Man in the Gray Flannel Suit

by Sloan Wilson

  No, it hadn’t been like that at all. There was no use making it worse than it was. The man in the leather jacket had been armed, he had been an enemy, legally decreed such by several governments. He had been a German, and the Germans were different from other people, or at least it had seemed so at the time. How hard it was to remember what the Germans had seemed like then! They had been unconquerable. They had been efficient. They had been professionals at war, while everybody else was an amateur. They had been cold and pitiless. They had been Jew beaters. They had shot, burned, and gassed millions of innocent people. They had laughed at weakness, they had taken joy in cruelty, they had been methodical, they had done things According to Plan. They had started the war, they had been infinitely guilty. The man with the leather jacket had been eighteen years old.

  Jesus Christ, that doesn’t make any difference! Tom looked up at the traffic light on Fifth Avenue. The man beside him coughed again. The boy with the leather jacket should not have coughed; it had been his cough which had given him away.

  “Now listen. One thing you’ve got to get through your heads is we’re not playing games!”

  That was a curious sentence to remember. It had been spoken in a harsh voice, matter-of-fact rather than fierce, perhaps a little exasperated, the voice of a teacher confronted by slightly stupid pupils, the voice of the old master sergeant who had prepared Tom for his assault on the boy with the leather jacket, the old master sergeant to whom, in a sense, Tom owed his life, for if he had not learned the lesson, he himself, rather than the boy with the leather jacket, might now be only a painful memory.

  “Now listen. One thing you’ve got to get through your heads is we’re not playing games! When you’re behind the enemy lines, you don’t take prisoners–if you do, you have to stay awake all night to watch them, and the odds are they’ll trip you up someway, anyhow. There’s no use taking a chance. You see a Jerry, you don’t go through this cowboy crap of telling him to put up his hands; you just shoot the bastard, in the back if possible, because you take less chances that way. We ain’t playing games. And let’s not have any tend-the-wounded crap. The wounded can get you with a hand grenade or a pistol–I’ve seen it happen a hundred times. There’s no use taking a chance. Either don’t go near the wounded, or finish them off before you go near them. We ain’t playing games.”

  Well, Tom thought as he entered the office of the Schanenhauser Foundation and sat down at his desk, he had played no games back in 1943, when he had met the boy in the leather jacket. There had been no time for games. Tom and Hank Mahoney had been alone–the whole company had been busted up, it had been snafu from the beginning–situation normal, all fouled up, only they hadn’t used the word “fouled” in those days; no word had been anywhere near bad enough to express the way they felt. They had jumped at the wrong time at the wrong place, and a quarter of the company had been killed by rifle and machine-gun fire before they hit the ground. That had been no time to have sad thoughts about eighteen-year-old German boys. They had jumped and been jumped, by a whole damn division, it had seemed like, and Tom had had just one idea: I’m going to get out of this alive and don’t try to stop me. No, he hadn’t thought that; it had been different from that. He had thought: I’m going to try to get out of this, I’m going to try; I’m not going to die for lack of trying.

  Everything had been confusion. They had jumped from the planes just at nightfall, about a hundred men dropped behind the German lines to destroy a bridge. They had been supposed to land in a field near a copse of woods without opposition and proceed to the bridge under cover of darkness, but it hadn’t been like that at all. The Germans had been waiting; they had sent up flares and turned searchlights on the men dangling from the glistening white parachutes in the air. And those who survived had panicked as soon as they hit the ground. They had been green troops, many of them, boys who had never been on a combat jump before, and as soon as they saw that things weren’t going according to plan, they panicked and went running across the field toward the trees, and the Germans had really had it that time; they had simply lowered their antiaircraft guns and had a real turkey shoot right there at the edge of the forest. The paratroopers had been trained to crawl like snakes at a time like that, to hide like lizards on the ground, but most of them had forgotten, and had dashed toward the woods, running scared, big as snowmen in the searchlights and the flares. It hadn’t been necessary for a man to be very bright to be a soldier; all he had had to do was to remember a few basic rules, the most obvious one being to crawl when under fire, to slide like a snake, to live like a lizard, but that time the green troops had panicked and most of them, instead of living like lizards, had died like men.

  Tom had gathered twelve men around him, lying on their bellies in the snow and the mud. He and Hank Mahoney and ten other men who kept their heads had crawled in a wide circle and made the woods, all right, at about ten o’clock in the evening. Going into the woods, they had crawled single file, one man thirty feet behind the other, leaving a track like a great snake through the snow and the mud, with Tom as lead man, fifty feet ahead of the others, because the woods might be mined, and it would just be foolish to let a mine kill more than one man. They had been wet to the skin long before they reached the woods, and it had been cold, very cold, as a half moon climbed above the naked trees. Tom and Hank Mahoney and the other ten men had sat huddled together in the woods for a few minutes, until Tom, thinking of the great snake’s trail they had left behind, had ordered them to disperse and try to get back to their own lines by different routes, traveling in pairs because it would be just foolishness to let the Germans catch them all at once.

  So they had split up, and Tom had never seen most of the men again, nor heard what happened to them. Mahoney had gone with him. The two of them had walked as fast as they could through the woods, planning to circle home eventually, but hoping soon to find dry clothes, or an abandoned hut, or someway to escape the cold.

  Shortly before dawn they had reached the edge of the woods and, shivering violently, had hidden behind an ice-glazed rock and looked at what they finally made out to be a German tank depot, with orderly rows of barracks topped by chimneys out of which wisps of smoke had been curling, black and velvety against the frosty sky. It had been then that they heard a man cough only a few hundred yards away from them, and they had crawled back into the trees and along the edge of the woods, keeping under cover, until they saw two sentries in leather, sheepskin-lined jackets, the dry collars turned snugly up around their ears. The younger and slighter of the two sentries had been the one doing the coughing. He had been standing about thirty feet outside the woods, looking down at his feet and coughing. With his right hand he had been negligently holding his rifle, and with his left he had been clutching his chest. The other sentry had been standing about twenty feet from him, his rifle cradled in one arm, watching his companion cough, and looking worried.

  It had not been necessary for Tom and Hank Mahoney to talk. They had crawled toward the sentries over the hard crust of old snow in the dim light of the setting moon. It hadn’t been difficult. They had been able to crawl within ten feet of the sentries before jumping them silently–it hadn’t been difficult at all, and only one small cry had been made, not a very loud sound, the sort of noise a man might make in his sleep, not the sort of cry to alarm the whole camp. Tom hadn’t even had to use his knife at first–he had choked the sentry to prevent him from shouting, and when he had taken his hands away, the boy had seemed dead. Tom and Mahoney had stripped the bodies of the warm clothes, and the sheepskin collars had felt delicious against their own cold ears and necks. Before daylight, they had effaced all signs of the struggle and dragged the bodies into the woods behind a fallen tree in the hope that the Germans would think for a little while that their sentries had just gone over the hill. They had been about to leave the bodies lying stretched in the snow when the sentry Tom had choked groaned and moved one arm.

  “I made sure of mine with my knife,” Han
k had said. “Better finish yours off, or he’ll come to and rouse the whole camp.”

  Tom had taken out his sheath knife and had hesitated. The young German sentry had lain at his feet, helpless as a patient on an operating table.

  “Hurry up,” Hank had said nervously. “We’ve got to get out of here.”

  Tom had knelt beside the sentry. He had not thought it would be difficult, but the tendons of the boy’s neck had proved tough, and suddenly the sentry had started to sit up. In a rage Tom had plunged the knife repeatedly into his throat, ramming it home with all his strength until he had almost severed the head from the body.

  “Come on, that’s enough,” Hank had said in a shocked voice. “Let’s get out of here.”

  Trembling, Tom had stood up and followed Hank out of the woods. They had skirted the tank depot, until on the other side of the gully they found a burned-out tank which apparently had been left there to await shipment back to Germany as scrap. They had climbed into the wrecked tank and huddled in the cinders until nightfall.

  In the pockets of his newly acquired leather jacket Tom had found chocolate and cough drops and a wallet with no money, and an identification card with a picture of a thin, serious-looking youth eighteen years old named Hans Engelhart, and there had also been a letter written in a fine feminine script on thin, blue, slightly scented paper, but the letter had been in German, and Tom hadn’t been able to read it. On the upper-left-hand corner of the envelope had been printed what obviously was a return address. The absurd idea of writing the sender of the letter had flashed into Tom’s mind. What would he say? “This morning I killed your boy, and I would like to send my condolences. He was in the wrong army, but he seemed like a nice boy, and I’m sorry it had to happen like this.” Impulsively he had torn the letter into small bits, together with its envelope, and, trying to forget the feeling of the plunging knife in his hand, had lain in the ashes to sleep.

  After dark, Tom and Hank Mahoney had crawled out of the wrecked tank and had begun the long, circuitous journey back to their own lines. Skirting the tank depot, they had returned to the woods. In the darkness they had tried to head west, but they had soon become confused and after about two hours had realized that they were retracing their steps.

  “In a few minutes the moon will be up, and we can see better,” Hank had said. “Let’s sit down for a breather.”

  They had continued to walk until they found a tree trunk to sit upon. Through naked branches they had seen the moon climbing above the crest of a distant hill. Gradually the darkness had dissolved. They had just started to walk again when Tom noticed the two bodies they had left there that morning and realized that they had come full circle. The bodies had been lying just as they had left them, except that their faces had acquired the sardonic grin of death.

  “I guess they have the last laugh,” Hank had said. “I don’t think we’re ever going to get out of here. The dead always have the last laugh.”

  “Come on,” Tom had replied. “We’ve got to try.”

  Together they had resumed their journey, making better progress in the moonlight. At about midnight they had come to the field where they had landed. It was still strewn with equipment, and the dead. Stealing from body to body, they had collected six boxes of K-rations and five full canteens of water. After eating and drinking their fill, they had pressed on. Just before dawn exhaustion and the continuous cold had combined to make them lightheaded, and they had staggered along, holding each other up like drunks returning from a party. There had been no more woods–only fields affording little protection. “Before it gets any lighter, we’ve got to find a place to hide out,” Tom had said. At sunrise they had found a crater gouged in the earth by a crashing plane. Eagerly they had slid into the tangle of wreckage within it, only to be greeted by a fearful stench. “I can’t stand this,” Mahoney had said. “Let’s keep going.”

  “No,” Tom had said, nodding toward the endless fields which lay in front of them. “We’d be picked up sure. You’ll get used to the smell.”

  Mahoney had gagged.

  “Anyway, it’s going to be a nice day,” Tom had said. “We’re better off than if it were raining, and we’ve got plenty to eat and drink. Look at those clouds over there–they look warm. It’s a nice morning.”

  He had paused, suddenly and incongruously remembering the lines of verse carved on the bench in his grandmother’s garden so far away: “The lark’s on the wing; the snail’s on the thorn: God’s in his heaven–all’s right with the world.” He had started to laugh. Collapsing into the mud at the bottom of the hole, he had given himself over to almost maniacal laughter.

  “You nuts?” Mahoney had said.

  “No. I just thought of something–something I can’t explain,” Tom had replied. Mahoney had been too tired to question him further. They had curled up in the mud at the bottom of the crater full of wreckage and immediately had slept, not awakening until dusk. The sun had warmed them, and they had both felt refreshed and rested. “I think we’re going to make it,” Tom had said. “For the first time, I really think we’re going to make it.”

  They had made it all right, six days later, and upon rejoining their company had been looked upon as heroes by the young recruits who replaced the men who didn’t come back. There had been one young corporal who had been in the army only a few months, a thin boy of Italian ancestry, who had wanted to buy the German jacket, and Tom had given it to him. Gardella, the corporal’s name had been–“Caesar” Gardella, the boys had called him. He had had a deep voice. Now, Tom suddenly froze at his desk in the offices of the Schanen-hauser Foundation. Caesar Gardella! That was the elevator man at the United Broadcasting building! It was Caesar Gardella, grown fat and with a mustache! And the leather jacket wouldn’t be all he’d remember; he’d remember everything that had happened after that–the jump on the island of Karkow and, before that, Rome and Maria. Tom found he was gripping his thigh and sweating.

  Maria.

  It is not my fault, he thought; it was not my fault; it was nobody’s fault at all. It happened a long while ago.

  Maria.

  I have forgotten her, he thought. I haven’t thought about her for a long time; I really haven’t thought about her; she never entered my head for a long time.

  It really wasn’t my fault, he thought. It was no one’s fault. I am not to blame.

  How curious it was to find that apparently nothing was ever really forgotten, that the past was never really gone, that it was always lurking, ready to destroy the present, or at least to make the present seem absurd, or if not that, to make Tom himself seem absurd, the perpetuator of an endless and rather hideous masquerade.

  I am a good man, he thought, and I have never done anything of which I am truly ashamed. Curiously, he seemed to be mimicking himself. “I am a good man,” he seemed to be saying in a high, effeminate, prissy voice, “and I have never done anything of which I am truly ashamed.” A gust of ghostly and derisive laughter seemed to ring out in reply.

  It’s the way things happen, he thought, and if I were to go through it all again, they would happen the same way.

  It’s funny, but I can think about it now, he thought–I can see what happened, after all these years, I can finally see what happened, and it’s absurd to be ashamed.

  Maria. The time was December 1944. The place, Rome. And everything was different. Now, as he sat behind his desk at the Schanenhauser Foundation in the year 1953, Tom felt again the blind helpless fury that had started it all, back in December 1944, when, after fighting one war and getting it almost won, he and Mahoney and Caesar Gardella and all the rest of them had got orders to go to the Pacific, without even a day of leave in the States between wars. The whole company had got those orders, after having made two combat jumps in France and two in Italy. Someone had got the idea that the way to save lives in the invasion of the islands of the Pacific was to use more paratroopers. Take the islands from the air instead of going in on the beaches, somebody had said�
�send us more jump boys; we want to get this thing over in a hurry and all go home.

  “Another day, another war,” Mahoney had said when he heard it.

  Tom had said nothing. I got through one war, he had thought. I won’t get through another. The odds build up against you. They throw you in once, and you fight your way out. You do it twice, you can do it three times. But sooner or later the odds catch up with you. Its like throwing dice–sooner or later you get snake eyes. If they’re going to send me out to the Pacific, I won’t come back.

  He had had a clear picture then, as soon as he heard where he was going, of a Japanese soldier, a caricature of one, with a small evil face, grinning, and holding a bayonet poised. That’s my boy, he had thought. That’s the one who’s waiting for me. I’ve had the Germans and I’ve had the Italians, and now the Japs are going to have me.

  “Anyway,” Hank had said, “they say they’re going to give us a week here before we go, and it won’t even be counted as leave.”

  “A week?” Tom had said.

  “Sure! How much money you got?”

  “I’m broke,” Tom had said. His allotment to Betsy had never left him much. Since the beginning of the war, he had allotted her two thirds of his salary, and she had put it all into a savings bank, so that they could buy a house after the war. He had never minded being broke before.

  “Don’t worry,” Hank had said. “I’m loaded. I got six hundred bucks I won in a crap game, and I’ll give you half. This will be a week to remember!”

  Betsy, Tom had thought, but somehow she had dissolved into nothing more than an ironic and rather painful memory, something to be kept out of his mind. I’ve got a week, he had thought, a week in Rome, a week on the town. And to Mahoney he had said, “Okay, Hank, let’s go.”