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The Venus

What then is it like, America?

It was Fräulein von J. talking.

They were on their way to take the train to Frascati, the three of them, she, her companion, and Evans.

In reply, he shook his head, laughing and they hurried on to catch the car.

She could speak English well enough, her companion could not, Dev's German was spasmodic coming in spurts for a moment or two but disappearing as suddenly leaving him tongue-tied. So they spoke English and carried their lunch. A picnic. He was de-lighted.

This day it was hot. Fräulein von J. seemed very simple, very direct, and miraculously beautiful to his Roman mood. In her unstylish long-sleeved German clothes, her rough stockings and heavy walking shoes, Evans found her, nevertheless, ethically graceful. But the clear features, the high forehead, the brilliant perfect lips, the well-shaped nose, and best of all the shining mistlike palegold hair unaffectedly drawn back - frightened him. For himself he did not know where to begin. But she looked at him so steadily for some strange reason, as if she recognized him, that he was forced at last to answer her.

The tram was packed to the doors with passengers. Just before starting three treelike Englishwomen had come rushing up calling out distractedly in English that the tram must not go, that somebody was coming. Do you see her? Oh, what can have happened?

2

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She had the correct information about the tram's departure and clambered aboard just in the moment of the tram's departure and clambered aboard desperately, not a minute too soon. So that now they stood in the aisles, the four of them, sweating and glowering at the Italian men, who oblivious to such violence had already long since comfortably settled themselves in their seats.

Fräulein von J. was placed immediately before Evans looking at him absorbedly like a child.

Not knowing what else to do or to say, he too looked at the tram went through some bare vineyards) straight back into her clear blue eyes with his evasive dark ones. She lifted her head a little as if startled, flushed (he thought) just a trifle but did not change her gaze. So they continued, to look fixedly among the backs and across the coats of the Englishwomen in the aisle, who were jabbering away disturbedly about the threatening weather. She did not stir to look away but seemed to rest upon his look with mild curiosity and no nervousness at all. It was, as usual, his look which faltered.

Hearing the talk of the Villa this and the Villa that, about to be visited, Evans felt that he wished he could lose this crowd and was more than pleased when Fräulein von J. suggested that as soon as they should get to Frascati they head for the open country, delighted to find that her mood suited his own so well.

At the market place of Frascati, where a swarm of guides and carriages swooped down upon them, the three picnickers moved off at right angles to the direction taken by the rest, up a road that led between two walls around behind the town. They did not know where they were or indeed anything about the place or its beauties - they didn't care. Fräulein wanted to see the Italian springtime, that was the most definite of their spoken desires and Dev, sick of antiquities and architectural beauties, was more than willing to follow. The com-

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panion disliked Italian gardens anyway, lacking as they do the green profusion of the northern trees. With this they started, beginning at once to see violets along inside the fences, violets they could not reach. Following a brook which ran beside them, contrariwise down the hill, they tramped on, heading for open country.

What is it like, America? And so Dev began to tell her. Not like this. ¹/m and all the time somehow he was thinking of his sister. Where is Bess? I wish she were here! till walking and talking, leaving the town behind them, they came quite out into the fields with a hill on the left and a little village off in the distance across the valley before them. They were in a worn dirt gully high hedged on both sides with banks cut into narrow paths by goats' hoofs. Before them four absorbed children gathering violets rushed forward in the path by ones and twos rivaling each other in their efforts to pounce upon the finer groups of flowers.

The children paid no attention whatever to the three hikers, not even by so much as one glance. Running ahead with cries of delight each racing to exceed the others, they soon disappeared through gaps in the hedge. Evans was over and over startled by the German girl's delicate coloration and hair and eyes. Also, her hands were lovely, her ankles, firm ½ like the Venus, thicker than the stage or dance-hall type, but active too ½ just suggestive enough of the peasant to be like a god's.

You have not told me yet, what it is like, America.

It is like, Dev began, something muffled ½ like a badly trained voice.

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It is a world where no man dare learn anything that concerns him intimately but sorrow for should we learn pleasure, it is instantly and violently torn from us as by a pack of hungry wolves so starved for it are we and so jealous of each of us is our world.

I think I know what you mean, she replied, it is that we are all good citizens on top and very much better than that inside. It makes me think of the Johannesfeur. You know Sudermann's play?

America is a pathetic place where something stupefying must always happen for fear lest we should wake up. Yes, I have read the play.

By this time they had come quite around behind Frascati hill. Here they had lunch in a diminutive, triangular grove of oaks where there was a grassy bank with a few daisies on it, and the tall trees bending overhead. Then climbing through a fence they took the road again up to the right around the hill climbing steeply now on a stony path. It was a hard walk this part of the way and before long they were tired, especially Frau M. who was glad to stop near the top and rest.

But after a few words in German which Dev missed, Fräulein von J. cried, Come on! and they two went on alone about a hundred yards ahead up to the woody summit, to a place from which they could see Frau M. below them lying under an ash-tree. Here there were a few stones of some ancient construction almost gone under the wood soil and rotted chestnut leaves. It was a chestnut grove cut and counter cut by innumerable paths which led north over the brow of the hill to Frascati, no doubt. But now at this early season, the place was deserted. The random, long, dart-shaped dry leaves covered the ground all about them, two foreigners resting on the old stones. Elsa waved again to Frau M. from where she sat then she turned to Evans, Tell me what you are. You do not mind? I want to know everything. What is America? It is perhaps you?

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He said, To me it is a hard, barren life, where I am "alone" and unmolested (work as I do in the thick of it) though in constant danger lest some slip send me to perdition but which, being covetous not at all, I enjoy for the seclusion and primitive air of it. But that is all unless I must add an attraction in all the inanimate associations of my mouth, shapes, foliage, trees to which I am used and a love of place and the characteristics of place good or bad, rich or poor.

No, she continued, it is not that.

Evans felt at that moment, that there was very little in America. He wanted to be facetious but the girl's seriousness was not a thing to be fooled. It made him pensive and serious himself.

He could say that it was just a place.

But you must not tell me that America is nothing, she anticipated him, for I see it is something, and she looked at him again with her little smile. You seem to me a man like I have not seen before. This is America?

I am a refugee, Dev continued, America is or was a beginning, to clean out the

Then, she replied, it is as in Germany. I did not think so when I saw you.

And I, Dev answered, did not think so when I saw you.

Why am I in Rome, do you think? she queried next.

He did not know.

To become a nun.

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No, Dev shook his head.

Is it something to study? What will it do? Shall we go there to learn? she asked in rapid succession.

Dev shook his head.

But you will return to it?

Yes.

Why?

Habit.

No, it is something.

It is that I may the better hide everything that is secretly valuable in myself, or have it defiled. So safety in crowds

But that is nothing. That is the same as in Europe.

America seems less encumbered with its dead. I can see nothing else there. It gives less than Europe, far less of everything of value save more paper to write upon nothing else. Why do you look at me so? Dev asked her.

Because I have seen no one like you in my life, few Americans, I have talked to none. I ask myself, are you an American?

And if I am

Then it is interesting.

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And with a shock he remembered the German youths in their whom crimson gowns he had seen filing down the Quirinal, down the long steps; the Scotch youths playing soccer in the Borghese Gardens Sunday afternoon with their gowns tucked up, or doffed, garters showing and running like college athletes for the ball. He remembered too, the Americans with the blue edge to their gowns, the Spanish, the French.

Yes, she replied, that is it. I am in Rome to feel if the church will not offer me an answer.

I was 16 years old when the war was ended. I have seen the two things 1/2 to throw myself away or to take hold again. I have seen the women running in the stadiums, I have seen them together. If we were peasants, we could be nearer 1/2 but we must lose it all, all that is good. I am a German, an East Prussian. My mother is dead. My father is a general 1/2 of course. What shall I do? I do not want anything 1/2. Tell me what is America. You must say. Is it just a place to work?

Dev nodded.

You see that I am young 1/2 I am young, of course. You come to me carrying a message. I do not know what to do. I believe you will tell me. I am not a fool 1/2 and I am not gifted either. There is nothing for me. Is there? I cannot walk about letting my hair loose to surprise men because it is so yellow. You perhaps, yes, if you please 1/2 and she smiled, but not those whom I do not want. I cannot marry. It makes me sick to marry. But I want, I want. I do not care that I am a virgin or not. No. No. That is childish. I cannot remain as I am 1/2 but I must 1/2 until this (and she tapped her forehead) is satisfied. You have said something to me. What do I say to you?

8.

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Dev thought "running wild" that if they should do as he wished they
would both end that night in the jail at Frascati hungry and very
much disturbed. -以其爲他爲他念念不忘的堅韌不摧之志
possibly - but no more than that. Fool.

They speak to me of my body. It is beautiful. For
what? #{} Of what use to me?

She talked quite coolly.

Within a few years I must lose this. Why not? and I have nothing\ else unless it is a mind, {} to have, to have and nothing that
I want. Not painting, not music, philosophy, tennis for old men
for young men, for women? No. America, that seems something new.

You would find nothing in America, Evans quickly interposed. The
girls there cannot go half a mile out of town for fear a negro might
rape them, or their complexes be spoiled by the weather or the
Japanese come too close or they be buried in snow or baked, in summer;
or marry their business managers or secretaries and live together
two or three in apartments. Their thoughts are like white grass
so heavily have they been covered by their skins - and so heavily cov-
ered are they to protect them from the weather that when they are
uncovered they do not exist. One must snatch another up quickly from
the general supply, from a patent container. - Evans was ashamed
of this speech of which as a fact Fräulein von J. understood not
one word. But the few women he had admired were not pretty and
the pretty ones he did not admire. Never think of America, he con-
cluded. The men are worse than the women.

Are you then one?

Evans had no reply.

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When I saw you, I saw something unusual, I am never mistaken. I saw something different from what I see every day, neither throwing away nor taking hold to the old horrible handle, all filthy ⅓. Is it America I asked, but you tell me nothing. It is because you will not do so.

America, he began again haltingly, is hard to know.

Yes, she answered, because she had made him serious so that he must speak his mind or say nothing.

I think it is useful to us, he continued, because it is near savagery. In Europe, you are so far from it that maybe you will have to die first before you will live again. ⅓ But Dev was not such a fool. ⅓ Europe, I do not know, he corrected himself. I am seeing a few superficial moments only.

But he had a quick pupil. ⅓ That is enough, replied Fraulein von J. I see now what I saw at the beginning. You are a savage, not quite civilized ⅓ you have America and we have not. You have that, yes it is something.

It is very difficult, said Dev. I am not a typical American. We have a few natives left but they would not know me. ⅓

You are holding on to something, she said.

It is very difficult, Dev went on ¼ something very likely to be lost, this is what ¼ So he took out the flint arrowhead he had in his pocket and showed it to her.

She was impressed. She held it hard in her hand as if to keep its impression there, felt the point, the edge, tried it, turned it over.

Yes, she said, I have seen the same thing from our own fields, more

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finished work but it is very far, very far. No one believes it
is real. But this you carry in your coat? It is very strange.
Where did you find it?

In a cornfield in Virginia, there are many of them there.

Are there many Americans who know this that you are saying?

Dev shook his head. I have seen but a few.

There are pictures pressed into my mind, which have a great power of argument. Summer pictures mostly, of my part of the country, one of the old pioneer houses fast to the ground. There is nothing like them in Europe. They were not peasants, the people who built them, they were but tragic men who wasted their wits on the ground but made a hard history for me not for me only, I think; they were like all the earlier peoples but it has been so quick and misplaced in America, this early phase, that it is lost or misinterpreted. its special significance.

You think then it might be useful to me? Yes, that was what I saw in your eyes. She looked again. Yes, it is so.

She shock her head gently from side to side in marvelling realization. Come, she said, I was right. What an America is that!

Why then did you not look at me all this week? I was troubled. I wondered what was the matter with me.

Dev said he had been excited studying something he wanted among the antiquities.

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But a feeling almost of terror, Dev thought, mixed with compassion perhaps, came now into her eyes as she continued to look at him.

It must be even more lonesome and frightening in America than in Germany, she said. She shook her head. She seemed as if looking off into a new country and to be feeling the lonesomeness of it.

America is marvellous, replied Dev, grossly prosperous —

She shuddered, No. So were we. So will we be soon again. — She was frightened. — How can you stay where you are? Why do you stay there? You make the church impossible — but you are alone. I will pray for you.

They started to get up quietly from their serious mood and were rather startled to find themselves still in the surroundings of this pagan grove. Not too sure were they that they knew each other as well as they had been feeling they did for the few moments of hard sympathetic understanding just past, each trying hard to get at the other's mood, projecting themselves out, feeling each other's mood. They laughed, and Dev gave her his hand but she did not move away.

It is very difficult, she said, for us to support ourselves after we have passed the semi-consciousness of the peasant, and his instinct. We fall back, do we not? You are brave, she said, to want to find some other way - and one that is American. It seems curious to me.

Moving to rejoin Frau M. they saw that it was getting on into the afternoon and that they must be stepping <u>along</u> if they would be back in Rome by nightfall.

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You believe in America like a church, mused Fräulein von J. almost to herself.

Dev did not think so.

Do you believe then that the church is an enemy to your belief?

Yes.

She looked away.

Oh come on, said Dev, let's get out of this.

William Carlos Williams