Armageddon_ A Novel of Berlin - Leon Uris [201]
“Lil. I never got this blue until the American families came.” Then, on an impulse he said, “Are you my very good friend?”
“You bet I am.”
“Seems like I’ve got a penchant for going for the wrong woman. I think I’ve got it down to a science.”
“Getting mixed up with a German girl?”
“Not exactly. I know I want to see her again and I know I shouldn’t feel that way.”
“She encouraging you?”
“All I’ve gotten from her was a rap in the mouth.”
“The way you think about Germans you probably had it coming.”
“Maybe. Lil, am I a blind, arrogant Prussian?”
“My, my. Sounds like that girl said a mouthful.”
“She did. I guess there was enough truth in it to bother me.”
“Tell her what a nice girl she is. It’s not going to kill you.”
“I can’t. Not to a German girl. Besides, I guess I owe her an apology.”
“Sean ... there’s something human in the worst German who ever lived.” Lil picked up the knitting-instruction book, pulled out a number of stitches, counted carefully. “Did Bless ever tell you about us?”
“No.”
“I spent my first fourteen years on a dirt farm, the kind you read about in Tobacco Road. Ran away from home at the age of fifteen, pregnant. I lost that baby. Ended up in Harper, Tennessee, the county seat of Hook County.”
Lil set her knitting down, lit a cigarette, and poured herself a drink from the bourbon bottle. “I wasn’t much good for anything but hanging around roadhouses, but at least I was able to learn to read and write, have a dress on my back, have a room of my own with a light, a radio, plumbing.
“When I first met Bless he had been voted sheriff of Hook. Bless didn’t bother the girls so long as they didn’t steal. Matter of fact, he helped a lot of them out of trouble. Bless was always sweet on me, but he was too busy or too shy to do much about it.
“One night he pulled a raid on a place running a big game. I was caught in the roundup. I was pretty drunk, noisy, and seeing me hurt him inside. He roughed me up so bad I ended up in the hospital. Hell of a romance, huh, Sean?
“There was never a minute in my life like the next morning when that fat, wonderful man bumbled into my hospital room and asked to be forgiven. A man can look big in his own eyes and in the eyes of other men when he shoves people around. A man really looks big in a woman’s eyes when he is humble enough to say he is sorry.”
“Mind if I come in?”
Ernestine looked up from her desk as Sean closed the door behind him. She was too surprised to speak, but showed that she was unforgiving.
“I had some documents to deliver to Judge Cohen,” he said, referring to one of the American jurists in military government. “I thought I might drop in. So, this is where you work.”
The office was a clutter of law texts. Ernestine was working on translations of British and American volumes dealing with lower-court appeals.
“As a matter of fact,” Sean continued, “I am glad this opportunity came up, because I’ve been wanting to speak to you about our last meeting. Fraulein, my choice of words showed a lot of bad manners and bad taste.”
Ernestine watched his discomfort, but even his attempt to apologize was being carefully phrased. The colonel did not say he was sorry, had spoken untruthfully, or that he had changed his mind.
“What I should have said was that your uncle came back to Berlin out of choice and knowing how great his chore would be. But a long time before that he had made up his mind that the things he believed in were far more important than his own being. I believe that if you attempted to dissuade him from what he knows he must do, he would reject your plea.”
“You are right, Colonel O’Sullivan. He has rejected my plea.”
“I am sorry for your sake because I understand how much you love him.”
“It is kind of you to make this gesture.”
“As for my other remarks ...”
“You need not try to apologize. It is quite true that my fiancé was involved in the Babi-Yar Massacre and God knows what else. I am aware of what we Germans have done to the human race. I am not in the position to atone my shame and guilt, nor are you in a position to