"Please." He followed her anxiously. "Please, let me talk to you."
"Write me a letter," she said, through her tears. "You seem to save all your romance for the typewriter."
He caught up with her and walked in troubled silence at her side. He was baffled and lost, adrift on the irrational, endless female sea, and he did not try to save himself, but merely let himself drift with the wind and tide, hoping they would not wreck him.
But Hope would not relent, and all the long way home on the trolley car she sat stubborn and silent, her mouth set in bitter rejection. Oh, God, Noah thought, peering at her timidly as the car rattled on. Oh, God, she is going to leave me.
But she let him follow her into the house when she opened the two doors with her key.
The house was empty. Hope's aunt and uncle had taken their two small children on a three-day holiday to the country, and an almost exotic air of peace hung over the dark rooms.
"You hungry?" Hope asked dourly. She was standing in the middle of the living-room and Noah had thought he would kiss her, until he saw the expression on her face.
"I think I'd better go home," he said.
"You might as well eat," she said. "I left some stuff in the icebox for supper." He followed her meekly into the kitchen and helped as unobtrusively as possible. She got out some cold chicken, a jug full of milk and made a salad. She put everything on a tray and said, curtly, "Outside," like a sergeant commanding a platoon.
He took the tray out to the back garden, a twilit oblong now, that was bounded on two sides by a high board fence, and on the far end by the blank brick wall of a garage that had Virginia creeper growing all over it. There was a graceful acacia tree shading the garden. Hope's uncle had a small rock garden at one end and beds of common flowers, and there was a wood table with shielded candles and a long, sofa-like swing with a canopy. In the hazy blue light of evening, Brooklyn vanished like mist and rumour, and they were in a walled garden in England or France or the mountains of India.
Hope lit the candles and they sat gravely opposite each other, eating hungrily. They hardly spoke while they ate, just polite requests for the salt and the milk. They folded their napkins and stood up on opposite sides of the table.
"We don't need the candles," Hope said. "Will you please blow out the one on your side?"
He leaned over the small glass chimney that guarded the candle and Hope bent over the one on her side of the table. Their heads touched as they blew, together, and in the sudden darkness, Hope said, "Forgive me. I am the meanest female in the whole world."
Then it was all right. They sat side by side, in the swing, looking up at the darkening sky with the summer stars beginning to bloom above them one by one through the single tree. Far off the trolley, far off the trucks, far off the aunt, the uncle and the two children of the house, far off the newsboys crying beyond the garage, far off the world, as they sat there in the walled garden in the evening.
Hope said, "No, we shouldn't" and "I'm afraid, afraid…" and "Darling, darling," and Noah was shy and triumphant and dazzled and humble, and after it was over they lay there crushed and subdued by the wilderness of feeling through which they had blundered, and Noah was afraid that now that it was done she would hate him for it, and every moment of her silence seemed more and more foreboding, and then she said, "See…" and she chuckled. "It wasn't too hot. Not too hot at all."
Much later, when it was time for him to go home, they went inside. They blinked in the light, and didn't quite look at each other. Noah bent over to turn the radio on because it gave him something to do.
They were playing Tchaikovsky, the piano concerto, and the music sounded rich and mournful, as though it had been specially composed and played for them, two people barely out of childhood, who had just loved each other for the first time. Hope came over and kissed the back of his neck as he stood above the radio. He turned to kiss her, when the music stopped, and a matter-of-fact voice said, "Special Bulletin from the Associated Press. The German advance is continuing along the Russian border at all points. Many new armoured divisions have struck on a line extending from Finland to the Black Sea."
"What?" Hope said.
"The Germans," Noah said, thinking how often you say that word, how well known they've made themselves. "They've gone into Russia. That must have been what the newsboys were yelling…"
"Turn it off." Hope reached over and turned the radio off herself. "Tonight."
He held her, feeling her heart beating with sudden fierceness against him. All this afternoon, he thought, while we were at the wedding and walking down that street, and all this evening, in the garden, it was happening, the guns going, the men dying. From Finland to the Black Sea. His mind made no comment on it. It merely recorded the thought, like a poster on the side of the road which you read automatically as you speed by in a car.
They sat down on the worn couch in the quiet room. Outside, it was very dark and the newsboys crying on the distant streets were remote and inconsequential. "What's the day?" Hope asked.
"Sunday." He smiled. "The day of rest."
"I don't mean that," she said. "I know that. The date."
"June," he said, "June 22nd."
"June 22nd," the girl whispered. "I'm going to remember that date. The first time you made love to me."
Roger was still up when Noah got home. Standing outside the doorway, in the dark house, trying to compose his face so that it would show nothing of what had gone on that night, Noah heard the piano being softly played within. It was a sad jazz tune, hesitant and blue, and Roger was improvising on it so that it was difficult to recognize the melody. Noah listened for two or three minutes in the little hallway before he opened the door and went in. Roger waved to him with one hand, without looking round, and continued playing. There was only one lamp lit, in the corner, and the room looked large and mysterious as Noah sank slowly into the battered leather chair near the window. Outside, the city was sleeping. At the open window the curtains moved in the soft wind. Noah closed his eyes, listening to the running, sombre chords. He had a strange impression that he could feel every bone and muscle and pore of his body, alive and weary, in trembling balance under his clothes, reacting to the music.
In the middle of a passage Roger stopped. He sat at the piano with his long hands resting on the keyboard, staring at the scratched and polished old wood. Then he swung round.
"The house is yours," he said.
"What?" Noah opened his eyes.
"I'm going in tomorrow," Roger said. He spoke as though he were continuing a conversation with himself he had been conducting for hours.
"What?" Noah looked closely at his friend to see if he had been drinking.
"The Army. The party's over. Now they begin to collect the civilians."
Noah felt dazed, as though he couldn't quite understand the words Roger was using. Another night, he felt, and I could understand. But too much has happened tonight.
"I suppose," Roger said, "the news has reached Brooklyn."
"You mean about the Russians?"
"I mean about the Russians."
"Yes."
"I am going to spring to the aid of the Russians," Roger said.
"What?" Noah asked, puzzledly. "Are you going to join the Russian Army?"
Roger laughed and walked over to the window. He stood there, holding on to the curtain, staring out. "Not exactly," he said. "The Army of the United States."
"I'll go in with you," Noah said suddenly.
"Thanks," said Roger. "Don't be silly. Wait until they call you."
"They haven't called you," said Noah.
"Not yet. But I'm in a hurry." Roger tied a knot reflectively in the curtain, then untied it. "I'm older than you. Wait until they come for you. It'll be soon enough."