“I understand. And I’ll back you. You feel pretty chipper don’t you.”
“Wonderful.”
“Ay lad, God was with you.”
“Granted. He was with us all, all the way, Father.”
“The Father is writing a recommendation that will be presented before our Congress,” the Colonel said. “He wants your help. Your testimony as to what the Kachins have contributed.”
“It’s for an appropriation for the people. For after the war.”
“I feel now’s the time to get it,” the Colonel said. “While our activities are known and can be presented fresh.”
“Well, I’m not too crazy about the attitude Congress will have in the giving,” Con said. “But the Kachins should have the money. They deserve and need it.”
“Ay, but I don’t want the money administered so as to change the way of the people,” the priest said.
“Money, the Father feels, with a lot of strings attached could be worse than no money at all,” the Colonel said.
“When do you want to start?” Con asked the Priest.
“When you’re well enough, lad.”
“Tomorrow morning,” Con said. “How’s it going down there, Ray?”
“Ringa got three trucks day before yesterday. And Danny got a tank with a Molotov cocktail.”
“Anyone hit?”
“Three wounded and one dead.”
“I think I heard in my sleep that there’s a new offensive coming up,” Con said. “And that you won a new garrison hat?”
“That was pretty sneaky,” the massive Colonel grinned. It was stifling hot now and the Colonel was soaked wet through around the armpits of his khaki shirt. “So you weren’t asleep?”
“I guess I wasn’t. I heard about your private St. Patrick’s Day parade, Father.”
“The Irish are crazy,” the priest said scratching his grey and white beard. “The bottle’s the curse,” he shook his head reluctantly, guiltily.
“The Father wants a neutral Commissioner appointed for the Hills,” the Colonel said.
“And the Father think’s he’s the man?” Con asked.
“Yes. And I think so,” the Colonel said.
“I’m not sure if I approve,” Con said seriously. “Or if Danny would. And I think we both ought to have our say.”
“How do you mean that, lad?” the priest said hurtfully, rising up in his chair.
Con thought about it for a moment. “For one thing you’re Catholic. I think that you, personally, would give them freedom of religion. But your church would force you to be partial to the Catholic missionaries,” Con said. But that wasn’t really it at all. There was something else Con feared in the priest as an administrator. He couldn’t seem to place it.
“I can handle the Church, I can,” the Father said.
“No one can handle the Roman Catholic Church. Not even Franco in Spain,” Con said.
“Con has a point,” the Colonel said aware that it was something else that forced Con’s reluctance to agree.
“I think the people ought to have something to say about who the Commissioner will be,” Con said. “In fact what’s wrong with a native Commissioner.”
The priest opened the hole in his grey white beard as if to speak but Con got in the first word. “Someone like Nautaung.”
It stopped the Father cold.
“Do you know that there was a Kachin girl raped at Shadazup and another at Riptong. Both by Americans, lad,” the priest said.
“It serves them right,” Con said. “I didn’t know about it but it serves them right. We’ve sent messages endorsed by all the elders for all the people to stay out of American Areas. Which doesn’t mean I approve of rape,” Con said. “But you know the Kachin women as well as I do. They’re natural born coquettes and curious always. If they prefer to succumb to their curiosity rather than to the advice of their wise and learned elders that’s their business. They’re that free, thank God, and they’ll stay that free. And if rape is part of the price they pay for their freedom they can damn well pay that, too. The story sounds like hog-wash anyhow. The Kachin women are too clever to be taken in if they didn’t want to be and too full of love not to enjoy it once it began.”
The Colonel laughed loudly.
“Lad, you’ve gone completely heathen. What’s wrong with you?”
“Oh for Christ sake, Father, don’t start that crap. Just because I don’t agree with you,” Con said. “You so-called men of God make me sick. You’re like a damn vulture. Trying to seize political control of the Hills while the people have their backs turned fighting to save themselves. That don’t appear so holy in black and white, now, does it,” Con grinned.
“I swear you’ve some Irish in you, lad. You got the malarky of one.”
“We’ll work it out,” the Colonel said. “But I insist, too, that Danny and Con have their say.”
“Ay. I agree to that.”
“You drink too much and worry too much,” Con said to the priest.
“These are big problems, Con boy,” the priest said.
“Oh God, but you’re full of it,” Con said meanly and meaningfully now.
“I’m pulling Ringa back the end of next week,” the Colonel said quickly. “And bringing down the men that are still training up north. We want more recruits and more units. But I’ll tell you more about that later. The Americans are being dissolved. The Chindits, too. So it’s going to be more up to you guys than ever.”
“I suppose,” Con said impassively as if he hadn’t even heard, staring concernedly at his bare big toe.
“You can have two weeks off when you get out of here,” the Colonel said. “To Ceylon.”
“I’ll be ready to leave as soon as the priest and I work out this recommendation.”
“Whenever you say,” the Colonel said.
“Have you seen Lau’rel?” Con asked.
“He’s here. He’ll be moving in a couple days. It’s permanent, the Doctor thinks. You can see him if you want.”
“I suppose I’d better,” Con said, then shifted his eyes to the priest. “Come on over and have dinner and we’ll talk about it tonight.”
“Ay, lad. And you get some rest. You’ll feel better after a rest.”
Oh Jesus, Con said to himself.
“Anything special to eat?” the Colonel asked.
Con thought about it for a moment. “Yeah. How about something curried and hot. For the whole ward.”
The Colonel nodded and they left.
Con slept all that afternoon. That evening and the next morning he worked with the priest on a joint report of the Kachin accomplishments since their inception as an American led guerrilla force. Con told the priest that rather than stress their overall accomplishments it would be better to show in specific cases where the Kachins contributed to the saving of American lives. He explained that it would be the only thing that would justify the bill, more than likely, as far as a Congressman’s constituents were concerned. Con asked the priest if the British were going to make a similiar contribution. The priest said that he definitely hoped not. If the British did make a contribution to the Kachins, no matter how small in comparison to the American post war contribution, the British would gain the Administration. The British, the priest said, had long ago sold the Americans the idea that they were the only ones that could administer native Far Eastern Affairs. This of course was a fallacy, the Father added, as the British had always had trouble in Burma and India, and had really never administered any Far Eastern Territory as well as the Americans had the Philippines. “Take it from a native Irishman,” the priest had said, “when you can avoid politics with England do so. They’re international con-men, they are. No country had ever had less respect for history than England. They distort history. They make you eat their distortions because of your lack of knowledge of their history.”
They finished the report about noon and gave it to a headquarters clerk to type up. The priest left. Con went to sleep. The nurse w
oke him in midafternoon. He was sweat through. It was almost unbearably hot with no wind at all. She gave him a pill.
“A vitamin,” she said. “You’re friend the Filipino is being shipped out in the early morning. To the Calcutta hospital. If you want to see him you’ll have to do it this afternoon.”
“I thought this was your day off.”
“The Doctor wants someone to accompany you. I was chosen,” she said pleasantly.
“You don’t have to,” he said.
“I don’t mind. I can assure you there’s nothing else to do around here unless you’ve taken to hospital alcohol and canned grapefruit juice,” she smiled. “Or run for your life.”
“I’ll bet you hate that,” he grinned.
“Can it, jungle walla,” she said.
“How many men are there on the base now?” he asked wiping his sweating face with a towel.
“Two hundred thirty-five,” she said.
“And three white women. You know I bet there’s not one man on the base that knows the base strength except the personnel officer. How come you know it?”
“It’s simple. I’m a woman.”
“I’m aware of that,” he said. “I want to thank you for what you did for the boys last night. Suggesting they bring that movie here. It did them a lot of good. They were crazy about it.”
“We all make mistakes. You get dressed. I’ll meet you at the office,” she said, ordering again.
He watched her walk out. She had on khaki G.I. pants and shirt. She was tiny; not over ninety-five pounds, he thought. Her light brown hair was cut short and with the small slightly uptilted nose she reminded him of a girl from Winnetka he had taken out a couple of times. He felt a sudden deep wave of nostalgia for the land of his native birth, the neighborhoods he had roamed. He wiped under his armpits with a towel and threw on a robe and headed across the hall to the shower.
He saw the skyline of Chicago in his mind, and he was driving down the outer drive. Well if you’re going down the outer drive, he said to himself, do it in the winter. Like that English teacher once told you: When you read Jack London’s To Build A Fire read it when it’s hotter than hot. If it doesn’t cool you off, he had said, you don’t have any sensitivity and you might as well not bother to read at all.
So make it winter, Con boy. So it is winter and the lake is churning grey out in front of the Drake Hotel, and the sky is grey as you move down the drive in the quickening pace of the late afternoon traffic, and soon you are caught in that eternal traffic jam just before you come to the Edgewater Beach, and the horns are blowing, and you can’t see out the back window because of the snow-whirls.
Down the icy streets into Evanston, through the ravines of Sheridan Road in Winnetka with the night coming quickly coldly darkly in the late December afternoon, the snow piled high over the hard earth, the windshield frosting again and you asking Jerry if he was sure it was all-right that he had brought you along, and him passing you the flask after the girls had finished, and Jerry’s sister bundled up in her mink snuggling up close to you her hand inside your coat and her head on your shoulder, you feeling awkward with Jerry there, and he giving you that wise what-she-does-is-her-business-sister-or-no-sister wink, the new knowing wink he had acquired at this his first term at Yale, all of them on the way to Jerry’s so his sister could change, then drinks out on 41 at the Villa and back down to the Gold Coast where Miss Mary Ann whatever-her-name was having her debut at the Woman’s Club. It was your first and only debut, he said to himself now turning on the shower, and remember how very out of place you felt until you and Jerry and your friend Big Stever from Princeton began to lap up the free scotch, and then Jerry and Big Stever falling down the fifteen steps of the circular stairway in the Club, landing, laughing, right at the head of the receiving line, and no one noticing, and, later, one of the society daughters in a weeping drunken hysteria and all the rich, placidly reserved very rich old men paying absolutely no attention to her, I shall ignore it therefore it never happened, and early the next morning your little sister waking you, your mouth thick and dry, and you telling her all about it, beginning to tell her that it really wasn’t so hot and seeing the disappointment in her eyes, and abruptly changing your story so that it all sounded like a fairy tale, her big black eyes alive with the small girl dreams of Princesses and the Never-Never land that was the society page of the Chicago Daily News.
Jerry was dead now. The first one of the fellows he had known who went to war; killed, flying with the Canucks in the Blitz over London. That was a blow to your little sister, remember, remember what a school girl crush she had had for Jerry.
And then once again in his mind he saw the Lake in the winter, and the snow-sleet, and the lights in the apartment houses overlooking the Lake and the Drive, and now alone in the shower with the water turned off and feeling the heat once again: Something came into the room, something that he had never known before came like a dry haze and it was all purple and grey like a cloud and everything was still, all still, all quiet with the purple grey cloud all around him, and then he knew, knew for the first time that he would never with these eyes see that Lake, that City, again.
He stood for a long moment feeling a great gushing hurt all through his chest; a great longing to be a part of all that he had known, if only for an hour, for once again. And then the cloud was gone.
He shook his head and toweled and went into his room and dressed. He paced down the long hall, the Kachins making numerous comments on how wonderful their movie was and what a very minor wound he must have had to be on his feet so soon, and when was the laku coming?
The nurse drove the jeep. She drove carefully over to the small cottage where Lau’rel was under special guard. They went into the livingroom and talked to Doctor Levy for a moment. Then into the bedroom. Lau’rel was sitting on the bed with his legs crossed under him. There was toilet paper all over the room. He was tying toilet paper in big knots in the form of a cross and when he finished one he would throw it on the floor and start another. They stood there for fifteen minutes and though Con spoke several times Lau’rel did not look up once, or hear, or was just too intent with the toilet paper.
It was very hot in the room and when no one spoke or Lau’rel was not mumbling incoherently to himself there was an almost horrifying silence. Con forced himself to stay a half-hour with the vague hope that he might look into Lau’rel’s eyes and distinguish, at least, a faint glimmer of recognition. Then a moment before Con was ready to leave he spied the silver St. Christopher medallion on the bedsheet by Lau’rel’s side. He walked around to the side of the bed without any notice from the Filipino whatsoever, and reached for the medallion. Lau’rel snarled like a maddened beast and his hand flashed out with an almost inhuman quickness gripping Con’s arm around the forearm. He snarled again not ever looking at Con but only at the medallion until finally Con yanked his arm free. He looked at the arm. It was bleeding where two of the Filipino’s fingernails had driven into it and the dark skin was pressed white with a picture of Lau’rel’s grip. Con stepped back. Lau’rel put the the medallion possessively between his legs, then with a very satisfied expression went back to work on the toilet paper. For all the world it reminded Con, reminded him shudderingly, of Scheherezade and the way she had acted with her possessions. Even Lau’rel’s eyes looked exactly as Con had remembered seeing the monkey’s on several occasions. He took the nurse quickly by the arm and walked her out of the room. The sweat poured from his face. He asked the Doctor for a drink and was obliged.
The nurse drove him over to the Colonel’s quarters. He talked to the Colonel for a half-hour and was reassured that Lau’rel would receive the finest of medical attention.
He paid for a case of scotch to be given to the enlisted men that kicked the supplies out the door of the planes that air-dropped to them. The Colonel said if he felt up to it to spend the afternoon around his quarters. He agreed. He went out and thanked the nurse.
The Colonel’s quarters and o
ffice was the main house of the tea plantation. It was a big house of white stucco, fourteen rooms and a large veranda. In the lease the American government had taken they agreed to keep up the gardens. There were two acres of gardens all in perfect shape and from a red tiled veranda that ran around three sides of the house you could see the gardens and the grass that was like the grass of a putting green.
He loafed in the house for a while, drinking and thumbing books. Finally in his idleness he sent messages to Ringa, Niven, and Danny. The nurse came to dinner. It was easy to see why the nurse stayed away from the rest of the fellows at base. She roamed the Colonel’s house as if she had been born and raised there.
After dinner the evening message was brought in by a runner from message center. Niven had been hit in the left leg during a firefight near the Road. The wound was not serious but he was being flown out the next day.
“That’s all,” Con said when he had read the message. “Get me out of here, Ray. I want some peace. I want to see Carla. Tomorrow.”
“I don’t think you’re well enough to travel,” the nurse said.
“Goddamn it, don’t you interfere. I’m sick, goddamn sick of seeing only half people,” he said turning to Ray. “How about my marriage?”
“I’ll have to check it. We didn’t expect you to be out so soon.”
“You didn’t count on me getting wounded, is that it?”
“I guess that’s it. But I’ll get on it first thing and get you out of here tomorrow.”
“Thanks,” Con said. “Christ, I’m sorry. But this place is driving me crazy.”
“You’ll be out tomorrow. We understand,” he said.
Never So Few Page 47