by Irwin Shaw
“… oh, they’ve shot off my bollocks,” sang the RAF in the other room, “and screwed my hydraulics, Oh, Bless them, lads, bless them all …”
A stout Major General in Services of Supply, who had just arrived in England that afternoon from Washington, entered the bar. A large young woman with long teeth and a flowing black veil was on his arm. A drunken Captain with a large moustache followed him carefully.
“Ah,” the Major General said, heading straight for Louise, with a wide, warm smile on his face, “my dear Mrs. M’Kimber.” He kissed Louise. The woman with the long teeth smiled seductively at everyone. She had something wrong with her eyes, and she blinked them, quickly, again and again, all the time. Later on, Michael found out that her name was Kearney and that her husband had been a pilot in the RAF and had been shot down over London in 1941.
“General Rockland,” Louise said, “I want you to meet PFC Whitacre. He loves Generals.”
The General shook Michael’s hand heartily, nearly crushing it, and Michael was sure the General must have played football at West Point at one time. “Glad to meet you, Boy,” said the General. “I saw you at the party, sneaking out with this handsome young woman.”
“He insists on being a Private,” said Louise, smiling. “What can we do about it?”
“I hate professional Privates,” said the General and the Captain behind him nodded gravely.
“So do I,” said Michael. “I’d be delighted to be a Lieutenant.”
“I hate professional Lieutenants, too,” said the General.
“Very well, Sir,” said Michael. “If you wish, you can make me a Lieutenant Colonel.”
“Maybe I will,” said the General, “maybe I will. Jimmy, take that man’s name.”
The Captain who had come in with the General, fumbled through his pockets and took out a card advertising a private black-market taxi service. “Name, rank, and serial number,” he said automatically.
Michael gave him his name, rank and serial number and the Captain put the card back carefully in an inside pocket. He was wearing bright red suspenders, Michael saw, as the blouse flipped back.
The General had Louise over in a corner by now, pinned against the wall, his face close to hers. Michael started toward them, but the long-toothed girl stepped into his path, smiling softly and blinking. “My card,” she said. She handed Michael a small, stiff white card. Michael stared down at it. Mrs. Ottilie Munsell Kearney, he read, Regent 4027.
“I’m in every morning until eleven,” Mrs. Kearney said, smiling without ambiguity at him. Then she wheeled away, her veil blowing, and went from table to table, distributing cards.
Michael got another gin and went over to the table where Colonel Pavone was sitting with the correspondents, two of whom Michael knew.
“… after the war,” Pavone was saying, “France is going to go left, and there is nothing we can do about it and nothing England can do about it and nothing Russia can do about it. Sit down Whitacre, we have whiskey.”
Michael drained his glass, then sat down and watched one of the correspondents pour him four fingers of Scotch.
“I’m in Civil Affairs,” Pavone said, “and I don’t know where they’re going to send me. But I’ll tell you here and now, if they send me to France, it will be a big joke. The French have been governing themselves for a hundred and fifty years, and they’ll just laugh at any American who tells them even where to put the plumbing in the city hall.”
“I raise you five hundred pounds,” said the Hungarian correspondent at the other table.
“I’ll see you,” said the Air Forces Major. They both wrote out IOU’s.
“What happened, Whitacre?” Pavone asked. “The General get your girl?”
“Only on a short lease,” said Michael, glancing toward the bar, where the General was leaning heavily against Louise and laughing hoarsely.
“The Privilege of Rank,” said Pavone.
“The General loves girls,” said one of the four correspondents. “He was in Cairo two weeks and he had four Red Cross girls. They gave him the Legion of Merit when he returned to Washington.”
“Did you get one of these?” Pavone waved one of Mrs. Kearney’s cards.
“One of my most treasured souvenirs,” said Michael gravely, producing his card.
“That woman,” said Pavone, “must have an enormous printing bill.”
“Her father,” said one of the correspondents, “is in beer. They have plenty of dough.”
“I don’t want to join the Air Force,” sang the RAF in the back room, “I don’t want to go to war. I’d rather hang around the Piccadilly Underground, Living off the earnings of a high born—ladeeee …”
The air-raid sirens blew outside.
“Jerry is getting very extravagant,” said one of the correspondents. “Just yesterday I wrote an article proving conclusively that the Luftwaffe was through. I added up all the percentages of aircraft production reported destroyed by the Eighth Air Force, the Ninth Air Force, the RAF, and all the fighter planes knocked down in raids, and I found out that the Luftwaffe is operating on minus one hundred and sixty-eight percent of its strength. Three thousand words.”
“Are you frightened by air raids?” a short, fat correspondent by the name of Ahearn asked Michael. He had a very serious round face, mottled heavily with much drinking. “This is not a random question,” said Ahearn. “I am collecting data. I am going to write a long piece for Collier’s on fear. Fear is the great common denominator of every man in this war, on all sides, and it should be interesting to examine it in its pure state.”
“Well,” Michael began, “let me see how I …”
“Myself,” Ahearn leaned seriously toward Michael, his breath as solid as a brewery wall, “I find that I sweat and see everything much more clearly and in more detail than when I am not afraid. I was on board a naval vessel, even now I cannot reveal its name, off Guadalcanal, and a Japanese plane came in at ten feet off the water, right at the gun station where I was standing. I turned my head away, and I saw the right shoulder of the man next to me, whom I’d known for three weeks and seen before in all stages of undress. I noticed at that moment, something I had never noticed before. On his right shoulder he had a padlock tattooed in purple ink, with green vine leaves entwined in the bolt, and over that on a magenta scroll, Amor Omnia Vincit, in Roman script. I remember it with absolute clarity, and if anyone wished I could reproduce it line for line and color for color on this tablecloth. Now, about you, are things more clear or less clear when you are in danger of your life?”
“Well,” said Michael, “the truth is I haven’t …”
“I also find difficulty breathing,” said Ahearn, staring sternly at Michael. “It is as though I am very high in an airplane, speeding through very thin air, without an oxygen mask.” He turned suddenly away from Michael. “Pass the whiskey, please,” he said.
“I am not very interested in the war,” Pavone was saying. The guns in the distance coughed the overture to the raid. “I am a civilian, no matter what the uniform says. I am more interested in the peace later.”
The planes were overhead by now, and the guns were loud outside the house. The planes seemed to be coming over in ones and twos, and diving low over the streets. Mrs. Kearney was handing a card to the MP Top Sergeant who was coming from the kitchen now with his fish.
“The war,” said Colonel Pavone, “is a foregone conclusion. Therefore I am not interested in it. From the moment I heard the Japanese had hit us at Pearl Harbor, I knew we were going to win …”
“Oh, what a beautiful mornin’,” sang an American voice near the piano, “Oh, what a beautiful day. I got a beautiful feelin’, Everything’s goin’ my way …”
“America cannot lose a war,” said Pavone. “You know it, I know it, by now even the Japs and the Germans know it. I repeat,” he said, making his clown’s grimace, pulling heavily on his cigar, “I am not interested in the war. I am interested in the peace, because that issue is stil
l in doubt.”
Two Polish Captains came in, in their harsh, pointed caps, that always reminded Michael of barbed wire and spurs, and went, with set, disapproving faces, over to the bar.
“The world,” said Pavone, “will swing to the left. The whole world, except America. The world will swing, not because people read Karl Marx, or because agitators will come out of Russia, but because, after the war is over, that will be the only way they can turn. Everything else will have been tried, everything else will have failed. And I am afraid that America will be isolated, hated, backward, we will all be living there like old maids in a lonely house in the woods, locking the doors, looking under the beds, with a fortune in the mattress, not being able to sleep, because every time the wind blows and a floor creaks, we will think the murderers are breaking in to kill us and take our treasure …”
The Hungarian correspondent came over to the table to fill his water tumbler with whiskey. “I have my own private theory,” he said. “Later on, I am going to have it published in Life Magazine. How to Save the Capitalist System in America, by Laszlo Czigly.” A battery in Green Park nearby made a great clatter for a moment and the Hungarian drank and looked reproachfully at the ceiling. “I call it The Guided Tour System of Democracy,” he said, when the noise had died a little. “Look around us now …” He threw his arm wide in a spacious gesture. “What do we see? Unparalleled prosperity. Every man who wants to work, with a good job. Every woman, who in normal times could not be trusted to rinse rubber nipples, now doing precision tooling at eighty-seven dollars a week. Mississippi traffic policemen who in peacetime made eleven hundred dollars a year, now full Colonels, with pay starting at six hundred and twenty a month. College boys who were a drain on the family fortune, now Majors in the Air Forces, making five hundred and seventy dollars a month. Factories working night and day, no unemployment, everybody eating more meat, going to more movies, getting laid more often than ever before. Everybody alert, happy, in good physical condition. What is the source of all these benefits? The war. But, you say, the war cannot last forever. Alas, that is true. The Germans will finally betray us and collapse and we will go back to closed factories, unemployment, low pay, disaster. There are two ways of handling the situation. Either keep the Germans fighting forever, and you cannot trust them to do that … or …” And he took a long drink of his whiskey, and smiled widely. “Or, pretend the the war is always on. Keep the factories working. Keep producing fifty thousand airplanes a year, at two-fifty an hour for everyone who picks up a wrench, keep producing tanks at a hundred thousand dollars a tank, keep producing aircraft carriers at seven million dollars apiece. Ah, you say, then you have the problem of overproduction. The Czigly System takes care of everything. As of the moment, the Japanese and the Germans absorb our production, prevent us from glutting our markets. They shoot down our planes. They sink our aircraft carriers, they tear holes in our clothing. It is a simple problem. We must be our own Germans, our own Japs. Each month, we collect the necessary amount of B-17s, the allotted number of aircraft carriers, the specified number of tanks … and what do we do with them?” He looked proudly and drankenly around his audience. “We sink them in the ocean, and we order new ones immediately. Now,” he said, very seriously, “the most delicate problem—the human element. Overproduction of goods, you say, that is not an insoluble problem. But overproduction of human beings—there we tread on dangerous ground. One hundred thousand men a month, two hundred thousand men a month, I do not know how many, are now being disposed of. In peacetime, there will be a certain objection to killing them off, even if it keeps the economy in A Number One working order. Certain organizations would protest, the Church would take a stand, even I can comprehend the difficulties. No, I say, let us be humane, let us remember we are civilized human beings. Do not kill them. Merely keep them in the Army. Pay them their salaries, promote them, decorate the Generals, give allotments to their wives, and merely keep them out of America. Send them, under proper guidance, in large numbers to one country after another. They promote good will, they spread prosperity, they spend American money abroad in large sums, they make pregnant a great many lonely foreign women with good democratic New World seed, they set an example for the local manhood of vigor and directness that is most useful. Most of all, they do not compete with American labor on the home scene. From time to time, permit large groups of them to be demobilized and be sent home. There they will take up their old lives with their wives and mothers-in-law and their civilian employers. They will see quickly how foolish they were. They will clamor to be taken back into the Army. But we take back only the best; we have finally only ten or twelve million of our finest examples, touring the world; we have left in America only the slightly slow, the slightly stupid, who do not compete too fiercely with each other, and so that nervous tension which has been complained about so often in American life, slowly relaxes, slowly disappears …”
There was a high whistle outside and above, a roaring, crowding, thundering, clattering scream, that grew out of the blackness like a train wreck in a storm, and hurtled toward them. Everyone hit the floor.
The explosion crashed through every eardrum. The floor heaved. There was the sound of a thousand windowpanes blowing out. The lights flickered, and in the crazy moment before they went out, Michael saw the sleeping proprietress slide sideways out of her chair, her glasses still hanging from one ear. The explosion rumbled on in waves, each one less strong, as buildings collapsed, walls broke, brick tumbled into living rooms and areaways. The piano in the back room Hummed as though ten men had struck chords on it all at once.
“I raise you five hundred,” the Hungarian’s voice came from the floor, and Michael laughed, because he realized that he was alive, and that they had not been hit.
The lights flickered on. Everyone got to his feet. Somebody lifted the proprietress from the floor and put her back on the chair, still sleeping. She opened her eyes and stared coldly out in front of her. “I think it’s despicable,” she said, “stealing an old woman’s scarf while she sleeps.” She closed her eyes again.
“Pest,” said the Hungarian, “I have lost my drink.” He poured himself another tumblerful of whiskey.
“You see,” said Ahearn, standing up next to Michael, “I am sweating profusely.”
The two Polish Captains put on their pointed caps. They looked around them disdainfully, then started out. At the door they stopped. On the wall was a poster of Roosevelt, Churchill, Chiang Kai-shek, and Stalin. One of the Poles reached up and tore off the picture of Stalin. Then he ripped the picture in quarters, swiftly, and threw it back into the room, in angular confetti. “Bolshevik pigs!” he shouted.
The Frenchman who ate martini glasses got up from the floor and threw a chair at the Poles. It clattered on the wall next to the pointed caps. The Poles turned and fled.
“Salauds!” shouted the Frenchman, wavering at his table. “Come back here and I will cut your testicles off!”
“Those gentlemen,” said the proprietress, keeping her eyes closed, “are to be denied admission to these premises from now on.”
Michael looked over to the end of the bar. The Major General had his arms comfortingly around Louise and was tenderly patting her buttocks. “There, there, little woman,” he was saying.
“All right, General.” Louise was smiling icily. “The battle is over. Disengage.”
“The Poles,” said the Hungarian. “Children of nature. However, there is no denying it, they are as brave as lions.” The Hungarian bowed and returned, quite steady, to the table where the Air Forces Major was sitting. The Hungarian sat down and wrote out an IOU for a thousand pounds and shuffled the cards three times.
The siren went off, indicating, in its long, pulsating wailing, that the raid was over.
Then Michael began to shake. He gripped the bottom of his chair with his hands and he set his teeth, but they clattered in his jaws. He smiled woodenly at Pavone, who was relighting his cigar.
“Whitacre
,” said Pavone, “what the hell do you do in the Army? Whenever I see you, you’re holding up a bar some place.”
“I don’t do anything much, Colonel,” Michael said, then kept quiet, because one more word would have been too much, and his jaw would have worked loose.
“Can you speak French?”
“A little.”
“Can you drive a car?”
“Yes, Sir.”
“Would you like to work for me?” Pavone asked.
“Yes, Sir,” said Michael, because Pavone outranked him.
“We’ll see, we’ll see,” said Pavone. “The man I had working for me is up for court-martial on charges of perversion, and I think he’s going to be found guilty.”
“Yes, Sir.”
“Call me up in a couple of weeks,” said Pavone. “It may turn out to be interesting.”
“Thank you, Sir,” said Michael.
“Do you smoke cigars?”
“Yes, Sir.”
“Here.” Pavone held out three cigars and Michael took them. “I don’t know why I think so, but I think you have an intelligent look in your eye.”
“Thanks.”
Pavone looked over at General Rockland. “You’d better get back there,” Pavone said, “before the General rapes your girl.”
Michael stuffed the cigars into his pocket. He had considerable trouble with the pocket button because his fingers were shaking as though he were plugged into an electric circuit.
“I am still sweating,” Ahearn was saying as Michael left the table, “but everything is extraordinarily clear.”
Michael stood respectfully but firmly next to General Rockland. He coughed discreetly. “I’m afraid, Sir,” he said, “I have to take the lady home. I promised her mother I’d bring her back by midnight.”
“Your mother in London?” The General demanded of Louise.
“No,” said Louise. “But PFC Whitacre knew her back in St. Louis.”