The Winds of War

conquer the world and murder all the Jews.

But I guess you’re waiting to hear about my little chat with Leslie Slote — eh, darling?

Well — he was definitely not expecting the answer I brought back to his proposal. When I told him I’d fallen head over ears in love with you it literally staggered him. I mean he tottered to a chair and fell in it, pale as a ghost. Poor old Slote! A conversation ensued that went on for hours, in a bar, in a restaurant, in my car, in half a dozen circuits on foot around the Lincoln Memorial in a freezing wind, and finally in his apartment. Lord, did he carry on! But after all, I had to give him his say.

The main heads of the dialogue went something like this, round and round and round:

SLOTE: It’s just that you were isolated with him for so long.

ME: I told Briny that myself. I said it’s a triumph of propinquity. That doesn’t change the fact that I love him now.

SLOTE: You can’t intend to marry him. It would be the greatest possible mistake. I say this as a friend, and somebody who knows you better than anyone else.

ME: I told Byron that too. I said it would be ridiculous for me to marry him, and gave him all the reasons.

SLOTE: Well, then, what on earth have you in mind?

ME: I’m just reporting a fact to you. I haven’t anything in mind.

SLOTE: You had better snap out of it. You’re an intellectual and a grown woman. Byron Henry is a pleasant light-headed loafer, who managed to avoid getting an education even in a school like Columbia There can’t be anything substantial between you.

ME: I don’t want to hurt you, dear, but (this is the way I walked on eggs for a while, but in the end I came flat out with it) the thing between Byron Henry and me is damned substantial. In fact by comparison, just now, nothing else seems very substantial. (Slote plunged in horrid gloom.)

SLOTE: (he only asked this once): Have you slept with him?

ME: None of your business. (Jastrow not giving Slote any cards to play that she can help. Slote sunk even deeper in gloom.)

SLOTE: Well, “la coeur a ses raisons,” and all that, but I truly don’t understand. He’s a boy. He’s very good-looking, or rather, charming-looking, and he is certainly courageous. Perhaps that’s assumed an outsize importance for you.

ME: (ducking that sore topic; who needs trouble?): He has other nice qualities. He’s a gentleman. I never knew the animal really existed outside of books any more.

SLOTE: I’m not a gentleman, then?

ME: I’m not saying you’re a boor or a cad. I mean a gentleman in the old sense, not somebody who avoids bad manners.

SLOTE: You’re talking like a shopgirl. You’re obviously rationalizing a temporary physical infatuation. That’s all right. But the words you’re choosing are corny and embarrassing.

ME: All that may be. Meantime I can’t marry you. (Yawn) And I must go to sleep now. I want to drive four hundred miles tomorrow, (Exit Jastrow, at long last.)

All things considered, he took it well. He calmly says we’re getting married once I’m over this nuttiness and he’s going ahead with his plans for it. He’s remarkably sure of himself, to that extent he remains very much the old Slote. Physically he’s like a stranger now. I never kissed him, and though we spent an hour in his apartment, very late, he never laid a hand on me. I wonder if the talk about gentlemen had anything to do with it. He never used to be like that, I assure you. (I daresay I’ve changed too!)

Maybe he’s right about me and you. I choose not to look beyond the present moment, or more truly beyond the moment when we stood by the fire in my bedroom and you took me in your arms. I’m still overwhelmed, I still love you, I still long for you. Separated though we are, I’ve never been so happy in all my life. If only you were here right this minute!

I said you see things too simply but on one point you were just plain right. Aaron should leave that stupid house, let it fall down and rot, and come back to this wonderful land to live out his days. His move there was stupid. His remaining there is imbecilic. If you can convince him of it — and I’m writing him a letter too — I’d feel a lot better about your coming back. But don’t just abandon him, sweetheart. Not yet. Wait till my plans jell a bit.

Happy New Year, and I hope to God that 1940 brings the end of Hitler and this whole grisly nightmare, and brings us together again.

I adore you.

Natalie

Three letters came straggling in during the next few weeks. The first two were shallow awkward scrawls:

I’m the world’s worst letter writer…. I sure miss you more than I can say… things are pretty dull around here now without you… sure wish I could have been there with you in Lisbon… Well, got to get back to work now…

She read Byron’s embarrassing banalities over and over. Here on paper was just the young featherweight sloucher she had first seen, propped against a red Siena wall in the noon sun. Even his handwriting fitted the picture: slanting, undistinguished, the letters small and flattened. The pathetically flourishing B of his signature stood out of the mediocre penmanship. All of Byron’s frustrated yearning to amount to something, to measure up to his father’s hopes, was in that extravagant B. All his inconsequence was in the trailed-off, crushed “… yron.” Poor Briny! Yet Natalie found herself dwelling on the artless empty scribblings as though they were letters of George Bernard Shaw. She kept them under her pillow. They contrasted most cruelly with her other preoccupation, for to pass the time she had hauled out her master’s thesis, already three-quarters written in French: “Contrasts in the Sociologismic Critique of War: Durkheim’s Writings on Germany, 1915-1916, and Tolstoy’s Second Epilogue to War and Peace, 1869.” She was giving thought to translating it, and enrolling in Columbia in or NYU in the fall to finish it off and get her degree. It was a good thesis. Even Slote had read sections with approval, if now and again with a thin Oxonian smile. She wanted not only to finish, but to revise it. She had started with the anti-French, pro-German bias of most American university opinion between the wars. Her experiences in Poland had inclined her to agree much more with Durkheim about Germany. These things were as far beyond the writer of the letters under her pillow as the general theory of relativity. It would give Briny a headache just to read her title. But she didn’t care. She was in in love.

Popular songs were sweetly stabbing her: songs about women infatuated with worthless men, whining cowboy laments about absent sweethearts. It was as though she had developed a craving for penny candy. She was shamed of gratifying her fancy, but she couldn’t get enough of these songs. She bought records and played them over and over. If Byron Henry wrote stupid letters, too bad. All judgments fell away before her remembrance of his eyes and his mouth and his arms, her delight at contemplating a few ill-written sentences because they came from his hand.

A much better letter came along: the answer to her first long one from Miami Beach, several pages typed with Byron’s odd offhand clarity. He somehow never struck a wrong key in his quick rattling, and his pages looked like a stenographer’s work.

Natalie darling:

Well, that’s more like it. A real letter. God, I waited a long time. I skipped all that stuff about the USA and Miami, to get to the Slote business, but then I went back and read it all. Nobody has to tell me how good the United States is, compared to Europe. I’m so homesick at this point, I could die. This is quite aside from my yearning for you, which remains as strong as if you were in the room downstairs. I’m beginning to understand how iron filings must feel around a magnet. Sometimes, sitting in my room thinking about you, the pull gets so strong, I have the feeling if I let go of the arms of my chair I’d float out of the window and across France and over the Atlantic, straight to your house at 1316 Normandie Drive.