Mavis Gallant - The Cost of Living - Early and Uncollected Stories

1954

I WAS EIGHTEEN when I married Walt and nineteen when I followed him to Salzburg, where he was posted with the Army of Occupation. We’d been married eleven months, but separated for so much of it that my marriage really began that autumn day, when I got down from the train at Salzburg station. Walt was waiting, of course. I could see him in the crowd of soldiers, tall and anxious-looking, already a little bald even though he was only twenty-nine. The first thought that came into my head wasn’t a very nice one: I thought what a pity it was he didn’t look more like my brother-in-law. Walt and my brother-in-law were first cousins; that was how we happened to meet. I had always liked my brother-in-law and felt my sister was lucky to have him, and I suppose that was really why I wanted Walt. I thought it would be the same kind of marriage.

I waved at Walt, smiling, the way girls do in illustrations. I could almost see myself, fresh and pretty, waving to someone in uniform. This was eight years ago, soon after the war; the whole idea of arriving to meet a soldier somewhere seemed touching and brave and romantic. When Walt took me in his arms, right in front of everyone, I was so engulfed by the idea of the picture it made that I thought I would cry. But then I remembered my luggage and turned away so that I could keep an eye on it. I had matching blue plaid suitcases, given me by my married sister as a going-away present, and I didn’t want to lose them right at the start of my married life.

“Oh, Walt,” I said, nearly in tears, “I don’t see the hatbox.”

Those were the first words I’d spoken, except for hello or something like that.

Walt laughed and said something just as silly. He said, “You look around ten years old.”

Immediately, I felt defensive. I looked down at my camel’s-hair coat and my scuffed, familiar moccasins, and I thought, What’s wrong with looking young? Walt didn’t know, of course, that my married sister had already scolded me for dressing like a little girl instead of a grownup.

“You’re not getting ready to go back to school, Cissy,” she’d said. “You’re married. You’re going over there to be with your husband. You’ll be mixing with grown-up married couples. And for goodness’ sake stop sucking your pearls. Of all the baby habits!”

“Well,” I told her, “you brought me up, practically. Whose fault is it if I’m a baby now?”

My pearls were always pink with lipstick, because I had a trick of putting them in my mouth when I was pretending to be stubborn or puzzled about something. Up till now, my sister had always thought it cute. I had always been the baby of the family, the motherless child; even my wedding had seemed a kind of game, like dressing up for a party. Now they were pushing me out, buying luggage, criticizing my clothes, sending me off to live thousands of miles away with a strange man. I couldn’t understand the change. It turned all my poses into real feelings: I became truly stubborn, and honestly perplexed. I took the trousseau check my father had given me and bought exactly the sort of clothes I’d always worn, the skirts and sweaters, the blouses with Peter Pan collars. There wasn’t one grown-up dress, not even a pair of high-heeled shoes. I wanted to make my sister sorry, to make her see that I was too young to be going away. Then, too, I couldn’t imagine another way of dressing. I felt safer in my girlhood uniforms, the way you feel in a familiar house.

I remembered all that as I walked along the station platform with Walt, awkwardly holding hands, and I thought, I suppose now I’ll have to change. But not too soon, not too fast.

That was how I began my married life.

In those days, Salzburg was still coming out of the war. All the people you saw on the streets looked angry and in a hurry. There were so many trucks and jeeps clogging the roads, so many soldiers, so much scaffolding over the narrow sidewalks that you could hardly get around. We couldn’t find a place to live. The Army had taken over whole blocks of apartments, but even with the rebuilding and the requisitioning, Walt and I had to wait three months before there was anything ready for us. During those months — October, November, December — we lived in a farmhouse not far out of town. It was a real farm, not a hotel. The owner of the place, Herr Enrich, was a polite man and spoke English. When he first saw me, he said right away that he had taken in boarders before the war, but quite a different type — artists and opera singers, people who had come for the Salzburg Festival. “Now,” he said politely, “one cannot choose.” I wondered if that was meant for us. I looked at Walt, but he didn’t seem to care. Later, Walt told me not to listen to Herr Enrich. He told me not to talk about the war, not to mix with the other people on the farm, to make friends with Army wives. Go for walks. I wrote it all down on a slip of paper like a little girl: Don’t talk war. Avoid people on farm. Meet Army wives. Go for walks. Years later, I came across this list and I showed it to Walt, but he didn’t remember what it was about. When I told him this was a line of conduct he had laid down for me, he didn’t believe it. He hardly remembers our life on the farm. Yet those three months stand out in my memory like a special little lifetime, neither girlhood nor marriage. It was a time when I didn’t like what I was, but didn’t know what I wanted to be. In a way, I tried to do the right things. I followed Walt’s instructions.

I didn’t talk about the war; there was no one to talk to. I didn’t mix with the people on the farm. They didn’t want to mix with me. There were six boarders besides us: a Hungarian couple named de Kende — dark and fat with gold teeth; and a family from Vienna with two children. The family from Vienna looked like rabbits. They had moist noses and pink eyes. All four wore the Salzburg costume, and they looked like rabbits dressed up. Sometimes I smiled at the two children, but they never smiled back. I wondered if they had been told not to, and if they had a list of instructions like mine: Don’t mix with Americans. Don’t talk to Army wives…We ate at a long table in the dining room, all of us together. There was a tiled stove in a corner, and the room was often so hot that the windows steamed and ran as if it were raining inside. Most of the time Walt ate with the Army. He was always away for lunch, and then I would be alone with these people — the Enrichs, the de Kendes from Hungary, and the rabbity family from Vienna. Only Mr. de Kende and his wife ever tried to speak to me in English. Mr. de Kende had a terrible accent, but I once understood him to say that he had been a wealthy man in his own country and had owned four factories. Now he traveled around Austria in an old car selling dental supplies. “What do you think of that for Yalta justice?” he said, pointing his fork at me over the table. The others all suddenly stared at me, alert and silent, waiting for my reply. But I didn’t understand. All I could think of then was that my brother-in-law was a dentist, and I remembered how he’d taken me into his home when my mother died, and how kind he had been, and I had to hold my breath to keep from crying in front of them all. At last, I said, “Well, goodness, it’s quite a coincidence, because my sister happens to be married to a dental surgeon.” Mr. de Kende just grunted, and they all went back to their food.

I told Walt about it, but all he said was, “Don’t bother with them. Why don’t you get to know some Army wives?”

He didn’t understand how hard it was. We lived out of town, and I didn’t know how to go about meeting anyone on my own. I thought it was up to Walt to take me around and introduce me to people, but he had only one friend in Salzburg and seemed to think that was enough. Walt’s friend’s name was Marvin McColl. He and Walt came from the same town and had gone to the same school. He seemed to have more in common with Marv than with me, but they were the same age, so it seemed only natural. Walt wanted me to be friends with Marv’s wife, Laura.