“Peter,” he said, “the war is lost.”
I was nine years old. What could such a statement mean to me? For children who are not actually devastated by it, war is no more than a merciful interruption of routine. In the schools there had been drives for steel and tin and clothing, each of which added a certain tension to the day, made it pass more quickly than usual.
“Do you understand me?”
What was I to understand? What does a child know of defeat, of humiliation, of devastated pride? We knew that in France since 1914 something mighty had been going on. But what, in the end, did it have to do with us? How could something so far away bring such sorrow to my father’s face?
I said nothing. It was getting dark, the trees turning black against the sky.
“We have been defeated,” my father said. He shook my shoulders slightly. “Defeated, do you understand?”
“Yes, Father,” I said in a low voice.
His face seemed to shrink back as he looked at me. I know now that what he wanted — what he always wanted — was for me to join him in his fantasy, to play Lohengrin in his Parsifal. “Is that all you have to say?” he demanded.
“Defeated,” I repeated. I could feel the air of evening turning cool.
My father delicately removed his glasses and wiped his eyes with a folded handkerchief. Even in grief, he was obsessively fastidious. “It’s not our fault,” he said, replacing his glasses. “You must remember that.”
“Not our fault,” I said.
“Yes,” my father said. He drew a deep, painful breath that seemed to expand his bulk from within, as if something were blowing up inside him. “It’s important that you remember that it was not our fault.”
“Yes, Father,” the little brigadier said.
My father placed both his large hands on my shoulders and pressed down. “I will not have you growing up defeated, do you understand?”
I nodded. A small breeze blew a strand of hair across my forehead. He quickly swept it back.
“We are never to feel defeated,” my father said. His voice was restrained, but there was an undiscoverable ferment behind his eyes, a crazed unrest.
“I won’t, Father,” I said.
He touched the side of his head with his index finger. “We must keep this in our minds.”
I imitated his gesture. “In our minds.”
“It is important.”
“Yes,” I said.
My father watched me suspiciously, his lower lip trembling. All his life, he was a creature of unfathomable loneliness.
I stood quietly in front of him and probably would have stood there through the night if he had wanted, but suddenly the smell of sugar cookies surrounded me, lifting my spirits. I smiled.
My father frowned. “What is it?”
I stiffened my back reflexively. “Nothing, Father.”
“That smile, what was that for?”
“Nothing.”
My father squeezed my shoulders. “Answer me!”
I could not.
My father stood up instantly and stared down at me with intense disapproval. “How can you smile after what I’ve told you?” he said angrily.
“I was not smiling,” I said quickly. The very idea of sugar cookies became nauseating.
My father glared at me, then raised his hand and slapped my face. I could hear the sound of the blow ringing through the park.
“You dishonor me!” he cried.
“No, Father.”
“You dishonor me!”
I lowered my head.
He took my chin in his hand and lifted it up. “You are like your mother,” he said. His face showed his disgust.
“I’m sorry, Father,” I said desperately.
“Like your mother. Stupid. Stupid.”
For a moment I saw myself positioned in his sense of the Chain of Being, a vile, crawling thing that sickened him unspeakably.
“I didn’t mean to do it,” I whined. “I didn’t mean to smile. It was the sugar cookies.”
My father’s face hardened. “Sugar cookies?”
“Yes.”
“Sugar cookies? What are you talking about?”
“From the bakery on Telemannstrasse,” I explained. “They are making them. They smell sweet.”
“How can you think of such things?”
“It was just the smell,” I said, trembling. “I didn’t mean to smile.”
My father dropped to the bench, his shoulders slumping forward. “Sugar cookies,” he muttered.
Then I saw defeat. Not in France, but in him. “Father, I’m sorry,” I said weakly.
My father’s head bent forward. I could almost see my face reflected in the sleek smoothness of his skull.
“I didn’t mean to smile, Father,” I said again.
He looked at me. “You must learn to care about things, Peter. Do you think the world is sweet? Do you think it is made of sugar cookies?”
“No, Father,” I said. “I’m sorry.”
My father shook his head. “It doesn’t matter,” he said wearily. And then, in a low voice, almost to himself, “They will come here. We are at their mercy now.”
“Who?”
“The enemy.”
In my childishness I could not even be sure exactly who the enemy was.
“It’ll be all right, Father,” I said.
“I don’t know what will happen now,” my father said without looking up.
“Nothing will happen. It will be all right,” I said. I felt the urge to touch his shoulders, but I was afraid to do it.
“They will come here,” my father said. “The enemy.”
And then in my imagination I saw them, the enemy. They were not people at all, but great, woolly monsters. In my mind I saw them clawing up the pavement of the Unter den Linden and scratching their matted, filthy behinds on the lofty archway of the Brandenburg Gate.
OLD MEN watch the world from a certain distance. From the heights of my verandah I can see Esperanza as she bends over the river scrubbing my white linen shirts on a large flat stone. There are no modern conveniences in El Caliz. And throughout the Republic there are very few. Of course, in El Presidente’s palace the rooms are stacked to the ceiling with every imaginable mechanical contraption. He is a connoisseur of all the little humming trinkets of advanced industrial society. From the great enterprising nations he imports thousands of toasters, televisions, electric pencil sharpeners, and the like. It is said that he has devoted one huge hall to the working of such things. The walls are empty save for row upon row of electrical outlets. These he uses to feed a current through a jungle of extension cords powering hundreds of small machines, infinite in their variety. When he pulls the switch, they clang and hiss and sizzle, and it is said that nothing can be heard above this metallic bedlam except the gleeful laughter of El Presidente.
Esperanza slaps a shirt against a stone. The very monotony of her action makes it clear that part of the tedium of the primitive lies in the incessant passing of day into day until the nature of labor becomes, finally, the nature of life. The lowly character of Esperanza’s work reflects the low esteem with which she and all her kind are regarded by El Presidente. And yet Esperanza has triumphed over the debased quality of her circumstances. From within the depths of her impoverishment she has seized a spirit in its flight and prisoned it within the confines of her potions and incantations. She has captured God, and dispenses his indecipherable favors to the villagers who gather nightly in her hut. They come to hear their futures spun out from Esperanza’s mouth like the endless string of Fortune’s wheel. Will the child be a changeling? Will the sugar cane rise tall in season? Will the bats suck dry the herds? To all these questions Esperanza gives certain answer, and the villagers, in the desperate precariousness of their need, remember when she is right and forget when she is wrong.