The Moon Pinnace

by Thomas Williams

  In the living room he and Kaethe Muller were alone. From somewhere upstairs came the melodious whine of Cynthia’s violin. Jean Dorlean wore a polo shirt and khaki Bermuda shorts, his legs unhairy only at the knees, as if the curly brown hair had been worn off in just three places—his two knees and his forehead. Kaethe Muller wore a beige skirt and blouse and no bra, her blouse as usual open nearly to her waistband. She was so big she made Jean Dorlean look like a hairy little spider, one of those males a quarter the size of its mate. They were a pair; Dory had seen her go into his room late at night.

  “Please sit down, Dory, if you have a minute,” Kaethe Muller said. Her s’s were z’s and her v’s were f’s. All of the guests had accents except Jean Dorlean, though his name sounded French. Werner almost didn’t have an accent. The Patricks sounded English, but there was an Irish lilt in their voices, especially Mrs. Patrick’s.

  “How politically conscious are you, Dory?” Jean Dorlean said. His accent was American, all right, but the question seemed foreign. And she smelled the patronizing tone of it; her consciousness of that was developed enough.

  “How do you mean?” she said neutrally. She sat in the wing chair, facing the two of them on the chintz-covered davenport.

  “For instance, are you a Republican or a Democrat? I suppose being from New Hampshire you’re a Republican.”

  “I can’t vote yet. I don’t know what I’ll be when I’m twenty-one.”

  “But you’re quite sure you will know when that magic number arrives?” He was amused by his question, as was Kaethe Muller.

  Dory didn’t answer. One impulse was to smile and let herself be led into the patronizing humor of a guest, and the less conventional impulse was to be irritated.

  Jean Dorlean said, “But about Dewey and Truman—do you think ‘Maestro’ Zwanzig will get to present his monster bust to Dewey at the White House?”

  “I’d rather have Truman win,” she said, knowing that this preference had really come from John Hearne.

  “Not a chancel” Kaethe Muller said. “Too bad for you, Dory!”

  “Yeah. Too much going against old Harry, I’m afraid,” Jean Dorlean said. “The American people just won’t accept this civil-rights legislation of his. Imagine that kind of equality for the Negro! Too much history there, and anyway, the whole thing was Eleanor’s idea. Then the Roosevelt-Truman Supreme Court throws religious education out of the public schools! I mean, Dory, who’s going to vote for Harry S. Truman? And now he wants a peacetime draft and racial integration in the armed services! What next? He’s got some nerve even running.”

  “He may not get elected, but you’re wrong about the other things,” she said.

  Jean Dorlean turned to Kaethe Muller, pleased. “See?” he said. “I told you she was something, didn’t I?”

  Kaethe Muller shrugged and smiled knowingly, her unadorned lips like big healthy pink muscles, which they no doubt were. All of her was large, healthy and German, and Dory couldn’t help thinking that if they had all been that large maybe we wouldn’t have won the war. She wondered what sort of German Kaethe Muller was. Some Germans had been against Hitler, but most of those were Germans first and anti-Hitler in their spare time, on leave from their units. Where had she studied this? Why had she studied this? Boche, Hun. Winston Churchill said, “The Hun is either at your throat or at your feet.” But what did he mean—a race? Ike Eisenhower was German—his name was, at least, and no one could be more American. But why was he called “Ike“? His name was Dwight David Eisenhower. Maybe “Eisenhower” sounded Jewish to his West Point classmates, so as a joke they called him “Ike.” Did our national hero get his nickname because of a Jew joke? Hopefully she was wrong. But then, Jewish actors and others, even, changed their names; they must know something about her country, too. Joseph Goebbels said that if his arguments about the Jews got out into the world they would do their work, like a disease. There were two Jewish famihes in Leah. One ran a junkyard and the other a haberdashery. She didn’t know the children because they were older. But she knew who they were. She was aware of them as Jews, who knew how?

  “What?” she said to a question, to an expectant look.

  “I asked you what Werner told you, that’s all,” Jean Dorlean said.

  “What did he say about his career, if anything?”

  “He said something about being a cadet.”

  “About Klagenfurt?”

  “He said that name.”

  Jean Dorlean and Kaethe Muller looked at each other quickly.

  “Anything else?”

  “He said his father ‘fell’ at Rostov, and that he was in the Waffen SS.”

  “Do you know what that is?” Kaethe Muller said.

  “Yes, I think so.”

  “Well…what?”

  “Black uniforms. No prisoners. The Malmédy massacre.”

  “Oh, they weren’t all like that!” Kaethe Muller said.

  “Well, that’s all right,” Jean Dorlean said. “But why don’t you go talk to Werner, Kaethe? He did seem very upset.”

  “I asked him not to bully my sister,” Dory said.

  “Ja. He should stay away from your sister,” Kaethe Muller said. “I shall go to him and talk.”

  When she’d left, Jean Dorlean got up to replenish a brandy glass Dory hadn’t noticed before, lit a cigarette, sat down again and leaned toward her as far as he could without falling off the davenport. “What do you know, and what do you not know?” he said as if to himself, looking at her. He glanced conspiratorily around the room, then leaned toward her again. “We are at war. You understand that, don’t you? The real war goes on. It was always between Bolshevism and the West. The Nazis were an aberration, totally disorganized fools with their insane Führer and his idiotic racism. Bad luck for everybody except Stalin, in the end. And the Japanese with their toy navy and their stupid, suicidal racial arrogance! No, Dory, the real enemy is organized, ruthless and determined to destroy us.”

  He seemed pleased to have given her this information, and was about to continue when Mrs. Patrick came into the room. In her dowdy way she was dressed up, with lots of lipstick and pancake makeup that faded her reddish freckles. She didn’t acknowledge their presence but went to a bookcase and stood looking at it. Her large breasts seemed swollen, her belly swathed in the loose, flimsy material of her green dress. She was posing, sucking in her belly and standing up straight, as if stretching. Mr. Patrick came in, following her. He paid no attention to them either but went up behind his wife and stopped. He leaned over her and placed his hands on the bookcase, but she bobbed under his arm, as if doing a curtsy, and moved away from him. He followed, stopped behind her and leaned over her again. They seemed to be in a trance of some kind, or as if they followed rules, and then Dory recognized their purpose, which she had seen in birds and in other animals. It was a ritual of pursuit and coy avoidance. She and Jean Dorlean watched openly, without feeling that the Patricks were aware of them at all.

  When Sean Patrick approached his wife again she preened, and when he stopped behind her he placed his arms around her. Only then did she bend at the knees and twirl out of his arms. He was tall and broad-shouldered, but seemed washed out, somehow. He wore a loose summer suit of cotton, a light, faded blue. He seemed as simple as the simple desire his actions revealed, and she, too, seemed to have been made simpler and tackier by her coy mincing. Soon she left the room, and he followed.

  Jean Dorlean looked at Dory and raised his eyebrows. “One can practically smell the musk,” he said, his urgent political tone having disappeared. “Tell me,” he said. “Are you a virgin?”

  She didn’t answer.

  “Perhaps you think that wasn’t a proper question,” he said. “But I’m curious. Honestly, now. Are you?”

  “It’s not a proper question,” she said, getting up.

  “Just curious, that’s all. I don’t know too much about the mores of these latitudes, but you weren’t too greatly offended by my question, were you? From m
y observations you and I are the most intelligent people in this nest of clowns.”

  “It’s none of your business,” she said.

  “I beg to demur. It’s my business to ask questions. It seems to me that you and I are natural allies. For instance, you’re worried about your sister and you’re worried about your friend Cynthia and you’re even worried about the calf-eyed swain, Robert, Her Altesse, the Royal Tease, having chosen him for her summer’s amusement. I happen to know more or less what’s going on around here, and I suspect you’d like more information than you have. But how mature are you? How politically and socially sophisticated? How much do you know already? You can see that my naughty question does have some relevance aside from the unavoidable fact that I’d like to get into your pants. Oops! Pardon me. There I go again; my defect is candor. As a matter of fact, that idea just jumped into my head. Does its implementation interest you at all?”

  “No,” Dory said, and went toward the door.

  “Wait!” he called with enough urgency to make her turn and look at him. He came up to her and said in a low voice, “Let me give you something as a bit of earnest. Here’s something I know about ‘Maestro’ Zwanzig. Did you know that he’s been known to sell those wash drawings he makes of ’La Gioconda’ as genuine Rodins? Signs them ’A. Rodin’ and sells them? How anyone could be fooled by his talentless line is a mystery, but there it is.”

  “Why should I want to know that?” she said.

  He appeared to be startled. “Because it’s information!” he said.

  She shrugged and turned to go. At the doorway he caught up to her and held her by the waist. “Wait,” he said. “I don’t understand.”

  She tried to shrug out of his grasp and was astounded that he wouldn’t let her. “Wait a minute,” he said. “Don’t be in such a damned hurry!”

  She felt no fear, but his breath was sickish sweet from alcohol and she tried to pry his hands from her body, fighting the male fingers that were much too strong for her and holding her breath. Finally she took a breath and said, “Let go of me!”

  “Calm down,” he said, “I’m not…” In an involuntary spasm of escape her head swung back and jarred against his face. “Ow!” he said. “That hurt! That wasn’t so funny!” There was an edge in his voice that gave her the first little fringe of fear. To fight against what could overpower you was to risk more than imprisonment, said that fear, and that this man was irrational enough to break laws. Maybe she was in a situation beyond law; she was not so far removed from childhood, that legal vacuum, even to be certain about what laws he might be breaking.

  “You’d better let me go,” she said. “There are things I have to take care of.” It was demeaning to have to justify her release, and there was a taint of crying in her voice that she despised but couldn’t help. She could feel, as if it were a suction, the parasitical enjoyment her body was relinquishing to him, and also the cruelty. She hadn’t called for help. He must know why she hadn’t—or maybe he was so stupid he thought she didn’t want to get away and was playing a game of resistance for him. The vagaries of human pleasure had been revealing themselves this year, most with the logic of nightmare, and this one, for all her desperation, had in it elements of repetition.

  “It’s all right. Take it easy and…”

  He didn’t finish what he was going to say because Dibley appeared, reached over her and took him by the beard and the hair on the back of his head. Dibley said through closed teeth, “Break your neck!”

  She was caught between them, feeling the daunting strength they both possessed. Then she ducked out under Dibley’s long arms and was free.

  “Christ almighty!” Jean Dorlean said, gargling the words. “All right! Get your goddam knight-errant to let go of me, all right?”

  “Dibley,” she said, and Dibley let him go.

  “What is he, your goddam bodyguard?” Jean Dorlean complained, rubbing his hairy face. “Jesus!”

  Dibley kept himself between them and looked down on the short man, flexing his long muscles, his legs trembling. He was just a boy and he must have been awed and even frightened to fight a grown man.

  “You wouldn’t let me go,” she said to Jean Dorlean. “You can’t do that. Why did you do that?”

  Without answering he pushed past them and went toward the stairs. Dibley turned toward her, squinting as if in strong light. She took his arm, which turned him as immobile as wood. “Thank you for helping me, Dibley,” she said.

  “Urr!” he answered, meaning that he was still angry. She began to tremble, and came all over with sweat that immediately turned chilly. Just for a moment Dibley looked straight at her. There was something primitive and pure about his slate-colored hair, white skin and black eyes. He was all angular and sharp at the edges, all in black, white and gray, as if the sun hadn’t touched him at all. She was grateful, and he seemed so whole and simple in what he meant and felt that she hugged him. He was as rigid as a plank but the tremors she felt in him were of a frantic ecstasy that made her quickly let him go. Distaste and guilt about her power and his freakishness and youth were all mixed up and unsortable.

  As she went to her room he stayed at her side, inches closer to her than anyone ordinarily would, so close she wondered if he would leave her voluntarily. She began to feel shadowed, and stopped at her door, saying, “Did you write on my screen?” She really didn’t want to hurt or embarrass him and wished she could take the words back. But she did want to know. He turned away from her so violently it looked like a military about-face.

  “Well, did you?” she asked.

  He spoke to the hallway. “I never spied on you.”

  So he had crept along the porch roof outside her window, because he “loved” her. But what was that love? What was its power? From the cruel race came this force that was not cruel, but not always kind, that could be exploited, that could change in a second to hatred or disdain.

  “All right, I believe you,” she said. But she didn’t, because she had no way to get the truth.

  “Good night, Dibley,” she said.

  He wouldn’t look at her, but bowed, nodding, to the empty hallway as she went into her room.

  22

  The young doctor and the older nurse with the mother-of-pearl stockings both agreed that it was a miracle his head had never touched the pavement, that he must have tucked it in like a snail. His kneecap was a little out of place, and they spent a lot of time with Q-tips and a kind of medical soap taking grit and fiber out of his knees and elbows. “Ah, youth,” the nurse said. They’d been informed by the police that according to the marks left by the motorcycle he’d rolled one hundred feet.

  He was bandaged, stinging and stiffening up when Bonnie Forester arrived. The nurse was impressed by her size and glow, the silken sheen of her dark hair, her high heels, sheer stockings, a flag of chiffon at her neck mauve against rich navy, coral and silver. She was stunning, the clear expanses of her handsome jaws so wide as to seem, at first glance, almost indecent exposure. But it was more an exposure of feeling, each variant of friendliness, commiseration, clear and rightful sympathy coming and going like a flash of light. The nurse came into her influence immediately, encircled by her power. Such pure good nature, such spiritual cleanliness—even her musical, continental American voice, so ordinary and transparent, was full of unintimidating power.

  “I’m Bonnie Forester and it was all my fault!” she said to the nurse. To John she said, “I’ve seen the police and the doctor and I’m taking you home with me!” Then she consulted the nattered nurse about the care of his wounds—dressing, antisepsis and manipulation. She seemed to treasure each technical term the nurse used, and repeated it aloud as proof of the nurse’s superiority in knowledge and in nobility of occupation.

  The nurse brought him a pair of crutches and taught him how to use them, first demonstrating their use with a stiff right leg, her mother-of-pearl stocking like a glimpse of lucent shell between the flat white of uniform and shoe. He’d used cr
utches before, but saw that he should ceremonially take the lesson the nurse wanted to give in front of Bonnie Forester.

  He could move his right knee a little bit, in spite of the bandages, but there was a deep, puncturelike ache that admonished him to be very careful. The knee, that improbable, complicated joint known for its unreliability, spoke to him. The crutches adjusted and tried, he was finally declared capable of locomotion, but from all the bearing surfaces he had instinctively used to protect his head from the street came the beginnings of the reckoning. The nurse, seeing him wince, said that he might not be doing much walking, even on crutches, for several days.

  Bonnie signed him out and the nurse wheeled him in the mandatory wheelchair to the parking lot, where the two women gently helped him, with a tentativeness about his discomfort that was his life’s memory of women, into Bonnie’s Ford. His knee had to bend, which made him think of the semi-raw joint of a cooked fowl, one of those joints with a vague, tendony correspondence to a human joint, and he was given a deep, badly focused pain that caused a flutter of nausea. He hadn’t been consulted about going home with Bonnie, or about anything else, for that matter. He was evidently the ward of her best intentions, as if his wounds had deprived him of opinion along with mobility. He felt that he would heal soon, but in the meantime he would be incapable of evasion.

  As they drove, in the hazy benign sunlight of late afternoon, along a curving avenue beneath palms, she straightforwardly acquired his vital statistics, one fact after another, each in an order that suggested the official organization of a dossier. All he knew of her was her name, but it was Forester and she had probably been backing straight out of the driveway of 601-B Los Robles. His own name had no special effect on her that he could see.

  “How tall are you, John?” she asked. “It’s hard to tell ‘cause you’re so crabbed up.”

  “Five-ten or so, normally,” he said.

  “Then you’re just my height! I mean in bare feet, of course.”