Marjorie Morningstar (90 page)

She leaned forward and put her hand on his, restraining him from turning the key again.
“You said you had a small objective. You said you’d achieved it—”

“I think I have. I can’t be sure. In any case—” He leaned back and stared at her.
In the fading light from the pellucid sky, where several pale stars winked now, his
scar was almost invisible, and he looked very young. She could picture him at the
age of twenty-five, and it seemed to her she might have fallen in love with that ugly
young man. He said, “Well, you unquestionably consider me a crackpot anyway, so I’ll
tell you. What difference does it make? You’ve got to understand, first of all, that
I really have nothing in common with this group, I don’t sympathize with them politically
or anything, it’s strictly a practical arrangement. I fell in with them by accident.
When I first came to Germany in ’35, travelling for a chemical firm, I was still suffering
from suicidal depressions. There was an analyst living in Berlin whom I’d known in
Vienna in the old days, Dr. Blum, Jewish, supposed to be one of the top men in the
world, and I went to see him. He didn’t help me, as it turned out, I helped him. He
was trying to get out of Germany. It was easy in those days, the only question was
getting your money out too. The problem now is to get out with your skin. I carried
five thousand American dollars across the border for Dr. Blum in my inside coat pocket.
It was a cinch, the Nazis weren’t searching Americans, especially not a Nordic-looking
bastard like Herr Eden, with his Heidelberg scar.

“I can’t tell you, Margie, what it did for me, pulling off that little coup. To begin
with, it saved my life. I didn’t care at that point whether I lived or died, in fact
I had a slight preference for being dead—that’s why I’d gone to see Blum. And mind
you, I didn’t get much of a kick out of pulling Blum out—selfish frigid goat, risking
his family’s lives for the sake of a lousy five thousand dollars—Blum had, however,
three lovely grandchildren, a blond boy of five and twin girls, real angels. When
I met Blum and his family at the train in Paris, and saw those three children step
safe on French soil, something came to life in me, something that had been dead since
the accident…. Aren’t you freezing? Shall we go back? We can talk about all this in
a warm restaurant somewhere—”

Marjorie glanced toward the winking lights of Lucerne. “You won’t talk where there
are people. I’m not cold, Mike—”

“Well, Blum had friends in the same fix, and I went back a couple of more times and
did it again. I realize now what a stupid procedure that was—a tourist, even a businessman,
popping back and forth across the border like that. I’d have been picked up sure after
a couple of more trips. But one of these birds knew someone in this group, and put
me in touch with them.

“This outfit, you see, isn’t primarily interested in getting Jews out of Germany,
or even their own people, though they do that too occasionally. They have dizzy grandiose
schemes of revolt against Hitler. They keep moiling and fussing and sneaking around,
making elaborate plans, and building up arsenals, and running mimeograph machines
at night, and raising money abroad and sneaking it in, and it’s all a lot of pathetic
nonsense, for my money. But they do have a functioning apparatus, and some powerful
friends in England and America. I run certain little errands for them, errands an
American businessman can bring off with the least risk, and in return, pretty much
on a quid pro quo basis, they help me sneak out my few silly Jews… because that’s
all I’m interested in.”

Marjorie put her hand on his. He broke off, squinting at her. “What’s the matter?”

“Certain little errands, you say.”

“That’s right.”

“If you’re caught running them—what?”

“I’d undoubtedly get kicked out of Germany, for good.”

“Nothing worse?”

He said irritably, pulling away his hand, “What are you getting at? That I’m not as
good an insurance risk as a psychology teacher? I know that, but I might not be alive
at all if I’d remained a psych teacher. The Gestapo is most unlikely to get too rough
with me. They’re insane butchers, to be sure, but they turn all smiles and they sweat
pig grease as a rule at the sight of an American passport. Look, I’m scared enough,
Marjorie, it doesn’t add anything to warn me I’m not playing tennis in Central Park.
I know.”

“All I’m saying is that maybe you ought to wait before going back—”

“I’d get bored waiting.”

“That’s not a rational answer.”

“Who said I’m a rational person?” He laughed coldly. “You guessed I was Jewish. I
don’t even know if you’re right about that. My great-grandfather was a German Jew.
When he came to America he changed his name to Eden, and dropped all his connections
with Jews. Our family name—on my oath, this is true—was Einstein. No relation to
the
Einstein, but don’t you think that’s funny? The one name that’s apt to survive the
next twenty centuries wasn’t good enough for my family.

“But I guess my Jewish blood, or whatever it is, has stayed alive. Because I’ve found
a reason for existing, a satisfaction I can’t even describe, in pulling a few Jews
out of Germany. I go after the ones that, for one reason or another, the big rescue
organizations can’t or won’t budge. There’s an amazing number of them, Marjorie, Jews
by the tens of thousands, just sitting in that fiery furnace, waiting for it to cool
off. It’s their home, you see. They
won’t
go. They can’t get themselves to leave home. There are graves they can’t bear to
leave behind. They clutch childishly at straws of optimism. Well, I talk to them,
yank at them, take jewels or money out for them—anything that’ll get them moving.
They’re usually annoyed and not very grateful, but I get them out. Most of the ones
I go after have little kids. I’m happiest when there’s a kid in the picture. Who knows
which of those kids is going to be a Heine, or Disraeli, or Einstein, or Freud? Or
one greater than all of them?”

Eden sat up very straight, and was silent, peering at Marjorie. When he spoke again
his voice had a new strained timbre. “In case you have any lingering doubts that I’m
stark mad, let me ask you this, isn’t the Messiah going to be a Jew? Even the Christians
are waiting for a second coming of their Savior. He came to them the first time as
a Jew. Why should it be different the second time? He wouldn’t be self-conscious about
having a Jewish name, I should imagine, like my great-grandfather. Aren’t the times
full of signs of a new era coming?”

Eden lit a fresh cigar, and the yellow flare of the match filled his face with leaping
shadows. In the taut silence Marjorie stared at him with a feeling not far from eerie
horror, as the thought came to her that he really was more than a little mad.

He startled her by saying, “No, I’m not exactly sane, and if you want further proof
of it I’ll tell you one more thing. For three years I’ve had the unshakable conviction
that my remaining destiny in life was to save one child, or its forefather, I’m not
sure which, from destruction by Hitler—furthermore, that the death of Emily, and everything
else that’s happened to me, was part of the process necessary to forge the queer instrument
to do that queer job. You don’t have to tell me it’s a systematic fantasy, I could
write up my own case history impeccably. However, there was once an Arab stevedore
who had a systematic fantasy that he was destined to start a great religion, and now
a respectable part of the human race believes in Mohammed. Sometimes these systematic
fantasies stamp themselves on events, and change the very nature of what’s true and
what’s false.

“But take the thing in its worst light. Let’s say I’m nutty as a fruitcake—that destiny
is a primitive delusion, that nothing exists but chance. All the same in my nutty
way, don’t you think I’m doing some good? Hitler’s going into the wholesale skeleton-manufacturing
business in a year or so, you know. Jewish skeletons. Nothing can stop it. At least
I’m cutting down the number of skeletons. Especially the little skeletons. The little
skeletons with small soft bones. And entirely by accident, isn’t it more than possible
that I actually will rescue some great benefactor of mankind? They’ve got the genes
for it, these Jewish children, haven’t they? Unless I pull them out, along with their
paralyzed parents, there’s nothing in sight for them but to manure the German ground.”

He leaned close to her. The cigar glowed bright red. She could see the gleam of his
eyes, and the wrinkling furrow of his scar. “Now I’ll tell you one thing more. I have
a feeling that I’ve already done it, already rescued him. That’s the strangest part
of it. I’ve had it more and more strongly for the past six months. It comes and goes
and then comes again more strongly. I feel I’ve already gotten him out. I don’t know
who he was or when I did it, but I do have this irrefutable sense of an accomplished
mission. I can’t pay any attention to it because obviously, on a rational basis, it’s
just my horrible fear of this whole filthy business converted into a notion that would
free me from having to go back into Germany any more. It’s exactly like hysterical
blindness in a soldier. All the same, that’s what I meant when I told you back on
the
Queen Mary
that I’m coming to the end of the novel.

“I’ve never told all this to anybody else, Margie, and I don’t know why I’ve unloaded
it on you. If I’d told this crowd I work with, they’d have stopped using me long ago.
You’re probably thinking right now how you can get me quietly committed. Well? What
do you think? Do you feel like jumping out and swimming for the shore? Don’t, I’m
quite harmless.”

Marjorie looked at Eden wordlessly for a long time, her breast heaving, her mind in
a tumult. There was so much she wanted to say; but no sentences would form. She felt
helpless, trivial, baffled and, at the same time, thrilled in her deepest soul.

She did the best she could. With a single sinuous movement, she slid across the seat
to him, twined her arms around him, and kissed him. She tried to tell him with her
arms, with her body, with her silent mouth, that he must not go to Stuttgart the next
day, and that if she could keep him from going she would.

There was a flicker of response in Eden’s kiss; then a stronger response; then it
faded and he was cold. He said in a low tone, holding her gently, his cheek resting
against hers, “Okay, Marjorie. Okay.”

“Mike… Mike, you’re not very well, don’t you know that? You must know it. Don’t go
back. Not tomorrow. Wait a while, wait till you feel a little better—till you know
some more. I’ll stay in Zurich with you, if that makes any difference—”

He sat up, took her hand, and held it to his face for a moment. He moved away from
her, resting an arm along the back of the seat. “There’s something that needs doing
right away. It’s not at all dangerous, but I’m the one to do it, as it happens. It
needs the free and easy American again. Take my word for it, my nerves are better
than they’ve ever been. It’s the truth, Margie. You’ve seen me as I’ve been for years,
not at a low point or crisis, not in the least. I am what you saw on the ship, that’s
all. Most people can’t stand me, you know, I’m a jagged, panicky, supercilious, mean-tempered
son of a bitch. Yet you like me. I know it, and it’s given me some new red corpuscles.
But don’t try to come any closer, darling Marjorie, I’m pretty used up, excellent
for what I’m doing, good for nothing else—”

“Mike, listen—”

“It’s exactly so. I’m doing what I’m doing not because I’m a hero, and don’t go making
me one in your mind, whatever you do. It takes a displaced neurotic of the worst kind,
a walking ghost with no roots in the real world, to do it—”

“There are millions of neurotics not doing anything like it, Mike—”

“I know that. Therapy for me takes the form of excessively tense action, it’s a known
pattern, and that’s what makes me useful. If I find enough wild ridiculous things
like this to do, I may live to be ninety-seven, in which case I hope we’ll be doddering
old friends some day, but if I’m really coming to the end of the novel, Margie, nothing
you or I can do will add a page to it. I’ll be run over by a trolley car in Zurich
tomorrow, if nothing else—”

“For God’s sake don’t talk that way any more, Mike, I’ll start crying. It’s such damned
horrible nonsense, these premonitions—”

“I daresay. Don’t cry, dear Marjorie, whatever you do.” He took her hand, pressed
it briefly to his cheek, and dropped it. “Noel is okay. I’m sure you can tame him.
Really sure.”

“All right.”

“I’ll look for you next time I’m in the States. I hope I’ll be obliged to buy you
a wedding present.”

“Thanks, Mike.” She could hardly bring the words out of her constricted throat.

He rested his hands lightly on her shoulders, and looked earnestly into her face.
“Of all sad words of tongue or pen, the saddest are these:
it might have been
…. I’ve never felt the force of that overworked old jingle until now. You’re a little
darling, Maud Muller, a perfect darling. I’ve never seen prettier blue eyes or softer
brown hair. Your smile, in case Noel’s never mentioned it, is pure warm radiance.
It just happens that I have this date in Stuttgart tomorrow, that’s all. You’ll have
to excuse me, Marjorie…. You might kiss me once more, for good luck. Then we’re off
to deliver you to Noel.”

A minute or two later the boat was foaming full speed across the dark lake to the
lamplit shore.

Arriving back in Paris, Marjorie wondered whether the sun ever shone in that much-praised
city. It was a cold drizzly afternoon, and Paris seemed a cold drizzly place, endlessly
flat and gray, and full of dripping statues. The Arch of Triumph and the Eiffel Tower,
looming out of blue mist as she drove past them in a taxicab, gave her no thrill;
but the taxi did. The driver, a slumped old man, possibly eighty-seven or so, in a
dirty black coat and a dirtier black cap, with a drooping big yellow-stained mustache,
four or five yellow teeth, and rheumy yellow eyes, drove through the thick honking
traffic with the abandon of a drunken duke. He had the unnerving habit, whenever the
taxi seemed to be careening toward a collision, of dropping to the floor of the cab
and twisting the wheel sharply, then bobbing up to see where he was, and how he was
doing. In this fashion he mounted the sidewalk several times. Marjorie would gladly
have gotten out of the cab, but in her paralysis all French left her, including the
word for “stop.” She arrived at the Mozart Hotel covered with perspiration, and hating
Paris. The desk clerk, a fat man with hooded eyes, leered politely at her, welcoming
her back, and asked in oily English whether she wanted a double bed. It was obvious
that he considered her a travelling American whore, and was wondering whether he could
afford the price of a night with her. The room he gave her had a yellowing cracked
bath with only a trickle of rusty hot water, but the other furnishings, especially
the brass bedstead, looked so medieval that the bath by contrast seemed to clang and
shriek of modern times.