Circles of Confusion

  Charlie sat back in her chair. She was so small that her shoes dangled two inches above the floor. She looked like an aging little girl playing dress-up. "And your aunt, she had no friends, no family of her own? She had lived like a hermit?"

  "Well, she never married."

  "No lovers?" Charlie arched an eyebrow. Even at eighty-three, she could still draw men to her.

  "Before this trip, I would have said no." Claire got up from the table. "I found something that I want your opinion on. Evan didn't think it could be real, not if Aunt Cady owned it."

  Kneeling on the floor, she unfastened the suitcase, which she had carried on her lap all the way back to Portland. She lifted the lid and began to set aside the papers that cushioned the painting. A low moan interrupted her.

  "Nein." Charlie's face had gone pale above the edge of her rose- colored sweater. Her eyes were fastened on one of the pamphlets. It showed a half-dozen men in close-cut, neatly pressed uniforms, their backs to a bonfire spitting flames into the darkness that surrounded them. Behind them, another soldier was tossing a stack of books into the flames.

  Charlie's mouth fumbled. She raised her hand to cover it, the hand that still bore an obscene embroidery of green numbers along her wrist, ending in the web between her thumb and forefinger. One human being had done that to another, the better to keep track of inventory.

  Claire was conscious as never before that the older woman had walked through another world that to her was only a brittle pamphlet, a yellowing photo, a documentary. Charlie had labored in Dachau, that much Claire knew.

  "Why do you have these?"

  "The papers were in the suitcase, but I don't know why she had them. Maybe she didn't even remember they were there. All this had been untouched for years. Maybe even since the war. Aunt Cady was over there, in Germany. But that's not really what I wanted to ask you about." Claire lifted the last of the papers that cushioned the painting. Its beauty struck her with fresh force, and she heard Charlie gasp.

  Across time, the woman's liquid gaze met theirs. She seemed as real as the two women regarding her. Together, Claire and Charlie bent over the painting. For the first time, Claire began to look closely at the things that lay around the woman. The chair, topped by lions' heads, had a row of brass studs across the top, and a pattern of gold diamonds painted on its back. At the edge of the picture, a fringed oriental carpet, patterned in red and blue and cream, lay bunched in folds on the table beside the woman. Claire ran her fingertips across it, almost surprised to feel tiny brushstrokes instead of thick tufts of wool. On top of the carpet a white jug with a curving handle and brass lid rested in a shallow brass basin. The basin held an exquisite mosaic of reflections from the room, tiny chips of paint in all colors.

  The dominant colors of the painting were shades of blue and yellow. What could be seen of the woman's dress under the yellow jacket was a deep ultramarine blue. There were echoes of color in the blue tracery of the carpet's flank and in the shadow of the open window's frame. The room was not merely revealed by light, but constructed by it. Even the shadows of the table and the chair shone.

  "Look," Charlie said, her finger tracing the wall behind the woman's back. "Do you see what is missing?"

  Claire narrowed her eyes. The chair and the table, the pitcher set on the carpeted table—all cast shadows in shades of blue and gray, but the woman herself, the woman who stared back at them with half-parted lips, she cast no shadow at all. This should have made her look one-dimensional, a flat figure painted on top of a real background, but instead it gave her a greater reality. It was as if the woman existed someplace halfway between the painting and the room where the two women returned her gaze.

  "She is beautiful," Charlie said. Claire heard the tiny click of her manicured nail as it tapped the dried paint. "And, I would say, genuine. Of course, you would need more confirmation than an old woman's memories." Charlie sat back in her chair, closed her eyes. Her skin was so translucent that Claire could see the delicate blue threads of veins in her eyelids. "We were, you know, a bourgeois family. Before." Claire didn't have to ask before what. "I grew up surrounded by old manuscripts, medals, golden fans, Louis the Fourteenth furniture, vermeil flatware with precious stones on the handles. And paintings. Paintings that had been with the family for generations. AH gone now. When I married, I had as part of my dowry a Rembrandt. Or at least a painting from his school. A little painting of a woman sewing. Four hundred years old, and it was as if she were there in the room with you. Like this woman." Charlie opened her eyes, but they remained unfocused, cloudy. "Of course, what do I know, just an old woman with memories."

  "What happened to the painting?" Claire knew enough of the answer not to ask what had happened to the family.

  Charlie's mouth tightened against the answer. "Goring collected art. Sometimes, it was said, he was willing to trade rather than to simply take. My husband traded the Rembrandt to someone who worked for him, traded it for safe passage to Switzerland. But the official said it was only worth papers for two, not three. When he came back, Richard said I must go, take our son." She pronounced her dead husband's name the German way, with the "i" a guttural long e, followed by a hard k sound and the second r rolled in the throat. Ree-kard. "I argued. I said I would not go without him. Our son, he was just four. Finally I took our son and went away, as we knew I must. But at the border we were turned back, told our papers were no good. And when we returned home, Richard was gone."

  That night Claire took a nail file to the mouth of Aunt Cady's diary, prepared to force it open, but the brass band sprang apart as soon as the point slipped inside. She flipped through the pages, reading entries at random. The diary started in 1943, when her great-aunt had joined the Women's Army Corps. Claire counted backward in her head. Aunt Cady had been 26, but in the first few dozen entries she sounded more like a high school girl, listing everything in breathless detail, from the items that made up her clothing ration ("rayon khaki underwear pants—ick!!") to complaints about GI soap ("horrible brown stuff that is mainly fat and lye"). As Claire read further, she began to recognize the story beneath the surface, the story of a woman considered an old maid destined to take care of her aging parents, who had grabbed her one chance to get out in the world.

  Claire skimmed the first third of the diary, which covered basic training and a few months of clerical work at Fort Des Moines, Iowa, as well as Aunt Cady's reassignment to Fort Oglethorpe, Georgia. Gradually, Cady began to sound older, seasoned, not such a giddy girl. Diary entries grew further apart in time, appearing only when something had deeply disturbed her. She was sent to England as a typist, survived the buzz bombs.

  As the end of the war in Europe drew near, she and twenty-one other WACs had been sent to Munich to free up men to go fight the Japanese—or as Aunt Cady put it, "the Japs." It was hard for Claire not to color each entry with her own knowledge, to remember that when Aunt Cady wrote in her diary she did not know there was a fixed date for the end of the war that events were moving inexorably toward, that even winning itself had been no sure thing.

  Claire began to read more carefully. She was certain that the secret to the painting's past lay in Germany and what had happened to her aunt there. Aunt Cady had evidently worked as a secretary to one of the men overseeing the newly conquered enemy. "I keep track of things, from Harold's meetings to his parties. It's like being his wife with none of the perks. He is short with me unless he wants something, and then he is sweet."

  Chapter 9May 10, 1945

  They have billeted us in someone's old home. The rain comes in where the tiles are partially smashed or blown away, and the wind whistles through the dormer windows. My blanket has a peculiar smell. When I go into the courtyard, glass splinters grate under my feet. Our quarters are surrounded by barbed wire, and if we leave the area, we're supposed to be accompanied by an armed escort. But I'm so tired of never being alone.

  The barbed wire can't keep out the smell of lilacs that still grow in the fire-black
ened ruins. This last winter, when there was nothing to eat at all, they say children were dying with bloated bellies. People dug for roots in the woods. Old people ate grass, like animals. There is still a great hunger, pent up after years of want. We're not supposed to fraternize with the enemy, hut we do a bit. Ordinary people—never were they Nazis, never!—are our servants and our translators, our cooks and our washing women. And they all hint around or come right out and ask for chocolate, milk powder, cigarettes. Things go missing, laundry soap, cheese, even flour. People—our side and theirs—search through empty apartments, looking for something useful. Nowadays it seems like everything belongs to everybody. You see something you need, you take it. I don't complain. And people's lives were hard, you can see it in their eyes, dark and hollow. Our cook has a little girl, about four, and presumably no husband, since one is never mentioned. The two of them are pale and blonde and so thin their knees and elbows show like knots in a string. When I have something sweet, I often find myself giving it to the child. She can make a single chocolate bar last for hours, nibbling on it like a faded little mouse.

  Sometimes I feel so lonely here. The other girls go about in great gaggles, inseparable. They are overjoyed at the idea of going home. They borrow lipstick from each other and fix each other's hair and those who aren't married are plotting to be.

  The only person I really know here is someone from home, Al Patten. It's funny that I should say "know," because I didn't, not really. He moved in a different crowd, one of the boys who was destined to drop out and go to work in the mill, pulling green chain and making lots of money as long as he was strong. I used to see him standing on the street corner before class, smoking a cigarette, his face already needing another shave. He scared me a little. But war changes things. When he learned we were both stationed here, it was like we were old friends.

  ***

  May 11, 1945

  Went for a walk today, just down the block to what used to be a park, but still, strictly forbidden. The streets were empty and silent. Houses have been replaced by ruins, charred shells, masses of rubble and sometimes even mass graves. Everywhere remnants of the war, disemboweled cars, burned-out tanks, twisted gun carriages. Very few people. Once in a while a miserable figure staggered past me, a man in shirtsleeves, a ragged woman in bare feet. An old man rattling along on the metal rims of a tireless bicycle. They look at my uniform and they look away.

  The park has been transformed into a desert. The trees have become stumps, lost to the need for firewood. You have to watch your step because of the trenches that are now filled with rags, cans, bottles, coils of wire, spent shells. It was a terrible place, but it was still good to be alone.

  While I was in the park, I saw a group of POWs in the distance, trudging silently, dragging their feet. Some of them limping. Stubble-faced, sunken-eyed, out of step. They didn't look anything like the Germans in the posters at home, who were square-jawed and square-shouldered, with gleaming red eyes. These men were either very young or very old, Volkssturm men in patched uniforms sent out to guard the barricades, the last terrible harvest the German officials made from the male populace. Filthy, gray-bearded faces, or boys who had no need of a razor. I heard two of them talking to each other in high voices. Thin in their far-too-loose uniforms, they couldn't have been more than fifteen.

  On my way home, I passed a hill of broken brick and stone, and two shaky old women trying to remove some of the rubble with dustpans into a little wagon. At that rate it will take them weeks to dispose of that mountain.

  An elderly civilian was digging up corpses from a makeshift plot in front of what had once been a cinema, I guess he planned to rebury them properly in a cemetery. One corpse already lay on the rubble—a long, clay-covered bundle wrapped in canvas. I was aware for the first time what a dead body smells like. A smell too thick to be inhaled.

  The digger wiped the sweat from his brow with his shirt sleeve while he stood half-supported by his shovel. When he looked up, he saw me, and my presence enraged him. Maybe it was our bombers who had killed whoever lay at his feet, maybe he was angry to see an enemy looking so well fed, but whatever it was, he started yelling at me. "How op!" it sounded like. "How op!"

  Then he began to rush at me, waving his shovel over his head. My feet were nailed to the ground, but then a man I hadn't even noticed was nearby, an American GI, rushed in and put himself between me and the man. He rattled off a string of German, his hand on his holster, and finally the man dropped his shovel and began to back away.

  My savior began to scold me. "You girls are not allowed out of the barracks, and certainly not on your own," he told me. "You could have been killed!"

  "All I did was go for a damn walk!" I yelled back at him, and then surprised myself by bursting into tears. And was surprised even more when he took me into his arms and patted me on the back. Strong arms, a rough cheek against my own, the smell of cologne. I stepped back as soon as I could, feeling more than a little off-balance. I'm not like the other girls. I didn't join up thinking it would be a great way to meet men. I'd finally gotten free from my parents—and I didn't feel like cooking or cleaning again for anyone but

  myself. But still, this man intrigues me. Rudy. Rudy Miller. He has eyes like silver. And he asked if he could see me later.

  The next few entries were again like a schoolgirl's as Aunt Cady began to spend time with Rudy—the man, Claire guessed, from the photos. Rudy said this, Rudy said that, I think Rudy likes me, Rudy kissed me, then more circumspectly, Rudy took me to a room.

  ***

  June 5, 1945

  Our cook, Frau Lehman, invited us—me and Rudy, who she slyly referred to as my "beau"—to a little party tonight. They held it in what remained of their house—the cellar. After walking through a wasteland of rocky rubble, the moonscape that was once their neighborhood, I began to appreciate what a miracle it was that even their cellar had survived. We brought wine with us, and crackers, and some American cheddar, which they thought was funny because they've never seen cheese dyed orange. Our contributions turned out to be all the food there was, which may be the reason they invited us. There was plenty of black market booze, though, something that seared the back of your throat. I didn't drink more than a sip, but Rudy had a fresh glass in his hand every time I looked.

  Frau Lehman and her friends were quick to reassure us that they had never supported Hitler, and that they had suffered for their beliefs. I have yet to meet anyone in Germany who admits to having been a member of the Nazi Party. They will look you straight in the eye and say that they never joined, when you know they must have. That they hid their Jewish neighbors in their cellars when the truth more likely is that they looked the other way when someone came for them.

  But now everyone is in the same boat, desperate, lying and scheming to find work, to find food. The whole economy here is run on cigarettes. For a few Camels, you can buy anything from a cabbage to a painting. It all depends on how hard up the seller is. Rudy doesn't smoke. At first I thought it was because he considered it a vice, since he so clearly looks down on people who do smoke. Then he told me it's as foolish as a man rolling tobacco in a ten-dollar bill.

  On our way home from the party, we passed a group of men-—liberated forced laborers and displaced persons—with faces like animals, the skin stretched over the bones, their eyes shifty. They smelled like animals, too. On seeing us, they conferred in a babble of languages—Polish, I think, and French, in addition to German—and then approached us. Rudy pulled his service revolver and they decided to go looking for someone else. One of the men stopped and stretched out his hand to me in a hopeless kind of way. The night was so silent you could hear the sound of the hammer of Rudy's gun being pulled back. They turned and left. I was shaking, but Rudy wasn't frightened at all. I've never seen him scared.

  Chapter 10In Claire's dream, Evan had just completed building a new bed for her. In real life, tools were foreign to him. His long-fingered pale hands were meant to be tapping the
buttons of a calculator, not being turned to bloody pulp under the missed stroke of a hammer. But in her dream, Evan had become an accomplished carpenter. The finished bed was newly painted a red as bright as blood, the glossy color of Chinese lacquer. Evan encouraged Claire to lie down and try it out. Obediently, she climbed in. But in her dream, the bed seemed to shrink, so what had once been a roomy double now seemed barely wide enough to contain her.

  Still dreaming, she rose up on her elbows. The bed had shaped itself around her, angling sharply from her shoulders down to her feet. As Evan approached her, smiling a dead smile, she saw that he carried the missing piece—the lid to the new "bed" he had built her. And now Claire recognized the familiar shape that surrounded her. Evan had built her a coffin.

  Waking tangled in ropes of sheet, Claire was relieved to find herself in a real bed. Then she looked at the clock and groaned. It was six-thirty on a Monday morning, time to get up and gird her loins for another week at the Custom Plate Department.

  TI—3VOM

  ***

  Claire tried to distract herself from the fact that her week was beginning all over again. As soon as she got into the car, she inserted a Spanish language tape into the cassette player on the passenger seat and began to dutifully echo the instructor. The words rolled off her tongue without engaging her brain. Her thoughts were still taken up with the painting and Charlie's reaction to it. Talking about her past had left Charlie looking drained, reminding Claire of how old her friend really was.

  As she drove past the neighbor who lived two blocks away, Claire exchanged waves. The other woman was just getting into her car, a Mazda the exact same model and color as Claire's. They shared this ritual greeting every weekday, although they had never spoken. The woman looked a little like Claire, only Hispanic, with high cheekbones and a halo of wiry long dark curls. Claire imagined that she came from someplace exotic like Costa Rica, perhaps spoke with the same lilt and rolling R's as the instructor on the cassette tape.