The Gallery

by John Horne Burns

— Character! howled the American officers.

  The dinner was a relay affair, with one course served at each colonel’s villa around the hills of Algiers. The party would pile into jeeps and staff cars and screech through the streets from one villa to the next. They’d have soup in Maison Carrée and steak in Maison Blanche. Major Motes was a little envious, for he now knew that Casa was pretty small potatoes compared to the way The Boys lived at AFHQ. All officers of field grade had villas. In each the major noted the presence of a lovely Algérienne as hostess.

  The last course of dinner ended at 2200 hours. All the officers were in high spirits. They decided to round out the evening at the Center District Club of the Mediterranean Base Section, three blocks from the Aletti Hotel, near Algiers Harbor. Jeeps and staff and command cars tore through the blacked-out streets of Algiers, screaming at the French to get the hell off the roads. Captains and majors and colonels yelled good fellowship at one another like kids on an outing. Occasionally (just for sport) two jeeps would drive parallel till they were abreast. Then they’d lock wheels. Just kids at heart.

  — I think I’m going to be sick, Major Motes said into Stuki’s ear.

  — Now just ya hold on, chief. It’s all in ya imagination. . . . An say, ain’t this fun? . . . We gotta leave that stinky Casa, huh? We gotta move here an get in with these bigtime operators.

  The Center District Club was low and cool, hung with green and ocher chintzes. Service was by Italian prisoners of war in white linen coats. These stood behind the bar leaning on their elbows, their eyes misty with nostalgia. Seeing the P/W, Major Motes revived from his rum dizziness and said impressively to a small circle:

  — Goddam it now, boys. Look at those goddam Dagos. Feeling sorry for themselves, as usual. . . . Don’t they like American rations? A few months ago they were killing our boys in Tunisia . . .

  A Negro band blared up. An elderly lieutenant colonel of the party lurched to his feet and cried whoopee. He grabbed the prettiest and youngest of the P/W waiters and pushed him into a tango over the floor among sparring junior officers and nurses and the girls of Algiers. From the club’s doorway came an MP to break up the clinch of the colonel and the Italian, who had begun to cry.

  Stuki left Major Motes’s side and went to talk with the Italian bartenders. His mustache quivered with joy as his Italian poured out. Soon he came back to tell the major that their names were Otello and Enzo and Gabriele, and how he’d upbraided them for declaring war on us, how he’d taunted them for Mussolini and for betting on the wrong horse. In short Stuki’d told those wops a thing or two. Presently the prisoners of war began to blubber and bawl as they drew the beer and rum. This brought out the sergeant and the officer in charge of the club, who yelled and waved threats at their help.

  — Call a strike, Ginsoes! Stuki railed at them, his mustaches quivering with passion. I dare ya! Call a strike.

  The G-2 section roosted on the edge of the dance floor, British and American mingled. Drinks kept coming and coming, the strongest sweetest rum, schooners of beer, tall emerald Tom Collinses. Major Motes’s stomach was squeezing like an accordion. So he sat where he could pour most of these libations into the base of the potted palm behind him. Toward midnight the Negro band got hotter and hotter. The girls of Algiers in the scented gloom of the dance floor lay across officers’ laps and submitted to long laughing embraces while their escorts’ hands tore at the straps of their gowns.

  — Ya livin, kids! Stuki screamed over the brass and drums.

  Then a captain arose from his cane-bottomed chair and bounced it off the chintz-arrased wall.

  — Christ, but this place is dull! I want action.

  So the party repaired to their jeeps and staff cars. They formed a drunken convoy and tore through the town of Algiers, where only thimbles of light showed through the trees on Rue Michelet. Then even these tiny landmarks flickered out. Sirens began to shriek all over Algiers. The convoy screeched to a stop. Two jeeps telescoped. All the officers wove or were carried out of their vehicles to the side of the road, where they threw themselves down on their faces in a culvert.

  — Bes thing in an air raid is a woman! someone shouted with his mouth against the dirt. Where is she? Beaucoup women, beaucoup dive bombers!

  But no planes came over Algiers that night.

  Major Motes and Stuki landed at Cazes airfield and took the ATC bus into Casablanca. They had hangovers. It was the middle of the morning. The domes and finger-slim white apartment houses of the city glowed like solid geometry alive.

  — Ya got a ordeal aheada ya, chief, Stuki mumbled.

  Lieutenant Frank was waiting at the office with a clipped-together file of typewritten paper. He chomped on his cigar and twisted at the embossed belt about his paunch. His pink pants had a stain over his left cheek. In the examination room Major Motes saw that the examiners were bent over their Stars and Stripes. There was peace with them. Nevertheless he called out a bright good morning. They glanced up and, noting the new gold leaf on his collar, blanched and blinked. He heard them whispering chaotically to one another as he took the document from Lieutenant Frank’s mottled hand and went behind the glass partition of the front office to scan it. He had to keep from trembling at his desk, for he knew that every eye was upon him. For the first time he cursed the glass wall of the front office that made him as vulnerable as a floodlighted thief.

  The report of the inspector general was a lengthy and detailed document. Before he settled down to reading it, he leafed through it for a skimming, lighting a cigarette with shaking all-thumbs and moistening the tip of his forefinger. He observed that nearly every officer and GI of his detachment had registered a complaint against him. It was all there in stenographic fullness. He had the sixth carbon.

  Major Motes took an hour to read the report. He pored over it in a concentration of horror, just as a hypochondriac notes the symptoms of a disease in an encyclopedia and compares them with his own.

  His officers had complained to the IG that they enjoyed none of the prestige or authority of their commissions. Some mentioned having been humiliated by Lieutenant Frank in the presence of enlisted men. All agreed that the process of censoring mail had been reduced to a frightful and unnecessary drudgery. One used the expression that they were worse off than slaveys at sewing machines in a sweatshop. In the depositions of the officers there recurred the phrase Unholy Three, meaning Major Motes, Stuki, and Lieutenant Frank. They were also called the Inner Circle. Others averred that the outfit was run in a style befitting a reform school for girls, with flagrant abuses occurring under a façade of being GI. There were protests against the freezing of transportation, whereas the Unholy Three used jeeps and trucks at their own sweet pleasure. Officers swore that they weren’t allowed to entertain ladies in their billets, but that Lieutenant Frank violated the order continually and with impunity.

  The GI’s of the outfit had told the IG that they never knew where they stood with the officers. The sergeant major said that Captain Motes never looked him in the eyes when he gave him an order. Other GI’s said that some officers had drunk with them and played golf with them at Fedhala, while other officers would press court-martial charges without provocation. But the focus of all the pissing and moaning was that Captain Motes was a spineless commanding officer, that the disunity and confusion and cruelty of the detachment all stemmed from him, that he gave his orders through his mouthpiece, as though he himself were afraid and unsure.

  Major Motes began to exude an icy sweat when he got to the recommendations of the inspector general. There were three. That officers should not be forced to live so close together when off duty. That stricter demarcation he made between the treatment of officers and enlisted men. That Captain Motes establish sound policies of leadership or else be removed from command of his detachments.

  He rose from his desk, made a giant effort to master the quaking of his nerves, and rushed out into the examination room with the IG report in his hand. There he summarily had an o
fficers’ call. He read to all his examiners the report of the inspector general even to the recommendations, not sparing himself. When he’d read the last sentence, with its implication of his being removed from command for incompetence, he laid his face in his hands and wept noisily.

  — Gentlemen, forgive me. . . . All I can say is that if we have had dirty linen in this detachment, we should have aired it together . . . but in privacy.

  He continued to sob snortingly for a full minute. Then a round of applause rippled through the examination room, and one officer got to his feet and called:

  — Major, you’re a man’s man. We’ll stand by you.

  — Let’s wipe the slate clean and start anew, Major Motes sniffled, diving for his handkerchief.

  — Let bygones be bygones! a roar went up through the room.

  The entire detachment entrained for Algiers.

  On the three-day train ride Major Motes busied himself creating new titles for almost all his officers. This one would be mess officer, this one soldier voting officer, another in charge of special service, another PX officer, another war bond officer. Major Motes rushed from car to car, personally distributing special orders and designations and citations he’d had the sergeant major type up. Thus with all the officers become something in their own eyes, the trip was made in a gala and phoenix spirit.

  He spoke much of the advance detail of specially trusted officers he’d dispatched in trucks to Algiers to set up housekeeping. Yet when they detrained at Maison Blanche at the depot where they were to live, it was discovered that the advance detail hadn’t yet arrived. But Lieutenant Frank did some shouting and cigar chewing, and at last the dirty weary frayed detachment was permitted to partake of Spam in an abandoned mess after a nigra band had finished its chow.

  For himself and Stuki he chose a pyramidal tent at the head of a blocked row close to the latrines. On the sand in front of it was an attempt at a lawn, colored pebbles and flowers plotted out by the Italian P/W who were their orderlies.

  Next morning Major Motes was awakened at 1000 hours by a full colonel standing over him and prodding him.

  — Stand at attention. Who the hell are you?

  Major Motes scrambled out of his cot in his flowered pajamas.

  — You’re in charge of that censorship gang that moved in yesterday? In the future you and all your detachment will stand reveille, like everyone else in this depot. We’re all in the army here.

  — But we’re a separate intelligence outfit. We’re simply billeted here for the convenience of AFHQ . . .

  — You heard me, the colonel yelled. I am in command of this depot. As long as you and your letter openers live in these tents, you’ll abide by my orders. . . .

  Major Motes spent much of his time at AFHQ offices in Algiers. He carried in his briefcase samples of comment sheets, which are extracts of violations found in troop mail. He was like a peddler going from door to door. He had a theory that military censorship still hadn’t the importance it deserved. By persistence he soon made his organization well known. Shortly afterwards, at his own request, there was transferred to his detachment one of the bright young men of AFHQ. This young officer told Major Motes that he could never forgive the war for interrupting his doctor’s dissertation in Erse philology.

  Lieutenant Mayberry sought out Major Motes every night. He was a short boyish second lieutenant with thin blond hair and an incisive baritone. He always carried with him Fowler’s Modern English Usage. Before long Major Motes said to himself that Lieutenant Mayberry was the most cultivated and disciplined mind he’d ever known. Each night he’d root out the major and Stuki where they sat working late in their office, entering the Boyle hut after a businesslike knock. He’d take off his field jacket and set down his Blue Book.

  — I’m afraid, lieutenant, said Stuki languidly, that we ain’t good enough for ya here. We don’t know much about readin and writin.

  — Do you mind leaving us alone? I have some business with your commanding officer.

  Lieutenant Mayberry had a way with Stuki as though he weren’t even in the room.

  — Who tha hell ya talkin to? Stuki shrilled. I know more about postal censorship than you do. . . . So ya better be nice to me. . . . Besides I think ya pretty fresssssssh bargin in here this way. Nobody asked for your advice.

  — I appeal to you, sir, Lieutenant Mayberry cried to Major Motes with a Shakespearean gesture of outraged sensibility. This is a confidential matter I wish to discuss with you.

  So Stuki left the Boyle hut, his mustache working and his brown eyes sparking.

  — That fellow should change his hair oil, Lieutenant Mayberry said. I speak of him so frankly with you, sir, because I know that in your heart of hearts you size him up the way I do . . . he’s a creature.

  — He means well, Major Motes said quickly.

  — Takes more than good intentions to win a war, as you and I know well, sir. . . . That fellow is what I’d call a greaser. . . . Frankly, sir, do you trust Italo-Americans of the first generation? Cloak and dagger, that’s all they are. . . . But why am I telling you these things? Perhaps I lecture a little bit too much. . . . I’ve just come from working with inferior minds. I’ve got into the habit of underscoring everything I say. . . . Sir, I was delighted to be transferred to your command. I was getting sick of the intellectual stagnation of Algiers. Fed up with it. . . . Sir, I desire to place at your disposal certain talents which have so far been wasted. . . . Special skills suffer in the army, don’t they? You, sir, should know . . . for you are a specialist.

  — Thank you, Major Motes said.

  — Don’t thank me for facts, sir. I don’t underestimate myself. And I speak thus frankly to you because I’ve known you and heard of you as a man who lives by plain dealing. . . . I don’t pay oily compliments, sir. My semantic training has taught me the value of language. Oh sir, the waste that goes on in meanings in this modern world! . . . With your permission. . . .

  Lieutenant Mayberry brought a folding metal chair to the desk and seated himself next the major under the green-hooded white light. Major Motes studied the thinning yellow hair, the tuft of yellow mustache, the slashed line of the mouth. The forehead was etched out in pool-like hollows, the pale blue eyes were hooded with thought. Lieutenant Mayberry opened a folder full of diagrams and figures.

  — Major, sir, in justice I must tell you that I know all about your unfortunate . . . incident in Casablanca. . . . I read all the files. And I said to myself, there’s a man being done to death. A modern Acteon. . . . My heart bled for you, sir.

  — The . . . incident . . . has all blown over, Major Motes said, making a vague pass at the air.

  — Thank God justice has been done, Lieutenant Mayberry murmured, devoutly lifting his eyes into the dark beyond the shaded light. His white hand moved over the figured sheets, which were full of lines and arrows and labeled boxes. There were also sheets of graph paper and canals in particolored crayon.

  — Now sir, work of your kind is enormously important to the Allied war effort. . . . But because censorship is essentially negative in action and results, it needs advertising and pictorial aids to keep it before the eyes and in the consciousness of the bigwigs in Algiers. Pardon the vulgarism. . . . Otherwise your valuable work gets lost in the shuffle of more voluble intelligence agencies.

  — I see what you mean, Major Motes said, warming, and eying the patchwork quilt of graphs.

  — Of course you do, sir; of course you do. . . . Now, do you get out a mimeographed monthly report? Are you making the fullest possible use of charts and figures as visual aids? . . . Think for example of the stunning effect on some stuffy brigadier general of a huge colored sketch on oilcloth, showing the ratio of V-mail read in relation to the number of ordinary letters, with legends and percentiles of the types of censorship violations. . . . Then you will of course forward carbons of your comment sheets to all user agencies. . . . Do you have punch headlines to attract the weary and wandering eye? . . . Do y
ou make appropriate use of underscoring and italics in order to — shall we say — slant the material? Do you quote only sections that are pertinent? . . . And have you arresting-looking buckslips to be returned from the offices concerned, showing what action has been taken, or whether they’ve simply thrown your precious submissions into the wastebaskets? . . .

  As Lieutenant Mayberry talked, vistas fell open to Major Motes’s eyes. He saw that to this hour he hadn’t even tapped the potentialities of censorship. It was one of the most vital of all America’s secret weapons. The two men shook hands after a three-hour discussion. Major Motes was exhausted and thrilled by the controlled violence of Lieutenant Mayberry’s mind, by the clarity and ruthlessness of his new young officer’s thinking.

  The following morning a desk was set up in the front office for Lieutenant Mayberry. Over his head was suspended a sign, lettered by an Italian P/W: REPORTS, RETURNS, AND STATISTICAL DIVISION. Stuki sat at his own field desk and glared and purred rawly. And all day long every error in Stuki’s grammar was pounced on by Lieutenant Mayberry, with Fowler’s book open to be cited as the authority. To all this Major Motes listened with pride and avidity. One day he gave Lieutenant Mayberry authority to wear his Phi Beta Kappa key on his watch chain. He’d got into the habit of reading aloud his V-mails to his new section chief, who’d make slight emendations in their style.

  — You write a fine prose, sir. . . . But do read a little more Macaulay.

  It took less than a week for Lieutenant Mayberry to work drastic changes in the front office. He undertook first the rehabilitation of the enlisted clerks of the detachment. In his evenings (he never went to Algiers for amusement or distraction) he gave French lessons to several corporals from Baltimore, bending his blond mustache over them as they squirmed and parsed under the brilliant shaded lights. Then he made them read François Villon, saying that it would help them with their Algerian loves. Nor did the first sergeant or the sergeant major escape him. He waged a cultural war on them. First he made them feel ridiculous and loutish by working up a comedy campaign against them every time they took out their comic books from under their typewriters. In two weeks he’d reduced them to such despair that they were spelling out Thomas Mann and puzzling over Lieutenant Mayberry’s favorite poem, a line of which was always on his lips: I have been faithful to thee, Cynara, in my fashion. . . . He told the whole GI office force that than this poem there was nothing more magic or golden in all literature; it was better than Joyce Kilmer or Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.