Ms Steward
had quick judgment, an unerring taste for it, and was possessed of need of
steel control, never letting go, seldom if ever anyhow. I’d find out in due
time she never left her table of thought without first planning. She had only a
need to look at the calendar, and prescribe a treatment for the modification in
her schedule, to transform her day into something indescribably different—and
in this case of today, for me, quite dumfounded; for today quite the
opposite. —but in all-in-all, strangely,
she had that Jewish sheer genius, and that German fortitude, and I doubt at the
time that in the future anything would change my judgment of her. She is
stately in her attitude of mind, generous, sensible, sensitive, and has a large
amount of vitality for her condition: her maturity was beyond mine. Sometimes
she seemed all of forty, at twenty-six, and at other times in her romantic
moods, or way: nearly sixteen, especially when she was aroused. In a word, she
is highly normal, serious, and healthy looking, but not really all that
healthy, thinning with that illness of hers, but surely a natural woman of her
species in every other way. And yes, feminine, with nearly a hair out of place.
Always well groomed. Furthermore, she
wore mostly dresses, there was a lure to that, an asset to her adequate neck,
slim legs, and waist. She had done long glances at me, and appeared to enjoy my
firm-shouldered body. Slim, trim she was
the model type, nearly as tall as myself, perhaps two inches shorter, with the
mellowest-voice, one of all, in the German-Jewish race.
One thing I had noticed, and I must not
forget, she was selective of her man-interest (in
me, and another certain German fellow—if you please, a very rich German merely
a sugar-daddy, I assumed at the time).
At rare moments she talked about him,
that other fellow, when I met him one afternoon, she gazed at him with a so-so
altitude of anxiety in her eyes, and left with me. With him her face a
transported white, with me eyelids fluttering, all the way down to her lips
moving silently. He must had been in his mid-thirties. He seemed habitual disciplined
to want to have met me, I thought at the time; when we left the guesthouse, in
Augsburg, where I had met him this one afternoon after work, about 4:00 P.M.,
him being well-groomed, suite and all, a Mercedes sitting in the parking lot,
that I knew was his, because Chris once in a while drove it—the color to her
face, and voice slowly turned to my face. It was as if time and space had stood
still as if having reached the speed of light. And she just had returned to
earth.
For the reader, I am now experiencing
our whole nine-month relationship, put into a nutshell; not to include the
first two dates, I shall express them perhaps shortly. Incidentally, for this
narrative, I do realize I am speaking in the present as well as past at the
same time, that being: the first and the third person to be exact, and even at
times in a reporting description, forgive me for breaking the old worn-out
literature rules, it seems to fit, and it bothers me to undo it.
Had I profiled myself back then, back in
1970, I would say I had a primitive nature to me, perhaps innocent or naïve
being a Midwestern boy, and that Chris` sugar-daddy, perhaps was married, and
still I feel safe in predicting, I was the weaker link in her life’s chain.
Especially in this love circle of hers. Even though I may have called him: ‘the
poor devil’ mentally she was being fulfilled from both sides, as if having a
coin with two heads on it; although, he would make out at the end as I would
get orders to relocate to participate in the
Vietnam War in Asia, and thereafter, get a Dear John letter from Chris.
But I felt it was forthcoming, so it was no big surprise, when it did come.
Yet, she nor I carried any resentment
for one another, in this strange relationship. And thinking about it now, I
must have looked in my Military Security Uniform, a young hoodlum; or so I
felt. And still I must add, I with an
outrageously swollen temper. But our meeting was handled in a peaceful way, at
his request to Chris, and her request to me. That is to say, he didn’t deny
her, dating me, but wanted to scan me for some reason, I suppose to see what
she saw in me, could he?
Even today, some forty-four-years later,
I find myself a tinge snarling at the man, more than usual, although he was
handsome, polite to me, both of us about the same weight, and height, and
myself being well trained in the art of Karate, held no fear of him. He asked
me questions, my replies were given in monosyllables, and my face set in
superlative sourness; not so much for me allowing the love circle, but because
I seemed to have been pressured into meet him, or better yet, persuaded into
meeting him. I really didn’t want to, I knew I had to hold my temper back, and
I didn’t want to show that side of me unless necessary. In other words, I
didn’t want to regret, what I might do. It wasn’t jealously or even envy, I
don’t know what it is, men often don’t know, perhaps it was that he was
stepping on my foot, kind of, if you know what I mean, and I can’t explain it
any differently.
She had told me before I met him “Don’t
be a grouch.”
To me this was a phenomenon, to which I
claim no experience; or on the lunatic side of life, I mean to say: when you do
something stupid like this, no one can figure out who’s the fool? Me or him! I
mean to say, we both look the fool. It took me a few hours thereafter our
meeting, before I could regain my composure, became my old self was still
trying to figure out the reasoning behind this. I suppose I take pride in which
hurts me most in is the knowledge that he was not guilty of being a
blunderbuss, but well mannered, he was no slob, but curious, offering me a seat
and a beer; to which I refused both. I do wonder what he thought though.
I guess I looked to him, as Chris would
remark: a handsome enough young soldered, well built, but a little standoffish.
Now being an old man of sixty-seven, I
think back and figured he figured: he’ll never know. And the reason being, he
was the interested person, and they usually will not say anything; and I doubt
Chris knew, even if she thought she knew, other than having rumors and
guesses. But being a man, this I do
know: he had received a fearful blow on the head—figuratively speaking, if not
his pride, and this prodigious lump on the head, and from this he was little
dazed over me, and feeling somewhat like an old sea-relic, was in awe of what
she saw in me, he was suffering from a concussion of the brain, and all this
aroused his curiosity. And instead of retreating, he came out softly,
noiselessly, to see if he was going to receive any injury from this new
invented love circle of Chris’ whom according to her friends she had less than
two years to live from her illness. And once she told me she wanted to live to
the fullest, and I was part of her jam-packed life.
A second thought on this, and I look to
the three of us, to look at this capacity for a mystery: myself and the
sugar-daddy, both fair-skinned, blue-eyed, the German, under the American
mastering and commanding authority at the time, and in a wider perspective: to
the ends of our type on the earth. Although the German, had a lordly history?
It was taken away from them twice by Americans.
And though America may be doomed to pass, in 1970 it was only
twenty-five years after WWII, it didn’t look like it. Germans did not necessary like us GI’s in
that we were occupying their country, taking home a lot of German brides. We
had disciplined them to obedience. This
all could be depicted in miniature, for him at the time. I suppose he could see this in my eyes. And
surely he was thinking: was he or I, the lesser type for Chris to build her
future on—although she had not a long future to look at, and is perhaps why I
got that Dear John letter; and if I enjoyed anything, it was that I was not the
enslaved individual, in an enclosed country; although being drafted, did seem
like a bit of slavery.
Note: A
short story, by its author; non-fiction, that took place in 1970. No: 1025
