The Young Lions (2 page)

"American girls," she heard Frederick say, laughing. "They pretend they know how to drink."

The tears stopped slowly. Margaret felt weak and foolish and tried to ignore them, methodically brushing her teeth and putting her hair up and patting cold water on her red, stained eyes, so that in the morning, when Joseph came, she would be lively and as pretty as possible.

She undressed in the shining, clean, whitewashed room, with a thoughtful brown wood Christ hanging on a crucifix over the bed. She put out the light, opened the window and scrambled into the big bed as the wind and the moonlight came soaring in off the powdery, bright mountains. She shivered once or twice in the cold sheets, but in a moment it was warm under the piled feathers. The linen smelled like fresh laundry at home in her grandmother's house when she was a child, and the stiff white curtains whispered against the window frame. By now the accordionist was playing softly below, sad, autumn songs of love and departure, muffled and heartbreaking with so many doors between. In a little while she was asleep, her face serious and peaceful, childish and undefended in the cold air above the counterpane.

Dreams were often like that. A hand going softly over your skin. A dark, generalized body next to yours, a strange, anonymous breath against your cheek, a clasping, powerful arm, pressing you…

Then Margaret woke up.

"Be quiet," the man said, in German. "I won't harm you."

He has been drinking brandy, Margaret thought irrelevantly. I can smell it on his breath.

She lay still for a moment, staring into the man's eyes, little jets of light in the darkness of the eye-sockets. She could feel his leg thrown over hers. He was dressed and the cloth was rough and heavy and scratched her. With a sudden jerk, she threw herself to the other side of the bed and sat up, but he was very swift and powerful and pulled her down again and covered her mouth with his hand. He chuckled.

"Little animal," he said, "little quick squirrel."

She recognized the voice now. "It's only me," Frederick said.

"I am merely paying a little visit. Nothing to be frightened of." He took his hand tentatively from her mouth. "You won't scream," he whispered, still the small chuckle in his voice, as though he were being amused by a child. "There is no point in screaming. For one thing, everyone is drunk. For another, I will say that you invited me, and then maybe changed your mind. And they will believe me, because I have a reputation with the girls anyway, and you are a foreigner, besides…"

"Please go away," Margaret whispered. "Please. I won't tell anyone."

Frederick chuckled. He was a little drunk, but not as drunk as he pretended. "You are a graceful little darling girl. You are the prettiest girl who has come up here this season…"

"Why do you want me?" Margaret desperately took the cue, trying to tense her body, make it stony, so that the inquisitive hand would meet only cold, antagonistic surfaces. "There are so many others who would be delighted."

"I want you." Frederick kissed her neck with what he obviously thought was irresistible tenderness. "I have a great deal of regard for you."

"I don't want you," Margaret said. Insanely, caught there next to that huge, tough body in the dark bed, deep in the night, she felt herself worrying that her German would fail her, that she would forget vocabulary, construction, idioms, and be taken because of that schoolgirl failure. "I don't want you."

"It is always more pleasant," Frederick said, "when the person pretends in the beginning she is unwilling. It is more lady-like, more refined." She felt him sure of himself, making fun of her.

"There are many like that."

"I'll tell your mother," Margaret said. "I swear it."

Frederick laughed softly, the sound confident and easy in the quiet room. "Tell my mother," Frederick said. "Why do you think she always puts the pretty young girls in this room, with the shed under it, so it is simple to get in through the window?"

It isn't possible, Margaret thought, that little, round, cherry-faced, beaming woman, who had hung crucifixes in all the rooms, that clean, industrious, church-going… Suddenly, Margaret remembered how Mrs Langerman had looked when the singing had gripped them all in the room below, the wild, obstinate stare, the sweating, sensual face swept by the coarse music. It is possible, Margaret thought, it is, this foolish eighteen-year-old boy couldn't have made it up…

"How many times," she asked, talking swiftly, postponing the final moment as long as possible, "how many times have you climbed in here?"

He grinned and she could see the gleam of his teeth. For a moment his hand lay still as he answered, pleased with himself.

"Often enough," he said. "Now I am getting very particular. It is a hard climb, and it's slippery with the snow on the shed. They have to be very pretty, like you, before I will do it. You're so pretty," Frederick whispered, "you are so well joined together."

"I'm going to scream, I warn you."

"It will be terrible for you if you do," Frederick said. "Terrible. My mother will call you all sorts of names in front of the other guests, and will demand that you go out of her house at once, for luring her little eighteen-year-old son into your room and getting him into trouble. And your gentleman friend will come here tomorrow and the whole town will be talking about it…" Frederick 's voice was amused and confidential, "I really advise you not to scream."

Margaret closed her eyes and lay still. For a moment she had a vision of all the faces of the people at the party that evening, grinning, leering conspirators, disguised in their mountain health and cleanliness, plotting against her among themselves in their snowy fortress.

Suddenly Frederick rolled over and was on top of her. She felt smothered and lost beneath him. She felt the tears coming into her eyes and fought them back.

Her hands were free and she scratched at his eyes. She could feel the skin tearing and hear the rasping, ugly sound. Again and again, swiftly, before he could grasp her hands, she ripped at his face.

"Bitch!" Frederick grabbed her hands, held them in one great hand, hurting her wrists. He swung the other and hit her across the mouth. She felt the blood come. "Cheap little American bitch!" He was sitting astride her. She was lying rigid, staring up at him, triumphant, bloody and defiant, with the level moon lighting the scene in peaceful silver.

He hit her again, backhanded. With the taste of his knuckles, and the feel of bone against her mouth, she got a fleeting ugly whiff of the kitchen where he worked.

"If you don't go," she said clearly, although her head was dipping and whirling, "I'll kill you tomorrow. My friend and I will kill you. I promise you."

He sat above her, holding her hands in one of his. He was cut and bleeding, his long, blond hair down over his eyes, his breath coming hard as he loomed over her, glaring at her. There was a moment of silence while he stared at her. Then his eyes swung indecisively. "Aaah," he said, "I am not interested in girls who don't want me. It's not worth the trouble."

He dropped her hands, pushed her face with the heel of his hand, cruelly and hard, and got off the bed, purposely hitting her with his knee as he crossed over. He stood at the window, arranging his clothing, sucking at his torn lip. In the calm light of the moon, he looked boyish and a little pathetic, disappointed and clumsy, buttoning his clothes.

He strode across the room heavily. "I am leaving by the door," he said. "After all, I have a right."

Margaret lay absolutely still, looking up at the ceiling.

Frederick stood at the door, loath to go without some shred of victory to take with him. Margaret could feel him groping heavily in his farmboy mind for some devastating thing to say to her before leaving. "Aaah," he said, "go back to the Jews in Vienna."

He threw the door open and left without closing it. Margaret got up and quietly shut the door. She heard the heavy footsteps going down the stairs towards the kitchen, echoing and reechoing through the old wooden walls of the sleeping, winter-claimed house.

The wind had died and the room was still and cold. Margaret shivered suddenly in her creased pyjamas. She went over to the window and shut it. The moon had gone down and the night was paling, the sky and mountains dead and mysterious in the greying air.

Margaret looked at the bed. One of the sheets was torn, and there were blood spots on the pillow, dark and enigmatic, and the bed-clothes were rumpled and crushed. She dressed, shivering, her body feeling fragile and damaged, her wrist-bones aching in the cold. She got into her warmest ski-clothes, with two pairs of wool socks, and put her coat on over them. Still shivering and unwarmed, she sat in the small rocker at the window, staring out at the hills as they swam up out of the night, touched now on their pale summits by the first green light of dawn.

The green turned to rose. The light marched down until all the snow on the slopes glistened, bright with the arrival of morning. Margaret stood up and left the room, not looking at the bed. Softly she went down through the quiet house, with the last shades of night still lying in the corners and a weary smell of old celebration hanging over the lobby downstairs. She opened the heavy door and stepped out into the sleeping, white and indigo New Year.

The streets were empty. She walked aimlessly between the piled drifts on the side of the walks, feeling her lungs tender and sensitive under the impact of the thin dawn air. A door opened and a round little woman with a dustcap and apron stood there, red-cheeked and cheery. "Good morning, Fraulein," she said. "Isn't it a beautiful morning?"

Margaret glanced at her, then hurried on. The woman looked after her, her face first puzzled, then snubbed and angry, and she slammed the door loudly.

Margaret turned off the street and on to the road leading towards the hills. She walked methodically, looking at her feet, climbing slowly towards the ski-slopes, wide and empty now and glistening in the first light. She left the road and went across the packed surface towards the ski-hut, pretty, like a child's dream of Europe, with its heavy beams and low, peaked roof, crusted heavily with snow.

There was a bench in front of the hut and Margaret sank on to it, suddenly feeling drained and incapable of further effort. She stared up at the swelling, gentle slopes, curving creamily up to the high, forbidding rocks of the summit, now sharp and purple against the blue sky.

"Good morning, Miss Freemantle," a voice said beside her.

She jerked her head round. It was the ski-instructor, the slender, burned-dark young man whom she had smiled at and asked to sing when the accordionist played. Without thinking, she stood up and started away.

Diestl took a step after her. "Is anything wrong?" he asked. The voice, following her, was deep, polite and gentle. She stopped, remembering that of all the loud, shouting people the evening before, when Frederick had stood with his arm around her, braying at the top of his voice, only the ski-instructor had remained silent. She remembered the way he had looked at her when she wept, the sympathetic, shy, baffled attempt to show her that she was not alone at that moment.

She turned back to him. "I'm sorry." She even essayed a smile. "I was thinking and I suppose you frightened me."

"Are you sure nothing's the matter?" he asked. He was standing there, bareheaded, looking more boyish and more shy than he had at the party.

"Nothing." Margaret sat down. "I was just sitting here admiring your mountains."

"Perhaps you would prefer being left alone?" He even took a tentative step back.

"No," Margaret said. "Really not." She had suddenly realized that she had to talk about what had happened to someone, make some decision in her own mind about what it meant. It would be impossible to tell Joseph, and the ski-instructor invited confidence. He even looked a little like Joseph, dark and intellectual and grave. "Please stay," she said.

He stood before her, his legs slightly apart, his collar open and his hands bare, as though there were no wind and no cold. He was graceful and compact in his beautifully cut ski-clothes. His skin seemed to be naturally olive-coloured under the tan, and his blood pulsed a kind of coral-red under the clear tone of his cheeks.

The ski-instructor took out a packet of cigarettes and offered one to her. She took it and he lit it for her, deftly cupping the match against the wind, his hands firm and certain, masculine and olive-coloured close to her face as he leaned over her.

"Thank you," she said. He nodded and lighted his own cigarette and sat down next to her. They sat there, leaning against the back of the bench, their heads tilted easily back, staring through half-closed eyes at the glory of the mountain before them. The smoke curled slantwise over them and the cigarette tasted rich and heavy against Margaret's morning palate.

"How wonderful," she said.

"What?"

"The hills."

He shrugged. "The enemy," he said.

"What?" she asked.

"The enemy."

She looked at him. His eyes were slitted and his mouth was set in a harsh line. She looked back at the mountains.

"What's the matter with them?" she asked.

"Prison," he said. He moved his feet, in their handsome, strapped and buckled boots. "My prison."

"Why do you say that?" Margaret asked, surprised.

"Don't you think it's an idiotic way for a man to spend his life?" He smiled sourly. "The world is collapsing, the human race is struggling to remain alive, and I devote myself to teaching fat little girls how to slide down a hill without falling on their faces."

What a country, Margaret couldn't help thinking, amused despite herself; even the athletes have weltschmerz.

"If you feel so strongly," she said, "why don't you do something about it?" He laughed soundlessly, without pleasure.