What Love Sees by Susan Vreeland Page A

Miss Weaver and the girls joined the shouting throngs of students shoving their way across a stone bridge. Lucy and Jean got separated from the others in the narrow passageway. People couldn’t move ahead. They were stuck, stomach to back to stomach.
    “Can you see the others?”
    “No, but they must be up there,” Lucy shouted.
    They braced themselves against the crowd and plowed ahead. Jean held onto Lucy’s elbow with both hands. There were bodies touching all sides of her. Everyone inched his way across the bridge. Her clothes felt tight and the air was stifling. Here was that terror again, feeling like a newborn calf being shoved ahead in a stampede.
    “Aren’t we near the end yet?”
    “I can’t tell.”
    A sudden heave of toppling people threatened to push them against the passageway wall, but a man behind them quickly interfered, cushioning them when they were pushed. Jean felt his chest against her shoulder struggling to push back the other way. “ Bleibt zuruck ,” he muttered sharply in the opposite direction. She didn’t know whether to be thankful to him, or to be afraid. She’d come to trust people, but maybe he was a Nazi. She held on more firmly to Lucy’s elbow.
    “Ouch!” Lucy cried. “Don’t pinch.”
    “Do you see Icy?”
    “No, I told you that.”
    Even the New York crowds coming out of Madison Square Garden didn’t have this frenzy. A long half-hour later, they met the others at the restaurant, but Jean didn’t breathe normally until she was back in the pension that night.
    Germany swelled with nervous motion that summer, and it seemed to Jean that Nazism was in a great hurry. In Dinkelsbühl in northern Bavaria a Youth Day parade took over the annual Kinderfest.
    “They’re only kids,” said Icy. “So young they’re still in short pants and knee socks. Some are carrying swastika flags.”
    “Is it the children beating on the drums?” Jean asked.
    “Yes.”
    “Sounds like little toy drums.” Ranks of children sang “ Deutschland, Deutschland uber alles .” “It’s a thrilling song, isn’t it? So spirited.”
    “They look kind of menacing to me,” Lucy said. “Puffed up and too serious to be kids.”
    “They should be riding bikes and fishing during the summer, not out marching,” LCW said. “Something’s awfully wrong.”
    The remark made Jean feel ignorant. Miss Weaver’s voice lacked its usual husky authority. That, in itself, made Jean uneasy. The next day they left Dinkelsbühl by train. As they neared Munich, Jean sensed Miss Weaver’s spirit rally. “We’re going to have a marvelous time in Bavaria,” Miss Weaver declared. “In the Teutonic world lie the roots of Anglo-Saxon culture, much deeper than any boys marching around for a summer, and Bavaria, Munich especially, is the center of the Teutonic world. It’s the seat of schmaltz and students, high art and oompah. So for the next three weeks I expect you to absorb its spirit.”
    They did. Jean and Lucy bought quilted jackets, dirndls, long aprons and black velour hats in the style of Tyrolean mountain climbers. They all ordered beer in the Hofbrauhaus. They took side trips out of Munich to see the opera Jederman in Salzburg and a medieval street pageant in Innsbruck. The longest side trip was to the Wagner opera festival, the Bayreuther Festspiele .
    On day trips Miss Weaver never let the girls stop to go to the bathroom. While trooping through museums or riding in hired cars, she never stopped. She was Iron Lady. “You must learn control,” she’d say. “In all aspects of life, even this. Master your bodies with self discipline and it will elevate your character.” They didn’t stop from Munich to Bayreuth.
    The little troop checked into a third-floor room at a second-class inn. They rarely stayed in first-class hotels. Miss Weaver was firm on that. “We’re going to mix with the people,” she declared. By the time they got to the inn, the girls were squirming, concentrating on keeping