Ever After. William Wharton

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СКАЧАТЬ comes to visit me in the hospital during his lunch-time, eating sandwiches in the car. He holds the baby, fooling with it, his crazy beret perched on his head, while looking up at me and smiling like a demented fool. I know I’m smiling back in the same way. I have never been so happy.

      Then, right in the middle of sedate Starnberg, we have a typically Oregonian event. A group of Bert’s old cronies from his high school basketball team, five of them, decide, practically overnight, to visit us from the United States. They want to check out Bert’s new baby girl – as well as the famous German beer: a private Oktoberfest in mid-April.

      Bert’s at home when the local policeman leads them to the apartment. They don’t speak any German; to be honest, their English isn’t so hot. The celebrations had started at the first Gasthaus they came across.

      The next day, Bert brings them into the hospital. They’re all wearing heavy-knit sweaters, lumber jackets, jeans, hard-tipped boots with thick-ribbed woolen stockings folded over at the top. The boots have yellow leather thongs lacing them up. They all have different multicolored stocking caps with pom-poms.

      And loud! They seem to think they’re out in the woods. The nurses are running and buzzing around, yammering at them, like farmers in the Morvan trying to control a herd of cows as they move it down the road. Bert stops them all outside my room. He doesn’t have to explain much. I’ve figured it out. His Oregon animal buddies have somehow found us. I pull my nightgown shut – I’ve just finished nursing – and prepare myself for the worst.

      Bert’s all apologies. He’s sheepish, but I know that, underneath, he’s pleased they’ve come all this way.

      ‘OK, Bert. Let them in. We’ll just take it as it comes.’

      They’re quiet for the first few minutes. Bert gives one of them the baby, and he holds her like a cut log, and then she’s passed from one to the other, each holding her in a slightly different way, as if she were a water-bucket in a lumberjack fire brigade. Little Dayiel looks each one in the eyes as if this is the most natural thing in the world. Bert’s beside me, holding my hand, and as obviously proud as any proud papa could be. Any moment I’m expecting one of them to try a lay-up shot with this strange-shaped basketball. I’m glad when she comes back to Bert and then to me. She smells of cigarettes, sweat, and, I’ll swear, Oregon spruce trees.

      Finally they’re ready to leave. Bert needs to return to school and he gives them the key to our apartment. It’s the one to the door at the top of the spiral staircase we use as an entrance.

      Just before dinner, Bert comes again on his way home. He and Wills ate at the pizza place but didn’t see the mob. He hasn’t been home yet. I hate to think of what these woodsmen will have done to our nice little nest – maybe built a fire in the middle of the living-room floor to keep warm.

      At about nine o’clock Bert phones, just after I’ve given Day her bedtime feeding. He still hasn’t heard or seen anything of his friends. He’d made arrangements to show them around town and maybe keep them out of trouble, but they didn’t show.

      ‘Lord, I hope they don’t mess things up, Kate. They can be real hellraisers when they get into the spirit of things.’

      ‘Don’t worry about them, Bert. They’re big boys and not our responsibility. Just go to bed. Make sure Wills drinks some warm milk to help him sleep.’

      With that, I hang up. And in a few minutes I’m asleep.

      The next thing I know is an awful clattering, shouting, and hollering. It’s almost like a chant but I can’t quite make it out. Day wakes too. I listen. It’s ‘WOODMAN!’ Someone is chanting: ‘WOODMAN! WOODMAN!’

      My God! I know who it is immediately. What can I do? I ring for the nurse. She comes running in all excited. I explain in German to let one of them in, only one, and bring him to my room. She stares at me. I repeat. Just one, only one. Nur eins. She scoots out of the room.

      I don’t know how she picked the one she has but he’s absolutely stoned. Maybe he was the only one upright. He stands, more or less, at the foot of the bed, holding onto it, rocking back and forth, his head rolling on his shoulders.

      ‘Don’t you understand, this is a hospital? You can’t just barge in like this. What are you thinking of?’

      He looks up at me. It takes about three tries before he can get a word out.

      ‘The key – lost the key.’

      I almost laugh. It’s too much. I reach over to my purse on the table beside my bed.

      ‘Why didn’t you go to the apartment? Bert has a key.’

      Again, a long lapse before he answers.

      ‘Did. Nobody answered. We yelled and nobody came.’

      I believe it. Bert can sleep through almost any noise. I guess if you live around sawmills, you can ignore most sounds. I give him my key.

      ‘Don’t lose it! You know the right way to go in?’

      ‘Yeah, we’ll be fine now we have the key.’

      He’s holding it out in front of him like a gold nugget he’s found under a rock. He goes out the door to my room that way. What a crowd of idiots Bert grew up with.

      When Bert comes in the next day during his lunch period I don’t even have to say anything. They’ve told him. Bert’s holding out his hands, both of them, as if he’s a cop trying to stop traffic.

      ‘It’s OK, Honey. They’re all very sorry. They’re on the S-Bahn, leaving for Heidelberg, first to Munich and then onward. I know they seem like a bunch of untamed animals, but they’re a great bunch of guys. They just can’t handle this German beer.’

      I put out my arms and Bert comes to me. He’s such a shaft of strength coming from that tangle of wilderness. I’m so lucky to have him. I’m anxious to be home with him soon as possible.

      When I come home, there are flowers everywhere. My friends have cooked different meals for the whole week and put them in the refrigerator. All Bert needs to do is heat them up. I spend practically all that first week at home in bed, except for going to the bathroom. I play with Dayiel whenever I have the energy. She’s such a wide-awake baby, already looking around at everything. It seems like such a new start on things. I figure I’ll have one more baby seven years from now. That way I can have three children and each one will be like an only child. The older ones will be old enough to help me, too. I have it all planned out. Ha! What one doesn’t know.

      4

      Dayiel is a doll but she’s a devil, too. At four months, she’s already biting my nipples when I nurse her, and she doesn’t even have teeth. Bert thinks it’s funny, and I think Dayiel does it because he laughs.

      She’s on her hands and knees almost as soon as she can roll over onto her stomach. She rocks back and forth, laughing out loud as if she’s just robbed a bank. It isn’t long before she develops her own way of crawling – not on her knees but on her hands and her feet – and is scooting around the apartment, like a dog or cat. Nothing is safe. I do everything to baby-proof that apartment, but nothing is Dayiel-proof.

      She never sleeps through the night. She’s up three or four СКАЧАТЬ