Читать книгу Ever After - William Wharton, Уильям Уортон - Страница 8

When I’ve finished my practice teaching, I sit down to write out a curriculum vitae that will sound good. Although I did graduate cum laude from Arizona State, I hadn’t quite finished my credential. It’s hard finding a job in an overseas school without at least two years’ US experience. But I decide to try anyway.

I mail out sixty letters, then buy a Eurail pass and start on my journey. It’s May. Mom is still teaching, Wills is in school. Dad says he’ll take care of Wills when Mom isn’t home. I hate to depend on them so much, but there’s no other way.

I travel at night from one city to another. I sleep on the train to save hotel bills. I do quite a bit of criss-crossing Europe, looking for the night train-rides that are about eight or ten hours long. When I get off a train in the city where I’m going to be interviewed, I head to a phone, confirm the rendezvous, then look for a reasonable restroom where I can put myself in order. I take more ‘bird-baths’ in sinks of train stations than I ever thought I’d take in my whole life.

Most of the interviews are discouraging. People are usually interested in the fact I can speak French, German, and English, and have a good academic background, but they hold the lack of experience against me. I try to beef my résumé up with my nursery-school teaching in Idylwild and Phoenix, but it doesn’t help much.

After two weeks on the road, with one or two interviews every day, I still have nothing definite. The next stop is near Munich. In fact, I have one interview at an international school right at the head of the Starnberger See near the city of Starnberg. We lived nearby, in Seeshaupt, when I was a child and Dad was on sabbatical from his teaching. It’s only a half-hour trip on the train from Starnberg to Seeshaupt.

The last time I saw Dad, he said he’d just started writing a new book, part of which takes place in Seeshaupt. He said it’s built around the stories he told us in the morning about Franky Furbo, a wonderful magic fox. In fact, I was the one who suggested he could make a great adult book from those stories. I’d love to have read it, but I guess I never will. Or maybe there is a way. I just don’t know about those things yet. It’s a strange situation we’re in.

The man who interviews me in Starnberg, Stan, is one of the smilingest men I’ve ever met. We get along right away. But it’s the same thing: he doesn’t think he can hire someone without experience. The fact I speak such good German impresses him. I’m impressed too because he, an American, can speak incredibly good German himself. It turns out his first wife, who has died, was German.

He asks me to wait a few minutes in the office and he’ll be right back. I think maybe he’s going to the bathroom. I’ve already given up. After around twenty rejections, one loses confidence. I’m hoping to catch a train down to Seeshaupt before dark.

He comes back smiling. But then he’s always smiling. He rubs his hands together.

‘You’re lucky, Kate. I talked the director into it. I exaggerated your nursery-school experience a bit, even more than you did, so don’t make a liar of me. But you’re the kind of teacher I’m always looking for, optimistic, smiling, full of enthusiasm and energy. Maybe after you’ve had two years’ experience, you won’t be that way, but you’re hired to teach first grade. You’ll get the same salary as the other first-grade teacher I hired last year. I’m sure you’ll love her.’

I could have fallen over right there in his office; I have a hard time to keep from crying. It’s all been so difficult the last few years and now it looks so beautiful. I know I must have thanked him but I don’t remember. He comes around his desk.

‘Come on, Kate, let me show you the school. We’re really proud of it. The German government built this place for us and about half our students are German. Their parents don’t like the strict, old-fashioned ways of German schools. We have the best mix of Germans, Americans, and all other nationalities, but we teach an American curriculum. It’s an exciting place.’

We walk over to the campus, which is in the country, with modern buildings and old cow-barns and a small castle. My room is bright and neither too big nor too small. Stan says they try to keep the classes to under twenty students. God, it’s like a dream. I can’t believe it. I’m still a little teary.

‘Do you have a place to stay, Kate?’

‘I have friends near here, in Seeshaupt. I think I can stay there. Then I’ll start hunting for a place in Starnberg and be ready to teach in September. Is there any chance I can come out during the summer to get my classroom ready?’

‘Anything you want. Boy, this is great for me. Usually I need to hunt up a place for new teachers because they don’t speak German. But you’re all set. Are you sure you don’t want anything?’

I find I’m smiling, and then I laugh.

‘How about a contract? I’d actually like to sign a contract so I know this is all true. I can’t wait to tell my parents. My little boy, Wills, is just going to love it here. Do faculty children get to go to this school free?’

‘Absolutely, completely free to faculty kids. Who do you think I am, Scrooge?’

‘More like Santa Claus, Stan.’

The temptation to put my arms around him and give him a big kiss is enormous, but I resist. I don’t want to do anything to screw up this chance.

I phone Dad and Mom. They’re as excited as I am. I find a little furnished apartment near the lake, and work like crazy getting it into shape. I make curtains, wax all the furniture. It’s a little nest on the second floor with a beautiful view of the lake. I have a large room with a corner kitchen and a curved nook eating area. Almost everything’s made of wood. I’ve decided to keep everything simple. I buy two dishes, two cups, two spoons, two knives and two forks. It’ll be just Wills and me, no social life, at least for a while. I can’t wait till Wills comes.

In the evenings I study my books from Arizona State and plan lessons. I want everything to be just right when I start. I’m very nervous.

I have a little stove but no refrigerator. I’ll buy some kind of used refrigerator as soon as I get my first check; for now, I’m almost flat broke. I have enough to pay Wills’s air fare and we can get by on food till my first check, but that’s it.

Wills arrives at the airport in Munich the same day school lets out at MIS. MIS stands for Munich International School, my school. We both cry, hugging each other outside customs.

We take the S-Bahn home and Wills loves everything – the lake, the town, our apartment. But he falls asleep on the floor in about ten minutes. I carry him to his bed and undress him. I imagine he hasn’t slept much the night before with all the excitement. I’d had a hard time getting to sleep myself. I whisper in his ear that I need to go to school for a while but I’ll be back when he wakes up.

I’m supposed to go to an end-of-the-school-year party. Stan asked me to come, even though it’s the day Wills arrives.

There are six new teachers for the next semester. Stan introduces me and I stand up. People clap. I meet most of the other teachers. One is a huge, bearded guy who doesn’t have much hair. I can’t get over how much he looks like Dad and my brother Matt. He’s flirting with the new librarian. When introduced, he says he comes from Oregon, although he’s just been teaching in Southeast Asia. I don’t see a wife around. The married teachers seem to have their spouses with them.

I work like mad getting my classroom in order. Wills comes with me every day and plays: on the soccer field, kicking a ball, or at the gym, trying to shoot baskets. They have a great playground here, too. Sometimes he’ll come in and give me a hand, pushing desks around.

A couple times the big, bearded guy from Oregon comes in. He’s going to be teaching computing and is getting his room fixed up, too. He speaks very slowly, but the more we talk, the more I like him. He doesn’t waste time with anything that isn’t worth talking about. Chatter is about ninety percent of all conversations anyway, but when he says something it’s usually interesting. He can’t believe I can really speak German and I’m not German. I try explaining, but I’m not sure I come across.

I find a refrigerator being sold by an elderly German couple, at a price I can pay. They’re willing to hold on to it till I get my check, but I need to find someone to move it.

The next time Bert, that’s the name of the bearded Oregonian, stops in my classroom, I ask if he could help me move a refrigerator. I promise him a home-cooked meal, American-style, in return. He stares at me a minute, then lifts an eyebrow and says, ‘Spare-ribs?’

I have no idea where I can find spare-ribs in Germany, although I do know how to cook them. That’s one advantage of those years cooking at home instead of washing dishes. So we make the deal. He wrestles that machine out of the cellar of these old people, across town, and up my stairs, single-handedly, as if it were a portable radio or something. He’s bushed when he’s finished and flops down on my couch.

‘You don’t perhaps have some of this great German beer around, do you, Kate?’

By luck, I have one bottle. I don’t drink beer myself. It isn’t cold because we haven’t plugged in the refrigerator yet, but he doesn’t seem to mind. He has a bottle-opener on the knife with his keys, and drinks it out of the bottle before I can find a glass. Just then, Wills comes running in. Bert lolls back and smiles.

‘Hi there, buster, what’s your name?’

Wills, his mouth open, is taking in this hunk of a man. Bert has to be six-three and 200 pounds.

‘Wills, sir.’

‘Well, Wilzer, I’ve seen you shooting baskets down there in the gym. You like basketball?

‘Yeah, but I can’t get the ball up high enough to go through the basket. It’s too high.’

‘Sure you can. Next time I see you down there, I’ll show you how. You’ll be dropping in baskets like Magic Johnson.’

I’ve prepared most of the dinner. I’ve borrowed some dishes and cutlery – so much for my bachelor life. I’ve let the spare-ribs simmer for three hours, basting them with my ersatz barbecue sauce. I’ve set the little table. Wills is as excited about having spare-ribs as Bert is. I haven’t done any real cooking in quite a while.

Both Wills and Bert eat with such gusto that my hokey barbecue sauce is spread all over the kitchen. No cook can ever complain when people dig in like that, and I don’t.

For me, Bert looks part grizzly bear, yet, strangely enough, it’s attractive. He’s physical, is deeply into sports; likes beer, chasing women, horsing around with the boys. He’s exactly the kind of man I’ve spent most of my life trying to avoid. I also recognize in him some of the things in my dad which drove me up a wall. I wonder what Mom would think of him: dismiss him probably as one of the unwashed peasants. But I admit his very simplicity gets to me. I know I’ll need to watch myself.

For Wills, Bert is just some other kid to play with. Bert actually listens to him ramble on, and shows him about ten different silly things you can do with a knife, fork, and spoon, including drumming. They start drumming on the table, the glasses, the dishes, anything they can touch, while Bert sings or hums, ‘When the Saints Come Marching In.’ That’s how a lot of the sauce is spread all over the place.

In self-defense, I move over to the kitchen and begin taking things off the table. But all the time my eyes are glued on Bert and he knows it. He’s acting up. He knows when I look at his massive forearms or the hair squeezing up over his T-shirt. That’s right, he’s wearing a T-shirt at the table, a dirty, sweaty T-shirt. After all, he’s just moved a refrigerator. I’m giggling, thinking to myself: what would it be like, making love to a grizzly bear?

I have the answer that night. After Wills is in bed, we begin chatting. He tells me about his home town in Oregon, a place called Falls City. His best friends are still his high-school buddies, especially the ones he played basketball with. He’s thirty-two, a year older than I am and has never been married, says he has no intention of getting married, at least not for a long time yet.

He makes simple moves, the kind adolescent boys make, and I don’t resist. It’s been months since I’ve had a chance to be with a man.

He doesn’t so much make love, as cuddle, and hold, wrap himself around me, all in slow motion, like one of those underwater love scenes. His hands are strong and gentle. He never hurries, doesn’t seem nervous at all. It’s as if making love is the most natural thing in the world, and all men and women who aren’t making love just then, at that moment, are really missing something. It’s a bit like making love with a real animal, maybe not a grizzly bear or a gorilla, but a powerful male. I don’t think I’ve felt so safe and comfortable with any man in my life.

He giggles a lot. He hardly talks when we’re loving, but makes all kinds of quiet purring, growling, contented noises. We fall asleep after about two hours of fore-, center-, and after-play.

In the morning, he’s up before I am, sitting in the little alcove-kitchen with Wills, playing cards; actually he’s performing card tricks while they both eat cornflakes raw – I mean dry. He’s made some coffee. Soon as he realizes I’m awake, he calls out to me.

‘Cuppa Java?’

I nod. I’m still in bed. I wonder what Wills is thinking. I’ve always tried to keep the men in my life away from Wills because he still loves Danny so, and I don’t want to make him feel things are as bad between us as they really are.

Bert ambles over to the kitchen stove and pours me a cup. He’s wearing a pair of boxer shorts. He doesn’t even have shoes on. He has wide feet that won’t sink in any mud, and a tattoo on his left ankle. He smiles down at me.

‘Hope you don’t mind my staying over. Little Wilzer was up and moving about before either of us, so I just slithered out of bed and joined him. I don’t think he’s noticed much.’

This he says in what passes as a whisper for him. As I get to know Bert, I learn his idea of a whisper can be heard at fifty meters. But Wills is concentrating on the cards, trying to build a card house to match the one Bert’s made on the table.

I sit up and drink the coffee. It’s been a long time since anyone’s brought me coffee in bed. My hair is a mess. I’m sure my make-up is smeared all over my face, but I know Bert doesn’t mind too much. He leans over and gives me a quick, light kiss. I’m astounded again at how such a big, seemingly clumsy man can be so gentle. He straightens up.

‘Well, I’d better get back to my place. My landlady watches me like a hawk. We don’t want to start any rumors before we even begin teaching. Old Lister, our beloved headmaster, would blow his crispy, blond top.’

That’s how it starts. I expect him to move over to the next available woman but it doesn’t happen that way at all. We begin to go out a little even before school officially starts, just to the local Gasthauses, usually with Wills. I have a hard time keeping from calling him Wilzer myself. That gives some idea of the quiet power of Bert’s personality.

Bert invites me to his place. I go, after Wills is asleep; the lady downstairs said she’d listen for him. I meet him at the Dampher Steg, my favorite place, a little gazebo near the docks for the local cruising boat. It’s a wonderful spot to wait for someone, with the swans and ducks and the sun setting over the lake.

But, as the weeks go by, I rarely have to wait because Bert is usually there before me. He always has something special, a piece of German chocolate, or some wild flowers he’s picked, or a particularly beautiful stone he’s found by the side of the lake and shined up for me. He’s always whittling something, such as two links in a chain, or a heart with our names on it. It’s like a high-school romance, but so much more powerful because we’re older, old enough not to expect too much and to take it as it comes.

He’s there, waiting for me, and we go to his place. He puts his finger to his lips and makes a big deal about sneaking up the back staircase. The landlady was adamant that he was to bring no women to his room. The Germans can be awfully uptight, especially the older ones. Bert says he almost didn’t take the place because of this ‘no women’ business but couldn’t find anything better in his price range.

It’s a real nest, like a bear’s cave or fox’s warren, one big room with a bed nestled under an eave. In fact, everything is tucked under an eave one way or another. But it’s cozy. He makes me a cup of coffee and pours a bit of brandy in it. Usually, I don’t drink alcohol, but this is special. He’s so proud of himself I just can’t say no, so I sip slowly and try getting it down without choking. Mom and I both have this problem of choking on anything spicy or strong.

Bert and I naturally grab onto each other and then drop into that bed where a person can scarcely sit up. I’m beginning to feel I could be falling in love with this creature of a man. This doesn’t fit my plans at all. I want some time, at least two years, to prove myself as a teacher and establish my independence.

We aren’t even halfway through the first semester when Bert gives up his place and moves in with me. I don’t fight it. He makes me feel valued, not just precious, but intrinsically valued, in a way that no one, not even my own parents, who I know love me dearly, ever could.

We have become the ‘romance’ of the school. Bert’s very overt in his affections, taking my hand when we walk, or throwing one of his monster arms over my shoulders. We have a little coffee-clatch of elementary-school teachers who meet at lunch every day and he joins us. At first, a few object, but they quickly accept him. I keep catching him gazing at me.

And the change in Wills is remarkable. He’s always hated school. Now he drives there with Bert and me. Bert chatters along about his math, asking him what parts are hard, and showing him the magic, secret ways he has to lick different kinds of arithmetic, as if they’re fighting off some multi-armed dragon. Bert, who isn’t, himself, much of a reader, can also light a fire under Wills, just by reading to him. He’ll go along, then at critical parts ask questions about what’s happened or what Wills thinks is going to happen. He’ll sometimes act as if he’s stuck and ask Wills to sound out a word. What a fine first-grade teacher he’d make.

He also gets Wills interested in both calculators and his computer. He sucks him in with games, then has him checking his homework, sometimes with the calculator, sometimes with the computer.

Homework actually begins to be fun-time at home. After dinner, Bert opens a beer and Wills spreads his work over the kitchen table. Bert leaves Wills alone till he’s stuck, then comes charging in. It’s like Tom Sawyer whitewashing the fence. Wills will end up begging to do the next part and Bert will keep pushing him off till Wills starts to be mad, then takes over and finishes with joy.

Bert likes to smoke cigars, the most vile cigars I’ve ever smelled. When he moved in, I told him he couldn’t smoke those things in the house. Then I told him he couldn’t smoke in the car either, even when I’m not with him. When he can’t stand it any longer, he’ll go outside and take a walk to have his ‘stogie.’ Invariably, Wills wants to join him. So now I’ve made a new rule: ‘no stogie walk’ until Wills is in bed. I don’t know why Bert puts up with all this.

With each new rule, and there are many, Bert just tilts his head, looks at me to see how serious I am, then shrugs his massive shoulders. I hate bringing up any of these rules. I see how he suffers. I also don’t want to lose him. How often does a woman get a chance at a man like this one?

Bert plays in a basketball league of local Germans and Americans. This is the kind of thing he really likes. Wills loves to watch him. Bert plays like a bull in a china shop, none of the usual slinking around of basketball players. He’ll just dribble, watching for someone to whom he can pass, and if nothing comes up, he’ll find the smallest hole and charge right through it. He has several impressive shots besides a right-and left-hand lay up – especially a stop-and-jump shot with one hand.

I learn the names of these things from watching and having them explained to me after each game. Before, I didn’t know a thing about basketball. Sports, especially team sports, were not exactly favored in our family.

Afterward, Bert likes ‘goin’ out with the boys.’ They go to one of the local Stüben and have a few beers, smoke cigars, and participate in some good old-fashioned male camaraderie crap.

He’ll come home a bit silly, usually bearing some goofy thing he’s picked up, as a love gift, like a beer coaster on which he’s written ‘Bert loves Kate.’ Then he’ll climb in bed and fall right to sleep. I can’t bring myself to ask him to stop.

At Christmas, I talk Bert into coming to the mill and having Christmas with the family. I know he’ll like it: the stuff about the mill that I hated will be just his thing. I tell him that we’ll chop down and steal our Christmas tree as we do every year. Dad will write about it later, in a book called Tidings. I’m Maggie in that book.

Bert fits right in with the family. The morning after we arrive, he’s padding around the main room in a sweatsuit and bare feet. Nobody, not even Dad, walks around at the mill in bare feet. The floor is freezing. Bert’s feet just don’t seem to feel the cold. Bert’s enthusiastic about everything – the pond, the hills, the dark mystical quality of the Morvan, the whole family.

He says it’s the closest thing to Oregon he’s found in Europe, and, in some ways, it might even be better. He connives with the tree-napping, helps mount a ten-footer in the corner next to the fireplace, puts on the highest balls and wraps the lights and garlands around it. He works right in with the family, as if he’s always been there.

Late one evening, after Christmas, when everyone has gone to bed, I have a few moments alone with Dad.

‘What do you think of Bert, Dad?’

‘Well, to be honest, I’m not sure he isn’t a member of the family who’s been hiding out on us. I can look at Robert, Matt, and Bert and see them as brothers. I think he’s terrific. What do you think of him?’

‘You remember what you said when I was considering divorcing Danny and I asked you, long distance, what love was?’

‘I’ll never forget it. I was very upset. I didn’t want you to divorce. Now it seems to have worked out, but I still feel sorry for Danny.’

‘Don’t worry about Danny. He’s living a yuppie life in Venice, California. But that isn’t what I want to talk about.

‘You said love was admiration, respect, and passion. I thought you weren’t being helpful, but you were. Do you remember what you said about having all three?’

‘Yup.’

‘Well, now I know I don’t have to die to go to heaven.’

But I did.