The Winston Affair

by Howard Fast

  “I also heard about Burton.” Bender nodded eagerly. “I wish I could have seen the job you did on him, Captain.”

  Moscow fixed him with a cold stare, and Bender became quiet without knowing what he had done.

  “Suppose we finish eating and get down to work,” Adams said. “If I don’t act more joyous, it has nothing to do with you, Lieutenant Bender.”

  “I mean, if I said something wrong—”

  “Oh, go ahead and eat,” Moscow told him.

  Hurt and bewildered, Bender returned to his food and began to eat silently and efficiently.

  Monday 9.40 P.M.

  Alone in his room now, Barney Adams opened the letter from Kate Sorenson. “Dear Barney,” it began.

  I am writing what I would be unable to say to you directly. That is because I have never been too good with words. To begin with, I was notified of my transfer today. I put in for one five months ago. I suppose they decided to process it very quickly, because I’m booked on Air Transport to Egypt tomorrow on the two o’clock flight. From Cairo, I go on to England, where I’ll join a base hospital.

  This above does not change what decision I had come to. It only makes it easier for me. I hope it will also make it easier for you.

  If I was only a little younger and a little different, the night we spent together would be something I would want to treasure all my life. The way it is, I don’t know. Any more than I really know why you are doing what you are doing.

  I wish that I could separate myself and yourself from the Winston case, but I can’t. Even if you believe in the kind of love you said you feel for me, you can’t separate such a thing happening from the circumstances in which it happens. Can you? I would like to believe that love can happen the way you said it did happen. I don’t believe it. Love must be a continuation of yourself—but such continuation cannot happen in terms of both of us together. The continuation would be too different, because whether you believe in such things or not, we do come from two separate worlds—each of them far apart from the other.

  Maybe that’s why I wouldn’t let myself fall in love with you, as much as I might want to. And love is something you can control, I think. You must want to let it happen to you.

  I read a book once where this happened to a man and a woman in wartime. The author made you believe it while you were reading, and then he didn’t have any problems to solve because one of them died. Life is something else, isn’t it?

  We would have to understand each other and plan to live with each other in real life, wouldn’t we, Barney? But I don’t think you would ever really understand me, and I know that I would never understand you. You are too many separate things. You have the beautiful little boy face that I had come to detest as a symbol of men who neither labored nor suffered but lived their lives on the gift of that face. You come from a wealthy background, where you knew only peace and love. You never had to think about where the next meal was coming from. I don’t say all that is bad, but it is different. Too much different ever to straighten out to a point of understanding.

  You are like a child. But you are also a man, and the man frightens me. You have innocence but you also have a terrible and terrifying sophistication. You control so well that everything important remains bottled up inside of you.

  But above all, I kept asking myself—why, why are you doing this thing with the defense of Winston? Why is the life of this sick and evil man so important to you? I asked Max Kaufman to explain it to me, and he tried. But it was no good. My own case is nothing. If they’re moving me, I am glad to be moved, and I haven’t changed my decision to testify for you in the morning. But it won’t be as easy for others as it is for me. That doesn’t matter to you. It doesn’t matter who will be hurt, who will be ruined, who will have his dreams smashed—so long as you win this case.

  You see, as much as I try, I cannot get myself to believe that the main reason you want to win is something apart from your need to win. I wish I could believe that you were standing against the world for some high moral purpose that is central to your life, but I can’t believe that.

  I think I have been honest in trying to explain this thing to you, Barney. When I see you tomorrow, don’t make it harder for either of us. That wouldn’t help.

  And it was signed, simply, “Kate Sorenson.”

  Tuesday 4.16 AM

  He awakened from dreaming about Gabowski again, and as he lay sweating and trembling under the mosquito netting, he said to himself: I really must talk to Kaufman about this dreaming. I can’t go on waking up night after night with this dream. It’s no way for a person to live.

  Then he stretched out on his back and tried to compose himself to sleep, even though he knew quite well that there would be no more sleep on this night. He wanted to think about Kate Sorenson, but he couldn’t. He felt no grief, no sense of rejection; insofar as he was able to comprehend his own feelings, he felt nothing at all.

  He let his thoughts wander back through his life to a day when he was ten years old, and that was the day when he left for military school for the first time. At the door of their house he clung to his mother, his face pressed against her, his arms around her. He had thought to himself then: They’ll have to tear me away from her. They’ll have to tear my arms off.

  “Barney,” his father said, very quietly.

  “Let the boy have a minute more,” his mother begged.

  “Barney.”

  I’ll never let go, never, he thought.

  “Barney, the car is waiting.”

  Then he let go and turned his tear-stained face to his father, who said coolly, “Be a man now, Barney. That will be expected of you now at all times. You are the son of a soldier and the grandson of a soldier, and you are now going to learn to be a soldier yourself.”

  This was what he remembered now, lying in bed in that place so distant from where he was born and bred; and as the long hours before dawn passed, Barney Adams tried to piece together how and where he had failed his father or failed himself. But the flow of thought, as he well realized, was without importance or consequence. Nothing until now was of great consequence. And perhaps least of all, as he was coming to know, was the empty strut of being a hero.

  Tuesday 9.40 A.M.

  Kate Sorenson was the first witness for the defense, and she began her testimony soon after the court convened. Baxter took her to the Judge Advocate Headquarters, and then he picked up Adams at the Makra Palace. Lieutenant Moscow was riding with him, and he took the opportunity to wonder whether Adams would not have another interview with Winston.

  “Why, Lieutenant?”

  “Well, sir—”

  “Go ahead,” Adams said.

  “I mean—well, I don’t want to talk out of turn. Harvey and myself, we’re both in a peculiar position. We admire you a great deal and we feel that we have known you a long time, but when you come right down to it, sir—well, we don’t know you enough to press our opinion.”

  “What is your opinion, Lieutenant? I’m asking for it.”

  “Let me put it this way. You’re defending a man.”

  “Yes?”

  “I mean, a man it is hard to defend. Still—well, you have to defend the man, sir. You can’t just defend an idea.”

  “Do you think that I’m defending an idea, Lieutenant?”

  “Well, to tell the truth—sometimes, yes, I do. A principle—let’s say, a contention.”

  “No,” Adams said thoughtfully. “That’s not so. I’m defending Charles Winston. But I can’t talk to him. You and Lieutenant Bender can talk to him if you wish. But I don’t think it will make any significant difference.”

  Adams had tried to be truthful, yet he was not wholly truthful. He couldn’t trust himself to talk to Winston, just as now, standing in front of Kate Sorenson in full sight of the court and all the others in the room, he could not trust himself to look at Charles Winston. Yet he knew what Winston was in the only way that he could state it in his own thoughts: Winston was a body, and
inside the body, the soul was dying.

  Winston sat silently, the eyes empty behind the metal-rimmed spectacles.

  Kate Sorenson was composed as she gave her name and rank; asked whether she knew the defendant, Lieutenant Charles Winston, she nodded at him and said, “Yes. There he is.”

  “And when did you first see Lieutenant Winston, Lieutenant Sorenson?”

  “The morning he was admitted to the NP Ward.”

  “What was his condition at the time, Lieutenant?”

  “He was sick, in a state of shock and profound depression. His blood pressure was very high, his pulse rapid.”

  Major Smith objected, on the grounds that Lieutenant Sorenson was not competent to define his condition medically. Colonel Thompson upheld the objection and ordered question and answer stricken from the record. Colonel Thompson’s face bore the marks of a sleepless night His bloodshot eyes were angry and tired.

  “May I ask her opinion, sir?”

  “Not on a medical question, no—you may not.”

  “May it please the court, am I not allowed to ask Lieutenant Sorenson her opinion of the condition of another human being?”

  Mayburt passed a note to Thompson, but he shook his head with annoyance and said, “No—no, you may not. Not under circumstances where it would be inevitably interpreted as a medical opinion. Lieutenant Sorenson is not a physician, and not competent to give medical evidence.”

  “Very well—Lieutenant Sorenson, what are your duties in your ward?”

  “I am chief nurse.”

  “Then it was your duty, was it not, to assign Lieutenant Winston to a bed?”

  “It was.”

  “Where did you assign him?”

  “We have six psychopathic isolation rooms. Two of them were empty. I placed him in one of those rooms with a wardsman on inside attendance.”

  “Was this on Major Kaufman’s instructions?”

  “I know my work, sir. I was not instructed what to do in this case. It was routine accommodation.”

  “Who assigned the guard to Lieutenant Winston’s room?”

  “Major Kaufman did that. He called the Provost immediately, and a military police guard was in the ward within the hour.”

  “Now, Lieutenant, I am going to ask you what your own duties and responsibilities toward Lieutenant Winston were during the next five days. Try to answer my questions in terms of what you did, not in terms of Major Kaufman’s instructions. Nor am I interested in any conversations between Major Kaufman and yourself. Now, what were your duties and responsibilities toward Lieutenant Winston?”

  “Since he was a special case, he was put directly under my supervision—that is, in nursing terms.”

  “Did he have a private nurse at all times, Lieutenant?”

  “I assigned a wardsman to be in the room at all times.”

  “Why did you take these measures?”

  “Because he was a suicidal depressive.”

  Major Smith rose to object, but Mayburt said, “If you are going to offer an objection, Major, I would like to note that the witness is merely specifying details of her work.”

  “May it please the court, I still object.”

  With Mayburt’s comment on the record, Thompson had no other course open than to overrule.

  “How often did you see the patient, Lieutenant?”

  “I took Lieutenant Winston’s pulse and temperature three times each day. I saw him at least six times each day. I spoke with him. I supervised his physical therapy—that is, baths and massage.”

  “Did he make any attempt to communicate with you, Lieutenant?”

  “You asked me not to repeat conversations. He spoke to me quite often, as I said. I seemed to have his confidence.”

  “Did he communicate anything in writing?”

  “Yes, he wrote a letter to me, which he gave me on the fourth day after he was admitted.”

  Adams went to the table and took a sheet of paper which Moscow held out to him. He gave the paper to Sorenson.

  “Will you examine that, Lieutenant, and tell me whether this is the letter Lieutenant Winston wrote to you.”

  “This is the letter,” she said, handing it back to him.

  Adams asked that it be stamped for identification and entered as evidence. Wells and Jacobs scribbled furiously and passed notes to Smith, who rose and asked whether he could see the letter.

  He read it hastily and then said, “I object to this being put in evidence as a letter to Lieutenant Sorenson from Lieutenant Winston. There is no evidence that Lieutenant Winston wrote this. May it please the court, unless Lieutenant Winston testifies to the authenticity of this letter, there is no way of proving that he wrote it.”

  Thompson reached for the letter, read it, and then passed it to Mayburt. The letter went along the line of officers.

  “What is your opinion on this point, Captain Adams?” asked Thompson.

  “I have Lieutenant Sorenson’s testimony.”

  “You must have anticipated this, Captain?” Mayburt said.

  “Yes, sir, I did.”

  Suddenly speaking up, Major Cummings said, “I’m no lawyer, but I find it difficult to understand why that letter shouldn’t be read into the record. Could you give us an opinion, Colonel Mayburt—in terms of the law?”

  “I would prefer that the court heard Captain Adams first How did you anticipate this, Captain Adams?”

  “I have a handwriting expert who is prepared to testify.”

  “How is he qualified and who is he?” Mayburt asked curiously.

  “His name is Professor Nahrawal Chatterjee, and he is Full Professor of Philology at the local university. He took his degree at Oxford, and his thesis for his doctorate was a study of comparative chirography, based on historical deviations from original scripts.”

  Colonel Burnside, speaking for the first time, said in his slow, pleasant drawl, “I am sure, Captain, that you can make it a little clearer for us uninitiated ones.”

  “Yes, sir—chirography is the science of handwriting. Dr. Chatterjee studied the manner in which script writing evolved in the West and in the Orient, and attempted to explain the variations. I have not had time to read his book, but only to glance through it. He has been called upon by the local constabulary on four separate occasions. He has also testified on occasion at the litigation of wills.”

  “I would say that he is sufficiently qualified—wouldn’t you, sir?” Mayburt asked Thompson, who had no choice but to agree and order the witness to be brought into the court. He told Lieutenant Sorenson to stand down, but not to leave the courtroom.

  Professor Chatterjee came into the court, and studied it with curiosity and diffidence as he was sworn in. He was a thin, nearsighted man of about sixty, stooped, white-haired, and wrapped in the folds of white cotton that constituted the native dress of the land. He looked at the letter, read it carefully, and then examined the specimens of Winston’s handwriting that Bender had obtained early that morning in the presence of a military police witness.

  “Professor Chatterjee, are both documents written by the same person?”

  “Oh, yes. Yes, indeed—without any question of doubt.” His voice was thin and high-pitched, his accent the precise and singular result of Oxford. “You see, Captain, such handwriting as this cannot be imitated except perhaps by a professional forger. To a very large extent, it is uncontrolled and emotionally blocked. At one point the t’s are upright, at another they lie over, as do the l’s and d’s. Here and there—an unfinished word. The uneven enlargement and diminution of the letters demonstrate considerable emotionable instability.”

  “In your opinion, sir, is this the writing of a sane man or an insane man?”

  Major Smith rose, but before he could speak, Thompson snapped out, “You will not answer that question!” And to Adams, “You know that he is not competent to answer that question. That is a question for a physician, not for sideshow fakery!”

  “May it please the court,” Adams said,
“and with all due respect, I must object to the court’s comment and ask that it be stricken from the record.”

  “I think you forget yourself, Captain Adams.”

  “I am trying not to forget myself, sir.”

  “May I ask you to explain that comment?”

  “May it please the court, I am merely trying to act within the framework of proper procedure. With all due respect, I repeat my request.”

  “Your request is denied, sir!”

  Meanwhile, Mayburt had passed a note to Thompson—a note which brought an angry shake of Thompson’s head. A second note followed this.

  Then, unexpectedly, Colonel Burnside interrupted once more with his pleasant drawl, “Would the court have any objections to my putting that same question to the witness?”

  Taken aback, Thompson passed the question on to Mayburt, who said, “I see no reason why the witness should not testify within his own competency. There have been cases where tests and drawings have been used to measure emotional balance.” And to Chatterjee, he said, “Are such matters procedural within the limitations of your science, professor?”

  “To a degree. I have no desire to indulge in what one might call side-show proceedings. I cannot describe people or read character from handwriting. But emotional factors have been carefully and scientifically charted.”

  “Then I see no way in which the court can deny your question, Colonel Burnside,” Mayburt said carefully.

  Burnside repeated the question, and Chatterjee answered, “In my own opinion, sir, I must say that this is the handwriting of an insane man.”

  Tuesday 10.37 A.M.

  Lieutenant Winston raised his head and fixed his watery eyes on Kate Sorenson as she began to read the letter. It was the first time Adams had seen any evidence of hurt or sorrow upon his face. As she read on, the corner of Winston’s mouth began to twitch slightly and his eyes became bright with tears.

  Dear Kate,

  I call you so because to me I know someone right away. I don’t have to try. When I saw you this morning God cut my belly. I put my hand down there and there was some blood so God cut me maybe with a dagger. That was a signal. This is a woman for you Winston—God said. And I am going to change everything now. I was waiting for you. Not me—God said that. So I have chosen you to be next to me I will give you money and you can live like a queen. I am only pretending to remain in here. I will walk out when I want to. I will spit in the face of the lousy mp at the door. They are all laughing at me but I am laughing at them. You are lucky that I like you.