Bliss, Remembered (24 page)

And that cording, Teddy. The trapunto cording ran all across the front, and out over my shoulders and down under the arms.

Then, there was a large bow in back.

Oh yes. The whole gown was magenta. The back was low, where the bow was. That was often the style then, that the back was very low and the front high. There was no cleavage at all. Just a little dip in the bodice beneath my neck. And a neck could be important, Teddy. I wore my hair short, which was pretty much the fashion, curled up at the nape of the neck. My neck was on display.

And then I ran my hands down my sides, where the gown came in at my waist. So, yes, maybe there wasn’t any cleavage, but the way it was cut—well, I can assure you, Teddy, it displayed my . . . my rack to best advantage. Besides, if you could see a lady’s bare back, it served to emphasize the mystery of the front. And remember now, my hair was short. There was a lot of back. Cleavage is a tease, Teddy, but a bare back is more sensual in its own way. It is bare, after all, isn’t it? There’s much to be said for a high front and a low back, even though most men wouldn’t say it.

And remember, Teddy, there were dinner parties then. It wasn’t a fast-food world. A lady would sit at a table, and it was important that the front of her dress be attractive, because that would be on exhibit. If it was just a couple of straps and some cleavage, even the best of that physical display might begin to wear thin on the other guests by the main course. I know that may be hard for a discriminating gentleman such as yourself who has spent decades peering at cleavage and that which abuts it on either side, but in a genteel world, there really were other, more stylish considerations.

All right. And so, in the changing room, I saw how wonderfully the gown clung to me, just flaring out below my knees. It was cut on the bias, too, which, of course, made it all the more special.

Cut on the bias?

Teddy, how old are you now?

And you have never, in all your life, sixty-one years of a relatively sophisticated life—you have never, in all this eon, heard of any clothing being bias cut?

Then, given that this has escaped you for sixty-one years, it’s reasonable to assume that it’s unlikely you will encounter any discussion of the subject in what remains of your sojourn on this planet, and so therefore we are not going to interrupt this reverie of your dear old mother’s for any further technical explanation. Let’s just leave you with the basics: that the gown is tight on me in here—

—and then flared out, so, if you can envision this, Teddy—try now—you have the wide shoulders and the wide skirt, top and bottom, and me in between.

Good. And so I emerged from the changing room, and I stood there, nearly breathless, and, well, hallelujah: the reaction was all a gal could desire. Frau Rosenthaler clasped her hands before her bosom and sighed, and Herr Rosenthaler simply said, “Schon, schon, schon,” over and over. I didn’t know what that meant, but I knew it was damn good, whatever it was. And that was that, Teddy. That gown fit like it had been cut for me alone. They had only to take in the tiniest pinch under my arms, and that was it. There was Cinderella in magenta.

Mr. Rosenthaler folded the gown up and put it in a box. I hated to treat it that way, but Horst didn’t want to see the gown till he could see me in it. In that respect, it was sort of like a wedding gown.

All the more so, from hindsight, since it turned out that I never would have a wedding gown.

And so, clutching the box, I glided on air out to the car. Horst went back inside and settled up. When he came back, I thanked him and kissed him. Then I said, “You spent too much.”

“No, I didn’t, Sydney. And don’t ever bring it up again.” So I let that slide, Teddy, even though that gown was terribly expensive. It was the most expensive present I’d ever had in my life.

But Horst wasn’t done, because then he took me to the Rot-Weiss Club for dinner. Everyone was elegant, dressed to the nines. It must’ve been obvious how impressed I was, for after dinner, when we were strolling on the veranda, Horst asked me, “Do you really like it here?”

“Of course I do. Can’t you tell?”

“It’s important to me,” he said.

“Come on, Horst.” I swung my arms wide and whirled around. “This place is absolutely beautiful.”

“No, no, Sydney, I don’t mean just here. I mean Berlin. I mean us—Germans. Have you liked us?”

“Yes, I have.”

It had started to get chillier again. The beautiful day before had been the exception. He took off his jacket and put it round my shoulders, took my hand and walked me down to the tennis courts. “We play our Davis Cup matches here,” he said. “Have you heard of Gottfried von Cramm?”

Actually, Teddy, the name only dimly rang a bell, but, in the context, I figured correctly that he must be a tennis player, so I said I had. “He’s a member here,” Horst said. “The Baron—he’s old royalty. He made the Wimbledon final last month. He lost, but he was injured at the very beginning of the match. The Baron played on, though. He simply wouldn’t give up. And then he apologized for playing so poorly. Everyone admires him so. We’d never had a German do so well at Wimbledon before. And no one—no one from any country—had ever played so nobly. The Baron made us all so proud.”

There was a bench there. It was quite dark, because there was no moon. You could barely see the courts before us, from the lights of the clubhouse we’d left behind. When we sat down, I thought he was going to kiss me, but instead he actually leaned away, putting his elbow up on the far arm of the bench. He looked out toward the courts, into the dark, and began to speak as if from a script. “Remember, Sydney, remember I told you how my mother sent me to the American school in Tokyo in lederhosen?”

“Yes. You told me that.”

“Well, it was mortifying. Of course, none of the other boys wore them, and not only that, I didn’t speak English that well yet, and I stuck out like a sore thumb. I was seven. It was 1923, and the war had only been over five years. Now, the other boys didn’t remember the war at all. They’d been too young. But, oh, they all sure knew that we Germans had been the enemy. They knew that. And they knew they’d won the war, and Germany had lost. And so, right away, I was an outcast. No one wanted anything to do with the strange duck in the funny pants.”

Horst stood up and put his hands in his pockets, but he kept talking. It’s a little bit the way I’ve been talking to you, Teddy. I just have to say these things, and I may be saying them to you, but, really, I just need to say them. I thought at the time that it was more important for Horst to say what he wanted to than it was for me to listen. I thought I was just an excuse for him to talk.

In a way, yes. Don’t take it personally.

Good. But I do hope you’re listening.

Well, I listened to Horst then, out by the tennis courts. I could tell what he was saying mattered a great deal to him. He told me that at recess, several boys teased him, called him a “kraut,” and one of them, a bully named Andy, began to jab at him, and then he grabbed Horst and threw him to the ground and started punching him.

Horst turned directly to me, then. I was still sitting on the bench, wearing his jacket. And he said, “He beat me up pretty good, Sydney. Andy was much bigger than me, and I didn’t have a chance. And the other boys just watched. I don’t know about girls, but boys can be very cruel, honey. They’re kinda like those brownshirts, you know, the really awful Nazis, who’re suddenly very emboldened, very mean when they’re all together. A teacher finally heard the ruckus and pulled Andy off me, and told us to stop fighting. Only, of course, there was just one of us responsible for the fighting. But I didn’t say it wasn’t my fault. I just looked around at all the other boys who’d just stood there watching me get beat up, and I let it go. I think it made some of them ashamed. A couple of them, anyhow.

“So I got beat up just because I was a German. In a way, I found out then what it was like to be a Jew. Or a Negro.

“When my mother came to pick me up and saw me all scratched and bruised, she wanted to go right to the headmaster and complain. But I wouldn’t let her. I just told her never to make me wear those damn lederhosen again. Which she didn’t. And I learned to speak better English, and to speak it exactly like the American boys. And I told you: I learned to play baseball. I caught on, Sydney. You live abroad, you adapt. I can be a chameleon. I can be an American.

“It drove Andy crazy, and near the end of the year he tried to pick a fight with me again. And guess what?”

“You beat him?”

“Oh no. That’d make a good story, but Andy was much too big for me to ever beat him. Besides, I’ve never liked to fight. No, but it was even better. You see, the reason Andy got so mad at me was that the more popular American guys had begun to accept me. After a while, they didn’t care anymore that I was German. They’d forgotten that I was supposed to be a rotten person. By the end of the year, I was accepted into the right group. You know? And Andy wasn’t part of that. That was much better than if I’d just beaten him up. The other guys stopped Andy from trying to pick on me. I got much more satisfaction that way. I’d found my way in, and Andy was still out.

“But I never forgot, Sydney. I never forgot how hated I was in the beginning just because I was a German. And I don’t want anyone ever to look at us like that again.”

I reached out and took Horst’s hand. “That’s a very nice story,” I said. “I’m glad you told me.”

“Yeah, I wanted to tell you, Sydney. I’ve never told another soul.”

So I was wrong. It was important that someone had listened to him. “Thank you, Horst. That means a lot to me.”

Then, after a moment, he said, “You wanna go back to our house with me?”

I said, “Sure.”

Horst put on a very serious face then. He said, “You understand, Sydney. My parents are up in Kiel for the sailing. We’d be alone.”

So I just said, “Yeah, you told me.”

And, of course, Teddy, I’m sure you know that in 1936, a so-called nice girl, which is what I was, so-called and otherwise, was not supposed to go to a boy’s house unchaperoned.

Yes, and as we used to say on the Shore: in a July minute.

Then Horst said, “You can trust me, Sydney,” and I nodded that I knew that, and we got in his car. His house was also in Charlottenberg, not far away, on a lovely little street named Dernburgstrasse. It was a very nice area, a very nice house. Germany had come a long way since the terrible times after the war. Especially on this western side of town. To me it didn’t look any different from some nice section of Baltimore or Wilmington.

He asked me if I wanted a schnapps, and I said yes, because I was suddenly a very sophisticated schnapps drinker, and while he got the drinks I started glancing at the various photographs of his family there in the living room. I was looking at one picture of three boys, standing on a dock somewhere, when Horst came back. “That’s my father,” he said, pointing to the boy on the left. “And those were his brothers—Henner and Max. They were both killed in the war.”