The Young Lions Part 29

"I was a skiing instructor, Sir."

"Eh?" The Colonel glared at Christian as though he had just insulted him. "What was that?"

"Skiing, Sir."

"Eh," said the Colonel flatly. "You will not ski with that knee any more. It is for children anyway." He turned away from Christian and washed his hands, with meticulous thoroughness, as though Christian's bare pale flesh had been unutterably filthy. "Also, from time to time, you will find yourself limping. Eh, why not? Why shouldn't a man limp?" He laughed, showing yellow false teeth. "How will people know you have been in the war otherwise?"

He scrubbed busily at his hands in the large enamel sink that smelled so strongly of disinfectant as Christian went out of the room.

"You will kindly get me a bayonet," Hardenburg said. Christian was sitting at his side, looking at his leg, stretched, still stiff and dubious, out in front of him. In the next bed the Burn lay, lost as always in his silent Antarctic of bandage and his tropical and horrible smell. Christian had just told Hardenburg that he was leaving the next day for the Front. Hardenburg had said nothing, but had merely lain still and rigid, his smooth, swathed head like a frightening and morbid egg on the pillow. Christian had waited for a moment and then had decided that Hardenburg had not heard him. "I said, Lieutenant," he repeated, "that I was leaving tomorrow."

"I heard you," Hardenburg said. "You will kindly get me a bayonet."

"What was that, Sir?" Christian asked thinking: It only, sounds like bayonet because of the bandages.

"I said I want a bayonet. Bring it to me tomorrow."

"I am leaving at two o'clock in the afternoon," Christian said.

"Bring it in the morning."

Christian looked at the overlapping, thin lines where the bandage crossed over itself on the round, smooth surface, but there was no expression there, of course, to give him a clue to what Hardenburg was thinking, and as usual, nothing was to be learned from the everlasting, even tone of the hidden voice. "I don't have a bayonet, Sir," he said.

"Steal one tonight. There is no complication there. You can steal one, can't you?"

"Yes, Sir."

"I don't want the scabbard. Just bring me the knife."

"Lieutenant," said Christian, "I am very grateful to you and I would like to be of service to you in every way I can, but if you are going to ..." He hesitated. "If you are going to kill yourself, I cannot bring myself to ..."

"I am not going to kill myself," the even, m.u.f.fled voice said. "What a fool you are. You've listened to me for nearly two months now. Do I sound like a man who is going to kill himself?"

"No, Sir, but ..."

"It's for him," Hardenburg said.

Christian straightened in the small armless wooden chair. "What's that, Sir?"

"For him, for him," Hardenburg said impatiently. "The man in the other bed."

Christian turned slowly and looked at the Burn. The Burn lay quiet, motionless, communicating nothing, as he had lain for two months. Christian turned back to the equal clot of bandage behind which lay the Lieutenant. "I don't understand, Sir," he said.

"He asked me to kill him," Hardenburg said. "It's very simple. He hasn't any hands left. Or anything left. And he wishes to die. He asked the doctor three weeks ago and the idiot told him to stop talking like that."

"I didn't know he could speak," Christian said dazedly. He looked at the Burn again, as though this newly discovered accomplishment must now somehow be apparent in the frightful bed.

"He can speak," Hardenburg said. "We have long conversations at night. He talks at night."

What discussions, Christian thought, must have chilled the Italian night air in this room, between the man who had no hands and no anything else left and the man without a face. He s.h.i.+vered. The Burn lay still, the covers shrouded over the fail frame. He hears now, Christian thought, staring at him, he understands every word we are saying.

"He was a watchmaker, in Nuremberg," Hardenburg said. "He specialized in sporting watches. He has three children and he has decided he wants to die. Will you kindly bring the bayonet?"

"Even if I bring it," Christian said, fighting to preserve himself from the bitter complicity of this eyeless, voiceless, fingerless, faceless suicide, "what good will it do? He couldn't use it anyway."

"I will use it," said Hardenburg. "Is that simple enough for you?"

"How will you use it?"

"I will get out of bed and go over to him and use it. Now will you bring it?"

"I didn't know you could walk ..." Christian said dazedly. In three months, the nurse had told him, Hardenburg might expect to take his first steps.

With a slow, deliberate motion, Hardenburg threw back the covers from his chest. As Christian watched him rigidly, as he might watch a corpse that had just risen in its grave and stepped out Hardenburg pushed his legs in a wooden, mechanical gesture, over the side of the bed. Then he stood. He was dressed in baggy, stained flannel pajamas. His bare feet were pallid and splotched on the marble floor of the Lyons silk manufacturer.

"Where is the other bed?" Hardenburg asked. "Show me the other bed."

Christian took his arm delicately and led him across the narrow s.p.a.ce until Hardenburg's knees touched the other mattress. "There," Hardenburg said flatly.

"Why?" Christian asked, feeling as though he were putting questions to ghosts fleeing past a window in a dream. "Why didn't you tell anybody you could walk?"

Standing there, wavering a little in the yellowing flannel, Hardenburg chuckled behind his casque of bandage. "It is always necessary," he said, "to keep a certain amount of crucial information about yourself from the authorities who control you." He leaned over and felt lightly around on the blanket covering the chest of the Burn. Then his hand stopped. "There," a voice said from behind the icedrift of bandage above the counterpane. The voice was hoa.r.s.e and lacking in human timbre. It was as though a dying bird, a panther drowning slowly in its own blood, an ape crucified on a sharp branch in a storm in the jungle, had at last accomplished speech with one final word. "There."

Hardenburg's hand stopped, pale yellow and bony, like a weathered and ancient x-ray of a hand on the white counterpane.

"Where is it?" he asked harshly. "Where is my hand, Diestl?"

"On his chest," Christian whispered, staring fixedly at the ivory, spread fingers.

"On his heart," Hardenburg said. "J-ust above his heart. We have practiced this every night for two weeks." He turned, with blind certainty, and crossed to his bed and climbed into it. He pulled the covers up to where the helmet of bandage, like archaic armor, rose from his shoulders. "Now bring the bayonet. Don't worry about yourself. I will hide it for two days after you have gone, so that n.o.body can aceuse you of the killing. And I will do it at night, when no one comes into the room for eight hours. And he will keep quiet." Hardenburg chuckled. "The watchmaker is very good at keeping quiet."

"Yes, Sir," said Christian quietly, getting up to leave, "I will bring the bayonet."

He brought the crude knife the next morning. He stole it at a canteen in the evening while its owner was singing "Lili Marlene" loudly over beer with two soldiers from the Quartermaster Corps. He carried it under his tunic to the marble villa of the silk manufacturer, and slid it under the mattress as Hardenburg directed. He only looked back once from the door, after he had said good-bye to the Lieutenant, looked back once at the two white blind figures lying still in the parallel beds in the tall-ceilinged rather gay room with the Bay s.h.i.+ning and sunny outside through the high, elegant windows.

As he limped down the corridor, away from the room, his boots making a heavy, plebeian sound on the marble, he felt like a scholar who has finally been graduated from a university whose every book he has memorized and sucked dry.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN.

"ATTENTION!" A VOICE called from the door, dramatic and alarming, and Noah stiffened rigidly in front of his bunk.

Captain Colclough came in, followed by the Top Sergeant and Sergeant Rickett, and began his Sat.u.r.day inspection. He walked slowly down the scrubbed middle of the barracks, between the stiff rows of barbered and laundered soldiers. He peered heavily at their hairlines and the s.h.i.+ne on their shoes, with a hostile impersonality, as though these were not men he was inspecting, but enemy positions. The blazing Florida suns.h.i.+ne struck in through the bare windows.

The Captain stopped in front of the new man, Whitacre.

"Eighth General Order," Colclough said, staring coldly at Whitacre's necktie.

"To give the alarm," Whitacre said, "in case of fire or disorder."

"Rip that man's bed," Colclough said. Sergeant Rickett stepped between the bunks and tore down Whitacre's bed. The sheets made a dry, harsh sound in the still barracks.

"This is not Broadway, Whitacre," Colclough said. "You are not living at the Astor Hotel. The maid does not come in here in the morning. You have to learn to make a satisfactory bed, here."

"Yes, Sir," Whitacre said.

"Keep your G.o.dd.a.m.n mouth shut!" Colclough said. "When I want you to talk I will give you a direct question and you will answer. Yessir, or Nosir."

Colclough moved down the aisle, his heels strident on the bare floor. The Sergeants moved softly behind him as though noise, too, was a privilege of rank.

Colclough stopped in front of Noah. He stared ponderously at him. Colclough had a very bad breath. It smelled as though something were rotting slowly and continuously in Colclough's stomach. Colclough was a National Guard officer from Missouri who had been an undertaker's a.s.sistant in Joplin before the war. His other customers, Noah thought crazily, probably did not mind the breath. He swallowed, hoping to drown the wild laughter that surged in his throat as the Captain glared at his chin for lurking signs of beard.

Colclough looked down at Noah's footlocker, at the sharply folded socks and the geometrically arranged toilet articles.

"Sergeant," he said, "remove the tray."

Ricket bent over and picked up the tray. Underneath were the rigidly folded towels, the stiffly arranged s.h.i.+rts, the woolen underwear, and under the other things, the books.

"How many books have you got there, Soldier?" Colclough asked.

"Three."

"Three, what?"

"Three, Sir."

"Are they government issue?"

Under the woolen underwear there were Ulysses and the Collected Poems of T. S. Eliot and the dramatic opinions of George Bernard Shaw. "No. Sir," said Noah, "they are not government issue."

"Only items of government issue, Soldier," said Colclough, his breath charging at Noah's face, "are to be exposed in foot-lockers. Did you know that, Soldier?"

"Yes, Sir," Noah said.

Colclough bent down and knocked the woolen underwear roughly to one side. He picked up the worn gray copy of Ulysses. Involuntarily, Noah bent his head to watch the Captain.

"Eyes front!" Colclough shouted.

Noah stared at a knothole across the barracks.

Colclough opened the book and leafed through some of the pages. "I know this book," he said. "It is a filthy, dirty book." He threw it on the floor. "Get rid of it. Get rid of all of them. This is not a library, Soldier. You're not here to read." The book lay open, face down, its pages crumpled on the floor, isolated in the middle of the barracks. Colclough brushed past Noah, between the double bunks, over to the window. Noah could sense him moving heavily around behind his back. He had a queer, exposed twitching sensation at the base of his spine.

"This window," Colclough said loudly, "has not been washed. This G.o.dd.a.m.n barracks is a G.o.dd.a.m.n pigpen." He strode out to the aisle again. Without stopping to inspect the rest of the men waiting silently before their cots, he walked to the end of the barracks, followed lightly by the Sergeants. At the door he turned around.

"I'm going to teach you men to keep a clean house," he said. "If you have one dirty soldier you're going to learn it's up to all of you to teach him to be clean. This barracks is confined to quarters until reveille tomorrow morning. There will be no pa.s.ses given to anyone for the week-end and there will be an inspection tomorrow morning at nine o'clock. I advise you to make sure the barracks is in proper order by that time."

He turned and went out.

"Rest!" Sergeant Rickett shouted and followed the Top Sergeant and the Captain out of the building.

Slowly, conscious of the hundred accusing, deprived eyes upon him, Noah moved out to the middle of the aisle, where the book was lying. He bent over and picked it up and absently smoothed the pages. Then he walked over to the window that had been the cause of all the trouble.

"Sat.u.r.day night," he heard in tones of bitter anguish from the other side of the room. "Confined on Sat.u.r.day night! I got a date with a waitress that is on the verge and her husband arrives tomorrow morning! I feel like killing somebody!"

Noah looked at the window. It sparkled colorlessly, with the flat; dusty, sunbitten land behind it. On the lower pane in the. corner a moth had somehow managed to fling itself against the gla.s.s and had died there in a small spatter of yellow goo. Reflectively, Noah lifted the moth off.

He heard steps behind him above the rising murmur of voices, but he continued standing there, holding the suicidal moth, feeling the dusty, unpleasant texture of the shattered wings, looking out over the glaring dust and the distant, weary green of the pinewoods on the other side of the camp.

"All right, Jew-boy." It was Rickett's voice behind him. "You've finally done it."

Noah still did not turn around. Outside the windows he saw a group of three soldiers running, running toward the gate, running with the precious pa.s.ses in their pockets, running to the waiting buses, the bars in town, the complaisant girls, the thirty-hour relief from the Army until Monday morning.

"About face, Soldier," Rickett said. The other men fell silent, and Noah knew that everyone in the room was looking at him. Slowly Noah turned away from the window and faced Rickett. Rickett was a tall, thickly built man with light-green eyes and a narrow colorless mouth. The teeth in the center of his mouth were missing, evidence of some forgotten brawl long ago, and it gave a severe twist to the Sergeant's almost lifeless mouth and played a curious, irregular lisping trick to his flat Texas drawl.

"Now, Tholdier," Rickett said, standing with his arms stretching from one bunk to another in a lounging, threatening position, "now Ah'm gawnta take you unduh mah puhsunal wing. Boyth." He raised his voice for the benefit of the listening men, although he continued to stare, with a sunken, harsh grin, at Noah. "Boyth, Ah promise you, this ith the last tahm little Ikie heah is goin' tuh interfeah with this ba'acks' Sat.u.r.day nights. That's a solemn promith, Ah thweath t' Gahd. Thith ithn't a s.h.i.+tty thynagogue on the East Side, Ikie, thith ith a ba'ack in the Ahmy of the United Thtates of Americuh, and it hath t' be kep' shahnin' clean, white-man clean, Ikie, white-man clean."

Noah stared fixedly and incredulously at the tall, almost lip-less man, slouching in front of him, between the two bunks. The Sergeant had just been a.s.signed to their company the week before, and had seemed to pay no attention to him until now. And in all Noah's months in the Army, his Jewishness had never before been mentioned by anyone. Noah looked dazedly at the men about him, but they remained silent, staring at him accusingly.

"Lethun one," Rickett said, in the lisp that at other times you could joke about, "begins raht now, promptly and immediutly. Ikie, get into yo' fatigues and fetch yo'self a bucket. You are gahnta wash evry window in this gahdam ba'ack, and you're gahnta wash them lihk a white, churchgoin' Christian, t' mah thatishfaction. Get into yo' fatigues promptly and immediutly, Ikie, and start workin'. And ef these here windows ain't shahnin' like a wh.o.r.e's belly on Christmath Eve when Ah come around to inthpect them, bah Gahd, Ah promith you you'll regret it."

Rickett turned languidly and walked slowly out of the barracks. Noah went over to his bunk and started taking off his tie. He had the feeling that every man in the barracks was watching him, harshly and unforgivingly, as he changed into his fatigues.

Only the new man, Whitacre, was not watching him, and he was painfully making up his bunk, which Rickett had torn down at the Captain's orders.

Just before dusk, Rickett came around and inspected the windows.

"All raht, Ikie," he said finally. "Ah'm gahn t' be lenient with yuh, this one tahm. Ah accept the windows. But, remembuh, Ah got mah eye on yuh. Ah'll tell yuh, heah an' now, Ah ain't got no use for n.i.g.g.e.rth, Jewth, Mexicans or Chinamen, an' from now on you're goin' to have a powerful tough row to hoe in this here company. Now get your a.s.s inside and keep it there. An' while you're at it, you better burn those bookth, like the Captain sayth. Ah don't mind tellin' you at thith moment that you ain't too terrible popular with the Captain, either, and. if he seeth those bookth again, Ah wouldn't answer fo' yo' lahf. Move, Ikie. Ah'm tahd of lookin' at your ugly face."

Noah walked slowly up the barracks steps and went through the door, leaving the twilight behind him. Inside, men were sleeping, and there was a poker game in progress on two pulled-together footlockers in the center of the room. There was a smell of alcohol near the door, and Riker, the man who slept nearest the door, had a wide, slightly drunken grin on his face.

Donnelly, who was lying in his underwear on his bunk, opened one eye. "Ackerman," he said loudly, "I don't mind your killing Christ, but I'll never forgive you for not was.h.i.+ng that stinking window." Then he closed his eye.

Noah smiled a little. It's a joke, he thought, a rough joke, but still a joke. And if they take it as something funny, it won't be too bad. But the man in the next bed, a long thin farmer from South Carolina, who was sitting up with his head in his hands, said quickly, with an air of being very reasonable, "You people got us into the war. Now why can't you behave yourselves like human beings?" and Noah realized that it wasn't a joke at all.

He walked deliberately toward his bunk, keeping his eyes down, avoiding looking at the other men, but sensing that they were all looking at him. Even the poker players stopped their game when he pa.s.sed them and sat down on his bunk. Even Whitacre, the new man, who looked like quite a decent fellow, and who had, after all, suffered that day at the hands of Authority, too, sat on his re-made bed, and stared with a hint of anger at him.

Fantastic, Noah thought. This will pa.s.s, this will pa.s.s ...

He took out the olive-colored cardboard box in which he kept his writing paper. He sat on his bunk and began to write a letter to Hope.

"Dearest," he wrote, "I have just finished doing my house-work. I have polished nine hundred and sixty windows as lovingly as a jeweler s.h.i.+ning a fifty-carat diamond for a bootlegger's girl. I don't know how I would measure in a battle against a German infantryman or a j.a.panese Marine, but I will match my windows against their picked troops any day ..."

"It's not the Jew's fault," said a clear voice from the poker game, "they're just smarter than everyone else. That's why so few of them are in the Army. And that's why they're making all the money. I don't blame them. If I was that smart I wouldn't be here neither. I'd be sitting in a hotel suite in Was.h.i.+ngton watching the money roll in."