'It's OK,' I said. 'It's just a cow.'
The cow stared at us blandly, stupidly; all history looks pretty much the same to cows.
Finally Utch laughed out loud - I suppose because she had to. 'Goodbye, Mother,' she said to the cow. Then I drove us across the wooden-plank bridge, over the Leitha, where all the other cows looked up at us as we rattled the bridge. 'Goodbye, Mother!' Utch yelled as I drove faster. November was everywhere. The vineyards were plucked clean; the root vegetables were stacked inside the cellars; the cider was surely pressed.
Utch cried most of the night in her room full of plants at the Studentenheim and I made love to her whenever she wanted me to. For a couple of hours she was out of the room, and for a while I thought that she was taking a hot bath down the hall. But when she came back about dawn, she told me she'd been saying goodbye to Heinrich and Willy. Well, goodbyes were clearly in the wind; we were leaving the next day.
In the Herrenzimmer I said goodbye to Willy and Heinrich. They were polite, quiet, up to no mischief. I said I was sorry about what had happened to their shaving-cream can, but they refused to accept apologies of any kind. 'You've got a good beard going,' Willy told me. 'Why do you want to shave?'
Then we were in the cab, heading for Schwechart Airport. A cold gray day for flying, a poor ceiling. At the airport I bought an international Herald Tribune, but it was a day old. It was 22 November, 1963. We were waiting for an evening plane. The loudspeaker at the airport made announcements in German, French, Italian, Russian and English, but I didn't listen. In the airport bar I recognized lots of other Americans. Many of them were crying. I had seen strange things in the last two days, and I had no reason to expect that the strange things would cease. Like everyone else, I watched the television. It was a video-tape replay. The reception was lousy, the narration in German. I watched a big American convertible w
ith a woman climbing out of the back seat and on to the trunk behind to help a man hop up over the rear bumper and climb into the car. It didn't make much sense.
'Where is Dallas?' Utch asked me.
'Texas,' I said. 'What happened in Dallas?'
'The President is dead,' Utch said.
'What president?' I asked. I thought she meant the president of Dallas.
'Your President,' Utch said. 'You know, Herr Kennedy?'
'John Kennedy?'
'Ja, him,' Utch said. 'Herr Kennedy is dead. He got shot.'
'In Dallas?' I asked. Somehow I couldn't believe that my President would ever even go to Dallas. I stared at Utch, who wasn't even familiar with Kennedy's name. What must she think of this place she is going to? I wondered. In Europe, of course, they kill their aristocracy all the time, but not in America.
In front of me a large, befurred woman bawled her head off. She said she was a Republican from Colorado but she had always liked Kennedy, even so. I asked her husband who had done it, and he said it was probably some dirty little bastard who didn't have a decent job. I saw that Utch was bewildered and tried to tell her how extraordinary this was, but she seemed more concerned for me.
When we changed planes later that night in Frankfurt, we found out that whoever they thought had shot Kennedy had himself just been shot by someone else - in a police station! We saw that on television too. Utch never blinked, but most of the Americans went on crying, outraged and scared. For Utch, I suppose, it was not at all unusual; it was the way they would settle scores in Eichbuchl. Nobody had taught her to expect any other part of the world to behave differently.
When we landed in New York, some magazine had already printed the picture of Mrs Kennedy which was to be around for months. It was a big color photograph - it was better in color because the blood really looked like blood; it showed her stunned and grieving and oblivious of her own appearance. She had always been so concerned about her looks that I think the public liked seeing her this way. It was the closest thing to seeing her naked; we were voyeurs. She wore that blood-spattered suit; her stockings were matted with the blood of the President; her face was vacant. Utch thought the photograph disgusting; it made her cry all the way to Boston. The people around us probably thought she was crying for Kennedy and the country, but she wasn't; she was reacting to the face in the photograph, that grief, that look of being so totally had that you just don't care anymore. I think that Utch was crying for Kudashvili, and for her mother, and for that terrible village she came from, which was just like any other village. I think she empathized with the vacancy on the face of the President's widow.
We took the subway to Cambridge. 'It's sort of like an underground Strassenbahn,' I explained, but Utch wasn't interested in the subway. She sat tensely, the wrinkled picture of Mrs Kennedy in her lap. She had thrown away the magazine.
In Harvard Square we walked past a lot of Kennedy mourners. Utch stared at everything but she saw nothing. I talked about my mother and father. If the suitcases hadn't been so heavy, we would have walked the long way home to Brown Street; as it was, we took a cab. I talked on and on, but Utch said, 'You shouldn't make jokes about your mother.'
Mother was at the door, holding the same damn picture of Mrs Kennedy that Utch had. It may have been one of those false sororities of identifying yourself with another person; it works out all right because you never find out that you meant wholly different things by whatever it was that united you.
'Oh, you've really gone and done it!' my mother cried to me and opened her arms to Utch.
Utch ran right to her and cried against her. My mother was surprised; it had been years since anyone had cried all over her like that. 'Go see your father,' Mother told me. Utch's crying appeared inconsolable. 'What's her name?' Mother whispered, rocking Utch in her arms.
'Utchka,' I said.
'Oh, that's a nice name,' Mother crooned, rolling her eyes. 'Utchka?' she said, as if she were humoring a baby. 'Utchka, Utchka.'
I didn't see my wife again for hours; my mother kept her hidden from my father and me. Occasionally she would appear to offer pronouncements, such as, 'When I think of what happened to that poor child's mother ...' or, 'She's a remarkable young woman, and I don't know what you've done to deserve her.'
I sat with my father, who explained to me everything that would happen to the country in the next ten years because of Kennedy's assassination, and everything that was going to happen regardless of the assassination. The distinction confused me.
Utch was restored to me at dinner; whatever had accumulated to unbalance her appeared to be in control. She was relaxed, alluring and mischievous with my father, who said to me, 'I think you got a good one. Jesus, when your mother was running in and out earlier I had the impression that you'd brought home some war waif, some woman of catastrophe.' When the old bore finally stopped muttering the house was asleep.
I looked out on the dark sidewalk. I think I must have been looking for the man with the hole in his cheek, to see if he was checking up on me. But history takes time; my marriage was new, I would not see him for a while.
The next morning my father asked, 'How's that stupid Brueghel book coming?'