"About fifteen minutes. Long enough for me to sprinkle some sulfa on your belly and leg and put on a bandage. You're lucky, I would say. You were sliced right across the stomach about a quarter of an inch deep. Not serious, but your calf is a mess. You'll have to get it sewed up."
Yale tried to thank her. "Oh, no," she said, wiping his face with a damp cloth. "You're not getting off that easily. You've ruined my sleep, got blood all over the sheets and are occupying the only bed in the room and . . ."
Yale looked at her. "And what?"
". . . and you have a briefcase with a great many francs in it. I looked in your billfold and found your I.D. card. So we start with your name . . . Yale Marratt . . ." She grinned.
"I'm single . . . twenty-six . . . and exhausted. If you'll give me about four aspirins and let me sleep on the floor, I'll appreciate it." Yale struggled up. He tried to get off the bed.
She pushed him down. "Stay there. The bed is big enough for both of us." She found some aspirins in her handbag and gave them to him. She rolled a blanket and put it down the middle of the bed. "I'm a softy, Yale Marratt, or else I'd boot you out of here in a hurry."
She turned the light out. Yale tried to sleep, but it was impossible. The pain from the wounds became intense. His leg was throbbing, and his stomach ached. The events of the night churned across his consciousness in kaleidoscopic colors. He turned his head in the direction of Mrs. Wilson . . . Anne Wilson . . . and listened to her even breathing. She was asleep . . . he wished the light were on so that he could see her face. She was a trusting woman, he thought, and a pretty one with her natural dark blonde hair combed back from her forehead, held in place with a ribbon. He admired her quick presence of mind. Her lack of fear.
Toward morning he must have dozed. When he awoke she was gone. He staggered out of the bed, surprised to find that he was naked from the waist down. He looked for his shorts and found them in the bathroom. She had washed them, but bloodstains remained. They were too wet to put on. He found her bag and cosmetics, and wondered where she had gone. He was looking in the mirror, disgusted with his unshaven face, when she burst into the room with a cheery good-morning. She was followed by a small moustached man carrying a bag.
"This is a French doctor, my pantless friend," she said cheerily. "I told him you would pay beaucoup francs to get sewed up. I bought you a razor, and a pair of G.I. chinos leg 32, waist 36. You look almost six feet." She started to toss her cosmetics into a knapsack, watching the doctor as he removed the bandages she had put on Yale. "You owe me about five hundred francs. G.I. pants are expensive on the black market. Your own are too soiled to wear."
The doctor, who didn't bother to introduce himself, pointed Yale to the bed. Quickly he snapped Anne Wilson's crude bandages from Yale's leg and stomach. He ran his finger over the livid cut on Yale's belly, and said with a distinct accent. "This eez a vairy interesting wound. Deep, but not vairy serious. It weel heal. This one," he said, pointing to Yale's calf, "we must sew. I weel do it, now!"
"I'm glad it's nothing serious, chum," Anne said, standing near the door. "I took the twenty dollars from your billfold to cover the 500 francs you owe me. By the way, you're on a flight to Cairo at eleven o'clock. If it is all the same to you -- last night never happened -- I'd prefer not to show any favoritism among that gang of wolves on the plane. See you around -- Yale Marratt," she said. She closed the door and was gone before Yale could protest. The doctor had strung a needle with catgut. While Yale clutched the bed, muttering with pain, the doctor swiftly sewed the gash on his calf.
Yale found a taxi to take him to the airport and limped aboard the plane a few minutes before departure. A sergeant checked his orders. "Thought you had gone A.W.O.L. Major down back looking for you seems mad as hell."
Yale walked past Anne Wilson seated near the front of the plane. She looked at him and turned away, making it very obvious that she wasn't going to be friendly.
Yale sat in his bucket seat and fastened his seat belt. He looked across the plane into Trafford's face. Trafford stared back at him, contemptuously. "Well, you cheap son-of-a-bitch! I see you made it," he said, angrily. "You didn't give a shit what happened to me did you! You killed that damned Arab, and left me to be the patsy. If it hadn't been for Bronson I'd be in the jug right now."
"Bronson!" Yale said startled. "What was he doing there?"
"He was looking for you, friend. He said you pulled a fast one on him, too. He wouldn't tell me what, but you're a lucky turd he didn't find you."
Yale tried to explain that he had come to help but his voice was lost in the roar of the engines being revved for the take-off. They finally reached altitude. Yale unfastened his belt and moved across the plane beside Trafford.
"Listen, you stupid bastard," Yale said. "I didn't come to interrupt your orgy. You were out cold on the bed; your prick sticking in the air. I tried to get you out of there, and one of your floozies made a grab for me. She tried to castrate me. I got myself sliced across the belly and my leg half chopped off . . . all because you have to stick that thing of yours into anything in sight." Yale looked at him and shuddered. "Brother, I don't even like to sit near you. You must be crawling with bugs and V.D."
"Aw, you're a fucking pansy. I'm clean as a whistle. Had a nice shower and a 'pro' courtesy of Uncle Sugar. The trouble with you, Marratt, is that you think you're still in the States. I went on a little tear. So what? You've gotta get rid of the germs that pile up in you."
"You're married, aren't you?" Yale asked, pointing to a wedding ring Trafford was wearing. Trafford wore a huge signet ring over his wedding ring practically obscuring it. Trafford looked at him bitterly. "It's none of your god damned business." He looked out the window of the plane. "I was married. I put this stupid band on and said I'd never take it off. Caught her fucking a young lieutenant; a wise bastard like you. Right in our apartment in St. Louis. How do you like that? Came home on leave . . . and there she was. You know what I did?"
Yale shook his head. He looked at Trafford, feeling a troubled sympathy for him. "I didn't do a damn thing. I just said, okay, friend, if that's the way you want it. I walked out. Too bad. 'We had a nice little kid, a girl." Trafford scowled. "But that's the way the ball bounces. In the last analysis, no one in this world gives a crap for you anyway."
Yale didn't say anything for a while. He could feel in Trafford's words a cold anger that was frightening if he let himself think about it. His own anger at Trafford vanished. Why was it impossible for him to retain hatreds? He had every reason to blame Trafford for his near death last night, or to feel cold hatred toward Bronson who had probably come back to kill him. Yet, all he could feel was a kind of sadness. Without thinking he spoke his thoughts to Trafford.
"You see, I guess what shocks me is why most men and women insist on degrading themselves. They grasp for each other . . . for the fleeting beauty of consummation. For a tender second, they face the world with wonder -- then they are so damned ashamed of their emotions that they sneer at themselves and eventually try to degrade love in every way possible. They seem to hate and despise love . . . the only integrating factor in a disintegrating world. It bothers me. If men can't respect each other, can't stand back in awe and reverence of the wonder of man, I'm afraid civilization won't last long."
Trafford listened to him, astonished. "For Christ sake, you are a moralistic bastard, aren't you? Look you've picked up an audience." He grinned for the first time, nodding across the aisle to Bill Stevens and Al Kanachos who had corralled Anne Wilson. They were sitting on either side of her.
"It's difficult to hear you," Anne said, smiling. "We seem to hear only the dirty words. It does seem like an interesting conversation. The lieutenant sounds quite idealistic."
Trafford rocked with laughter. "I bought a book about a guy like him once. Candide . Candide didn't know there was a war on, either. He didn't know which end was up!"
Yale grinned. "Was it an illustrated copy?"
"Sure," Trafford said,
lighting a cigarette. "I bought it for the dirty pictures. Very edifying . . . women with their guts hanging out or their tits cut off." He smirked at Anne, obviously trying to horrify her. "You amuse me, Marratt. You're worried about my morals. If you love men so much, why don't you worry about that Arab you murdered."
Yale noticed Anne Wilson's shocked expression. He was half angry with Trafford for bringing it up. He knew that with an audience he couldn't explain what had happened. Even worse it was impossible to tell how badly he did feel. He wondered, thinking back on it, how it might have been avoided. Perhaps if he had not reacted with such fear for his life, the Arab might be alive.
"It was a reflexive action," Yale said, wondering what Anne was thinking. "I had a feeling it was his life or mine."
"Now you're cooking with gas," Trafford laughed. He jerked his thumb in the direction of Europe. "You can sit here and philosophize with your full belly, you can worry why men don't love each other . . . but if you were over there in France, you'd be sweating your balls off, figuring it was your life or some Nazi's. What's one greasy Arab more or less? In this world, friend, it's every man for himself!"
"I think this little Cook's Tour we are having is educational," Al Kanachos interjected. "Major Trafford is right in a broad sense. The nature of man is to dominate and master his fellow men, if he can. Bill and I took a trip in the New Medina yesterday . . . what they call the Walled City. Believe me, it was like something out of the Arabian Nights ."
"We took a tour of an Arab whore house," Bill Stevens said enthusiastically. "The girls are sold into it, I think. Then they eventually can buy their way out on money saved from their earnings, or they can get out by marriage. You have a new idea of how the other half lives when you see that place. Women are kept in an animal existence."
"We were walking along seeing the sights. Lovely girls, a little on the dark side." Al Kanachos grinned apologetically in Anne's direction.
She shrugged at him. "Don't let me dampen you. I've heard all the dirty words."
"Yeah, well, you never saw anything like this, sister. One of the babes standing on a sort of a dais without a damned thing on kept yelling 'Cigareet, cigareet,' at us. The Arab guide said to give her one, which Bill did. This babe lights it and then starts yelling, 'Dix francs. Dix francs.' What the hell, I handed her ten francs. Then she walks up and down rubbing her pussy and jerking her boobs around. . . ." Kanachos blushed and looked at Anne again.
"Go on," Anne said, sarcastically. "Can't you see the lieutenant's and the major's mouths are open . . . they're breathless to hear the rest."
"Well, this babe finally bends over backward shoving her hairy little delta right in the air. Then with one hand she sticks the cigarette in it, wiggles a bit and blows out the nicest smoke rings out of it you ever saw."
Trafford roared with laughter. "Jesus, a human smoke stack. That babe must be a sensation. She could probably use it for a vacuum cleaner, too!"
"So you see, Lieutenant Marratt," Anne said, looking slyly at Yale, "there isn't much to idealize about sex, really. A good vacuum cleaner and all's well with the world."
"I guess you're right," Yale said. He looked out the window. Below them the desert stretched to the horizon, not bright and yellow as he had imagined it, but dull and grey. That's the way reality always seems to be, he thought, dull and grey. For himself he knew that it would be suicide to take off the rose-colored glasses. He half listened to Trafford, Kanachos and Stevens as they talked, letting the conversation pass him by. Occasionally, he noticed that Anne Wilson was looking at him thoughtfully. What kind of person was she he wondered? If he searched forever would he find another Cynthia? Or was Cynthia simply a figment of his desire to recreate the world in his own image?
They landed at Shephard Field, Cairo, at five-thirty, and were told that priority military personnel to Karachi had usurped their places. The next A.T.C. flight would be tomorrow. There were no accommodations. They could eat in the terminal and hang around until morning.
"Where in hell do we sleep?" Trafford demanded belligerently of the billeting officer. "I didn't get a wink of sleep last night, Lieutenant. What the hell kind of a deal is this?"
The billeting officer shrugged. "The place is jammed. I'm sorry. There's a war on. There were eighteen men on that plane and one dame. I just took things alphabetically. Everyone aboard, from A through J, either got out on the plane to Karachi, or got the last beds here. That leaves Kanachos, Marratt, Stevens, Trafford, and Wilson who can sleep in the terminal." He looked at Anne, "I'm sorry. The benches aren't too hard. I'll get you a blanket. It's only a twelve hour wait-over."
"Twelve hours, huh," Trafford said. "To hell with sleeping; we might as well see Cairo. How far is it?"
"It's about eight miles. I'm sorry there's no transportation, Major. Most of the places are off limits. The Arabs are not too cordial."
Trafford leaned over the lieutenant's desk, and said with great seriousness, "Listen, friend, did you ever hear of General F. Stanley Waite?"
The Lieutenant shook his head.
"No? Well, how would you have heard of him? Son, I'll tell you in confidence that he is responsible for all personnel in the Middle East Command. Now I can get on that phone and call him, and raise hell generally. Or you just call the transportation officer and get us a staff car, real easy, without getting involved with Waite who is an old time hell-raiser. What do you say, friend?" Trafford's voice was masterful, inflected with both suavity and forceful command. The Lieutenant agreed that he could obtain a car for them.
Driving the staff car toward Cairo, following directions he had obtained from the Lieutenant, Trafford laughed heartily when Anne asked him if there really was a General F. Stanley Waite.
"If there is, I never heard of him," Trafford said, amused. "Funny, how gullible Americans are. I learned that in an insurance business I owned back in St. Louis. While I never actually said it, just implied it a little, that billeting officer has an idea that General Waite and I are very buddy-buddy."
Sitting in the back seat with Kanachos, Anne in the middle, Yale could feel the sway of her body against him. Trafford drove fast, insisting that they should get into Cairo and find a place to eat before dark. Al Kanachos suggested that they would probably eat at the Shephard Hotel. The billeting officer had told them how to get to several night clubs that specialized in belly dancers.
Listening to their talk, Anne decided that if this was going to be an all night affair, she would get a room in the hotel and try to get a few hours sleep. After inquiring from several Arabs, and becoming the center of a jabbering crowd all intent on giving unintelligible directions, Trafford finally located the Shephard.
An austere clerk wearing a red fez and speaking with a thick British accent informed them that the dinner was being served in the dining room. Yale heard the clerk tell Anne that there were no rooms available.
Trafford and the others had gone ahead to look in the dining room.
"Why did you want a room?" Yale asked Anne, wanting to talk with her alone. He wondered if he could ever shake the others.
"I think this is going to be another night for the Rover boys," she said, looking at him calmly. "I wouldn't want to get in your way."
"Listen, Anne. I'd like to talk with you," Yale said hurriedly. "Sometime tonight, when they start plying the joints, insist on coming back here and waiting, will you? I'll do the rest."
Anne looked at him curiously. "What do we have to talk about? If I gave you the impression I was interested in what happened last night . . . forget it; I'm not interested."
Yale noticed Trafford returning, a broad grin on his face.
"I'm not begging," he said to Anne quickly. "I was just curious to know whether the beauty of your face is more than skin deep."
Anne was startled by his reply. She shrugged at him, failing to indicate by her manner whether she was willing to follow Yale's suggestion. There was a strange quality about this Lieutenant Yale Marratt that attracted her,
she thought, yet somehow frightened her.
"We've picked up six bottles of very excellent Scotch," Trafford said happily. "I'm beginning to like this Army. This is going to be an evening to remember, Anne Wilson." Ignoring Yale, he took her arm and led her toward a small lounge. Yale, limping a little, followed them. Kanachos and Stevens were already seated, smoking, waiting while a somber Arab opened a bottle of Chivas Regal and poured drinks for them.
Several drinks later they had finished the bottle and started another. Trafford sat close to Anne. He put his arm around her shoulder.
"This is the life," he said expansively. "Why don't you fellows go ahead? Al knows how to get to that Café where the belly dancers are. Anne and I will join you later."
Kanachos and Stevens thought that was a good idea. Yale wondered if Trafford had put them up to it. He was irritated at the way Trafford was moving in on Anne. He wondered if Anne enjoyed Trafford's attention. I'm being childish, he thought. What do I know about Anne Wilson? She's probably just the type that would go for a Major. What the hell were Red Cross girls, anyway, but camp followers, or dames looking for a husband?
"I'm not interested in belly dancers," Yale said. "I think I'll just stay here and have another drink. Why not eat here? This is the famous Shephard Hotel. The food should be good." He could see that Trafford wasn't pleased. Yale looked at Anne to see if she would take the bait.
She didn't. "Oh, I think we all should see at least one belly dancer. It's only eight o'clock. We can't sit here all night, and just get drunk, can we, Lieutenant Marratt? Come on, it will be fun!"
Yale made no further attempt to talk with her. They ate at the Shephard. Trafford, leading them, appropriated Anne's arm. He sat next to her at the table. Together, while the others listened, they kept up a running conversation of sophisticated wisecracks.
Later, in a smoke-filled night club, Trafford continued to dominate Anne's attention. They listened to the never ceasing music of an Arab orchestra with its exotic quarter-tone scale. Anne said she enjoyed the insistent beat. Yale shrugged. "Chacun à son goût." She grimaced at him.
The Rebellion of Yale Marratt Page 31