JOYCE CAROL OATES
589
smiling, aging around the eyes, a wifeless husband, a lover without a
beloved, clearly deserving of female sympathy. But Cecilia is suf–
fused with a sense of irony as if her very flesh might laugh; Cecilia
draws unobtrusively away. They have not touched since that awk–
ward meeting in the hotel corridor-they have hardly dared look at
each other all evening. Cecilia understands that it falls to her to
assuage this man's guilt for thinking her despoiled by denying the
very premise for such thinking, she understands that he is eager as a
small child to be assuaged, eager to believe whatever she tells him;
but she does not intend to tell him anything.
They are standing in front of the Hotel Zur Birke, a solitary
tourist couple, apparently indecisive about what to do next.
It
is
late, past midnight, the wind has picked up, clearly Mainz is not
Frankfurt or Berlin in terms of its nightlife, why not give up, why
not simply go to bed? But Philip doesn't want to go to bed alone.
Philip seems to be frightened of being alone . He detains Cecilia, ask–
ing what she thought of the Germans at dinner. Wasn't it all su–
premely revealing? The casual remarks as well as the political-?
That quintessential German-ness he'd find amusing if it weren't so
terrifying- the secret gloating pride in their blood, in their race- in
sin, guilt, history, whatever they choose to call it-
Cecilia surprises him by laughing, laughing almost heartily, as
she slips past him and enters the hotel.
There, in her room on the third floor, she falls asleep almost at
once, as soon as she turns out the light and finds a comfortable posi–
tion in her bed . She will not be accompanying Philip to West Berlin
the next day- she will make her own arrangements at the Frankfurt
Airport to fly back home. It should not be very difficult, she thinks;
even informing Philip about her decision should not be very diffi–
cult. She supposes he will understand.
He will never have to touch me again, she thinks.
Released, profoundly relieved, she sinks through diaphanous
layers of sleep, aware of herself sinking, drifting downward, her
physical weight dissolved. She sees a creek out of her childhood–
the St. Joachim-she smells the wet, newly mowed grass in the
cemetery where both her parents are buried- she hears her Aunt
Edie's voice raised in welcome: Cecilia, a child of eight or nine, shyly
poking her head into her aunt's kitchen, standing on the rear porch,
holding the screen door open . It is summer but quite windy. Rain–
drops the size of golf balls are pelting the roof. A river has over–
flowed its banks, a lake has overflowed, the very light is strange, pale
