Secret Father (34 page)

I looked back at the German matron, but, as if she had spent her day's quotient of empathy, she refused to meet my eyes. Slowly she closed the door, restoring the room's darkness and sealing it with the click of the lock. I made my way to my end of the room, found a chair, and sat.

From the day bed, Kit said, "Jesus H. Christ, Monty." Her voice was thick with anxiety.

"I know," I said. "Me too. And the H means hell. Where the hell is Rick?" I called him Rick, thinking of the snoops who would be listening in on us. We had to emphasize his being American.

"I'm scared," she said. "I'm really scared."

"They wouldn't hurt him, Kit. They wouldn't dare. An American? A general's son?" I could say that, couldn't I?

"People just disappear, Monty. This is the Iron Curtain we're across."

My thought was, Maybe
we've
disappeared. But saying that would have made it seem true. I said, "I feel like we've let him down."

"What can we do? We're just hanging on ourselves here."

"They want us to feel like he's on his own, you know? As if we're not in this with him."

"But we are."

"Right. Rick's being okay is why I came to Berlin."

"Me too."

"That and the debating club." I laughed quietly, and was relieved to hear her laughing, too. But then I thought, Fuck it, they never believed that debating shit.

And speaking of lies, she had told them I was her boyfriend, which brought me back to my very first question. "About Rick," I said.

"What?"

"You didn't tell me what happened between you two." A long silence. Then she said, "How can we talk about stuff with Big Brother listening?"

"Just talk, Kit. They only care about things we have nothing to do with. Talking about
our
stuff makes the point."

"So what about him?"

"You tell me."

"Have you seen that hole in his wall?" Kit asked.

"What, in his bedroom at Lindsay?" So she'd been in his bedroom. "Yes, I've seen it."

"I was in there when he did it, Monty. He punched that hole in the wall with his fist. It scared me."

"He has a temper. So do I."

She laughed. "Not like Rick you don't. You're a gentle guy, Monty. You give off gentle vibrations, it's the thing about you. Don't you know that?"

I sensed her flowing my way, but could not imagine how to meet her. "Rick," I said. "Rick is dealing with a lot of shit, Kit. You know that. His stepfather—" I stopped myself, another deflection.
Not his stepfather. Do not talk about his stepfather.

"And his
real
father," Kit said.

"What do you know about that?"

"Nothing. But he had a German father first, right? And when you think about what sets Rick off—the Eichmann trial, a Jewish university, that Jewish radical..."

"Marcuse."

"He's a Jew, right? So maybe, who the hell knows, Rick's real father, you know..."

"Killed Jews?"

"Have you ever noticed that about the Germans we meet? How none of them ever knew about the concentration camps. Do you believe that?"

"So you think Rick's problem...?"

"Is with his real father. Why the big secret about the guy? Rick's mother won't even talk about him. It makes Rick crazy.
Vergangenheitsbewaltigung
—have you heard that word?"

"That's not a word. It's a paragraph."

"'Coming to grips with the past.' It's what they say about the Eichmann trial. Rick said it about himself that day when he hit the wall with his fist."

"And it scared you."

She did not answer me.

"The sins of the father," I said.

"And the stepfather," Kit said, her voice barely above a whisper. "Rick feels guilty because of both of them. Death camps
and
Dresden."

"But that's crazy. Am I guilty if my father forecloses on widows?"

"Yeah, right. In Frankfurt, capital of the
Wirtschaftswunder,
mortgages for widows, sure."

"And you're guilty if your daddy ... Kit, what wicked things does Sergeant Carson do in a Mohammedan country? Make moonshine?"

Even in the dark, I sensed how my question opened into a room she didn't want to enter. Again she said nothing. Her great white father.

I veered. This was like sailing. "It's the point of being young, isn't it? That we get to start over?"

"The past is never dead, big guy," she said, recovering. "It isn't even past."

"Who says?"

"Billy Bob Faulkner. William to you. My daddy would kill me if he knew what Faulkner's books say."

"About colored people?"

"For one. And about how Eupheus Hines beats his old lady purple. 'Universal bones,' Monty. 'Universal bones.' That's what Faulkner calls it. The cruelty in folks. Incurable cruelty. Specially men."

The word hung in the shadowy space between us: incurable.

"I thought it was your mother who was incurable," I said. "I thought it was her disease you were writing about."

"You
did
read my damn book, didn't you?"

"One paragraph."

"Some paragraph I'll tell you what my mother's disease is—it's my father,
his
incurable cruelty."

"That's why the blood in the van got to you. You've seen blood like that before."

"In the kitchen. In the bathroom. On the porch. Always on my mama."

"I thought you said she was his Dixie Cup."

"And what do you do with a Dixie Cup when the ice cream is gone? You crush it with one hand. Haven't you seen that?

"Yes.

"Haven't you done it?

I had. The sweet sensation of the wax container crumpled around its wooden spoon. I could not say so, gentle me.

"And with the other hand, she went on, "you punch a hole in the wall. We've had fist holes in the wall in every house I've ever lived in."

"Did you explain that to Rick?"

"No."

"But it's why?" Why she wasn't his girlfriend anymore.

"Yes."

"Because of your old man."

"I get scared. I can't help it. Not of Rick. Just of, like, what I'm feeling, which isn't Rick's fault. He would never take his problem out on me, I know that. I love the guy. But he's too intense."

"Like at the border, when he tried to fight them. Jesus. When he trusted Tramm."

"You blame Rick for that?"

"Not
blame.
How could I blame him? Whatever happens next, Kit, and however much the past—I don't know—all of that is off the table as far as I'm concerned, because this is already the best damn thing I've ever done."

She took that in. Then she said, quietly again, "I could never talk to him like this."

"About your secrets?"

"Which ones?"

"That your father hits you?"

Silence.

"Right?" I pressed.

She said, "I've never told that to anyone. How did you know?"

"It's what your book is about. The feeling you're scared of."

"Whoa, what is this, ESP?"

"Writing about it as a way of saying it will never happen again."

Kit laughed. "If my daddy was here tonight, he'd have his strap out."

"Because you're behind the Iron Curtain?"

"Because it's like midnight or two
A.M.
or something and I'm in bed in a room with a boy."

I laughed. "A boy
across
the room, a boy in a chair. And anyway, your daddy wouldn't mind it being me." Not intense enough. Intense emotion—what was that line?

Kit said, "I don't know about that, him being able to read my mind and all."

"Meaning?"

"He'd know I'd be wanting y'all to come on over here."

"Us all?"

"Or do I have to come on over there?"

"No," I said. "No, you don't." But I did not move. She remained where she was, waiting. And I—I waited, too.

We remained there in the silent dark, apart from each other for a long time. At last, I knew I had to move or speak. Still, I could do neither. What was given me then were a few lines I had sometimes recited to myself while drifting into sleep but had never said aloud. I said them now.

"I am not yet wise in grief—
so this great darkness makes me small.
But if it's you..."

I stopped. Always before, "you" had been my mother. But no more.

"...make yourself fierce, break in."

"Like this?" she said, startling me with a touch on my shoulder. She had crossed to me without a sound. I could hardly make out her form. She took my hand and gestured me to my feet. Not speaking, she began to unbutton my shirt.

When I was bare-chested, I opened my arms. Like that, she was inside my embrace. To my amazement, her own skin was naked against mine, the pressure of her breasts against my chest, the fleshy firmness of her nipples.

"Jesus, Kit," I said. I started to pull away, but she held me.

"Make yourself fierce, you said."

"That was Rilke "

"It was nice."

When I lowered my face to hers, her mouth was ready. She wasn't the first girl I had kissed, or the second, but she might have been the third. I knew nothing.

We kissed again, then simply held each other. The skin on my chest had never seemed more sensitive.

I whispered, "I've never been naked with anyone."

"We aren't actually naked yet."

She was wearing underpants. When she pulled back now, it was to get at my belt buckle. My belt, in her father's hands, would be a strap.

I let her unfasten my trousers, aware of it as she brushed against my erection. She pushed my trousers down, and I sat in the chair as she began to pull them off. I stopped her. "My shoes," I said. "My braces."

She knelt and began to untie my ugly orthopedic shoes. I let her do this because I knew that when my legs were exposed, she would not be able to see them in the dark. I leaned forward to release the leather fasteners of my braces. Very quickly then, my shoes, braces, and trousers were off, and Kit once more drew me up to stand with her, both of us naked except for underpants.

Taking my weight, she led me to her bed. We lay together on top of the blanket, on our sides, facing each other. I kept my legs back, away from her. We mirrored each other, her face an inch or two from mine. I could not read what was in her eyes. We kissed. I touched one breast, brushing it lightly with the back of my hand, so tentatively.

"Bee stings," she said.

"What?"

"They're so small."

"They're beautiful."

"Compared to what?"

I laughed. "To what I've only imagined."

"And this isn't even daylight."

"Which is just as well," I said.

She moved closer to me, pressing the length of her body against mine, taking my erection against herself. I moved back against the wall.

"What?" she asked.

"This is good, Kit. Just being with you like this."

"Is enough?"

"Yes."

She pushed close to me again. She put her mouth on mine, her tongue alive in a new way. I found her breast with my hand. My other hand went around her, to her ass, pulling her to me. But matching my arousal was a mounting inhibition, which came to me as a question: Why is she doing this?

I pulled back. "Why?" I asked. "Why are you?"

"Because I just love contact sports. And this is one
you
can play."

"Oh," I said with a bitterness that surprised even me.

"Legs are not what counts in bed, big guy."

"Who's talking about legs?"

"All right. Let's talk about something else. What about grief? 'Wise in grief,' you said."

"Rilke said. And what he said was 'not yet.'"

"But it's true. It's true of you. You
are
wise in grief already. It makes you kind and caring, and you know things nobody ever told you because it's true, you
are
wise, that's exactly what you are. I've never met a boy like you."

"You feel sorry for me."

She went rigid. "Oh, Christ."

"I mean you—"

She pulled away. "Jesus H. Christ, Monty. I'm not the visiting nurse, you know."

"Nurse? Why do you say nurse?"

"Oh, come off it, big guy. You told me to get fierce. It so happens that turns out to be easy for me—with you. I like you!"

"I forgot. I'm your boyfriend."

She sat up. "What is your problem?"

"I just don't want you—" I was flat against the wall, pressing into it.

"I don't, Monty. Okay? Feel sorry. That's what you're worried about, right? If I feel sorry for anybody, it's myself. Stuck in Berlin with a
pair
of sawdust Casanovas."

"Casanova New house Ulrich "

"Rick isn't here, though. Not now. Can't we leave him out of this—you and me?"

"You brought him up."

"You, Monty. It's
you
I'm with. It's you I want to be with."

"Because of my grief."

"Which
you
brought up." I sensed her deciding to say what she was thinking. Then she did. "You know, Michael, you really ought to get over it."

"What do you mean?"

"About your legs."

"Get over it?"

"Your legs are only a problem if you let them be. We
all
have things we would change, Monty. About where we come from. About who we are. About our bodies. Look at me and my small boobs."

"Your breasts are great. I love your breasts."

"You can call them boobs, Monty, now that you've met."

"They rise up out of your ribs like mounds of life itself."

"Tits, Monty. And too small. Cut the crap."

"They're perfect."

"Unlike your legs, you mean?"

"I never discussed my legs. Not with anyone."

"That's not true. You discussed them with your mama."

"Not discussed, exactly."

"But she knew. You let her see what you felt. It wasn't that she was magic, Monty. No miracle worker. If she knew about your legs, it was because you let her know. What you had going with your mama was something you did for yourself, as much as her doing it."

"Why are you saying this?"

"Because you can do it again. You can do it with me."

"I'm working on it," I said.