In the King's Arms (15 page)

“Oh, I’ve really missed you!” blurted Lily.

“You’re an imbecile. So where was I? Oh, yes, the Princeling. I’m sure you’ll find that topic far more stimulating than the one about how you missed me.”

“I did miss you, Peter.”

“O.K., you souse. I believe you. Now let me finish my story. Finally, my darling located Julian in The King’s Arms, and brought him tumbling home.”

“Babbling and sobbing,” laughed Sabina, her mouth wide open. Lily remembered those strong white horse-teeth of hers. If she’d ever had a crush on Julian, she’d gotten over it. She seemed on top of the world now. While Sabina filled the room with the sounds of hilarity, Lily caught a look at Peter’s face. It was lonely and sad. He saw her looking, and quickly turned away. When he faced her again, he was cool again. Breezy.

“You were very good tonight, Peter. I saw your final performance.”

So that was why Julian had run out, he thought.

“Oh, did you? How very Christian!” An old joke.

“It was great, Peter. You have a lot of talent. And you finally got a starring role! I couldn’t believe it!”

“Finally. I suppose it’s at least partly because I let Fanning stick a vibrating dildo up my arse. Eight feet long and ticking like a Geiger counter.”

“No, really, Peter. You were wonderful. I had chills. Did your father ever show up?”

“Oh,” he sighed, and turned it into a weak little laugh. “My father. Very preoccupied. Perhaps he doesn’t fancy this particular little play. Reminds him of his long-forgotten paternity. Or perhaps he doesn’t fancy this particular son of his. He’s all gung ho to see
Julian
in a play, isn’t he, Sabina? Yes, he is. Real chip off the old sod’s block, and recently discovered by the great Fanning as well. Apparently she thinks he has what Dad has: what they call ‘sha-reees-mah.’ Well, sod him and sod all the witches who fall for him.

“We all have our little idiosyncratic likes and dislikes, you see. I, for instance, don’t like you very much. For example.”

He had grown depressed and angry at the mention of his father. Lily understood. She knew Peter would always like her—here he was, sharing his insecurities. She looked over at Julian: was he listening to their conversation? He looked dead to the world, still.

“Peter,” she said, “can I wake him?” Peter shrugged. She touched Julian’s face and he grimaced, pushed her hand away, and loudly smacking his lips, turned over. His skin was very hot.

“Anyway, now we can be sure he’ll be here for my next play. Dad, I mean. He’s weak for Shakespeare. It’s
Tempest
. Next term. Eighth week. I’m playing Prospero. Sabina’s been cast as well. She’ll be Miranda. It’s sort of sweet having my nubile Nubian cast as the fruit of my loins. Such as they are. Shelagh thinks of every little twist!” After a moment he added, casually, “And Julian’s got Caliban, the beast-man. It’s a showy role of course, and amateurs fake it beautifully. And who do you think counseled him for his audition?”

“It’s my favorite play, Peter. I practically know it by heart. I did Ariel once. In high school.”

“Please,” said Peter, pressing his forehead with the heels of both hands. “Please don’t bore me.”

He went over to his liquor collection and poured himself another drink.

“
She
nearly got Ariel,” he said, gesturing at Sabina, “but someone said her teats were too pendulous for androgyny. Do you agree or disagree?”

“I totally agree.” said Lily. Sabina looked her challengingly in the eye.

Lily took a good look at her. She wore a flamingo sarong and ankle-straps. Her thighs were strong and long; she had a lush, fat bottom. Her thick hair was made for tossing from side to side in ecstasy. Sexy as ever; sexy as hell. She gave limits to Peter’s effeminate moue: he seemed to stop short and collect virile tension around her rolling flanks. Sabina sat on the edge of the bed upon which Julian lay. She looked like a lioness.

“Peter, I came to apologize to you. For everything I did. For upsetting you over Julian. For . . .”

“Yes, right. I understand.
Tout comprendre c’est tout pardonner
. And I do understand. I understand the meaning of it all, now that Sabina and I are connubial Olympians. I can only fault your taste, darling. Why do all you women surrender to such gaudy lures? Black hair and blue eyes. A broad back. Long torso. Strong thighs.

“Look at your lover now. Soused. Wept for a good incoherent hour, spoke gibberish about love, I think it was, then dropped like a shit-ball. I just pray he doesn’t vomit on my shantung.”

“Peter,” she said. “I’m sorry about what happened that night. It was an awful, awful night. I’m sorry Timmy had to suffer because of my carelessness. If I could erase it all, I would. I wish it had been me that had fallen in the snow. I can’t tell you how ashamed I feel when I think of how the baby suffered out there ‘til we found him.”

He turned away, pulled open a desk-drawer and fished out his cigarette case. He took out a cigarette; his hand shook as he lit it. “Well, look. Mum thinks you’re a slag. Arch thinks you’re the Antichrist. I don’t think Timothy includes you in his little prayers at night. But I will always care for you. Strangely enough. Julian told me how it all happened. Look, it’s all right.”

She had suddenly started crying. He put his arms around her.

“Do you know what?” she said. “I haven’t had a period in two months.”

“You’re pregnant?”

She nodded. Sabina gave a shriek that opened one of Julian’s unconscious eyes for an instant, as though the eye itself had shrieked. Like a train whistle in the blind night. Peter did not immediately react.

“Are you sure?” he said lamely.

She nodded her head.

“I mean do you—are you actually going to have it?”

“Don’t you think I ought to? I mean it’s going to be some baby. Julian and I have pretty interesting sets of genes.” She looked at Julian; so did Peter.

“Does
he
happen to know about your grand plans?”

“No, I’m not telling him until I’m ready.”

“When . . .er . . . do you think that’ll be, Lily?”

“After, after Passover. After Easter vac,” she amended. “I’ll see my parents, and think it over, and and maybe I’ll write to him.

“I need to see them, you know,” she persisted, though he didn’t contradict her. “They love me more than he ever could, and only they can help me.”

But even as she said these words she knew they couldn’t help her out of this. They had risen to the Holocaust, but it had made them shy of hard, sudden twists of fortune. They would be stricken by the news; they would treat it like one more sighing burden. Mobilizing an old sadness, Josef would move tentatively; Gretta, warily. They would be her children as much as she their child. But there was the healthy, new life inside her to protect, too.

She nervously smoothed her round little stomach. It connected in her mind with the Passover feast, with the Matzoh-wafers. Every year, Josef explained that it was the poor bread that had sustained the Jews thousands of years ago, as they wandered through the wilderness. But one year, Gretta had said, “And the pious Germans wouldn’t give a Jew a piece of Matzoh this big in the camps on Passover!” She had made a small tight circle in the air with angry fingers. Lily thought guiltily of the Communion wafer she had swallowed; that was the size of it. Small and round. But couldn’t hope be small and round?

“Lily, what’s wrong, you look dreadful.”

Peter’s voice was gentle as her father’s now.

“Look here. You don’t sound very sensible at all to me. Are you sure you’ve thought about this?”

“Oh, I’ve thought and thought,” she said, vaguely trying to picture getting on the plane. She couldn’t imagine flying with this awesome weight in her.

“Really,” she said, “this is the very best thing. I feel too weak here, things don’t go the way I plan, and . . .” Her voice broke off inconclusively.

“Peter, what choice do I have?”

“Look, Sabina,” said Peter, “will you leave us alone for a minute? Take a walk in the quad or something. Thanks. There’s a girl.”

Sabina left slowly, and with a poor grace.

“Lily,” he said, “I am very, very fond of you. You are the dearest thing, with your serious face and silly ideas. And Julian loves you.”

He saw a tremor in her face.

“You take my word for it. My word of honor. He loves you. Even when he doesn’t seem to.

“But we’ve all been shaken, and miserable, and things have gone
a bit funny between us. I don’t even know what’s caused it. I know I shouted some very cruel things at you that night. I was a bit over the top, as Miss Fanning likes to say. I was a bit hysterical about Timmy. It’s funny, maybe I love the little half-breed after all.

“It must be blood, Lily. His mother is my mother, and Julian’s mother. Our mother’s son. I couldn’t stand to see him lying there like that. As though he were dead. I thought he was. It honestly frightened me. We’re all brothers, and I felt it that night very strongly. But Lily, I don’t blame you any more than I blame Julian. It was an accident. And if it was more—if it was a crime of passion—then I actually envy you for that passion. It’s a rare thing. I’ve never felt it.

“Do you understand, though, why we’ve been so standoffish? It’s a matter of blood. A silly concept, I know. But it’s passed. Timothy’s all right. It’s passed.”

She said nothing. She was thinking: no, it hasn’t passed. The baby we’re talking about, I’m carrying him. Your blood and mine are mingled; I walk around with it, and it grows strong. He’s mine. And Julian’s. And Timothy’s. And your mother’s. And still mine. And this life will be a Jewish life, because this time, I’m behind the “silly concept.” I’m the one who’s closing ranks.

Once, staring at the lamb-shank on the Passover plate, she’d asked: “Why do they call Christ the Paschal lamb?”

“Well, Lily,” her father had answered, “You know that Jesus was Jewish. Fine. He had a Passover Seder, in Israel, where we come from. This was just before he died. So there was before him Matzoh, and bitter herbs, and also the Paschal lamb. Now why they call him a lamb is another story. Because to them his death created another Torah, you know, Lily. The New Testament.

“So they took the ‘Old’ Testament, our Torah that was handed
down to Moses at Mount Sinai, and they decided that it was useless, like an old father you don’t need anymore. And they stuck it in the corner, disgraced and forgotten. But Lily, the old person was not dead. The old person was endowed with eternal life. Because the Jews did not forget him.”

“For our loyalty we have been tortured for thousands of years,” Gretta had said. “In the name of that gentle lamb.”

Looking now at Peter’s lashless, puzzled eyes, Lily felt murderous. She was glad that Julian couldn’t hear them talking about “Us” and “Them.” She hated that xenophobic, bloody-minded feeling; she hated herself for sharing it. Personal love can be broken on such inquisitions. And broken, disgraced, like the “old person” her father had spoken of, how could it be remembered forever?

But then she looked over at the beautiful Julian. She had never seen a more miraculous creature of nature. He had thought her lovable. He had loved her in the best way that he knew, to the limit that he could. His body, too, had fit hers perfectly. They had made real love, in wild belief. His seed had taken on life inside her. She had made a home for him there. Why didn’t this change anything?

A lovely, dreaming boy she had to leave. For good. She bent over and imprinted a kiss on his brow.

Peter came over to her. He held her quaking body in his arms. She steadied herself.

“Good-bye, Lily.”

He waved at the door. She heard him shut it behind her. Then there was silence, and a hollowness, and a burning as she quickly walked the stairs.

 

 

W
ALKING BACK TO HER ROOM on the cobblestoned path, in the dark of the night, the young girl called up Peter’s voice in her head: Goodbye, Lily. Goodbye, Lily. Good-bye, Goodbye.

Her own name lilted strangely in her ears that night, as she walked through the winding streets.

Lilililililily.

A funny name. Tonight she hardly knew it. Perhaps it had never, really, been hers. Like many other Jewish children, Lily Taub had been named after a dead person, and not only a dead person, but a martyr.

Was it some dead soul, replacing Peter’s voice in Lily’s ear?

Lily’s mother had been lucky in concentration camp. An opening (death) had occurred among the kitchen workers and she had been selected to fill it. What a sign from above! This meant that she would no longer be exposed to the cold, that the work itself would be far less exhausting, and that most of all she would be sure of having enough to eat! As soon as the news got around that Gretta was going to work with food, people treated her with special respect. She was now powerful.

The soup they gave her to ladle out was thin. At the bottom of the bucket, though, were solid bits. A piece of potato could save a
life; so could a couple of beans. The question was (the question was visible on the starving faces): would she ladle from the thick bottom or from the watery top? How could she stand to look at those faces behind their trembling, upraised bowls? Almost expiring, but for the quickening desperation when her ladle began to dip. How they glittered, those eyes; how they flattered and cursed her, those mouths.

Eventually, Gretta ladled mechanically, feeling only a growing fatigue in her arm as, cooperatively, the bucket began to empty. She poured and poured as supplicants passed, a weary priest among whispers and wails.

Gretta’s closest friend at the camp was called Lili. She had been a startling beauty when she first arrived, with a thick mane of hair and dazzling eyes. She stood, hands on hips, and stared at the Nazis very calmly. Her gaze remained calm as her hair was shaved away, exposing a great naked head. She held it aloft, as though it were an Egyptian bronze.