Chapter 55 War Brides
WAR brIDES
It was evening by the time I finished my tale. Time for dinner, but I couldn’t manage dinner. We’d come back up to my suite after lunch, and I was in the most comfortable chair, but all the same, I was hit by a wall of fatigue from talking all day. Or maybe that was loss.
“Oma,” Alix said, “are you all right?”
“Yes,” I said. “Merely—merely tired. I believe I’ll have dinner in the suite tonight.”
“Cool,” Ashleigh said. “We can order it, and you can tell us about the wedding and all that.”
“I fear that must wait until tomorrow,” I said.
“Oh,” Ashleigh said. “Well, at least the story’s pretty much done.”
“Very much not so,” I said. “I’ll tell you tomorrow.”
“As long as we have time,” Ashleigh said. “Tomorrow night’s the opera, and then that’s it, you’re gone, so …”
Sebastian rose. “No more talking,” he said. “Let’s go. Can I order you that platter again, Marguerite? And a pot of tea?”
He’s really so very much like Joe.
Friday morning, and another breakfast. I would miss the bread most of all once I went home, I thought, spreading Quark over a moist, dense, coffee-colored slice of true German Pumpernickel.
The same kind I’d baked during the war, made of nothing but ground rye berries, salt, and water.
“Americans don’t appreciate this bread,” I told the others.
“Possibly because they don’t eat Quark. Pumpernickel spread with Quark, thinly sliced cucumbers, smoked salmon, and a bit of chopped dill—now, this is breakfast.”
Ben said, “OK, I’m going for it. I ate sour meat already, right?”
I smiled at him. “You’ve been very adventurous, yes. Open-mindedness is a fine quality.”
“Thanks,” Ben said. “But it’s mostly just that I like food.” And I laughed.
Ashleigh was all but hopping up and down in her eagerness to get going again. She had her phone in her hand, too. I asked, “How are the bites coming along? And I really cannot recount more, you know, until I finish my breakfast. Nobody wants to see an old woman talking with food in her mouth.”
“We’re so viral,” she said happily. “Ben and I were up until one again editing, and I’ve got enough to keep going for two weeks.
One a day is better, so you keep people coming back.
And having the whole thing up so new people can binge-watch, of course.
After this is done, I want to do more stuff about World War II, but not the super sad parts. ”
I said dryly, “You’ll be a bit starved for material,” and ate another bite of Pumpernickel.
“Why?” Ashleigh blinked at me. “I mean, there’s England, and Czechoslovakia, and Poland—I’ve been reading some books so I know what questions to ask—and Paris, too.
Who doesn’t love Paris? And the French Resistance is romantic, right?
I can be the World War II channel. Everybody who remembers it will be dead soon, though, so I have to move fast.”
“Well, yes,” I said. “Very true. We old people could drop dead at any minute.”
Ben said, “That’s, like, really un-tactful, Ashleigh.”
“Why?” she asked. “Mrs. Stark knows she’s old.”
“True,” I said. I must endeavor to spend more time among young people; they are so very amusing.
“And Oma’s saying you’ll be starved for material,” Alix said, “because the whole war was super sad.”
“War brides, though,” Ashleigh said. “New beginnings, right? Did you know that Army officers’ wives did classes for Japanese war brides, teaching them how to cook American food and put on makeup and dress like Americans?
Cultural suppression, anybody? Now, that would be a funny season—I’m calling them seasons, by the way—the Japanese wives talking to each other in disgust about cooking with Spam and Velveeta and making Jell-O salads and buying Wonder Bread.
And these really gross TV dinners they had back then, and Kraft Macaroni who do you think they were?
Many records were destroyed at the end of the war, and there was a great deal of confusion.
Would the Americans want to risk somebody like that coming to their country? ”
“So they left German and Japanese—and Italian, I guess—women out of the Act?” Alix asked.
“No,” I said. “They didn’t. But the wrinkle remained.”
I learned about it the very next day, when Joe came to see me.
We met in the Grüner Brauhaus for dinner, not the apartment, because Dr. Müller’s landlady, Frau Wentzl, had stared in shock when I’d said goodbye to Joe outside the door of the apartment the evening before.
I hadn’t touched him and he hadn’t touched me, but his being there was already too much.
I’d had to explain to her that I hadn’t known of Dr. Müller’s hospitalization—she’d seen Joe departing with him, of course, for she was a most nosey woman—and Joe had merely been bringing me word of it.
She’d sniffed suspiciously at that, but fortunately, she knew me from the bakery and hadn’t thrown me out onto the street.
She had said, though, “Whatever Frau Adelberg may have let you get away with, it’s most improper to be alone with a man in your flat, much less an American.
Your mother isn’t here to tell you, so I will.
And I won’t have my house getting a reputation like that. ”
Now, Joe was saying, over weak beer and rather suspect liver dumplings, “I got in to talk to Colonel Forrest today, the CO. Serving soldiers need permission from their COs to marry. Which I knew, but …”
“Oh.” My heart was sinking, because Joe didn’t look happy. “What did he say?”
He took my hand—under the table, for we were being circumspect now—and said, “The Army’s forbidden marriages between GIs and German or Japanese women.”
My vision swam a bit. “Oh,” I said, and swallowed.
“Marguerite.” Joe gripped my hand more tightly. “They’ll have to change their mind at some point. It looks like the Army’s going to be here in Germany a long time, and in Japan, too, and I won’t be the only one wanting to get married. They have to change their mind.”
I didn’t say anything. I knew better than Joe that governments didn’t have to change their minds. I looked down at my liver dumplings instead and tried to take a bite, but it wouldn’t go down. I chewed and chewed as my eyes filled with tears, and at last, the bite was gone.
“Hey.” That was Joe again. “Hey, now. By the time this trial’s over, they’ve got to have changed the law. I’ll—I’ll write to my Congressmen. They can’t do this to us guys after everything we’ve been through. I have a Silver Star and a Purple Heart. That has to count for something.”
I said, trying for calm, “Perhaps after you’re discharged and are home again, you could send for me. Or does the … the Act apply only to serving soldiers?”
“See, now,” Joe said, “that’s an idea.” He smiled at me, but I could see the frustration and concern beneath.
“What are you afraid of?” I asked. “That I won’t wait?”
“No,” he said, too quickly. “No, of course not.”
“Joe.” I wanted to put my hand on his face, but I couldn’t.
“If I didn’t wait, you wouldn’t want to marry me anyway.
I wish we could be alone, though. When spring comes, we can have picnics.
But if Dr. Müller—” I stopped myself again, not wanting to say the word.
We’d taken the books to him tonight, but hadn’t been allowed to see him, and the nurse had been most noncommittal about his prognosis.
“If you can’t afford the apartment,” Joe said, “I’ll pay for it.”
“Of course I can afford it. If I’m allowed to pay the rent, that is. If I’m allowed to stay. It’s the landlady, you see. She’s not a bad sort, but her husband is still in an American camp. I just don’t know.”
“Then,” Joe said, “we’ll find you someplace else.” He squeezed my hand again. “We’re going to do this. It’s going to work. You’ll see.”