The Pacific and Other Stories (30 page)

So with the place where he lived, a jumble of ancient brick in a basket weave of black iron that lay upon the tenements like fishing net sprawled to dry across a city of crates. The streets had no prospect and were tight and twisting. Only from the rooftops could you catch a glimpse of ships and blue water, and the trees, being so few and rare, were achingly beautiful.

Roger’s affection for the awkward and homely way in which he lived had not diminished, and it began to enfold him graciously even as he headed out the stadium’s main gate. It was the way his parents had lived, and the way their parents had lived, and so forth, and so on, very far back. But it would be a sin to carry on habit for its own sake, or to venerate the old merely because it is old. After all, given the expanse of the infinite, all that occurred did so within less than the duration of a spark, so everything was new and
had to be judged for what it was. Tradition was an illusion, an afterimage—comfortable, yes, but unjustifiable in itself.

The ancient ritual, the black coats, the way of speaking, the languages, the revelations and commentary, the candles, the cuisine, the marriage customs, and the fur-rimmed hats, were things as new as if they had just burst upon the world like the first rays of light. Pop. There they were. To think that they were old would be only a mistake of perspective. What made them what they were, and so different from everything else, was that each one carefully and deliberately put the things of the world in their place. Each was a declaration and vow, each the outcome of a battle in which reason strictly assigned them a post. And thus subdued, the things of the world were sweet, and the world rose, like a planet in ascension, to its proper position.

The subway, inexplicably elevated aboveground, rolled down its track, taking Roger home. It made many turns indirectly in directions different from the one in which he was headed, but the sum and subtraction of the departures would constitute the precision of the aim, and had the train gone merely in a straight line, it likely would have missed. It went noisily amid the appearance of a million gently burning lights that gradually took the place of the bright scales with which the setting sun had armored the face of every building. It went left, it went right, it lurched north, south, east, and west, but then it began its last dash toward Brooklyn like a dog following a trail.

Roger closed his eyes, and a world that once had been came alive in all its tender detail. His mother lived again in moments so taxing to him that it threatened his young heart. His father lived again. They moved in color and dimension, and as the train rushed forward the world doubled back upon itself, twisting immeasurably, confounding time. In these moments, when it was as if he were observing them, unseen, they were, somehow, observing him. He could neither explain nor understand, but he was sure they knew.

When the train rose gracefully onto the bridge and sped with immensely complex clacking over iron rails in an open box of steel held in the wind a hundred feet above the river, the sound made Roger open his eyes. There was the world clear in the night, its sparkling towers piercing a band of brilliant orange light. For a moment, and just a moment—for he had work to
do—he thought about what had happened. What had happened was but a single, lovely note in an always urgent song that he had been brought up to sing, like those before him, in protest of mortality, hope of survival, and love of God. It had happened here, in the New World, and why not? If Ruth could, among the alien corn, begin the line in Judah that led to David, then what was not possible here, and what perfection would be disallowed?

E
ACH HOUR OR SO
, the waiter who in his starched white jacket looked like a rhesus monkey left his station to sweep sand from the single tennis court. Though in the end this was less economical than erecting a barrier at the edge of the windblown dunes, the hotel was just scraping by and had neither the capital nor credit for building walls. Every effort was directed instead to making the guests happy. Perhaps their memories of the unexpected luxuries visited upon them in this splendid, sunny August would spur them to book for the next season and to tell their friends, so that the summer of 1940 might see the full occupancy that had not been achieved since 1929.

Accordingly, the hotel in the dunes east of Het Zoute sparkled through the night, steady in the wind but for the Japanese lanterns on its terraces riding the air and staying lit long after everyone had gone to bed, just so that if anyone did venture onto the beach in the dark and turned back to see the hotel, he would see something brave, beautiful, and standing alone.

The laundry worked overtime, for the greatest part of the hotel’s luxury was its cleanliness and the quality of its linens. The silver, more than one would expect at a resort with only two stars—though at the turn of the century it had had four—was finely polished and, because of the sea air, frequently. The chef was French, and very good. Flowers were brought every
day from the polders, and at the porte cochere a row of intensely colored flags snapped in the blue as in a Manet.

The more expensive places were grouped farther west along the coast. That was merely fashion, for here, east of Het Zoute, were the most wonderful dunes, ten stories high and a mile wide, and the beach was empty. But something about a hotel standing by itself at the end of a sand-colored road was forlorn, and fashion finds nothing more repellent than the forlorn. Nonetheless, in what it did not know was its last season, the hotel had by its extraordinary efforts become once again a place of luxury, and it deserved to have had its stars doubled, although not only were they not doubled, they would vanish forever after the building itself, having become a German post, would be destroyed by naval gunfire.

But now, in August of 1939, this was unforseen. At ten a.m., breakfast was still being served on the terrace, because there had been a dance the night before, and though sparsely attended it had lasted, in surprisingly balmy air, until three in the morning. The waiters were peacefully serving
complets
, ushering like dance partners their white ceramic pitchers of coffee, tea, or chocolate, and pushing carts laden with fresh croissants and brioches. Without success, the sun shone on the glass and silver jam pots as if to pale their pure reds and yellows.

There was only one record for the Victrola, and the young waiter who swept the tennis court had to play it over and over: Fred Astaire, singing “They Can’t Take That Away from Me.” But there were no protests, for everyone had seen him sing it in
Shall We Dance
, a film that, with French subtitles, was playing at the cinema in Zeebrugge, and the song itself seemed to fit the moment so perfectly as to demand repetition.

M
RS
. L
AWRENCE
and her daughter Angelica had come to the edge of the polders, by the sea, because they had heard from a neighbor how beautiful this Belgian seacoast could be, though the neighbor had formed his opinion in the trenches close by, when, in Flanders during the war, his heart being broken, he was prone to seize on even the most insignificant beauty as if it were illuminated by the world’s most golden light.

Even now in a time of peace, it was much like it was then: quiet, deserted, the wind almost constant, the waves never ceasing to greet the shore with a seismic thump and a rush of foam. Even now, twenty years later, horrendously transformed corpses disinterred by the Yser and the Lys and sent to sea would wash back up on the beaches, unidentifiable and grotesque, but not so long ago the beloved of those who, carrying on after two decades, working at a desk, tending the garden, taking a bath, bicycling through well kept streets, would never know how the waters had lifted from the mud their husband, father, or child.

On the polders back from the beach they grew carrots and potatoes, malt, barley, oats, tobacco, flax, and wheat, and a great deal else, in rich and undisturbed tranquillity. At Het Zoute you could get ten days full board and a room overlooking the sea for what you might pay in Brighton for three days in a room above a shopping street, and Mrs. Lawrence and Angelica had six days to go. Then they would get on the Ostend boat and cross the Channel, and then by train to London and cab to Brent, refreshed for the year. It couldn’t have been better.

“How do they make such magnificent croissants?” Angelica asked. Of a perfect figure at nineteen, she could eat as much as she wished and never show it, and with as much blood-red jam.

“It’s the butter,” her mother answered. “They have better butter than we do.”

“Why can’t we import their butter, then?”

“It’s the water.”

“Whatever it is,” Angelica said, “I like it.”

Suddenly, Mrs. Lawrence, whose face was long and built like a camel’s, went absolutely quiet. Her daughter felt the change.

“Do you know who that is?” Mrs. Lawrence asked with delighted excitement.

“Who what is?”

“The man,” Mrs. Lawrence said in an undertone and, ventriloquist-style, without moving her lips, “to your right. Don’t stare. Just move your eyes.”

“Him?”

“Yes.”

“Who?”

“Sidney Balbion.”

“Who’s that?”

“Have you never heard of Sidney Balbion?” the mother asked. The question sounded like a lyric out of Gilbert and Sullivan.

“Of course not. Who the hell is Sidney Balbion?”

“He’s like Harry Lauder, although not as big, of course, but he’s very good. He’s quite good.”

“Music hall?”

“Yes,” said the mother. “He was most famous during the war.”

“That was more than twenty years ago. That was before I was born.”

“And from time to time he would be billed in London, at the top of the bill. Well, if not at the top of the bill, then second or third, and if not in London then in Slough, where I saw him once.”

“What songs does he sing?”

“Lots. Wonderful songs.”

“Like what?”

“There were so many. I can’t think of them.”

“What about just one?”

“‘Laura O’Banion’? ‘Lara O’Banion’? ‘Lucy O’Banion’?”

“I’m sure that was a real toe tapper.”

“No no, he was good, really. He entertained the troops. Your father saw him after the Somme. He used to dance with
two
canes. That was his … trademark. Yes.”

Sidney Balbion, a man of about sixty, simultaneously closed his eyes and lifted his face to the sun as it came into the clear between the entangled white clouds over the sea. He was tall and, for a man of his age, unfattened. The hair that was left to him in a bathtub ring around the side of his head was jet black, as were his large, rich eyes, his beetled eyebrows, and his heavy beard, which he had to shave twice daily. His teeth were as white as new piano keys, his nose excelled in prominence, and his forehead exaggerated the contrast of his features in a way that could easily be discerned from far in the back of even a major theater.

He had the air of someone who once had been frequently recognized and
who, though now hardly recognized at all, was prepared to be charming and responsive to anyone and anything—even a crossing gate, a door slammed in his face, or a shop girl who thought he was an animal cruelty inspector.

“I’d like to talk to him,” Mrs. Lawrence said.

“Why don’t you? He’s not doing anything.”

“He’s sleeping.”

“No he’s not. He was reading his paper, and when the clouds parted he turned his face to the sun.”

“He’s in his bathing costume.”

“He’s wearing a robe.”

“It wouldn’t be right. Oh, look, that man just sat down. He’s an Englishman. You can tell. They’re talking. I’d be interrupting them.”

“Who cares?” the daughter asked.

“But I tell you what we can do: we can sit behind him and listen to what he says. He won’t even know we’re there.”

“And that would be right?”

“He’s famous. We won’t tell.”

“He’s not famous, and you will tell. You’ll tell everyone.”

“
I
want to know. That’s the point,” said Mrs. Lawrence, who then gathered her things, crossed the terrace undetected, and slipped into a chair directly behind Sidney Balbion’s, there to listen and knit. She was soon joined by her daughter, who tried to read a newspaper in German and had to give up after the first paragraph, which was also the first sentence. And there they sat and listened to the other man and to Sidney Balbion, who once had sung for the king.

“H
AVE YOU HEARD
anything from the Farkases?”

“I don’t hear anything from the Farkases, Nigel, except what comes through their solicitor. It costs a great deal of money to hear from them, and as it’s always a demand, a threat, or an accusation, the more I don’t hear from them the better.”

“Even Herman? Herman’s the good one, isn’t he, and Willi’s the bad one?”

“No, Herman’s the bad one, and Willi’s the bad one. There’s no difference
between the two. Herman likes to pretend that he’s a decent chap, but he isn’t.”

“Herman’s the one who met Hitler, isn’t he, not Willi?”

“Nigel,” Sidney Balbion said, with the beginnings of impatience, “neither of them has met Hitler. Herman claims to have met Hitler but never has. Willi makes no claim about Hitler, as far as I know.”

“Why didn’t you just keep your mouth shut about Hitler, Sidney? You’ve got to learn to be more diplomatic.”

“To the contrary, Nigel. I’m an entertainer. I make my stock-in-trade the truth. Oh yes, everyone thinks he knows that nothing we do is real or true, but that’s the point, you see, that’s how we convey the truth, by letting it ride under the belly of the ram. I didn’t make speeches. I spoofed him. It was better.”

“You killed your career, that’s what you did.”

“What does it matter? Hitler will pull the whole world into war, once again. In light of that, what does the career of one music-hall singer mean?”

“It means a lot to you, Sidney. And if you’re right you can go back to entertaining the troops.”

As the waves broke sharply, Sidney Balbion looked at his friend askance, hesitated, and then said, in the most evenly delivered lines, “I already have entertained the troops. I am now forgotten enough so that I would not again be asked to entertain the troops. And I would not abstain, merely to put myself in a position to entertain the troops, from trying to forestall a world war.”