by James Jones
This is the song of the men who have no place, played by a man who has never had a place, and can therefore play it. Listen to it. You know this song, remember? This is the song you close your ears to every night, so you can sleep. This is the song you drink five martinis every evening not to hear. This is the song of the Great Loneliness, that creeps in like the desert wind and dehydrates the soul. This is the song you’ll listen to on the day you die. When you lay there in the bed and sweat it out, and know that all the doctors and nurses and weeping friends dont mean a thing and cant help you any, cant save you one small bitter taste of it, because you are the one thats dying and not them; when you wait for it to come and know that sleep will not evade it and martinis will not put it off and conversation will not circumvent it and hobbies will not help you to escape it; then you will hear this song and, remembering, recognize it. This song is Reality. Remember? Surely you remember?
“Day is done . . .
Gone the sun . . .
From-the-lake
From-the-hill
From-the-sky
Rest in peace
Sol jer brave
God is nigh . . .”
And as the last note quivered to prideful silence, and the bugler swung the megaphone for the traditional repeat, figures appeared in the lighted sallyport from inside of Choy’s. “I told you it was Prewitt,” a voice carried faintly across the quadrangle in the tone of a man who has won a bet. And then the repeat rose to join her quivering tearful sister. The clear proud notes reverberating back and forth across the silent quad. Men had come from the Dayrooms to the porches to listen in the darkness, feeling the sudden choking kinship bred of fear that supersedes all personal tastes. They stood in the darkness of the porches, listening, feeling suddenly very near the man beside them, who also was a soldier, who also must die. Then as silent as they had come, they filed back inside with lowered eyes, suddenly ashamed of their own emotion, and of seeing a man’s naked soul.
Maylon Stark, leaning silent against his kitchen wall, looked at his cigaret with a set twisted mouth that looked about to cry, about to laugh, about to sneer. Ashamed. Ashamed of his own good luck that had given him back his purpose and his meaning. Ashamed that this other man had lost his own. He pinched the inoffensive coal between his fingers, relishing the sting, and threw it on the ground with all his strength, throwing with it all the overpowering injustice of the world that he could not stomach nor understand nor explain nor change.
Prewitt lowered the bugle slowly and let the megaphone rest in its swivel. Reluctantly he withdrew his mouthpiece and gave the bugle back to Andy. His lips were pinched and red from the playing.
“Christ,” he said huskily. “Jesus Christ. I need a drink of water. I’m tired. Me and Stark goin to town. Wheres Stark?” and fingering his mouthpiece he went vaguely toward the barracks in the darkness, not proud but innocently unaware as yet of what he had created.
“Boy,” Maggio said as they watched him go. “That guy kin really play a bugle. Whynt he never play? He should ought to be in the Bugle Corps.”
“He was, you jerk,” Andy said scornfully. “He quit. He wouldnt play in this old Corps. He played a Taps at Arlington.”
“Yeah?” Maggio said. He peered after the retreating figure. “Well,” he said. “Well what do you know.”
The three of them stood silent, unable to voice it, watching him go, until Stark who had been listening came over to them.
“Wheres he goin?”
“Lookin for you,” Andy said, “to go to town. Went up toward the porch.”
“Well thanks,” Stark mocked, “I never would of guessed it,” and went to find him.
“Come on, kid,” he said. “Lets go to town. Lets fling a real one.”
Book Three
The Women
Chapter 16
THEY CAME UP the lightless stairs of the New Congress Hotel, very dark now after the brightly lighted, almost deserted Hotel Street outside, feeling their way half-drunkenly carefully. They had just left the small bar in the downstairs part of Wu Fat’s brightly tropically decorated restaurant next door, and now they carried with them, suddenly, all the unmentionable, unspeakable, pride destroying heart shakiness and throat thickness and breath chokiness of men about to mount women, the same attributes displayed so shamelessly by all the male dogs on the Post as they chased down alleys after reluctant bitches, and that they laughed at in the hapless dogs, but that they did not feel like laughing at now, as the disembodied breasts and bellies and long thighs, all of a completely unearthly loveliness, swam through their minds.
All evening (with the foreknowledge of this now goading them into joyness) they had had a fine time, a viciously, pugnaciously, wildly bottle swingingly, fine time; with no fights at all yet, with hardly even any arguments except for the ex-dogface, squawmen taxi drivers who envied them their freedom and so always argued anyway and did not count. Getting out of the Schofield taxi at the big, rambling, palm camouflaged Army-Navy YMCA (with this prospect before them), they had gone immediately at once across the street for the first long drink, the best drink of them all, to the long open-fronted Black Cat Café. The Black Cat was a very successful place, being situated as it was directly across from the Y and the cabstand for all the Pearl Harbor and Schofield cabs. Everybody made for the Black Cat for that first best drink when they got in and stopped there for that last worst drink before going back, so that the Black Cat was always very crowded. And because the Black Cat was very successful and always very crowded both of them disliked it very much and felt it was fattening off their lifeblood and their hunger, and later on just before they went to Wu Fat’s they came back to the Black Cat and ordered two toasted limburger cheese sandwiches to go from the stupid Chinese sandwichman, saying they would be back and pick them up, then walked around the block once and by the time they got back the Black Cat was no longer very crowded, it was not even successful for the moment, it was empty and closed for the night with the iron latticework grill locked across the open front and there was not a soul to be seen in it, or for that matter to be seen in that block on that side of the street, and they shook hands happily (with this prospect still before them) and went for a drink to the nearest bar to celebrate the victory.
Before that, after the first drink there, they had worked their way down angling Hotel Street, stopping for a drink at the bars that appealed to them and watching the cherubfaced Oriental waitresses (able to watch now without anguish, with this prospect before them), the Chinese girls with their thin breastless side view and the startlingly curved front view, the Japanese girls with their stockiness of heavier breasts, shorter legs, and more voluptuous hips, but best of all the hapa-Portagee girls with their hot smoking, cat clawing sexiness, everywhere women, women, women, and them cockily feeling their load (that this prospect would take care of) and the liquor raising the thermometer of the blood higher and higher in the ears. They had not stopped at Wu Fat’s then on the first time around but passing it had gone in short bar hops clear down to the river where Hotel angles into King with Aala Park darkly mysterious across the bridge, and from there looking happily up King at the movie houses just letting out the second shows they had cut over to Beretania along the muckiness of River Street and worked their way back toward the Y, hatching the plot against the smug Black Cat happily while threading their way happily through the groups of sailors rolling along drunkenly arm in arm and the hissing-footed Filipinos padding femininely in twos and threes but never one alone in their padded zoot suits. And (happily, whole-earth-lovingly, now, because this prospect was before them) the one and two storey frame buildings crowding against the sidewalk anxiously offering their charms, the bars, and liquor stores, and restaurants, and shooting galleries, and photo shops; and inbetween each two or three storefronts (this prospect emphasizing their retiringness) the dark stairways leading upstairs to the women and their secret parts and gorgeous smells of sweated crotch, perfumed breasts, and the eternal Lysol; and always a
nd eternally everywhere, pervading everything like Fate, the smells of rotting meat and dead wilted vegetables from the open fronted grocery stores with their folding lattice (like an old-fashioned wall phone you pulled out to use) drawn across and locked, keeping you out and not keeping in the smells that exquisitely sadly reminded us of the hangover tomorrow and then the next one after that and so on to the last final hangover the biggest most perpetual hangover of rotting meat stashed away on shelves and hairy wilted carrots dissected on the tables, smells that we will forever remember as the attar of Hawaii, that we will never smell again without remembering Hawaii, the Hawaii of our unrepentant unrepented youth, for the rest of our whole lives.
And after the Black Cat’s glorious fiasco then down Hotel once more, this time to Wu Fat’s to eat won ton soup upstairs and then come back down to the bar downstairs where a thin fine-drawn queer with an English accent had wanted to know with subtle flattery if they were civilian sailors adventuring from home and offered to buy a drink that Stark told him to save for someone who had no money for the whores and would be more appreciative, the queer making a sly womanish crack at him, Stark hitting him happily, the bartender escorting the dazed queer to the door because Stark was spending more money and then coming back and shaking hands and saying he did not like them either but bartenders have got to live too, and then finally settling down to the serious drinking to get primed, Stark getting really drunk with a wild urgent thirst that Prew had not suspected in that cool, slow talking, levelheadedness, but Stark confiding to him now with the unreserved intimacy of drunkenness that he was not worth a damn in any whorehouse unless he was properly liquored up and he did not know why, but anyway this was the only way to do it, the only way he could do it, but that he sincerely loved it this way, really he did (with the prospect coloring everything with unattainable brilliance, heightening everything with that unattainable ardor that in the end was one pure love of everything that lived, but could be attained no other way), and that by god no matter what anybody said any thing that could make you love the earth as much as this could not be wrong, no matter what they said, or evil, goddam them, or ashamed, screw them, and he would not believe it wrong, the sons of bitches.
Until now, standing at the top of the stairs on the landing with the massive steel door with its square peephole in front of them making a deadend tunnel of the stairway, the great earth love that needed an outlet, the great hunger for love that must be fed, were so great it almost creamed them both.
Stark (very drunk but still able to roll a cigaret deftly in the darkness) struck a match and lit it—the match flare lighting up like echoes of their minds all the pencil drawn naked bodies (male and female) on the walls, the unattached bodyless organs (male and female), the realistic looking vaginas made by holding a burning kitchen matchhead against the wall and then drawing in the legs afterwards, and all the accompanying verses of several generations of artistic soldiers, sailors, marines, and kanaka shoeshine boys—and beat with his fist against the door.
The peephole slid back immediately and a huge, black Hawaiian woman’s face peered out at them suspiciously.
“Let us in,” Stark said. “We freezin in the cold, cold night,” ending with a tragic, from the heart, hiccup.
“You drunk,” the great hulk heaved, “go way. We dont want trouble with MP. This a respectable place. Close up. You go home.”
“Now dont get tough with me, Minerva,” Stark grinned. “Or I have you busted back to the ranks. Go tell Mrs Kipfer her number one boy is here and why aint she on the door where she belongs.”
“I see,” she said, still suspiciously. “You wait,” and slammed the peephole irritably shut.
Prew felt the completely unearthly lovely breasts and bellies and long thighs begin subtlely to fade and grow dim on him. He looked at Stark.
“There,” Stark said bitterly. “You see? Woman thinks we drunk.”
“Imagine that,” Prew said. “Suspicious old bat.”
“Any time women see a soljer, think he’s drunk. Why? You know why?”
“Because he is.”
“Thats right. Just plain suspicious. Thats why I dont like to come to these places. No faith in humanity. For two cents I’d go over to the goddam Service Rooms, or Pacific Rooms, or Ritz Rooms, or White Hotel. She thinks this is the only whorehouse in this town? Theres even a Japanee Electric Massage four doors down the street.”
“Lets go there. I never been to one of them.”
Stark giggled. “Cant. Close up. Closes at eleven.” Then realization dawning, he turned and stared. “You mean you never been to a Japanee Lectric Massage?” he said disbelievingly.
“Never.”
“Ones with the little white sign and red letters on it and red streak of lightning under them?”
“Not once.”
“Tsk, tsk,” Stark said. “Where have you been?”
“I’m a hick,” Prew said bitterly. “Plumb green.”
“Tsk, tsk. I bet Wahoo’s the ony place in whole dam world where a man can get Japanee Lectric Massage. And you refuse to take advantage of your opportunity. You have missed a great experience, Prewitt, you have neglected your education. They lay you on your side,” he said, “then one of these hot lookin Japanee girls works you over, all over, with this lectric vibrator. But you cant touch her. They come out naked, and work you over and catch it in a towel. But they wont let you touch them, not even with a finger. They explain it all beforehand. And just in case someone dont understand instructions they keep a bouncer, a great big judo man. They let you see him when you first go in.”
“But I’d want to touch em,” Prew said. “I like to touch em.”
“So do I. Thats the point, see? You want to but you cant. Very funny feeling. There she is, all of her, but you cant touch it. Practically the same thing as a civilian tryin to make a respectable woman, see? Very peculiar feeling. Really nothing like it. Takes a Japanee to think of a valuble experience like that”
“Takes a Japanee to enjoy it too, I bet.”
“Oh, no,” Stark said. “I enjoy it. Makes you hot so hot you’d almost eat the goddam thing. With me, it invigorates the blood. After a Japanee Lectric Massage I could run any whorehouse out of business, even if I was sober. Makes you realize what a woman’s worth, even a whore. Gives you a great understanding of the human race. All of it.”
“I still wouldn’t like it,” Prew said stubbornly.
“You’re just stubborn,” Stark said stubbornly. “How do you know you wouldnt like it? I liked it. Why wouldnt you like it?”
“Because I like to touch em. I like to more than touch em.”
“By Christ,” Stark said suddenly, “but that woman’s sure been gone a long time.” He turned and began to beat his fist against the door again. “An awful long time. Hey! Open up!”
The peephole opened up immediately, almost as if the tall, narrow faced, prettily smiling, white woman who smiled out at them had been standing there all the time listening.
“Why, hello, Maylon,” the woman smiled delightedly. “Minerva didnt tell me it was you. How are you?”
“About to bust,” Stark said. “Let us in.”
“Why, Maylon,” she chided, gently but firmly. “Is that any way to talk to me?”
Prew, looking at this ladyhood, this almost maidenhood, felt everything suddenly run down out of him hollowly, like snow suddenly slides off a roof under a February sun exposing the orderly shingles of a former business venture. And, like all the other times, at other places, he was ready to go home now. I wonder what Violet Ogure is doing, he thought right now, at this minute?
“Jesus Christ!” Stark was storming. “You aint scared we wreck your joint?”
“Not at all,” the woman smiled. “I have no fear at all upon that score. And please dont swear at me, Maylon.”
“Mrs Kipfer,” Stark said, with a sudden subdued sobriety at the seriousness of the situation, “I’m surprised at you, Mrs Kipfer. Did you ever know me to come up
here when I was drinking heavily? I ask you honestly, do I look like that kind of a man?”
“Well I had certainly never thought so, Maylon,” Mrs Kipfer lied pleasedly. “You have always been a perfect gentleman, around me.”
“Thank you, Mam,” Stark said. “And now, if there is no further misunderstanding, will you please let us in?”
“Heavy drinking,” Mrs Kipfer countered, “just does not mix with the entertainment business. Every respectable decent place must consider its future.”
“Mrs Kipfer, Mam,” Stark said, “I give you my solemn word your future will be safe with us.”
Mrs Kipfer was appeased. “Well,” she smiled. “Since you give me your word. I’m sure you will, Maylon.”
There was a sound of steel rubbing steel and the door swung inward. Prew saw a sophisticated looking woman with upswept hair and voluptuous figure daintily encased in a lovely doeskin colored evening gown with a corsage of redly purple orchids at her shoulder, looking as if she were the aristocratic lady just stepped out of an International Sterling Silver ad to call her guests to dinner. She smiled at him with forgiving motherly solicitude, and he understood now why everybody who went to whorehouses always talked about Mrs Kipfer and admired her so. It was because Mrs Kipfer was such a lady, and because she was willing to forgive them.