The Gallery

by John Horne Burns

  Lieutenant Mayberry said that the modern American language was falling apart from lack of discipline or surface tension. Therefore as an antidote he insisted on a Victorian tautness and periodicity in all the prose emanating from his office.

  He organized a glee club for the officers and enlisted men of the detachment. Major Motes, observing that, while they sang, his command had the first unity of its army career, made attendance at glee club rehearsals compulsory to all. On nights when Lieutenant Mayberry bullied his choir through nigra spirituals in an abandoned mess hall, nobody got a pass to Algiers.

  But the noblest achievements were wrought at month’s end in the monthly censorship report that went to AFHQ. When this was in the mill, starting with the twenty-seventh of each month, Lieutenant Mayberry would shut himself in the office till midnight and be unapproachable. It was miraculous what he could do with the detachment’s figures, which, unvarnished, were simply a list of the number of V-mails and ordinary letters read each month, violations of military security, and recommendations of new ground rules for postal censorship. What went to G-2 in Algiers was a ten-page mimeographed brochure accompanied by graphs, charts, arrows, slots of different altitudes and colors. And the history of the censorship detachment for each thirty days was set forth in gorgeous army-ese, with paragraphs commencing with such stately tidbits as:

  — Attention is directed to a chain of malfeasances by . . .

  — It is felt that such directives would irreparably condone . . .

  Major Motes had never been so happy or important or aware of his contribution to the war effort. He had frequent meetings with his officers in which he lashed them on to new heights of work and achievement. Officers who read fewer than five hundred letters a day were excoriated in Mayberry prose on the bulletin boards. The examination of mail reached such velocity that a wit remarked that the turning over of letters on the examination tables created a breeze which blew planes backwards at Maison Blanche airport.

  In his executive ecstasy Major Motes created still more posts for his officers. Nothing now was too good for them. He gave Lieutenant Mayberry a jeep all his own, which that officer christened under its windshield CYNARA in letters of Caslon style six inches high. Major Motes designated a club officer to open a little bar in an empty tent. He named an assistant recreational officer to preview all films to be shown to the detachment. There was only one fly now in the ointment: it was still difficult to get promotions for his officers in relation to their just deserts. Reading their mail in the evenings, he noticed a rising tendency to bitch about promotions. Requests for transfer again mounted and had to cool off in his top desk drawer.

  One day Major Motes asked the A C of S G-2 to come and address his examiners. The colonel turned up and talked for an hour in a masterful yet cajoling way. He scolded and railed and wept and tore at his iron-gray hair, saying how he himself would like very much to be a brigadier general, but how he too was making a sacrifice. And in a roaring peroration the colonel told the officers that there were richer rewards in the army than the outward one of changing the brass on their collars. He concluded:

  — Ah, gentlemen, gentlemen! When your babies cluster around your knee and ask, Daddy, what did you do to help win the war? you can bow your heads without shame and say, Son, I had the hardest job of all. I was in the intelligence service of the Army of the United States. . . .

  In May, 1944, pressure was put on AFHQ by Washington. It was felt that there were in North Africa altogether too many officers and enlisted men hanging around the base sections with nothing to do but keep meaningless office hours, put their feet on their desks, and read Stars and Stripes. Many of these malingerers, Washington hinted, could very well be sent to the Italian front as infantry replacements. The general officers of AFHQ went into a panic. Hadn’t they figured on huge commands simply to take up the slack, on the principle that a team must have many substitutes on the bench? But the reckoning came to AFHQ, in the persons of inspecting generals flown to Algiers from the Pentagon. They represented the War Manpower Commission, and they came with the conviction already implanted in them that work in the Algiers area could be realized with a cut of one-third of the personnel.

  When Major Motes got a phone call that a brigadier general of WMC would visit his detachment that afternoon, he held a conference in the front office. Present were Stuki, Lieutenant Frank, and Lieutenant Mayberry.

  — Goddam it, what am I going to do? Major Motes screamed in executive anguish. They’ll cut half the detachment. I simply can’t get along on a skeleton office force. You all know how vital our work is. . . .

  There was some hasty whispering and planning. Shortly afterwards Lieutenant Frank stalked out into the examination room, bit his cigar, called for the officers’ attention, and said in a curdling voice:

  — News item: They’re hard up in Italy for infantry replacements. If they don’t find those replacements damn quick, they’re gonna start pickin em outa the hat. Here for instance. . . . Those of ya who wish to volunteer for combat kindly step into the front office after this meetin is over. . . . Ya’ll get six weeks training an then be sent to tha Eyetalian front. . . . After all we gotta take Rome, ain’t we? . . . An I know that some a ya feel ya could make a more important contribution than ya been makin. . . . Like leadin a platoon inta a chatterin machine-gun nest. . . .

  Almost immediately a fat looie tottered into the front office. He dragged Major Motes into one of the shed latrines. He gibbered and sobbed:

  — Major, lissen . . . I never caused ya no trouble, did I, now? . . . An there’s sonsabitches out in that room ud cut ya throat. . . . Single guys. Now I gotta wife an two kids I ain’t never seen. . . . I wanna go back to em in one piece, see? . . . Ya wouldn’t, ya couldn’t . . .

  — I understand, I understand, goddam it, Major Motes said hoarsely, wringing the officer’s hand.

  And after noon chow there turned up a brigadier general from the War Manpower Commission in an olive-drab staff car, with a pretty WAC sergeant for a secretary and a covey of aides with clipboards. Meanwhile Lieutenant Mayberry and Stuki were busy in the examination room. They dumped all the mailbags on the reading tables, so that each examiner, when he returned from lunch, would find himself surrounded with sufficient mail to censor for the next month. They piled the mail on three sides of each examiner’s field desk. When they’d finished, each desk looked like a machine-gun emplacement.

  While this was going according to instructions, the general was standing in the front office, haranguing Major Motes and Lieutenant Frank, who’d offered him a fine chunky cigar.

  — We’re convinced back in the Pentagon, said the general, nibbling at the tip of the cigar, that something funny is going on over here. We believe that many overseas headquarters are something of a war crime in themselves. They tend to get bigger and bigger, like a snowball. . . . While on the Italian front there’s a critical shortage of infantrymen. We suspect that Allied Force Headquarters is ridiculously overstaffed.

  — Well, sir, I know only my own outfit, Major Motes said meekly. A good commanding officer must stay at home and tend to his own washing.

  — There must be some of your personnel you feel you can get rid of, the general roared.

  — Will the general look at my poor clerks? the major moaned, gesturing at rows of corporals who were beating the life out of their typewriters. Sir, a good officer thinks of his GI’s first. . . . And these poor joes, sir, I haven’t been able to give them an Algiers pass this week. . . . They have to work nights . . . beg to, poor devils. . . . And I’ve got three officers in the hospital, sir . . . nervous breakdowns . . . overwork.

  — Let me see the room where the mail is read, said the general.

  — Let me impress upon the general that everything he’s about to see is strictly confidential. . . . Examination of personal mail is the privilege and the responsibility of the cream of American commissioned officers.

  The general blew out a tuberose of cigar smoke.
The major stepped aside to let him pass into the examination room. Here there was the silence of a library. The head of each examiner could barely be seen over the top of the litter of letters that Stuki and Lieutenant Mayberry had piled on the field desks. It looked like Christmas Eve in a post office.

  — O my God! the general said softly. Don’t envy those poor fellows. Read read read . . . is this a normal day for them, major?

  — Quite normal, sir. . . . Perhaps when the general goes back to Washington, he may remember to mention in his report officers he saw who never make the headlines or the Purple Heart, but who just as surely were giving their eyes in the service of their country.

  The brigadier general later left, muttering apologetically that Major Motes did indeed need a larger staff, and that himself would personally see what could be done. Lieutenant Frank told the examiners that they might take the rest of the afternoon off:

  — But don’t go tattlin to ya little friends in Algiers about what happened here this afternoon . . . if ya wise. . . . That general wanted to send ya all to the Eyetalian front and replace ya with WAC’s. . . . Not that they couldn’t do a better job. . . .

  Major Motes’s triumph of the day was complete when Algiers phoned at 1600 hours to state that Lieutenant Mayberry was now a first lieutenant and Lieutenant Frank a captain. Out of his secret drawer Lieutenant Frank fished a set of silver tracks and pinned them on himself.

  — Seventeen months of sweatin! he bellowed. An I got gold leaves bought too.

  — I have no silver bars, Lieutenant Mayberry murmured piteously to himself. I didn’t come overseas expecting to be promoted.

  — Well, I ain’t got no extras to giveya, Stuki said, yellow under his tan.

  Like a bridegroom bull Captain Frank hurtled around the front office:

  — So they called me a permanent first, hey?

  He then ripped the old silver bars off his cap and off his field jacket and threw them like deadly little brooches with the pins open at Lieutenant Mayberry, who caught them humbly, his eyes shining thankfulness, his blond mustache rampant.

  — Take em take em take em. . . . Ya can shove em up if ya like. . . .

  Major Motes wasn’t a great one for wasting the pay of the army, but his Virginia sense told him that tonight was the unavoidable occasion for a party. Promotion parties are simply de rigueur to old soldiers. So he invited Stuki, First Lieutenant Mayberry, and Captain Frank to be his guests for the evening. They got into his jeep with festive solemnity and headed for Algiers. Even as he drove, Major Motes was aware that Stuki was brooding because he hadn’t been promoted too.

  — A few more months yet, he said cheerily in Stuki’s ear, laying his hand consolingly on his roommate’s arm.

  — Few more months, balls, Stuki said with feeling.

  At first Major Motes wondered whether he could get away with taking them all to the TAM mess, paying five francs for each, and throwing in two bottles of white wine. But as they descended into Algiers where in the blue water the hospital ships were falling and heaving under the barrage balloons, he knew he couldn’t get away with that for a promotion party. So he took them to a black market restaurant off Rue d’Isly, where for two thousand francs they got a peasant soup, eggs, a thin steak, a salad, pastry baked without sugar, and wine.

  — Kinda expensive, these promotion parties, Stuki leered. Betcha glad they don’t come around too often, huh, chief?

  Then they picked up in the jeep Captain Frank’s Algiers mistress, a huge and vociferous French girl with hair under her arms. When she saw her lover’s new insignia, she screamed and ran her tongue over his thick purple lips. The final touch in Major Motes’s hospitality was an invitation to the Center District Club for drinks. He himself got nervous and broody as usual with alcohol. But he pretended for the occasion’s sake that he was having mad fun, even to nudging the mistress once, for which she goosed him feelingly and invited him up some evening when her capitaine couldn’t come. Then all except Major Motes got drunk on P/W gin. Captain Frank believed himself Napoleon, putting his cap on sidewise and sticking a hand inside his meaty chest. Lieutenant Mayberry lectured on the English language as distinct from Americanese. And Stuki just drank and drank till the tears dribbled off his mustache into his gin. At midnight he announced he was going out into the streets of Algiers to cruise up a little heavy lovin.

  On Saturday morning 31 July 1944, Major Motes first saw the city of Naples checkered in the sunlight. Over the bay rode the smell of all the world’s garbage.

  — My ole man started out from this burg, Stuki said. His ole man put him on a boat when he was eleven. Told him to shift for himself, he didn’t never wanna see his puss again. . . . Now I’m comin back to Napoli. I’ll show em they couldn’t treat my ole man the way they did.

  — All your relatives’ houses will be off limits anyhow, Lieutenant Mayberry said. So you’ll be spared the trouble of a courtesy call on them. . . . I smell that pasta and hair oil already.

  It took six hours to unload the ship. It was late afternoon when they and their baggage rattled out of the barbed wire around the port. Major Motes appraised the ruin around Naples Harbor.

  — Goddam it, he cried exulting. See what happens to people who declare war on Uncle Sam?

  Lieutenant Mayberry wondered aloud:

  — I wonder how many greasers are still lying under that rubble? . . . Well, Italy always was overpopulated. Musso sends the birth rate up, so we choose our own means of bringing it down.

  — That’s what they get for kickin my ole man out, Stuki said, tweaking his mustache in approbation. So now I’ll stamp all over their ole ruins. . . . My ole man says Italy always did have too many monuments.

  Captain Frank looked at the carts picking through the narrower streets.

  — So I left my baby doll in Algiers for this. . . . Well, guess there’ll be choicer pickins here, though.

  When Major Motes first saw it at the end of July, 1944, Naples was a steaming and shattered anthill committed to some furious project. Besides the Neapolitans, the streets were mad with Allied soldiers. He felt already faint from the heat. They drove to the palazzo where their offices were to be set up. It was a huge block of stone and balconies that had once housed offices and German companies. On its four floors room after room yearned out emptily, echoing rooms with painted plaster and nothing else but rubble in them.

  He and his party climbed to the roof of the palazzo, which was a flat square of gravel girdled with a railing. They could see the shrill blue of the Bay of Naples. To their rear was a column and a heap of plaster shag from which flowers were already poking out their heads like war orphans. To their right was a church where the bombs had ripped away half the wall; they saw the statues and the benches and the organpipes and the tattered winy draperies that once sheathed the arches. To their left was the turn of an alley from which rose the steam of urine vaporizing in the sun. Here stood a queue of GI’s waiting at the entrance to a house. Girls peeped out from its tiny balconies on the second floor; screaming children were hawking the charms to be bought upstairs. In and out of this house the GI’s were in constant motion. They’d posted watches against the coming of MP’s. Captain Frank watched this shifting line with interest. Finally he leaned his paunch in its pink trousers over the railing of the roof terrace and hooted paternally at the GI’s:

  — Oooh you VD!

  Lieutenant Mayberry looked out over the housetops, heavy with his sense of history and of time:

  — That’s the Italy of the guidebooks and paintings for you: a cat house next door to a church.

  — It stinks, Stuki said, holding his nose over his mustache. I see why my ole man never came back to it.

  — I feel, the major said, that our organization is going into a new and brilliant phase here in Naples. . . . I want you all to share my triumphs.

  Early in August, 1944, Major Motes’s palazzo opened for business. He’d made it the headquarters for most of the censorship in meridian Italy. H
e’d screened out hordes of Italian civilians who desired to work for the Allies at twenty-one hundred lire a week: refugees from Trieste, penniless students of the University of Naples, pale Jews who’d hidden from pillar to post in Italy. And Major Motes got them all seated at long examination tables in hushed rooms under hard lights. He locked the massive wooden doors on them and labeled the entrances with secret designations. Inside these inquisitorial rooms the furren examiners unfolded the long green sheets of the provost marshal general and read:

  — Carissima mamma, io sto bene, e cosi spero di te e dell’intera famiglia . . .

  or

  — Was ich auch von dir hoffe .

  those twenty-four lines which Italian and German P/W wrote their families each week by permission of the Geneva Convention. These furren examiners brought their lunches to work wrapped in old copies of Risorgimento: black bread and cheese. Soon they petitioned for American rations to be served as the noon meal, since they were now in the employ of the United States Army.

  — Those Ginsoes expect us to serve em a lunch! Stuki cried.

  — The only logical position for a greaser, Lieutenant Mayberry said, is under a wolf, sucking her teats like Romulus and Remus.

  — They’re like nigras and must be kept in their place, Major Motes said.

  But since so many of the Italians fainted away at their work under the hard lights in the airless examination rooms, he promised to try for a GI food issue. To himself, however, he declared that he’d never lift a finger to help feed a people which had declared war on the United States and which had been the turncoat traitors of Europe throughout their history. More Italians fainted while censoring the mail, and more were hired to take their places: dottori and professori and geometri and ragionieri and studenti. Next it was arranged that the Italians and the American officers should dine and be released at different hours in order that they should never meet to make friends or compare notes on the winding staircase of the palazzo. And often in the afternoons Major Motes would stand in the cortile of the palazzo to watch his workers streaming out when the bell set them free. The Italians walked arm in arm or skidded along in sandals and shorts carrying their umbrellas. The American officers looked like moles coming from underground and rubbing the itching of their eyes. Major Motes got to feel like Henry Ford watching his plants empty at the changeover of a shift.