“Yes. I’ve heard of him,” he spoke seriously. “We’d be in a hell of a fix without him. He’s the only really dependable source of information from several vital areas. Only God knows where he gets the information he gathers.”
“Do you know him personally then?” Con asked the Colonel.
“I don’t think anyone knows him.”
No, Father Barrett said to himself, hardly anyone knew Colonel Piccolo. But unfortunately he did. It was a secret that often he wished he did not know. That he had taken an oath to himself never to divulge. Hardly a day passed that he didn’t pray for the short sloppy fat little Greek, Gusto Regas; shipper, opium addict, and black marketeer. Inwardly the priest chuckled.
It was another of those international confidences that the Catholic Church had somehow penetrated. How greatly this unnecessary knowledge in the hands of the Church endangered the life of the ever provident kindly Gusto, the Father did not know. But it irritated him often. And this questioning irritated him now. A man who had sacrificed his life to the contempt of a democratic society in the interest of it deserved a far greater consideration than his present one of satisfying the inquisitive nature of Danny and Con. But then again how are they to know? How was anyone to know, he wondered. God and the Saints be with you, Gusto.
The airforce corporal came rear and told them to fasten their seat belts. They flew bumpily descending through the thermal pockets and finally landed at Delhi.
After breakfast Danny and Con picked up their gear at Air Transport Command and said their goodbyes to both the Colonel and Father Barrett who left for the city and a meeting at Allied Headquarters.
Thirty minutes later Danny and Con took off. The plane flew them two hours to Dehra Dun, Gurkha Headquarters, and there was a taxi waiting at the field.
“Have you read Kipling?” Danny asked as they seated themselves in the taxi for the drive to Mosorrie.
“Most everything he wrote,” Con said. “My uncle, the one I lived with when I was in Rangoon, gave me a complete set of Kipling.”
“Kipling knew India,” Danny said looking out the window. “He knew it as few writers ever have. He did some of his finest writing right here.”
The cab started driving fast out into the plains. They sat silently, each to his own thoughts, and soon they started up the winding, twisting road that had been cut out of the steep hard rock of the Himalayan foothills. And far above in the distance through rifts in the dark and grey scattered clouds Con saw jagged peaks, snow covered, solitary and unmolested, and he knew that somewhere beyond those peaks lay the Vale of Kashmir and the Lake of Srinagar; that haunting spiritual valley that has so inspired poets and composers like the great Rimsky-Korsakov.
Higher they rose in the late afternoon, twisting round and round the Mosorrie road where at five thousand feet it began to grow chilly damp as they passed through heavy cloud banks, up and up, then suddenly at eight thousand feet they came haltingly to a stop at the gates to the city. A city of hotels and estates perched precariously on rocky ledges that fell away into abysses a thousand, two thousand, three thousand feet.
“We’ll have to get out here,” Danny said. “No motor or horsedrawn vehicles allowed in Mosorrie. All transportation is pushed and pulled by native labor. Something like enclosed rickshaws only larger.”
Danny was paying the taxi driver. Momentarily Con sat immobile. Suddenly he felt like he did before battle; the strong urge to urinate, the knowledge that he could not. Finally, he opened the door and pulled out the duffle bags, Danny following. They walked towards the gate and through the cloud mist Con saw the man from G.M. and his wife. And standing next to them, arms crossed, was the woman called Carla. What was her last name? He couldn’t remember.
CHAPTER XV
The fireplace burned warmly in the livingroom of their suite at the Princess Hotel. Outside a final cold darkness had sided in. The dinner dishes had been cleared and Danny and Con sat across the table sipping a demitasse of Turkish coffee.
“I’ve had it with Margaret,” Con spoke absently, eyes thoughtfully downcast.
“So I gathered.”
“I can’t figure it out. There were so many things that I wanted to tell her. That I thought many times about telling her. But when I saw her I just knew she wouldn’t understand.”
“Oh.…” Danny pondered a moment. “Are you sure of that?” he grinned pixieishly. “Are you sure you weren’t afraid to tell her? Because if you did tell her these things and then she didn’t understand you’d have felt like a ridiculous ass. An ass in her eyes.”
Con flushed slightly, then seeing Danny’s silly pixieish grin he was forced to laugh: “You English bastard.”
“As you say. But you asked for it. If sympathy is such a necessity in this dark hour,” Danny grinned, “you could try the Chaplain. Or better yet, Dorothy Dix. We English understand she’s most happy to render judgment. And you do wish to be judged? Don’t you, Con?”
“I should never have opened my mouth.”
“Granted,” Danny’s grin widened. “Tales of broken romance are really a bore, a tyranny of repetition. If you really had a love it would be so there, so with you, that you’d never have to mention it because you’d naturally assume that any damn fool could see it plainly. And even if you didn’t think I could see it plainly you’d probably never mention it because you would have no reason to justify it. Not to me or anyone else. Your love would be justification in itself. In my opinion,” Danny grinned, “which you have practically asked for, I think what you are trying to justify is a simple matter of internal devaluation on the part of your male vanity. And that line should leave you with little or no comment,” Danny smiled.
A piece of dry firewood cracked loudly and sparks flew. Con was grinning oddly, mulling it over. They finished their coffee and there was a knock on the door. A pantalooned black waistcoated bearer entered carrying a small silver tray.
“Captain Reynolds? Sign for wireless, please.”
Con tipped him and he left.
“Here goes our holiday,” Danny said.
“Of course they waited until we were comfortably settled,” Con said opening the envelope.
NIVEN TO PEARSON FOR REYNOLDS10 Jan 44
MIKE ISLAND INVESTIGATING JAP RAPE PILLAGE NATIVE VILLAGE AMBUSHED AND KILLED. HIS ACTION SAVED PATROL. FORCED TO TAKE ARMS AT FINAL MOMENT. RECOMMENDED COMMENDATION HIGHEST ORDER. MAKING EFFORT TO RECOVER BODY NOW.
NIVEN
For a moment the words didn’t have any meaning. Con could have been reading a newspaper article about someone he had never known. He read the message again knowing only that something terrible had happened, trying to find its significance. Then slowly, numbly, like novocaine the meaning spread through him.
He groped for a memory of Island but got only a fuzzy distant picture. Then the camera of his mind focused in and he saw the wavy haired Englishman with the contemplative almost pious expression, the old-young face. He was the only conscientious objector Con had ever known. Oddly now, Con remembered he looked exactly like what he had always visualized a conscientious objector to look like.
He tried to visualize Island in death, the only way Con now knew death; rotting Japanese dead in all their broken postures by the fly-infested, jungle-infested roadside. And there was Island his head superimposed on a Jap body one legginged leg extended quietly, brokenly upward. His throat clogged as shimmering waves of nausea spread through him. It was hard to believe Island could possibly smell like that. He threw the message across to Danny upsetting a water glass with his arm.
Slowly Danny read. Looked up. Con breathed deeply, visibly.
“Wasn’t he the English conscientious objector?” Danny asked his voice even and composed.
There were tiny eddies of sweat on Con’s forehead as he stared his reply. Somehow the death seemed a fantasy. Again Con couldn’t evaluate it wholly and it gave him a queasy guilt. In his mind he reviewed the message once more. Still a numb nothing.
Then he
remembered. “Recommend commendation highest order,” and “making effort to recover body now,” and a thick dull anger mounted in him.
And Danny watching attentively saw the color returning to his face, the numb bewilderment superseded by another more determined emotion.
That goddamned Niven, Con was saying to himself. That goddamned Niven and his snobbish prep school gallantry wants to risk how many more lives? for the sake of what? for what, Niven? A ceremonial burial. My God. Where, where Niven will you pin that medal on that useless lifeless form; still, waxen, undignified, dead?
Suddenly Con lurched up. “Get the desk, Danny,” he said. “I’ve got to get off a reply.”
Danny went for the servicephone. Con went to the table-desk, took paper and pencil and scrawled:
REYNOLDS TO PEARSON FOR NIVEN10 Jan 44
FORGET BODY AND SUNSHINE HEROICS. MOVE TO NEW TRAINING AREA AS DIRECTED OR FACE CONSEQUENCES.
REYNOLDS
He addressed the Calcutta headquarters. Wrote Forward-Urgent-Rush in huge emphatic letters. An assistant manager appeared magically. Danny instructed him in a swift brusque blurting of Hindustani. In a matter of minutes the message was on its way.
“You told them to forget the body?” Danny asked coming across the room.
Con was resting one arm on the fireplace mantle running the back of his hand across his goatee. He nodded: “And to get out of the area. Do you think they’ll get the message in time?”
“No,” Danny shook his head. “No, I don’t. And truthfully I don’t see that your message makes too much difference.”
Con’s eyes shifted sharply invading Danny.
“You don’t have any authority over Niven now,” Danny said calmly. “You may feel responsible, but you have no authority,” Danny paused so the vast reality of it might settle in. “And if you did have the authority there’s not a damned thing you can do that you haven’t already done.”
Con’s forehead was wrinkled perplexedly, then his eyes flickered with an angry resentment that Danny felt wholly.
“Niven will handle it,” Danny said. “You’d think of something if you saw the set-up. So will he.”
“Will he? To begin with it’s stupid to risk lives for a carcass,” Con said pointedly. “It’s a glamorous worthy sounding idea but basically it’s like trying to bail lost money out of a crap game. It doesn’t make sense. You know it. I know it. And Niven should know it. It’s basic.”
“Yes, it’s basic. It’s basic if you live by axioms. But you’ll never see the battle that’s fought to any prescribed military axiom and neither will I. There is no such thing,” Danny said caustically. “The important thing is that you don’t know what Niven knows. You don’t know his situation so you’ve got no bloody business trying to analyze it. In other words, it’s not your money and not your dice.
“If you doubted Niven you would never have put him in command to begin with. But now that everything isn’t going the way you patly visualized it, the way you think it should go, you’re beginning to have your doubts. And not about Niven either. Come off it, old man. You forget that Niven has a perfect right to make an ass of himself. That’s not our right exclusively. With the recruiting campaign scheduled for the next six months Niven may be commanding more men than you are at present. Better he should learn his lesson with this smaller risk. If he’s lucky he’ll get creased in the ass himself. That’ll make him think twice about chasing empty carcasses.”
Con was glaring at Danny seeing only the reflection of the fire in miniature in Danny’s monocle.
“I know how you feel,” Danny said in a new voice. “I know because I’ve felt that way myself. You think it’s your fault because Island’s dead. It took some doing,” Danny smiled. “But you managed it. You had to say something like this: ‘Now if I hadn’t put Niven in charge they would have been in another area and this would never have happened.’ Or: ‘I should have stayed myself. Island would be alive if I were there.’ Or: ‘You can’t die, Island. I don’t care what your ideas on the subject are, Island. You may be ready to die. But I, Con Reynolds, don’t want you to die. Don’t you dare die. I command you, Island,’” Danny said with a wild pixy-on-a-drunk leer in his good eye. “If I were Island I wouldn’t care for your attitude at all. I would say your whole outlook was presumptuous to the point of arrogance; an insolent invasion of my privacy at the very hour I was to meet my Maker.”
Gradually the leering wildness disappeared from Danny’s eye and he looked at Con in that serious way of his, his head far back, his face a mask; “We don’t know, but maybe Island’s death was a reward for services rendered. Maybe after he picked up that weapon it was against his religion to touch he was ready. Maybe that gesture itself was his final obligation in this life, and maybe he knew it.
“We don’t know what he thought about his death because we don’t think as he thinks. We forget that our living and his living, though outwardly they may appear as this living, are in reality three different livings entirely; his, yours, and mine.… and it would be impossible for this living, the identical one, to have the same meaning to him, or to you or to me.
“But you ignored that. You blithely ignored that part of his living and dying that you had no comprehension of. It’s not fair, Con. It’s not fair to Island. And more; it’s not fair to you.” Danny paused. “I know as well as you do that there is no self-justification for the careless decisions of command. You and I will both live with enough of our own mistakes. You don’t have to invite Niven’s, too. Besides, you can never feel them as he does.”
There was silence. Con stared at Danny sullenly, constrainedly.
“I’m an ass,” he said finally.
“A what?” Danny whispered incredulously, leaning forward.
“All right, you son-of-a-bitch,” Con said. “A fool. A goddamned fool.”
“Ah, you too?” Danny extended his hand. They eyed each other a second, hands clasped, then simultaneously both broke grinning.
“Sometimes I hate your guts,” Con said.
“I don’t. Brandy?” Danny asked.
“Certainly.”
“We told Mr. Turner we’d stop by his cottage for a while,” Danny said. “What do you say?”
“Sounds like we should. Maybe we’ll take in a club.”
“If we get bored. Which I doubt. There’s usually a very gay crowd here in Mosorrie.”
“Let’s hope there is.”
“I didn’t think you thought people ought to be gay while you were warring,” Danny said moxishly.
“You really are a son-of-a-bitch,” Con grinned.
“A little of this, a little of that,” Danny poured a drink. “We’d better dress warm. The nights are bitter at this altitude.”
They had a couple of drinks and put on their trench coats and walked down the one flight of carpeted stairs, through the marble floored lobby with its oriental rugs, hearing the orchestra music in the main dining salon. They left their key, then past the lobby bar through the glossy glassed revolving door down the four steps into the street.
The clouds lay close to the earth and the night was cloudy dark. They walked hatless, their collars turned up, Danny shivering slightly, down the broad asphalt road that rolled like a miniature roller coaster past large houses wedged into the rocky cliffs. The light shaded stucco homes lay close to the road, close to each other, with tall iron-latticed fences which gave the dim barely visible lights beyond that rich subdued privacy that was almost a secrecy.
“We’ll have to do some riding while we’re here,” Danny said. “Excellent trails. Probably some of the oldest man-made trails in existence.”
“How about the stables?”
“Two. Both first rate.”
“I’d like to ride,” Con said dreamily. I’d like to ride this moment, he said to himself, feeling a sudden wild outlaw sense of abandonment that seemed to transcend all fears, wanting to ride hard and fast, to see everything and do everything there was in this world to do, dreami
ng of his ride with those small boy dreams as the raw cool night air whistled its strange syncopation. Then Danny and he suddenly passed into a lighted area of now closed very smart shops, Danny walking faster, past several cafés, a cinema house the marquee brightly lit (Clark Gable in Gone With The Wind … One Week Only), out of the business district edging to the right of the road, checking the house numbers.
The “cottage” was a massive pink stucco home of twenty or more rooms decorated in dynasty Chinese. There was a cocktail party in progress in the extremely high-ceilinged studio living room and a stringed orchestra was playing Intermezzo. And as a white jacketed bearer helped them remove their coats they saw many refugees informally casually attired and resplendent noble Indians intense and straight-backed in their flowing robes and too tailored western suits.
Distinguishedly white moustached and erect M. J. Turner came forward radiating the quiet charm of the practiced host. He escorted them to the bar and they ordered scotch and exchanged pleasantries. Danny drifted away to old familiar faces, then the host dutifully moved on to receive his due homage from some departing guests.
Con stood alone feeling intensely acutely alive listening to the music of the violins. His eyes shifted about the room studying the faces of the people; brown, black, white faces; Negroid, Mongolian, Aryan faces; faces that for all their distinct individuality bore a like characteristic of identity, that same form of assuredness that was the assuredness of all the haute monde everywhere as if they all knew exactly why they were here and exactly where they were going when they left. It could have been a party in Chicago, he was thinking, when he heard a shout and turned to see Gus Regas waddling lightly toward him:
“Greetings, countryman. I say, I heard you were in town,” the Greek said in his exaggerated English accent but as though they were the oldest, most familiar friends. “So we shall have our old-country dinner together after all. Hey?” he laughed wheezingly.
Con extended his hand eyeing the short sinister Greek dressed unfashionably in the fashionably-expensive brown cashmere sport suit, surprised at the firmness of Gus’s pudgy grip.
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