JOYCE CAROL OATES
579
claim to them is that she and they share American citizenship . . m
a manner of speaking.
Cash half-teases her that she must be a reporter, else why
would she be bothering with
them,
and Cecilia, flushed, laughingly
denies it. "Do I look like a reporter?" she says. And afterward won–
ders why she made that particular remark.
For an art historian she doesn't always
see
clearly enough; she
isn't exacting; in fact she can be "perplexingly blind"- so Philip has
said, critically, kindly; so Philip has been saying since their arrival in
Germany. For a critic of some reputation she isn't sufficiently ...
critical. After all, to be sentimental about foreign places and people
simply because they are foreign is a sign of either condescension or
ignorance. It can even be (so Philip hinted delicately) a sign of in–
verted bigotry .
Again and again Cecilia will tell herself that she wasn't con–
descending to the soldiers, she isn't that sort of person, in fact she
feels a confused warm empathy with nearly everyone she meets ...
but of course her intentions might be misunderstood. Her empathy
itself might be angrily rejected.
Yet is there any reason, any incontrovertible reason, to believe
that her invisible assailant was actually one of the men in the
pub... ? There is no proof, no evidence. The soft gravelly South–
ern accent might have belonged to any number of Americans sta–
tioned in Germany. And of course she didn't see the face. Hearing
the running footsteps- feeling the acceleration of her heart- she had
not wished to turn her head.
It takes her approximately ten painful minutes- walking stiffly,
her arms close against her sides- to get to the Hotel Zur Birke. Only
on the busier street do people glance at her, frowning, disapproving,
wondering at her disheveled hair and clothes; but Cecilia looks
straight ahead, inviting no one's solicitude.
(Yet it is a nightmare occasion- Cecilia Heath alone and ex–
posed, making her way across a public square, along a public street,
being observed, judged, pitied. A dream of childhood and early girl–
hood, poor Cecilia the object of strangers' stares, in a city she does
not know, perhaps even a foreign city. . . . How ironic for it to be
coming true when she is an adult woman of thirty-four and her life is
so fully her own....)
Fortunately there is an inconspicuous side entrance to the
hotel, and a back stairway, so that Cecilia is spared the indignity of
