Some celebration they're having.
What are they celebrating?
War.
But there isn't a war. It's all over.
They're celebrating the next one, he says. It's on the way. Everyone's denying it up there in cloud cuckoo land, but down at ground level you can smell it coming. With Spain shot to hell for target practice, they'll start in on the serious business pretty soon. It's like thunder in the air, and they're excited by it. That's why all the bottle-smashing. They want to get a head start.
Oh, surely not, she says. There can't be another one. They've made pacts and everything.
Peace in our time, he says scornfully. Fucking bullshit. What they're hoping is that Uncle Joe and Adolf will tear each other to pieces, and get rid of the Jews for them into the bargain, while they sit on their bums and make money.
You're as cynical as ever.
You're as naive.
Not quite, she says. Let's not argue. It won't be settled by us. But this is more like him, more like the way he was, and so she feels a little better.
No, he says. You're right. It won't be settled by us. We're small potatoes.
But you'll go anyway, she says. If it starts up again. Whether you're a small potato or not.
He looks at her. What else can I do?
He doesn't know why she's crying. She tries not to. I wish you'd been wounded, she says. Then you'd have to stay here.
And a fat lot of good that would do you, he says. Come here.
Leaving, she can scarcely see. She walks by herself a little, to calm down, but it's dark and there are too many men on the sidewalk, and so she takes a taxi. Sitting in the back seat, she repairs her mouth, powders her face. When they stop, she rummages in her purse, she pays the taxi, goes up the stone steps and through the arched entranceway, and closes the thick oak door. In her head she's rehearsing: Sorry I'm late, but you wouldn't believe what happened to me, I've had quite a little adventure.
Yellow curtains
How did the war creep up? How did it gather itself together? What was it made from? What secrets, lies, betrayals? What loves and hatreds? What sums of money, what metals?
Hope throws a smokescreen. Smoke gets in your eyes and so no one is prepared for it, but suddenly it's there, like an out-of-control bonfire-like murder, only multiplied. It's in full spate.
The war takes place in black and white. For those on the sidelines that is. For those who are actually in it there are many colours, excessive colours, too bright, too red and orange, too liquid and incandescent, but for the others the war is like a newsreel-grainy, smeared, with bursts of staccato noise and large numbers of grey-skinned people rushing or plodding or falling down, everything elsewhere.
She goes to the newsreels, in the movie theatres. She reads the papers. She knows herself to be at the mercy of events, and she knows by now that events have no mercy.
She's made up her mind. She's determined now, she'll sacrifice everything and everyone. Nothing and nobody will stand in her way.
This is what she'll do. She has it all planned out. She'll leave the house one day as if it's any other day. She'll have money, money of some description. This is the unclear part, but surely something will be possible. What do other people do? They go to the pawnshop, and that's what she will have done as well. She'll get the money by pawning things: a gold watch, a silver spoon, a fur coat. Bits and pieces. She'll pawn them little by little and they won't be missed.
It won't be enough money but it will have to be enough. She'll rent a room, an inexpensive room but not too dingy-nothing a coat of paint won't brighten up. She'll write a letter saying she isn't coming back.
They'll send emissaries, ambassadors, then lawyers, they'll threaten, they'll penalise, she'll be afraid all the time but she'll hold firm. She'll burn all her bridges except the bridge to him, even though the bridge to him is so tenuous. I'll be back, he said, but how could he be sure? You can't guarantee such a thing.
She'll live on apples and soda crackers, on cups of tea and glasses of milk. Cans of baked beans and corned beef. Also on fried eggs when available, and slices of toast, which she'll eat at the corner caf © where the newsboys and early drunks also eat. Veterans will eat there too, more and more of them as the months go past: men missing hands, arms, legs, ears, eyes. She'll wish to talk with them, but she won't because any interest from her would be sure to be misunderstood. Her body as usual would get in the way of free speech. Therefore she will only eavesdrop.
In the caf © the talk will be about the end of the war, which everyone says is coming. It will only be a matter of time, they'll say, before it'll all be mopped up and the boys will be back. The men who say this will be strangers to one another, but they'll exchange such comments anyway, because the prospect of victory will make them talkative. There will be a different feeling in the air, part optimism, part fear. Any day now the ship will come in, but who can tell what might be on it?
Her apartment will be above a grocery store, with a kitchenette and a small bathroom. She will buy a house plant-a begonia, or else a fern. She will remember to water this plant and it will not die. The woman running the grocery store will be dark-haired and plump and motherly, and will talk about her thinness and the need for her to eat more, and about what should be done for a chest cold. Perhaps she will be Greek; Greek, or something like it, with big arms and a centre part in her hair, and a bun at the back. Her husband and son will be overseas; she'll have pictures of them, framed in painted wood, hand-tinted, beside the cash register.
Both of them-she and this woman-will spend a lot of time listening: for footsteps, a telephone call, a knock on the door. It's hard to sleep under these circumstances: they'll discuss remedies for sleeplessness. Occasionally the woman will press an apple into her hand, or an acid-green candy from the glass container of them on the counter. Such gifts will be more comforting to her than their low price would suggest.
How will he know where to reclaim her? Now that her bridges have been burned. He'll know, however. He'll find out somehow, because journeys end in lovers meeting. They should. They must.
She'll sew curtains for the windows, yellow curtains, the colour of canaries or the yolks of eggs. Cheerful curtains, like sunshine. Never mind that she doesn't know how to sew, because the woman downstairs will help her. She'll starch the curtains and hang them up. She'll get down on her knees with a whisk and clean out the mouse droppings and dead flies under the kitchen sink. She'll repaint a set of canisters she'll find in a junk store, and stencil on them: Tea, Coffee, Sugar, Flour. She will hum to herself while doing this. She'll buy a new towel, a whole set of new towels. Also sheets, these are important, and pillowcases. She'll brush her hair a lot.
These are the joyful things she will do, while waiting for him.
She'll buy a radio, a small tinny secondhand one, at the pawnshop; she'll listen to the news, to keep up with current events. Also she'll have a telephone: a telephone will be necessary in the long run, although no one will call her on it, not yet. Sometimes she'll pick it up just to listen to it purr. Or else there will be voices on it, having a conversation on the party line. Mostly it will be women, exchanging the details of meals and weather and bargains and children, and of men who are somewhere else.
None of this happens, of course. Or it does happen, but not so you would notice. It happens in another dimension of space.
The telegram
The telegram is delivered in the usual way, by a man in a dark uniform whose face brings no glad tidings. When they're hired for the job they teach them that expression, remote but doleful, like a dark blank bell. The closed coffin look.