The seventeenth day of Con’s hospitalization Colonel Pearson visited him. He started by giving his military opinion of the Kachin contribution. The Japanese, the Colonel said, had paid a severe price for their face saving attempt to annihilate a segment of the Kachin force. Intelligence estimates varied extremely in actual enemy killed and wounded but the Japs had pulled a crack group of their main force, weakened their front, practically dissolved their reserve, and thrown their supply system into complete disorder. As a result the combined Chinese American Mars task force was streaking for Lashio, was in fact on the outskirts of that town, and with its downfall the Burma Road would be open.
“So,” the Colonel was saying, “for all intents and purposes the Kachin forces are no longer useful. We can dissolve them.”
It was late afternoon and raining hard and Con was staring out the window. He nodded slowly. His chin was bandaged, the bandage running up and around his head. And his forehead was bandaged and both legs and one arm heavily bandaged. He was in shorts and the Colonel could see the line of his ribs and the thin gauntness of his face beneath the high cheek bones.
“I suppose we better leave Niven down there then,” Con said.
“I think so. In Delhi they’re calling your battle the Battle of the Croton Oil. Snidely, of course.”
“That was Danny’s idea.”
“It did the trick.”
“It helped,” Con said.
“The news from Europe is good. It shouldn’t be too long there now. That’s what I really came to see you about. You can go home if you want.”
There was a momentary silence.
“Sure. But what for?” Con said. “I mean I want to go home. Very much. I’ve thought about it. But I can’t. Not now. I think the others should go if they want.”
“I asked Doc Travis already. He doesn’t want to go.”
“Ringa?”
“He wants to talk to Niven first. But he said he was pretty sure they’d stay if they’re needed.”
“What are you going to do?” Con asked.
“We’re moving from here. To Ramree Island in the Bay of Bengal. I’m doing the intelligence for the invasion of Rangoon. I’m doing it with the British, that is.”
“Then we’ll be working together again,” Con said.
“That’s what I hear. You got no sympathy from them. I got a wire from Piccolo a couple days ago wanting to know when you’d be fit.”
“Will you leave this hospital here? I mean for the Kachins.”
“They’ll have a hospital at Myitkyina and another at Bahmo. The amputees will be taken care of at the base hospitals just as before.”
“How about getting me a release and orders then? I’d like to go to Colombo.”
“Whenever you say. There’s something else I’d like to mention to you,” the Colonel said running the back of one huge hand across his leathery chin.
“If it’s about Carla forget it. It took me a few months for it to sink in but forget it.”
The Colonel eyed Con thoughtfully for a second, then stood up. He breathed once deeply and his great chest expanded massively. “Well, I just thought I’d drop by. Leaving town tonight. I’m going to be pretty busy with this new thing, and moving this outfit. I’ll probably run into you in Colombo sometime.”
“Sure.”
“If there’s anything you need,” he said a little awkwardly. “You know.”
“Thanks, Ray.”
“Well.… take it easy boy.”
“You too, Ray.”
“So long, Con.”
“Good-bye.”
Ponderously the Colonel walked from the room. He stepped outside into the rain throwing his trench coat over his shoulders. He wiped the rain-water from his face with his huge hand pausing affectionately with thumb and forefinger over the crooked line of his flattened nose.
It was a bastard outfit, he thought, with a bastard crew whose only real talent was a talent for war. And yet there had been so much more. From Danny to Danforth, from Niven to Doc to himself, from Con to Ringa and to old Nautaung. A strange crew, he thought affectionately, in a strange land in a strange war. He started for the jeep. And not one of them took the chance they had to go home, he said to himself. Not a goddamn one of them, he thought with a welling melancholy gratification. He got into the jeep.
And from his bed, looking out the window, Con saw him offer the driver a cigarette, then light them both up in the rain.
A week after Con had his visit with the Colonel he felt up to making his trip to Colombo. His orders were cut but before he left, he had on separate days first the priest and then Nautaung flown in for a conference. Through the meetings a temporary policy was established. Ringa agreed to return to Sinlumkaba as soon as his arm was properly doctored to set up the administration for the demobilization. Con himself was to return after the fall of Lashio. And Niven was to assist Ringa. As a final gesture, and so that Ringa would have the proper authority, Con recommended him for promotion to Captain.
With the details out of the way Con flew to Colombo. It was a bumpy nine hour ride from Calcutta and he was severely sick all the way. He called Carla at her office and she came at once in the chauffeured limousine and they began the drive out to the beach house. He was a greenish white and they had to stop the car twice so that he could get out and vomit.
When they arrived at the house it was mid-afternoon of a sunny, tropical day. The wind blew softly from the sea over the white sand and the surf pounded at the beach. She insisted that he go to bed at once and he agreed if she would have the day-bed put up on the porch. The house-boy did this quickly, expertly while she made soup. She had not shown her own shock when she had seen him with the bandages and the two canes. He had only written that he was slightly wounded and that she probably wouldn’t hear from him until he arrived there. But what had really made an impact on her was his color and his weight.
Con undressed himself and climbed into the cot with the house-boy’s help. It was too warm for anything but a sheet and he sat there looking out at the sea, waiting. She came with the soup and a bottle of brandy.
“No brandy,” he said.
“It’ll do you good.”
“That’s what started it I think. Last night. The bar at Calcutta headquarters.”
She pulled a chair up next to the bed, set the brandy and soup on the chair then sat on the edge of the bed. She put her hand up on the side of his face just below the bandage line touching him tenderly.
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“It’s not bad. It looks bad but I haven’t got a broken bone in my body outside of my right toe.”
She picked up the soup bowl and began to feed him with a spoon. He didn’t resist.
“My mother did this for me once. When I had scarlet fever. I was small and I’ve never forgotten it.”
“I’m your mother now, too,” she said.
“More,” he said.
“Your mother wouldn’t like to hear you say that.”
He laughed. “You can say that again,” he said between spoonfuls. “No more soup now.”
“A little and it will be done,” she said.
“Please,” he said.
“Drink it,” she said. He drank it. She put the bowl down. She kissed him lightly on the lips. She had on a thin white silk blouse and he could feel her fine breasts up against his chest. He put one hand over her breast caressingly. In his mind he marveled at the clean, firm feel of it. He took his hand abruptly away as if he were afraid of abusing too good a thing, then she sat up.
“Was it bad?’ she asked.
He didn’t answer for a second.
“It was horrible, Carla. Horrible. If they had broken and run or screamed or pleaded or something. But they just stayed there and took it and made jokes.… Danny’s dead.”
Her hand raised up to her throat and she went all grey for a second. He thought he had never seen anyone turn so grey so quickly. But as quickly the off color evaporated and only her
eyes showed her emotion; eyes that had been placidly, understandingly blue changing slowly, clouding up as reality sifted through.
For a moment she didn’t move then abruptly she picked up the empty soup bowl, stood up, and walked from the room. He watched her stride away, head high, suddenly aware of the silence her absence had left. In a moment she returned and sat beside him on the bed. She leaned over him as if he were some fragile thing and her eyes held his with a puzzled yet warm and loving look that he couldn’t quite discern.
“It’s hard to believe, Con,” she said softly. “I’m sorry and sorry for you. I’m not sure how I feel. I don’t know why but I’m not sure exactly.” He reached up one hand cupping it under her hair on her neck, gently.
And suddenly she felt a vague and murky guilt as if somehow she were partly responsible. She wanted him to tell her about it; she didn’t know why but she wanted to hear it all. Finally she asked him and he told her.
He tried to tell it as straight and factually and without feeling as he could. She got the feeling, living it. And with the power of her own imagination living more than it really was. Feeling too a looming horror, realizing now that her first emotion was one of relief, believing somehow that in Danny’s death Con was allowed to live. And yet throughout the entire conversation her lips and eyes had remained stoically firm and resolute, refusing to show him the slightest emotion, refusing to dramatize with him that which her own mind had dramatized.
Later, after they had had tea, he noticed the time. He told her they would have to go into town, his head bandage was to be removed by previous arrangement and his other bandages changed. She insisted upon giving him a sponge bath before they left. Then they drove in slowly.
It was six o’clock when they got into Colombo. The medical officer attached to the Colombo headquarters was a Lieutenant-Colonel. He had been waiting. Con introduced Carla.
“You’re late, Major,” the half-colonel said.
He was very small and very thin with neatly, flatly combed blond hair. Con thought he looked more a book-keeper than a doctor.
“I was sick,” Con said. “I apologize.”
“I see from your medical records that you’ve a habit of being a bad patient.”
“Would you like to fix me up,” Con said, “or give me a lecture.”
“I’ll have to ask the lady to leave. It’s a base order,” he said efficiently.
“Would you mind waiting in the car?” Con asked Carla. “Or take a ride?”
“I’ll wait in the car,” she said. “We could go to my doctor,” she eyed the half-colonel frigidly.
Con smiled wryly. “That won’t be necessary. I’ll be out shortly.”
She walked from the porch of the doctor’s cottage which was next to the base headquarters house all once a large estate overlooking the sea. She walked out to the car after kissing Con once briefly and eyeing the half-colonel once more frigidly and not so briefly.
Con came out fortyfive minutes later. She watched him wobble down the porch steps on his two canes. She had expected to find all his hair shaven off but it wasn’t. He got into the car. She examined the wound under his chin which was so neatly set under the chin that it was hardly recognizable with the scraggly hairs around it and the way it conformed to the line of the chin yet was an ugly wound freshly red from the just removed stitches.
“I’ll have my goatee back in two weeks. You’ll never notice it,” he said. She was still examining the wound with an intense childlike curiosity that caused the tip of her straight aristocratic nose to wrinkle slightly, her lips half parted with the same curiosity. He had to smile and she moved back a woman with no trace of any childlike curiosity, ever.
“I hope you told that little bastard off,” she said suddenly.
“I didn’t,” he said.
“Did he apologize?”
“No.”
“Con, tell me it was a joke. You knew him all the time, didn’t you? What did he say inside?”
“He said, after looking very efficiently in his little notebook, ‘I can take you at two-thirty on Thursday. And I do mean two-thirty, Major.’ And I said, ‘Thank you, sir.’ And tomorrow I will call him up and thank him very much, very politely and tell him that I’m going to the mountains and that I’ll get treated up there. And he won’t believe I’m going to the mountains because that’s the way his mind works, and he will feel slighted, and a human being can stand to feel anything but slighted. And because he will not like the feeling of feeling slighted maybe he will remember and will be a little different in his attitude toward other patients. It’s as simple as that. I didn’t blow my top for a change. I feel the better for it. And I hope that he does and believe that he will eventually. And I forgot to mention, yes,” he grinned, “I forgot to mention that in spite of your recently bitchy eyes I love you very, very much. No, because of your recently bitchy eyes. How about going to the Galle Face for dinner?”
The pout of her lips vanished, simply vanished, and she began to laugh that earthy unorganized laugh that still fascinated him, the gypsy laugh, he thought; and then he suddenly realized how long it had been since he had heard her laugh.
“Oh, I love you,” she said still laughing. “Yes, let’s go to the Galle Face,” and still laughing earthily told the chauffeur in Ceylonese. “You grow, Con, and somehow I never expect you to.”
“I’d like to grow a little on you.”
“You would? In your condition?” she teased. “I’m afraid I’d hurt you.”
“I promise I’ll let you know if you do.”
“Well, if you promise.”
“I do,” he said looking down at the long loose legs. She had on spectators and her legs were tan and he raised the pale gabardine skirt running his hand over the smoothskinned thigh feeling its strong comforting warmth. “I don’t hurt easy.”
She put her hand on his that was over her thigh. “You love my legs don’t you, Con,” she said uninhibitedly, proudly.
“Every bit of you,” he said.
“It’s very important. I didn’t think so once but it’s very important.”
And he kissed her and then leaned back and she moved away a little and their hands rested on the seat so that only the slight sway of the car would make them touch and they did not talk but felt their presence fully now in the twilight as they drove on the road by the beach with the white sand with the sun gold and red like the sun of Burma setting in the distance touching the edge of the blue sea that was suddenly green near the shore and they could hear the pounding of the surf and feel the wind that came soft from somewhere across the water and suddenly they felt suddenly mesmerized not seeing anything or knowing anything but feeling each other fully scorchingly like a never ending bursting rocket one inside the other not touching each other but a never ending all feeling it fully afraid to breathe visibly that even breath might make it go away and it stayed and stayed and then began to go away not quickly but slowly like a thick white cumulous cloud that dissolves beyond a horizon and then it was gone and they didn’t say a word until the car pulled up at the hotel and then they did not mention it and sometime during the dinner they knew that they never would.
Carla stayed home from the office for four days. Then they agreed it would be best if she went back to work. She told Con that she hadn’t seen Nickie since that night they had all met at the Silver Faun. But Gus had told her that Nickie had at her own request been transferred. To where Gus said he didn’t know.
Quickly they fell into a routine. They would get up early and go down to the beach and Carla would swim, then they would take tea on the porch. After Carla left for the office he would take books and the beach-sheets and go down near the sea. On the beach, in the sun, he began to mend rapidly. He was by nature dark and he tanned so that from a distance he might not be distinguished from any of the natives. He read and read with an avid interest and a new found patience. He read Thomas Mann’s The Magic Mountain and Joseph in Egypt to start with, then at Carla’s request he
read several Stendhal novels and one day by accident he discovered W. H. Hudson’s Green Mansions. He read it over four times delightedly and one day traced the illustrations. He decided that if he ever had a daughter he would name her Rima which proved to please Carla. He must have told her sixteen or eighteen times in the space of four days what a shame it was that W. H. Hudson didn’t know the Kachin people.
By the middle of the third week he was swimming far out and had made friends with some of the native fishermen down the beach, and two days in a row went out with them in their large outrigger canoes. They refused to take any money from him so he gave Carla a check and she bought some fishing equipment and cloth in town which Con gave them as a gift.
It became a habit in the morning after the swim for Carla to bring out a book for him to read. That was how Con got started reading the Confessions of St. Augustine. And reading Emerson again, but as he told Carla, reading Emerson with a new meaning. He began to underline things in the books, didn’t seem able to get enough of them or from them, and late at night after Carla had gone to sleep he read from the Bible.
He had never read the Bible through. And one morning at three he discovered the Song of Solomon and woke Carla to ask it she had ever read it, then asked her to read it to him. Half-asleep but happily she did.
As the days passed his interest in books of philosophy and religion intensified; he no longer read the novels she suggested and completely quit his exercise. She would come home from the office and go out on the porch and see him still out there by the sea, stretched out his head resting on his hands, motionless, intent over a book. Finally, when he did come in he seemed partially dazed and withdrawn, then after a while he would begin to ask her leading questions about what he had read. She found it difficult to refuse a reply. He seemed to esteem her opinion. Most often as she spoke he would visibly ponder or brood but hardly ever comment and when he sensed a truth, a discovery, his eyes would become full of marvel and wonder.
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