Lorrie Moore - 100 Years of the Best American Short Stories

“Thank you very much,” he said to Mrs. Mason. He was still standing up, politely. Now he moved toward the door.

“Don’t go away,” she said. “Stay and talk. Sit down, please. You’re part of the party.”

“Thank you very much,” he said.

“Understand you had a bad time with those Nazi fellows,” Mr. Worthington said, being very friendly. “Were you really in one of the concentration camps?”

“Yes, I was. It was very bad.”

“I was in Germany once,” Mr. Worthington said. “The thing I kept noticing was, they were such damned bad losers. One night I went out drinking beer with a lot of fellows, me and a Frenchman I knew. They seemed all right guys. But about two in the morning when we’d all drunk a lot of beer one of them said, ‘Let’s have a foot-race.’ Down the main street there, it was all quiet. Well, we started, and in a minute or two the Frenchman was way in front, and I was just behind. They just quit. Started walking along. Wouldn’t admit they’d been racing. But if they’d been ahead, you can bet they’d have rubbed it in. They want to be on top, that’s it, and they take it out on the fellow underneath. If they get licked, they won’t admit they were playing at all.”

“Yes,” said Mr. Loeb.

“You’d see fellows pick fights all the time, late at night, but you never saw them pick a fight unless they thought they could win. I played a lot of tennis over there and, of course, you know, American tennis… They just wouldn’t play again. Fellow over here would say, ‘Let’s play a return match and I’ll lick you.’ Not them.”

“Yes,” said Mr. Loeb.

“Those concentration camps, now. Just the fellows on top doing it to the fellows underneath… It must have been a job keeping your courage up.”

“I did not keep my courage up,” Mr. Loeb said.

Mr. Worthington looked embarrassed.

“I don’t blame you,” he said. “The things you hear about those places; they break your spirit, I guess.”

“Yes,” Mr. Loeb said.

Fräulein sat under the light with her hair parted smoothly from the middle. She looked from Mr. Worthington to Mr. Loeb with self-assured eyes, not entirely understanding nor especially interested. Mr. Worthington twisted his long legs around one side of his chair.

“Anyway,” he said, “it’s all over for you and I bet you’re damned glad. You can just forget about all that stuff. This is a free country and you can do what you please and nobody can hurt you. It’s all over now and finished for you.”

“For many it is not,” Mr. Loeb said after a few moments.

“Yeah, that’s right. Poor devils.”

“But,” Mr. Loeb said hesitantly, “I have thought, I do not know how you say it; the more and more that are all the time — surrendered?”

“How do you mean?”

“He means oppressed,” Mrs. Mason said. Mr. Loeb bowed to her.

“The more and more that are oppressed all the time, the more there are who know together the same thing, who have it together. When it is time and something happens to make it possible, there is something that all of these have had together and that will make them fight together. And now Frenchmen, too, Belgians, too, Flemings. If you have been in a concentration camp, it is more together than that you might be of different countries. I speak very badly,” Mr. Loeb said.

“No,” Mrs. Mason said. “A common cause.”

“Please?” Mr. Loeb asked. Fräulein spoke to him in German.

“I do not think that it is what you call cause, just. But knowing the concentration camps together. And what happens. That they were all crying together and no — courage. It makes them love.”

“I don’t see what you mean, exactly,” Mr. Worthington said.

“I do,” said Mrs. Mason. “They all remember the same thing together.”

“Yes,” Mr. Loeb said.

It seemed to her for a minute that she saw a sea of faces upturned, with the same look in all the thousands of them, the anguish, the terrible humiliation, the fear. It was a vast and growing sea, a great host of the tortured and the outcast, who had known ultimate fear instead of death and had been together in the valley of living hell. Separately each of them had known fear, had felt it burning in their veins, but now that they were all together the common fear became something else, larger, because there were so many millions of them, because they were not alone; it was set in dignity like a brand of brotherhood upon their lifted faces. And there were more of them, and more of them; if there were any more they would be the largest part of all the people on earth; this part would be strong by its numbers, and unshakeable because of its suffering shared. This was something she had never thought of before.

The children were sent off to bed at last, and Mrs. Mason went up to say good night to them. They lay in the two cot-beds holding still while they said their prayers and then releasing into a last, wild activity before the light should be turned out on them. She pushed them back under their sheets and kissed them. When she came downstairs again Mr. Worthington was sitting alone in the living-room and the German voices were coming in softly through the screen door, from the warm darkness outside.

“Hello,” Mr. Worthington said.

“Hello,” she said. He reached out and took her hand as she passed where he sat, and kissed it. She stood still for a minute, and smiled at him.

“I love you from now,” he said. She went on looking at his face, bent over her hand but with his eyes looking up at her. After a minute the consciousness of what he said, where she was, the consciousness of herself came back over her and she drew away her hand. But for a moment she had lived in freedom, without watching herself.

In August Mrs. Sisson came back from California and opened the big house, and Mr. Loeb was much busier, doing all the things that Mrs. Sisson wanted done. Mrs. Sisson was a woman of fifty with black hair and a tall strong figure, who was very particular and liked her big place tended to perfection. Mrs. Mason knew her only slightly — to wave to when Mrs. Sisson drove along the road in her black car with her initials on the Connecticut license plate, and to speak to in a neighborly way when they met in the village. Sometimes now Fräulein started to tell her things about Mrs. Sisson, how badly she treated all her servants, that she didn’t even feed them properly, and had had three different waitresses in just the time she had been back.

“Nobody wants to work for a woman like that,” Fräulein said.

But Mrs. Mason thought she ought not to listen to gossip, and did not let Fräulein talk about it much.

One afternoon when she came out of the house, Mr. Loeb was standing at the gate, talking to Fräulein. The two little boys were playing at the end of the lawn. Mr. Loeb was talking very fast in German, his voice much higher than usual, and Fräulein was looking at him and from time to time saying something in her usual calm voice. Mrs. Mason walked to the gate.

“Hello, Mr. Loeb,” she said.

Mr. Loeb made his bow, but he seemed distracted. His eyes were tense and his face was even redder than usual. Mrs. Mason thought he looked almost as if he were going to cry. He turned to her and began to speak in English but stumbled and was silent.

“That Mrs. Sisson,” Fräulein said. “She says to him she will report him to the Refugee Committee in New York so that he will never be able to get a job again.”

“What did he do?”

“Nothing! She talked to him the way she talks to all the people who work for her, she bawled him out, he doesn’t paint the fence quick enough, she says he’s too slow. He’s a foolish man, he pays attention to what she says. I tell him he ought to shrug his shoulders, what does he care, as long as he gets his pay.”