by James Jones
—lets see, he thought going over them in his mind, who was it? He watched an almost endless parade of officers’ faces, then his mind stopped the film and backed up to one of them. Thompson, the mental dossier informed him, Major Gerald W Thompson, formerly of the Umteenth Infantry, commanded I Co as a Captain, moved to Battalion Adjutant, on to Regimental Aide-de-Camp, made Major in charge of S-3 Plans & Training, graduated to Post Headquarters and promoted to Commandant of the Stockade; the one whose wife both Holmes and Culpepper use to take up on the Honouliuli trail riding—
—anyway, he thought, still proud the old automatic filing system functioned so perfect, Thompson would already have another Fatso Judson already in stock. And plenty more on the waiting list. We got at least two of them in this outfit: Liddell Henderson and Champ Wilson would both make good Fatso Judsons with a very slight proper training.
No, he did not think anybody would be around. But if they did he would still be covered. The day they came around was the day he would have just discovered Prewitt was gone. And, if they did prove anything, he was still covered. The furlough would cover him. Let Choate and Dhom take the blame, the sons of bitches, they started it. But when a whole compny went stone-deaf and blind on a thing like this you did not have to worry much. Nobody would rat; Dhom and Choate sure wouldnt; the only one who would be likely to rat would be Ike Galovitch, and who the hell would listen to an old nut like Ike who was busted for Inefficiency? But even Ike wouldnt have the guts to speak in the face of all this opposition.
Having figured it out to his own satisfaction, he crushed out the foul-tasting cigaret that he had not wanted anyway and, on second thought, got up and went to the filing cabinet and got out his bottle that he had been careful to mark with indelible pencil before he left on furlough, and took a big drink for his hangover.
It tasted very thin.
Has that sly quiet son of a bitch Rosenberry been watering my whiskey?
No, it wouldnt be Rosenberry. Not Rosenberry. It was probly more likely that fucking son of a bitch Dhom!
He took another big drink, because it was thin, and then sat back down at his desk, still in the dirty crumpled but prize $120 Brooks Bros, powder-blue tropical-worsted that he had given so much thought to before he picked it to wear on his idyll. He was thinking that that was what a man got for trying to take a little time off. They not only fouled up his Morning Report for him but they watered his goddam whiskey. It was getting so you couldnt trust no son of a bitch any more.
Not even yourself.
The hotel—inn, they called it—had been out in Kaneohe Valley, perched up high on the shoulder of the Koolau Range above the valley where the mountains made their inside-curve to the west to include the Nuuanu Pali. He had selected it very carefully, both for esthetic reasons and because it was the only place on the Island where they could go safely without being seen by somebody, like that sharp-eyed son of a bitch Stark. They had driven over the Pali in the U-Drive to get there, after he had taken her off the boat for Kauai to visit a sister that Holmes had brought her down to and seen her off on. Just like the goddamned iceman who comes in the backdoor as hubby goes out the front to the office. He just barely got her off the son of a bitch before they cast off the gangplank, Holmes hung around for so long.
Karen always loved to drive over the Pali. This time he stopped and pointed the hotel—inn, they called it—out to her in the blue distance haze across the steep drop. It was strictly a tourist hotel—inn, they called it—but in a class with the Halekulani, so that nobody but the most e-lite tourists even knew about it. He had happened to go there once before on a weekend back when he had been working on the Molokai moonlight cruises. That was how he happened to know about it. This time, he had already called up ahead of time and chartered a two-room corner suite on the third (and top) floor with the big windows looking off down across the valley to the sea on one side and right back into the mountains on the other. This time he was going to make sure it was perfect ahead of time. This time there werent going to be any loopholes. It was a beautiful view. It was also very secluded and very exclusive. It was really a very beautiful hotel—inn, they called it. The Haleiolani Inn. That meant Truly Heavenly House Inn in Ka Beretania. There was always wind in Kaneohe Valley, but it had big trees around it so that you could utilize even the wind. It had a park-garden, too. And stables. This time it couldnt help but be perfect. This time it couldnt possibly have any loopholes. This time he meant to seal every chink by which the world could seep through ahead of time.
One of the first things she wanted to know was how he had ever come to know about such a lovely place that was so exclusive and expensive. He gave her some answer, he couldnt remember what, but it didnt make much difference. The motif for the next ten days was already set.
They had two luxurious rooms with eight luxurious walls and the world was not anywhere in evidence. Even during the meals they ate in the dining room to break the monotony of having them all sent up to the suite the world was still not anywhere in evidence, neither in the soft-spoken maître nor the softer-footed waiters and busboys. He even had the hotel-inn, they called it—on his side. They made their living holding the world back out of evidence.
They went riding a number of times back in on the mountain trails. She loved to ride.
They went driving in the U-Drive almost every evening.
Twice they went swimming in the afternoon at Kalama Beach.
And at no time, no where, no how, was there ever any relief from the two rooms and the eight walls. The eight luxurious walls of the two luxurious rooms that he had very carefully sealed so the world could not get in. He had sealed it all right. He had sealed it so tight it would have made a wonderful tomb. In fact, that was just what it resembled, an airtight worldtight, wonderful tomb. What he had overlooked was that after he sealed it they had to open the door to get into it. They brought the world inside with them. By the time the ten days was up he could not remember ever having hated any place so much in his life.
But no. It wasnt the money. He still had over $300, over half of the original $600 left. And it had been hard work, it had been labor, to be able to spend that much, with her giving him holy hell for being so extravagant, just like a wife.
Perhaps if they had had more time then . . .
But no, it wasnt the time either. If anything they had had too much time. Before the third day was over it was all both of them could manage to do just to keep from suggesting that it was time to go home. It had been hard work, it had been labor, for him to keep from paying the bill and packing them up and going home early from what had turned into the debacle of the annual vacation, just like a husband.
What had happened, ironically, was that the fact that they had had to stay hidden for fear of meeting somebody who knew them, had, without their realizing it, approximated on this honeymoon the situation that would exist when the honeymoons were all over, just like a husband and wife.
They were always making each other pay for something. You hurt my pride and I hurt your pride. It use to be you build me up and I build you up, but once the masterpiece had been made it was you tear me down and I tear you down.
She made him pay for having made her love him so much that she had gone off and left her son in the care of a gook maid.
He made her pay for having made him love her so much that he had run out and left his Company in the sausage fingers of Dhom.
She made him pay for having made her a whore.
He made her pay for having made him an officer.
The eight luxurious walls of the two luxurious rooms were still eight walls and two rooms. And sixteen walls and four rooms, or thirty-two walls and eight rooms, even with a furnace, even with an American Kitchen, garbage disposal unit, automatic dish washer, fully equipped bar, glassed in breakfast nook, even with a Bendix washing machine and a rumpus room, it would not in the end really make a whole hell of a lot of difference.
No matter how often you changed that part, the rest would alway
s still be the same forever and ever amen if there be any man present who can show just cause why this man and this woman should not be united in holy matrimony let him speak now or forever hold his peace.
So this is what married life is like, hunh? his mind said.
The masterpiece was made, created. When you go on creating on a masterpiece that is already created you dont make it more of a masterpiece, you unmake it. You go on spending the rest of your life changing semi-colons to commas and commas to semi-colons.
So this is what you are condemning us both to? his mind said. Me, your best friend?
They both knew it. It was just that neither wanted to be the first to admit it because they both felt too guilty about always making each other pay for something. Besides, they didnt have any other blueprint to go by. They told you love was the end. But love wasnt the end. But they didnt tell you where to go next. If only they could stop and not go on creating. But who ever saw a human being who could stop and not go on creating?
Married life, his mind told him indignantly, appears to be vastly similar to the bracketing in of a battery of 155’s. First a long that goes over, then a short that goes under, then a long and a short and a long and a short, a see and a saw and an up and a down, each a little bit closer to target, until finally we are in and we lay down our barrage and we’re married. A constant roaring, marriage, in which the individual explosions are no longer even distinguishable so that it itself even finally tapers off into monotony and boredom, leaving only a charred churned-up countryside in which there is nothing alive anymore. Not even the parakeets that once rose up in white clouds screeching out of the jungle, every time a bracket shell dropped. The bracketing-in always use to be fun, remember? But laying a barrage, that begins to wear after a while. Whether you’re the Artilleryman on the guncrew, or the Infantryman lying out under it. Even the excitement of almost dying loses its appeal after a while and subsides into just gloom.
The only real relief either one of them had got from the other in the whole 10 days was the night they went in town to the luau.
That was, of course, if you did not count the whiskey, the case of I. W. Harper he had bought the first day in town while waiting for her, and that she had given him hell for buying, but which later on she had drunk at least half of, sitting in the two luxurious rooms with the eight luxurious walls.
During the past three or four months, his mind grinned sardonically, in which you have been so busy, having had nothing else better to do, I have occupied myself with making a searching and profound study of the institution of married life as practiced in these United States, somewhat in the manner of the psychiatrists who write those articles for the Ladies’ Home Journal. Oh, yes; dont look surprised; didnt you know; sex is an open topic in the United States now. Would you care in hear my conclusions?
He, Warden, had never seen her drink so much. Usually she drank very little if any. She did not even like for him to drink much. This time she ended up by getting as drunk or drunker as often or oftener than he did, and he resented it. Not only had he needed that whiskey himself, but it frightened him. He did not want a wife who was going to turn into an alcoholic anonymous. He did not want to have to add that guilt onto all of the other guilts. He must have overlooked something. He must have made some mistake.
My conclusions, his mind went on anyway, are that marriage in the United States is based upon the principle of romantic love. Not wholly, of course, but in the majority; you will agree that the majority in the United States accept the principle of romantic love. They accept it so strongly, in fact, that even the minority who marry for other reasons such as money or social position or business or just plain security still strive to give the impression of having married for romantic love. This is, incidentally, perhaps the only country in the world where that is true, even among the most ignorant lower classes of peasantry, if you discount England. Myself, I always discount England. Well, by personal observation and careful experimentation, during these three or four months I had nothing to do, I have finally isolated the virus of the illusion of romantic love. My conclusion, in this paper, is that the epidemic of romantic love which is threatening to decimate the United States is the direct result of a viscid vicious virulent virus, or infection, which, for lack of a better name, I shall call Ego-stimulation; or, naming it after its discoverer, Warden’s Bacillus.
By way of proof, his mind said, let us take a case in point. Let us take a hypothetical young female aged 18 and a hypothetical young male aged 19, both you understand of the acceptedly superior type considered most likely to succeed (both in life and in love), such as, say, a football-hero-recipient-of-the-DAR-medal and a straight-A-girls’-college-prep-major-who-also-doubles-as-cheerleader.
If we take, his mind said, this hypothetical young couple, at the beginning of their—
“Oh, go fuck yourself!” Warden hollered.
He got the bottle out of the filing cabinet again and drank, this time not because it was thin, but in pure self-defense. If a man could just hang onto one illusion he could still love. The main trouble with being an honest man was that it lost you all your illusions.
Penetrated by a sudden cunning idea, he set the bottle up in plain sight on the corner of his desk, instead of putting it back in its hiding place. Then he leaned back in his chair still Then I was going to in the dirty, crumpled, prize $120 Brooks Bros, tropical suit and cocked his feet on the desk and grinned at the innocent bottle slyly. He locked his arms behind his head and settled back hopefully to wait for that Chicago stupid Jew lawyer son of a bitch Ross to come in. Maybe that was the ambulance chasing bastard that had been watering his whiskey.
The very least he can do is transfer me. Maybe he’ll even bust me, he thought hopefully, he busted Ole Ike, dint he?
Chapter 47
IF IT COULD ONLY all be like the luau had been, all the time, Warden thought with his feet cocked on the desk and his head cradled in his locked fingers. That was what it ought to be like. The luau had been on the eighth night. He had been desperate, even to suggest it. And she had been even more desperate to accept. Because this was a tourist luau in Waikiki and like as not they would run into somebody one or both of them knew. But they hadnt run into anyone. They had gone into town to the luau and each taken a new lover, and gotten the only real relief either one of them got from the other during the whole 10 days.
The fact that the new lover she took was named Warden, and the new lover he took was named Karen Holmes, that did not matter.
It was a tourist luau, not a real one, but after a few drinks it was practically just as good and you did not mind the fat white vacuum-cleaner faces watching, or the neatly pressed jackets and pants catching the light from the fire whitely. The tourists had all read Somerset Maugham, as preparation for their trip to the tropics, and went in for white linen suits and dresses. But you did not mind, not after a few drinks. Because everything else was there, just like in a real luau.
The long ditch with the fire dying down on the hot rocks and the black Kanaka kuke with skin catching red glints from the bonfire putting his layers of banana leaves in the kapuahi ditch to lay the food on, and then the music and hula dancing while the smells began to fan out from under the scorched banana leaves’ smell in the still breeze bringing a flood of water into the mouth—the pipi orna roastbeef, and the roasting puaa with a big ohia in his mouth and the pink scrubbed skin beginning to crisp brown (pig-skin and poi, pig-skin and poi), the heikaukau rock crab and welakaukau Hawaiian hot stew in the calabashes cooking. And in front of you the poi and kukui nuts and the i-a paakai salt fish, i-a uahi smoked fish, i-a maloo dried fish, i-a hou raw fish, fish fish fish (pig-skin and poi, pig-skin and poi), and the fruits, papaya, pineapple, malala, peels of raw cane—all this just to chew on while you waited for the real dinner (pig-skin and poi, pig-skin and poi) to get itself cooked. And all the time firelight flickering on naked bronze bodies as the greased muscles rippled under the koa trees in the hula.
; The only luaus she had ever seen were the put-up jobs at Schofield for the officers. She had never seen the kane hula dancers whose masculine grace and swift agile angularity, savage and powerful, outshone and dimmed the hip-swinging wahine dancers as much as the ballet’s Spectre de la Rose outshone and dimmed a walkathon. She had never seen the pi-le noseflute either, or the little-tom-tom that they played with the knees and elbows sitting crosslegged. She had never eaten pig-skin and poi. And this place in Waikiki with its stone wall hiding the glade just across the street from where Kuhio Park narrows in to the highway seawall, she had never even heard about.
The real dishes, the others, the old ones that smelled like feces until you had ignored your nose and gotten them into your mouth and then forever after never smelled that way again, and that were not on this menu, she did not miss because she did not know about them. And if the songs they played and danced here were mostly songs that the tourists would already know—Song of the Islands, Sweet Leilani, Lovely Hula Hands, Hilo March and Kalhala March, Hanakai Tomboy, and the War Chant—still, she did not know because she had never heard the old ones, the ancient ones, like we use to play at Tony Paea’s family luaus, old Tony, who ran a battery shop on Nuuana, and whose father Ioane Paea had once been sole owner and proprietor of the Island of Paea, before the missionaries. Old Tony was somewhere Stateside now.
She had really taken it all in, eaten it up. And by the time the roast whole hog and pipi orna roastbeef had been finished off everyone was drunk, even some of the tourists were drunk, and he had stripped off his gook shirt and kicked off his sandals and rolled his slacks up to his knees and jumped out into the firelight and danced Meliani Oe for them with a gardenia snatched from the hair of the youngest wahine stuck over his ear, and that had really gotten her. With the grinning dancers who could not keep from forgetting they were paid entertainers egging him on solo, the seated ones beating time on the ground with their hands, the standing ones stamping it with the feet.