“I see. Does she still love him?”
“Yes, I think she does.”
“Does she love him because she hasn’t been able to change him? That kind of love.”
“Partly. Both kinds,” she said perplexedly. “What is all this? What’s this sudden interest in Nickie?” she asked with a razor’s edge of iciness, as if to say let’s get to the point.
“His name was Lau’rel wasn’t it?” Con asked.
“You know him then.”
He began to tell her the story. They arrived at the beach house and he was still telling it while having his first drink and she showered and changed. He made a second drink, and her first, and they sat on the steps at the sunset and looked out at the sea and the white sand and he finished.
“So he’s crazy. Absolutely no help for him crazy.”
“What will they do for him?”
“They’ll try whatever is new. Shock treatments for one thing, the Colonel said. Then, when we get the Philippines back, send him home to Manila with a pension. By the way, the Colonel told me about his will. Nickie was in it for quite a sum had he been killed.”
“Are you going to tell all this to Nickie?”
“I think we should. I’ve thought about it. It’s going to come out anyhow,” he paused thoughtfully. “It’s a funny world. He went crazy trying to prove to her that he had courage and there was the chance she’d never find out. Nickie ought to like that. That ought to please her; a man doing all that for her.”
Carla put her hand over his. She wanted to speak but she didn’t.
“What am I saying,” he said. “Of course Nickie won’t like it. Well, she will and she won’t. She’ll like it because her man showed courage. And that will make mankind greater. Which in turn will make her greater as a member of mankind. Then she will feel guilty because she will feel the courage was for her, and it’s her fault that he’s crazy. But what I want to know is where is all the love in that situation? Where? It seems the whole thing was a selfish undertaking on both their parts. Who the hell is better off? Lau’rel not knowing anything? Or Nickie with her guilts?”
He had been staring at the sand as he spoke and now he turned to her: “You know, Carla, I’m beginning to wonder if we run anything. Things we think we are running are always running us. Like when I’m fighting. Sometimes when I’m fighting there are many loose ends and I must tie them and in the concern over tying them I lose interest in the fighting itself. Then when the day comes that I haven’t much to do, when I’m merely a spectator at the battle, and they start to throw mortars at us, I still stand up as if I had other concerns. Even if it is the sanest most logical thing to seek refuge, I stand there. Everyone around me is lying close to the bosom of their mother, their basic ingredient, the earth, but I am alone protecting my reputation. And the terrible thing about it is that it’s a false reputation. So how honest am I? If I die one of those days standing, when I do not have to stand, then I die for my reputation. Not for good or bad, not for dictatorship or liberty, but trying to protect my reputation. That’s my courage. I’ve died for selfishness. And Lau’rel went crazy for selfishness. And G.I. Joe does not run from his foxhole because he is too selfish to let his buddy know he wants to run. And Jerry the same. Everyone, practically, dies for what they are fighting against: Selfishness, Greediness, Inhumanity. When you see and know and feel this, well, it makes … it makes everything you’ve believed in a lie. It de-guts you, it …” he said perplexedly, looking into her eyes as if for an answer, his forehead furrowed. “Hell, I don’t know.”
She put her other hand over the top of his so that his left hand was between hers. “People will do anything for recognition, Con. Anything. To be recognized is the real devil in us, the Lucifer. And there will be war, and more war, and war until people see the fallacy of this warring as you have seen it. Until people find out that recognition by others has no value until you have recognized yourself.”
He smiled suddenly. “You talk like Nautaung,” he said. “But I know what you mean. Nautaung says the flesh is the flesh is the flesh. And that’s that. And when you know it is nothing more than the flesh, and can accept that, and go on to the other thing, then you don’t need to fight for recognition. As Nautaung does not need to. Nautaung says that if people knew themselves, and leaders ordered them to war, they would laugh at the leaders. What he meant, I guess, is what you just said; if people recognized themselves instead of demanding recognition, they would not treat each other as they do. They would have too much respect for humanity because of their own humanity.
“You’re right, Carla, recognition is the evil in us,” he said as if suddenly awakened. “We die for recognition, we kill others for it, we wage war for it, and when we have it, or too much of it, and find it’s not what we thought it would be, then we’re afraid to admit our error, to change, so we drown ourselves in recognition finding in it only a numb insensitivity that is in reality no more than an alcoholic stupor.”
“And there’s lots of people that like a stupor, Con. But people who are insensitive bother the sensitive ones. Laurel and Nickie and their diversions, one with business and war, the other with liquor and freakishness, bother us now. They managed to take something out of us, something we both planned for this our first night. We’ve tried hard to do the right thing, act maybe, well I hate the word, we’ve tried to act dignified. To give our lives a sense of dignity. We’ve tried to believe that we had dignity. But there you are making an ass out of yourself in the fighting, and here was I a few months ago, insensitive myself, and we see ourselves, our parallels in them, and we don’t like what we see. Not a goddamn bit we don’t like it,” she said. “And then there’s that doubt, that horrifying doubt, that maybe we’re really being just as big fools, maybe there isn’t any dignity really. Maybe there’s no good and evil, really. Maybe there is nothing here but flesh, salted with a little ego, but flesh and the desire to procreate, really. And maybe the ego has subdued us so thoroughly that we, too, are insensitive but insensitive with a greater ego than they. That would be the biggest joke of all.”
“Christ,” he said, “over and over I’ve thought how I wanted to spend this night.”
“You, yourself, just said we can’t run things.”
“I’d love to say let’s go into town and get drunk.”
“Well, are we?” she challenged.
“I know I’d like to. I’d really like to.”
“Are we?” she asked.
“What do you suggest.”
She didn’t answer.
“No, let’s, not get drunk. Let’s stay and feel awkward, and more awkward with each other and hope this feeling goes away,” he said sarcastically. “Let’s by all means, not get drunk. Let’s by all means, have no vicarious thrills. No liquor, night clubs, movies, and positively no newspapers in the house,” he said and threw his drink on the sand, then set the glass down and turned and began to laugh. And she began to laugh, too; that earthy gypsy laugh.
“But there is something,” he said still laughing and standing up and pulling her toward him so that she was on the first step and he in the sand. “There is something. And it’s not vicarious but close and now,” he said with the awkward feeling all gone, knowing it had gone away from her, too, and at the same instant.
He kissed her very hard there in the twilight, and she kissed him back just as hard, and then he held her head back so that he could see her eyes, and their deep softness, and feel the silken all silk of her hair, and feel the longness of her thighs warm against his thighs; the full straining of their longness to touch and to feel; the full thankfulness of their bodies for preventing what just could have been.
And then they were walking towards the sea, edging towards a cluster of palms, and the roar of the surf came louder, and louder, and, later, the moon came up half full and reflected on the white surf and the blue sea and he said to her:
“You are the best lover, ever.”
“I love you,” she said.
<
br /> “Say that again. Just that way.”
“I love you,” she said.
They were lying on a beach towel inside a wind breaker on the edge of the palms that were some fifty yards from the sea. It was warm in the night with fine, soft trade winds.
“When do you think it will be over?” she asked.
“Soon,” he said.
“What will you do back in America?”
“I don’t know. I’ve never thought about it much.”
“When can I come?”
“As soon as they’ll let you. But if it’s not before I’m to leave I’ll try to stay on and wait.”
“I’ve always wanted to go to America. But I’d go anywhere with you. I’d like to stay right here forever.”
“I wonder what it will be like to see America again,” he lied, remembering now how it had come to him in the shower, in the hospital that he would never see America again. Then because they had been as close as two people can be, and together under the beachsheet, she thought she felt what he knew for the first time. She wasn’t sure.
“We’ll go to Florida first. You’ll see how much it’s like this. You’ll like that,” he said.
“I’ll like it if it’s like this. It’s good to be naked beside you. I love to have you look at me the way you do. You have wonderful eyes. I never thought I could have a man look at me naked and like it. You make me feel proud.”
“You have a beautiful body,” he said.
“It’s not mine anymore. It’s yours.”
“I wish I was a kangaroo. I’d put you in my pouch. Or if I could have a zipper in my belly. I’d like to carry you around inside me so you’d be close, always.”
“I don’t care what you do to me. I feel clean with you.”
“That’s just the way I feel,” he said. “Clean. I’ve often thought I’d be dirty forever after what I’ve had to do. But you make me clean.”
“That’s nice. I’d like to die for you. To show you I would die for you,” she said.
“You’ll never die.”
“We all die.”
“For me you’ll never die.”
“Say it again.”
“For me you’ll never die,” he said.
“Tell me more about the jungle.”
“Not tonight.”
“Will you take me there?”
“I’ll take you everywhere.”
“Tell me why you like the jungle?”
He smiled. “The greatest of all creation is there. Life teems. Death gives life. It’s that simple. Nothing is ever destroyed. It only changes.”
“I don’t understand. Not exactly.”
“I’ll show you.”
“You’re good.”
“Wait until you’ve seen me shoot a man,” he said, thinking of Billingsly. “You won’t think I’m so good.”
“You tease. You can have a drink now. It would be all right now.”
“I don’t want one.”
“You never get drunk do you?”
“Yes.”
“I’d like to see you drunk.”
“Why?”
“I want to see you every way you are. That’s why,” she said.
“I’m lucky to have you,” he said.
“Your hand feels good there,” she said.
“You feel good,” he said.
“Sometimes I think you’re very close to me when you’re far away. I’m sure of it sometimes.”
“We’ll have to keep a chart. We’ll check the times we feel that way, then compare them.”
“You joke?”
“No,” he said. “I believe it. I really believe it.”
“I’m glad. Swim?”
“No.”
“I’ll swim for both of us.”
“All right,” he said.
She threw off the beach sheet and the moonglow was on her body and he studied it carefully for a moment, the wonder of it, and then she rose up and he followed her with his eyes, and because the moon was high and bright, he could still see her until she disappeared some yards out in the surf.
He watched the surf for a while, and began to worry, and once he thought he saw a speck of reflection on the water very far out. Then, watching carefully, resting his chin in his hands, he saw a wave come up on the beach and dump her hard on the sand. She stood up and waved to him and began to explore her body for the sand, then returned to the sea to wash herself clean, and came wet, shining towards him.
She was smiling, walking slow, and feeling the warm air against her body, then she was standing over him and he could feel the water dripping down from her onto his back, and then she came down and kissed him on the side of his neck, and he could feel her hard, wet nipple as it pressed against his shoulder blade, and he rolled over quickly, fiercely, and kissed her wet, now pagan mouth, and both were suddenly transported as if into some different, ancient world loving completely for all the before and before they had not loved, and for the after and after they had not loved, and for the forever and forever there in the night in the sand.
CHAPTER XXXIII
The first week went lazily. Con, because of his broken ribs, could not take exercise. And Carla did not work. They lay on the beach, played records on a portable, and one day had a picnic in the hills. Con tanned and put on weight, and as if by magic his taut edginess was replaced by an utter loose relaxation. They made games of their love, talked incessantly of music, politics, and America, and hardly ever spoke of the jungle or the Hills.
In the evenings, at the twilight, they would walk up the beach and out on the rocky promontory of Mount Lavina and take their drinks on the terrace or the bathing pavilion of the Grand Hotel. Then take a horse-drawn taxi back. Tonight they were finally going into Colombo to meet Nickie at the Silver Faun for dinner. They were dressing in the bedroom.
“Are you worried about telling Nickie?” Carla was asking.
“I’ll manage. What kind of a place is this, anyhow?”
“I’m sure you’ll like it. It’s run by an American. Very sophisticated and the food’s superb.”
“And very dark with candlelight?”
“How did you know?”
“All Americans that leave America are romantics,” Con said. “Will Nickie have her uniform on?”
“She’s supposed to wear it. But she never does. She’ll be dressed quite Nickie-ish, I’d say,” Carla said. She had left her vanity and was choosing a gown from the closet. She chose a cocktail dress of white Kashmir; strapless, plain to the hips, with a wide flowing skirt and a shawl to match. “You like it?” she asked holding it up for him to see.
“Very much,” he emphasized. He watched her as she began to disrobe and dress.
“Aren’t you going to wear anything under that?” he asked.
“Why should I?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “I just wondered.”
He was standing in front of the mirror putting on his summer gabardine blouse. He had bought it in Washington and only worn it once. Now it was about six sizes too big for him and he was holding one fist full of the blouse clutched in a ball and the shoulders of the blouse stood away out from his own. “I’ll be damned,” he said awed.
“Oh Con,” she laughed. “You look like Private Sad Sack.”
“I feel like it,” he grinned a small boyish grin. “What’ll I do?” he asked helplessly. “Will they let me in without it? I mean with just a shirt and tie?”
She laughed that earthy laugh. “Don’t you know Americans can go anywhere, anytime, anyway they want.”
“I suppose,” he said and began to take off the blouse.
He went into the living room and poured himself a brandy, then another, waiting for her. She was never too long dressing but the idea of going out had somehow frightened him and he felt he should be fortified. She came in. He had never seen her so beautiful. She had on white high heeled sandals with the white dress, and a single strand of pearls, and small pearl earrings. Her hair hung long, silken and l
oose. The long free-swinging legs were sunshiny bronze against the white of her dress and she smelled faintly of a fine perfume. He kissed her. “You’re beautiful,” he said.
“I’m glad you like it,” she said, “but now I’ll have to straighten my makeup.”
“Will you have a drink before we go?”
“Let’s stop and have one. At the hotel. The Galle Face.”
“All right,” he said.
They met Nickie and Gus at the Silver Faun after stopping at the Galle Face. Con took Nickie to the bar and told her about Lau’rel. Nickie cried at the bar. She did not cry heavily or long, but large thorough tears. She did not have her uniform on but a blue and white print cocktail dress, and much makeup and the tears stained her makeup. Her once exquisite hands were stained, the nails short, and there were several bruises. Soon, Con knew, they would be full-fledged mechanic’s hands.
“Where’s José now?” she asked.
He told her.
“Is there anyway I could get, you know, custody of him?” she asked plaintively.
“I’m afraid not, Nickie. Besides, it’s best if he’s in American hands. There’s always the chance that our medicine will come up with something that will help him.”
“I’d take good care of him.”
“But you’re in the service, Nickie.”
“Gus will get me out.”
“I’m afraid not even Gus can do that.”
She was thoughtful for a moment. “No, I guess he can’t,” she said defeatedly. “I guess I’ve really bitched it up this time.”
“He was the one that made an ass of himself,” Con said. “You didn’t force him to do that.”
“He was no ass. He couldn’t help what happened,” she said a little wildly, almost hysterically. “You don’t know anything about it.”
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