My Father's Tears And Other Stories Part 5

She put her hand on his and pressed his fingertips deeper. "There. Feel it?"

"Sort of. Does it hurt?"

"I'm not sure it's supposed to. Do the other in the same place. Is it different, or the same?"

He obeyed, shutting his eyes to concentrate on the comparison, trying to envision the interior nub, the dark invader. "Not the same, I think. I don't know; I can't tell, honey. You should get to a doctor."

"I'm scared to," Lisa confessed, and the blue of her eyes showed it, anxious and bright amid her fading freckles.

Les hung there, one hand still cupping her healthy right breast. It was soft, warm, and heavy. This was the bee sting, the intimacy he had coveted, legitimately his at last; but he felt befouled by things of the body and wanted merely to turn away, while knowing he could not.

The Accelerating Expansion of the Universe

WHY SHOULD IT BOTHER Martin Fairchild? In his long, literate lifetime he had read of many revisions of cosmic theory. Edwin Hubble's discovery of a pervasive galactic red shift and therefore of universal expansion had occurred a few years before he was born; by the time of his young manhood, the theory of the Big Bang, with its overtones of Christian Creation by fiat-"Let there be light"-had prevailed over the rather more Buddhist steady-state theory claiming that s.p.a.ce itself produced, out of nothingness, one hydrogen atom at a time. In recent decades, in astronomy as in finance, billions had replaced millions as the unit of measure: a billion galaxies, a billion stars in each. Ever stronger telescopes, including one suspended in s.p.a.ce and named after Hubble, revealed a swarm of fuzzy ovals, each a Milky Way. Such revelations-stupefying for those who tried truly to conceive of the distances and time spans, the t.i.tanic amounts of brute matter acc.u.mulating, exploding, and dispersing throughout a not quite infinite vacancy seething with virtual particles-had held for Fairchild the far-fetched hope of a last turn: a culminating piece in the great skyey puzzle would vindicate Mankind's sensation of central importance and disclose an attentive mercy lurking behind the heavenly arrangements. Martin Fairchild? In his long, literate lifetime he had read of many revisions of cosmic theory. Edwin Hubble's discovery of a pervasive galactic red shift and therefore of universal expansion had occurred a few years before he was born; by the time of his young manhood, the theory of the Big Bang, with its overtones of Christian Creation by fiat-"Let there be light"-had prevailed over the rather more Buddhist steady-state theory claiming that s.p.a.ce itself produced, out of nothingness, one hydrogen atom at a time. In recent decades, in astronomy as in finance, billions had replaced millions as the unit of measure: a billion galaxies, a billion stars in each. Ever stronger telescopes, including one suspended in s.p.a.ce and named after Hubble, revealed a swarm of fuzzy ovals, each a Milky Way. Such revelations-stupefying for those who tried truly to conceive of the distances and time spans, the t.i.tanic amounts of brute matter acc.u.mulating, exploding, and dispersing throughout a not quite infinite vacancy seething with virtual particles-had held for Fairchild the far-fetched hope of a last turn: a culminating piece in the great skyey puzzle would vindicate Mankind's sensation of central importance and disclose an attentive mercy lurking behind the heavenly arrangements.

But the fact, discovered by two independent teams of researchers, seemed to be that deep s.p.a.ce showed not only no relenting in the speed of the farthest galaxies but instead a detectable acceleration, so that an eventual dispersion of everything into absolute cold and darkness could be confidently predicted. We are riding an aimless explosion to nowhere. Only an invisible, malevolent anti-gravity, a so-called Dark Force, explained it. Why should Fairchild take it personally? The universe would by a generous margin outlive him-that had always been true. But he had somehow relied on eternity, on there being an eternity even if he wasn't invited to partic.i.p.ate in it. The accelerating expansion of the universe imposed an ignominious finitude on the enclosing vastness. The old hypothetical structures-G.o.d, Paradise, the moral law within-now had utterly no base to stand on. Everything would melt away. He, though no mystic, had always taken a sneaky comfort in the idea of a universal pulse, an alternating Big Bang and Big Crunch, each time recasting all matter into an unimaginably small furnace, a sub-microscopic point of fresh beginning. Now this comfort was taken from him, and he drifted into a steady state-an estranging fever, scarcely detectable by those around him, of depression.

Fairchild had not hitherto really believed in his own aging. He could see in the mirror his multiplying white hairs, his deepening wrinkles, and feel his shortness of breath after exertion, his stiffness after sitting too long in a chair or a car; but these phenomena took place a safe distance from the center of his being. His inmost self felt essentially exempt from ruin.

His patient daily labors, with an ameliorating additive of pomp and prestige as his position at his firm improved, had acc.u.mulated an ample nest egg, enabling semiannual foreign travel with his wife. Their trips to Europe had gradually exhausted the more obvious tourist destinations-England, France, Italy, Greece, Scandinavia. She had never been to Spain, and he only once before, on a hurried student trip that had left little trace in his memory. After Madrid and the obligatory day flight to Bilbao to see Frank Gehry's t.i.tanium whale, they came south into the land where the Moors for centuries raised lemons, erected filigreed mosques, and sang love songs around the plashing fountains in the courtyards.

Seville seemed a little short of charm, or perhaps the Fairchilds were tired of being charmed. They were fresh from Granada and Cordoba. In every cathedral and palace there lurked a gloomy Christian boast that the Moors, with their superior refinement and religious tolerance, had been expelled. The Alcazar Palace and the Cathedral of Santa Maria de la Sede were both, it seemed to Fairchild, bigger than they needed to be, and the streets of the old ghetto, which held their hotel, were narrow and heavily trafficked by buzzing mopeds and rickety delivery trucks that ignored the pedestrians-only signs.

Late one afternoon, the aging couple, having done its duty by the Casa de Pilatos, emerged with some relief from the ghetto's quaint alleys onto a slightly broader thoroughfare. They had coffee at an outdoor table, and then headed back to their hotel. His sense of direction told him that the most direct route lay along a busy one-way street with a narrow sidewalk on one side. "You think?" his cautious wife asked. "Suppose I fall off into traffic?"

"Why would you fall off?" Fairchild scoffed. "I'll be right behind you."

It was true, the noisy stream of traffic did feel very close as they made their way single-file, Fairchild in the rear. Fiats and Vespas sped by, stirring the ubiquitous dust. He was watching his wife's feet, or thinking of his own, when a sudden sensation of pressure pushed him off-balance, and down; there was no resisting this inexplicable force. He fell sideways, twisting. In the midst of his plunge he saw, inches from his eyes, the porous new-shaven cheek of a dark-haired young man; the man was grimacing with some terrible effort, with some ordeal that he, too, was undergoing.

Then Fairchild hit the asphalt, face-down. His arms were pinioned by the relentless force at his back, and he foresaw that his forehead would strike the street's hard surface. No sooner had this thought been entertained by his brain than the sensation of a momentarily blinding blow on his brow told him that the worst was over, that he would survive.

Automobiles were braking behind him. He raised his head in time to see two men on a moped turn down a side street and, smartly leaning in unison, vanish. One of them had been his dark-haired companion in gravity's terrible grip. The weight on his back was still there, but it lifted, cautiously, and began to talk to him in a female voice, and Fairchild realized that the irresistible weight had been his wife's body. He lay some seconds longer on the street's abrasive, dirty surface, in a position that obscurely felt privileged, while he relished the apparent fact that his skull had taken the blow without causing him to surrender consciousness: he was one tough old americano americano, he thought, as if his consciousness had become a detached, appraising witness.

Bit by bit, his swirl of sensations was retrospectively clarified. By the time he got to his feet, with the help of several hands, he understood that his wife's shoulder bag had been s.n.a.t.c.hed and the entangling strap had pulled her into him. The two of them had been welded together by the pressure as the dark-haired thief struggled to hold on to his prize without losing his seat on the speeding moped. Fairchild's thumped brain, he noted with satisfaction, was in excellent order, working very fast. But it had not been fast enough for him to reach up and pull his a.s.sailant down with him. He would have liked, very much, to have done that-to have dragged this criminal down to the dirty asphalt with him, and pulverized his smooth-shaven face with his fists.

His wife, Carol, had once been a nurse; she still quickened to emergencies. She was staring intently at his face. So, with less disguised alarm, were the several Spaniards who had gathered behind her. "I'm fine," he said to his wife. He addressed the Spaniards: "Soy bueno. No problema." "Soy bueno. No problema."

His wife said softly, in her soothing emergency voice, "Darling, don't try to talk. Let's take off your jacket."

"My jacket?" A light-tan windbreaker, with a lining for warmth in the Spanish spring, it had been bought new for the trip. "Why?"

He wondered if he was supposed to be translating their exchanges to the gathered crowd. "Por que?" "Por que?" he translated aloud. he translated aloud.

"Keep calm," she told him levelly, as if he were crazed. "I'll help you, darling."

Fairchild was beginning to find her officious; but in moving his lips to protest he tasted something warm and salty. He realized, as a walker in the woods realizes that a tickly swarm of midges have enveloped his head, that he was bleeding into his own mouth. His face had met the asphalt on the right eyebrow, the crest of bone there-a blood-packed site, he knew from his old sports injuries. He saw the light: his wife, the eminently practical nurse, was worried that he would bleed on the new windbreaker. It had not been expensive, but it evidently outweighed his wound, his drama, his near-tragedy. As she gently peeled the coat from his shoulders, the crowd behind her, and the cab driver who had braked in time to avoid running over him, started to offer advice, of which the most prominent word was policia. "Policia, policia," policia. "Policia, policia," they seemed to be chanting. they seemed to be chanting.

After removing his coat, Carol had picked his hip pocket, and now she handed him his own folded handkerchief and indicated that he should keep it pressed against his right orbital arch. On center stage amid the halted traffic, Fairchild stood tall; he gestured rather grandly with his free hand, like a matador disavowing a spectacular kill. "Policia," "Policia," he p.r.o.nounced scornfully, and, unable to come up with the Spanish for "What can they do?," expressed the opinion he p.r.o.nounced scornfully, and, unable to come up with the Spanish for "What can they do?," expressed the opinion "Policia-nada!" "Policia-nada!" From their alarmed faces, it could have been more happily put. Not long ago, under Franco, this had been a police state. From their alarmed faces, it could have been more happily put. Not long ago, under Franco, this had been a police state.

Traffic was beginning to honk; the cab driver needed to get on his way. This driver, wearing a wool jacket and tie in the formal, self-important European manner, was small and round-faced and visibly shaken by nearly running over an elderly American. His hand still held aloft, Fairchild told him, "Muchas gracias, senor-vaya con Dios." "Muchas gracias, senor-vaya con Dios." The phrase had floated into his head from a Patti Page song popular when he was an adolescent. To the crowd he proclaimed, The phrase had floated into his head from a Patti Page song popular when he was an adolescent. To the crowd he proclaimed, "Adios, amigos!" "Adios, amigos!" This, too, was no doubt inadequate, but what he wanted to say in final benediction materialized in his head only in French: This, too, was no doubt inadequate, but what he wanted to say in final benediction materialized in his head only in French: "Vous tous etes tres gentils." "Vous tous etes tres gentils."

Fairchild felt exhilarated, striding through the antique streets holding a b.l.o.o.d.y handkerchief to his eyebrow while his wife-undamaged, younger than he-trotted beside him, holding his jacket, which, for all her concern, bore only a single drop of blood, now dried. "That son of a b.i.t.c.h," he said, meaning the thief. "What all did you have in it?" he asked, meaning her shoulder bag.

"My wallet, without much money. The credit cards are the big nuisance. They can help me cancel them back at the hotel. If they have any hydrogen peroxide at the desk, I can get the blood out of the jacket. Lemon juice and salt might do."

"Will you stop focusing on my blood blood? You knew when you married me I had blood." Why be angry at her? Por que? Por que? As if in apology, he said, "You always hear of things like this, but I never thought it would happen to me." He corrected himself: "To us." She was teaching him, this late in his life, feminist inclusiveness. As if in apology, he said, "You always hear of things like this, but I never thought it would happen to me." He corrected himself: "To us." She was teaching him, this late in his life, feminist inclusiveness.

Carol in turn explained, "I was so concerned with staying on the sidewalk I guess I forgot to switch the bag to my inside shoulder. Now I keep thinking of everything that was in it. The Instamatic full of shots of the Alhambra. My favorite scarf-you can't get wool that lightweight any more. Marty, I feel sick. This is all just hitting me. The guidebook kept warning us about Gypsies. Did he look like a Gypsy to you? I never saw him."

"Boy, I did. His face was right next to mine for a second. He didn't wear an earring, just a very determined expression. I guess he thought you'd let go before you did."

"I couldn't believe somebody else wanted it," she said. "It was so sudden, you don't think. Thank you, by the way, for cushioning my fall. I didn't even skin my knees."

"Any time, my dear. That's rotten about your perfect scarf."

"He won't know what it was worth to me. He'll throw it away."

La policia were already at the hotel. How had they known? "The cab driver reported the accident," the smiling young clerk behind the desk explained. "Then the police called hotels in this area for a couple of your description." How much of a police state was this, still? were already at the hotel. How had they known? "The cab driver reported the accident," the smiling young clerk behind the desk explained. "Then the police called hotels in this area for a couple of your description." How much of a police state was this, still?

The policeman himself, a phlegmatic bland man in his forties-colorless, as if a policeman's experience had washed out of him all his natural tint and capacity for surprise-spoke no English; he didn't risk his dignity by venturing even a phrase. He glanced at Fairchild's clotted eyebrow and gave him a long bilingual form to fill out. Through the desk clerk, the policeman communicated an intention to take him away, though the victim protested, "Es nada. Nada!" "Es nada. Nada!" Mrs. Fairchild, the desk clerk translated with a pleased smile, was invited to come along. Mrs. Fairchild, the desk clerk translated with a pleased smile, was invited to come along.

In the back of the police car she confided, "The clerk was telling me while you were filling out the form about a woman who got thrown down and broke her hip, and in another incident a husband who tried to intervene and got stabbed and killed. So we were lucky."

"Good for us," Fairchild said, beginning to feel weary. His eyebrow hurt. The invigoration of shock was wearing off. They were being taken, he realized, out of the tourist region, into the real Seville, its ordinary neighborhoods and everyday inst.i.tutions, its places for working and shopping, living and dying. They pa.s.sed down streets of restaurants, past banks and a department store, all still bustling in the growing dark, at an hour when an American city would be shutting up shop. The silent policeman parked at what must be the hospital. The building had a six-story Beaux-Arts core, with a post-Franco modern wing. Within, all was brightly lit but with a milkier, subtler light than an American hospital would have employed. Such dramas as galvanize hospitals on American television were not occurring here. Instead, there was quiet in the halls. Most of the desks in sight were empty. No one seemed to speak English. Nor did the policeman offer anyone in his own language a long explanation of Fairchild's case-his abrupt crisis, his heroic survival.

Two uniformed women, possibly nuns, one in green and one in white, interviewed the victim. Fairchild pointed at his wound and explained, "Dos hombres jovenes-Vespa, vroom, vrrrooom! Mi esposa" "Dos hombres jovenes-Vespa, vroom, vrrrooom! Mi esposa"-at a loss for words to describe how Carol had been tugged down, he pantomimed a grab at his own shoulder, then did a toppling motion with his forearm-"la senora, boom! y me con la." The women nodded sympathetically, and went away, and eventually brought a man down the echoing hall. Feminist though he was becoming, Fairchild was relieved to see a man taking charge. The word The women nodded sympathetically, and went away, and eventually brought a man down the echoing hall. Feminist though he was becoming, Fairchild was relieved to see a man taking charge. The word hidalgo hidalgo came to his mind; the man was a somebody. He was short and fair and squarish-a blond descendant of the Visigoths, with a toothbrush mustache and an air of courteous amus.e.m.e.nt. He was a doctor. He examined Fairchild's b.l.o.o.d.y eyebrow and gestured for him to sit on a high, sheeted bed. Fairchild liked his gestures, firm but unhurried, with an Iberian touch of ceremony. came to his mind; the man was a somebody. He was short and fair and squarish-a blond descendant of the Visigoths, with a toothbrush mustache and an air of courteous amus.e.m.e.nt. He was a doctor. He examined Fairchild's b.l.o.o.d.y eyebrow and gestured for him to sit on a high, sheeted bed. Fairchild liked his gestures, firm but unhurried, with an Iberian touch of ceremony.

The patient's comprehension of Spanish was improving; he understood that the doctor was asking the nurse for Novocain, and that the nurse came back, rather breathlessly reporting that no Novocain could be found. The doctor urbanely shrugged, but his eyes declined to join his patient's in a wink at such female incompetence. When at last, after much distant chatter and clatter, the anesthetic was found, Fairchild lay back and shut his eyes. He felt a paper mask being lowered onto his face. In her solicitous nurse's voice Carol described in his ear what was happening to him: "Now, Marty, he has the needle, you're going to feel a pinch, he's injecting all around the gash, don't move your head suddenly. Now he has some gauze, he's going to wipe out your eyebrow, don't make that funny face, keep your face still."

Through his numbness Fairchild felt the tug of the st.i.tches, and the latex-gloved fingertips lightly pressing on his brow. How kind this doctor, and the policeman, and this entire post-Fascist nation were! When the operation was over, he produced his wallet, holding credit cards and a pastel salad of euro bills, but his attempt at payment was waved away. Instead, a flamboyantly signed doc.u.ment, giving his wound an official status, was handed to him. A slight, ceremonious smile tweaked the toothbrush mustache. "One week," the doctor said, in his lone effort at English, "st.i.tches out."

In a week, his black eye faded, Fairchild was back in the United States, where his own doctor, a youth no older than the Gypsy robber, marvelled that the st.i.tches were silk. "In this country," he explained, "you never see silk st.i.tches any more."

Why was this unlucky event-being mugged and injured in a foreign land-so pleasing to Fairchild? It was, he supposed, the element of contact. In his universe of accelerating expansion, he enjoyed less and less contact. Retired, he had lost contact with his old a.s.sociates, full of sociable promises though their partings had been. His children were adult and far-flung, and the grandchildren within his reach had only polite interest in the stale treats-the moronic kiddie movies, the expeditions to cacophonous bowling alleys indelibly smelling of the last century's cigarettes-that he could offer. His old poker group, which used to crowd eight around a dining-room table, had increasing difficulty mustering the minimum five players, and his old golf foursome had been dispersed to infirmity and Florida if not to the grave. One partner remained who shared Fairchild's old-fashioned aversion to riding a golf cart and was willing to walk with him; then on a winter morning this friend's handsome photograph, twenty years out of date, popped up in the obituary section of the Boston Globe. Boston Globe.

Other than the obituaries, newspapers had less and less in them that pertained to Fairchild-crucial sports contests, burning social issues, international crises all took place over a certain horizon. A curvature of concern left him out of it; he was islanded. Even his doctors and financial advisers, the caretakers of his old age, were increasingly difficult to reach, hiding behind a screen of recorded messages and secretaries whose hurried, immigrant accents were difficult for Fairchild to decipher. If a heart attack or a catastrophic downturn in the market were to overtake him, he would be left clutching the telephone while shimmering streams of Vivaldi or, even more insultingly, soupy instrumental arrangements of old Beatles standards filled the interminable wait for the next available service representative.

As opposed to this, there had been the Spanish doctor, his firm velvet touch on Fairchild's brow, and the member of the policia policia providing in stoical silence a tour of the real Seville, and the swarthy young mugger, not necessarily a Gypsy but distinctly dark, with shiny black hair providing in stoical silence a tour of the real Seville, and the swarthy young mugger, not necessarily a Gypsy but distinctly dark, with shiny black hair en brosse, en brosse, his face inches away and touchingly contorted in the work of retaining his loot. Everything in Spain had felt closer. There had been contact. his face inches away and touchingly contorted in the work of retaining his loot. Everything in Spain had felt closer. There had been contact.

Mrs. Fairchild, meanwhile, led an ever busier American life, with her committees and bridge groups and book clubs and manicure appointments. She had joined the universal dispersion of which Fairchild felt himself at the center. As she went off one day, she a.s.signed him a small task which, she patiently explained, "even he" could do. Last summer she had decided, against his advice, to have the two heavy tall doors opening into the living room removed. "I hate hate stuffy rooms," she told him, unstoppably. "Air! Light!" It made the house airier but (he pointed out in vain) harder to heat. stuffy rooms," she told him, unstoppably. "Air! Light!" It made the house airier but (he pointed out in vain) harder to heat.

Too heavy for him to lift, the doors had been carried down to the barn by two young men and wrapped in a tarpaulin and leaned in a corner, against the remote possibility of their reinstallation some day, if not by the Fairchilds by the next owners-even the house, as his time in it dwindled, was flying from him. One of the doors had a blue doork.n.o.b, rare old cobalt gla.s.s, which Carol wanted to see installed where they could enjoy the sight of it. Could he possibly go down and take the k.n.o.b off? "Really, Marty, a child child could do it," she said. could do it," she said.

The day was a clear one in February, with a chilly breeze. The barn was a relic of the horse-and-buggy era, with several stalls and mangers and a large central s.p.a.ce the Fairchilds had slowly filled with things the couple didn't have the heart or the imagination to throw away. Their children had left bulky deposits of schoolbooks, flat-tired bicycles, defunct toys, unplayable 33 rpm records. Dead ancestors persisted in the form of framed diplomas, garden tools, and musty trunks stuffed with clothes and letters more ancient than the barn itself.

After a frightening moment of senile blankness, Fairchild recalled the padlock combination. The creosoted barn doors creaked open. The interior, lit by high windows of dirty gla.s.s, held the expectant hush of an abandoned church. The two living-room doors leaned in their beige tarpaulin against a wall six feet behind an antique cherrywood corner cupboard that Fairchild had inherited when his mother died.

The imposing three-sided cupboard had been a presence in his childhood, a choice piece of Philadelphia cabinet-making and a looming proof of his family's pretensions to respectability. In a child's view it had emanated the grave mystery of ownership. To buy things, and then to have them all yours, and to place them safely on shelves, and to have the government with its laws and enforcers keep others from taking them, had struck him as a solemn privilege of grownup life. He could still hardly bear to part with anything that was his. Even the oldest clothes might be used as cleaning rags, or an outfit for a very dirty job, dirtier than this one.

A section of the corner cupboard with two panelled doors formed the lower portion; upon it rested, with no attachment but gravity, a similar-sized unit whose single large door held nine panes of wavery old gla.s.s. The shelves behind the gla.s.s used to be loaded with rarely used family china, its gleaming ranks changelessly presiding in the dining room while Fairchild as a child played on the carpet and executed crayon drawings, much admired by his elders, at the dining table. When, after a long widowhood, his mother had died, the cupboard had seemed the most precious part of his inheritance, and he had saved it from auction and in a rented truck brought it up to Ma.s.sachusetts from Pennsylvania. But none of his children had wanted it, or had room for it, and Carol, whose sense of decor, formed in hospitals, favored a clean and uncluttered look, didn't see that their house, a stately neo-colonial with more than its share of windows and radiators, had any place for it either. And so it had come to rest in the barn, waiting for someone to cherish it as Fairchild did and come take it away.

Fairchild loved it because its subtly irregular old panes reflected into his mind the wobbly ghosts of his grandparents and his mother and father and Uncle Wilbur, a New Jersey dairy farmer who once had taken out his penknife and jimmied open the corner cupboard's door during a summer visit. Uncle Wilbur had had an accent that Fairchild never heard any more, a soft mild wheeze formed, possibly, in patient conversation with animals. Fairchild's mother on that long-ago summer day (the air heavy with promise of a thunderstorm) had complained of being unable to retrieve something from the cupboard-the big porcelain soup tureen, perhaps, or the dessert dishes with scalloped edges, like glossy thick doilies. The door was stuck, swollen by the humidity. The New Jersey cousin's clever patience with his penknife had opened it and saved the day-that distant day-so that joyous exclamations arose from the visiting relatives seated expectantly around the table. It was a trivial incident magnified by family feeling; it touched Fairchild to realize that in the level run of his childhood days so small a thing would stick up and stay in his memory. Uncle Wilbur's knife-marks could still be seen on the edge of the beaded cherrywood. In New England's drier climate, the door swung open easily.

With the enshrined china auctioned off, along with most of the rest of the family possessions, Fairchild had sentimentally filled the cupboard with his mother's remaining treasures-a heavy pottery vase wearing a purplish-brown glaze, a thinner tubular one with a matte marbled pattern like that of endpapers in a de luxe de luxe book, several baskets woven of multicolored straw, a collection of possible arrowheads she had collected as a young farm girl, her father's hand-painted shaving mug with his name in gilt, porcelain figurines (an elf with polka-dot wings, a baby robin in its tinted nest), some sandstone "rose stones" acquired as souvenirs of her one trip west, with her husband, a year before she became a widow. In a small flat box, from the days when department stores packaged even small gifts in substantial boxes, she had saved the Sunday-school attendance badges and field-day ribbons that her only child had once been awarded. book, several baskets woven of multicolored straw, a collection of possible arrowheads she had collected as a young farm girl, her father's hand-painted shaving mug with his name in gilt, porcelain figurines (an elf with polka-dot wings, a baby robin in its tinted nest), some sandstone "rose stones" acquired as souvenirs of her one trip west, with her husband, a year before she became a widow. In a small flat box, from the days when department stores packaged even small gifts in substantial boxes, she had saved the Sunday-school attendance badges and field-day ribbons that her only child had once been awarded.

Fairchild had even put into the cupboard her last pocketbook, a plump black one with its catch on the top. Its leather had mildewed since her death. A pocket inside it, he knew, still held her driver's license, her Social Security and Medicare cards, and a computer-generated reminder of a doctor's appointment scheduled for the week after she had, abruptly, died, rendering all these accoutrements of her existence useless. Souvenirs of a life of which Fairchild was the last caring witness, these remnants that he lacked the will to discard depressed him, deepening the depression from which even so modest a task as removing a blue doork.n.o.b from a disused door loomed like a mountain almost impossible to climb. Why bother? Everything decays and sinks and fails under the dominion of time and entropy.

Moving the tarpaulin to one side was difficult. The husky workmen-dos hombres jovenes-had wrapped the two living-room doors together and then leaned them so their weight pinned the covering top and bottom. The blue k.n.o.b was on the inside, toward the wall. Fairchild had left his reading gla.s.ses up at the house, so he could not make out the head of the little screw that held the k.n.o.b in place. The light, falling through the dirty high windows, was poor. He lifted the doors toward him, closer to what light there was. He seemed to make out, shifting his head to gain a clearer spot of vision, that there was no screw; in the hole where one should have been was something like a nailhead, that would have to be pulled with a needle-nosed pliers. He hadn't brought pliers.

Why was everything in life so difficult?

To see a little better, to get the blue k.n.o.b a few inches farther into the open, he shifted the doors, in their enc.u.mbering wrap, toward him, so that they were precariously balanced in a vertical position, against his shoulder.

Suddenly he was being pressed, as he had been on that street in Seville, downward irresistibly, by a force he could not at first understand. Then he did did understand: the doors were falling on him. Together the two substantial doors of oak pressed him flat, face-down, onto a pile of old pine boards that he, with thrift's absurd inertia, was saving. His knees sc.r.a.ped on the rough edges. Splinters gouged the side of his right hand. As his brain registered these injuries he felt the weight of the doors continue to fall, past him, over him; in the split second before it happened he knew what was going to happen: they would slam into the top half of the corner cupboard, and it would topple from its perch on the lower half, and all would be smashed and scattered-arrowheads and badges and vases and baskets and figurines and the nine panes of irreplaceable old wavery gla.s.s. understand: the doors were falling on him. Together the two substantial doors of oak pressed him flat, face-down, onto a pile of old pine boards that he, with thrift's absurd inertia, was saving. His knees sc.r.a.ped on the rough edges. Splinters gouged the side of his right hand. As his brain registered these injuries he felt the weight of the doors continue to fall, past him, over him; in the split second before it happened he knew what was going to happen: they would slam into the top half of the corner cupboard, and it would topple from its perch on the lower half, and all would be smashed and scattered-arrowheads and badges and vases and baskets and figurines and the nine panes of irreplaceable old wavery gla.s.s.

The crashing successive tumult, as he lay with shut eyes and stinging knees on the useless saved lumber, came in stages, bad followed by worse, worse by worst, and then by silence. Winter wind whispered in a high corner of the barn. A splinter of gla.s.s tardily let go and tinkled to the floor. All was destroyed, shattered, dispersed. Fairchild's brain, working as fast as a knitting machine, had in a split second seen it all coming. For that split second, he had not been depressed.

German Lessons

BOSTON had a patchy, disconsolate feel in those years, the mid-Seventies. Girls with long hair and long skirts still walked along Charles Street with bare feet, but the Sixties bloom was off; you found yourself worrying that these flower children would step on broken gla.s.s, or that parasites would penetrate their dirty soles, which were stained green from wandering on the gra.s.sy Common. The cultural revolution had become unclean. had a patchy, disconsolate feel in those years, the mid-Seventies. Girls with long hair and long skirts still walked along Charles Street with bare feet, but the Sixties bloom was off; you found yourself worrying that these flower children would step on broken gla.s.s, or that parasites would penetrate their dirty soles, which were stained green from wandering on the gra.s.sy Common. The cultural revolution had become unclean.

Ed Trimble felt unclean and guilty. He had moved to the city alone, having left a family behind in New Hampshire. His wife and he ran a small real-estate firm in Peterborough, and Arlene made most of the sales. She had more gusto and social grace; she didn't let her real feelings about a property sour her pitch, as he did. He resented her superior success, and knew she could hold things together if he pulled out for a time. He needed s.p.a.ce; things were up in the air. In this interim, with the begrimed conveniences of a city all about him, he saw a chance to fill some of his gaps. Guided by the Yellow Pages, he enlisted in German lessons, at a so-called Language Inst.i.tute in Cambridge.

The Inst.i.tute turned out to be an ordinary wooden house north of Central Square, and the cla.s.s a ragged handful of other gap-fillers, some of them not much younger than he, and the cla.s.sroom a small bas.e.m.e.nt room where an excess of fluorescent lighting blazed as if to overcome the smallness with brightness. Their teacher was Frau Mueller-Muller in Germany-and their textbook was Deutsch als Fremdsprache, Deutsch als Fremdsprache, a slender blue tome designed, as the multilingual cover announced, for speakers of any other language. It was ill.u.s.trated with photographs that Ed found alienating-the people in them could have been Americans but for an edge of formality and the ubiquity of Mercedes cars. The men, even the auto mechanics, wore neckties, and the young women sported slightly outdated miniskirts and Jackie Kennedy hairdos, teased into glossy bulk. Ed's older brother had acquired a shrapnel wound and a lifelong limp in the Ardennes counteroffensive, and Ed rather resented the prim, bloodless prosperity revealed in these lesson ill.u.s.trations. Now, while the U.S. was risking troops and going broke protecting what was left of the Deutschland from the Russians, these defeated Huns, sleek and smug, were wallowing in a picture-book capitalism. a slender blue tome designed, as the multilingual cover announced, for speakers of any other language. It was ill.u.s.trated with photographs that Ed found alienating-the people in them could have been Americans but for an edge of formality and the ubiquity of Mercedes cars. The men, even the auto mechanics, wore neckties, and the young women sported slightly outdated miniskirts and Jackie Kennedy hairdos, teased into glossy bulk. Ed's older brother had acquired a shrapnel wound and a lifelong limp in the Ardennes counteroffensive, and Ed rather resented the prim, bloodless prosperity revealed in these lesson ill.u.s.trations. Now, while the U.S. was risking troops and going broke protecting what was left of the Deutschland from the Russians, these defeated Huns, sleek and smug, were wallowing in a picture-book capitalism.

Frau Mueller did not look like the well-groomed women in the photographs. Her hair, straw color fading to gray, had been pulled back into a streaky ponytail; stray strands fell untidily around her face. She dressed in the absent-minded Cambridge manner, adding woolly layers as the summer waned and autumn deepened into winter. To Ed she seemed much older than he, but perhaps the difference was as little as five years: she had just suffered more. Her nose came to a sharp tip reddened by perpetual sniffles; her thick spectacles magnified pale-lashed eyes that twinkled sometimes as if remembering a joke it would be too much trouble to explain.

Though Deutsch als Fremdsprache Deutsch als Fremdsprache contained no English, Frau Mueller's accompanying guidance contained plenty of it, much of it focused on fine points of English grammar. Ed knew this was wrong; he had taken enough language courses-French, Spanish, both mostly forgotten-to know that the modern method, proven over and over, was immersion, no matter how painful at first for the students and the native speaker leading them. When they came to the German subjunctive, she informed the cla.s.s, "Your English subjunctive fascinates me. It does not seem-how can I say this?-quite serious. When does one employ it? Give me examples." contained no English, Frau Mueller's accompanying guidance contained plenty of it, much of it focused on fine points of English grammar. Ed knew this was wrong; he had taken enough language courses-French, Spanish, both mostly forgotten-to know that the modern method, proven over and over, was immersion, no matter how painful at first for the students and the native speaker leading them. When they came to the German subjunctive, she informed the cla.s.s, "Your English subjunctive fascinates me. It does not seem-how can I say this?-quite serious. When does one employ it? Give me examples."

"If I were king," Ed hesitantly offered.

"If any man sin," timidly chimed in a student called Andrea-quoting, Ed realized, the Book of Common Prayer.

Frau Mueller's eyes, twinkling, darted around her mostly silent little flock. "Ah," she triumphantly told them, "you must think think for examples. If the subjunctive in English did not exist-if it exist not, would it be correct to say?-no one would miss it! No one would notice! That is not the case in German. We use it all the time. Not to use it would be a serious discourtesy. It would sound-can I use the word?- for examples. If the subjunctive in English did not exist-if it exist not, would it be correct to say?-no one would miss it! No one would notice! That is not the case in German. We use it all the time. Not to use it would be a serious discourtesy. It would sound-can I use the word?-pushy. Germans are always being described as pushy, yes? I think it is fascinating, the looseness of English." Germans are always being described as pushy, yes? I think it is fascinating, the looseness of English."

"Aber-Englisch hat Regeln," Ed protested, hoping that that was the plural of Ed protested, hoping that that was the plural of Regel, Regel, and the accusative. The rest of the cla.s.s looked at him as if he were crazy, trying to communicate in German. and the accusative. The rest of the cla.s.s looked at him as if he were crazy, trying to communicate in German.

"Ein Satz Regeln," Frau Mueller smiled. Frau Mueller smiled. "Aber es ist nur eine Kleinigkeit." "Aber es ist nur eine Kleinigkeit."

Ed found German disagreeable and opaque; its closeness to English addled his mind. Reading, in the lesson "Im Restaurant," the fictional Herr Weber's polite request, "Vielleicht haben Sie einen Tisch am Fenster?," "Vielleicht haben Sie einen Tisch am Fenster?," he had to fight the impulse to make he had to fight the impulse to make Tisch Tisch into "dish" and into "dish" and Fenster Fenster into "fender." He might have quit the cla.s.s but for Andrea. In this disordered period of his life, she radiated, though well advanced into her thirties, a healing innocence. She was on the small side, with the wide-eyed, washed-out face of an aging child, her lips the same color as her cheeks and clear brow. As winter closed in, her delicate lips cracked and she kept applying a lip balm that made them, under the harsh fluorescent lights, gleam. into "fender." He might have quit the cla.s.s but for Andrea. In this disordered period of his life, she radiated, though well advanced into her thirties, a healing innocence. She was on the small side, with the wide-eyed, washed-out face of an aging child, her lips the same color as her cheeks and clear brow. As winter closed in, her delicate lips cracked and she kept applying a lip balm that made them, under the harsh fluorescent lights, gleam.

Frau Mueller not only spoke too much English, but when it came time for the cla.s.s to examine the a.s.signed German texts, she waved them aside as if their meaning was obvious to all. Little was obvious to Ed, including the differences between noch noch and and doch. Doch doch. Doch seemed to be untranslatable, sheer padding, like the English word "well"-but the utility and sense of "well" were inexpressibly apparent. Andrea was less indignant than he, coming up against the language barrier. He and she began to sit side by side in cla.s.s, and to arrive with lessons they had worked up together, either in the underfurnished two rooms he rented in the South End, or on the sofa or bed of Andrea's apartment, the third floor of a stately Cambridge house on Fayerweather Street. The genteel landlady was a professor's widow, hanging on beyond her means. Andrea shared the third floor with a female cellist who was often away, performing. She herself was a part-time librarian, on duty evenings at an East Cambridge branch of the city system. Her immurement in books, and her acquired skill at aurally deciphering what the library's minority patrons wanted, enabled her to see through the opacity of the German texts into a sphere of human meaning. He even once caught her, as they coped side by side with a set pa.s.sage from Brecht, laughing at a joke that had leaped out at her. Feminine intuition: Arlene back in New Hampshire had possessed it also, but had used it less and less to antic.i.p.ate his desires. When he and this new woman, an aging flower-child, a vegetarian, and a peacenik, made love, Andrea seemed a filmy extension of his wishes. Her gentle shyness merged with a knowingness, an experience of other partners, that slightly unnerved Ed. She had been, in a way that worked to his benefit, corrupted. seemed to be untranslatable, sheer padding, like the English word "well"-but the utility and sense of "well" were inexpressibly apparent. Andrea was less indignant than he, coming up against the language barrier. He and she began to sit side by side in cla.s.s, and to arrive with lessons they had worked up together, either in the underfurnished two rooms he rented in the South End, or on the sofa or bed of Andrea's apartment, the third floor of a stately Cambridge house on Fayerweather Street. The genteel landlady was a professor's widow, hanging on beyond her means. Andrea shared the third floor with a female cellist who was often away, performing. She herself was a part-time librarian, on duty evenings at an East Cambridge branch of the city system. Her immurement in books, and her acquired skill at aurally deciphering what the library's minority patrons wanted, enabled her to see through the opacity of the German texts into a sphere of human meaning. He even once caught her, as they coped side by side with a set pa.s.sage from Brecht, laughing at a joke that had leaped out at her. Feminine intuition: Arlene back in New Hampshire had possessed it also, but had used it less and less to antic.i.p.ate his desires. When he and this new woman, an aging flower-child, a vegetarian, and a peacenik, made love, Andrea seemed a filmy extension of his wishes. Her gentle shyness merged with a knowingness, an experience of other partners, that slightly unnerved Ed. She had been, in a way that worked to his benefit, corrupted.

His and Andrea's becoming a kind of couple in German cla.s.s, and their being somewhat older than the other students, won them an unlooked-for honor; before Christmas, as the first term was ending, Frau Mueller invited them to tea. "Only if you like," she said.

"You've used the subjunctive!" Ed told her.

She half-smiled-her smile was rarely more than half, diluted by a nagging wariness-and said, "I think it was merely the conditional."

She lived in one of three squat brick apartment buildings built on an old Kenmore Square industrial site; the complex had the small-windowed look of a modern prison, but lacked the barbed wire and guard towers. Ed and Andrea would not have gone, except that they did not know how to decline an invitation that clumsily crossed the American line between paid instruction and social friendship. "What do you say? Nein, danke Nein, danke?" Ed asked.

"You don't want to hurt her feelings," Andrea said. This excursion was a step for them, too, venturing forth for the first time to be entertained as a couple. For a present they took something that they considered, after much deliberation, to be uniquely American-a tin log cabin full of maple syrup. Though, without pancakes, did maple syrup make any sense?

They were taken unawares when a man, speaking in the thick accent of a stage German, responded over the security speaker at the entrance and then greeted them in the dark hall. "I am Hedwig's husband, Franz," he told them, p.r.o.nouncing the name "Hettvig." "It is werry obliching of you to come." He, too, sensed something strange about the occasion, its awkward reaching-out.

Tea, it developed, was not offered, though cookies, sprinkled with red and green sugar in honor of the Christmas season, had been set out, along with some miniature fruit tarts still in their pleated wax-paper cups from the deli. Franz urged a beer, an imported Lowenbrau, upon Ed, and for Andrea, who did not drink alcohol or smoke or eat meat or fish-"nothing with a face" was her creed-he found a c.o.ke in the back of the refrigerator. She did not drink caffeinated soft drinks, either, Ed knew, but with a docility that broke his heart she accepted this desperate offering from her host. Franz was plump but energetic, with thinning blond hair combed straight back on his skull; his scalp was dewy, and his shirt damp, as if in silent comment upon the overheated airlessness of this rented apartment.

In her husband's presence, an invisible burden seemed to slip from Frau Mueller. She became pa.s.sive and betranced, sipping an amber drink that Franz quickly replenished when the ice cubes settled to the bottom. She seemed pleased to have the conversation focus on Franz. He was a photographer-weddings, graduations, bar and bat mitzvahs. "To the Orientals especially," Franz explained, "the photographer is more important than the minister. He iss iss the minister, in practical fact. He iss the Gott who says, 'Let sare be light,' and this pa.s.sink event iss made- the minister, in practical fact. He iss the Gott who says, 'Let sare be light,' and this pa.s.sink event iss made-Was ist 'ewig,' Liebchen?"

"Eternal," Frau Mueller supplied, out of her smiling, drifting state.

The living room was configured like a bas.e.m.e.nt: steps led up to a floor above, and the triangular s.p.a.ce beneath the stairs was filled with stacks of magazines. Ed, who had taken the easy chair nearest the stairs, slowly saw that most of the saved magazines were Playboy Playboys and Penthouse Penthouses and Hustler Hustlers. On his second Lowenbrau Ed felt empowered to remark upon this unusual domestic archive. His zealous host hopped up and placed a few in his hands, urging him to flip through. The glossy pages reminded Ed of a rose-grower's catalogue, so many vivid shades of pink and red, with the occasional purple and mauve of a black woman. Franz explained, "They use mirrors, to focus light upon"-he hesitated, glancing toward Andrea-"chust that that spot." spot."

Ed, too, glanced at Andrea, and was startled by the angelic beauty of her face, blankly gazing elsewhere in serene ignorance that the men were discussing mirrors focused on v.a.g.i.n.as. She was a silverpoint beauty, all outline, transparent to the radiance beneath things: the sudden contrast, perhaps, with the dirty girls of Penthouse, Penthouse, their spread legs and forced leers, created the impression. She was so good, so abstemious that Ed saw, sinkingly, she could never be his. This glimpse of truth persisted when most of the details of the slightly mad tea party had faded. their spread legs and forced leers, created the impression. She was so good, so abstemious that Ed saw, sinkingly, she could never be his. This glimpse of truth persisted when most of the details of the slightly mad tea party had faded.

The Muellers wanted, it seemed, to talk about themselves. Of this couple, the man was the natural teacher, the natural sharer and salesman. Franz had been a young soldier in the Wehrmacht, and had ingratiated himself with the two great armies that had defeated his own. As a prisoner of war in the Soviet Union, he had learned enough Russian to make himself useful and win favored treatment in a harsh environment. Then, repatriated to the Western zone, he had learned the American version of English. He had acquired skills, photography being only one of them. Weekdays, he worked at MIT, as a lab technician. Hedwig and he had come to the United States nearly ten years ago, already linked by marriage.

If they ever described how they had met, or what dream had brought them to the United States, Ed, mellow on Lowenbrau, let it slip through his mind.

As her third tea-colored drink dwindled before her, Hedwig's languid pa.s.sivity warmed into lax confidingness. She called Franz by a nickname-"Affe," and he responded with and he responded with "Affenkind." "Affenkind." Monkey and baby monkey. She shocked Ed by referring, out of the blue, to Franz's "cute little heinie." The word "heinie" was one Ed had not heard since his childhood, and American women in the Seventies still kept to themselves any interest in men's derrieres-the words "b.u.m" and "b.u.t.t" and "a.s.s" were saved for, if ever, intimacy. He reasoned that the two Germans, childless, in strange and formerly hostile territory, would make much of their s.e.xual bond. But here among the four of them it was as if, in their eagerness to achieve closeness, the couple were using s.e.x as a stalking horse for darker confidences. These were real Germans, Ed told himself-the people his brother had fought against, not the "Dutch" who had come to this country to be farmers or brewers, and not the Jewish Germans who had come here to flee Hitler. These Germans had stayed where they were, and fought. They had fought hard. Monkey and baby monkey. She shocked Ed by referring, out of the blue, to Franz's "cute little heinie." The word "heinie" was one Ed had not heard since his childhood, and American women in the Seventies still kept to themselves any interest in men's derrieres-the words "b.u.m" and "b.u.t.t" and "a.s.s" were saved for, if ever, intimacy. He reasoned that the two Germans, childless, in strange and formerly hostile territory, would make much of their s.e.xual bond. But here among the four of them it was as if, in their eagerness to achieve closeness, the couple were using s.e.x as a stalking horse for darker confidences. These were real Germans, Ed told himself-the people his brother had fought against, not the "Dutch" who had come to this country to be farmers or brewers, and not the Jewish Germans who had come here to flee Hitler. These Germans had stayed where they were, and fought. They had fought hard.

Late in their little party, the early-December night tightening cozily around them, Hedwig announced, with a smile rather broader than her usual wary one, "I was a Hitler b.i.t.c.h." She meant that she had been, in her teens, with millions of others, a member of the BDM, the Bund Deutscher Madel, the League of German Maidens. The matter had arisen from her description, fascinating to the Americans-Ed had been a boy during the war, and Andrea was not yet born-of the Fuhrer's voice over the radio. "It was terrible," Hedwig said, picking her words with especial care, shutting her eyes as if to hear it again, "but exciting. A shrieking like an angry husband with his wife. He loves her, but she must shape up. Both of you know, of course, how in a German sentence the verb of a compound form must come at the end of a sentence, however lengthy; he was excused from that. Hitler was exempted from grammar. It was a mark of how far above us he was."

And Ed saw on her face a flicker of grammatical doubt, as she rechecked the last sentence in her head and could find nothing wrong with it, odd as it had sounded in her ears.

Two other shared occasions, on the scant social ground where Ed and Andrea and Franz and Hedwig met, remained, decades later, in Ed's spotty memory.

First, there was a bitterly cold January night in which the two couples and another, Luke and Susan, had gone out to eat together. Luke and Susan were hardly a couple, since Luke, a weedy slight youth with a pained squint, was generally a.s.sumed to be gay. He had come along as Susan's guest. In the cla.s.s, where dwindled enrollment encouraged an even looser informality, Hedwig, digressing from the lesson on weil, um zu, weil, um zu, and and damit, damit, had expressed a desire for more authentic Cantonese cuisine than the "mongrelized"-she p.r.o.nounced the English word deliberately, in apparent ignorance of its bad historical connotations-fare offered as Chinese food. Susan, a large-framed, exuberant brunette given to sweeping p.r.o.nouncements, had responded that she knew just the place, an unbelievably tiny family restaurant in Chinatown. It was agreed that after the next lesson-lessons occurred in the late afternoon, the students emerging from oppressive brightness into the January dark-Franz would pick the five of them up in his car, which turned out to be an early-Sixties Buick, proudly maintained. The Americans, climbing in, giggled at its largeness, its inner swaths of soft velour, reminiscent of their parents' more naive, expansive America. Chinatown proved too cramped and crowded for the s.p.a.cious car, and Franz finally took a chancy spot at a corner of Beach Street, his front b.u.mper and k.n.o.bby chrome grille nearly protruding into traffic. had expressed a desire for more authentic Cantonese cuisine than the "mongrelized"-she p.r.o.nounced the English word deliberately, in apparent ignorance of its bad historical connotations-fare offered as Chinese food. Susan, a large-framed, exuberant brunette given to sweeping p.r.o.nouncements, had responded that she knew just the place, an unbelievably tiny family restaurant in Chinatown. It was agreed that after the next lesson-lessons occurred in the late afternoon, the students emerging from oppressive brightness into the January dark-Franz would pick the five of them up in his car, which turned out to be an early-Sixties Buick, proudly maintained. The Americans, climbing in, giggled at its largeness, its inner swaths of soft velour, reminiscent of their parents' more naive, expansive America. Chinatown proved too cramped and crowded for the s.p.a.cious car, and Franz finally took a chancy spot at a corner of Beach Street, his front b.u.mper and k.n.o.bby chrome grille nearly protruding into traffic.

The meal, deftly served in a smoky, clattering congestion by what seemed a pack of children in slippers, fell short of Susan's expectations, but no one else complained. The Tsingtao beer tickled Franz's palate, and he insisted, against feeble objections from his impecunious crew, on picking up the check. When, however, overfed and overheated and talking too loud, they all went back out into the freezing January night, the spot on Beach Street where Franz's car had been parked was empty. The nostalgic big Buick was gone.

Ed, at heart a country boy, a.s.sumed the worst: the car had been stolen; the loss was total and irremediable. If he were by himself, he could simply walk back to the South End, and he resentfully pictured the long trek, by taxi or the T, that he must endure to return Andrea to her Cambridge widow's house. The others, more city-smart, took a less dire view of the disappearance. Franz and Luke agreed that the car, illegally parked, had been towed by the police, and a call, from an imperfectly vandalized pay phone, with Luke doing the talking, confirmed that this was the case. The car was being held captive at the great fenced-in impoundment lot beyond the Berkeley Street overpa.s.s of the Ma.s.sachusetts Turnpike, to be released upon payment of fine and fees. The Muellers offered to say good night on Beach Street right then and take a taxi to ransom their automobile, but the Americans would not hear of it. There were too many for a cab, so all walked together, their cheeks on fire with the cold, the mile to the dismal civic site.

Susan, in white earm.u.f.fs and a long striped scarf wound around her neck, led the parade. Her dark hair gleamed beneath the streetlights. Broken gla.s.s glittered all around. Andrea, it seemed to Ed, glowed in a religious rapture; the physical challenge of the trudge through the litter and the desolate urban margins of the Turnpike, with a group goal of redeeming a lost thing, spoke to her ascetic, cooperative spirit. As their brave parade moved through the blasted cityscape, its rubble and battered playground fencing and hard-frozen puddles, Ed kept thinking of bombed Berlin, and of cities Berlin had bombed, and of the black-and-white wartime movies that had communicated to his childhood an illicit exhilaration.

The episode was one of unequalled solidarity and spontaneous fun with the Germans. Franz had paid for their feast in cash, in those days before credit cards became universal tender, and found himself lacking the dollars that the heavy-lidded, implacable police clerk demanded from within his fortified and snugly heated shack. The others quickly made up the sum, raising their American voices as if to hide Franz's accent. The cop did not like the accent, or Franz's toadying manner, acquired in the postwar ruins. The cop suspected that his leg was being pulled; he was used to sullen hostility, not a cl.u.s.ter of tow-truck victims happily gabbling. The German students clambered into the liberated vintage sedan like schoolmates on an educational outing that has gone slightly, hilariously awry.