“What?” asked Blondie.
“It really does look like a bear.”
Blondie followed Petr’s gaze and nodded. “Yes, I guess it does at that.”
CHAPTER 6
THE CHOIRBOY
Winter, 1939
The day after Bobby met Karen at the concert, he skipped class and left a card in her mail slot asking for a date. She accepted, so they spent that Saturday strolling in the park, her father acting as chaperone but respectfully keeping his distance.
They watched skaters on the lake and kites in the sky.
“So. Did you figure out the answer to my question?” Karen asked him.
“Yes,” he replied, “I did.”
Her face lit up. “What is it, then? What is it you want to do?”
He held her gaze for a moment and said, “I can’t tell you yet.”
Her smile continued to play across her lips as she read the mischief in his eyes. “Is it a mystery, then?”
“For the moment, yes.”
Still smiling, she bit her lip before turning and continuing to stroll along the path with him. As they walked, she slipped her hand into his.
Bobby asked her out every weekend. They went to the park, to the zoo, and to the movies. He even invited her to come watch him play basketball. This time it was her turn to marvel at him, at all the bare skin revealed by his athletic shorts and jersey, sweat glistening off toned shoulders, arms, and legs. She loved it, all of it—except the cheerleaders, who she thought were silly.
Winter turned to spring, and still they went out, but only during the day. Karen and her father worked nights, rehearsing or performing. Bobby attended all the performances he could and waited with the admirers by the stage door. He got to know her father better, along with the other musicians. He was even invited to their postconcert soirees, where he was introduced to their intoxicating avant-garde lifestyles. They talked of art and politics and love and sex all in the same breath. They didn’t consider themselves Americans but rather world citizens, since the music they loved came from all over Europe.
And as he got to know them better, Bobby began to realize why, despite their obvious talent, the more traditional theaters and critics shunned them. They didn’t believe in the ownership of music. They believed in the complete freedom of all intellectual ideas. They refused to be bound by traditional compositions. Like jazz musicians, they would add their own improvisations whenever inspiration struck them. They openly criticized one another, deeming the performance as a whole, rather than the feelings of a single individual, to be of paramount importance. They were musical as well as political socialists, and Bobby’s family would have been scandalized to know that he was making their acquaintance.
On each and every date, Karen asked him if he was ready to tell her the answer to that first night’s question. And on every date Bobby disappointed her.
She told him she didn’t believe him, said she thought he was stalling for time, and even threatened to break up with him. But she never did.
Bobby was afraid to tell her. It was a strange feeling. He’d been so confident in the rest of his life; he still was. But he dreaded telling Karen the truth. What if she rejected him? He’d be devastated. So he held his tongue until May 30. It was at a particularly lively soiree after a particularly successful concert. And it was an unseasonably warm night with a full moon.
The shades were open, the lights off, and the burning glow of cigarettes lit smiling faces and flashing eyes. Ice clinked in glasses, and conversation spilled through the open windows out into the street. Karen and Bobby sat close on the sofa, their knees touching.
“Tell me,” Karen said.
“I want you to marry me,” Bobby blurted out.
Karen looked shocked. No one else had heard it amid the dozen conversations twittering in the background. But it felt to Bobby as if the room had fallen suddenly, dreadfully, silent.
Karen stood up unsteadily. She smoothed the front skirt of her dress. She looked down at Bobby. He suddenly felt very small in his corner of the sofa. Then she nodded as if making up her mind, cuddled up in his lap, and kissed him on the lips.
From that point forward, Bobby and Karen couldn’t keep their hands off each other. At any opportune moment, Bobby would pull her onto his lap and kiss her, or Karen would pull Bobby under the shade of a tree and kiss him. No embarrassment came when they embraced; no shame followed their kisses. And their constant touch only made them yearn for each other even more.
They couldn’t get married, of course. They were both too young. Karen was fifteen and Bobby only seventeen. He knew his parents would never approve, but he also knew that once he was legally an adult, he wouldn’t require their approval. So he promised Karen he would wait, and she returned that promise.
Something else happened while they dated. Bobby began to pay more attention to the world beyond America’s borders. Because the musicians all considered themselves world citizens, they were personally affected by the continued Nazi takeover of Germany and the regime’s subsequent invasion of Czechoslovakia. They lost contact with Jewish musicians living in Prague and were shocked by the reports of artists who’d managed to flee the country.
Then, in the summer of 1940, Karen left for Leningrad. Before her departure, they spent an entire day together. Bobby rented a horse-drawn carriage, and they toured Central Park. Then he took her to a Yankees game, where they watched Joe DiMaggio hit a home run. They had dinner outdoors at the Café Brevoort, where they made up stories about the New Yorkers hurrying past them while they ate. Bobby had organized the entire day to combine both his and her favorite activities; he didn’t want her to remember only him, but also the city and the country she loved.
The next morning Bobby saw her off at the dock, where they repeated their promise to wait for each other. He gave her a golden locket with his photograph inside so she wouldn’t forget him. And they said good-bye.
“I’m so glad you told me,” she said.
“Not as glad as I am,” he replied truthfully.
They wrote to each other constantly over the next year and a half. One didn’t wait for the other to reply before firing off a new letter, so the effect was like having four separate conversations all at once.
Karen confessed her melancholy to him. She described how much she missed America.
Bobby tried to keep her spirits up by describing New York in its tiniest details. He began to carry a journal with him wherever he went so he could jot down observations that he would later send to Karen via letter. She seemed to love these observations and always asked for more.
Although they were apart, Bobby convinced himself that they were experiencing a bodiless love, a purer love of the mind and the soul. Then Karen stopped writing. Bobby wrote, begging her to tell him what had happened, what had gone wrong. But she simply wouldn’t respond.
Bobby fell into a deep depression. He didn’t just feel rejected; he felt lost. He had dedicated his entire future to Karen, and now that she didn’t want him anymore, he didn’t know what to do with himself.
He threw himself into basketball and his schoolwork. He tried to work so hard that he wouldn’t have time to think about Karen or his future. But that just brought his future closer. He finished his course work at nineteen. He was about to graduate, but he had no idea what to do with his life. His teammates tried to cheer him up. They took him to a movie.
There, in December of 1941, he saw a newsreel about Leningrad. He’d known that Germany had invaded the Soviet Union, but he hadn’t known that the Germans had already advanced to Karen’s city, let alone that they’d surrounded it. If he’d understood the mortal danger Karen faced every day, if he’d had any idea how many people had already frozen to death and how many more would eventually starve, he would have been terrified.