"He'll keep," said Michael, who was feeling sleepy, hungry, and very tired of Miss Wilson.
"You think so? I have my doubts. But you're lucky. At noon you get shet of him, as you say out Indiana way. With me it's just beginning. Yes, I have what they call a date. But just one of these over—and under—the desk romances. Nothing like yours and mine. Still, I'll be happy, if only for the liquor I'll get out of it. I could stand a drink, and thank god he does."
"Does he?"
"Oh, heavens, yes. That's my only stipulation—that they drink. But, then, you don't, do you?"
"Not to excess."
"Oh, but you should sometime. With me. Just lots and lots of excess."
Michael looked down the hall and tried to stifle a yawn. "Aren't you hot in that fur coat?"
"Smothering, but one must have the proper effect upon majors. I couldn't run out in a sunsuit, particularly since I don't know where we're going for lunch. There're really only a couple of places, and I hope it's the American Club. You can get more liquor there somehow. . . . But, darling, you're fidgeting, and I know that's a bad sign. So come on, back to the mines and another glorious three hours for the greater glory of Mac, our Lord and Saviour."
The major stepped out of the doorway again and looked at them.
"There's Simon Legree Calloway, darling," said Gloria. "Come, let's cross the ice together."
Major Calloway had a mistress. He was also in love—though not with the mistress. The position in which he now found himself was a usual one for the Major. Not content with what he had—the mistress—he wanted something he strongly suspected he couldn't have—Gloria. He always wanted more than he had. Consequently he was very ambitious. He wanted to be a lieutenant colonel, he wanted to run the office, and he wanted Gloria.
The first two wishes he felt relatively certain of being able to realize in time. Gloria was another matter. He had suspected for some time that she might be willing to sleep with him, and this cheered him up. He'd reached this conclusion after hearing an unusual amount of talk about her and after noticing that whenever she was with him she looked rather attentively at other men. This did not make him jealous. It merely pointed out to him her probable availability. This, however, was not at all what he wanted. He wanted her to love him as he loved her. He loved her for her soul.
He never said this and but rarely thought it, for he was from Texas and consequently believed that any talk of the soul was either unhealthy and fanatical or, worse, effeminate. A soul was something like a truss—doubtless useful if you were so unfortunate as to need one, but the least you could do was to keep it decently out of sight. He had never once entertained the idea of harboring one—a soul, not a truss—until he met Gloria.
But Gloria had not wrought this miracle all by herself. Japan had helped. Until the Major left America he never felt a soul to be particularly necessary—Dallas was substitute enough. There were girls to date and friends to meet and big deals to put over. Here everything was different. Few girls, no friends, and making money the way he made it back home was illegal. So he was lonely, and with loneliness had come self-scrutiny.
After giving himself a long steady look, he decided that he must affiliate himself with some successful organization, some growing venture, if he were to get the things he wanted. After looking around, he decided that the most successful organization he could find, and one of which he already happened to be a member, was the Occupation. So he ceased thinking of his daily work as merely a job and began to think of it as a mission. He began saying that his duty was toward America. Therefore his real duty in Japan was not so much making Special Services bigger and better as it was explaining America and Democracy to the Japanese.
This was the first conscious thought completely unconnected with tangibles that he had ever had. He was proud of himself. Abstract thoughts were difficult, and he'd managed to have one. He now thought of himself as something of an educator, a mature if stern taskmaster who, in complete possession of all the necessary know-how, was going to make the world, or at least this part of it, a better place. He said as much in his letters back home, and his paragraphs were filled with talk of higher purposes and further meanings. His friends were very surprised, perhaps even a bit embarrassed.
The Major, at thirty-five, considered himself a man. Japan had matured him. But a man cannot succeed all at once, no matter how great his ambition, and so the Major viewed his own retreats and failures with kindly indulgence. This was where Gloria came in. She was comforting; the very personification of home and family; worldly enough to smile at his misgivings and fallings from grace, yet doubtless innocent enough to believe, with him, that the world—particularly his own private one—could become ever so much nicer than it was now.
To be sure, he was aware that Gloria had never done anything but laugh at him. Still, this was better than nothing. It proved that she had a sense of humor, and he had long believed that this quality was very precious and very American—almost exclusively so. In fact, having one was practically a patriotic duty. He was rather proud of his own.
Gloria also had for him another and a higher meaning. He had selected her to help him achieve his ambitions. Together they would rise or together they would fall, though he never for a second believed that anything but success would crown his patriotic endeavors.
Already he was insuring success by making a bit of money on the side, for how could one be truly succesful without money? It couldn't be done. Therefore, for the sake of his soul and Gloria, for the good of Japan and America, for a more complete identification of himself with the glorious ideals of the Occupation, the Major was neck-deep in the black market—and this was the reason he was staring at Michael and Gloria. He was merely waiting for her to leave before bringing up a little business matter with Private Richardson.
No sooner had they squeezed past him into the office than he barked out: "Private Richardson, I want to see you."
Gloria, already at her desk, raised her eyes, grimaced a smile of commiseration at the Private, and began the day's typing.
In the hall Michael found the Major striding up and down.
"Private Richardson," he said, "you didn't come in last night."
"No, sir, I didn't."
"Private, you're given quarters in these here offices as a convenience to the Army. If you're not here at nights, then there's no use you living here at all. Next time this happens I'm gonna personally send you back to barracks. Just like anyone else. Understand?"
"Yes, sir," said Michael. He purposely refused to stand at attention. Resting one foot behind him, he folded his arms across his chest.
"You think I won't, buddy, but I would. Just like that! You wouldn't want that, would you?"
"No," said Michael, "but, then, you wouldn't either, would you? Who'd run your errands then?"
Major Calloway turned slightly pale, his freckles bleaching to a light orange. He glanced up and down the hall and then said: "No, naturally I wouldn't." He grew slightly red and added: "But you don't need to think you can walk all over me, Private. Sure, we're both in this, but you're gettin' yours. So don't think you can get snotty."
Michael shrugged his shoulders and waited.
This, as was intended, irritated the Major: "And I got news for you, Private. After tonight we part company."
The soldier looked mildly interested. "That so, sir?"
"And I wish it was tomorrow already," said the Major.
"So do I, sir," said Michael.
Here, thought Michael, is the kind that could be very dangerous. The kind that doesn't feel he's doing wrong, the kind that can talk himself into being self-righteous about breaking the law. Around the office he was the clown, the regular cutup, half-purposely, half-unintentionally. But all of his practical jokes, his cute sayings, his sunny smiles were false. He could be vicious.
The Major's mouth relaxed and he smiled. Their enmity was becoming too apparent. 'After all," he said, "this is the last time. I'd think you'd be glad t
o get rid of the responsibility and all."
"It's as much yours as it is mine, sir," Michael reminded him.
"Aw, look at you," said the Major, laughing. "Here you act as though you think we're sinners or something. It's just a fast buck—no harm in that. And I bet you can use it too. What we acting so doggone guilty about?" He rolled his eyes, licked his lips, and his accent became broader and broader.
Michael watched, slightly ill. He was always surprised at how phony the Major could be.
Michael was acting guilty because he, unlike the Major, felt guilty. He had ever since he first started running those innocent-looking errands for the Major, delivering packages to Japanese office buildings or rich homes, drinking tea in damp waiting rooms, being bowed out of invariably overcrowded Western-style parlors, each complete with plum-colored easy-chairs and an upright piano. At first he'd thought the errands a part of his duties, but it was soon made clear that the Colonel was to know nothing of them. When he confronted the Major and refused to run any more errands, the latter grew red and threatened a great deal, but ended by giving him a percentage of the profits.
The Major was a big-time operator and consequently dealt only in money changing—dollars to yen or yen to dollars, but always at an enormous profit, and if occasionally he had to use his official position to put the screws on, well, that's why he kept those golden oak leaves so brightly polished. Michael didn't mind the illegality of the transactions so much as he hated being involved with the Major. He felt guilty because, hating the Major as he did, he still worked for him, still shared the ever-present danger of discovery.
The Major was saying: "This morning O'Hara's coming in." (It was definitely the Irish name on the Major's lips—not the softly spoken Japanese "small field" at all.) "I already got him almost talked into it. Hell, you'd think these people'd know a good thing when they see it. But they got no business sense, no get-up-and-go. Cautious. Real cautious. That's what they are. How they ever expect to get ahead in the business way beats me. But maybe you think I don't have a way to light a fire under O'Hara's tail! Just watch him this morning."
"What am I supposed to do?"
"The usual. He's taking dollars for the yen payment, or my name's not Calloway. It's for that opera tonight, you know. You'll deliver. Gonna buy that little girl of yours something nice out of the proceeds?" He smiled broadly.
This was the usual finale to business arrangements between the Major and the Private.
"After all, Richardson, it isn't as though it was just us doing things like this. Hell, half the Army's selling cigarettes or sugar or something. That's the way things are. I don't think it's up to us to go around trying to change them, do you?" He smiled again and said: "Besides, some changes are gonna be made in this here little old office before very long, and I think it'd be real nice if you stayed on—and as something a bit more important. Sergeant or something like that."
The Major stepped back to see what effect this had.
Michael looked at the floor. He'd suspected this was coming. Poor Colonel Ashcroft. Only someone like Major Calloway could possibly do something like this. And he was right. He could make a private a sergeant, simply through pull in the proper direction, a little juggling of the Table of Operations, a little interview with the proper colonel, then the proper general. Major Calloway was an operator.
Michael turned to go back to the office, and the Major almost ran the few steps between them: "So—you got it straight about tonight? Got it?"
Michael couldn't decide which aspect of the Major was the worst—the phony commander, leader of men, head of the office; or this ingratiating puppy-like little man, all buddy-buddy with the privates, the good Joe. He simply nodded to show he had in fact "got it."
Instantly the Major became extremely affectionate. He threw his arm around Michael's shoulder, and they walked back into the office. The Major always overdid everything, and now he no more thought of the advisability of a major's throwing his arm over a private's shoulder than he thought of the Articles of War or the meaning of morality. He winked, and for an awful moment Michael thought he was going to nuzzle his cheek. But, instead, he sat down at his desk and became very busy.
Gloria, on the telephone, looked up, amused, mock-despair in her eyes. "... No, sir," she was saying, "you have the wrong number. This is the Liaison Office of Special Services.... Not at all." She hung up with a bang.
"Isn't the telephone wonderful," she said. "You can commit any number of atrocities, like wrong numbers, over it and never get caught. I think I'll call up the Provost Marshal and tell him that the Bank of Japan has just been robbed and a perfectly reliable witness—namely me—saw little Arthur MacArthur MacArthur scooting away with the loot in his kiddy-car. They'd believe it, you know."
The telephone rang again. "... Oh, you wanted Major Calloway.... I see. ... Very sorry," said Gloria, then turned to the Major. "Same party again. Turns out she thought I'd said it was the Imperial Household or some such thing. At any rate, she's waiting."
The Major picked up the telephone. "Hello," he said, and then was silent for a long time. "But you got me all wrong—I never ... Oh, that's just one of those things." Another long pause, and then: "No, of course it's nothing serious, dear.... Well, I can't.... No, I can't explain right now. . . . All right, I'll see you this afternoon. But listen—Hello, hello."
He handed the phone back to Gloria. She gazed at Michael with slightly widened eyes.
The Major looked at both of them and then said: "Must have got cut off."
Gloria put the phone back on the hook; then, with a satisfied grimace in Michael's direction, she began typing again. The hush of industry finally—at ten—settled over the office.
In the next room Colonel Ashcroft was looking out of the window. He heard the click of typewriters, the rustle of papers, and the self-important squeaks of Major Calloway's swivel chair. He looked at his gold watch, then shook his head.
Perhaps he was just old-fashioned, yet it did seem to him that when the working day began at nine the work itself should begin at the same time. The work, after all, was important: that was why they were all here. It was for that reason he'd forbidden coffee-hour in his offices and had thus earned the reputation of being a martinet—a reputation he felt he didn't deserve.
He watched the other officers he knew and saw their refusal to take obligations seriously. They consequently enjoyed the reputation of being what the soldiers called good Joes. The Colonel would never be a good Joe, and he knew it. It was the price that conscience and duty exacted of him. But then this, as the Colonel saw it, was life itself.
Long ago he had learned that if you did not take yourself seriously, no one else was likely to. To be sure, it was not the way to become popular. Becoming popular was easy: all one needed was a fairly destructive sense of humor and a complete lack of dignity. The Colonel had often longed for popularity, but eventually he always believed that it was better to take himself seriously—to refuse to see himself as others saw him, in the perspective which would have revealed to himself his smallness and his misery; to refuse to turn against himself the damaging glance of humor; to refuse to make fun of himself. This would have made him popular, but it would also have deprived him of all dignity in his own eyes. For the Colonel there was no choice at all—popularity was as fragile and ephemeral as most things in life; only human dignity was enduring. Only through dignity were you allowed the privilege of a motive and a goal in life.
The Colonel stroked his silver moustaches. As always, this action calmed him. It had also always calmed his father and his father's father, both of whom had also worn silver moustaches.
On his desk the Colonel always kept his grandfather's letter opener, solid silver and marked "Colonel Randolph Ashcroft," and his father's pen holder, marked "J. D. A." for John Delancy Ashcroft. He had his own date pad, given him by his father, but had never had his own initials engraved upon it. He had not felt they should be. His grandfather had been a great leader in t
he Civil War—or, rather, the War between the States—and his father had commanded with distinction in the first World War. He himself was in charge of a subsection of entertainment for the troops—Special Services.
Calmed, he took his hand from his moustaches and felt in his pocket. There he carried his father's gold watch. On its chain was the State Seal of Virginia in gold. This too had belonged to his grandfather. The sound of industry in the next room made him feel important, a bit at least. His forces—all the forces he now commanded—did their duty well. Responsibility, industry—this was all that really mattered.
He looked out of the window and saw the street full of Japanese. The Japanese were industrious, and the Colonel liked them for it. The first day he'd come into this little office he'd stood and looked out and seen the blackened ruins stretching away to the horizon. Now, only a few years later, a new city had been built upon the ruins. It was a jerry-built city of frame buildings and colored stucco fronts to be sure, but a city none the less. And Atlanta had been longer reconstructing than Tokyo. He was pleased to see that now some of the earlier buildings had been destroyed to make way for new concrete office buildings. There was one near him. It was up halfway and seemed to be held together entirely by bamboo and straw rope. The workmen in their Army hats and straw sandals swarmed over the structure carrying miscellaneous loads in haphazard ways, adding bit by bit as though they were building a sand castle.
Like ants, Major Calloway had said one morning, looking out this same window. Like everyone else, he had been surprised at their industry. The Colonel knew better. It wasn't ant-like necessity; it was hunger and need. At other times they were bored and listless. The Colonel had seen this state often enough in his own men, brought back from combat during the war. They were too tired to turn the pages of Life or to drink Coca-Cola. The Japanese were suffering from the same old-fashioned complaint—shell shock. Realizing this, the Colonel thought even more highly of their industry.
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