Ice Brothers

by Sloan Wilson

  Unfortunately these moments of calm were often swept away by gusts of rage. Why did all this have to be happening to him? Why couldn’t he come home, a conquering hero, like he’d often imagined, and be met by his faithful admiring wife with sighs of love? Certainly that sort of thing must be happening often to men no more deserving than he. At least half the men in the forecastle were waiting for it to happen to them, and not all of them would be disappointed.

  Well … if I’d picked a saner wife and had been saner myself I could expect better rewards, he lectured himself, but in some ways I’m a damn lucky man … For one thing I’m alive and unhurt. Hansen, Sparks, Seth, Blake, Cookie, the living pincushion—if he thought about them it was hard to feel sorry for himself.…

  As they neared Boston a heavy blizzard enclosed them in the now familiar curtains of snow, but with the help of the radar Paul found his way into the harbor without difficulty. Just before dark he nosed the Arluk alongside a wharf in the same shipyard where they had first boarded her less than a year ago. It seemed a lifetime. There was no one ashore to catch their heaving lines, but Guns jumped from the forecastle head, and the ship was quickly moored.

  “Finished with engines,” Paul said, and Nathan rang up the signal.

  “Liberty party requests permission to go ashore!” Boats called from the well deck.

  “Permission granted,” Paul said, and the men, who had been wearing their dress blues for hours, scrambled over the rail.

  “I’ve given Mr. Williams the duty aboard tonight,” Nathan said. “I’ll be around tomorrow. There’s no reason why you can’t take off.”

  “You got any plans?” Paul asked.

  “I’m going to have a drink at the Ritz bar.”

  “I’ll join you before I make my telephone calls.”

  They both put on rumpled khaki uniforms because they had no clean blue ones, and they felt out of place at the Ritz bar with beautiful women and sleek-looking men laughing all around them. They said very little as they downed two drinks, and then Paul, with a rising sense of dread, walked to a telephone booth. He decided to call his parents first to see where Sylvia was. His mother answered.

  “Paul! Where are you?”

  “Home.”

  “I’m so glad! I’ve been so worried about you. I’m so sorry everything happened the way it did. You’ve heard about it, haven’t you? Bill is just furious at Sylvia. He told me before he left that he hopes none of us ever have to see her again.”

  “Where did he go?”

  “Didn’t you get our letters? They sent him to England, and now I’m so worried about him. He volunteered to go even though he could have stayed as an instructor here.”

  Well, Paul thought—at least I won’t have to see him … “Is Sylvia still in the hospital?”

  “Yes … she’s really in very bad shape, I hear. Bill says she’s mental. She’s got more than broken bones. I’m so sorry. It’s such a terrible thing for you.”

  “I’m all right,” Paul said, got the name of the hospital, promised to visit his parents as soon as possible, quickly hung up and walked slowly back to the bar.

  “One more drink,” he said to Nathan. “I’ve got to visit a hospital.”

  “Want to come back here afterward? We could have a late dinner.”

  “That would be good,” Paul said. “I shouldn’t be long.”

  He took a taxi to the Massachusetts General Hospital. A receptionist gave him the number of Sylvia’s room. He walked through endless corridors, all of which seemed to him to be full of the smells and sounds of sickness and death. As he approached the open door of Sylvia’s room he heard her laughing exactly as she used to do at parties. She was sitting in bed with one leg propped up in a plaster cast, and she was talking to two white-coated young interns who were drinking from paper cups. Vases of flowers filled every level surface in the room.

  Aware that his sudden arrival might come as a shock to her, Paul hesitated by the door.

  “You’re just saying that!” Sylvia said. “You’re just trying to cheer up a poor cripple.”

  “No, I mean it,” the taller intern said.

  Sylvia’s glossy dark blonde hair had been brushed over the shoulders of her pink bed jacket. She was wearing, as usual, a little too much makeup, but in her face there was that familiar vitality, the same old excitement, and her eyes sparkled as she laughed with the interns. Paul walked slowly toward her. From the doorway, he said, “Hello, Sylvia.”

  She jerked her head to face him, and went so pale that her lipstick and rouge seemed to brighten.

  “Paul! My God! You’re back!”

  She held out her arms and the interns hastily brushed by Paul on their way out. Leaning over the bed, he kissed her on the forehead and gave her a quick hug before stepping back.

  “What kind of a greeting is that? Oh Paul! Are you mad at me?”

  “No.”

  “I wish I wasn’t like this. I wish I could ask you to jump right into this bed with me.”

  He smiled.

  “Oh, Paul, sit here on the edge of the bed and hold my hand. I have so much to tell you about. I want to explain the whole thing, so you don’t have any reason to be mad at me at all …”

  She talked very fast, often contradicting herself and her letter, making him almost embarrassed for her as she strained to explain why she was driving around the city at three o’clock on the morning after New Year’s Eve with an air force captain and why she had been charged with drunken driving, but she managed to give a certain plausibility to her protestations of innocence, except for the fact that she now had the air force captain a terrible man who had practically kidnapped her.

  “It all must have been very hard on you,” he said.

  “It wouldn’t really have been more than a stupid accident if it hadn’t been for Bill. I haven’t wanted to tell you this about your own brother but …”

  According to her, Bill had been pursuing her for years and had almost raped her only a week after Paul had gone to Greenland. Paul was sure that she exaggerated this, but also suspected there was some substance to it. He was very glad that Bill was three thousand miles away.

  “I’m sorry about all this too,” he said, “but there’s not much we can do about it now, is there?”

  “No, but I just want to be sure you believe me. I haven’t done one single thing wrong.”

  “I’m not judging you, Sylvia. I’m not in very good shape for judging anybody … but I can’t stay long. I have to go—”

  “Where? Why? Chris said you’d get a thirty-day leave when you came home.”

  He thought of confessing his sins and asking her honestly to confess hers, but the thought appalled him, and he was sure that after the whole messy scene was over he would still want to get away from her. There was no point in putting her or himself through all that.

  “I have to go,” he repeated. “Sylvia, you and I need time to figure things out. Let’s just do as best we can until after the war is over. Then we’ll see where we stand.”

  “You are mad at me then, aren’t you? You don’t believe me!”

  “I think we both need time to see where we are and what we are.”

  She looked scared. “You’re not going to cut off my allotment, are you? Bill said you would.”

  “I won’t do anything like that. Get better and don’t worry. We both have to sort things out …”

  He kissed her on the lips this time and quickly turned to go. She broke into tears, and, damn it, he was strongly tempted to go back. He was also pretty sure that that would turn out to be the worst decision in his life, and by now he was something of an expert in the mistake line. He went out of the room so fast that he jostled a cart full of trays in the hall, spilled one, and was shouted at by an angry nurse. “Why don’t you look where you’re going?”

  Some way to talk to a hero …

  By the time he got back to the Ritz bar, his calm had deserted him, and he realized that he was almost in shock. His hand t
rembled as he reached for a drink.

  “You’re not as terrible a man as you think,” Nathan said with his crooked smile.

  “I don’t know. She’s sick and I just walked out on her. She was crying. Maybe she really was telling the truth.”

  “Do you really believe that?”

  “No. But maybe that shouldn’t matter.”

  “Maybe.”

  “But in the long run it would. Damn it, I want to get out of this town. I don’t want to see her again and I don’t want to see my parents. They’ll just keep telling me how terrible she is.”

  “Why don’t you go up to the district office tomorrow and see what orders they’re cooking up for you? I met a commander here at the bar a few minutes ago, and he said they’re sending practically everybody to some kind of school in Florida between assignments.”

  “You mean now they’re going to send us to school?”

  Nathan laughed. “That figures, doesn’t it?”

  The next day Paul found that he was indeed slated to go to Advanced Officers’ Training School in St. Augustine, Florida, for six weeks. After that he would be given command of one of many small ships which were being built for service in the southwest Pacific. The thought of palm-fringed islands pleased him. Until then he had not realized how much he dreaded going back to the Arctic. The personnel officer told him that there was no reason why he could not go to Florida right away and take his leave there before reporting to the school. A month of lying on the beaches in a place where no one would expect anything of him seemed to Paul to be just what he needed. No matter how much sleep he got, he still felt exhausted.…

  When Paul was detached from the Arluk Nathan was given orders making him commanding officer of the trawler. Paul was packing his clothes when Nathan came to his cabin to show him the mimeographed papers.

  “Aren’t you going to get any leave?” Paul asked.

  “Later maybe. I want to be here to make sure that the refitting goes right, and I’ve got to train practically a whole new crew.”

  “I bet you turn out to be worse than Mowrey,” Paul said with a straight face.

  “I can’t really believe I’m skipper,” Nathan said. “When we first came aboard here, who in the world could have imagined that?”

  “In war everything changes fast, including us.”

  “You mean the Coast Guard has made men out of us?” He smiled.

  Paul closed his footlocker and strapped it to Brit’s big narwhale tusk in its sealskin case. “Maybe you’ll see Brit again,” he said.

  “I doubt if we get over to the east coast again, but maybe.”

  “Give her my best.”

  “I will. Do you want me to have some of the men carry your gear out to the street?”

  “I’d appreciate it. You better read your orders to the men as soon as I’ve gone. They should know who their skipper is.”

  The petty officers who appeared to take Paul’s footlocker were new hands. All the men Paul knew were on liberty or had been transferred. There was no one to say good-by to, but before leaving he walked through the wardroom and up to the forecastle, which was strangely deserted. Nathan followed him. They stood by the gangway for a few moments, oddly embarrassed about saying good-by.

  “Take care of yourself,” Paul said, taking Nathan’s hand.

  “Let’s get together after the war.”

  Paul clapped him hard on the shoulder, turned and walked ashore.

  A few moments later he turned to take a last look at the Arluk. Nathan had hurried to the signal halyards and as Paul watched, the third repeater fluttered toward the top of the mast to signify that the commanding officer was not aboard. Standing by the foot of the mast, Nathan made the halyard fast, turned and raised his hand in a salute that ended in a wave. Paul waved back, and then, acting on impulse, gave the ship a formal salute before turning and hurrying toward the street, another ship and another war.

  EPILOGUE

  Nathan and Paul did not meet again for thirty-seven years, and then it was by chance. Before that they often thought of each other and considered trying to get in touch, but like many men they were perhaps afraid to attempt to carry a wartime friendship into peacetime. Neither of them was a jovial backslapping type who enjoyed meeting people for old times sake. Perhaps they thought that some memories that were good, almost hallowed as time went by, could be ruined by an awkward reunion. Besides that, they were both unusually busy men who lacked the time for sentimental excursions into the past.

  Still, Nathan often wondered what had happened to Paul in the Pacific, whether he went back to his wife and whether he found a way to be as effective in, say, business as he had been aboard the Arluk. And Paul wondered how Nathan had managed aboard the Arluk back in Greenland, whether he had seen Brit again, whether he had ever found out what had happened to his wife in Poland, and whether he had found a career suited to his unusual talents. Their memories of each other were like stories with the last pages missing, but that was the way most wartime friendships looked in retrospect. Both Nathan and Paul were thoughtful men, and they concluded that the fragment of each other which they possessed had a certain completeness in its own right. The past belongs to the past and was often ruined when dragged into the present.…

  Nevertheless, Paul was delighted one morning in May, 1979, when he picked up a copy of the New York Times in his office and saw a small headline which said, “DR. NATHAN GREENBERG TO ADDRESS N.A.M. ON SOLAR ENERGY.” A photograph of a craggy-faced, balding man in his sixties removed any doubt that this was indeed Nathan of the North and Paul was not surprised to see that he had changed his family name back to Greenberg. The article said that Dr. Greenberg was a professor at M.I.T. who was considered a pioneer in developing solar energy, and it added that his address was going to be given at the Hilton Hotel at three that afternoon.

  On impulse Paul called the hotel to see if Nathan was registered there, and when he found he was, telephoned his room. Nathan’s deep, “Hello” seemed to echo unchanged across the chasm of thirty-seven years.

  “Nathan, get your ass up on the bridge!” Paul said. “The fog is closing in. I need some radar bearings.”

  “Paul! My God, that voice of yours still makes me jump. Where in hell is the bridge these days?”

  “I’m not more than a dozen blocks from you. I’ll come over to see you any time you’re not too busy.”

  “Come now. I’ll order coffee and I’ll see if I can get some croissants or some Danish pastry like Cookie’s best.”

  Nathan’s suite was as impersonal as most hotel rooms, but he had arranged a feast on a fake marble table that would have done justice to Cookie himself. There was even a bottle of Aquavit. Paul found himself studying this before allowing himself more than a glance at Nathan. Stooped and gaunt even in his youth, Nathan had not aged well physically, but his craggy face, especially his eyes, still had the vitality of youth. He was dressed in a blue serge suit almost as rumpled as their uniforms aboard the Arluk, but his white-on-white shirt, his maroon tie and his shoes all looked expensively tasteful. He looked, Paul decided, more like Abe Lincoln than ever.

  Nathan, too, found it hard to get accustomed to the appearance of his old commanding officer. Paul was fat—not grossly so, but he was huge. His full head of hair was white and still refused to stay combed. His face, though heavy, still retained a certain boyishness. He wore the clothes of a successful businessman—dark gray silk, a club tie of some sort, a delicately striped shirt, polished black shoes almost like jackboots.

  The two men shook hands awkwardly and sat down on a couch by the coffee table. Nathan poured coffee, but they did not interrupt their words with food.

  “I’m not going to beat about the bush,” Nathan began. “Damn it, I want a full report. What happened to you out in the Pacific?”

  “I had a gas tanker. We were hit. It wasn’t too much fun. How did you make out with the Arluk?”

  “Mostly we just made milk runs up and down the west coast but we
rescued some men from the Dorchester, and the crew of a wrecked plane. That made us feel pretty good. We never got back to the east coast.”

  There was a moment of silence before Paul said, “Did you find out what happened to your wife in Poland?”

  “She died at Buchenwald. I found the records.” There was a pause before he added, “I married again, a great Brooklyn girl. We have two sons.”

  “I’m glad. I married again, twice, I’m afraid. I’m still lucky at cards. Still, I have a good son and two daughters who spoil me.”