Voices of a Summer Day (14 page)

Mr. Grauheim shrugged and smiled uncomfortably. “I am something of a special case, my dear lady,” he said. “I would not presume to advance my opinion—”

“Speak up, Jacques,” his wife said. She was a powerful wide woman with a shock of gray hair, and a face like an Indian, all bones and stoicism. “Say what you believe.”

“I am not tired of the subject, my dear lady,” Grauheim said.

“I’m sure there are people here and there who…,” Mrs. Humes began.

“Tell us why you are not tired of the subject, Mr. Grauheim,” Peggy said.

“Well…” Grauheim laughed apologetically, using only breath. “I was in a camp for three years.”

“Tell Mrs. Humes about the last days,” Peggy said.

Grauheim looked helplessly at his wife.

“Tell the lady,” his wife said.

“They started to move us out,” Grauheim said. “The Russians were approaching. We could hear the guns. They walked us for five days and five nights.”

“How many men started on the march?” Peggy said, tight-lipped. Federov sat back, not daring to get involved in the argument for fear of inflaming Peggy past all polite limits in this candlelit room on a summer’s evening in the peaceful seashore resort.

“There were five thousand men who started out,” Grauheim said.

“How many were alive at the end?” Peggy asked, relentless.

“Four,” Grauheim said tonelessly. With one syllable, the Atlantic Ocean was drained. A road in Germany led suddenly across a dining-room table in Long Island.

“Are you still weary of the subject?” Peggy said to Mrs. Humes.

“I think it should be forgotten,” Mrs. Humes said. She was flushed. She had probably drunk a little too much, to fortify herself against the evening, and for once she spoke freely, “It’s only painful. What good does it do to remember? I have no prejudice against the Jews. You all know how I adore Leah. I just want to warn you. I hear from so many of my friends, fine, liberal people, absolutely without prejudice, they get it from every side, that play is just stirring up old anti-Semitic feelings, feelings people didn’t even realize they had any more. You have to forget
sometime.”

“You and your friends forget six million murders,” Peggy said in the general, embarrassed hush. “Mr. Grauheim can’t.”

Peggy’s vehemence made Federov uncomfortable. He himself believed in argument only when some practical purpose could be served by it. Confounding poor Mrs. Humes was hardly worth all that emotion. Foolishly, he also felt a challenge to his masculinity in Peggy’s fighting for him what he considered was essentially his battle. He was surprised, too, that Stafford, as host, didn’t break it up, but Stafford sat back in his chair, listening, taking no part in the conversation, consciously allowing Mrs. Humes to be educated.

“Still,” Mrs. Humes went on stubbornly, “I assure you it would be the best for all concerned, and especially the Jews, if the play were taken off tonight.”

“What have the Jews got to do with it?” Peggy said. “The play was written by a German Lutheran.”

“Even so,” Mrs. Humes said, “I am just warning you about what’s happening. I have sources of information that are denied to the rest of you. I haven’t the faintest idea who’s a Jew here and who’s not, except for dear Leah, of course, but you all live in New York and you don’t know what’s happening in the rest of the country.”

“Carol-Ann,” Stafford said politely, rising, “I think we’re finished here.”

But, at the center of attention and unleashed for the first time since her wedding day, Mrs. Humes rushed on. “You people,” she said, including Stafford and all the guests, “admire all the wrong people. You scorn Pope Pius, who saved us all from Communism, and you approve of Pope John, who
was
a Communist…”

“Carol-Ann, stop being a fool,” Leah said sharply.

“I know you would like me to shut up,” Mrs. Humes said, “but I’m speaking for your own good. And all your woolly ideas about the Negroes.” Naturally, Federov thought. Here it comes. Auschwitz to Mississippi in one easy lesson.

“I’ve heard, I’ve heard. Every summer,” Mrs. Humes said. “I’m from the South and I really know about Negroes. They don’t really want to live next door to you. They don’t like you. They don’t like to be near you. They think we have a different smell from them, just the way I know they have a different smell from us.”

“Carol-Ann, darling,” Stafford said. He went over and kissed her lightly on the forehead. “You smell divine.” Then he said with mock seriousness to the rest of the company, “But I know several Negroes who also smell divine. Lena Home, Diahann Carroll, Josephine Baker.”

“Now you’re making fun of me, John,” Mrs. Humes said. She turned to the other guests, who were standing, a little embarrassedly, unhappy about the scene. “I love you all,” she said. “You are wonderfully interesting. You make my summers here fascinating. But I don’t want to see you get hurt, any of you. No, John,” she said with dignity. “I am going to bed. I’m afraid I’m too emotional for arguments. Good night, my dear, good friends.” She went out of the dining room with tears in her eyes. Stafford’s mother, robust and pretty, sighed heavily. She looked to her son for a sign. Stafford nodded, and his mother, with a little helpless wave of good-night to her son’s guests, left the table to cross the lawn with Mrs. Humes and see her safely to bed.

There was silence for a moment and then Stafford said, “There’s coffee and brandy in the living room.”

In the living room people began to talk about the upcoming election, and the incident of Mrs. Humes and
The Deputy
would probably have ended there, an unpleasant few minutes in the history of a long summer, if it hadn’t been for Louis. He hadn’t said anything while the argument had been going on, but had sat back indolently, fixing Mrs. Humes with a quizzical, lazy look all through her performance, as though he didn’t quite believe that he was hearing what he was hearing and was waiting for her to laugh or to explain it was all a joke. His usual soft manners deserted him when he was confronted by unattractive women, and he could be brusque and mocking with them, especially if they combined brainlessness with lack of charm. He was staying at the Federov’s that weekend, and when he and Benjamin and Peggy got home that night, he took a drink and remained downstairs when the others went up to bed.

As Federov dropped off to sleep, he heard the tapping of a typewriter downstairs and he wondered what on earth Louis could be working on at that hour of the night.

Federov found out the next morning. At his place at the breakfast table, when he came down early to eat with the children, there was an envelope beside his plate. He tore it open. There was one sheet of paper in it, neatly typed.

“From Fort Sumter to Carol-Ann Humes and Back,” he read.

There was a young lady named Humes

Who was a great expert on fumes.

With one simple sniff

She could tell you the diff

Between Baptists, Frenchmen, and coons.

Federov chuckled. His children stopped talking and looked questioningly across the table at him.

“What’s so funny, Dad?” Michael asked.

“A note your Uncle Louis left for me,” Federov said.

“Can I read it?” Michael asked.

Federov hesitated. “It’s private,” he said.

“I could use a laugh or two myself,” Michael said.

“It’s an inside joke,” Federov said firmly.

“I’m on the inside,” Michael said.

“Me, too,” said his daughter, spooning up cornflakes.

“Not this much, boys and girls,” Federov said. He folded the page neatly and put it into his pocket. He didn’t want it to fall into anybody else’s hands. The sooner last night was forgotten, the better it would be for everybody.

What he didn’t know was that Louis had made two carbons of the limerick. And it wasn’t until later in the week that he found out that Louis had sent one of the carbons to Stafford and the other one, incomprehensibly, to Mrs. Humes.

The week that followed was one of scandal. Everybody heard about the limerick by Tuesday, and phones rang constantly in the city and out on the Island. Mr. Humes called Louis in the office and, when he heard that Louis was not in, asked to speak to Benjamin.

“You tell your goddam brother,” Humes said, “that unless he apologizes to my wife, I’m going to punch him in the nose the next time I see him.”

Benjamin knew Louis too well to expect that Louis would apologize. He told Humes as much, then added, for Humes’s sake, “The next time you describe my brother, leave out the goddams. And let me advise you that it would be unwise to try to punch him in the nose. He’ll kill you.” He hung up, refraining from pointing out that if Humes could only tolerate spending the weekends with his wife, he might be able to keep her mouth shut with happy results for them all.

“What the hell did you do it for?” he asked Louis when Louis came into the office and listened, grinning, to the report of the conversation with Humes.

Louis shrugged. “She’s so all-out ugly,” Louis said, “and she made poor old Grauheim so unhappy. A little lesson like this might do her some good. Wouldn’t it be
marvelous
if the sonofabitch tried to hit me?”

Humes didn’t try to hit Louis, but he did make a formal call on Stafford and told Stafford that he would not come to the Stafford house when Louis Federov was invited.

All in all, it was a banner week on the Island, and one that would be long remembered.

Leah, sitting on the bench beside him, winced as she watched her son strike out on three straight balls.

“Louis shouldn’t have sent that thing to the poor woman,” Federov said. “I hope he called you and John, at least, and apologized to you.”

“Don’t be absurd,” Leah said. “John lapped it up. He had it mimeographed in the office and he’s sending copies out all over the country. He’s crazy about Louis.” She looked maliciously at Federov. “Maybe I picked the wrong member of the family,” she said.

“Maybe you did, lady,” Federov said. “Maybe you did.”

1936

I
T WAS WHEN HE
was going to visit Leah and her new husband, Franklin Ross, who was a friend of Federov’s that Federov sailed on the Fall River Line for the last time. He was going to Truro, on Cape Cod, to stay with the Rosses, who had rented a house there for the summer, and he went on board the steamer
Priscilla,
with a secondhand Ford he had just bought, the first automobile he had ever owned. He was working as an engineer for a construction company, and this was his first holiday since his graduation from college.

After he had put his bag into his stateroom (he had a baseball glove packed in, he remembered Eddie Roush and the smell of neat’s-foot oil and New York passing by the open porthole) he went up on deck, just as the ship was pulling away from the pier. Two children, aged about four and seven, in identical navy-blue suits with knee pants, passed him on the steps. The older one looked very much as Louis had looked at the same age.

Federov was glancing back at them and nearly bumped into a young woman as he went through a doorway.

“Excuse me,” he said, standing back to let her pass. “I wasn’t watching where I was going.”

“It’s nothing,” the woman said. “There is no harm done.” She spoke with a bit of an accent. For the moment he couldn’t place it. Middle Europe. She held the door open for him, smiling. There was a hint of coquetry in the smile and the excessively polite moment at the door. She was blond and pretty, buxom, dressed simply in a navy-blue skirt and lighter blue sweater. When he went through the door he turned to examine her. She was slowly going down the stairs, looking back at him. They both laughed.

Later, lady, Federov thought, liking the idea.

He saw her again after dinner. She was still wearing the same clothes. Federov was standing against the rail, enjoying the summer wind of the ship’s passage and the lights of the Connecticut coast across the dark water. The girl was walking along the deck. She stopped a few feet away from him and leaned against the rail, too, and looked across at Connecticut, her blond hair blowing gently around the soft fair face that was going to be fat and gross later on, but was pretty and desirable now.

“Good evening,” Federov said.

“Good evening,” the girl said with that slight thickness of accent.

Federov moved toward her. They began to talk. Banalities. The beauty of the night. The calmness of the sea. The impressiveness of the sunset that evening. Their destinations. Truro, Nantucket. Her name. Gretchen Something. She lived in New York, she said, on West Ninety-sixth Street. They started to walk slowly along the deck. She took his arm. Slight pressure of fingers.

She had been born in Germany, she said. Essen. Explanation of accent. She had been in the United States three years.

“Oh,” Federov said. “To escape Hitler…”

The girl stopped walking. Her tone was almost harsh. “Why should I want to escape Hitler?” she said. “I am a German.”

Federov didn’t want to push it. It was too beautiful a night to discuss Hitler. “I just thought—well—” he said, “a lot of people have left Germany since he got in and I thought that maybe—”

“There is no reason to leave,” she said. “My family is there. My brothers. They write me. I know. I came to America to learn English, earn money. That is all.”

They walked in silence. Still the slight, inviting pressure of fingers.

“It is the New York newspapers,” the girl said. She wouldn’t leave it alone. There was the tone of aggrievement in the not unmusical voice, a permanent grudge, a whine of persecution. “They print only lies. Nobody in New York can ever know the truth. I know. I get letters from my brothers every week. It is a young man’s country now, they tell me. They can be proud again, the young men.”

“Uh-huh,” Federov said. No use in arguing. As he walked on the dark deck, with the smell of the gardens of Connecticut in his nostrils and the inviting touch of the soft fingers making him want to take her down to his cabin into his bed, he knew that sooner or later he would be in Europe with a gun in his hand, fighting the proud young brothers of the desirable girl at his side. But he didn’t want to talk about it. Sex now, tenderness now, youth now. War later.