Bliss, Remembered (29 page)

I nodded.

Horst tried to put a little oil on the waters. “Father, going to study in the United States is simply an idea I’ve had.”

Herr Gerhardt replied, “And one that seems to have sprung up only very recently.” With that, he turned and smiled at me, indicating very neatly from which bewitching wellspring this idea must have sprung. But it was a fond gesture in the way he managed it, so then, the diplomat again, he rose and, smiling upon me, continued: “Sydney, you are as beautiful and as bright as Horst promised us. And I see now, you must, as well, be just as influential.”

“But, Father—” Horst began.

Herr Gerhardt held up his hand. “No, no. We can discuss these matters at some future time. For now, you and Sydney should go enjoy this glorious time in Berlin.” And with a sly emphasis: “You have so few days left together.”

So that Horst couldn’t continue the conversation in any way, I quickly stood before Herr Gerhardt and thanked him. He took my hands and kissed me upon both cheeks, as did Frau Gerhardt. I made sure to take hold of Horst and cling to him, so he couldn’t step back and try to keep things going. Then, as sweetly—but emphatically—as I could, I said my auf Wiedersehens.

As soon as we stepped outside, Horst made a point of putting his arm about me, and he kissed me sweetly as he helped me into the car. He knew his parents were watching, and he wanted to make certain that they understood the way things were. I’ll tell you, Teddy: I sure would’ve liked to’ve been a fly on the wall back in the house at that moment, though. My ears were burning, I can guarantee you that.

We drove back into Berlin, to the great park called the Tiergarten, which used to be the royal hunting grounds. Horst didn’t say anything, which was unusual. I could see he was a little unnerved by the encounter with his father, so, for diversion, I just prattled on about Edith and Alice and their chances for medals. He responded only in a cursory fashion, so I was especially glad when he parked the car. Isn’t it awful being cooped up in a car when somebody isn’t being communicative—especially in those ancient days when cars didn’t have radios to turn on?

Now the Tiergarten, Teddy, is sort of the Berlin version of Central Park in New York, which I’d been to at the Trials. Only in Central Park, you hardly ever lose sight of the skyscrapers. In the Tiergarten, though, there were these tall sycamore trees that completely separated you from the city. Maybe it’s different now, and maybe Berlin has skyscrapers that loom all up, too, but back then there was a sense that we’d left the city completely behind and were far out in the country. It was downright sylvan, and we strolled along by a little lake, Horst still silently communing with his thoughts, me trying to figure out exactly what his thoughts were.

About then, we came round a bend in the path and were jarred somewhat because four or five stormtroopers—what they called “brownshirts”—were striding toward us. These were the Nazi thugs. I didn’t know it at the time, but Hitler had ordered them to lay low during the Olympics, to behave themselves for the benefit of the foreign visitors. But, you know, they just plain looked nasty, Teddy—perhaps especially because, simply by their martial presence, they soiled the serenity of the park. As we passed them, they smirked at us, and it certainly wasn’t lost on me that Horst didn’t acknowledge them in any way, shape or form.

No, I didn’t feel threatened at all, but there was just such an ugly impression about them. In fact, it stood out from all my other memories of that time. I would look back to when the war started and remember that one brief moment, and think, “Ah, that’s the Nazis.” All the good stuff when I was there, but I could never forget that one passing incident. Of course, at the time, in the Tiergarten, in this lovely haven, it seemed as if the brownshirts were the ones out of joint. But, of course, it wasn’t that way. Those SOBs were just lying in the weeds, biding their time.

Certainly, though, I could immediately sense that these creepy guys stirred up something in Horst, because right away, he gripped my hand harder and guided me over to a bench that overlooked the little lake. I sat down, but he only put his foot up on the bench and bit his lip for a moment. “Horst?” I said.

“I’m just so sorry,” he said.

Teddy, I still didn’t know what was eating at him. “What about?”

“You know. My father.”

I reached up to take his hand, but he wouldn’t let me. “Honey, he didn’t upset me. Really.”

He leaned forward then, on his knee. “You didn’t get what that name business was all about?”

“Oh, shoot, that’s nothing. People are always asking me about my name. It’s a funny name. They used to kid me in school.”

“No. You don’t understand, Sydney. The whole thing was just to find out if you might be Jewish.”

Only then, as the Bible says, did the scales fall from my eyes. “It was?”

“Yeah.” Horst took his foot down from the bench and knocked his one fist into his palm. “My father is getting so bad about that. It didn’t use to mean anything to him, but now that he’s in the party, and—” He stopped, and shifted about. “I mean, Dad doesn’t have to get involved with domestic stuff. He’s a diplomat. But now I see him losing some perspective. And he’s too smart for that.” He paused. “And too nice.”

“You love him a lot, don’t you?”

“Yes, I do, Sydney. I’m very proud of him, too.” Suddenly, he sat down next to me. “Look, I’ll tell you. There’s a certain amount of tension in the family because of Liesl. Well, not because of her, but because of her husband. Walter is an officer, a Standartenführer in the SS.”

I knew so little, Teddy. I’d never even heard of the SS. “What’s that?”

“SS—Schutzstaffel. Oh, never mind what it means. It’s Hitler’s own police force, sort of a second army. And Walter is a very . . . uh, dedicated Nazi. Very passionate. And I think it affects Dad—and, frankly, I haven’t had the courage to say anything. And, I’m sorry, it really got to me when he started on that name stuff with you.”

“Hey, please don’t get upset because of me.”

Horst took both my hands and looked right at me. It was so abrupt and so dramatic, it took me aback. “Could you live here, Sydney?” he asked. “Could you?”

“Remember? You asked me about that.”

“Yes, of course.” And at that he got up again and crossed his arms. He was so squirmy. He just couldn’t stay put. “No, no, I know it would be so much easier for me to come to the United States. I mean, just the language.”

“Yeah, the language.”

“That’s why I thought about going to school there.”

“That was kind of a surprise—for us all.” And boy, that was an understatement.

“Well, it’s a possibility.”

“Yeah.”

“It’s just, I don’t want to leave here. I don’t. It’s like it’s all coming together for Germany now. And, yeah, some of the stuff isn’t right, but we’ve come a long ways, and I know these Olympics have made such a difference. Everybody can see that. My father should see that.” He sat down next to me again, and for the first time in awhile, he smiled. He hadn’t smiled during any of this. “I’m just so excited, Sydney. It’s all happened so fast. The Olympics. And you just drop in from off the moon or somewhere, and all of a sudden I’m completely in love with you.”

“From the moon.”

“Yeah.”

And then, you know what, Teddy? You would have thought we’d’ve fallen into some passionate embrace at this point, but we didn’t. Not at all. We didn’t even look at each other. We both just stared out at the lake in front of us. And neither of us said anything for the longest time. I knew what he was thinking, because I was sure he was thinking exactly what I was, that we had found each other, and it was perfectly amazing, but, of course, I knew he was also thinking about Germany and how that affected things.

Only after quite a while I started to cry. Very softly at first, and then harder and harder. It took him by surprise. Well, it took me by surprise. I mean, it was completely involuntary. “Sydney? Why?”

“Because I’m so happy,” I said, and I fell into his arms.

“Oh,” he said.

“But also because I’m sad.”

“You are?”

“Because I have to leave you next week.”

“Please don’t think about that.”

So I tried not to, but I didn’t succeed altogether. I kept crying because I was so happy and so sad at the same time, which sounds like a crazy thing, Teddy, but which was absolutely the case on this occasion when I was in the Tiergarten. We both stared out at the lake again, for the longest time.

The next night I took Mom out to dinner. She chose a different little restaurant nearby. It was French and very highly regarded, but I think Mom picked it largely for the name—it was either a
le
or a
la
. When it came to restaurants, Mom much preferred the ambiance to the cuisine. Names mattered. She made sure to get us a table by the window, because it offered a good view. Views mattered.

For September it was especially warm, as if summer had gone into an overtime, but it was our last evening together. Mom had plans, though. Helen would be visiting her in another week or so, and then she wanted to come back to Missoula to, as she put it, “see my old friends one last time . . . above ground.” She knew her days were running out, but she remained markedly calm and held to her good spirits.

We both ordered a gin and tonic, and Mom raised hers in toast: “To G and Ts,” she proclaimed. “Last one of the year. You can’t drink gin if it isn’t warm.”

“Why?”

“I really don’t know, Teddy. My father absolutely subscribed to that rule. He used to call tonic ‘quinine water,’ so maybe it has something to do with the tropics—heat. Don’t you drink quinine to ward off malaria?”

“Or the tsetse fly,” I said.

“Anyway, you shouldn’t be caught dead drinking gin and tonics once the frost is on the pumpkin. I adhere to that principle in life.” And she took another sip, then quickly dove into her purse and hauled out the tape recorder and placed it on the table.

“You brought that?”

“Well, I thought I’d tell you about the race while we were waiting for the meal.”

“The race?” I asked, clicking the recorder on.

My race, Teddy, for goodness’ sake. The Olympic one-hundred meter backstroke. Thursday, the thirteenth of August, in the year of Our Lord, nineteen hundred and thirty-six.

Yeah, more’s the pity. But it was a honey of a race to watch—even if it was another nasty day. The weather just never got consistently nice that whole two weeks. Just those few odd good days, like the time Horst and I went to the beach. He wasn’t at the race, though. Leni had him doing something somewhere else that afternoon. Of course, Eleanor came. She was brandishing a press pass, but she chose instead to sit with us, her erstwhile teammates. Just to stick it to the blazers. She plunked herself right down next to me.