He walked to the window. Below was a small rectangular swimming pool, the water bright turquoise. The pool was empty, and the water lapped restlessly along the tiled sides. The narrow pavement around it was scattered with lounge chairs. On one side was a high stockade fence, easily scalable. On the far side of the pool was another wing of the hotel, and rows of blank windows stared in at his. The other wing was twenty meters away, an easy shot. Though he’d turned in his rifle.
He pulled the curtains closed. He wanted a civilian shower. He began to undress, dropping his clothes on the bed. He kicked off his moccasins. His feet were white and slimy: he had a Godzilla case of athlete’s foot. Everyone got it. It was fungus from wearing your boots too long, too much heat, not enough washing.
He didn’t actually want to touch his feet. Sometimes when he’d taken off his boots, the skin peeled off in his fingers in long, pale, putrid strips. When he was wearing his boots, his feet didn’t hurt. It was when he took them off that his feet started itching and burning.
It was strange walking around in civilian shoes, no boots, no dog tags inside the left one, bunching beneath his toes. The dog tags felt like a good-luck charm, even though they were for the worst-case scenario, ID’ing a dead body. But they meant a kind of ultimate care, like a name and address pinned onto a traveling kid. This is who I am.
In the shower he closed his eyes and let the hot water stream over him. The showerhead was a small disk, pale with oxidation. He raised it, training the stream directly at himself, closed his eyes, and turned his head up toward the hammering rush. All the hot water he wanted, and all the time. It was unimaginable. He felt something release in his neck. He was here, standing in the bathtub in a hotel in America. He was back. What lay before him was dinner with his parents, nothing more than that, and he was not in danger, there was no threat outside this room, his body was not held tightly on alert, nerves singing, waiting endlessly for the sound of the explosion; he was here in this clean, tiled space, alone, and he was safe, and this was a kind of miracle. The shower curtain drifted against his shoulder and he twitched reflexively, but it was only the shower curtain moving in the current of air made by the shower. It was nothing. He was safe, and at that surprising thought he felt something stinging around his eyes: he was crying. The water drummed against his face, his ears, the back of his calves, his slimy feet.
This would be good for the athlete’s foot. Or maybe not: you should dry out fungus, not get it wet. He didn’t move. The pounding water felt primally good, like a reward, and he stood under it for a long time, head lowered, letting the water thud onto his neck and shoulders, turning back and forth, offering himself to it, as if the stream could carry everything away.
He turned off the water, got out, and stood on the thin mat. He began to dry himself, rubbing hard. It felt good. There was no sand. He kept expecting to find it in creases, armpits, balls, ass. Behind his knees. No sand.
The thing was that he couldn’t see where he was going. It was like heading toward a dam. He couldn’t see past it, over the edge. All he could see was air, though he knew about the drop. He was waiting for something to click into place. In the military you had orders, and a task. Now what he had to do was keep moving. Without orders or a task.
He thought of calling Claire, but couldn’t imagine the conversation. He’d call later. This was something else he had to figure out, besides what he was going to do with his life. He wasn’t sure how to talk to her now. Now that she’d semi–blown him off. Not entirely, of course, Claire was too nice to blow him completely off while he was in-country. She’d gone on writing, but everything had changed, and now he didn’t know what tone to take or how they were meant to talk, or if they were supposed to talk at all. Or if she had another boyfriend, which she never mentioned, and which she clearly did not want to discuss before he came home, and which he certainly had not wanted to know about. The thought depressed him.
He went back into the bedroom and dropped down onto the deck, the carpet rough beneath his hands and feet. He did fifty push-ups, fast, his arms pumping up and down, trying for speed. He was determined to stay fit. He kept his face forward, gaze focused, body rigid, arms flexing and straightening, as though he were doing PT. He counted in a loud whisper. What he wanted to do was yell out the numbers at the top of his voice, like during PT. One! Two! Three! Everyone rising and falling together, thundering out the words.
When he’d finished he felt better, as though he’d paid off something, shaved a piece off a debt. He thought again of calling Claire. He’d do it after dinner. He didn’t want to start the conversation now.
The civilian clothes felt weightless and flimsy, like a costume. This was not real life. It was unnatural not to put on anything more: no flak jacket, kneepads, holster. No CamelBak over his shoulder, no grenades at his belt, no tourniquet. When he left the room, stepping into the hallway, he felt unarmed. Lightweight, useless, walking down the hall in the flimsy pants, as if he were in disguise.
* * *
The restaurant was a long, high-ceilinged room. On one side was a wall of plate-glass windows looking toward the beach. The tables were full, and when Conrad and his parents pushed through the heavy doors, the noise closed around them, loud and shrill. Conrad felt his chest draw tight. There were too many people in the room, and too much noise.
They stood at the high front counter, waiting. A young blond woman came over, wearing tight capri pants and white jazz sneakers. Her hair was pulled back in a wispy ponytail that nodded jauntily when she moved. She gave them a wide, empty smile.
“Three? Follow me, please.” Holding big menus, she led them through the crowded room. She rose a little with each step, as though the white sneakers held springs. The ponytail bounced. She stopped at a big round table in the center of the room.
“Here you are,” she said.
“Do you have anything smaller?” asked Marshall. “We’re only three. This looks like it would hold ten.”
The waitress shook her head. “I’m sorry, this is the only table available.”
“We did ask for a table for three,” Marshall said.
“I’m really sorry, sir.” The waitress smiled without apology. There were crow’s-feet around her eyes: she was older than she’d looked. Was everyone in Southern California an actor, or was that a myth? “This is all we have. We’re really busy.”
Marshall looked around the room; Lydia spoke.
“Never mind,” she said, “we’ll take this. Thank you.”
They sat down, widely separated. The waitress dealt out the menus like cards and left, ponytail bobbing.
Lydia cupped her mouth and called, “We’ll just have to shout!”
Conrad smiled but did not answer. He hated this.
They were in the dead center of the room, full tables around them in every direction. On one side a wall of breakable glass gave onto a public thoroughfare. Behind him, double swinging doors led to the kitchen, where people pushed back and forth. He didn’t like being in the middle of the room. He didn’t like having his back to the swinging doors, and he didn’t like people suddenly appearing behind him. He didn’t like the big plate-glass windows giving onto the beach just beyond them, strangers walking past carrying bags. Conrad began to sweat.
He opened his menu. The name of the restaurant was spelled out across the top in elaborate gold letters. Italia del Mar.
At the next table was a group in their forties, with bright clothes, big hair, loud voices. The nearest man was balding and dark-skinned, his open collar showing a nest of black hair. His rosy shirt rose loosely over his swelling belly. He leaned forward in his chair.
“No, she didn’t!” he shouted. “She never tells me! That’s her little secret!”
The others screamed with laughter.
The woman beside him was deeply tanned, with thick black hair, big glittering blue earrings. She waved her hands. Her crimson fingernails were like talons.
“He never listens!” she shouted back. “
How would he know if I told him or not?”
They were all screaming, screaming and laughing, like demons. All around him was the clinking of glasses, silverware, crockery. The room was dense with noise. Waitresses and busboys hurried between the tables, behind his back, carrying trays. A pulse started in Conrad’s head.
“What are your thoughts, Con?” asked Marshall.
About this place? Conrad looked up, but Marshall was holding his menu. The waitress stood beside him. His father was asking about food.
Conrad cleared his throat. “Veal parmigiana,” he said at random.
The waitress didn’t move.
“Ah,” Marshall said. “Did you see that on the menu? I think they just have seafood.”
“Oh, sorry.” Conrad looked down. “Right. Scampi.”
When the waitress had gone, Lydia drank from her water glass and looked at him.
“So, Con,” she said, “how are you really?”
He looked at her. His father, too, was waiting.
But it was impossible to drag the whole lumbering world of Iraq—hot, smoky, contaminated, the fucking sand, and the sound, that terrible enveloping sound that filled the world—to this table. None of it was transferable. The sound of mortars. The foul black smell of the shitters. Setting out through the narrow streets of Haditha. Waiting for the sound, the giant earth-stopping sound of explosion. The screen you put between yourself and the rest of the world. He had no words for this; there was no bridge between that place and this.
“Glad to be back,” he said, and smiled.
4
The difference between a cult and a religion depends on what’s being worshipped. It’s a question of whether or not the object is divine, and whether or not the worship is excessive. But the definition of divinity is subjective, so the answer will depend on who you ask. Zoroastrians or Jews, for example, might consider Christianity a cult. Civilians might consider the Marine Corps a cult. But true believers know that what they follow is a religion.
Becoming an initiate into anything involves instruction, ceremony, belief. It means yielding certain personal freedoms in exchange for the power, knowledge, privileges, and protection offered by the group.
* * *
The city-state of Sparta, in ancient Greece, was organized around the premise of military supremacy. All its components—religion, law, education, the family unit—were part of a system that held the military paramount. The warrior, with his lethal and seductive glamour, reigned supreme. Sparta was the dominant military presence in Magna Graecia for some three hundred years, from around 650 B.C. to 350 B.C. It then lost its dominance but remained independent for another two hundred years, until it was finally conquered by Rome. When Conrad studied Sparta, in his classics courses, he realized it had lasted as a country far longer than the United States.
Conrad wrote his senior thesis on Sparta. He was interested in the extreme demands the military put on the society, how the society responded to those strains, and how to define “extreme.”
All Spartan citizens were full-time soldiers. Citizenship was limited to male descendants of Sparta’s founders, but only healthy ones. Selection began at birth: male babies were examined by a council of elders, and imperfect and weak infants were abandoned to die of exposure on a mountaintop. Healthy boys lived at home until the age of seven, when they left to start training—the agoge. For the next ten years they lived in communal messes where they studied reading, writing, music, and dancing, but primarily military subjects.
Conditions in the agoge were deliberately harsh in order to toughen the young warriors. Each boy was given only one piece of clothing a year, a cloak. To make them resourceful, the boys were underfed. They had to steal food to survive, though if they were caught, they were punished. The physical training was demanding. They were trained to fight in phalanx formation: closely linked, shield over chest, sword in hand. They marched so closely that each soldier’s shield partly protected the man to his left. This was part of what created such a powerful bond of loyalty and trust between them; also, each young soldier had a close relationship with an older mentor, who acted as his adviser and guide.
Every aspect of their lives was affected. The trainees were expected to speak like soldiers, to be terse and witty: the word “laconic” comes from laconia, a Greek word for the region of Sparta.
At eighteen Spartans graduated from the agoge. At twenty they became members of one of the syssitia, military messes or dining clubs, and it was here that they formed their closest personal bonds. They remained full-time soldiers until the age of thirty, and until the age of sixty they were active reservists. At thirty they were required to marry, and they left the messes to live with their wives and children. The system, with its intense focus on military training, produced legendary warriors who were fiercely loyal to their fellow soldiers and their country.
The business of Sparta was war, and all else was subjugated to that. Since its citizens were full-time soldiers, all other business was transacted by noncitizens. Manual labor was performed by Helots—state-owned slaves who were often captured soldiers and their families, brought back from foreign wars. Sparta’s economy was primarily agricultural, and the Helots did the farming, living in small outlying villages. Relations between the two groups were hostile: Spartans were suspicious of the slaves, and in order to prevent mutinous stirrings, Helots were routinely mocked and beaten, to crush their spirits.
Sparta was governed by two hereditary king-priests, as well as magistrates, or ephors. The ephors took office each year, and at that time the state declared a ritual war against its Helots. The act of murder was a serious offense, carrying the burden of blood guilt, but killing a Helot was not considered murder. Helots could be killed with impunity.
The ritual war took place in the autumn. At that time, certain graduates of the agoge were chosen for a secret rite called the krypteia. These soldiers were sent out at night, armed only with knives, into the Helot villages. Their mission was to stalk and kill any Helots they thought troublesome.
The political purpose of the krypteia was to suppress the possibility of revolt: the young warriors on their nocturnal raids struck terror into the Helot community, like members of a secret police squad. But for the soldiers it had another, darker function: the krypteia legitimized the kill. It gave the soldiers moral permission from the state, the church, and their comrades to step outside the bounds of humanity. It broke down the psychological restraints against murder.
Humans have a powerful and innate resistance to killing other humans. Something in the heart curdles at the prospect. The sound of screams, the sight of blood, the evidence of pain: all arouse an urgent need to quit. The human recognizes itself in the other. Within the military, this deep empathetic response causes profound problems. To be effective soldiers, men must be persuaded to kill other men. They must be persuaded to give up their recognition of another man’s humanity.
There are different ways of persuasion. One strategy is to dehumanize the enemy, making his death seem less significant. Helots were ideal for this dehumanizing, since they were both foreigners and enemies. They lived separately from the Spartans and often spoke different languages. Their work was demeaning. They were beaten and ridiculed. On occasion they were forced to get drunk, and then to sing and dance to amuse the crowd. They were treated as less than human, which made them perfect targets for homicide. Moreover, since Helots were forbidden to carry weapons, these first kills would be easy ones.
All this was invaluable battlefield training: no other city-states offered practice killings. Only certain warriors were selected for the ritual, which gave the krypteia a glamorous elitist luster. The dark, bloody bond, forged in secrecy and violence, strengthened the brotherhood between soldiers. It offered a shared sense of godlike power, the belief that they were above the laws of man and of human nature.
Sparta was an unparalleled success as a military power. Its soldiers were legendary heroes: it was Sparta that brought down Tro
y. It may have been the most successful warrior culture in history.
Part of Sparta’s military success depended on its treatment of the family, which was entirely subordinate to the state. The state superseded the authority of parents over their infant children, ordered small boys to leave home, required close male bonding, and banned marriage for men under the age of thirty. The state was a deeply and intimately invasive presence within every aspect of the life of the individual.
The reasons for Sparta’s failure were the same as the reasons for its success: everything was subordinated to the military. The stringently exclusionary citizenship requirements meant that Spartans could not replace the warriors whom they lost in battle. The requirement to wait until thirty to start a family meant fewer children and a diminishing population. Since they could not accept non-Spartans as citizens, eventually their ranks became too diminished to fight effectively. The soldiers were outnumbered by their Helots, who were allowed neither to fight nor to become citizens. Sparta’s rigidity in obeying its own strict laws was finally the cause of its downfall.
So, wrote Conrad, do we count them a success or a failure?
* * *
His own initiation took place at Quantico, in Virginia. Officer Candidates School lasted only ten weeks, but in some ways it was just as transformative as the agoge. And in some ways the Marine culture was based on that of Sparta.
Conrad expected the physical duress, push-ups and drilling, exhaustion. And the mental tedium, the psychological stress. That was the point, wasn’t it? It was a kind of brainwashing, a relentless conditioning process meant to break you down, devalue everything you were so that you could start over with a new body and a new way of looking at the world. A new mind. It was obvious what was happening, but because it was so extreme, and because there was no alternative, it was completely effective. Everything happened right in front of the candidates’ eyes, with their acquiescence. There was nothing they could do about it except quit, and the whole reason they were there was that they would not quit, that they were prepared to endure.
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