Under my arm I felt the pistol, in my head faintly heard the shrill music, and dancing with Jutta, I felt as well as I ever felt. Naturally my eyes looked from face to face, beyond the back of her head, followed the girls that were hugged along and passed from dry smile to smile. It stirred a memory of burnished Paris women and silver bars during the second part of my visit, of murky waters stirred with blinking lights and faint odors of flowers on street corners. I bumped a man and no words were spoken, then I was pushed backwards into a girl and tried to recall the sensation — while all about me moved the bundles of rags, grass sticking to their collars.
The Census-Taker had lost us and squeezed on the end of a narrow bench that sagged with girls whose fingers were chewed at the ends. He looked with distaste from one red knee to another. He hooked his fingers in his shirt and tried to rest his back, felt something soft and loose pushing into his side and pushed away. An Italian with long hair down his neck looked from the Census-Taker to the girl, and catching his eye, shook an olive head “no,” in a meaningful way; the Census-Taker shut his eyes.
The lilt and strain moved back and forth in an endless way, foreshadowed and stunted in careless glances, in the unexcited hang of a dress, with words partially exposed to hearing, with all their mixed nationality running out in shuffling footsteps. Something inside me motioned to hold her closer, and I did so, the scratching close now to my ear. I lit a cigarette with one arm hooked around her neck, the flame close to her hair, spaces black between my teeth as I exhaled. Two of the white heads hung together in a corner with breaths stifled, while the music rested on the constant low scuffle of wooden shoes.
“I must leave,” I said. My hand rested on the middle of her back; I looked at her kindly. Something about my person could still be called soldat but not the crawling, unshaven soldatto filth of the Italians who wriggled dog-fashion.
“Yes,” she answered. In the Census-Taker’s disturbed sleep, the white handkerchief, recently blown into, fluttered down like a child’s parachute to the ground.
“You must get him back to the rooms. Be careful not to fall. Get some sleep, you look tired. I’ll come and see you in the morning after it’s done, and remember, there’s no danger.” She smelled a breath of tobacco as my cheek touched her forehead for a moment, and I stepped off, no longer recognized, among the grey masqueraders. Alone, Jutta followed the length of three walls, past outstretched thick feet, past bodies hanging arm in arm, until she found where the Census-Taker was sitting, the last in a row of tallow girls. Gently, holding beneath one arm, she made him rise until his strong breath fumed about her throat, until his red eyes were narrowed full on her face, and speaking softly, she propelled him along. Feeling the narrow doorway, they found themselves out in the night air, alone. In the receding storehouse, the dancers massed together in the cold tart atmosphere to perform, couple by couple all night, some distasteful ritual, whereby those with uncovered bellies and tousled hair walked in their midst as easily and unnoticed as the most infected and sparkling damsel.
Jutta’s son, the fairy, fled for his life, his knees the size of finger-joints whirling in every direction like the un-coordinated thrashings of a young and frightened fox.
The Duke continued to prod and tap with the gleaming cane, drew the coat tighter about his chest.
Jutta’s daughter watched in the window, her golden curls tight like a wig about the narrow face.
Jutta herself, with the Census-Taker heavily against her shoulders, started down the cinder path, while over all the town and sty-covered outskirts hung a somber, early, Pentecostal chill. She moved slowly because the man mumbled thickly in her ear and his feet caught against the half-buried bricks that lined the path. Finally she could no longer hear the music and was quickly back in the thick deserted kingdom of crumbling buildings and roosting birds, the asylum all about her. She wanted to get home to sleep.
I followed, far ahead of them, the clay contours of the railroad tracks, crossed the wooden scaffold over the canal, smelled the rivulets of fog, heard the slapping of deflated, flat rubber boats against the rocks, made my way across ruts and pieces of shattered wood. I knew that soon the American on the motorcycle, the only Allied overseer in this part of Germany, would be passing through the town, shivering with cold, mud-covered and trembling, hunched forward over the handle bars, straining with difficulty to see the chopped-up road in the darkness. The main highway, cracked badly from armored convoys, crossed the town at a sharp bend where the low wet fields faced the abrupt end of a few parallel streets of shapeless brick houses. A log lay across the road, heavy and invisible. For a moment, I remembered my true love, and then I was following the rough line of the log, leaving the town behind, and slipping in haste, I dropped down beside the two soft murmuring voices and leaned against the steep embankment.
“He’ll be here soon.”
“Ja, der Tod.”
Backs to the road, we looked out across the endless grey fields and almost expected to see barrels of smoke and the red glare of shooting flares through the twisted stunted trees.
Jutta could not believe that I was in danger, but some dull warning voice seemed to try to speak from the leaning buildings, and the Census-Taker babbled in her ear; some voice, a consideration, tried to force its way through her blunted journey. As she passed the building where Balamir had once been kept, she felt this new twist in things and did not want to lose me. Years before she would have seen the face pressed to the window and would have heard from his lips what was in her heart: “I don’t want to see those birds smashed!” Balamir first screamed so long ago to his startled nurse. Jutta hurried, pushing the drunk man in front of her towards the hill, and began to think that Stella was a strange woman to take a man crazy with the stars into the house, while out in the cold, I, her lover, had to wait for the puttering of the motor-bike, for the saddlebags, the prize.
PART TWO–1914
LOVE
“Stella sings like an angel,” cried the crowd, and the Bavarian orchestra played all the louder. Some of them were shocked, some annoyed, others opened their big hearts and wanted to join in the chorus, while some looked out into the sultry night. The largest of them were eager waiters whose black jackets showed here and there with darker patches of velvet from stains, whose stout arms bore platters of beer and who paused near the kitchen doors to hear the new singer. The officers in their new grey tunics were slightly smaller and the girls were smaller yet — but still were Nordic women, straight, blonde, strong and unsupple. Even the vines on the trellises were thick and round, swaying only slightly out in the heat. Heads nodded close together at the tables in the garden. In the brightly-lit room the wooden chairs and tables were uncarved, unornamented, and the white walls and pillared ceiling were remote. It did not seem possible that enough blue smoke and shadow could rise to make the hall alluring. The men talked together, the clatter of cups intruded. Their backs were straight, they nodded cordially, and the light gleamed on undecorated chests. But it was only ten, still dusk, still formal. They smiled. Stella twisted the handkerchief in her fingers, squeezed it strongly into her damp palms and continued to sing and to smile. Then she found it simple, found that her throat opened and her head could turn and smile, that she could move about and thrust into her shoulders the charm of the song. They listened, turned away, then listened again, and like a girl with breeding and a girl with grace, she made them look and sang to them. First, sadly, then with her eyes bright and her shoulders thrust backwards: