American Romantic

by Ward Just

  When anyone asked, she said she was traveling to Hamburg.

  Do you have family in Hamburg?

  Yes, my sister.

  And your parents—

  Yes, my parents also.

  It’s a pleasant city, Hamburg.

  My family is in the shipping trade.

  How interesting!

  I hope to be home for Christmas, Sieglinde said. It is always a great celebration in my family. Roast goose. Gingerbread.

  Oh, it sounds like a feast.

  It is! Sieglinde said.

  Leaving Cairo, Sieglinde had begun to worry about money. Of course she had her savings with her. She had been careful to put aside what she could during her time on the hospital ship and had been frugal in Madagascar. She had been paid in deutsche marks and the exchange rate was favorable, but now she put herself on a regime, coffee for breakfast, a salad for lunch, a simple dinner in a café. She had always paid her own way and hated worrying about money now, like some disappointed shopgirl. Sieglinde stopped at Tripoli and went overland by bus to Tunis. She had no fixed destination. She told herself she would know it when she saw it. Harry was much on her mind during this journey. When she thought about the silk-string hammock, the details of that night came vividly to mind and she smiled and giggled and smiled again. Harry so athletic, and gentle, too. Had she ever been happier? At last she was living in the present moment. She remembered also Harry’s rapt expression as he stood on the stairs of his villa watching her play Chopin. Less happily she recalled telling him of the war, her father’s death and her mother’s disappearance, Hamburg in flames, the nation on its knees. What could he know of that in Connecticut! He lacked imagination. He could not comprehend the situation in Europe. He had never in his life been hungry. Never breathed ashes in the air. He had made a joke involving the Third Reich and she had felt a chill deep in her bones. He had no understanding of the way things were, owing to his lack of imagination.

  Still, he applauded her piano music. He was moved by it. Sieglinde had not touched a piano in months and was surprised at how quickly it all came back to her, phrasing and tempi. Of course Chopin reminded her of Europe, and Europe of the war, and she did not wish to think of either one.

  Her thoughts were scattered. She had taken to calling herself a wanderer. The hospital ship had been her home and now it, too, had gone away. She wondered if she should have stayed on board until Hamburg and then shipped out again when it received orders. There were rumors that the next ports of call would be in the Baltic, if the Russians would consent. She remembered her years in Rügen as a child. The beaches were mostly unclean and the water frigid. Why on earth would she want to visit the Baltic?

  In Tunis she took a bus to one of the nascent resort towns on Tunisia’s east coast and stopped there, finding work as an x-ray technician in a local hospital that dated from colonial times. The x-ray machine was primitive. All business was conducted in French. The three doctors, two French and a Tunisian, were brusque. All three were exploring ways and means to emigrate to Marseilles. Watching them work, she thought them no more than competent. Sieglinde settled into a routine, putting in her eight hours and returning to her hotel on the edge of the resort, close to the beach. Each evening she went for a long walk and drank a cold Löwenbräu on the porch of her hotel as dusk settled. One night she looked up and searched, unsuccessfully, for the Southern Cross, remembering it as one of Harry’s failed quests. It had something to do with the Polish writer Conrad, she’d forgotten what. And now she would never know. At times she thought she had made a terrible mistake leaving Harry, at other times not at all. Theirs was a doomed love affair. The precise reason she could not name, except to reflect again and again on how different their childhoods were, how different their upbringings, how different the societies from which they had sprung. Their personal histories at no point connected and Harry seemed so confident of the life he had chosen. Was there room in it for someone else? They were parallel lines that would never touch. Still, her thoughts turned to him each day, where he was, how he was doing. What had become of Village Number Five? She hated thinking of him in the jungle yet again. Sieglinde read a newspaper when she could find one, always turning first to news of the war, when there was news of the war. A brigade of American troops had landed, the first organized fighting unit in the country. Surely the brigade would bring the insurgency under control. She had no idea where Harry fit in. When one of the articles referred to the embassy bombing weeks before, her breath caught in her throat. The article mentioned one fatality, the fatality unnamed. She was appalled. She had no idea how to learn the identity of the fatality. The obvious solution was to write Harry at the embassy, but then she would have to give a return address and she did not want to do that. She decided finally to call the embassy. She had the number and the next day she went to the post office to book the call, and when the embassy operator answered, Sieglinde’s voice was so soft and shaken that she was asked to repeat the name. Harry Sanders, she said, and the operator said that Mr. Sanders was no longer at the embassy. Sieglinde said, He was not hurt in the bombing? No, the operator said. He was not hurt. Mr. Sanders was reassigned. When Sieglinde asked what posting, the operator said she could not answer that, but if the caller wished to write Mr. Sanders a letter, the letter would be forwarded. Sieglinde hung up, her eyes filled with tears. At least he was safe. But she wondered where he was.

  At the hotel in the Tunisian resort town—it was a resort in name only, and the hotel was more rest house than hotel, though it did have a pleasant dining room that looked over the sea—Sieglinde fell in with a team of archaeologists conducting a dig to the west of town. They were confident they had found a colosseum that dated to the fourth century. The team was composed of four men, British and American, and a woman, a Canadian. One night, seeing she was alone, they asked Sieglinde to join them for dinner. They were in the midst of a friendly dispute concerning the dimensions of the colosseum, presuming it was a colosseum and not an agora. They were at the beginning of their dig, the British arguing for large and the American for small. The Canadian woman, Suzanne, called the dispute bootless since they would know the answer soon enough, meaning sometime that year. Suzanne looked at Sieglinde and rolled her eyes—they were listening to a typical male dispute in which patience was ignored. Of all the disciplines in all the world, archaeology called for patience. Only from patience would intuition arise. Suzanne asked Sieglinde what she was doing in Sfax, of all places. Sieglinde said she was traveling with no fixed destination. She liked places near the sea and had fetched up at Sfax faute de mieux. And was she alone? Yes, alone. Sieglinde told Suzanne that she had found work as an x-ray technician at the hospital and that would keep her going until she moved on, perhaps Italy, perhaps somewhere else. Suzanne did not inquire further except to ask if Sieglinde had medical training beyond x-ray machines. Yes, of course, Sieglinde said. She had had a year of medical training, one of the requirements in Germany.

  You could tend to a broken bone, for example.

  Yes, Sieglinde said. Later, certainly, hospital care would be necessary.

  And you could diagnose tropical diseases?

  Some of them, I suppose. Yes.

  Stomach disorders?

  If there were medicines available . . .

  Suzanne pulled her chair closer and poured them both a glass of wine. She said, We have need of a medical person. The desert is very tough. Snakes, scorpions, strange maladies. Other than our team we have twenty locals for the heavy digging. Someone is always being injured or falling ill and then one of us has to take him to the hospital here. We waste time. If we could put together a pharmacy and a medical tent, could you do—what has to be done? Ailments and broken bones and the like. This would save us time. Save us money. I think I have seen you at the hospital, Sieglinde.

  It’s possible, Sieglinde said. Truthfully, it’s not a very good hospital.

  In this part of the world, Suzanne began.

  It’s what we h
ave, Sieglinde said.

  It’s interesting work, ours. We live in the desert and once every few weeks we come here for a few days off, a sort of rest-and-recreation thing. We get on very well. We’ve known each other for years. We are compatible and I think you would be compatible, too. Our work is slow work. We’d teach you how to go about it and when one of the natives got sick or stung by a scorpion you could look after him until we could get him to a hospital. Probably you could do what the hospital does and do it better.

  Also, Suzanne said, I would like some female company. What do you say?

  Would I be paid?

  Of course, Suzanne said, and named a figure.

  It’s more than I’m making now, Sieglinde said.

  We have funds, Suzanne said.

  How long—

  You would have to give us a two-month commitment. After that, if you want to go away no one would stop you. We’re not running a prison.

  Two months, and then if I didn’t like the desert, I could go.

  Exactly, Suzanne said.

  Maybe it’s time I settled for a while, Sieglinde said. I was about ready to give it up here and go somewhere else.

  You have been traveling a long time?

  Long enough, Sieglinde said.

  I would like to do what you’re doing, Suzanne said. Moving from place to place, no fixed itinerary . . . Her voice trailed away.

  They were sitting on the porch of the hotel, the one facing the sea. At distant points over the water were ships’ lights. The air had a pungent smell, not unpleasant. It was different from tropical air. Probably it was the desert that made the difference, dry air mixed with sea air. The effect was somnolent and Sieglinde yawned, thinking of the prospect of two months in the desert excavating a fifteen-hundred-year-old colosseum (if it was a colosseum). She looked at the men across the table. The argument had ended and they were throwing dice for the check. Their faces and necks were deeply tanned, their arms bruised and scratched. Suzanne had joined in the dice-throw, and when she was eliminated she turned back to Sieglinde. She said she had been married once but the marriage had not taken—that was her phrase, “not taken”—and she had returned to her archaeological work, suspended when she followed her husband to Los Angeles. He was an actor waiting for a break, and she waited with him until it seemed obvious to her that the break would never come, or come in an incompatible way. Los Angeles was said to be hospitable to those waiting for a break but Suzanne had not found it so. People were hospitable if they thought you could help in some way with the break, if you had connections, a school friend or an uncle in the industry. After a while her days were consumed with quarrels and so she left and found work with her college friend Ted. She nodded affectionately at the man with the dice in his fist, a heavily muscled redhead with hair so tightly woven to his scalp that it looked like an animal’s pelt, now muttering some incantation over the dice. Ted was a miracle worker with angel money and now they were a unit, she and the four men. They had enough money for a year’s work and had to show progress before another grant was approved. Suzanne laughed. She said, A year is nothing in this business. A year is a snap of the fingers. But we’re making progress.

  You like the work, Sieglinde said.

  I have a passion for it, Suzanne replied.

  Digging things up.

  Very old things.

  What kinds of things?

  A shard of pottery, Suzanne said. Something that may or may not have been a statue’s kneecap. There’s definitely something here. We just don’t know what it is. What’s interesting is the finding out. I’m not so sure about the colosseum. That’s Ted’s hunch. He likes to think big, Ted. That’s an advantage because most everything we find is so small. It’s good to have a goal if only as something to disprove. There was a sudden roar of laughter from the men, dice game over, Ted the loser.

  Sieglinde looked up to find a plate of clementines, peeled and quartered, before her. The tall American, the one called Joseph, had said little during dinner, and now he looked at her and said, For you.

  Sieglinde thought that the nicest gesture.

  Thank you, she said.

  My pleasure, Joseph said.

  Sieglinde heard something in his voice, an irregularity, and asked, Where do you come from in America?

  Joseph said he came from all over. He had started out in a small town in Wisconsin and went on to the university at Madison and after that the University of Chicago, trying to discover what it was he wanted to do with his life. At Chicago he became interested in archaeology and the work of Schliemann, his life and times, what some would call his banditry. Joseph wanted to learn how it was done, the identification of the place, and the digging itself. His first dig had been in Central America, not a very challenging dig. He went on about the dig in Central America, a Mayan dig that didn’t disclose much, and fell silent. Sieglinde waited for him to continue but evidently he had said all he wished to say. She thought Joseph had an interesting face, skin pulled tight over his cheekbones, large ears, wavy brown hair, a forehead that seemed to rise to the heavens. He was slight of build. He had an open smile and a soft voice, so soft that it was easy to miss the irregularity, but to Sieglinde it was like a fist to the face.

  The evening came to an end. Nightcaps were ordered and after a short discussion of the morning drill, all gear in the lobby by five-thirty a.m., coffee on the verandah, wheels up at six, the party broke up.

  Suzanne walked Sieglinde to her room, Sieglinde silent.

  Suzanne said, Is anything wrong?

  Sieglinde said, That Joseph. He is not American.

  Of course he’s American. He’s from Wisconsin.

  I do not believe he is from Wisconsin.

  I’ve known him for ages—

  What is his age?

  Joseph is—thirty? About thirty. He’s a gifted scientist.

  Sieglinde said nothing.

  If he’s not American, what is he?

  He is German, Sieglinde said.

  Why do you think so?

  I can hear it in his voice. It’s easy to miss, but it’s unmistakable. The German language. When you listen carefully as I was doing.

  That’s the Wisconsin accent.

  Wisconsin via Düsseldorf, Sieglinde said.

  I can’t hear it, Suzanne said.

  It’s German, definitely.

  And does that make a difference?

  Sieglinde was silent a moment.

  Maybe it does, she said finally.

  We have immigrants in North America, Suzanne said. We are a continent of immigrants. My grandfather came from Ireland. My great-grandfather, the other side, came from Holland. Some came over on the Mayflower, others arrived yesterday. So what?

  You are right, Sieglinde said. It makes no difference.

  But you are upset.

  I was surprised, Sieglinde said.

  He’s very gifted, Suzanne said.

  Yes, you said that.

  You’ll see, the way he goes about things.

  Good night, Sieglinde said, and went to her room.

  The dig was conducted not in the desert but on hardpan at the approaches to the desert. There was little vegetation and no trees above shoulder height. The terrain was flat, the line of sight extending for miles, the horizon a long thin line. Here and there were declivities but they were hardly noticeable. Sieglinde had never seen a country so bleak. The sun was already high when they arrived in the Land Rover, soon followed by a truck carrying the workmen. For a while no one moved. The heat was ferocious, boiling in the clear air, blue sky above. From time to time in the distance they would see a caravan, always, it seemed, moving east. Occasionally they would see a single camel and the camel’s driver, a nomad going who knew where. Sieglinde was told they were likely Tuareg, inhabitants of the southern desert, an austere people who lived by their own mysterious rules and regulations. They seldom ventured north. The Tunisian workmen had constructed a lean-to with a canvas roof against the sun. Sieglinde stayed
under it for most of the first day, getting used to the heat and blinding light. Soon enough a workman appeared with a wounded foot and twisted ankle. She had never seen skin so tough. It resembled old leather. She dressed the wound and wrapped the ankle, all the while looked at with high suspicion by the workman. Suzanne had told her to expect that. They do not trust women. They especially do not trust women doctors. Pay no attention, though it’s difficult not to. They are from another century, these people. And, do you know what, we’re the intruders.

  They had stopped at a pharmacy on the way from Sfax and bought supplies, splints and surgical tape, iodine and other antiseptics, and a range of medicines that would treat snake and scorpion bites, though they had yet to see a snake. There were remedies also for gastric disturbances and headaches, which did seen to be epidemic.

  Sieglinde thought of the archaeological patch as a place where time stopped. In the shimmer of midday nothing moved, not a leaf, not a twig. There was no wind. The earth did not stir. The sun made its indifferent transit and precisely at noon all work ceased with a clatter of tools and presently the plaintive cries of the faithful praising God. The workmen made their way to their tent and the archaeologists to theirs. They ate sparingly and went down for a nap and no matter how lethargic they were, sweat continued to rise and ooze down foreheads and chests. Often in the afternoon a fugitive breeze came up, not enough to stop the sweat but enough to moderate the heat a fraction. From the moment the breeze arrived—it was impossible to know its origin unless it was the hand of God Himself, so fervently prayed to by the faithful—time appeared to revive also, advancing at a pace so slow as to be barely noticeable, and in a moment forgotten. After the first few days Sieglinde found she liked the patch, the barrenness of the terrain, the heat, the absence of time passing. The outside world was over the horizon, unaccounted for. A good place to collect yourself, she decided, unlike Madagascar and its many demands. During the heat of the day no one spoke unless they had something to say of the work itself, the discovery of a pottery shard or a block of stone that may or may not have been part of a building’s foundation. At dusk, the workmen returned to their village, the foreigners gathered under the tent, normal conversation begun once more. Sieglinde said little, preferring to listen to her new colleagues. She learned that Ted, along with being a genius at writing grant proposals, had private money of his own, so that if temporarily they came up short, he helped out. They had constant problems with bank drafts and the blizzard of numbers and cosignatures that accompanied them. Ted was the de facto leader of the entourage but did not insist on leading unless no one else wanted to. The Englishman Paul was much the best educated in their group, always hauling out a quote from Coleridge or Gibbon to brighten the cocktail hour. They called it, French-fashion, un cocktail. Paul’s schoolmate Christopher was a pixie, vastly erudite but fond of dirty jokes and cockney rhyming slang. He also slept badly, often waking the group with groans and shouts that signaled a nightmare. Christopher was embarrassed and contrite but there was nothing he could do about the nightmares except to sleep away from the others, and that was deemed dangerous, one person alone in just a sleeping bag. So everyone put up with the nightmares and after a time became accustomed to them. Every few nights Christopher brought out his tape recorder, the latest model from New York, and played an opera. La Bohème and Tosca were his favorites but he also had tapes of Norma and La Traviata and Wagner’s Ring cycle. Sieglinde thought it enchanting: drinking a gin and tonic in the dark and listening to opera, the quality surprisingly good. The evenings usually ended with an accounting of the events of the day, what was uncovered and the prospects for tomorrow. The pace was glacial but no one seemed to mind. Harry Sanders slipped further into the closet of her memory, threatening to disappear altogether—and then someone would make a remark that reminded her of him, and the door would open a crack, and close soon after. She wondered where he was and if he had found a new girl.