Franz Denzel was a middle-aged German. His face was pinched with bitterness or illness. He greeted Jack and his wife with that elaborate and clever politeness that is intended to make guests feel that they have come too early or too late. He insisted sharply upon Jack’s sitting in the chair in which he himself had been sitting, and then went and sat on a radiator. There were five other Germans sitting around the room, drinking coffee. In a corner was another American couple, who looked uncomfortable. Joan passed Jack and his wife small cups of coffee with whipped cream. “These cups belonged to Franz’s mother,” she said. “Aren’t they lovely? They were the only things he took from Germany when he escaped from the Nazis.”
Franz turned to Jack and said, “Perhaps you will give us your opinion on the American educational system. That is what we were discussing when you arrived.”
Before Jack could speak, one of the German guests opened an attack on the American educational system. The other Germans joined in, and went on from there to describe every vulgarity that had impressed them in American life and to contrast German and American culture generally. Where, they asked one another passionately, could you find in America anything like the Mitropa dining cars, the Black Forest, the pictures in Munich, the music in Bayreuth? Franz and his friends began speaking in German. Neither Jack nor his wife nor Joan could understand German, and the other American couple had not opened their mouths since they were introduced. Joan went happily around the room, filling everyone’s cup with coffee, as if the music of a foreign language were enough to make an evening for her.
Jack drank five cups of coffee. He was desperately uncomfortable. Joan went into the kitchen while the Germans were laughing at their German jokes, and he hoped she would return with some drinks, but when she came back, it was with a tray of ice cream and mulberries.
“Isn’t this pleasant?” Franz asked, speaking in English again.
Joan collected the coffee cups, and as she was about to take them back to the kitchen, Franz stopped her.
“Isn’t one of those cups chipped?”
“No, darling,” Joan said. “I never let the maid touch them. I wash them myself.”
“What’s that?” he asked, pointing at the rim of one of the cups.
“That’s the cup that’s always been chipped, darling. It was chipped when you unpacked it. You noticed it then.”
“These things were perfect when they arrived in this country,” he said.
Joan went into the kitchen and he followed her.
Jack tried to make conversation with the Germans. From the kitchen there was the sound of a blow and a cry. Franz returned and began to eat his mulberries greedily. Joan came back with her dish of ice cream. Her voice was gentle. Her tears, if she had been crying, had dried as quickly as the tears of a child. Jack and his wife finished their ice cream and made their escape. The wasted and unnerving evening enraged Jack’s wife, and he supposed that he would never see Joan again.
Jack’s wife got pregnant early in the fall, and she seized on all the prerogatives of an expectant mother. She took long naps, ate canned peaches in the middle of the night, and talked about the rudimentary kidney. She chose to see only other couples who were expecting children, and the parties that she and Jack gave were temperate. The baby, a boy, was born in May, and Jack was very proud and happy. The first party he and his wife went to after her convalescence was the wedding of a girl whose family Jack had known in Ohio.
The wedding was at St. James’s, and afterward there was a big reception at the River Club. There was an orchestra dressed like Hungarians, and a lot of champagne and Scotch. Toward the end of the afternoon, Jack was walking down a dim corridor when he heard Joan’s voice. “Please don’t, darling,” she was saying, “You’ll break my arm. Please don’t, darling.” She was being pressed against the wall by a man who seemed to be twisting her arm. As soon as they saw Jack, the struggle stopped. All three of them were intensely embarrassed. Joan’s face was wet and she made an effort to smile through her tears at Jack. He said hello and went on without stopping. When he returned, she and the man had disappeared.
When Jack’s son was less than two years old, his wife flew with the baby to Nevada to get a divorce. Jack gave her the apartment and all its furnishings and took a room in a hotel near Grand Central. His wife got her decree in due course, and the story was in the newspapers. Jack had a telephone call from Joan a few days later.
“I’m awfully sorry to hear about your divorce, Jack,” she said. “She seemed like such a nice girl. But that wasn’t what I called you about. I want your help, and I wondered if you could come down to my place tonight around six. It’s something I don’t want to talk about over the phone.”
He went obediently to the Village that night and climbed the stairs. Her apartment was a mess. The pictures and the curtains were down and the books were in boxes. “You moving, Joan?” he asked.
“That’s what I wanted to see you about, Jack. First, I’ll give you a drink.” She made two Old- Fashioneds. “I’m being evicted, Jack,” she said. “I’m being evicted because I’m an immoral woman. The couple who have the apartment downstairs?they’re charming people, I’ve always thought?have told the real-estate agent that I’m
