Мариус Габриэль - The Ocean Liner

The vulgar smell of the fried onions in the hot dog elbowed its way between them. He quietly discarded the garnish, not wanting to lose the intimacy of Masha’s scent, which was of lilies and vanilla. But she did not seem to mind the onions, and ate with the relish of a healthy young animal, swigging her vivid red soda from the bottle. She caught him watching her, and laughed.

‘Have I got ketchup all over my face?’

‘Only a little, on your lips.’

She dabbed her mouth with the paper napkin, and leaned back luxuriously on the concrete bench, stifling a belch. ‘I love America. I feel so free here. Don’t you? Berlin was a prison. I thought it was just being a Jew that made it feel like that, but now I think that to be a German is itself to be a prisoner. Do you know what I mean?’

‘I think so.’

‘Where else can you eat sausages on a bench and drink from a bottle, and nobody frowns at you?’ She waved the remaining half of her hot dog at the extraordinary buildings all around them. ‘Where else can you see this?’

‘Nowhere.’

‘Nowhere. It’s—’ She couldn’t find the words. ‘Well, it’s America. ’

While she ate the rest of her hot dog, Thomas quietly got rid of his in the trashcan nearby. He understood her enthusiasm and wished he could share it more fully. This America was garish and brash and bursting with energy. The women flaunted their bodies in tight clothes and laughed with lipsticked mouths, the men showed their muscles and wrestled each other on the sidewalks. It would take him time to assimilate it and be assimilated by it.

Masha had polished off her hot dog. She pulled her skirt up over her thighs to expose her legs to the late afternoon sunlight. ‘I’m sick of being so white,’ she complained. ‘American girls are always tanned. It looks much nicer.’

Thomas glanced at her bare legs and then looked quickly away. ‘You look fine.’

She drank from her soda bottle and held it to him, still a quarter-full. ‘Do you want to finish it?’

He took it from her and laid the neck against his lips. There was a momentary trace of her perfume, a slippery suspicion of her saliva. He tilted the bottle up and the strawberry soda, warm and slightly flat, sluiced them away. He swallowed the moment – the nearness of Masha, the sweetness of the soda, the warm sun on his skin.

As he took the bottle from his lips, the air compressed around them, squeezing their eardrums. There was a deep thump that shook the concrete bench they were sitting on. A few leaves scattered off the nearby trees, spinning in the shocked air. Suddenly, people everywhere were running and screaming. Over behind the Perisphere a cloud of black smoke was rolling into the sky.

‘What was that?’ Masha asked anxiously.

‘I don’t know. But we should leave.’

People were streaming to the exits, and they joined the crush. There was still some laughter among the crowd. They could hear people around them speculating that it had been Fourth of July fireworks, or a prank, or just another display of some kind. But nobody wanted to stay to find out; and as they left the Fair down the ramp to the Brooklyn-Manhattan Transit, they heard a policeman telling a colleague, ‘There’s been a bomb at the British pavilion. Two cops got it out of the building, but it went off. Killed the both of them and dug a damn great hole in the dirt.’

‘We were there an hour ago,’ Masha gasped. Thomas nodded, feeling sick.

The transit back to Manhattan was crowded. They managed to find seats next to one another. Masha was pale and silent. For a while she slept with her head propped against Thomas’s shoulder. He closed his eyes, concentrating on the feel of her soft hair tickling his cheek. Why did the day have to end like this? The war had followed them all the way to Flushing Meadows, all the way to his dream, with its senseless cruelty and violence.

The sun was setting by the time they reached Penn Station. Golden-red light streamed through the glass roof, flooding the huge concourse below with fiery shadows. He had to get back to Hartford to be in school by nine. He offered to walk her to her platform.

‘It’s okay,’ she said, ‘a friend is coming to pick me up.’

‘Then I’ll wait with you.’

‘Oh, you needn’t. You go and get your train.’ But then she saw his expression and relented. They made their way to the great clock that hung in the archway, and stood under it to wait. ‘Thank you for today, Thomas. It was lovely to see you again. It was a lovely day all round.’

‘I’m sorry it ended like that.’

‘So am I.’ She looked suddenly tearful. ‘I don’t want America to join the war.’

‘If they don’t, the Nazis may take over Europe.’

Masha looked at the crowds around them. ‘These people came here to escape all that, the same as we did. They don’t deserve to be dragged back into it. I want America to be somewhere wars don’t happen.’

‘I don’t think there’s anywhere wars don’t happen.’

‘What are you going to do with your life, Thomas? Engineer? Rocket scientist?’

‘Something like that, I suppose.’

‘Just don’t become a watchmaker.’

‘Why not?’

‘I don’t know. I just don’t want to think of you in some little room, tinkering with little things, like a prisoner. Don’t end up like that. Be free. Be big.’

‘I will try.’

‘You’d better. Or I’ll come and find you one day, and drag you out, and embarrass you in front of all the other watchmakers.’ She turned her head, her eyes lighting up. ‘My friend is here.’

Masha’s friend was a good-looking young man in a double-breasted suit, wearing a trilby hat. He greeted Masha affectionately. The arm he put around her was casually proprietorial. He smiled cheerfully at Thomas as they shook hands.

‘Thomas, this is Dale Gordon,’ Masha said. And there was something in the shy, proud way she said the name that opened a door in Thomas’s mind. Through the door, he seemed to be looking down the years, as though looking down a hall of mirrors. He could see at once that Masha was going to become Mrs Dale Gordon, that she would live a happy life with him in a happy house, and have his children, and grow old with him. And in that hall of mirrors, his own reflection appeared only once, in the wrong place, at the wrong time.

Far away, he heard Dale asking if they’d had a good time at the Fair, and Masha telling Dale about the bomb, and Dale’s voice growing serious as he asked if she were all right. And then Dale said his car was parked on a yellow line and he would probably be getting a ticket right about now; and it was time to say goodbye.

Masha hugged Thomas and kissed him on the mouth. He could smell the onions on her breath, and he wondered whether Dale Gordon would mind that. He thought Dale probably wouldn’t mind the smell of onions, wouldn’t mind anything that Masha did.

As she walked away, she turned to look over her shoulder, and called to him, ‘Remember what I said. Don’t be a prisoner!’

But before the hall of mirrors closed in his mind, Thomas knew that he would always be a prisoner, because he would love her forever.

The room was cold and bare. It had whitewashed walls and a tile floor that smashed anything you dropped on it. There was a plain wooden cross hanging over the bed, but no Jesus nailed on it. Rosemary sometimes imagined that Jesus had quietly departed, taking the nails with him. It was hard to imagine that Jesus would have enjoyed this room, or indeed the gloomy convent chapel where mass was said every day and the long benches had no padding and were hard enough to make your backside ache and leave deep furrows in your knees.