"And of getting our asses blown into the river when the demolition charges go off," said Sergeant Cline, leader of the third platoon. Cline had the most experience of them all, more than the rest of them combined, and he was a battle-weary cynic.
"Blown into history," said Captain Grimes sarcastically. "That's the way it is. Ride as far as you can, but you'll have to go into the village on foot. Now move!"
Bat took one great gulp of beer, then trotted down the street to where his platoon sat around their vehicles: a truck and a halftrack. He ordered his men into the truck and halftrack, and they set off. Half an hour later they dismounted and advanced through a vineyard on foot. They reached a small grove of trees, hurried through it, and emerged to a spectacular view.
The Rhine lay below. A smooth paved highway ran along the west side of the river. The village was directly below them, dominated by a beautiful centuries-old church. And there was the bridge. It stood. Men and vehicles were streaming across.
Bat used a pair of binoculars from the halftrack and stared at the bridge. "Those are Krauts," he said. "Retreating. Okay. Let's move down. C'mon."
He led his platoon down the hill. He did not take time to look for a road or path. They just walked down, through terraced vineyards. Other units were moving. Something like twenty halftracks were advancing on the highway. The Germans on the bridge began to run. Only a few of them stopped to fire at the Americans.
"They're running away!" one man yelled. "They're not going to defend it!"
"Don't kid yourself," grunted Sergeant Dave Amory.
As Bat's platoon reached the bottom of the hill and the first houses of the village, sniper fire from the windows caught one man in the leg. He was Corporal Prizio, the son of a farmer from upstate New York. He screamed and fell. Bat ordered heavy fire on the houses and then knelt beside Prizio. He would survive. How well he would walk in future was another question.
The platoon moved forward. Their burst of automatic fire, especially that from the BARs, had shattered the windows of the nearest houses and knocked big jagged holes in the stucco on their rear walls. No more sniper fire. First squad, led by Sergeant Amory, kicked down the back door of the nearest house and charged in. Second squad entered another house.
Bat ordered two men to carry Prizio forward and into the first house. First squad spread out through the house and found a German family cowering in the cellar. "Heraus!" Bat screamed. "Heraus! Schnell!"
The Germans came up from their cellar: an elderly woman and two teenaged girls. Bat spoke German to them. "One of you fired on my soldiers and wounded that one. Lawfully, I can shoot all of you. If I decide to shoot you, I will allow my men to take such pleasure of you as they may wish before we shoot you. I offer you one chance to survive. You care for my wounded man. I will return for him — or one of us will. If he has not survived, or if he has been mistreated, you will die, and this house will be burned to the ground."
The women swore they had not fired a shot. It had been done by a Volksturmer — an overage militiaman — who had run when the Americans fired on the house. Bat left Prizio with sulfa and morphine, also with a carbine and a grenade.
The platoon assembled and advanced toward the river and the bridge. Other Americans were in the streets. They could hear the roar of tank engines.
The Ludendorff Bridge was a railway bridge. The Germans had planked over its tracks so tanks and trucks could cross. And it stood there, crossing the sullen gray and swift Rhine. At the far end it debouched at the foot of a stone escarpment. Whoever crossed it would have a hard fight to get beyond it.
As Bat and his platoon stood staring at the bridge, Captain Grimes came to them. "We go across," he said.
A moment later an explosion lifted the bridge and filled the air with smoke and dust. Bat shook his head, then shrugged. Well ... they were relieved of the crossing. The honor would not be theirs. They had arrived a few minutes too late.
But as the air cleared they could see the bridge again, still intact. The explosion had blown open a trench that would temporarily block tanks from crossing, but nothing but German small-arms fire blocked the infantry. Other units ventured onto the bridge. Enemy machine guns in stone guard towers opened fire. American infantrymen moved against it, peppering the towers with steel and lead. Engineers went over the railings and began to cut wires, disarming charges.
Emotions never to be experienced otherwise in life govern the combat soldier. Bat's ran strong, wholly in control of him. He was relieved not to be first across the bridge, but he was torn with anger that other platoons were rushing forward while his stood and stared. From the corner of his eye he saw Captain Grimes returning to give the order. He would not wait.
"Go, for Christ sake! What're we waitin' for? Move! Move! Move!"
He ran ahead of his platoon. He didn't have to glance back to see if they were following him. His men, some of them old enough to be his father, respected him or were afraid of him. They wouldn't let him go across alone. They dreaded what he would do to a man who proved afraid to follow him.
Maybe they dreaded more what their fellow soldiers would think of them.
Bat ran forward. He jumped over the bodies of Americans who had fallen to defensive fire, then over bodies of Germans caught in the sudden onslaught. Tanks on the river highway had zeroed in on the defense towers at the eastern end of the bridge. The white smoke and red fire of phosphorous shells enveloped the entire east end of the bridge. He could hear the agonized screams of German soldiers with phosphorus burning on their skin.
Slugs ricocheted off the steel around him. Ahead he saw a man fall. Drizzle and sweat in his eyes obscured his vision. The air was chilly, but he sweated nevertheless. Time, too, was obscure. He ran for less than a minute, but it seemed as if he were running for ten minutes. His eyes were dimmed, but he saw the situation as if it were engraved on a bright crystal. The danger was the explosive charges under the bridge. "Hey, Mac! Hey, Mac!"
The man was yelling at him. A man over the side. "Hey, Mac! Look! See the cable? Can you hit it?" Bat saw what the man was yelling about: a cable about half the thickness of a man's wrist, running from somewhere to the east and under the bridge — to an explosive charge, without any doubt at all.
"Shoot the son of a bitch! Break that son of a bitch!" Bat nodded. The carbine he was carrying was not the war's most accurate weapon, but he braced himself on the bridge rail and took aim. His first shot missed. A little high. He adjusted. His second slug severed the cable. It hung in shreds. He fired again. And again. The two ends separated and fell apart. "Hey, Mac —"
He had stood still too long. It made him a target. He felt the shock in a lower right rib, then the burning pain. He was aware of nothing after he felt Sergeant Amory dragging him into the shelter of a steel girder.
3
In that, on the 7th day of March 1945, First Lieutenant Jonas E. Batista, while leading his platoon across the Ludendorff Bridge in the face of heavy enemy fire in the best practice of infantry leadership, did stop and, exposing himself as a target, did by accurate fire from his weapon break an electric cable that connected heavy explosive charges to the enemy's source of electric power, thereby preventing detonation of such charges, but subjecting Lieutenant Batista to severe and life-threatening wounds; and
In that First Lieutenant Jonas E. Batista did conduct himself in the face of an armed enemy with extraordinary courage and gallantry in the finest tradition of the Armed Services of the United States,
NOW THEREFORE it is ordered that Lieutenant Jonas E. Batista be awarded and he hereby is awarded THE DISTINGUISHED SERVICE CROSS.
He was also promoted to captain. He was hospitalized first in Antwerp and then in Paris, finally at Walter Reed in Washington. He was at home for Christmas, at the hacienda outside Cordoba.
While he was away his grandfather had died. The hacienda seemed empty without him. Virgilio Escalante now invited him to share cigars and brandy after dinner. He took him into the town and treated h
im to the ministrations of the finest young puta Cordoba could offer. Bat accepted the gift. He returned to see the girl several times. She became a teacher for him.
At the end of his leave he went back to Walter Reed Hospital. The war was over, and he would be discharged as soon as the hospital granted him its final release. He took some time to inquire of Corporal Prizio. The young man had survived and was at home on a farm not far from Watkins Glen. He inquired of Jerry Rabin and learned that Ensign Jerome Rabin had been killed in the Battle of the Coral Sea. Captain — now Major — Grimes was in Japan, a professional soldier staying in the army. Sergeant Dave Amory was at home in Boston.
Bat applied to Harvard, to return and begin the rest of his education in the fall term of 1946.
The fall term began six months later. He had nothing to do for six months. He bought a car: a 1938 Cadillac. He drove up to Watkins Glen and visited Corporal Prizio. After that he drove on to Cambridge and began to look for a place to live. The returning GIs did not want to live in college dorms, and he didn't either. He began to look for an apartment.
He remembered that Sergeant Dave Amory lived in Boston. He called him, and they met for beer and sandwiches at a Cambridge pub.
He didn't raise the subject immediately, but after they'd finished a beer Bat said to Dave, "You saved my life."
"I did like hell," said Dave. "You were down. They wouldn't have wasted ammunition on you."
"Well then, they might have wasted it on you, while you exposed your ass running out there to get me."
Dave shook his head. "I had to run someplace. The other option was run on across the bridge, toward where the firing was hotter. Taking a minute to drag you behind a girder may have saved my life."
Dave Amory was as tall as Bat, and he was a great deal bulkier. His shoulders were broader than Bat's, his body was more solid, and his arms and legs were thicker. His broad, long-jawed face was more often solemn than jocular, but he had a submerged sense of humor that emerged in eccentric comments on just about anything. He was two years older than Bat and would begin his senior year in the fall. After that he would go to law school.
"What are you doing this summer, Dave?"
"Nothing. I'm drawing my fifty-two twenty. Sit around the VFW hall and soak up beer. I figure I'm entitled to a little time off before I pick myself up again."
Bat frowned at him. He lifted his chin. "You bored?" he asked.
Dave tipped his head to one side and drew one corner of his lower lip back between his teeth. He hesitated for a moment, then said, "Yeah, I guess I am. You know what it is."
"I sure do. It was a fuckin' nightmare, Dave, but nothing ever gets a man's juices flowing as strong. I doubt anything ever will. We have to admit it. God grant we never find anything again in our lives that — Well, it sure as hell wasn't boring. I wonder if everything for the rest of our lives will be boring ... by comparison."
"Are you absolutely sure you want to come back to Harvard?" Dave asked.
"No. But I've got to do something, and I don't know what else to do. Besides ... I don't want to disappoint my mother."
Dave chuckled. "As good a reason as any," he said. "What are you, Lieutenant? Twenty-one?"
"Not quite, but please don't call me Lieutenant."
"What you doing about boredom?" Dave asked. "Gettin' laid any?"
"When I was at home last winter, my stepfather set me up with a pretty little whore. I had a wonderful time with her, but —" He shrugged.
Dave nodded.
"When I was here in '42 and '43, my freshman roommate couldn't think of anything but what he called getting his wick dipped. He said he didn't want to die a virgin. Well, he ... didn't. He died, but he wasn't a virgin. God, what enthusiasm we had for it! My first. It wasn't very good, I know now, but —"
"It'll never be quite as good again," said Dave. "In another sense. When the mystery is gone out of a thing —"
"I was terrified of being shot," Bat interrupted. "Then I was hit. I got hit twice, you know. It's not the biggest thing in my life. It would have been if I'd been killed. It would have been if I'd been crippled."
"You had a punctured lung, didn't you? I saw the blood running out of your mouth."
"Lung was full of rib fragments," said Bat. "The Germans made good ammunition. The slugs went through cleanly. But not the bone fragments. Let's talk about something else."
"You looking for a roommate?" asked Dave.
"Sure."
"You have a car. So have I. That means we can look for a place outside Cambridge. Maybe Lexington. We can get more space for less money, and it'll only be a five- or six-mile drive."
"Deal," said Bat.
"Before we can live together, though, I've got to have the answer to a question. The story in the outfit used to be that you were a mysterious guy. We weren't even sure what your name is."
Bat faced Dave with a wry smile. "My name is Jonas Enrique Raúl Cord y Batista."
"Cord! Jonas ... Jonas Cord!"
"My father. And my great-uncle is Fulgencio Batista."
"And you use the name Batista, not Cord?"
"Accident. Batista is the last name on the string, so people tend to call me Batista."
"Which would you rather?"
"I don't care."
"What does your father think?"
"I've never met him."
"Good enough. That was the last question."
They agreed to drive to Lexington the next day. That afternoon they rented the second floor of a big old white frame house. It was furnished, but they told the landlady they would rather store her furniture and buy new. They furnished their apartment — living room, two bedrooms, kitchen, and bath — and moved in.
4
Bat thought about contacting his father. Jonas Cord was constantly in the news. In the hospital in Antwerp, Bat had read newspaper stories about how his father had crashed a huge flying boat in the Pacific off San Diego and lost seventeen million dollars. Then, when Bat was in the hospital in Paris, a story appeared saying his father had remarried. Odd, he had remarried his ex-wife. Another news account said he was going to manufacture television sets, devices that would receive pictures the way radio received voices and music; and he was quoted as saying that millions of American families would own television sets within the next ten years. A busy man. He might not want to meet a son he didn't know he had.
In any case. Bat didn't want to meet him while he was a student. When he was somebody — doctor, lawyer, merchant, chief — maybe he would confront this peripatetic tycoon. He would confront him when he was established, and his father could not suppose he had come to beg for something. Putting the matter more simply, Bat didn't want to meet his father until he could, if he chose to, tell him to go to hell.
11
1
"TONI, TONI, TONI, TONI ... I LOVE YOU, Antonia Maxim. Will you marry me?"
Antonia Maxim — she pronounced her name Ahn-toe-NEE-a — glanced up into his eyes, a playful expression on her face. "You didn't even have to ask, Bat. You know I'll marry you. You know I love you. I've proved it, haven't I? It's been a whirlwind courtship, but you have to know I love you."
It was a sunny Saturday afternoon, in the fall, when many Harvardians and Radcliffe girls had gone to the football game. Dave had gone to the stadium — more as an accommodation to his friends than because he was interested in the game — so Bat and Toni were alone in the bright, spacious, comfortable living room of the second-floor apartment in the house at Lexington.
He was naked. She had learned not to stare at the ugly purplish scar where a German bullet had crashed through his lower right ribs and nearly killed him — or at the lesser white scar in his left armpit, the mark of a flesh wound. She knew she was welcome to stare at what hung between his legs: oversized, at least in her experience, and straight and powerful. He was tanned. He had spent the summer before — that is, the summer of 1947 — at home in Mexico and had spent a great deal of time in the sun, playing ten
nis and lounging around a pool. He was a trim, sleekly muscled man, not lacking in self-confidence.
She was naked, too, except for a pair of white rayon panties. Antonia was exquisitely beautiful. Her hair was dark-brown, her eyes big and brown, her mouth narrow but her lips fleshy, and her face was stretched over well-defined cheekbones and a firm jawline. She carried no extra flesh, except perhaps for her breasts, which were large and firm and tipped with big rosy nipples. Her panties covered a commodious shiny-pink cleft, with which he had become profoundly intimate.
He had learned of Toni that she was comfortable exposing to him her legs and hips and belly and breasts and was never in any hurry to cover them but that she was not comfortable exposing her crotch and would not pull down her panties until absolutely necessary.
Right now she did not need to have her panties down.
She ran her tongue around his scrotum, then up the length of his penis to the tip. He drew a deep breath and let it out in a low moan.
"You really like that, don't you?" she asked, grinning.
"I had to teach you how," he said, squeezing her shoulder affectionately.
"Well ... if somebody had asked me two months ago if I'd ever do it, I'd have told them hell no, and you're crazy if you think I will."
"That's about what you said when I suggested it."
He had suggested it because they were in bed together and had just discovered they had no condoms; the package was empty. She had shaken her head indignantly. "You mean you want me to fellate you?" she had sneered. "What do you think I am?" Even so, she had lowered her head and impulsively, also a little sullenly, kissed his penis. The next afternoon, after they had coupled, she had pulled off his condom, wiped him with Kleenex, and kissed him again. Then very tentatively she had licked him — including his foreskin which again gleamed with his fluid. She had looked up at him, frowned, then quickly and decisively opened her mouth and shoved half his length into her mouth. She had held it there for ten seconds or so before she pulled away. "Just what you always wanted," she had said. "Your own personal fellatrix."
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