by John Hersey
Colonel Watson had turned around again. “I got a honey of a shantung table set down there,” he said, “a breakfast set, I think you call it. Only seven bucks. I knocked ’em down from twelve.” Then Watson snapped his fingers at Colonel de Angelis’s ricksha puller and said to him in English, “Say, boy, hubba-hubba a bit. Come alongside here.” He beckoned and flagged the coolie up. “The colonel and I want to talk to each other. That’s better.”
The rickshas ran parallel. “Seems funny,” Watson said, “the way they sent so many of us over here at once—colonels and lieutenant colonels. Like it, so far?”
“Well,” Colonel de Angelis said, “the food in the hotel is certainly punk. If they offer me another of those cold rice pancakes for breakfast—”
“I don’t know,” Colonel Watson said, as he always did in preface to a disagreement. “They have a darn good steak in the grill. I don’t think the food is so bad.” He paused, then said, “How did they happen to send you out here? Did you ever hear?”
Colonel de Angelis wondered: Why did they send a hundred colonels and lieutenant colonels over to North China in one batch? Couldn’t they have used more majors and captains in the teams to monitor the truce between the Gissimo and the Commies? And how did they happen to choose one man or another from the tremendous replacement pool? How did they happen to pick so many men who had been passed over for promotion, and so many who had already been bumped back from brigadier? Why did they send me over here? The older colonel shrugged. “You know the Army,” he said.
“I put in for this duty,” Watson said. “The way I figured was, with the war over and me not getting overseas while it was on, China seemed like the best possible chance for advancement—for a younger man, that is,” he added.
* * *
—
Colonel de Angelis thought again of Fort Sam. What was it he was trying to recall? At Fort Sam Houston he had been a captain. Those were dismal barracks. He had had the fourth bunk from the end on the right side in G. His sergeant major—what was his name? Benny something-or-other—that was great the time Benny pretended to trip and butted into Rassmussen. What a pathetic old character Captain Rassmussen was!
A silver C-54 roared low over the city and for a moment it seemed to be framed, from where the colonels rode, within the pailou, the high, skeletal ceremonial gate near the top of Rue Marco Polo. “Look at that!” Colonel Watson shouted, and at once he launched into what was certain, if past recitals meant anything, to be a long account of his uneventful flight across the Pacific. Colonel de Angelis only half listened. The rasping, effusive voice went on and on: “…hit the runway right on the nose, and we hadn’t been out of the overcast since Kwajalein…”; the story touched on all the commonplaces. Colonel de Angelis tried to distract himself by looking at the market, already crowded and obstreperous, spread out on the old glacis of the Legation Quarter, to their right as they rode—at the too colorful Japanese obis hung like wash on a line; booths where cloth shoes, old bottles, peanuts, suitcases, sweet potatoes, Chinese fiddles were for sale; men hawking, arguing in shouts, and talking loudly simply to be heard; and, at some distance on the curb, a bicycle-tire repairer waiting patiently a few yards beyond an area of broken glass he had scattered in the street. Colonel de Angelis remembered that he had had a bicycle at Fort Sam Houston. Fort Sam after the first war hadn’t seemed such a bad place; there was not much to do except avoid mistakes. On the whole, looking back, it was pretty good duty. A captaincy is a satisfying rank, when you’re young. It couldn’t have been so much fun for Captain Rassmussen, at his age. (“…I never saw so many wrecked ships,” Colonel Watson was saying, “as we did going in over Buckner Bay. My God, that must have been some typhoon…”) Colonel de Angelis, called back by the younger man’s voice when it seemed all at once to get louder, wondered what it was he so disliked about Colonel Watson. The other newcomers seemed to like him all right; they considered him cheerful, a good drinker, marvelous at liars’ dice, skillful at bargaining with the Chinks—a great fellow, they said. One man had even congratulated de Angelis on the luck of his draw for roommate. Anyone could room with Watson who wanted to. Perhaps, Colonel de Angelis thought, he could speak to the Chinese WASC representative at the hotel that afternoon and get himself shifted to a single room. Let’s see, he thought, get a haircut, go over to the PX for nail scissors—what was the other thing he had to do in the afternoon? (“…absolutely clear over Shanghai…”) What was it Watson brought to his mind—or to the very edge of his mind? Was it, he wondered for a moment, something about Captain Rassmussen?
On the way into Morrison Street, Watson directed the ricksha coolies, in Chinese, to turn in toward Executive Headquarters at the third hutung, rather than the second, so that they could go in the side entrance. “You taking up Chinese?” he asked Colonel de Angelis. “Or,” he went on in an affectionately teasing tone, “are you one of these old dogs that refuse to learn new tricks? Helps a lot, I can tell you. I got a start on it back in the States. You see, I got wind of this assignment—” He paused, as if waiting to be told that he would always land on his feet, and then went on, as if taking the compliment for granted, “It doesn’t hurt to keep some wires out. So when I heard about this, I lined myself up to have a couple of months in the language school up at New Haven. I still work on it pretty hard. It makes a difference, specially on bargaining. These merchants dope it out that they can’t fool around; anybody that speaks even a few words must be an old China hand, that’s the way they figure it. You meet a different type of people, too, with the language. You take down in Shanghai, while we were waiting to be shipped up here, I darn near got myself lined up with a sleeping dictionary. She was a honey. Belonged to a second lieutenant who got shipped home.”
The rickshas turned off Morrison Street into the third alley on the right. The older man looked at the headquarters compound, which now came into sight at the dead end ahead—the massive, handsome, pseudo-Oriental buildings that had once comprised a hospital and medical school, endowed by the Rockefellers, he had heard; now a house divided three ways—two kinds of Chinese and some Americans, all ostensibly trying to bring an end to civil war. What could he do there? He knew nothing about China. Every day he grew more confused as he watched the opposing Chinese and the Americans addressing one another with elaborate but artificial gestures, like those of marionettes, as if they were trying by sheer energy to make convincing the things they were saying—things that nobody could possibly believe. He had been in Peking two weeks, and still there had been no decision about whether he would be in the operations section here in Peking or would be sent out with a field team. He was somehow afraid of the buildings, with the kind of vague fear he would have felt if the compound were still a hospital, with ether heavy in the corridors.
Colonel Watson, who had also been looking at the buildings, turned and asked, “No, really, aside from the food, do you think you’re going to like it here?”
Like it? Like it? “I guess it’ll be all right.”
And then, unmistakably, in the sound of that “Like it?” he recognized the one whom Colonel Watson reminded him of: it was himself.
* * *
—
The Crescent, though by no means the finest speakeasy in San Antonio in 1921, nor that with the safest liquor, seemed to attract more soldiers and officers than any other. Its mirrors, cheap smoked-wood wainscoting, and brass chandeliers were like those of an old saloon; the place was ironically decorated, Colonel de Angelis remembered, with cartoons of John Barleycorn, photographs of Volstead and Miss Frances Willard and a convention of Band of Hope children, framed clippings of Prohibitionist news, and a cross-stitched motto: “The voters do not have the courage to vote as they drink—Dr. N. M. Butler.”
Colonel de Angelis remembered that he and Captain Rassmussen had sat that night—a winter night, late in 1921, it must have been—at a table against the wall opposite the bar. The place was crowded
with all sorts: fairly well dressed couples, workmen in denim, girls looking for pickups. Captain de Angelis’s uniform was crisp and his buttons bright. Captain Rassmussen seemed very tired. He was nearly sixty and would never be anything but a captain. He had blond hair with some gray in it, and a ruddy, finely wrinkled face. He had been at Fort Sam Houston only about a month, and de Angelis had asked him, a few days before, to take a seventy-two with him to San Antonio.
When he had invited Rassmussen, de Angelis had believed he did it because he liked the older man, who had been cheerful enough around the post, and full of stories of the old-time Army; on the way into San Antonio, he had decided it had been because he pitied Rassmussen; and after a few hours in the town, when he had found that the older man had no appetite for food, hadn’t the faintest desire to work up a date with a girl, wanted only two drinks, was satisfied with a captaincy, did not dislike his superiors, laughed about everything but never as if he meant it, wanted nothing, had nothing, was nothing—then de Angelis realized that he resented Rassmussen. He began to tease him. At first he was fairly subtle, and stuck so close to the truth, alternately praising and criticizing the elderly captain, that Rassmussen could not, at first, be anything but gratified, if slightly puzzled, by his young friend’s interest in him.
Later, however, when de Angelis found that his anger at the older man only grew with his own elation, he began to be comparatively obvious. He talked about the Army’s retirement and pension systems. He remarked that he had noticed how exhausted Rassmussen had looked out on parade a couple of days before. And he asked over and over whether Rassmussen liked being a captain at his age. Eventually this had become a half-drunken refrain: “Do you like it? Do you like it?” At last the older officer said, without particular anger, but looking quite defeated, “Say, I believe you’re being darned unkind.” De Angelis apologized and protested—quite convincingly, he felt—that he hadn’t meant a thing by his remarks.
* * *
—
The rickshas pulled up at the side gate of the headquarters compound. Colonel Watson asked in Chinese how much his coolie wanted, and after several sentences of conversation, in which mock outrage was displayed on both sides, he gave the coolie some bills and turned away laughing.
“How much do you give these jokers?” Colonel de Angelis asked.
“Let him have five hundred,” Watson said. “It’s too much, but he’ll give you a better ride next time.”
Colonel de Angelis handed his puller some bills. At once the coolie began protesting in noisy Chinese. “What’s he saying?” the older colonel asked Watson.
“Just the usual stink. Come on.”
Colonel de Angelis stepped over the shafts and started toward the entranceway. The coolie followed with hands outstretched, sneering at the bills he held, talking louder and louder, higher and higher, and—it seemed to Colonel de Angelis—more and more abusively. The older colonel turned and said with as much authority and contempt as he could convey in a language that would not be understood, “That’s enough. Now hang up.” He wheeled and walked on. But the coolie only shouted more, and he ran and caught up with the colonel and put a dirty hand on the officer’s sleeve and then grabbed the sleeve and waved the bills in front of the American’s face.
“Come on!” Colonel Watson shouted. He was about ten paces ahead.
The coolie tugged hard at Colonel de Angelis’s sleeve. The elderly colonel turned abruptly and, reaching across with his right hand, pulled out his swagger stick and aimed and flashed it backhand.
Colonel de Angelis glanced around and saw that Watson had started walking springily—perhaps tactfully; had he seen?—up the steps into the entrance court. Colonel de Angelis looked out to see if there had been any American officers coming along the street; there had not. The coolie stood with his right hand partly hiding the red stripe the swagger stick had printed on his cheek, his left hand still stretched out waving the paper money; he was silent now.
With a slow, awkward, exaggerated movement, like that of a drunken man, Colonel de Angelis groped in his breast pocket for his wallet, took it out, opened it, got out a bill, and offered it to the coolie, who took it and turned away without speaking. Colonel de Angelis stepped rather erratically toward the entrance. The two Chinese sentries standing at the gate saluted him with mechanical eagerness. He transferred the swagger stick from his right hand back under his left arm, and returned their greeting. As the old colonel started up the steps, he saw that the younger man was already indoors. There didn’t seem to be any faces in the windows around the wide entrance court.
Requiescat
The moment I hated most at Thurston’s came toward the end of Winston Fief’s tribute. I had tried to talk Margot out of having the service at Thurston’s at all. Moose Bradford didn’t belong in one of those fashionable horror shows at James W. Thurston’s “Memorial Chapel,” which are treated in the next day’s Times like Met openings or muscular-dystrophy balls at the Waldorf. Moose had given up on New York. He despised that crowd. I put it to Margot that services at Thurston’s were like big parties publishers give for hot authors at Four Seasons—big winners and burnt-out cases scouting each other, new outfits on display, envy on the loose, nothing to do with a figure like Moose. Who would get the best pews? God, look at that hat of Cynthia’s, has St.-Laurent gone bonkers? That would be the level of the text. But Margot is Margot.
The room was Thurston’s largest. The design of the pews, and indeed the mode of the place as a whole, was right enough for Moose—decorous, understated, New Englandish, more or less Congregational, almost in the spirit of the simple church he loved so much on Greenfield Hill. But you could count on Margot to have the last word. Her final affront to Moose was to smother him, where he lay in his brass-handled box—Margot had told me the casket was Thurston’s four-thousand-dollar number—in gladioluses. Moose hated them. I remember once his calling them the Pekingese dogs of the gardening world. He said they literally nauseated him, and I believed him; it was part of Moose’s makeup to have powerful somatic reactions to flowers, as he did to many other things—pets, colors, good and bad news, and the sight of a strange woman’s bare shoulder. He spent half his life having goose pimples.
As I entered, about fifteen minutes early, I could see that the room was going to be packed to overflowing—a flock of fickle ego-trippers who had forgotten how cruelly they’d snubbed Moose back in the fifties, now suddenly titillated by his horrible death, all turning up: celebrities, jet-setters, writers, politicians, musicians, business types, and ex-radicals wearing three-piece custom-made suits. A queer gazpacho. Having suffered my own loss so recently, I was feeling low anyway, and the sight of these people who thought this the best ticket in town that morning took me down a further notch.
Margot had given Thurston’s ushers a list, and they put me in the second pew on the left, right behind three of Moose’s four wives, all in a row. Maria, poor thing, was absent in the death of her own choosing, but the three survivors were there, chatting away like catbirds, Margot impeccable as hostess to those other two bitches, as she refers to them. I felt hot. This was not good enough for Moose; with all his weaknesses, Moose was a serious man.
Margot had Grischa Wallenstein play the viola for a while, a stately Bach chaconne—just right to choose the deep-toned instrument that is usually subordinated, almost too big to tuck under the chin, and Grischa, on slight acquaintance, seemed to have understood Moose, because he made Bach sound somehow akin to Hawthorne and Melville and Dickinson. That would have been enough, just that music, with its strange controlled leaps from string to string, from constraint to constraint, but also from heartbeat to wild heartbeat.
But then came the three so-called tributes, each worse than I could have feared: Eliot Fanton, sounding as if he were arguing a somehow distasteful civil-rights case before the Supreme Court; Philip Sieveringhaus, who hardly knew Moose at all but was “in” enough to suit
Margot, reading a long boozy poem he’d probably torn off the night before, really an abstract thanatopsis rather than a remembrance of this dead man; and Winston Fief—I’ll come to him. In all three performances I was reminded of the way Hazel, Moose’s first wife, used to pay her husband fulsome and obviously insincere compliments—keeping him on a tight leash.
All three touched on Moose’s courage, but as if it were beyond his command, demonic; on his having gone to prison for his beliefs, though under the surface admiration there were whiffs of a sick awe, as if there had been something in Moose really criminal, something that belonged in prison; on his “vitality,” his “magnetic energy,” which everyone understood with a little mental snicker to mean his voracious pursuit of the skirt; and—archly—on the “senseless violence” of his death. All three, even the poet, used that very phrase. To me, the violence had made all too much sense. It was the native-as-apple-pie goal toward which Moose had been steering all his turbulent life long, the failed Puritan’s final collision with the earthy reality he had always yearned for. I felt the same anger at those three men as I did at whoever had killed Moose in the first place.
Win Fief was all dressed in leather—open-necked shirt, jacket, and flaring trousers, enough cowhide against the skin to make a Buddhist pass out; at his neck a discrete little French sailor’s scarf; Birkenstock sandals; hairstyle like Boy George’s. He seemed to have had a dream of youth. About ten years younger than Moose and I—no youth he. I never could figure out what Moose saw in him, but he really liked Win. Win talked as much about himself, in his “tribute,” as he did about Moose: “When I first met our friend, I had just finished the preliminary designs for the Cullinan building….” But what really set me on edge was a complicated idea Win tried to develop about “origins and style,” for in putting this passage together Win’s pretensions had got the best of him, and he missed Moose by a mile. For a gross example: “His was a world fundamentally Emersonian, Thoreauvian, Jamesian.” Moose loathed Emerson, thought Thoreau self-righteous, admired James but felt light-years distant from his fastidiousness. Grischa with his big deep fiddle had understood: Moose came from that other New England, the New England of the wild heartbeat. The culmination of this passage of Win’s was the sentence that almost made me get up and walk out.