Three Farmers on Their Way to a Dance

by Richard Powers

  But the Bavarians were not to be so easily dealt with. One struggled with the widow, resisting expulsion. The other restrained him with a shrewd look, considering the international ramifications of such scuffling. Instead, the men set up a checkpoint just outside the shop door. Here they scrutinized every client that entered. They flattened their faces against the glass and peered into the store, leaving a cratered battlefield of Bavarian greased nose prints on the pane.

  As the day went on, the widow grew thankful for the boy’s compulsive prodigality. Aware of the fat Germans lying in ambush, the widow prayed for the very behavior she had tried to beat out of Peter. At best, she hoped he had taken the errand money from that morning and drunk it down, passing out in a ditch somewhere. If Peter came back and the rotund gentlemen killed him, her shop would fold, she’d be pauperized, and worse, she’d have to train another man from scratch to play the sex game as well as the boy did.

  When the sun went down, the Bavarians, evidently tired, hungry, and irritated, began arguing. The impatient one managed to convince the plodding one that they should break siege. Before they left for the night, however, one of them stuck his head in the shop and let off a last high-speed, mimed rifle burst. This much was at least unambiguous: they would be back.

  It was well past eleven when the returning Peter at last made the shop bell jingle. He went straight back to the rear rooms where he and the widow lived, a broad, disarming grin across his equine face.

  —Sorry about the delay, old woman. Those things you sent me after this morning were damn hard to find. But I’ll tell you what, you old witch. They must have been damn easy to lose, because I sure as hell don’t have them with me now!

  His laugh might have been Hubert’s horselaugh, childish and out of control but wisened up by the world. The widow, relieved of her daylong wait for catastrophe, was so punch-drunk that the laughing infected her as well. She laughed violently, thinking how this unscrupulous boy had a knack for nearly missing disaster, by always making the other fellow look foolish. She thought of the fat Bavarians waiting all day to kill this tramp, and laughed until she worried about bursting a blood vessel. Decency dictated that she tell him what was so hysterical. She managed to get the words out between explosions of spittle.

  —Two men came by today to shoot you.

  She and Peter set off again, laughing out of control.

  —I know that, you old cow. Why do you think I was so late coming home? I watched them from across the way at The Spoon. Six hours.

  This triggered another round of hilarity. The Spoon was a one-room dive that should have been called The Glass. The image of Peter downing beer after beer, aping the German garrison for the public benefit of The Spoon’s patrons was more than the widow could stand. When she stopped to catch her breath, she managed to ask:

  —What did you do to get those muttons so worked up? Shit in their sheets?

  —Do, hell. They came by the other day. I thought they wanted my brother Hubie. Don’t believe it, mother. I’m their boy. And I haven’t done piss to them.

  The widow cackled off again, now out of force of habit. The boy had a wonderful way of swearing, saying it as if he’d just invented it in his own mouth. She gasped and signaled him impatiently to go on.

  —I thought I’d had done with those pork rolls. But when I round the corner this afternoon, who should be waiting for sweet Petje but your friends Mr. and Mrs. Matterhorn. So I duck into The Spoon to collect my thoughts. Heh. Two beers later, it hits me: fake Schreck son. That’s me, too. These fellows have come to escort me to their war.

  —War? Yee-God. What are you saying?

  The woman performed a ritual that began as a sign of the cross and ended as a warding-off of the Evil Eye. She had planned, these last two months, on outliving the war, ignoring it until it went away. Now the boy had ruined that chance by speaking the word right here in her own home. Well, the place was due for a sweeping and disinfecting anyway. She would do it tomorrow.

  —What’s this about the . . . what you said. You’re Dutch. You don’t got to go to nobody else’s war. You stay here. I need you behind the counter. You’re Dutch. You’re neutered.

  —German, mother. Blood doesn’t matter when you sign the papers.

  —Ach! Papers will burn. Let them fight their own war.

  —Not a bad idea. Stand them side by side, and they’ll cover the whole front from Paris to Switzerland, with britches to spare.

  —You don’t go to no war, Petje. I tell you that much.

  —I don’t go to any war.

  —What’s this, Aristotle come back from the dead to wee on me? Six years of school and you’re correcting your elders. I’ll tell you why you don’t have to go off to nobody’s war.

  —Why is that, woman?

  —Because they kill people there, that’s why. That illegalizes any papers you might have put your name to.

  All trace of hilarity had drained out of the widow. Her eyes had become saucer-wide with her last pronouncement. What she had just said, apart from the anarchic grammar, seemed to Peter the unimpeachably logical credo under which the world should run. They both sat silent for a moment, transfigured by this bottom line of sanity. The only way they could hope to preach this gospel was to sneak him out of town.

  After the war, the Kaiser would seek asylum in Holland. And in spite of having spent the last four years fearing daily for its survival, the little country refused to extradite the fellow to the victors. But in the autumn of 1914, before the national states of Europe entrenched themselves in political cynicism, the same policy of noninvolvement meant that Holland would not prevent German citizens from themselves being extradited. The widow turned to the task of packing a sack lunch for the boy’s escape the next day: three chocolate sandwiches, a Dutch national food, and the only lunch Peter would eat.

  As she worked, she puzzled over not feeling the requisite sorrow for such a sad occasion. The boy was invaluable to her, if not professionally, at least personally. She supposed she cared for him; he amused her tremendously. They were always laughing about something, laughing until they rotted. Mostly, she had gotten used to him. New habits would take so long to develop after he was gone.

  But she did not feel sorrow. When she reminded herself of the seriousness of the situation, how in all likelihood she would never see the boy again, rather than recalling all the morose unhappiness of her past—the death of her husband, who had always treated her so well and to whose memory she had in a peculiar way remained faithful; the amputation in childhood of a favorite sister’s leg at the knee; the loss of a loved goat to one of the first motorcars in Maastricht—she could remember instead only those habits of hers that she would now have to change. And in considering those outrageous, ludicrous, and often unspeakable habits she could not help but snicker as she split the rolls and inserted the bars of chocolate.

  She had learned this feeling many times before, learned it and lost it with each passing tragedy: war, global emergency never seemed so urgent as some stray, unrelated, insignificant memory. She’d learned it when, led from her husband’s death chamber, she grew distressed over a spot of oil smudging her newly purchased widow’s weeds. She forgot and relearned it at each local catastrophe: the private self never meets crisis appropriately.

  And as she buttered and cut the sandwich bread, she snorted again and felt that such distraction was not so bad a thing. Where are joy and understanding, those first weak steps toward responsibility, except in public tragedy always being interrupted by the self’s secret healing potions? She stuck the sandwiches into a paper sack along with a fifty-guilder note. Without knowing what she did, even as she forgot all that had just occurred to her, she lifted the sack to her lips and kissed it.

  Peter left the widow’s shop before dawn on a modicum of sleep. The normally resourceful farmer, now at a loss without hat or cane, set off for another dance entirely. Uncertain how to proceed, he made his way with little difficulty across the street and into The
Spoon. That was as far as he got that day.

  He sat at the bar and greeted the perennials by name, smiling at what a poor escape he was making. He attempted the difficult task of choosing between two headstones that delighted him equally: “He died bending an elbow,” and “Say what you want, but he was a sociable fellow.” In the end, he decided to leave to chance what words commemorated him, as he wouldn’t be able to read them from his viewing angle anyway.

  The Bavarians appeared at the shop forty minutes after Peter’s departure. The Spoon’s front window gave a good view of their activity. They banged in Teutonic rhythms on the door, but the widow was shrewd and refused to open. The cheer went up in The Spoon:

  —Good for the old cigarmonger!

  Then one Bavarian called the other’s attention to a sign hanging on the shop door. The widow, disliking the finality of a “Closed” sign, always used one reading: “Patience. We’ll be back before the hour’s out.” Peter hung this message on the door each evening at close. Patrons seemed to find it wholly palatable. But then, the Dutch did not have the long tradition of dialectical imperative that the Germans had.

  The loyal covey of predawn Spoon customers watched the two agents with morbid fascination. In only a few short years, the public had become trained in how to watch such silent, jerky, comic mise en scène. The Spoon clientele recognized at once the fat-comedian duos who pratfell their way through so many one-reelers, already universally popular on the Continent: first A kicks B on the rump. Then B falls on oversized nose. B stands up to take a poke at A. A ducks and B slugs wall. Reaction take. It would go on like clockwork. Only the Spoon clientele missed, a little, the title cards.

  —What do you suppose they’re saying, Petje?

  —The bright fellow is saying to his buddy, “Look. Says here they’ll be back in an hour. We’ve got ourselves an infantryman.”

  —Hooray! They’ve got poor Kinder now.

  The predawn gate at The Spoon, though small, was tremendous, given the hour. Much of Maastricht apparently was used to showing up for the whistle slightly oiled. In Limburg, beer was the first of medicines, administered even to infants and the dying. In spite of The Spoon’s high spirits, Peter grew increasingly despondent as his friends finished their beers and filed out, wishing him well. He could not hope to outlast the two thugs. If he continued to spend the widow’s legacy at the current rate, he’d be forced to turn himself in by noon.

  It was in this condition of increasing self-pity and decreasing capital reserve that Peter was befriended by the gentleman Theo Langerson. Those with steady jobs had long ago left Peter and the bartender alone, one washing dishes, the other dirtying them. Periodically, a beat policeman, the girl Wies’s father, stuck his head inside, ostensibly to keep the peace but actually for the half glass that had become his due at such times.

  After noon, Theo entered The Spoon and established himself, as morosity commonly did, within earshot. Soon he and Peter, hardly introduced, had struck up a competitive game of “So you think you have troubles.” Theo opened conservatively.

  —What’s it with you, karel? Whatever it is, it must be at least interesting. You are plainly too young to be worrying about getting it up, and you still have all the hair you were born with.

  —Go suck.

  —Really upset, eh, chump? The clap, is it?

  —What is this, the Inquisition?

  —As a fellow sufferer, I’m out to prove my moral superiority over all comers, or at very least to derive a sense of comfort from there being saps worse off than myself. So you see how a man like you, obviously in agony, is obliged to aid my condition, one way or the other.

  —You? Problems? Your wife cold-fishing you, more than likely.

  —I assure you, friend . . .

  —Can you blame her?

  — . . . that nothing so mundane . . .

  —You’ve heard of prostitutes? They’ll fix your moral superiority for a few guilder.

  —Ha! If only that were it. No, karel, I’m afraid my superiority is somewhat more moral than that.

  —What then? You were in an auto accident, yes? Now your friends won’t go drinking with you because you talk funny, and you have to take your morality out on strangers.

  —You’re no stranger, child. We’re fellow sufferers.

  Theo meant to invoke the bond of pain only ironically. But his use of the word “child”—kind in Dutch—misheard by Peter as his old surname, shocked the boy into thinking that they had already met, probably introduced by common friends at The Spoon. The other fellow, assuming Peter had recognized him, must have been carrying out the entire conversation facetiously.

  That changed the complexion of the situation entirely. Peter had now to play along, be better humored, pretend the whole prelude had been a put-on, and try to trick the man into revealing his name. For the all-important line had been crossed; Peter no longer dealt with a stranger he could abuse anonymously. The two now bore, in Peter’s mind, the mutual responsibility of having been introduced to one another.

  —Have your victory, friend. Since you’d drag it out of me, I’ll give you a hint about my troubles. I’m being tortured by the G-E-R-M-A-I-N-S.

  Theo winced at the spelling and took two slugs of beer. When he was this boy’s age, he had nursed a dream about free public education through the twelfth grade. That had been some time ago.

  —Ah! Point two that we have in common. Strange country, that; in the name of Bach and Kant, they torch the library at Louvain.

  Peter wished he could place this stranger. He had once had a conversation with a gentleman who spoke much like this. The philosopher on the bicycle. That was long ago, before the world had turned heels-up. That conversation had been in Germany, in German. He moved his stool closer to the other fellow and listened.

  —Am I to understand that you are suffering in the abstract? That you are being “tortured,” as you so colorfully put it, by basic human indignity at the behavior of the Germans as a nation? That would be remarkable indeed. I can hardly believe that you’ve been tanking since early morning out of principle.

  —Principle, hell. Bismarck and the Kaiser are waiting on my doorstep to take me on a vacation en France.

  —Bravo. I knew there had to be personal involvement somewhere. We become more closely related all the time. But it seems I cannot claim the more serious suffering after all. To escape my creditors, all I need do is quit my job. But to escape yours it sounds as if you must quit your home, your friends, and, no doubt, your pretty little wife.

  Peter had a healthy laugh at the last article. The fellow must not know him after all; they could not have met in some Spoon extravagance because these always contained a surfeit of rude jokes about Peter and the tobacconist’s widow. Absolved of the duty of friendship, Peter could go back to his normal condition of cheerful cruelty.

  To make up for lost time, he began by suggesting that half a million men would have leaped at the chance to quit their jobs before the Miracle of the Marne; if all the gentleman faced was debtors’ prison, he’d best shut his jaws and be content with a relative heaven.

  Theo protested; the “debt” he had mentioned was figurative. Until two days ago, he had held down a safe and guilt-free position as journalist with a paper recognized by Peter as one of Maastricht’s smaller dailies. For the last year, Theo explained, his job had been to sit behind a lovely teak desk and ghostwrite editorials for his alcoholic editor. In this capacity he had championed a thousand progressive causes: universal suffrage, land reform, mass production, minimum wage.

  —Naturally, in recent months I’ve spilled more and more words on the outbreak of hostilities. Nothing like a good free-for-all to boost circulation. All speculation, you understand; by the time the news travels from the front to my beautiful teakwood, it’s worse than hearsay—it’s hopeless interpretation. That’s where the editor comes in. Friday, the word is the British are in. Saturday, word comes they’re out. Who to believe? Not important; I simply do a sideste
p and crank out a masterpiece beginning: “While the world decides its future, can His Majesty and Lord Kitchener afford to abstain?” I don’t have to bother with the facts at all.

  Peter ordered another glass and counted his remaining change. He could not follow this journalist: had the bastard made his point already, or was he still winding up to it? Either way, it did not touch on his own problem, all he had ears for at present. Still, Peter had long ago learned the habit of keeping quiet and giving off the air of omniscience.

  —But now the higher-ups have decided that the public will not go another two months on editorials alone. Our readers must have facts, they say. Ha! Can you imagine? A newspaper stooping to collecting facts. I tried to argue: we in the Netherlands have to sit tight and keep our hands clean. The minute we go about poking our observant noses into the matter, we are involved. And there is no involvement without complicity.

  Peter produced a sucking noise on the roof of his mouth. He clung to the disk of his barstool and tried not to let any part of his body touch anything else. A recent conversation on fingerprints he’d had here in The Spoon left him panicked about the marks his body made wherever he went. As this fellow piled up words in front of him, Peter began to feel that if he deviated even slightly from the narrow arm movement that brought his glass to his chin, he would be drawn into involvement with the man’s story.

  —They can’t be bothered with such petty objections. Instead, they search through the office for the ideal war correspondent, and naturally, their sights land on me. My editorials, be they ever so speculative, qualify me as the staffer with most experience in war reportage. So I give you Theo Langerson, off to the front, humbly reporting for duty. Drink to me, will you, mason?

  At this conclusion, Peter began to laugh so violently that beer began to run up his nasal passages. The long and short was that he and Theo were in the same jam. Why hadn’t the fellow said so at once? Peter immediately liked the man several times better for it. He forced the beer back down his throat, and in his old winning insolence, suggested: