Boys and Girls Come Out to Play (11 page)

The custom of having a guest of honour, “who has some most interesting things to tell us all,” was always observed at Mrs. Morgan’s luncheons. When Willi’s head rose over the table and he gave his sharp little nod to the company, his new friends and liberals ceased to speak of the year’s first peonies,
bowed back courteously to Willi and settled back as does a rural congregation that best loves to share in singing the familiar hymns but admits the moral necessity of a solo from the pulpit. Though they might love the old ways best, they recognized the preacher’s duty to speak of the present; though they had heard one Willi or another—and sometimes had themselves been Willi—exhort them at least once a week for many years, still they tolerated the right of the zealot to pour out his heart in a provincial or Central European accent. Mrs. Morgan’s editor took out his little notebook, and a silver pencil with leads in three colours. Morgan noticed that Divver leaned his elbow well onto the table, laid his strong jaw in his hand and fixed Willi with a furrowed look. Morgan at once did the same.

No one was on guard against the fire that Willi put into his American debut. Having reached into his inside pocket and found a pencil but no paper, he thrust away from him impatiently some bread, a knife, and a glass of water, and brusquely drew an outline map of Germany on the tablecloth. A start ran around the table, drowsy faces marked with summer’s first warmth awoke instantly to a man who was prepared not merely to talk but to demonstrate. Without a pause, Willi harshly split Germany into twelve equal parts (his famous “zones”), numbered each part, and placed below each number, in decimal units to the scale of one per thousand, its zone’s approximate harvest for the normal year. He then raised his head to declaim—and saw to his pleasure that every eye in the room was centred on his little drawing, and that those who could not see it from where they sat were standing up and peering over their neighbour’s heads. Nothing like this had happened to Willi before; and so his monologue that day, though similar in the main to all its predecessors, was so impassioned as to be thrilling. In a few brilliant paragraphs, which amounted to an overture, Willi scornfully swept from
the mind’s eye of his audience any cluttered vision they had brought with them of brown-shirted marchers, the steel industry, and Wagnerian heroics, and instead unrolled before them field upon field of leafy potatoes, a tuberous carpet of flowery greenery spreading from the Baltic to the Tyrol and trod by millions of male and female peasants with smocks and hoes. On this premise he then went to work creating his massive statistical romance; he summoned the wind and the rain in their probable quantities; he made the sun to shine according to the hours for which it was liable to serve the respective zones; he infested provinces with weevils, beetles, rot and wilt, and then sped to their aid with giant sprays and destructive powders; with ruthless slashes of his pencil he rejected areas which were sure to succumb, discounted with a calm shrug those which hovered between life and death, and then swept the vast remainder into fruition. As fast as these crops could be gathered in, Willi apportioned them to their various duties—with such confidence and verve that markets, bakeries, giant alcohol-distilling factories and a host of contraptions devoted twenty-four hours a day to the liquifying, solidifying and plasticizing of root, leaf and tuber dominated the landscape not merely materially but with a richly emotional quality and a Machiavellian combination of variety of method and excruciating singleness of purpose. The picture Willi was painting was no different in its ultimate effects from any other painting of the Third Reich; it was a picture of doom for Europe, but created so splendidly that once Willi’s audience had swallowed the potato as a prime mover they were only too happy to chase it down with its heady, thrilling by-products; Divver even recognized in Willi’s oratory the great poetic twang of the bass-string of statistical science. As Willi built toward his conclusion, a new tension was added: Willi appeared all at once to be opening a loop-hole of escape; he seemed to suggest that despite all the gigantic efforts he had described, still there
would not be enough potatoes to ensure the Reich’s march to victory. At this point heavy breathing was audible at the table: Willi was imposing on his listeners a dramatic moment of uncertainty; he was appearing to be about to demolish his own tremendous conception. It was with relief that the guests fell back in their seats as Willi dramatically introduced the potatoes of Poland as the means of filling the gap between shortage and sufficiency. From there on the excitement of his narrative decreased; there remained merely the pleasure of watching a thrilling story turned on the last pages into the sentimental finale of reconciliation: the bride at the altar, a charming hint at little children not far in the future: in short, Willi said that by conquering Poland this fall the Nazis would obtain all the potatoes they wanted.

When he had spoken his last word there was a pause, and almost immediately an air of nervousness. A few of the guests looked at Willi with the well-known expression of deep respect that a person assumes when he feels sorry for somebody who is obviously honest and obviously stupid; but the rest of the guests merely frowned solemnly at the tablecloth and fingered their bread. They had been deeply stirred, but they had not yet made up their minds whether it would be safe to applaud Willi, and the most they could do was so to twist their features as
to suggest that they did have minds to make up. One thing was clear to everybody—that a potato is a ridiculous, that is to say dangerous, thing to talk about impressively; like their French colleagues, they suspected Willi’s potato of being all wrong somehow, and they had more than a suspicion that to swallow it whole would be fatal to their own dignity. On the other hand, of course … one never knew … and how beautiful all those figures had been … like a dream … They peeked furtively out from under their knitted eyebrows, first at Willi, then at the faces of their friends. The silence was embarrassing.

It became more embarrassing when Mrs. Morgan chose that moment to drift slowly into one of those trances to which most people are subject but which in her case were not only conspicuous but apt to last a good half-minute. Her assurance receded from her face, her eyes became staring, and her lips parted in a flabby way that would have given her a look of complete vacuity if there had not also been a strong impression that she was helplessly sneering, like a worn-out old whore. For some seconds the guests had the unpleasant sensation of being suspended in emptiness, an illusion that was strengthened by the fact that sunlight was pouring in from a whole side of windows. At last, at the end of the table, the principal editor cleared his throat nervously: “Aa-aa-aa, Mr. Morgenstern,” he said sonorously, “if I may say so—I hope it’s not beside the point, but I was really astounded—you were able to give us those amazingly complicated and highly fascinating figures without referring to a single note.”

There was a deep bellow of agreement. At once, the happiest smiles appeared on the double row of faces, and Mrs. Morgan, returned to consciousness abruptly, added her smile to the rest without a second’s thought. A kind of happy prattling broke out: “I could scarcely believe my ears,” cried the editor: “I was the same way,” cried someone else. “It was incredible.” “How ever did you do it?” “I have had much practice,” said Willi sadly. “I think perhaps a European university trains its students in that kind of memory-association in a way that we might well learn from,” said the editor. “I thought,” said another, “that we Americans held the field in giving figures, but we’d better bow to Mr. Morgenstern.” There was general laughter at this, but instead of bowing, the guests began to stand up and stretch their arms and legs in a satisfied way. The editor got up to speak to Mrs. Morgan, saying earnestly as he passed Willi: “Mr. Morgenstern, I hope you are going to jot down a few of the things you told us today; there were
points that I feel sure would interest our readers in a shortish article.” “Yes, I will do so,” said Willi, “though I am sorry we could not now have had some small discussion of my ideas.” “We are most grateful to you, Mr. Morgenstern,” said Mrs. Morgan, smiling firmly. “At the moment,” said the editor, “we are of course desperately pressed for space on account of the international situation.”

Divver unveiled his brows and disengaged his jaw from his palm; Morgan followed his example; they rose from the table in stately unison. Divver was about to stride from the room when he changed his mind, turned on his heel and approached Morgan. “Don’t mind my saying this will you,” he began—and Morgan was surprised to see that his new idol’s face was worried—frightened, Morgan would have said of anyone else. Divver then lowered his voice and said: “My trip to Poland; your mother knows of course, but I—ah—I’m just not saying a thing about it to anyone else right now. I won’t go into all the reasons; actually, even my wife doesn’t know,” and he laughed with an odd sort of nervousness, as though he could hardly believe his own words. “I’ll not say a thing,” said Morgan, delighted. “That’s the idea: just keep it to yourself for a—well, a week, or two, or three,” said Divver. He gave Morgan a look of deep comradeship and understanding, edged off sideways a few steps and then left the room with his usual stateliness.

*

The Cadillac had taken the last of the guests to the station. Morgan found his mother sitting on a rustic bench under the largest of the maple trees; the day had tired her and she was slowly pulling a bunch of rosemary through her hands and talking to her secretary in a low voice. When she saw her son speeding towards her, his face glowing like the sun’s, she gave a heavy sigh and looked at the ground, showing to the secretary her top of wiry, rather lifeless hair with its conflicting
tints of colour at the parting. Looking down on the stooped figure, the secretary was moved to pity, as well as to respect for her own blonde hair and for the bust that had so intense an effect on the present tutor. She didn’t know what was going on between Mrs. Morgan and her son, but she always obtained a pleasing sense of maturity and dignity by taking the mother’s side. “I think I shall go to village after all,” she said, as Morgan came up: “how about a walk, Jimmy?”

He showed at once that he was not going to be distracted from his mother by girlish sycophancy. “I walked all this morning,” he said sullenly, staring down on his mother’s bowed head as if he would drag her to her feet if need be.

“
Such
a lovely evening,” said the secretary. “My feet are just tingling to go,” she exclaimed, hopping. “Come on, Jimmy!”

“I’m not coming.”

“You old lazybones.”

“You’d better go along, Peggy,” said Mrs. Morgan, observing her son with a faint shudder.

“Such a shame; such
waste
,” said the secretary, looking into the sun and clasping her breasts.

Mother and son were left under the big tree.

“Look now, mother …”

“Jimmy, first of all let me say: there’s something on your mind and I hope very much it isn’t that Polish idea.”

“You know very well …”

“… because if it is you know my answer.”

“I saw Max again, and spoke to him.”

Mrs. Morgan started. “You’re not going to tell me you talked about going to Poland with him?”

“Not exactly. But from the way he spoke …”

“Tell me the truth, please; he didn’t again invite you to go, did he?”

“He didn’t say he wasn’t taking me.”

“Don’t evade the point. It was a joke, his asking you in the first place. You know that as well as I do. Max isn’t a very intelligent man; he’s really a reporter. Now, what d’you want, Jimmy?”

“You know what I want. He asked me to go.”

“Must you go on repeating that—
he
asked
you
to
go?
Don’t you listen when I explain that he asked no such thing?”

“It isn’t true.”

“Never mind what it is or isn’t. I’ve told you already; people would think I was mad if I let you go. I hoped that after that little man had said those things today—most sensible things—you would realize for yourself the impossibility of going. Perhaps you didn’t listen.”

“You mean all that about potatoes? What’s that got to do with my going to Poland?”

His mother groaned. “Do you never listen, Jimmy? Such a fine, intelligent man, and his words wasted on you. And you
looked
so absorbed. I suppose your mind was far away.”

They were silent for a moment, and then Morgan said suddenly:

“I’m not going to stay tied here. It’s not done any good for me, has it?”

His mother winced, and looked at her son with such reproach that he felt ashamed, and blushed. Mrs. Morgan looked down at the ground once more, and when she raised her head again she spoke patiently and persuasively. “I have been thinking things over and I agree that you should get away from here; no young man is going to stay at home with his mother. I was telling Peggy that your Uncle Sam has asked if you’d like to spend all the summer with him in Colorado, and I think on the whole that’s the best idea.”

“I’m not going to Colorado.”

“Jimmy, you are not going to Poland.”

“I am going to Poland.”

Mrs. Morgan walked into the house without another word.

Over the cold supper, the secretary tried again. Noticing that mother and son dealt with each other only in frigid politenesses, she rose to the occasion with little jokes, and gambolled off ingenuously into remarks about the joys of sunlight and summer. At last she said boldly: “I dream of Colorado, of Arizona.”

Morgan looked at his plate and said nothing. Mrs. Morgan wet her lips and wound cole-slaw on her fork. “How I wish I could go there, like you,” said the secretary. “Lucky Jimmy!”

“Oh, why don’t you stop gabbing?” shouted Morgan suddenly, glaring at her in a rage.

“Please leave the table, Jimmy,” said his mother. He did so, slamming the door behind him: the room shook.

“I’m afraid I put my foot in it,” sighed the secretary, making a sorry-baby’s mouth.

“I’m afraid you did,” said Mrs. Morgan. “And I must tell you: he was quite right. You have no business to interfere.”