by Frank Conroy
At the faculty table Dr. Maniche, the headmaster, stood up and tapped his glass with a spoon. The room fell silent. He spoke first in Danish and then in English.
“Tomorrow afternoon we will have some visitors trom the Esperanto Society. For those of you who don’t know, Esperanto is an international language made up of phonetic elements from the major languages of the western world. The delegation will be in the common room at three o’clock to answer any questions you might have.”
At the faculty table my friend Roger Finlie-Pursel, a young Englishman, glanced at me, rolling his eyes into his head to signify his desperate boredom. When I laughed, Christina asked, “What is funny?”
“Roger,” I said. “He’s always fooling around.”
“I don’t like him.”
“Really?” I was surprised. “He can be terribly funny.”
“He is horrible to his wife.”
“Yes. I guess he is.” Roger had gotten a Danish girl pregnant and married her, so he’d told me, solely to give the child a name. “His lectures on Coleridge are certainly a farce.”
“You will be pleased to hear,” Dr. Maniche went on, “that despite the cold weather the work on the west field has been going well. I want to thank all of you who’ve been out with pick and shovel, and to urge the rest of you to come and join us. Manual labor is good for the soul as well as the body. I will now say grace.” He bent his head and said a few words in Danish. As he sat down the room filled with sound—chairs scraping, plates crashing, and the aural potpourri of seventy-five people speaking five languages, each group shouting louder than the next. It quieted down a bit as people began to eat.
Beside me, Christina put food on her plate. There was an air of calmness and deliberation in the way she moved, as if she were sitting at a formal dinner. She wore a gray flannel suit, cut simply, with a buttonless jacket over a white blouse. The glasses were perched on a straight nose. My eye followed the steel wire to a small, perfectly shaped ear. Her skin was white as milk, with a touch of pink from the cold in the slight hollows under her cheekbones. Watching her, I became momentarily disoriented, as one does after staring too long in a mirror.
“François! The potatoes!”
I turned and Russe winked at me, holding out his hand for the bowl, which I immediately passed along.
“Tonight,” Henri said, leaning across the table to Marie, “our dreams will come true. Yours and mine.” He stroked his short black beard.
Marie, a plump girl glowing with health, giggled and looked down at her plate. “I thought you were going to the Casino.”
“Tomorrow,” Midou corrected, and raised his arms to hold an imaginary girl.
“You are wicked boys,” Marie said. “Imagine the disgrace if you got caught in the girls’ building.”
“Disgrace?” Henri looked around unbelievingly. “Disgrace?”
Albert laughed. “Well, for her maybe.”
On my left Marcel leaned forward and asked, “I’d like to hear Radio Moscow tonight. Can I come by?” The only Communist in the group, Marcel stood, by choice, somewhat apart from the others. He affected an attitude of tremendous earnestness, and took a lot of teasing. He thought of himself as an intellectual.
“Of course,” I said. “I’d like to hear it myself.”
There was a scream of laughter from Marie at something Midou had whispered in her ear and some of the boys at the German table turned to look. Flashing her splendid white teeth, Marie waved and then collapsed with the giggles.
Christina laughed—a soft, tentative laugh, as if she were trying it out—and looked down at her plate.
After supper Dr. Maniche stood up with the day’s mail. When he called my name I felt, as always, a faint anticipatory excitement. The letter was from my mother. The only other person it could have been from was a spoiled, pouty, but incredibly sexy sixteen-year-old girl in Copenhagen, vaguely related to my family, whom I’d attempted, unsuccessfully, to make. She’d written me twice, short, perfunctory notes in bad English with nothing in them to suggest that I’d be any luckier the next time I saw her. Returning to the table, I said to Christina, “Nothing for you tonight.”
“My parents write once a month,” she said, pushing back her chair. “I didn’t expect anything.”
People began leaving the dining hall, streaming out through the double doors, letting in the cold air. As Christina got up from the table I stood motionless, watching her. “Where are you going?”
She paused for the briefest possible instant, her head slightly averted, and then said, “It’s my turn to help in the kitchen.”
The French boys were leaving behind me. “Okay. I’ll come too.”
We crossed the room and went into the kitchen. Some of the other students were already at work sorting out dirty dishes and stacking them next to the sink. The Frog stood over the steaming water, her big arms glistening, stringy hair hanging down.
“I’ll rinse and you dry,” I said to Christina. We moved to the sink and took up our positions.
On my left, the Frog looked up with an expression of surprise. “Naa du!” she said, and rattled off some quick Danish.
“What did she say?”
“That she’s surprised to see you here and she assures you it won’t hurt.”
I laughed, rolling up my sleeves. “Tell her it should hurt, otherwise it isn’t good for the soul.”
Christina translated and then said, “She doesn’t understand. Don’t tease her.”
“I didn’t mean to.” I rinsed some dishes in the clear hot water and handed them to Christina, her hands hidden under a huge dishtowel. She smiled.
“They’re all surprised to see you here.”
“Why?”
“Your group seems to spend time having fun. You’re the first to help in the kitchen, for instance.”
“Do people resent it?”
“Oh, no. It’s as if you’re having fun for all of us.”
“Well, that isn’t right. I mean people shouldn’t think that way,” I said quickly. “They’re great guys though. You should see them at the Casino in town.” I laughed at the memory.
“Do you dance there?”
“Me? Oh, once in a while. I go for the music more than anything else.”
“I’ve heard you play. You’re very good.”
“Thank you.”
Even though she knew no English, the Frog was listening to us, pretending not to, as she worked.
“Music is the most important thing for me,” Christina said without embarrassment. “I am a student of Bach.”
“Really? I didn’t know that.” I paused for a moment, my hands in the hot water. “But you never play. Why don’t you play?”
“I play the organ. Last summer I took a tour of Germany, playing all the organs Bach played. It was ...” she hesitated, searching for words, “it was a very important trip. I decided things.”
“I’d love to hear you.”
She held out her arms for some dishes. “Well, perhaps you will someday. But I like the jazz you play. The freedom of it. It must be a wonderful feeling.”
“Yes. It’s fun. But I’d like to play Bach.”
“Do you like him?”
Rinsing dishes, I began to sing the little fugue in G minor, very slowly. At the first entrance I looked at Christina, but she didn’t join in. “That’s where you come in,” I said.
“I know, but I can’t sing.”
“Well, good Lord, neither can I!”
“You keep the pitch, though.” She moved a pile of silverware. “How old are you?”
“Seventeen. I’ll be eighteen next month.”
“I am twenty-two,” she said. “I come from a very small town in north Sweden. Only five hundred people. You’re from New York City. I know from the book.”
I laughed. “That’s right.”
“Why do you laugh?”
“I don’t know.” After a moment I said, “My mother is Danish, though. I have relatives in Copenhagen
.”
“You don’t look at all Danish.”
“Don’t I?”
“No. You are the perfect picture of an American boy. Like the films.”
I busied myself in the sink. “That’s the freckles, I guess.”
When the work was finished we stood drying our hands on different ends of the same towel. The Frog was taking off her apron and everyone else had left.
“Well, I must go,” Christina said.
“Aren’t you coming over to the common room?” I didn’t try to hide my disappointment.
“No. I have some things to do upstairs.” She folded the towel and hung it on the rack. Then she looked at me, smiling. “Thank you.”
I didn’t know what to say. She took a few steps and opened a small door into a circular stairwell.
“What’s that? I didn’t know about that. Does it go upstairs?”
“Yes. It lets out right across from my room.” She stood posed at the bottom, holding the curved banister. “Good night, Frank.”
My body suddenly flushed with heat. I stood paralyzed, watching her slender figure turn quickly and disappear up the stairs. I took a step forward and then remembered the Frog. She stood by the sink, watching me, her big, brown, cowlike eyes staring sadly. As I passed I heard her catch her breath.
“Good nat, Frank,” she said, echoing Christina.
“Good nat.”
Outside the wind had risen, sweeping across the Sound from Sweden. As I walked along the cleared path to the boys’ dormitory the hollow whining made a sudden lunge up the scale and for a moment I was immersed in a bright cloud of swirling snow. I kicked my boots against the wall in the hot entrance way and went into the common room. Henri was standing by the door with a copy of Paris Match. He lowered it and gave me a nod.
“It begins, eh?” he said. “With la belle Suedoise.”
I sat down and pulled my boots off, wriggling my toes under the heavy socks. “Oh no,” I said, covering my embarrassment, “she’s five years older than me.”
“That means nothing,” Henri said, handing me the magazine. “You’re lucky, my friend. She’s an angel. What bones! Magnificent!”
“Enough, enough.”
He shrugged.
“Here’s a man that refers to his father with the formal vous,” I said, tapping the page. “Is that usual?”
He looked over my shoulder. “No. It’s very old-fashioned.”
“What is?” Marcel asked, joining us.
“To use vous with your father,” Henri said.
“What do you mean? I know families that do.”
“Nonsense. Hey, everyone! François has a question. Does anyone use vous to his father? I say it’s a ridiculous, old-fashioned affection.”
Very rapidly every Frenchman in the room was shouting, cursing, waving his hands in the air, and trying to be heard over the noise. The Danes and Germans watched us with quiet amusement, as if we were putting on a play.
I read my mother’s letter in my room. She asked me not to tell her parents that she’d gotten Jean out of the house and was divorcing him. (“It’s the second time and they might not understand.”) In speech she could easily pass for a native-born American, but in writing she made small mistakes, reductions of the same mistakes I heard every day from Scandinavian students. Thousands of miles away from her I discovered she unconsciously accepted her limitations, confining her written statements to a level of almost childish simplicity. She stated facts, nothing more. Her letters were peculiarly dead—dead with all the outward signs of life, like stillborn infants. I later learned that she wrote them at top speed, without reflection, and could not remember what she’d written from one letter to the next.
I folded the letter, put it away, and surveyed my desk. There was the short story, destined never to be finished, my correspondence with the College Entrance Exam people, and partially completed application forms to Harvard and Haverford colleges, neither of which I had ever seen. I was applying out of reflex. My abysmal high school record precluded, I’d been told, acceptance anywhere.
I looked up and the Frog darted away from her window, the curtain moving slightly as she pulled away. A gust of wind made the building creak and forced a cold draft through the wall. The Sound was frozen all the way to Sweden. They said it was the coldest winter in years.
I began going to classes (which were optional) in order to see Christina. Sometimes I’d sit near her, and sometimes next to her. One afternoon just before vacation we stayed behind, sitting at the huge table, and talked.
“Are you going home for Christmas?” I asked.
“Yes. I don’t really want to, though. I’d rather stay here.”
“Henri and Albert are staying. I have to see my family in Copenhagen. And take the tests for college.”
She folded her notebook and clasped her hands over it. “Where will you go in the summer when school is over?”
“Paris. If I have enough money. My sister will be there.”
“That’s good. There’ll be someone to look after you.”
I laughed. “Well, I don’t know that I want to be looked after.”
“Still, it’s nice to have someone you know in a strange city,” she said.
“I guess so.”
“You’re getting a cold.”
“I know.”
That evening after supper she came to the common room, as had become her habit. Midou had repaired the old Victrola in the corner (applause as the ghostly voice of Bing Crosby seeped out of the horn) and Henri was dancing with Marie. In a corner, giggling, the Frog danced with Hanna, her roommate.
“Shall we dance?” I asked Christina.
“I don’t know how,” she said, and sat down on the couch.
“Oh, come on. Everybody knows how to dance.”
“I’ve only danced with a man once in my life. It was my uncle and I fell down.”
I sat beside her. “That’s impossible.”
She laughed.
“Well, it is,” I insisted.
She turned and looked at me. “In America, perhaps. My village is very small, and my father is a minister. People live an old way, a way you’ve never seen. That’s part of the reason I’m here.”
“I thought Sweden was supposed to be so modern.”
“Oh yes, in the cities. The country is something else.”
I looked away, watching Henri and Marie. As in the Casino, Henri danced with his hand very low on his partner’s back, flat against the cleft in her buttocks.
“I’ll teach you,” I said suddenly.
“What?”
“How to dance. It’s easy.”
She didn’t answer. I got up. “Come on.”
“You mean now?”
“Sure. Why not?”
“But everyone will watch and ...”
“Don’t be silly. They won’t pay any attention to us. Come on.”
I went to a clear corner of the room. She followed hesitantly.
“Now you do a square, is what you do. Like this. One two, one two, one two, one.” I put my arms up as if I was holding someone and danced in time to the music. She stood a few yards away, watching my feet, her head at a slight angle.
“Is that all?”
“That’s the basic move. You can get tricky and do variations and everything, but that’s the fundamental step. Stand next to me and try it.”
She came and stood by my side, glancing at me quickly and then bending down her head. I started slowly and she mirrored my moves.
“One two, one two, one two, one. That’s it! Try it alone now.”
She went through the pattern rather stiffly, but on the beat, watching her own feet through the square glasses.
“That’s it. Now do it without looking down.”
She raised her head and smiled. “Like this?”
“Perfect. Exactly right. Now we just do it together.”
She stood motionless as I approached her, the smile gone and her eyes on my chest. She raised her
arms into the air and bit her lower lip. As I got close she seemed very small. Her left hand landed lightly on my shoulder as I touched her waist. Her other hand was cool, clasping mine gently. We stood at least a foot apart, waiting for the beat.
“Okay. Here we go now.” I went backwards, pulling her into the pattern. “One two, one two—that’s right-one two.” She moved awkwardly at first, but got the idea very quickly and began to follow my lead. My hand was just above her hip and I could feel the warmth of her body through the flannel. “Now back, that’s it, turn, that’s it. Here we go.” We danced back and forth in the corner of the room until the record ended. I released her immediately. “Well, you see?”
“You’re very good. It’s quite easy with you.”
“Of course it’s easy. I told you.”
“Are they going to turn the record over?”
I glanced up to see Henri doing exactly that. When the music started I put my hand on Christina’s waist again. “Now, one thing is if we dance a bit closer together it’s easier for you to tell what I’m going to do. You’ll be able to anticipate my ...”
“All right,” she interrupted. “That’s all right.”
We both came forward a little. My hand slipped around her waist to the narrow part of her back. The faint scent of lemon soap rose from her body. As we danced her small breasts brushed lightly against my chest and her hair touched the corner of my mouth.
“I can see why people like to do this,” she said after a while, completely serious. “It’s very nice.”
Night. I’d been laid up a day and a half with a bad cold that had moved to my lungs. The entire school was in the gym watching the various Christmas skits put on by each nationality group. I’d directed the French in theirs, a satirical piece I was sure would win the prize. My fever was high —at its apex—and I could no longer concentrate enough to read. I lay in bed dozing, half-hearing the music from the radio, drifting through time, dreaming, my body drenched with sweat. At intervals I would open my eyes, surprised each time to find the same reality around me. The fever heightened perception—every color in the room sensationally vivid, every texture magnified. When some soft jazz came out of the radio the bass notes seemed to vibrate at the base of my skull, note after note blooming inside me like black flowers. I closed my eyes and drifted away, slowly peeling off from the jazz, as if the music and myself were two airplanes splitting high in the air.