A Matter of Conviction

“Yes. Because I loved you from the first moment I met you. That is why I married you. That is why I asked Peter never to see me again. Because I loved you.”

“But you loved Pete first.”

“Yes. And didn’t you love someone first?”

“I didn’t go to bed with her!”

“And perhaps she didn’t live in wartime Germany!” Karin snapped.

“No, she didn’t. And you did, and don’t try to tell me that every German girl was fair prey for every American soldier.”

“I can speak for no German girl but myself,” Karin said. “I was hungry. And scared. Damnit, I was scared. Have you ever been scared?”

“I’ve been scared all my life,” he said.

A silence fell over the table. They sat watching each other with slightly dazed expressions on their faces, as if recognizing for the first time that they really did not know each other.

He pushed back his chair. “I’m going for a walk,” he said.

“All right. Be careful, please.”

He went out of the house, and the words “Be careful, please” echoed in his mind because these were the words she’d said to him each time he left her, years ago, to return to the base. He could still remember driving the jeep through the streets of a bombed-out Berlin awakening to face the silent dawn. Those had been good times, and this had been a stupid argument and oh, damnit, what the hell was the matter with him anyway?

He began walking up the street, a well-ordered street with old trees and carefully landscaped plots and meticulous lawns and great white houses with neatly painted shutters, a miniature suburb set in the heart of the city. A city of contrasts, New York, changing in the sudden space of two blocks from the worst slum to the most aristocratic neighborhood. Even here in Inwood, if you walked east for several blocks you came upon a neighborhood succumbing to the shoddiness of time.

He turned and began walking west, toward the river.

Why had he fought with Karin?

And what had he meant when he’d said to her, “I’ve been scared all my life”? The words had leaped from his lips involuntarily, as if wrenched from a secret inner person of whom he had no knowledge.

Scared, yes, at the controls of a bomber with flak bursting silently around the ship. Scared when they were hit over the Channel once and had to ditch, scared when the Messerschmitt dived and strafed the water and he could see the line of slugs ripping up a narrow path as the plane dived and gained altitude and then dived again at the floating crew members.

But all his life? Scared all his life?

He walked onto the path between the bushes at the end of the street, heading for the big rock which overlooked the railroad tracks and the Hudson. He and Karin walked here often on summer nights. Here you could sit and look at the lights of Palisades Amusement Park across the river downtown, the strung necklace of the George Washington Bridge, the moving lights of the water craft. And here, too, you could listen to the water lapping gently against the smaller rocks below, and there seemed to be in this spot a serenity which had somehow passed by the rest of the city, the rest of the world.

He found the rock in the darkness and climbed to its top. He lighted a cigarette then and looked out over the water. He sat smoking for a long while, listening to the sounds of the insects, hearing below him the lapping sounds of the river. Then he started back for the house.

The two boys were standing under the street lamp at the end of the block. They were standing quite still, apparently talking to each other harmlessly, but he felt his heart lurch into his throat at the sight of them. He did not know who they were; he was sure they were not any of the neighborhood boys.

He clenched his fists.

His own house was a half block beyond the lamppost. He would have to pass the boys if he wanted to get home.

He felt the way he’d felt over Bremen with a full cargo of bombs.

He did not break his stride. He continued walking with his fists clenched at his sides, closer to the two husky teen-agers who stood idling by the street lamp.

When he passed them, the taller of the two looked up and said, “Why, good evening, Mr. Bell.”

He said, “Good evening,” and continued walking. He could feel the boys’ eyes on his back. When he reached the front door of his house, he was trembling. He sat on the front steps and groped for the pack of cigarettes in his pocket. His hands shaking, he lighted one and blew out a hasty stream of smoke. Then he looked down the street toward the lamppost. The boys were gone. But the trembling would not leave him. He held his left hand in front of him, watched the spasmodic jerking of his fingers until, in self-condemning anger, he bunched the fingers into a tight fist and slammed the fist down onto his knee.

I’m not afraid, he told himself, and the words had a familiar ring. He squeezed his eyes shut and again he told himself, “I’m not afraid,” aloud this time, and the words echoed on the silent street, but the trembling would not stop.

I’m not afraid.

I’m not afraid.