had urgent business in the embassy. I approached the same marine and flashed him my passport. He glanced at the picture and waved me through as well. “Check in at the desk,” he said. Inside, I looked for the girl, who was nowhere to be seen. I asked to see the consul. Did I have an appointment? No, but I was here as a journalist, to do a sto
ry on the four-power occupation and the dynamics of same, and wanted to ask the consul some questions before I began. The clerk looked at me dubiously, in my garb of half GI, half bohemian, half-broke, if that is not too many halves. “Just a moment,” he said, and dialed a number. “Yes.” “Yes.” “No.” “I don’t think so.” Much to my surprise, and doubtless to his, he looked up and said: “The vice-consul will see you now. Second floor, fourth door on the left.”

  Inching my way down the corridor, looking left and right into each office, I spied, in the third office on the right, her. The sign on the door said PASSPORTS. The line was long, twenty or more, with only one clerk. I had a choice: go see the vice-consul and take my chances he would not be long-winded, or stand him up and join the passport line behind the apparition. It would be a good twenty minutes, maybe half an hour, before she reached the window, I judged. Surely, the busy vice-consul would not indulge me that long.

  Her name was Patsy, I learned from one of their questions. Feeling completely left out, I contemplated retreat to the waiting vice-consul, who by now was probably fuming. Then I had a brilliant idea. These, I was finding, usually led straight to catastrophe, but maybe this would be an exception. “Excuse me,” I said, tapping Patsy on the shoulder. She turned around and eyed me squarely, if quizzically. “Would you mind holding my place”—for now there were half a dozen behind me—“while I nip down and pay my respects to the vice-consul? He’s waiting for me.” Yes, I actually said “nip down,” probably a leftover from a recent trip to London. I had a habit of picking up expressions in whatever country I visited and regurgitating them until eventually they fell away. “Of course,” she said, smiling, “I’d be happy to…” “Dick,” I said, in answer to her hesitation. Her full face was everything I had imagined, for at the embassy gate I had only seen her angled from behind, at most one-third, a flash of chin and cheek. It was an open face, no hidden nooks and crannies, its features nigh perfect, at least to my already-smitten eyes—pert little nose, full lips, saucy, opinionated chin, and deep brown eyes that locked into yours, probing: So tell me who you are and what you’re about?

  I gave the vice-consul short shrift. “I wanted to touch base with you first,” I went on, “to see if there are any restrictions or political sensitivities.” “What exactly are you looking for?” “My impression on how the four-power occupation is working. Or not working.” “Wherever you have Russkies,” he said, “you have problems.” “So there’s no objection to my talking to the Russians?” His right eyebrow raised a good inch. “If they’ll talk to you”—he shook his head—“which frankly I doubt.” I thanked him and started for the door. “If you do get the Russkies to talk, I’d be interested to know what they have to say.” Ah, I thought, from semi-prevaricator to semi-spy.

  I spent the next couple weeks hanging around the headquarters of three of the four powers. The vice-consul, whom I had visited again, had given me a letter of introduction to the Brits and the French. As for the Russians, I was on my own. I talked to dozens of soldiers and civilians, most of whom were open and friendly, about the inner workings of occupation, about how the locals treated them, what they thought of one another, how they parceled out the city and their rotating duties. There was a fair amount of backbiting and bickering, but, as the vice-consul had forewarned, Berlin was where the action was, the real tension, especially between the Russians and the Americans. The Brits were above the fray, following but not quite buying the increasingly vocal American anti-Soviet line. The French, on the contrary, were closer perhaps to the Russians than they were to the Anglophones, again for political reasons, for although de Gaulle and his center-right coalition were firmly in power, there was a strong leftist opposition, both socialist and Communist. I was, in my underground lair, steadily writing my piece. But I knew I could never finish it till I had pierced the Russian armor. Increasingly depressed in my bleak quarters, I decided one night to splurge and have a proper meal at the Hotel Sacher with a French journalist I had met a few days before, who said he might help me contact a Russian or two. Barely had I sat down—I was the first to arrive—when I heard her voice. Her laugh. I turned, and there she was. This time, I decided, I would not screw up. I approached her table and started to remind her of our chance meeting at the embassy when she interrupted and said: “Dick, this is Monique, my friend from Paris.” She had remembered my name! “I held your place as long as I could,” she said. “Then I had to run.” “All straight with the embassy?” I asked, the better to ascertain the reason for her visit to Passports.

  “Not quite”—she laughed that wonderful silver laugh—“but I should be in a day or two. After which I’m off to Italy. Please,” she said, “do sit down. You make me nervous standing there.”

  “I really can’t,” I said, kicking myself mentally, for unmitigated strategic stupidity. “I’m waiting for someone.”

  “Ah,” she murmured, turning to her friend. “Il attend quelqu’un. Une jolie fille viennoise, sans doute.”

  “Non, un journaliste français.”

  “So, you speak French,” she said.

  “I live in Paris.”

  * * *

  Her embassy visit had been occasioned by a stolen passport. Theft of foreign passports, especially American, was rife in those early postwar days, and the embassy was backlogged with demands for replacements. Since the American authorities also suspected that certain of their younger, more impecunious citizens might be colluding—that is, selling their passports, for they brought a pretty penny on the black market—there was a wait of sometimes several weeks while the State Department checked the bona fides of its aggrieved citizens before issuing a new document. “Have to check with Washington” was the daily explanation, always with a smile of commiseration. Anyway, Patsy’s passport had been promised her—for the fifth time, she added—probably tomorrow, but surely, without fail, absolutely, on Wednesday. Which meant that time was running out for me, if indeed that initial explosion ten days earlier somewhere in my lower depths meant anything.

  “Why don’t we all have dinner together,” Patsy offered. I immediately pulled a chair for Jean-François and me. Jean-François was a connoisseur of fine food, I learned as we pored over the surprisingly ample menu. “The wine is on me,” I said grandly, despicably insinuating that the meal would be on Jean-François. I picked a Grüner Veltliner. It was pricey—five dollars a bottle was, in those days, close to top of the line—but what the hell. I was already approaching my mid-twenties, and I knew how short life could be.

  After dinner, I offered to drop Patsy off at her hotel, but she politely declined. “Where are you staying?” she asked. I started to lie, groping from my vague memory of the guidebook for the name of some respectable hotel, but in vain. Then I blurted out the name of my miserable underground lair. She burst out laughing. “But that’s where I’m staying,” she said. “Isn’t it great?”

  After breakfast, she said, “I’ll introduce you to some of my Russian friends if you like.”

  We hopped on a tram, so crowded at that hour we had to hang on for dear life on the rickety, unstable running board, if that was the proper term. We scrambled off, crossed the Ring, and headed up the street. A massive sign, in the center of which sat an imposing hammer and sickle, announced that we were arriving at the Soviet sector. Two tanks sat toadlike on either side of the sign, in front of which were parked half a dozen Russian jeeps, just a few feet behind the red-painted barrier that, as we approached, was raised to let a sleek black limousine through. Two wooden guardhouses, also red, stood on either side of the barrier, each manned by two guards.

  “Not exactly welcoming,” I muttered as we approached the first guardhouse.

  “Wait,” she said. Leading the way, she headed directly for one of the soldiers, who looked pretty grim to me, and waved gaily. “Sergei,” she called, “Patsy. Kak vy pozhivaete?”

  “Patricia!” He grinned. “Ochen khorosho!” Then, in a heavily accented English, he said, “Where haf you bin
? We had singing at soldiers’ club last night. We missed you.”

  “I was going to come,” she said, giving me a knowing glance, “but I got, uh, how shall I say, waylaid.”