Gently—and after long minutes—he placed me on the ground. His lips slowly left mine.
“We have a habit of kissing on platforms,” he said. “It’s a good habit.”
“It’s a wonderful habit.”
“Salt mines?”
“Anywhere, Jack.”
He nodded. He kept my hand under his arm as we continued toward the underground lake, which the brochure assured was a marvel not to be missed.
26
Constance climbed on a mechanical bull in Prague, Czech Republic. She was drunk. She was happy. She was in love.
But she shouldn’t have been on a bull, mechanical or otherwise.
“Ride ’em, cowgirl!” Raef shouted.
He was drunk, too.
We were all drunk, and it felt great. We had spent the afternoon in a tiny heuriger—a wine bar with cold cuts and accordion music—drinking the last of the spring vintage. Something about the constant travel, the difficult nights of sleep, had made us all slaphappy. We laughed a lot. We laughed in the way that old friends can laugh, with each of our personalities shining through the haze of alcohol and cheese wheels. We liked the Czech Republic even if none of us could spell Czechoslovakia. We liked the accordion music, too, and we talked a long time about why accordion music was not popular in the States or Australia, despite the fact—according to Raef—that it was the most versatile instrument ever devised by the hand of man. A debate about whether a squeeze-box and an accordion were the same thing occupied at least a pitcher or two of wine, and then we spilled out of the heuriger and poured ourselves into a westernized bar somewhere in the center of Prague near the Pražský orloj, or Astronomical Clock, and Constance climbed onto a bull.
“This could be a bad idea,” I said to no one, to everyone. “Or the best idea ever.”
Constance put her hand up above her head, cowgirl-style, and slowly began to spin with the bull undulating between her legs. It was sexual, of course, but beautiful, too, and I loved seeing Constance taking herself out of her usual prudence. She was the least overtly athletic person I had ever known, though she could be nimble and quick when she needed to be. She was always very balanced.
“She’ll be okay,” Jack said.
He had his arm around my waist.
Constance nodded every time she turned to see us. She had a gorgeous, funny expression. The expression said she had it, no problem, crank the bull, which was way more badass than anything Constance had ever done. The bull operator nodded at her, and she nodded back. They had an understanding of some sort.
Then she began to spin faster.
“I hope she doesn’t get seasick,” Raef said.
“She’s a good sailor,” I said. “Her family sails.”
It struck me as a drunken comment, but I couldn’t help it. A few people—it was early evening, or late afternoon, an in-between time at the bar, so the crowd was just arriving—whooped when Constance took it up to the next level. She looked mythical on the bull. I would have bet a great deal of money that she had a myth in mind, maybe Europa and Zeus, because her eyes blazed, and she looked as happy as I had ever seen her. Saint Constance riding the bull of Crete or some crazy thing. I took a couple of pictures and sent them to Amy. This was something Amy needed to see. You did not get to see Constance on a mechanical bull in Prague, Czech Republic, every day. I didn’t even glance at Jack, who always had a funny outlook about pictures.
Then the bull began to buck. Instead of simply moving around in a slow circle, it sometimes bucked its rear end up as if trying to throw her. Constance slapped her hand against the leather skin to balance herself for a moment, then she nodded as if she had once more figured out the rhythm.
“She’s a natural,” Jack said. “A freaking natural.”
“She’s the most beautiful woman who has ever lived,” Raef said, his eyes not leaving her for an instant. “She’s nearly too much.”
“She’s even more beautiful inside than out,” I said.
Raef slipped his arm through mine. His eyes were a little damp.
Arms linked, we stood and watched Constance ride the bull. She didn’t crank it all the way to the top, but she rode it hard and didn’t show any signs of slipping off. When the bull operator slowed it down, people cheered for Constance. She waved at everyone, but she looked a little rocky. Raef walked over and lifted her free of the bull. Constance kissed him, and he kissed her back. I knew, watching them, that they would be married. It was as simple as that. Whatever it was that drew two people together had latched onto them both.
“He loves her,” I said to Jack. “He loves her with everything he has.”
“Yes, he does. Does she love him?”
“Totally.”
“They’re good with each other.”
And there was a brief, passing instant, when one of us should have, might have, could have said something about love, about commitment, to the other. The knowledge descended on us inevitably. It wasn’t that I didn’t think we were falling in love, or already existed in love, whatever any of that meant. But we couldn’t say it exactly, and I wondered why that was. I felt myself giving in to the ridiculous old notion that a man should say it first. According to common lore, a woman should never drop the L-bomb first. That was basic girl knowledge. We had hinted around about it, had come close in Berlin and then in Poland, to confessing everything. But the word eluded us. We watched Raef and Constance lean against each other as they cleared the matted area beneath the mechanical bull, and then we broke apart and said we needed more drinks, and I gave Constance a hug, and Raef volunteered to buy a round in honor of Constance the bull rider, and we were jolly once more, Jack and I no less than before, but a tiny pilot of formality took light in my heart, and I wondered how we could be so close and still be so careful with one another.
* * *
In the early hours of the morning, Jack talked us onto a milk barge. Raef and Constance had gone back to the hostel. Jack had picked up a card from a man he had talked to at the bar—the brother of the barge captain, if I understood it correctly—and we had an address to give to a cab, although the cab driver had to ask two other cabbies how to get to the pier. Then we drove around for what seemed a long time, the driver leaning forward to peer more closely through the windshield. I didn’t have much sense of where we were going except that it seemed industrial. Now and then, a flash of water appeared in bright, surprising glimpses, the reflection of our headlights like small photographic flashes. We drove near the Vltava River, if I remembered my geography correctly. But it was hard to see anything with all the buildings and construction equipment barring the way.
When we arrived, Jack had to talk us onto the barge by giving the captain the card he had procured at the bar. He may have slipped the crew some money, too, because they went from reluctance to friendliness in a matter of seconds. The crew consisted of three men, all of them wearing dark clothing and black watch caps. They may have been wearing a company uniform, for all I knew, but they stayed busy and left us alone. The barge—a flat, messy boat with a small crane on the port side—pulled away from the dock sometime after midnight. The engine stunk of diesel, but eventually it pulled sufficient headway to make the exhaust stream behind us.
We sat leaning against the cuddy, as much out of the wind as we could manage. It was a dark, dark night, and I wondered how the crew could see where it was going. The canal, or waterway, was only a black rope through a black countryside. Now and then, the moon gave us a little light and the stars glittered and shook, and we heard an owl at one point, its call unmistakable, and then later, when the boat was steady and moving at a good pace, we heard a heron croak near us, and then we spotted him perched on a piling of a dilapidated dock.
We leaned close together. For a while, we didn’t really talk; maybe Jack was a little nervous about taking me on a strange boat, with a crew he didn’t know, but if he was, he hid it fairly well. When he sensed I was cold, he opened his barn jacket and tucked me inside it, sharing
his heat, and we went along through the darkness listening to the engine sounds bounce back off the trees that lined the water. This was how Jack wanted to experience Europe, I knew. Anyone with the price of a ticket, he would say, can visit a museum. You had to be a traveler to scout out something unique in a place where so many feet had already trod. He wasn’t content to visit museums and cathedrals and interesting cityscapes, then go home and feel he had bagged another destination. He refused to be a mere tourist. He desired a deeper connection with the land and people, and I had to admit that riding on the barge was something I knew I would remember all my life. The night after Constance rode the bull in Prague. The Vltava River. The scent of water and city mixed and the smell of diesel, making the air tinged with industry.
“I hope they’re not taking us to Russia or something,” Jack whispered. “Let’s hope they’ll bring us back to Prague when it’s all over.”
“Do you think we’re being kidnapped?”
“Probably. I’m fairly certain at some point we’ll have to dive overboard and swim for our lives.”
I tucked closer to him. I looked at him a long time. He was still the handsomest man I had ever known. Sometimes I had to remind myself that I was beside him, that in some way or shape, he was becoming my own.
“I’m assuming your grandfather would have liked this kind of thing.”
He shrugged. Then he tucked me closer still.
“He was a good guy,” he said. “I don’t know everything about this trip he took across Europe. I know he was traveling home after the war, but I don’t really know why he went this place or that place. He seemed to be wandering. I’m sure he was shell-shocked from everything that had happened.”
“I imagine everything was upside down. It had to be devastating.”
“He was from a dairy farm in Vermont. That’s the puzzle. I have a hard time imagining him here in Europe, just poking around. He had a big soul, Grandma always said. ‘He breathed through both nostrils’ was her phrase for it.”
“I like that phrase. I hadn’t heard it before.”
He shrugged again. Then he nodded.
“I spent a lot of summers with him. My mom and dad didn’t have a smooth marriage, to say the least. So during the summers, I went up and lived with Grandpa and Grandma, and I helped on the dairy farm. You were wrong about one thing on the train, by the way. I don’t have a trust fund. I have a little bit of a nest egg from the sale of Grandpa’s farm. I hate thinking about it. About selling it, I mean.”
“And your parents are alive, right?”
“Yep. Mom’s out in California reinventing herself. Dad moved down to Boston. They didn’t have much interest in the farm, so they sold it. Dad grew up on it and was sick of it. I tried to talk them out of it. I actually wanted to be a dairyman at one point.”
“And they gave you the money from the sale?”
“They split it in thirds. I guess partially out of guilt, they included me in the division. They knew I wanted the place. They sold it when land in Vermont was going for top dollar, and we did okay.”
“I’m sorry,” I said, and I was.
“The house wasn’t much, honestly. It probably needed to go. But the land … and the barn. I always loved the barn. While I was in college, I tried to get Grandpa some money to fix it up from the National Registry. I researched the whole topic. As a nation, we’re losing barns all the time, so there is some interest in trying to preserve them. Anyway, I was just this college kid with a grandpa he loved. I couldn’t swing it, and the barn was wicked expensive to keep up. Once the roof starts to go on those old barns, it’s over in no time if they’re not replaced.”
“I guess I didn’t have you completely pegged on the train.”
“I still had it a lot easier than a ton of people.”
After a little longer, the boat began to shift to the left bank, and one of the workers, a thin, wiry young kid with buckteeth and now wearing blue overalls, asked us in German to move. They were going to start pulling in the milk, he said through Jack. Jack asked him his name, and the kid smiled a bunny smile and said, “Emile.”
“Can we help?” Jack asked, standing and helping me up to my feet.
“Help?” Emile said and laughed.
He shouted something into the cuddy window, and the captain, a bearded man with an enormous belly and a deep, throaty voice, yelled back something that got drowned out in the engine sounds. The third crew member, likely the first mate, already stood up by the bow, ready to throw a rope to someone. The barge swung out of the current and rolled a little as it left the faster water and came into the slack. Emile ducked away toward the stern, probably preparing to throw a rope on that end. In the dimness, we could just make out the outline of a wooden dock beside a large field of emptiness.
The boat slowed, the engine reversed, and the ropes zipped out into the darkness with a whistling sound. The captain yelled something, and someone else replied, and then we shivered into the dock, rubbing it like a cat finding its way, a hundred, five hundred silver milk canisters arranged on the dock, waiting to be loaded.
* * *
We watched the first ten canisters come aboard. They swung in on small pallets; Emile worked as the ground man, guiding the loads while the first mate operated the crane. The captain did not bother coming out of his cabin, but we smelled his pipe smoke now and then when the wind brought it to us.
Five or six men moved on the dock. They didn’t say much except to shout directions occasionally. A bright floodlight illuminated the scene, and moths fluttered under the light like miniature angels. After a while, Jack and I began helping Emile land the pallets in the proper order. It wasn’t hard work, merely time consuming, and with three of us, it went faster. Emile laughed a lot as he watched us. The first mate said nothing, but the men on the dock commented about him having help for a change. The milk canisters came aboard sealed, but the bodies of the canisters perspired from the coolness of the night contrasted by the warmth of the milk. Light followed the loads and played off each one in short, soft glows.
When we had the milk secured, we off-loaded a pile of empty pallets. That was the hardest work, and Emile did not laugh as we helped him on that job. We handed the pallets down by crane, a dozen of them looped together for the men on the dock. The men let the entire load rest on the dock, then they unfastened the chain and swung it back to us.
“My grandfather would have liked this,” Jack said when we finished and the boat moved off, pulling back into the current and running at a higher engine rev. “He would have compared it to what he did on the dairy farm back home. He was a good farmer.”
“They must have trucks now, though, don’t you think?”
“I’m sure they do. Maybe this is just an old way to do it that hasn’t died out yet. Water is a cheap way to transport things.”
We stood along the railing and watched the countryside. Most of it was dark and formless, but here and there we saw houses and lights, and dogs sometimes barked at us as we passed. The water hissed beneath us; the boat ran through a group of swans before pulling into the second landing, and the swans paddled off like origami fabrications, impossibly serene and white and comfortable in the water.
We helped Emile on the second stop, and the work went faster. This time, the captain came out and joked a little with all of us, his pipe an empty pointing tool in his hand. He said he wanted to hire us permanently, then he went off the boat and came back in a few minutes with rolled-up newspapers containing fresh bread. He gave us two long baguettes and a small plastic tub of honey. The rest he gave to Emile and the first mate.
We broke the bread apart and dipped the pieces in the honey. It tasted like the night, somehow, and like the grass that fed the cows. It tasted like the wooden piers. It was delicious and sweet, and Jack leaned over and kissed me, and his lips tasted of honey.
It was late, almost morning, by the time the boat returned us to the starting point. We had become friends of a sort with the crew. The fir
st light of morning caught a portion of the river and turned it golden. It reminded me of days I could remember as a child. I could recall coming in from skating, or from sledding, and the world was quiet for a moment, was sincere in a way it could not always be sincere, and as eager as you were to be inside, to be warm and contained, it was difficult to leave the outside world, to say good-bye to all the air and wind and freedom. I always felt a traitor by going inside, as if I turned my back on a dear friend. I felt that now. When I stepped off the boat onto the solid framing of the pier, I felt my childhood beside me.
“Thank you,” I said to Jack after we had said our good-byes to the crew. The captain had joked again about hiring us. He said something—the translation wasn’t quite clear—about getting more work out of us than he got out of Emile. Emile smiled his bunny smile. Then it was over.
“That was an incredible night.”
“I like how you live, Jack.”
“Before,” he said, “when we watched Raef and Constance…”
I turned and looked at him.
“I know what we wanted to say to one another. I do. But I don’t want to rush it. I don’t want to say a single word to you that isn’t true.”
“Okay, Jack.”
“I’m filled with you, Heather.”
“I know. I feel that way, too.”
“I don’t want to name it yet. That’s too easy and too predictable. I want it all to rise on its own.”
“So you were paying attention?” I said and pushed my shoulder into his.
“I try to.”
“Now you have to buy me breakfast.”
“We always end up at breakfast.”
But he took my hand. And we walked down the dock, and when we turned back to wave at a shout from the crew, we discovered the crew had not called at all, but that a gull had made the sound of a human and forced us to turn.
27
July 12, 1946
I arrived in a small encampment near Vallorbe, Switzerland. I’m exhausted now and hardly feel I can stand on my feet. A friend suggested I go to see the Col de Jougne Fortress. The fortress was carved from stone and is kept active to guard against invasion. The friend—a thin man from Brooklyn named Danny—said it was a marvel of engineering. I like such things, but right now my thoughts are filled with longing, and I wish I could be home. It’s the evening light that always reminds me of the farm. My heart is heavy, and I wish I could free it somehow.
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