Winter Kept Us Warm Page 13

  “Does it hurt?” Ulli asked.

  “When it rains,” Jimmy said.

  The war, Jimmy said, had made people more interested in holding on to what they had. He had given Leo his card. “If you want to get into insurance, just give me a call,” he said, and that was Leo’s plan, to call Jimmy. Maybe he knew some people in California.

  Before they left Johnstown, Leo took Ulli to the cemetery to see the graves of his ancestors who had died in the flood. He knew where they all were buried, and he and Ulli walked slowly from gravesite to gravesite. At each stop, he looked up at the sky and recited from memory every word on the tombstone. Each time, he asked her whether he had gotten it exactly right, and of course, he had.

  “When I was a kid, we used to come here every Sunday after church, but then, the Sunday after my twelfth birthday, my mother was sick, so we didn’t go, and then we never went again. I wonder whether they talked about it, decided that we didn’t need to make the pilgrimage anymore, that enough time had passed, or whether they just got lazy about it. This is the first time I’ve been here since that last Sunday. I wasn’t sure I was going to remember everything,” he said.

  “I know the names of all the other victims too,” he added. He recited all of them. There were two thousand two hundred and nine names, and as Leo spoke the names of the dead, Ulli tried to imagine what it was like to be swept away by a wall of water that was at the same time as hard as rock and as ungraspable as air. By the time Leo got to the end of the list, they were both crying, and they held on to each other like a drowning man holds on to a lone tree. “I won’t ever let you go,” Leo said, and that made Ulli cry even harder.

  They did not make it to California. The plan was to spend a week or so with Isaac in New York, just for old times’ sake, Leo kept saying, and then head out to Los Angeles on the Greyhound bus, but Leo met another guy in a bar, another insurance salesman, and he also said to give him a call, which Leo did, and the next day he met the boss, who said that Leo was going to be a natural, he could tell. Leo told Ulli that he would just get some experience in the business, learn the tricks of the trade, and then they would go to California.

  They stayed with Isaac for three weeks, during which time Isaac kept reminding them that they were welcome to stay as long as they liked. Isaac was hardly ever home anyway. He was in the thick of graduate school at Columbia and would often spend the entire night at the library, coming home at dawn only to shower and change. But they couldn’t stay with Isaac forever. Leo and Ulli had to make their own way, especially since Isaac disapproved of insurance, which was obvious from the way he nodded without commenting every time Leo brought it up. What bothered Leo, however, was not that Isaac disapproved, but that he thought what Leo was doing was so insignificant that he didn’t even want to argue with him about it. So they left Isaac to his books and got their own place in Yorkville, near the German restaurants and delis that Ulli never entered, not even once, for she was done with Germany, done with wurst and black bread, but the apartment was cheap, and through the bedroom window they could see a sliver of the East River.

  Leo, it turned out, was more than a natural at selling life insurance—he was a genius. In fact, he sold more insurance than anyone else on his team, and the company soon made him the regional manager. For the first time in his life he saw the advantages of having grown up in the shadow of the flood. Johnstown gave him insight that the other salesmen, most of whom were from Queens or the Bronx or Brooklyn, lacked. They had been raised in what they all assured him was the greatest city in the world, had not known that kind of lurking danger.

  “The first rule,” he told the new hires, “is never, ever talk about danger. That’s what the big bosses will tell you to do. They’ll tell you to start listing all the possible things that could happen—car accidents, train accidents, a brick could fall from a building onto someone’s head, cancer, heart attack, murder, drowning. You might think that’s the way to go, but if you get them thinking about the dangers all around them, they’re just going to start feeling out of control, and when people feel out of control, they give up. They just let things happen. They don’t prepare. The trick is to sell them the benefits without ever mentioning death. So what do you do? You get them talking about their dreams and their families and what they’re saving up for—a house, a car, maybe a trip. You’ve got to commend them on how hard they’re working to make a good life for their families. You get them imagining where they’re going to be ten, fifteen years from now, and you get them talking about their kids, what they want to be when they grow up, how smart they are. You never mention danger. You make them feel like there’s nothing in the world that could stop them from being happy, and then you just take out the form and set it in front of them. ‘This will keep you safe,’ you say. And then you hand them the pen.”

  People liked Leo, and he and Ulli were often invited to the homes of his colleagues, where the men drank whiskey while the women busied themselves in the kitchen. Ulli did not mind domestic tasks and would have been happy enough to do them on her own, without the company of the other wives, whose talk about their children, or their plans for having children, or where they had bought a certain dress or a hat or underwear, bored her. They talked in low voices, as if they were telling grave secrets.

  Leo and Ulli did their share—too much, according to Ulli—of entertaining as well. Ulli and Leo cooked the meals together, though they did not tell their guests that. “Your wife is quite the cook,” his colleagues said, and Leo would laugh and say, “Damn right she is,” and everyone would laugh. When they had guests, Ulli drank steadily and practiced speaking with an American accent. As soon as the guests were gone, she went straight to bed, leaving Leo to clean up, which he did graciously—his penance, he called it, for having such boring friends.

  It was after one of their dinner parties that they had their first real fight. That night Ulli had been drinking more than usual, and she started imitating one of the wives’ strong New York accents. When no one seemed to notice except Leo, Ulli started parroting the woman, repeating every single thing she said, and she was a talker.

  “My wife is quite the linguist,” Leo said. “She speaks Russian, you know.”

  The wives nodded, and the men smiled.

  Ulli did not smile or nod.

  “Why don’t you say something in Russian for us,” Leo suggested.

  “I’d rather not,” Ulli said.

  “Aw, c’mon. Don’t be like that,” one of the husbands said.

  “Why don’t you recite ‘Dover Beach,’” Ulli said, glaring at Leo. “He knows hundreds of poems by heart. Have you told them that?”

  “I’ll do it if you say something in Russian,” Leo said, so she recited the numbers to one hundred, slowly.

  “Bravo,” Leo said, and started clapping. The others clapped too, until Leo stopped.

  “Now it’s your turn,” Ulli said.

  He stood, cleared his throat, and began to recite. When he got to the final line about ignorant armies clashing by night, one of the wives started laughing, and then the men started laughing, and one of them slapped Leo on the back and Leo started laughing too. After that, Ulli was silent. When the guests were gone, she started throwing the glasses against the wall, and Leo grabbed her arms and pulled them behind her back until she said, “Enough, Leo,” and she broke away and started picking up the broken glass.

  “You’ll hurt yourself,” Leo said.

  “I don’t care,” she said.

  “I do,” Leo said.

  “That was our poem,” Ulli said.

  “But you wanted me to recite it.”

  “You laughed,” Ulli said.

  “I was trying to make them comfortable after that nonsense you pulled with that poor woman.”

  “She’s not a poor woman.”

  “There was no reason to be cruel,” Leo said.

  “Of c
ourse there’s no reason to be cruel. I was drunk,” Ulli said.

  “Why don’t you get some rest?” he said.

  While he cleaned up the broken glass, he could hear Ulli crying in the bedroom, but he did not go to her, not because he was angry, but because she was angry. He knew that she was tired of waiting for him to come home at night and having to be pleasant and polite and say things like “More potatoes?” or “Here, let me fill your glass.” He didn’t go to her, because he did not want to change his life. He was building something, and eventually, she would see.

  From that night on, Leo went out with his colleagues by himself. “You missed a great party,” he would say when he came home, and he really meant it. He enjoyed himself with the insurance salesmen and their wives. It was fun being successful. Later she wondered why she did not put up more of a fight, why she did not either demand her equal share of happiness or make an effort to enjoy her husband’s success like the other wives, who seemed to want so little. Was it because that was just the way things were after the war, during peacetime—the women safe and sound at home, the men swinging their briefcases toward prosperity? Or was it that she did not know how to be happy?

  Ulli began going out on her own. She learned that the city was full of people who were on the lookout for human contact. She found those people in the dingy bars on Tenth Avenue and in isolated corners of Central Park, in coffee shops tucked in under the elevated, on trains. She never had any trouble, was never even afraid, not even for a moment. No one ever demanded anything she could not give. The most she did was listen or relate the superficial details of her life. None of these people ever became her friend. They spent a morning, an afternoon, together, and then they each disappeared back into the city. She had no particular stomping grounds, preferring far-flung neighborhoods toward the ends of subway lines, and she avoided returning to a place more than once.

  Once, she met a man at a Chock full o’Nuts. He was an ugly man, with folds of fat on the back of his neck and razor nicks all over his face. He was a salesman too. What was it about her that attracted salesmen? Did she look like an easy sell or a difficult one? He sold fire extinguishers and believed vehemently that every household should have one. “And if there are children in the house,” he said, “it is a crime not to have one. Imagine their tiny, helpless bodies burning up.”

  “I don’t have children,” Ulli said, thinking that Leo would have disapproved of his pitch. What did he think he was doing, talking about children burning up?

  “Don’t worry, I’m not trying to sell you anything,” he said. “How about we could go to the beach?”

  Ulli agreed to go with him if he gave her a driving lesson.

  “Look at this baby,” he said as they approached his car. “Dodges are the best. I wouldn’t buy anything but a Dodge. Don’t ever buy anything but a Dodge.”

  “I won’t,” she said.

  They drove out to Long Island and stopped at a Howard Johnson’s for lunch. They had milkshakes and hamburgers. “So where are you from anyway?” he asked.

  “Germany. Berlin,” she said.

  “You don’t sound German,” he said, which was what everyone said.

  “My mother was English.”

  “Well, that explains it.”

  They drove to the beach, took off their shoes, and walked along the shore. His feet were terribly white. He hadn’t cut his toenails in a long time, so they curved like talons. “It’s been years since I’ve walked on the beach,” he said, swinging his arms.

  After a while, he wanted to sit down and have a smoke, so he laid out his jacket for her and they sat on the sand and smoked a few cigarettes and looked out at the water.

  “So you married a soldier?” he asked after they had been sitting there for a while.

  “Yes,” she said.

  “Do you love him?” he asked.

  “Yes,” she said.

  “Hope he’s not a drinker.”

  “Not really,” she said.

  “Good. I used to drink, but I stopped when my wife died. I should have stopped before, but that’s the way it is.”

  “I’m sorry about your wife,” she said.

  “Cancer,” he said, shaking his head.

  They walked back to the parking lot. “How about some driving now?” he asked.

  She hadn’t forgotten but had decided not to bring it up. It seemed like a foolish request after he told her about his wife.

  “I’d love to,” she said, feeling that he would be disappointed if she changed her mind.

  Although the day had not been particularly hot, the sun was strong, so the steering wheel was hot to touch. “That’s why I always have my driving gloves,” he said, reaching into the glove compartment. “They’ll be a little big, since I’ve got such big hands.”

  He explained how everything worked in the greatest detail—the clutch, the brakes, the emergency brake, the gears, the mirrors. The mirrors, he said, were extremely important. Then he went on to the dials and levers—the heat, the lights, the windshield wipers—and only after he was sure that she understood the purpose of them all, were they ready to begin driving. Slowly he led her through the steps and, following his directions, she managed to slip smoothly from first to second gear. “You’re a natural,” he said. She drove around the parking lot, once, twice, three times, following his instructions. “Always keep your eyes on the road,” he said, even though she was.

  Ulli was afraid to tell him she had had enough. He seemed to be having such a wonderful time, so she kept driving round and round the parking lot. Finally he said they should probably be getting back to the city, and she agreed because she wanted to be sure to be home—in time for Leo.

  She insisted that he drop her off at the Chock full o’Nuts because she did not want him to know where she lived. “I guess we’ve come full circle,” he said.

  “I guess we have,” she said. “Thank you for letting me drive.”

  “My pleasure,” he said. “Here’s my card. Call me when you feel like driving.”

  “I will,” she said, but she never did. She thought about calling him, but she knew better, knew that the day could not be replicated, though for weeks after their outing, she awoke every morning thinking of him shaving in a tiny bathroom in a dark studio with windows facing the air shaft, telling himself he must pick up some razors on the way home. In her version of his life, he never got around to buying new razors, so every morning the bleeding got worse, blood dripped onto his clean white shirt, and he tried to wash it out with soap and a washcloth, but it always left a yellowish stain.

  During this period, when Leo was rising to the top of the insurance world and Ulli was wandering around the city, they saw Isaac only once a week—every Sunday afternoon at three. Isaac provided the pastries, always éclairs and Napoleons. They did not have the heart to tell him they were tired of éclairs and Napoleons, that they were ready for something new. There was something about Isaac’s apartment, about the pastries and the coffee in the middle of the afternoon, about the dominance of books, that left Ulli feeling like a child again, enduring her parents’ interminable Sundays. Ulli spoke little during these gatherings, letting Leo and Isaac do most of the talking. They reminisced about Berlin a lot, remembering the meals they prepared, the cold. They liked talking about who might be living in the apartment now. They hoped it was someone nice, a young couple with a baby. Ulli didn’t want to think about the apartment, but she didn’t tell them that. Sometimes Leo asked Isaac to tell them about his work, but Isaac always said he didn’t like to talk about it. “You wouldn’t be interested,” he said, and Leo didn’t push it. By six o’clock Ulli would be asleep on the sofa, and Leo would have to wake her, prod her to the door, hold her up as they waited for the elevator. It was only when they were back in the street again, when the air hit her face and the noise of passing cars entered her consciousness, that she could
stand on her own, and then she wanted to walk and walk and walk until she was exhausted. Leo obliged her. They often walked all the way down to Battery Park and back up to their apartment, where they would fall into bed with relief, clutching each other, making love like soldiers about to be sent forth from the trenches into battle.

  On Monday mornings she lingered in bed while Leo jumped up, excited about the week’s prospects. Was he going over his appointments in his head, adding up the figures—the premiums, the percentages? Was there a moment while he was drying off after his shower or tying his shoelaces that he wondered what it was she did all day, or did he just push that out of his head? Still, she yearned for him, waited for him to come home, counted the hours, and no matter how far she wandered, she was always home at six, despite the fact that each day it became clearer that what had seemed so attractive, so simple when they were in Germany, was not at all what she wanted. She tried not to be waiting for him, to stop on the way home for just one more drink or one more cup of coffee, to walk rather than take the bus, but then she would end up rushing, all in a tizzy about getting home in time. She wanted to be home before him, not out of any sense of duty, not because she was trying to be a good wife, but because she missed him, because she loved him even if he was an insurance salesmen selling people a security they both knew could never exist.

  She didn’t understand it, this love for him, but it was there, and if seven o’clock passed, then eight, then nine, the only way she could calm herself was to remember the bomb shelter, the waiting, the silence, the planes overhead, the buildings crashing down around her. I am safe, she repeated to herself over and over again. He will return, and he always did, smiling, full of stories, tired from a hard day’s work, hungry.

  At one point Leo bought Ulli a phonograph, and every night for three weeks he came home with a new record. After dinner they listened to the record, and sometimes they danced. The figure in their bank account grew.

  On weekends they went to the Metropolitan Museum, to the theater, to movies. They went out to steak houses and ate more beef in one night than Ulli had eaten during the entire war. They went to see Frank Sinatra. They went up to Harlem to see Billie Holiday at the Apollo Theater. “That is the saddest woman I have ever seen,” Leo said, and Ulli wanted to tell him that she was sad too, that she wished she could take her sadness and turn it into song, into something that people were not afraid to look at, into something they could touch and hold in their arms, not out of pity but out of love. But she did not know how to talk to him here, and she found herself longing for the quiet of snow-covered rubble and the pleasure of that one cigarette after having gone for so long without them.