Evergreen (39 page)

“Iris is far from haughty. It would be better for her if she could be, just a trifle.” Aristocrats. Joseph used to call her his queen when she was a child. Anna sighed.

“She looks more like my mother than anyone,” Paul continued.

“Yes, but your mother had style and confidence. I haven’t given them to Iris.”

“Maybe confidence is something that can’t be given, Anna.”

“I think it can. But—I’ve never been at ease with her. I told you that once.”

“What does—he think?”

“Ah, Joseph thinks the sun rises and sets in Iris! He can’t see that there’s anything lacking at all. If ever a man adored a daughter—” She stopped abruptly.

Paul started the car again and they drove on through
wider fields and more scattered villages into a calm countryside.

“I wish I could see her,” he said. “A part of myself is alive, walking through the world with thoughts and feelings perhaps like my own—and I don’t know her.” And when Anna made no comment he went on, “When you walked away, that day I learned the truth about her, I sat there on the bench until dark. I had no strength at all. I remember trying to sort my feelings out, what I was supposed to feel and what I actually did feel.”

“And have you sorted them out?”

“No, not even now. What can a man feel about a—a biological accident? Can I love her, when I’ve only seen her once for five minutes?” he asked bitterly. “And still, when I think what a miracle it is that she is made out of you and me, I do love her.… Oh, Anna! I’ve dreamed so of a message from you! ‘I’ve changed my mind,’ it will say. But it never comes.”

“Please,” Anna whispered.

He glanced at her. “All right, no more. You’ve had enough to think about. I want this to be a day without problems for you, and no pressure.”

They stopped on the single street of a tidy village: salt-box houses under maples, a white board church and belfry, bow-front shop windows displaying books, tweeds and imported foods.

“Pleasant, isn’t it?” Paul remarked. “An artificial enclave in a sooty world, very privileged, very unreal. And, to be honest, I enjoy it. At least, for a couple of months in the summer, I do.”

There were few cars or people on the street. Obviously the village was three-quarters asleep and would not wake up again until Memorial Day.

“Come, well get ourselves something to eat before we go out to the place.”

The food shop shone like a jeweler’s. Paul took a wicker hamper, filled it with quick decisiveness and carried it to the counter.

“You’ve enough there for six people!” Anna protested, for he had bought cold meats and cheese, crackers, cake, fruit, tinned artichokes, a little jar of caviar, a bottle of wine and a long French bread.

“You’ll eat. My guess is that you haven’t been eating very well.”

“That’s true,” she admitted. “I haven’t been hungry.”

“This air will make you hungry, I promise.”

From the end of the street a blacktop road led past comfortable houses and, between clumps of woods, quick glimpses of the slate-colored sea. Then came a dirt lane; brittle, brown mulleins and milkweed stalks stood tall on either side of it. The car bumped along for a quarter of a mile before Paul stopped.

“Here we are,” he said.

A little house of weathered boards shone silver in the vast light from the ocean that crashed only a few yards from its front door. A low fence, to which still clung dead sticks of last summer’s roses, kept the wild marsh grass from intruding on the yard.

“How lovely!” Anna cried. “It must be very, very old!”

“No, although this part of the island was settled in the seventeenth century and there are some genuine survivors left. But this is just a skillful copy.”

“Oh, lovely,” Anna repeated.

It was spare and simple, with rag rugs on a polished floor, a cavernous, blackened fireplace, country furniture and not too much of it. Dried flowers stood in a brass bucket on the mantel.

Paul ran a finger over the mantel. “Clean,” he announced. “I’ve a tiptop caretaker. Wait, I’ll get more heat up in a minute.” He flipped the thermostat switch and a low rumble rose immediately from the cellar.

“We’re well equipped. It can be chilly out here in late August. Come, let’s go walking till the house warms up. You’ll want to wrap the scarf around your head because the wind’s fierce on the beach.”

The tide was coming in. It raced up the hard sand to its
appointed mark and raced out again. It boomed and thundered at the breakwater, where clouds and mists of spray obscured the view that elsewhere lay clear to the gray horizon. Every few minutes a listless sun slid behind the clouds and as quickly slid back. The wind tore savagely at Anna’s scarf. It drowned their voices so that they had to shout at one another to be heard, and so they walked together without speaking. A tern plummeted into the sea for a fish, its forked tail tipping toward the sky as its head went under water. Herring gulls cried their wild cries. In the marsh at the end of the beach, wood ducks, black ducks and pintails quacked and scuttled as Anna and Paul drew near.

There was no one in sight. At the far end of the marsh Paul stretched his arm toward the point where, past acres of sedge, a rambling wooden structure faced the sea.

“The inn,” he shouted. “Great seafood! One of the best vacation hotels in the world!”

Joseph would scorn a place like that—old, ramshackle and remote. Why did she always think of what Joseph would think? Even now?

Back at the cottage they rubbed their hands in the welcome warmth. “But we need a fire for extra,” Paul said.

In a few minutes he had got one started. From newspaper to kindling wood to a great cedar log the flame spread, fluttering, swaying, stretching its filaments of orange, of scarlet and white-gold. Anna watched while Paul fanned and poked.

“I’m entranced,” she said slowly. “I feel as if I’d traveled a thousand miles since this morning!”

Paul rose from his knees and straightened up. “This place suits you, Anna. Or, better yet, I see you in some Elizabethan country house, coming down the steps to the garden.” He made a sweeping, intentionally romantic gesture. “Or else in a white Spanish villa with a red-tiled floor and a fountain in the courtyard. I don’t see you in an apartment house on New York’s West Side.”

“Nevertheless,” she said quietly, “that’s where I live.”

“Well, you oughtn’t to! When I first knew you I used to
think, There’s a woman for whom beautiful things were meant to be, diamonds and—’”

“I had a diamond, a huge one. I never wanted it. Joseph had to pawn it. I told him to sell it but he wouldn’t; he plans to get it back with the first money he can spare, he says. I don’t know why it should matter so much to him that I wear a diamond,” she mused.

“But I do know,” Paul said harshly. He frowned. Then his voice turned gentle. “Let’s move the little table nearer the fire and have some lunch.”

“You see,” he exclaimed a while later, when Anna had emptied her plate, “the air did give you an appetite!” She admitted that it had and he added, “You’ve lost a lot of weight, haven’t you?”

“I guess so. I haven’t really been paying attention. But you’re thinner, too.”

“I’m working very hard,” he answered briefly.

He lit a cigarette, making much of the small ritual and prolonging it. Anna sensed that his thoughts had for the moment left the room where they were. Then he shook his head, as though he were trying to rid himself of some troubling reflection, and spoke again.

“About Iris—you must see that she learns something practical, not just humanities, some Latin, some madrigals and a course in nineteenth-century drama.”

“You sound almost scornful!”

“Not at all. Those are all fascinating subjects. But one must also be prepared to earn a livelihood in the world.”

“Joseph will take care of her,” Anna replied defensively.

“That’s not what I mean. There’s also the question of self-respect. It’s bad to have to take from others all your life, especially if you think as little of yourself to begin with as you say Iris does.”

Anna hadn’t thought of it that way. One expected a girl to get married; every girl, any girl. Moreover, it struck her that she hadn’t given very much thought to Iris anyway during these past few years of Maury’s troubles and death.

“I do see,” she said now. “Yes, you’re right. Well, she’s
taking some education courses, so she will be able to teach.”

“Ah, well, that’s all right, then.”

She was not accustomed to having a man take charge like this, analyzing and planning. Joseph had never—yes, yes, she corrected herself, for Maury he had! Maury’s homework, Maury’s religious school—she recalled the battles over the latter—and Maury’s law school which he hadn’t entered, all had been part of his father’s ambition for him. But for Iris there had been nothing of the sort, nothing but a cherishing, blind, protective love.

Paul had risen to clear the things away. When Anna moved to help, he waved her back. “No, today you’re my guest. Sit there.”

But she stood up to walk restlessly about the room, and stopped before a dusky antique mirror between the windows. Something in her own posture now reminded her of the woman in that painting which Paul had sent: the same thin face; the head top-heavy with dark red hair, its windblown wisps loose on the long neck; the quietude which could be read either as tranquillity or melancholy, as one chose.

When Paul was ready they sat down on the rug before the fire. They glanced at each other and then quickly looked away, as strangers do who have just been introduced and are then left alone together.

Anna searched for a way to break the sudden silence between them.

“And are you going to stay, now that you’re home?”

“No, I shall be in London until the war comes, and it’s going to come soon, you can count on that. Then I’ll have to get out.”

She was puzzled. “But your business, your bank is here.”

“I’m not on bank business there.”

She understood that she was to ask no more and waited. He poked at the fire, unnecessarily, for a fountain of sparks gushed up. Some fell on the rug. He beat them out, then looked at Anna.

“Oh, why shouldn’t I tell you? It’s this: I have been making trips into Germany to rescue some of our people from the concentration camps and prisons. First we raise funds, and then we make contacts. For money, you see, these Nazi thugs will do anything. The trouble is, there isn’t enough money to save more than a very few here and there, the lucky ones whom we happen to hear about.”

“That’s what you meant when you said you were working hard?”

“Yes. I’ll tell you something: it tears the heart out of you. When you know that what you’re doing is only a drop in the bucket, and when you see some of the survivors—I met a man at the French border who had been released. One eye was gone and every tooth in his mouth had been knocked out. A professor of bacteriology he was, or had been. What’s left of him will never be fit to do his work again.”

Anna considered. “You yourself go into Germany? But that’s dreadfully dangerous, isn’t it?”

“I won’t say it isn’t. I’m an American citizen and that’s a great protection, but also I’m a Jew, so one never knows. People can disappear there swiftly and secretly. The American embassy wouldn’t be able to prove a thing.”

“Where will it all end, in heaven’s name?”

“Perhaps heaven knows. I surely don’t. But we have to try. We’re also working in Palestine. The British are trying to keep us out but it will be the only haven for many and so there’s a giant’s work to be done there, too. Only that—I’m sorry—that I cannot talk about.”

“I have a very general idea of what may be going on. I know that Joseph sent a check last week, money he couldn’t spare, but he sent it anyway.… Paul, don’t get killed there.”

He smiled. “I shall certainly try not to. But someone has to do the dangerous jobs, and a man like myself who has no family to care for, has plenty of money and is young enough to have the energy—such a man has an obligation,” he concluded simply.

Anna’s eyes filled with tears and she turned her head away. But he had seen. “Anna, what is it?”

“You’ll think, you’ll think I have nothing but troubles! It’s almost unreal, the things that have happened in my family …”

“Tell me, what is it?”

“My brother in Vienna. He and his wife and children, all of them died in Dachau.” She put her head in her hands.

Paul stroked her hair. “You’ve had too much. My God, it isn’t fair.”

The hollow of his shoulder was so firm, the wool rough on her cheek as she murmured, “Like sleepwalkers we are, walking the edge of a cliff. I’ve been so frightened since we lost Maury. I keep thinking, although I try so much to be reasonable, still I keep thinking: What terrible thing is going to happen next?”

“It’s all thrown dice, my darling Anna. The odds are that you’ve had everything thrown at once, and after this there’ll be no more.”

Turning her face, he kissed away a few tears on her lashes, kissed her wet cheeks, found her mouth and held to it.

It was warmth and balm; his strength was comfort and ease. With a little cry, she clasped him closer and the grieving soreness ebbed from her chest. After a while she lay back in the firelight as, with quick and gentle purpose, he drew off her dress. For a moment she was aware of her own hand stretched toward the blaze, its fingers curled, translucent in the brightness. She saw his luminous eyes before closing her own. Then she was not aware of anything at all but hunger and demanding need, a clamor for pure assuagement and a wish to prolong the marvel forever.…

A long, sweet time later came a fine calm while his arms still held her and, finally, the soft flow of sleep.

*  *  *

Paul sat on the floor beside her, anxiously scanning her face. “I was afraid you would be conscience-stricken again.”

She blinked. “No, strangely enough.”

“Then what were you thinking of before you opened your eyes?”

“I just woke up.”

“You’ve been awake for a minute or two. Your eyelids were moving.”

So sharp he was! You could never hide anything from this man. “All right. I was remembering how I used to think of that other time, and wonder whether it had really been like that or whether I had only been imagining it.”