People were turning to stare.
"Farmer?" I suggested.
"Oh," she said, "oh, oh--"
"Or a cheeseburger," I added.
There was a small crowd, now, openly watching. One man said, "Hey, this
is better than them jerks inside. Slug him, lady."
Jean started to laugh, and so did I, and then all of us were laughing,
the whole crowd.
We didn't go to a hamburger place. We went to a place where we could
dance, too, and I had a small glass of wine, and wondered why we'd
outgrown alcohol, on our planet.
It was a night I will never forget. It was a night I learned how much
she meant to me. There wasn't ever going to be anybody else for me,
after that night.
* * * * *
We were married in Las Trenos at five-thirty the next morning.
And still, I didn't tell her where I was from. When the time came, she
could go back with me, but I couldn't risk sharing that secret with her.
I didn't have the right to jeopardize my people by giving her
information she might divulge unintentionally.
The world was our playground, and my study hall American first. We drove
east, taking our time, while I tried to get the temper of the people. I
never overlooked a chance to talk to people; the papers were no
substitute for that. And between the papers and the people, I found that
only the hysterics were voluble, only the biased articulate. And yet, it
was a country with a liberal and progressive tradition, a country that
should have been informed beyond the average.
Knowledge had been made too easy; the glib were in command.
Fear, Jars had said, and it was becoming increasingly clear to me that
he was closer to it than Deering. For Deering's viewpoint, I had a
working model, I had Jean.
In the canyon city, New York, high in our room at the Empire-Hudson, she
said, "You're an awfully nosy guy, Dream Boat."
"I like to talk to people," I said. "Haven't you been getting enough
attention?"
"As much as I can handle," she said. "And I'm enjoying every second of
it. But it seems to be getting you down."
"You or the people?" I asked, and mussed her hair.
She didn't answer that. "Fred," she said, "do you remember that day at
breakfast, long ago? Do you remember asking about Ambrose Bierce and
Amelia Earhart?"
"I guess I do."
"Don't be evasive, Fred. You know you do."
I pulled her close. "Is this going to be a questioning period? Is this
one of _those_ marriages?"
"Now, Fred--" she said, against my shoulder. "Be serious, please, Fred.
Please be serious--oh, you, Fred--"
* * * * *
We went to England. What's that phrase they have--"muddling through"?
That's what they were doing. Proudly, with a minimum of complaint, with
no thought of rebellion, with no rationalizing or projection, living as
the submerged tenth lives in America, and seeming to think that--well,
things _could_ be worse.
In Italy, it was the kids, the beggars and procurers and thieves and
even murderers who were kids. In Spain we found much of the same. In
France it was all the heat and no light, charges and counter-charges,
lies and counter-lies, confusion and corruption.
In Berlin, it was Russia. The cloud that darkens the world looms darkest
in Berlin. The apathy that grips the world is epitomized in Berlin. A
people with no sense of guilt and no reason for hope, nor stirring to
the promise of a re-armed Germany. A bled and devastated people, shorn
of their chief strength, their national pride.