Chapter 47 A Very Good Man
A VERY GOOD MAN
I stayed in the shop until it closed the next day, even though I’d been up since three-thirty.
Joe didn’t appear, and I didn’t want to admit how disappointed I was to put up the Closed sign.
I was only cheered by Dr. Müller’s excitement, earlier in the day, at the stack of books Joe had left for us.
“Brideshead Revisited,” he’d exclaimed. “What a wonderful adventure. Hemingway, too: an American author. For Whom the Bell Tolls, hmm. What is that about, I wonder? We haven’t tackled A Farewell to Arms yet, have we?
Will this be another novel of war? And here is Thomas Mann with Lotte in Weimar, translated into the English.
How seditious! I believe I must claim the right to read this one first. And the last one: A Tree Grows in Brooklyn.
This I have not heard of. A woman author, too.
Betty Smith. This must be American, I think.
Now, that is the mark of an educated man, to want to read books written by authors wholly unlike him. ”
“Is an American woman wholly unlike an American man, then?” I asked.
He looked up, startled, then laughed. “Very true, Fr?ulein, very true. You challenge me quite rightly. Should I take all these away with me, or would you prefer to keep them here?”
“Oh, you take them, please,” I said. “I’ve gone back to The Grapes of Wrath for now.”
Dr. Müller looked at me, and I felt the heat rising in my cheeks. “The book about California,” he said.
“Yes.” I turned and straightened bread that didn’t need straightening—there were only three loaves left on the shelf.
“And you have a pretty new dress,” Dr. Müller said. “Well, well. Young men are not the most reliable of creatures, but here I suspect we may have found an exception.”
“Oh!” I said, happy to find a way to leave this topic.
“I nearly forgot.” I reached under the counter and pulled out four rolls of toilet paper, setting them before Dr. Müller with a flourish.
The smile on his face! “And …” I said, drawing it out before pulling out four pads of lined writing paper in a neat stack, followed by a tin of loose tea and a little packet of sugar.
And the last item: a tin of pipe tobacco.
“Oh, my,” Dr. Müller said. “Oh, my.” He took off his glasses and polished them on his tie, blinking his watery blue eyes. “To be able to take proper notes again, and to smoke a pipe in the evening while I think! I’ve an idea for a book that— And now I can pursue it. Oh, what a happy day.”
“Yes,” I said with a smile, feeling as proud of Joe as any mother with her child.
“And he has behaved properly, giving you all this?” Dr. Müller remembered to ask.
“Very properly,” I said. “He’ll be working in Nuremberg for a year, he says, and he asked again about the book discussion group. He really would like to pursue it, and he wished me to tell you so.”
“And perhaps to have a chance to sit with you in the evening, no?” Dr. Müller said. “No one could object, after all, to a discussion of books between a man and a woman, especially with such an elderly chaperone.”
I knew my cheeks must be wholly pink now. “I hope not,” I said. “But I expect I’d do it anyway. Can I help you carry all this home? The books are very heavy.”
“Certainly,” he said, “although you must find a bag for the toilet paper. Otherwise, we’re sure to be robbed in the street.” And I laughed and agreed and only hoped I wouldn’t miss Joe’s arrival during the errand.
But he didn’t come.
The next afternoon at one, he still hadn’t come, and I was telling Frau Adelberg in defeat, “I’ll go lie down for an hour, if you can manage.”
“Of course,” she said, “if you’re unwell.” Her gaze was too sharp. “Or is it disappointment?”
I smiled weakly, but only said, “Thank you.”
A chime at the door, and there was Joe. In the suit again, but without the rucksack. Frau Adelberg said, “Fr?ulein Glücksburg cannot see you today. She is unwell.”
“Oh!” I said, as my cheeks flamed. “No. I can—”
“Nonsense,” Frau Adelberg said. “You’ve been silent and slow all day, and I don’t believe it’s from love. How could it be?”
I wanted to fall through the floor. Joe said, “Should I come back tomorrow?” He looked uncertain for once, and I very much wanted to slap Frau Adelberg.
“No,” I said, hastily removing my apron.
“No, I—maybe we could find a—a bench, and sit a while.” I was wearing the yellow dress today, the one with the purple flowers.
My shoes were heavy and black—still the BDM shoes, as they wore like iron—but from the ankles up, I felt prettier than I had in months.
If I hadn’t been feeling so decidedly un-pretty, that is.
Frau Adelberg said, “On your own head be it, then,” in a sort of darkly foreboding tone, and I wondered exactly what she imagined would be worse than the things that had already happened to me.
Joe didn’t say anything until we’d walked to the end of the street. Then he asked, “Are you really not feeling well? You don’t look quite—” He broke off. “I don’t know how to say this. You could have found a smoother fellow.”
“I’m not feeling well, no,” I said. “You can notice it. You could hardly help doing so. We could sit in the square, perhaps? I’d be glad to sit.”
He asked, “Will you take my arm?” His voice was tender, and when I did take it, my head full of confusion, he covered my hand with his for a moment, then walked with me, sat on a bench among the cobblestones and the odd pigeon—meaning the wily pigeon, for the rest had long since been eaten—and asked, “What’s wrong? ”
I averted my gaze, and he said, “Marguerite. Sorry, Daisy. What is it?’
“I’d like it,” I said shyly, “if you’d call me Marguerite. When we’re alone.” It felt bold to say, especially the “alone” part, but I said it anyway.
“Good,” he said, “because it’s a beautiful name, and it suits you. The way you’re—how fine you are. But tell me, please. What’s wrong?”
“I have an ache in my midsection, that’s all,” I said, my cheeks flaming.
“Oh,” he said, then added, “Is it your period?”
“Pardon?” I was confused.
“Sorry,” he said. “I don’t know the word in German. Your menstrual period, when you bleed.”
My palms were on my cheeks now; I’d never been so embarrassed. “Meine Tage,” I managed to say. “Yes, but you shouldn’t—I shouldn’t—you can’t say such things.”
“Your ‘days,’” he said. “I suppose that’s a good euphemism.
Why shouldn’t I know about it? I have a mother and two sisters, and my parents are pretty modern, or they’d like to think so.
My sisters certainly are. I’m guessing that you can’t get aspirin very easily nowadays, either.
Would you like me to ride back to the post and get you some? ”
He was so matter-of-fact, I had to drop my hands. “No,” I said. “I can’t take aspirin.”
“Really?” For the first time, he sounded surprised. “Why not?”
“Our intimacy,” I said dryly, “is progressing by leaps and bounds.”
He laughed out loud. “Well, I hope so. Also, is it bad manners if I hold your hand?”
“No,” I said. “It would be—it would be allowed.”
“Good,” he said, and smiled at me. “Especially since I’m incognito.” Then he took my hand, and it was the same as the week before: such a comfort. Such a strength.
“You’re not so very incognito.” I felt able to tease him now. “I’m sure everyone knows by now who you are.” Indeed, we were attracting our share of glances, most of them disapproving.
“Do you care?” he asked.
“No,” I decided. “I’ve been hiding too long for that, and I haven’t even done anything wrong! No, I don’t care.”
“I could ask about that,” he said, “but I’m going to stick with this. If not aspirin, what would help?”
“A hot-water bottle,” I said with a sigh. “Does such a thing even exist anymore?”
“I’ll bring you one tomorrow,” he said. “If I have to steal it.” And we both laughed. “But you’ve been working all day feeling like that?”
“Yes,” I said. “One has to do many difficult things these days.”
He didn’t speak after that, just sat there with me. My back ached badly, and I wanted very much to lie down. “I’d like to tell you,” I said after a minute, “but it feels very personal. Nobody knows, now that Dr. Becker has gone away, and I—” I had to stop and bite my lip.
“You can tell me,” he said. “Don’t you know that you’re safe with me? I’m not going to hurt you, Marguerite, or let anybody else do it, either. I promise.” How did he always know what to say? It never sounded practiced, so how?
“I have a—a disease,” I said haltingly. “I know the English words, for my governess and nanny had to know, you see, to care for me.” I realized I’d said “governess and nanny” only after I did it, but he didn’t comment, so I went on.
“I’m a carrier of hemophilia. It runs in my family, in my mother’s line.
When boys have it, they generally die young.
My brothers died. Women merely carry the trait, but some things can still be—more difficult. ”
“Ah,” Joe said. “Well, that makes sense. Anytime you’d bleed anyway, you bleed more, is that it?”
“Yes.” He made it sound so normal, not shameful at all.
“That was why I couldn’t ride on your handlebars.
Such things are dangerous for me. And aspirin can cause more bleeding, so I’m not allowed.
I’m not nearly as afflicted as my mother, though, who was rather fragile.
One reason my father was protective of her, I think.
He could have been angry, realizing that he’d been matched with a woman with such a defect, but I believe it made him love her more, just as his injuries did the same for her.
As if they were each the only person who truly understood the other, who would always be there as a—a shield against the world. ”
“That’s a beautiful thought,” Joe said. “A beautiful marriage.”
“Yes,” I said, my throat closing over. How annoying is one’s frailty! When I hurt most physically, I was the least able to control my emotions.
“Your father had injuries?” Joe said after a minute.
“Yes. He was burned in the Great War, and had scars. He was a war hero. An aviator. Which I’m afraid means that he killed Americans.”
“Oh, well,” Joe said, “I’ve killed quite a few Germans myself. We’re not going to hold a little thing like that against each other, are we?”
I had to laugh. “I guess we’d better not.”
“Why is that such a big secret, though?” he asked. “That you’re a hemophilia carrier? Plenty of people have something wrong with them. My eyes, for example, are terrible. Nobody’s ever going to make me a pilot, but they also haven’t kicked me out of the Army.”
“Well, Hitler,” I said. “The Nazis.”
“Sorry.” Joe was frowning. “Hitler what?”
“He had people like me sterilized,” I said, “or put to death.”
Joe stiffened. “Wait. What?”
“It was meant to be the master race,” I said tiredly. “Which means there could be no genetic imperfections. Hitler was a great believer in Eugenics. A movement, I believe, that started in England.”
“And was plenty popular in the U.S., too,” Joe said.
“The arrogance of thinking you’re superior!
How much does that happen, though? The Chinese apparently think so, and the Japanese, and—well, even the Jews, from time to time, and we Americans definitely think we live in the best country in the world.
Everybody wants to feel special, I guess.
I suppose the Nazis just took it to the extreme. As usual. But seriously?”
“Yes,” I said. “If one was of subnormal intelligence, or epileptic, or—oh, any number of things, one mustn’t be allowed to reproduce, or, if it were bad enough, to live. Deformed children were to be put to death, and the disabled went to the camps. It was a matter of racial hygiene, you see.”
“I didn’t see anybody like that in Dachau,” Joe said after a minute. “At least none I recognized. They were all in pretty bad shape, though.”
“You didn’t see any,” I said, “because they were certainly already dead.”
“My God,” Joe said blankly.
“Yes,” I said. “Hitler was an evil person, I think—does one believe in good and evil? I think I do. I think I must. And an evil person, especially one with power, surely attracts other evil people. If goodness feeds on itself, why not evil? That’s so simple a label to attach to a person, but if it’s true of anyone, it’s true of him.
So you see—I had to hide my condition, and I also couldn’t have married under the Third Reich.
One had to provide a certificate of fitness from the public health authorities, and I wouldn’t have been able to obtain such a thing.
Our doctor, too, should have reported my mother’s illness and mine to the Reich, but it was Dr. Becker, who was treating us in secret for all our sakes, so he didn’t.
But I was cautioned never to reveal my condition to friends, much less to teachers.
Even when I had pain, I mustn’t let on. Except that for—for meine Tage—” I didn’t want to say the word in English—“That’s something other women also suffer, so that, I didn’t have to hide.
Except, of course, that I did.” I tried to laugh.
“As it isn’t a subject of which one speaks. ”
“Except that I just did,” Joe said. “And I’ve got an idea.”
“What?” The wind had picked up and there was a hint of October in the air, and I was shivering a bit.
“My idea is,” Joe said, “that I walk you home and then go get you that hot-water bottle, and I come back tomorrow and, if you’re feeling better, have tea with you and the professor and make a plan for those books. How does that sound? Or is that too soon to want to see me again?”
I raised my head, which I’m afraid I’d allowed to sink onto his shoulder. He was a slim person, but he had a good shoulder all the same. “Is that why you didn’t come yesterday? Because it was too soon?”
His smile was sheepish. “Yeah.”
“Isn’t your leave only another week?”
“Yes.”
“Then please,” I said, “come every day. And every day you can after that. Come and read with us. Please.”
“Oma,” Alix said with delight. “You were so forward!”
“Yes,” I said. “I’m afraid I was. But with Joe, the rules didn’t seem to apply.
You won’t realize how inappropriate it was for him to mention such things to me, but I couldn’t imagine a German man ever saying something like that.
It was freeing, after guarding my tongue about everything for so long, to meet such a person. ”
“Did he really ride all the way back and get you a hot-water bottle, though?” Ben asked. “And then have to ride all the way there and back again?”
“Yes. He really did.” I sighed. “He was a very good man.”