The Gallery

by John Horne Burns

  — I know it. . . . Pleased ta meetcha, I’m sure. . . . And can I say somethin, captain? I felt sorta bad this mornin when ya didn’t come over an shake me by the hand. . . . A fella sorta likes to meet up with his CO when he reports to a new assignment.

  — Of course; of course. . . . I was very busy . . . but I made a note on my desk calendar to call you in first thing tomorrow morning.

  — The boys tole me, Stuki said, sailing languorously into his meat loaf, that ya never have anything to do with em. . . . That’s what they said. . . . But when I sawya in ya office, I said to myself, That’s a soldier. Regular army maybe. The kind of guy that knows he has a job to do an no nonsense. That’s the kinda guy I like to take orders from. Also (he leaned forward, twitching his mustache daintily) I thought to myself that guys that talk that way about their own CO must be yella rats.

  — They are difficult men to deal with, Captain Motes conceded.

  — I hope ya don’t mind me talking to ya in this frank manner, Stuki said, a warm glaze crinkling his eyes. But I like ta put my cards on the table, captain. I came inta this man’s army to do a job and take orders. . . . Willya shake hands with me, captain?

  Captain Motes was ignited from within by a strange flaring of hope and joy. He’d been lonely. Yet he must be on his guard. He’d got so used to living in himself, to trusting no one, that any kind little remark lit him up inside. But he put out his hand across the catsup bottles and pressed Stuki’s. Into his own slid a warm and slightly moist hand like a bird into her nest. Stuki held on to the captain’s hand with varying pressures and affections.

  — Gee, thanks, Stuki said, his mustache in repose like a setting hen. Now I feel better. . . . Ya’ll never know how I felt this mornin comin inta ya outfit. Seemed like nobody wanted me. Treated me like I had mental BO. . . . An I take a bath every night. . . . They just sat an looked at me and kept sayin, You’ll be sorry! . . . The resta the time they tore you apart.

  — They hate me. I try to be impartial and end by pleasing no one.

  — So there ya are, Stuki sighed. That’s life for ya. . . . But when I heard the way they talked about ya, I knew they was a bunch of stinkers.

  — Perhaps you can help me to understand them better, said Captain Motes.

  As the meal advanced, so did their intimacy. They seemed to have known one another a long time. By the pineapple, it was clear to Captain Motes that Stuki had conceived a doglike devotion to him. A rocket of inspiration went off in Captain Motes’s head. In spite of the difference in their ranks, he invited Stuki to share his hotel room.

  With Stuki he began a new sort of life, centered around a freedom and devotion he’d never before known. Stuki took care of everything: sending out laundry, tipping the Fatima who cleaned the room, even writing the captain’s letters for him. By May, 1943, when spring came to Casa with a smell of jasmine and dung in bittersweet layers, Stuki would lie nude under his mosquito netting and listen while Captain Motes read aloud from Lucinda’s poetry. Stuki’s body was black and sheathed in glossy fur. He’d squirm and groan with pleasure at Lucinda’s love poems. Or during her sonnets on renunciation Stuki would lie motionless, his cigarette a glowing dot of red, his mustache placid as a half-moon.

  — Gee, she sends me. Ya wife’s a great poet. One of these days I’m gonna meet her. Da ya think she’ll like me? Da ya think she’ll adopt me inta the family?

  Captain Motes got so he couldn’t bear to spend time away from Stuki. The relationship between them was perfect: Stuki never overstepped the boundary between their ranks; there was a subtle deference in everything he said to Captain Motes, though he called him simply you when they weren’t in public. Eventually, to have his lieutenant always with him, Captain Motes ordered that Stuki be taken off the examination table. Another desk was put in the captain’s glass front office, and the position of supply officer was created for him. That night in their room Stuki got drunk on Casablanca rum and began to cry:

  — Gee, thanks for takin me off that table of letter openers. . . . Ya know what they call me? . . . Brown-nose. . . . They said that no second lieutenant should be the roommate of his commanding officer . . . If it’s gonna cause ya so much embarrassment, I’ll move out.

  — Goddam it, Captain Motes cried nobly, I won’t hear of it.

  In the spring of 1943 his nerves were stringy. Stuki could deal with that too. The captain would lie belly down on his bed, and Stuki would massage his spinal column. His body would go slack all over as those powerful moist fingers tugged at his nerves, and he’d fall into a swoonlike sleep. He’d awake at dawn next morning to find that Stuki’d undressed him and had put up his mosquito netting. And by the rising sun Captain Motes would look over into the other bed and see that dark face snoring soundlessly up at the ceiling, the mustache furled like wings over the half-open mouth. And Captain Motes’s letters to his wife were full of Stuki. One day Lucinda wrote back in a V-mail:

  — And who, pray, is this Stuki? I suspect you have an Arab mistress. . . .

  On week ends he and Stuki would take the jeep and drive out to Fedhala for golf, or to Rabat to a black market restaurant for spicy lobsters and wine. Or they’d go swimming by Villa Moss. Stuki would lie in the sun till his skin got like teak.

  Stuki went to the Sixth General Hospital for a three days’ reaming because he got piles from too much desk work. Captain Motes felt lost in his office and in his room. Each night he visited his roommate in the Sixth General, bringing fruit and flowers.

  — Ya shouldn’t do all this for me. Ya mustn’t put yaself out this way. Ya too good.

  Meanwhile Captain Motes did some manipulating and some furious talking to the assistant chief of staff G-2. So when Stuki limped out of the hospital, the captain was waiting for him in the jeep, looking secretive. He drove Stuki out to look at the sea at Fedhala. He took the gold bar off Stuki’s collar and pinned on a silver one. Stuki looked down; his chest began to quiver:

  — Oh ya shouldn’ta, ya shouldn’ta, chief. . . . Now they’ll hate me all the more. . . . I have ta live among them vultures and hyenas.

  After Stuki’s promotion the situation in the front office got involved. Lieutenant Frank sat at his desk and glowered at Stuki’s new silver bar. Lieutenant Frank’s paunch was growing heavier; his rear end had a spread like an ashcan dropped from a top story. He had a Casablancaise mistress and smoked two PX rations of thick dark cigars. But he wasn’t happy. He mumbled to himself about the length of time he’d been in grade, and how doing your job in the army really didn’t pay off. He glared at Captain Motes out of the fat around his little eyes, and he stared at Stuki, who bridled a dozen times a morning, flickered his mustache like a squirrel, and twittered:

  — Fresssssssh! Whaddya lookin at? Didja bang yaself silly all las night?

  The strain in the front office was palpable even to the files of officers sitting out in the examination room under the harsh lights, reading their mail or talking up their whispering campaign. Their eyes in their black glasses or horn-rimmed spectacles would pierce the glass partition, where they could see the uneven and unequal triangle of Captain Motes, Stuki, and Lieutenant Frank peering at one another. Captain Motes at first thought it might be necessary to transfer his executive officer to Oran or Algiers. But then, who but Lieutenant Frank was capable of talking to the men and striking the fear of God into them?

  — Fresssssh! Stuki said again. Nervous in the service? Why don’tcha go out for a nice long walk?

  Lieutenant Frank strode into the examination room. They could hear his voice and see his broad rear in pink pants. He was lecturing the officers on military courtesy. Someone had passed him in the streets of Casa without saluting. There was a swish and a hiss. Into the open door of the front office hurled a censor’s exacto knife. It gibbered in the cork wall behind Captain Motes’s head like a movie dagger. Simultaneously there was bedlam in the examination room. Stuki and Captain Motes ran out to the examination tables. The officers had left their work and were
standing in a numb knot around Lieutenant Almeranti, who was winding up to let fly another exacto knife. He was chuckling to himself:

  — Incest, kids, incest. . . .

  Then Lieutenant Almeranti took a pile of unread V-mails and tore them to pieces. He was ripping to shreds letters written by officers and GI’s of the army in Africa. The pupils of his eyes were popping like eggs, his forehead was glistening with sweat.

  — Stop him, someone, Captain Motes hollered. This is a court-martial offense.

  He took several steps forward, and Lieutenant Almeranti smashed the rest of the stack of mail into his face. The censors peered at the scene with dull absorption, like moronic children.

  — Censorship! Lieutenant Almeranti chortled. I’ll censor you all! I’ll G-2 you! . . . There ain’t no promotions this side of the ocean.

  — Put down that knife, ya fool! Stuki shrieked.

  Lieutenant Almeranti bore down again on Captain Motes. His arms were swinging, his eyes bloody and spinning.

  — And this, kids, is our chief base censor . . .

  Stuki leaped through the air. Captain Motes saw the blur of his rush and Stuki’s mustache grim and taut. There was a smell of cologne. Lieutenant Almeranti went down under Stuki in a litter of torn V-mails and ruptured envelopes. He went rigid, his eyeballs rolled up, he had a quick sighing paroxysm, and passed out. Now Lieutenant Frank became the man of action. He champed on his cigar, called out orders in his beefy voice, and stamped to the phone for a psychiatrist and ambulance from the Sixth General Hospital.

  — Go right on with ya readin, boys, Stuki said, picking himself off the floor and mopping his face with a fragrant yellow handkerchief.

  But there was little work done that morning. The examiners sat at their tables and smoked and muttered. It seemed that Lieutenant Almeranti had gone nuttier than a fruitcake and would be sent back to the States. Lieutenant Frank made two speeches, telling them they could all hope to end up like Almeranti if they didn’t settle down:

  — Why don’tcha act like officers insteada the wimmin’s garment union?

  — Send em all back to their billets for the day, huh, chief? Stuki said.

  — I won’t coddle them! Captain Motes shouted, pacing the front office. We have our quota of mail for each day. They’ll read it, goddam it, they’ll read it.

  He’d decided however to fly to Algiers that evening to investigate censorship procedures at Allied Force Headquarters. He told Stuki to pack two bags and meet him at Cazes airport. They heard the voice of Lieutenant Frank still haranguing the frightened examiners:

  — Oh ya don’t believe me? I can court-martial each an every one a yez an have ya returned to the ZI in the permanent grade of private. . . . Ya don’t believe me?

  On their second day in Algiers they had a phone call from Lieutenant Frank, shouting over the wires as though he desired to make himself heard all the way from Casablanca:

  — Ya, ya heard me right. . . . The inspector general’s here givin ya entire outfit the shakedown. . . . No, it ain’t a routine inspection. All ya goddam officers petitioned for him to come here. . . . Ya, that’s right. Right now he’s sittin at the desk in ya office. Every officer and GI of ya command is standing in line, waiting his turn to cry on the IG’s shoulder. . . . Some of them has written out complaints a mile long. Half the officers tole me ta my face that the least you could expect after the IG gets through with ya is Leavenworth. . . .

  That evening in his Algiers billet, thinking of what the inspector general must be doing in his office in Casa, Captain Motes had one of his nervous fits. As the moonlight tittered in, he lay under his mosquito netting. His teeth began to click and his eyes to roll. He gave out small moans and gasps like a woman in love. Cramps gathered in the calves of his legs. He felt his fists clenching at his sides. It seemed to him he’d never known such indefinable terror, with all the frightful things of this world and the next gathering in the dusk to spring upon him. Stuki jumped out of his bed and was at his side in a flowered kimono.

  — Whassamatta, chief?

  — My God, they’re crucifying me in Casa, the captain murmured, cushioning his forehead.

  — They’re filthy sneakin dogs. Don’t pay no heed to em. . . . Ya’ll come out on top.

  And Stuki’s moist hard hands commenced working at the captain’s spine. And Stuki’s voice dropped to the liquid caressing whimper that it adopted on such occasions:

  — Ya hear me, chief? Ya much too good for the whole dam lot of em. . . . Lissen ta me, chief. Ya all right? . . . We’ll lick em together, you an me.

  After a while the spasms faded and the horrors paled. Captain Motes fell asleep. The last thing he remembered was hands, kind hands that knew him as well as a mold informs a piece of clay to its own image.

  On the following morning he and Stuki called on the chief of staff, G-2, AFHQ, in the Saint George Hotel. He was a cheery colonel who before the war had owned a grocery store in Chicago. Now with a brigadier general and a British and American staff he ran most of the intelligence operations in the North African theater. His shirt breast was plaqued with ribbons. On his collar was the star of the general staff corps. He had the red and seamy face of one accustomed to attend midnight sessions of plotters and planners. He shook hands with Captain Motes and Stuki, who surprised him doing a crossword puzzle.

  — Well, well, well! Surprise, surprise, surprise! . . . Didn’t know you were in Algiers. . . . We call you our country cousins from Casa. How’s every little thing? Just step in to my inner office. . . . Got a little treat for you.

  The colonel’s inner office was four walls covered with enameled maps. All the maps were stamped SECRET in red block letters at top and bottom. They were planted with hedges of thumbtacks from which streamed ribbons of pastel silk. On the colonel’s desk was a herd of camels of graduated sizes walking along the glass in safari file.

  — This office, said the colonel clearing his throat, well, you might almost call it the brain of all NATOUSA.

  — Gee, sir, Stuki said, fingering a map stamped MOST SECRET EQUALS BRITISH SECRET, sorta makes a guy stop and think, don’t it?

  — I’d advise you not to try to take secret photographs of those maps, lieutenant, the colonel said loudly.

  — He’s my most trusted officer, Captain Motes said timidly.

  — I know, I know, the colonel said, leading them away from the maps and slapping their backs. But we in military intelligence can’t even afford to trust one another, can we, ha-ha. . . . You know how it is, boys. . . . My God, when I think of how much I know, I’m almost afraid to chugalug a drink or go out with a pretty little French girl, ha-ha. . . . Sometimes I wake up at night with a cold shiver and think of how much there is in this old skull of mine, ha-ha.

  — Ya wouldn’t be wearin that eagle if ya weren’t capable of ya job, sir, Stuki said.

  — Well, thank you, ha-ha, thank you, the colonel boomed, bending over his desk drawer. And now, Captain Motes, if you’ll be so good as to take off your insignia . . .

  Captain Motes felt his heart dive from some trapeze. But he reached up and fumbled with his collar, tearing loose his silver tracks. The colonel took something out of his desk drawer and approached him. He opened his palm to display a chaste gold leaf, which he then with his own hands fastened to the collar tab from which the former insignia had been tremulously torn away.

  — Major Motes! Military intelligence takes care of its own. For a long time our office has been watching your operations down Casablanca way. We lamented that we couldn’t do more for you. . . . But like all great and honest men, you can now reap more than the inner reward, satisfying as that may be, ha-ha. . . . If I was French I’d kiss you on both cheeks. . . . You are the father of censorship in North Africa. And what a bouncing healthy baby it is, ha-ha. . . . Congratulations, Major Motes.

  Major Motes saw the whole vaulted office, its maps and indirect lighting, whirling like a pinwheel before his eyes. People streamed in from other offices to sh
ake his hand. British colonels in their shorts and pipes and scarves pressed his hand and called him Old Man. Stuki stood beside the new major like a hostess, murmuring his name to the queue of officers. Stuki even linked his arm with Major Motes’s, who was so moved he could scarcely stand. Then there was a shrill yap of attention. There entered goutily an elderly British brigadier, carrying in both hands a small medal hanging from a broad violet ribbon. This he suspended round Major Motes’s neck, all the while burring away like a sewing machine:

  — His Majesty the King of England is pleased to acknowledge Major Motes’s services to military censorship. . . . Stout fellow. . . .

  That evening Allied Force G-2 gave a party for Major Motes. It began on the beach at Ain-Taya. Colonels, majors, and captains all went swimming in the mellow surf of the Mediterranean. Stuki’s was the lowest rank there, but the major kept his assistant always with him and presented him to all, beaming:

  — This, gentlemen, is the backbone of censorship in Casa. I have a hundred other officers like him. But he’s the cream.

  And Stuki, shy at first, gradually sallied forth with a good word to this colonel or that major. Major Motes was surprised to find that Stuki knew all their names, and in exactly what branch of G-2 they were: maps, photo reconnaissance, documents, liaison, topography, code and cipher. Stuki’s mustache was foam-flecked from the salt water. After a few drinks he’d chase a major on the beach or crack a joke with a captain from the I and E office.

  Major Motes was slightly worried when he saw how alcoholic the party was going to be. Tonight he’d have to let himself go a bit. After all, it was his promotion party. He’d dispatch Stuki to pour every other glass out in the sand. In the clubhouse at Ain-Taya a keg of American beer was broached. It burst its staves, and one of the British majors lay down in the foamy flood on the tile floor and did the breast stroke.

  — Oh that type! the British chortled.