No hint whatever would anyone have detected of the passions of racial hatred and blind patriotism that were driving presumably civilized men to acts of barbarous atrocity at the very moment the silent sun was sinking beneath these ancient undulations of rock, casting long lazy shadows and hazy shafts of light across their upper meadows. No notion would anyone have entertained of that new “conscience” which desperate circumstances were forging in the minds even of honorable and moral men that required them to invent horrors in the cause of safeguarding the world from the even worse horrors being disseminated by dishonorable and immoral men.
Such was the character of Ciel des Montagnes’ immutable face. In the wake of the war, there persisted here behind this face something of the older and more innocent conscience that had been irreparably shattered in many other parts of the world.
XI
One might be tempted to say it was an exceptionally grand spring day in the year 1947, but spring days in northern Vermont are habitually grand. They are exceptional only for the urban visitor who ventures that far off the beaten path. It is more than just the fresh breeze bearing aloft the dank odor of the decomposing litter on the forest floor, more than just the crystalline sky drawing the souls of men and women, the young and the old, upward. It is also the breed of people who make this place their home, a folk whose steady slow pace of work is the natural result of their imperturbable temperament and the tranquil assurance with which they get things done. Watching these people patiently withdraw oozing sap from the maple trees and more patiently still let it simmer down into syrup and sugar can have a most calming effect on the harried city-dweller.
At any rate, the day we have in mind was just such a day. On it, a black 1933 Ford panel truck lumbered into Ciel des Montagnes from the direction of Montpelier, plastered with the mud and dust of a long trip. Its single license plate had been issued in the State of Pennsylvania. Although it hesitated several times while moving through the six or eight blocks that constitute the length of the town, it did not stop but continued on down the highway for about a mile, past the schoolhouse and out into the country. There it turned off onto a gravel side road that twisted northward up a small drainage and around some fields for another mile before disappearing into the woods and upper meadows. At the far edge of the woods, the truck stopped and turned in towards a small cabin tucked under the trees. Here, apparently, was its destination.
The unimposing man who got out of the truck and unlocked the cabin would have passed for around fifty years of age. He might well have been a migrant worker returning for another season’s labor. His hair was a thick metallic gray except for a few dark strands across the crown of his head, and the skin of his not unhandsome face was drawn together in deepening wrinkles over his small features. A partial stoop marked his bearing as he walked, and a chronic squint pinched at his eyes. It was obvious that he had worked hard in his life, but some of his appearance of fatigue could probably have been written off to the long trip he had just completed.
Later that same day, Farmer Collins drove into the yard. He had been expecting the lone man’s arrival and left some twenty minutes later with a fatter wallet and a broader smile.
The next morning, the visitor drove to town and came home with enough basic provisions for at least a month or two. For the first week he seemed quite content to stay in or near the cabin. He pulled a large wicker rocking chair out onto the veranda and spent long hours absently surveying the peaceful countryside from his comfortable vantage point and puffing on his old briar pipe. Now and then he puttered around a little in the wild yard under the trees, collecting dead logs and sawing them into usable chunks to be split for firewood. He seemed deep in thought most of the time, almost melancholy. There was also a mild agitation visible in whatever he was doing. He was definitely not a man at peace with himself.
By the second week he began to take two strolls each day, one in the morning and one in the evening. These gradually lengthened until they took on a definite pattern. Each morning he emerged from the cabin at around 6:00 a.m. and walked briskly up the road for a couple of miles to a point where it swung around the side of a low mountain and afforded a commanding view of the valley below. It was usually 7:30 before he took a last cold drink from the spring that spewed its contents out from the rocks above the road. Then he proceeded laterally on a path around the front of the mountain for another mile and a half until it intersected a trail which happily terminated in his own backyard after traversing stony meadows, leafy woods, and grassy glades.
The evening stroll usually began at about 4:30 and took him in a rectangle in the opposite direction. First he ambled down the road in front of his cabin to the main highway which consisted of a narrow, sparsely traveled strip of blacktop. Then he turned right and went past the schoolhouse into town. Usually he walked on through and headed out the other side, greeting anyone who greeted him. About a mile outside town, he crossed a gravel road that ran roughly parallel to the road running by his cabin. This he followed up the gentle incline of the mountain’s lower slope before cutting across about two miles of open countryside back to his cabin.
These two daily hikes were distinct from one another in more respects than time and place. The one in the morning was invariably more buoyant. The hiker seemed positively eager to embrace the freshening day, to breathe in deep draughts of the cool clear air. The evening hike, by contrast, was slower. The hiker seemed weighed down by heavy thoughts and unresolved sorrows. No matter how splendid the sunset or cheery the birds’ songs, he greeted them with a sigh. He seemed simply unable to get up and out of himself on his evening hike.
No doubt, many people’s days begin and end like that.
Once his routine was established, the solitary man lived one day much like the next for several weeks. Every morning was a new beginning for him. Every evening saw him fall back into the same discouraging rut.
Then one day his routine evening pattern was upset by an unexpected intrusion, never to fall back into its old rut again.
XII
It happened on an ordinary evening as the solitary visitor was trudging along the road to town, his hands cupped behind his back and his head slumped forward, his usual evening hiking posture. For some reason this evening his mind was replaying some old “tapes” from his years in Germany with Einstein. And when it wandered off into other matters, it continued its internal monologue in the German language.
By now he was familiar enough with the course of his evening walk that he scarcely needed to look where he was going. Thus absorbed in his thoughts, he was crossing in front of the double row of ancient maples bordering the schoolyard when he was startled by the sound of a rapid movement, then a jolting thump and a shower of papers flying in the air.
“Entschuldigen Sie mich!” (“Excuse me!”) he cried out in shock as the pretty teacher with whom he had just collided landed back down on the turf with a thud.
“Einem, der so tief in seinen Gedanken verloren ist, ist viel erlaubt,” (“A person has to make plenty of allowance for someone so deeply lost in his thoughts.”) she replied almost coyly, brushing herself off.
“Bitte, lassen Sie mich diese Schularbeiten fuer Sie sammeln,” (“Please let me gather up all these pieces of homework for you.”) he insisted, darting from one escaping sheet of paper to the next.
“Ach, mein guter Herr! Seien Sie bitte nicht so verlegt. Es ist nichts. Regen Sie sich nicht auf. Niemand ist verletzt, und die Aufgaben werden nicht weithin fliegen.” (“O my good man! Please don’t be so embarrassed. It’s nothing. Don’t get so excited. No one is hurt, and the lessons won’t fly far.”)
“Nicht verlegt! Ich waere ein ganz tierischer Mensch, wenn ich nicht verlegt waere, eine so huebsche und schuldlose Dame niederzuschlagen.” (“Not embarrassed! I’d be a brute if I weren’t embarrassed after knocking over such a pretty and innocent lady.”)
Scrambling after the sheets of paper, he began putting together in his head how it had happened. She must ha
ve been sitting on the ground hidden by this massive trunk and sprung up in surprise when he almost stepped on her. Himmel! This was unfortunate!
“Himmel?”
Why was he talking to her in German? And why was she answering him in German? What was going on here?
He gathered up the last of the errant papers and brought them to the teacher who was still brushing the leaves off her skirt.
“I … I don’t know how to…,” he fumbled around.
“So you speak English, too,” she broke in playfully. “That’s too bad. I was looking forward to practicing my German on you.”
She sounded so disappointed by this latter misfortune that she made the poor man forget all about the former one.
“I’m sorry, ma’am,” he tried again.
“Oh, that’s all right,” she softened. “Are you a native of Germany, or did you have to learn the language?”
“No,” he replied ambiguously. “I’m a renegade Norwegian-American who lived in Berlin many years ago.”
A strange vagabond, this, thought the young teacher to herself. He can’t be a seasonal laborer, though he’s dressed like one…. I wonder from what he has fallen….
Whether it was female intuition that aroused her sympathy for this apparent drifter or scholarly instinct that detected something deeper beneath his effective camouflage, she found herself filled with a lively curiosity to learn more about him.
“I was with the Red Cross in Bremen and Hamburg after the war until this fall,” she offered. “That taught me a few idioms you won’t find in grammar books.”
The older man lowered his head and gazed a hole through the leaves on the ground.
“They tell me the destruction of those two cities was nearly total.”
“It was,” she affirmed. “There wasn’t much left. Just a lot of lost waifs standing in a state of shock on heaps of rubble. The rebuilding has already started, but it will take years.”
“It must have made you feel good to pitch in and help.”
“In a way, I suppose. In a very little way. Mostly you felt dejection. I am sure it would have got to me if there hadn’t been so much to do. You felt—you couldn’t avoid feeling—the remorse of those who realized they were getting what they as a nation deserved and the shame of the victors who had doled out such terrible destruction on so many innocent people.”
She hesitated. Clearly, the memories were painful for her.
Then she stood up straight, threw off her heaviness of heart, and announced, “My name is Katherine Kunstler. I teach grades five through eight at the school here.”
“And I’m Dr. Pearson,” echoed the sad little man. For the past six years that’s all he had heard: “Dr. Pearson, would you have a look at this?” “Dr. Pearson, what do you make of that?” “Dr. Pearson, this….” “Dr. Pearson, that….”
Immediately he added, “Stephan Pearson.”
She held out her hand and he shook it a little limply.
“Katherine,” he said. “I do hope we can meet again under more … more propitious circumstances.”
“I would like that.”
They smiled at each other. Dr. Pearson arched his back, cupped his hands, and resumed his evening stroll. Miss Kunstler sat back down under the tree to think. Her eyes peered through the treetops. She was mentally going back over her chance encounter with this most unusual little man to see if she could glean from it a few more scraps of information about him.
XIII
The following evening as Dr. Pearson was passing in front of the school, it happened that Miss Kunstler was sitting beneath the same trees working on another set of papers. Approaching the spot where the collision had occurred, he looked up and saw her mild but resolute eyes beaming back at him. Mechanically he raised his hand in greeting, a trifle surprised but not unhappy to see her there again. Walking on, he felt a twinge of self-consciousness about what had just happened that was not unpleasant at all.
The next evening she was not there, but Dr. Pearson paused momentarily by “their” tree before moving on. A few hours later, when it occurred to him that it was Saturday, this realization seemed somehow significant to him, but he couldn’t put his finger on exactly why.
Monday evening Miss Kunstler was back under the tree again correcting papers. Approaching the line of maples, the solitary hiker marked how cheerily she lifted her chin and smiled at him, so he ventured to stop and exchange a few words with her. Tuesday evening he arrived a little earlier than usual and traded a few more cautious banalities with her. The week went on in this manner from day to day until by Friday Miss Kunstler felt emboldened enough to invite him to sit down on the bank beside her “for a minute or two.”
There was a rather deep grassy ditch running between the twin rows of maples that bordered the schoolyard and the road, forming an irregular slope, now gentle, now steep, under the trees. The spot which Miss Kunstler favored for correcting papers was almost like a sofa with a low back and a long foot stool. Four or five people could easily have been accommodated on it side by side.
The little teacher discreetly moved over to give Dr. Pearson plenty of room. Even though the evening hour had brought restful tranquility to the world around them, she found herself just slightly short of breath and she detected in the abrupt self-conscious movements of her new friend a similar trace of disquiet in him.
But through the trunks of the trees on the other side of the ditch they could look beyond the walls of the frame schoolhouse onto the patchwork of woods and pastures that rolled off into the horizon across the hunch-backed swells, and as they sat there taking in this ancient sight, they both grew more calm and composed. The sun, now spreading its diagonal rays over the lush vernal vegetation, had transformed the hills into a weightless translucent green, the color of sprouting life.
They took it all in without saying a word.
Eventually Miss Kunstler observed, “You can see why I prefer to do my work out here every chance I get. It doesn’t really take your mind off Jimmy’s poor grammar, but it puts it in a healthier context.”
“That is worth something.”
“In the winter I positively cringed before this stack of papers. Now I welcome it.”
The gray-haired man was gazing into the distance and nodding his head up and down in response.
“It’s fearful, is it not, to contemplate how much violence and suffering it took to preserve peaceful scenes like this.”
Mildly startled by this strange comment, Miss Kunstler tried to imagine what kinds of violence had anything at all to do with the tranquility before them.
Sensing her confusion, he added, “The war.”
Silence.
“Oh, of course…. It is fearful. But … but if we think about it so much that it totally sours the sweetness of what we have fought for, then we might just as well not have fought for it, don’t you think?”
He stroked his chin wearily.
“That is certainly true. That is exactly what it does.”
“Very often I think of all the destitute and broken families, the shattered lives, I left behind me in Europe….”
“And doesn’t it plague you to think that they are destitute and broken because we fought to keep this?”
“It does. And yet, though I can never escape it, I can vindicate it logically in the name of achieving the greater good. It doesn’t make much sense, but every other choice makes even less sense to me.”
“That’s how I vindicate it too. But I only wish my heart would pay more attention to my mind…. Or maybe I don’t wish that either. Lately my mind seems to be pulling loose from its moorings, too. I thought it was in a perfectly ‘safe’ harbor. But lately…. O well. It’s time for me to be moving on. You’ll be blaming me for not letting you finish your work.”
“O no, Dr. Pearson. You’ll be blaming me for distracting you from your serious work of coming to terms with all of this.”
They smiled at their thin excuses, but understood. Dr. Pearson rose to
leave.
“Please take care until Monday,” she called after him.
“Until Monday,” he repeated to himself as he trudged on down the road.
On impulse he glanced back over his shoulder. For the briefest instant their eyes made contact, but that fleeting moment of contact felt to him like glue.
It ensured that Monday would lead to Tuesday, and then to Wednesday, and then to Thursday and Friday, and then to the week after.
XIV
In a life that had been full of associates and devoid of friends, Dr. Pearson had not had the benefit of an earthly companion for many years. To be sure, he had never lost a sense of Cecilia’s constant presence with him in the spirit. But even at best, that was different, and in recent years it had not been at its best. It was increasingly impossible for him to convince himself that what he was doing “for his country” was making her happy. Not his Cecilia who could be moved to tears over a dead cardinal!
And so, even that form of spiritual companionship with Cecilia had eroded over time to a mere memory, and a painful one at that at the thought that she must be feeling betrayed by him. Now, however, his long-forfeited need for female companionship was being stirred back to life. He was emerging from a very long hibernation. It was no longer good enough for him to sit on the porch in his wicker rocking chair and mull over the troubles in his soul all by himself. He was continually finding his mind being drawn down the road of its own accord to the double row of maples in front of the school and to the one person in the world with whom he had actually found it possible to share tiny but real pieces of the nightmare he couldn’t get off his mind. In his imagination he sat there on the porch pouring everything out to her, and in his imagination she was taking it all in without rejecting him.
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