Yes. I might have waited.
I felt his hand over mine, firm, dark, sinewy. “Never mind,” he said. “It’s done. Over with. We’ll forget it.”
I looked at him, bewildered. “What do you mean, forget it?”
“You made a mistake. I can understand it . . . you thought I was dead.” The life that had been extinguished lit his eyes once more. “I forgive you.” With that he gathered me into a strong embrace.
I managed to get my hand against his shoulder and shove with all my might. Crazy Dancer looked puzzled.
“I’m married. Can’t you understand? I’m married.”
“Yes,” he agreed. “To me.”
“Not to you. To someone else.”
“But you can’t. It’s impossible. You’re already married to me.”
“I know we considered ourselves married. We were married, according to Iroquois tradition. But it’s a marriage not recognized by Canadian law.”
“What has Canadian law to do with you and me?”
“It sanctioned my present marriage. I’m someone you don’t know anymore. I’m Mrs. Erich von Kerll.”
“Von Kerll? German?”
“Austrian.”
“What’s the difference? He’s still an enemy.”
We stared at each other bleakly.
“I see how it is,” he said in a low, toneless voice. “You love this other man.”
“He’s a very fine man, Crazy Dancer.”
“He’s a fool,” he spat out, “if he loves you.”
“Please don’t hate me.”
“Hate you? I want you to listen to me. I want you to come with me now. Now is the moment you leave your Austrian and come with the one who you married first and who loved you first. We will leave here and walk into the life we had.”
“Crazy Dancer, Erich is a cripple. He only has one leg.”
“That makes a difference? Then I’ll cut off mine, both of mine. Come with me.” With one light step he moved away from me. I stood rooted where I was.
He held out his hand. Mine was a heavy lump at my side. Another sudden movement and he was very close, but not touching. He spoke with controlled fury. “You called a Witigo to eat up your life. All that’s left is lies, and faithlessness, and no love, no love at all. Throw out your guardian, he will not guard you any longer.”
“If you are going to curse me, Crazy Dancer, don’t hide behind guardians and Witigos. Do it yourself.”
“Then I do, for throwing me away like a fish you don’t want. For going against the promise of a life together, a promise made before my mother and my friends, a promise you tore in shreds and threw in my face.”
“I have said all this to myself, Crazy Dancer. But when you think of me, besides everything you said, I want you to remember one other thing . . . I will be grateful all my life that you came back.”
I turned away.
I half expected that with a glissade and a tour jeté he would land beside me. And if he did, I didn’t know that I would have the strength a second time to walk away. Not like an unwanted fish. How could he think I would throw him away like that? A Witigo. Oh, dear God, I almost laughed. I knew from Elk Girl that a Witigo was a monstrous, hair-covered creature, who ate its young and lived below in an ice cave and had an ice heart. That’s what he thought I had, an ice heart.
I didn’t know where I was. I walked, taking streets at random. I sat in a little park. I sat there all day. I didn’t think about Crazy Dancer and I didn’t think about Erich. I watched a lady feeding pigeons, and children taking turns on a slide and rope swinging in tight circles. They called to each other in the quick voice pattern that is Canadian French. It was good to hear children play. I was glad for Anne Morning Light that her son was back. Would she also want a Witigo to attack my life?
I’d forced him to call the Witigo. I’d answered him in ways he couldn’t strike back at or deny. “I’m married.” I’d said it again and again. I used facts as my excuse, facts as my weapon. Fact: a husband. Fact: a ring. Fact: a legal marriage. Crazy Dancer used a different language. He spoke of love.
I watched the shadows of leaves as they danced on the walkway. I saw something surprising—a chameleon. Chameleons were not indigenous creatures in this climate, but they sold them at La Ronde. They came with a little gold chain and pin, to fasten to your collar. This small lizard had escaped the amusement park and lived here. As a result of his adventures he had only half a tail. Immediately I identified with him. I too had lost part of myself.
I went back to my room in the nurses’ annex.
“Where on earth have you been?” Erich greeted me.
Fifteen
WE FOUND A small apartment. It was old French architecture and charming. Mme. Gosselin closed off three rooms of her home, and we rented them. There were no interior stairs, you had to go outside to get from one story to another. Erich had trouble at first, but by the third day had mastered the stairs. The largest room had been a library. There was a fireplace, and we curled up evenings in a Mackinaw blanket, the Hudson Bay kind with stripes of black and red, green and yellow. I didn’t tell him about Crazy Dancer being alive, or that I’d seen him. I blocked it from my mind.
The bedroom was small. Once the double bed was in, there was no room for anything else. Erich was practicing his drafting skills and had a large drawing pad on the floor. It took up the entire space. He was able, with the aid of his crutch, to swing off the bed over the sketched plans to the bathroom, but I had to stand on the bed and jump.
I kept having flashbacks. Peering into fog, holding my end of a stretcher, not knowing where I was. . . . This kind of thing used to happen a good deal in the wards, it occurred in men who had seen combat. But it didn’t have to be the war. In fact, it usually wasn’t. Out of nowhere I’d hear his voice—“I’ll teach you to be an Indian.” I knew it was battle fatigue, but having a name for it didn’t make it go away. Even when I was at work—cranking up a bed, assisting Dr. Bennett, or checking a chart—“Watch it!” and the three-wheeler turned over and spilled us into the bank. “The center of gravity is too high.”
The announcement of our marriage didn’t bring things tumbling down around our ears as we feared. It was taken philosophically, and we were even congratulated. Erich was being considered for a position with an architectural firm, and had been in for a second interview, which we took to be a favorable sign. We were already putting by for our surprise visit to Mama Kathy. I wasn’t very original: I kept the money in the sugar bowl. We figured in about three weeks we could buy the tickets. Erich was very good about saving. He’d heard how fine the Montreal Symphony was. Desiré Dufauw directed, and Erich very much wanted to go, but deferred it for the sake of our trip.
“You’ll love Mama Kathy. She spent her honeymoon traveling by dogsled.”
—Sometimes it was the gesture of his hand at the railway station. Or the hurt look in his eyes—
I revived my cooking skills. For years I’d eaten in the hospital cafeteria. But no more. Between dispensing medication, changing dressings, and starting an intravenous feeding . . . I planned menus. Tonight I would prepare saschlik, a Polish dish Mama Kathy learned from a trapper’s wife: lamb and tomatoes—Or that first moment when he framed my face in his hands and looked at me with trust and love—garnished with onion and apple and poured over a steaming potato.
Hiroshima. The dropping of the A-bomb brought an abrupt end to the war in the Pacific. Did it bring an end to man’s humanity as well?
The technological aspect fascinated Erich. “A new energy source. Think of it! A teaspoon of U-235 will light the entire world. Submarines will be able to navigate the seven seas without needing to surface. The possibilities are unlimited.”
One moment a human being, the next etched into cement like a trilobite. We had achieved world peace.
I ARRIVED HOME one evening to find Erich waiting for me on the stairs. He had a telegram in his hand. “I don’t know whether it’s good news or bad. It’s from my mother. She’s com
ing to visit us.”
“All the way from Austria!” I ran up the remaining flight. “But that’s wonderful, isn’t it?”
“Of course it is. Only, the old life is so far away now. She’ll bring it with her.”
“Are you afraid she won’t approve of me?”
“Nothing like that. Of course not. It’s just that it was a lifetime ago I was her son.”
“Yes, the Bodensee, the little boy in the sailor suit.” I looked around at our three rooms. Each item we’d added had been a cause for celebration. The bud vase Egg gave us I’d tried in a dozen places—the table, the windowsill, by the kitchen sink. Finally it came to rest on the secondhand end table Erich had bought. Now I wasn’t so sure—our home that looked cozy and just right, I saw with other eyes. Instead of being charming, its age seemed a defect. It needed paint, the ceiling flaked, and the walls were dingy. The bannister leading to the landing had buckled and the wood splintered. The wardrobes in his mother’s home were undoubtedly larger than our bedroom.
“I don’t think this place will be what she expects.” And I don’t think I will be either, I thought.
“Nonsense. You’ve done wonders with it. It’s our home, pleasant, clean, comfortable—what else is needed?”
“Think of what she’s used to.”
“Remember, Mother’s gone through a war. We don’t know what she’s used to.”
“That’s true,” I said, relaxing a bit.
Erich laughed suddenly. “Of course if you mean it’s not elegant, no it isn’t.”
His lightheartedness reassured me. After all, it was ours, brought together by borrowings, gifts, and castaways. Somehow it all fit together, and the result was warm and friendly. The china couldn’t be so readily dismissed, two of the plates chipped and not all the same pattern.
Erich guessed my thoughts. “It isn’t a crime to be poor and starting out. All Austrians have a touch of schmaltz in their nature, and Mother will think it romantic.”
“It isn’t only things, Erich. It’s me. Your mother has never seen a First Nation person. Maybe she isn’t prepared. Well, I am many skin tones darker than you.”
“Once I get a good tan we’ll be the same shade. Kathy, one of your amazing attributes is that you have no idea how beautiful you are.”
“Schön?”
“Sehr schön.”
Now it was my turn to laugh at him. “I think the German language should be called schön talk. Everything with you is schön. Sehr schön, bitte schön, and danke schön. Any others?”
“Only you, Liebchen.”
ELIZABETH VON KERLL was coming by air transport, which she had somehow managed with the occupation authorities. The same skies that only four months ago had been deadly now accommodated a first trickle of traffic. Imagine looking down and seeing clouds, and, when they parted, the ocean! Soon, we were told, there would be commercial flights. The map of the world had shifted. The islands of the Pacific, so bloodily fought for, whose every inch was counted in human lives, suddenly were worthless. The war had passed over them, removing yesterday’s values. Now everywhere, everyone was making a new start. What if—But there would be no more what-ifs. I was grown up and knew how tragically meaningless they were.
Erich and I took a streetcar to Boucherville, seven miles outside the city. Our guest was coming in on the flying boat Caribou, at Imperial Airways. It was rumored they intended to expand and form a transatlantic mail service. How quickly the mindset of the country changed; this had been an embarkation point for Hudsons, Liberators, Flying Fortresses, Mitchells, and Martin Marauders.
“Suppose,” I asked, facing a fear I’d been struggling with, “suppose she wants us to go back with her to Austria?”
“We take a return flight, of course.” Then, shaking me by the shoulders, “Don’t look so stricken, Liebchen. Don’t you know that nothing, nothing could pry me out of here?” And his fingers interlaced with mine.
Just before our stop I asked in panic, “What shall I call her?”
This gave him pause. “I think Elizabeth. Elizabeth will be best.”
When I saw her I realized why. Young, blond, and beautiful, she gave no indication she had been in the air thirty-three hours with a stopover in Ireland, another in Newfoundland, and a midair refueling.
She stood still, letting crew members stream past as she took in her son. She seemed to inhale him, then inventory him, taking in the man. She came toward us smiling, allowing herself to be embraced, and then, catching sight of me, she made an instant assessment. Coming a step nearer, she clasped my hand and drew me to her.
“Kathy,” she said; and to Erich, “She’s lovely.”
Then, if I remember, they both talked at once. “And how is father—?” But he scarcely paused when she shook her head in the negative. “—And uncle?”
“They both send their love. And Dorotea and Minna.”
“And cousin Arthur?”
And so it went. Family members, friends, and relatives, all with a message for him, all wanting to be remembered. I watched his face. It was animated, flushed, and eager. His mind was back there, home, where he came from.
She hadn’t mentioned the cane he used. She knew, of course, but she didn’t mention it. They acted, both of them, as though he were exactly the same as when he’d left. But he wasn’t. He knew and I knew that he was a cripple, with all that entailed—physical limitations, need for frequent rests, pain, and pain medication. Into their mélange of greetings, endearments, nicknames, and remembrances I inserted how pleased we were to have her.
She nodded, smiled at me, and went on talking to Erich. Her English was fluent, with a trace of accent that set certain words off in a lilting manner. Her th’s tended to z’s. It was charming. Everything about her was charming. She wore a fox fur, which had probably originated here. I took in her nylons. Silk stockings were out, nylons were in. Her traveling outfit was an understated, tailored brown suit. Small diamonds were set in her ears, I knew they were diamonds because of the one in my onyx ring—they had the same shifting centers.
Once or twice she lapsed into German, but Erich answered each time in English.
Elizabeth stepped into the cab without a clue as to the hole it made in our budget. How else did one get from here to there? She was interested in the city, exclaimed at the sight of Mont-Royal, whose massive volcanic upthrust dominated the city, while the cross blessed it. Elizabeth was impressed by the well-to-do homes along its higher terraces, identifying Gothic revivals, French provincial, Tudor, and Queen Anne villas. It pleased her that there were so many parks and bridges, but in spite of an occasional French mansard roof and crenelated parapet, she thought the downtown looked gray with its massive fieldstone fronts.
“Impressive,” she said of the city, “more English than French. And the signposts, all English. I had thought of Montreal as a French city.”
“Actually,” Erich told her, “it’s cosmopolitan, bilingual, and wonderfully old.” He ordered the cabbie to drive out of our way so he could show his mother the sights.
“There seems to be a church every few blocks,” she observed approvingly.
Erich pointed out the Place d’Armes with its monument to Paul Chomedy, Sieur de Maisonneuve, founder of the city, and the great basilica of Notre Dame. Then southeast to the St. Lawrence with its immense docking facilities going on block after block. “Fifteen hundred ships at a time could load here.”
But Elizabeth was more interested in the shops on St. Catherine Street. I kept stealing sideways glances at her. She seemed too young to be Erich’s mother, hardly older than I. We came to the lower-middle-class suburb where we lived, and Elizabeth was immediately intrigued by the exterior stairs. She pronounced them quaint.
It wasn’t until she was ensconced in our best chair, with her stole hanging in my closet and a glass of sherry in her hand, that she began what she had crossed an ocean to say. It involved an acknowledgment of Erich’s condition. I will say for her that she faced it directly. �
��One would not necessarily realize—a limp is distinguished these days, the mark of a soldier. As to the cane, almost every gentleman carries a cane. You must believe me, Erich, it is not that bad. I was afraid—one sees so much in the way of disfigurement among our veterans. Actually, I am quite relieved. I’m sure your rehabilitation is due in large part to the excellent nursing care you received.” And she flashed me a brilliant smile.
I glanced at Erich. Usually, after he’d worn the prosthesis three or four hours, he would unstrap it and allow himself a period of relief. But with his mother here, he was determined to stick it out. The wound was still sensitive, and I was afraid of it becoming aggravated and inflamed. We had already gone through an ulceration, and I didn’t want to deal with that again. But I couldn’t say anything to embarrass him. Besides, seemingly he was tolerating it.
“Now tell me about Father,” he said.
She shook her head. “Your father is in failing health. The war—at first we thought you were dead. Then the terrible financial reverses. There was so much for him to handle.” She turned to me. “And now it must all be reassembled, the assets of the estate, everything, accounts in Switzerland, in the Caribbean, you’ve no idea. The bookkeeping alone is monumental. But,” she added brightly, “not to burden you. You children have your own life. I can see how good it is. I see what a lovely wife you’ve chosen, Erich. Your home, so welcoming, so comfortable. I have a warm feeling when I look at the two of you.”
When the sherry had been sipped, I suggested a rest for Elizabeth, which she was happy to take.
In this way I got Erich into our bedroom and helped him out of the prosthesis. The impacted area was inflamed, and I rubbed it with salve. This eased him, and he stretched out on the bed with a set of architectural drawings.
“Your mother is so pretty and so young.”
He agreed. “One of the few people the war hasn’t changed.”
“Tell me more about your father.”
“He doesn’t capitulate. That’s the main thing about my father. He belonged to the old Social Democratic Party. In your terms that would be the more liberal party. He didn’t change when it became convenient not to belong to it, when promotions were going to the National Socialists. And he didn’t change when it became dangerous to belong to it.
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