The Young Lions Part 14

In the middle of a pa.s.sage Roger stopped. He sat at the piano with his long hands resting on the keyboard; staring at the scratched and polished old wood. Then he swung around.

"The house is yours," he said.

"What?" Noah opened his eyes.

"I'm going in tomorrow," Roger said. He spoke as though he were continuing a conversation with himself he had been conducting for hours.

"What?" Noah looked closely at his friend to see if he had been drinking.

"The Army. The party's over. Now they begin to collect the civilians."

Noah felt dazed, as though he couldn't quite understand the words Roger was using. Another night, he felt, and I could understand. But too much has happened tonight.

"I suppose," Roger said, "the news has reached Brooklyn."

"You mean about the Russians?"

"I mean about the Russians."

"Yes."

"I am going to spring to the aid of the Russians," Roger said.

"What?" Noah asked, puzzledly. "Are you going to join the Russian Army?"

Roger laughed and walked over to the window. He stood there, holding onto the curtain, staring out. "Not exactly," he said. "The Army of the United States."

"I'll go in with you," Noah said suddenly.

"Thanks," said Roger. "Don't be silly. Wait until they call you."

"They haven't called you," said Noah.

"Not yet. But I'm in a hurry." Roger tied a knot reflectively in the curtain, then untied it. "I'm older than you. Wait until they come for you. It'll be soon enough."

"Don't sound," Noah said, "as though you're eighty years old."

Roger laughed and turned around. "Forgive me, Son," he said. Then he grew more serious. "I ignored it just about as long as it could be ignored," he said. "Today, when I heard it over the radio, I knew I couldn't ignore it any more. From now on, the only way I can make any sense to myself is with a rifle in my hand. From Finland to the Black Sea," he said, and Noah remembered the voice on the radio. "From Finland to the Black Sea to the Hudson River to Roger Cannon. We're going to be in soon, anyway. I want to rush to it. I've waited around for things all my life. This thing I want to take a running broad jump at. What the h.e.l.l, I come from an Army family, anyway." He grinned. "My grandfather deserted at Antietam, and my old man left three illegitimate children at Soissons."

"Do you think it'll do any good?" Noah said.

Roger grinned. "Don't ask me that, Son," he said. "Never ask me that." Then he spoke more soberly. "It may be the making of me. Right now, as you may have noticed, I have no goal in life. That's a disease. In the beginning it's no worse than a pimple and you hardly notice it. Three years later the patient is paralyzed. Maybe the Army will give me a goal in life ..." He grinned. "Like staying alive or making sergeant or winning some war. Do you mind if I play the piano some more?"

"Of course not," Noah said dully. He's going to die, a voice kept saying inside Noah's head, Roger is going to die, they're going to kill him.

Roger sat down at the piano once more and placed his hands reflectively on the keys. He played something Noah had never heard before.

"Anyway," said Roger above the music, "I'm glad to see you and the girl finally went and did it ..."

"What?" Noah asked, hazily trying to remember if he had said anything. "What're you talking about?"

"It was sticking out all over your face," Roger said, grinning. "Like an electric sign." He played a long pa.s.sage in the ba.s.s.

Roger disappeared into the Army the next day. He wouldn't let Noah go down to the recruiting station with him, and he left him all his belongings, all the furniture, all the books, and even all his clothes, although they were much too large for Noah. "I won't need any of this stuff," Roger said, looking around critically at the acc.u.mulation of the baggage of his twenty-six years. "It's just junk anyway." He stuffed a copy of the New Republic into his pocket to read on the subway ride down to Whitehall Street, smiling and saying, "Oh, what a frail weapon I have here," and waved at Noah and jammed his hat at his own private angle on the lean, close-cropped head, and once and for all left the room in which he had lived for five years. Noah watched him go, with a choked feeling in his throat, and a premonition that he would never have a friend again and that the best days of his life were past.

Occasionally Noah would get a dry, sardonic note from some camp in the South, and once a mimeographed company order announcing that Private Roger Cannon had been promoted to Private First Cla.s.s, and then there was a long lapse until a two-page letter came from the Philippines, describing the red-light section of Manila and a half-Burmese, half-Dutch girl who had the SS Texas tattooed on her belly. There was a postscript, in Roger's sprawling handwriting. "P.S. Stay out of the Army. It is not for human beings."

There was, of course, one advantage, and Noah felt guiltily how much he was enjoying it. Now he and Hope had a place of their own. They were no longer night-prowlers, famished for each other, waiting sadly in cold vestibules for Bible-reading uncles to go to bed, lovers lacking a couch to bed their love in, sad-eyed children comically frustrated on the public concrete of the city.

In the months after Roger's departure, Noah felt that he had finally, after all these years, made the discovery of his body. It was stronger than he had known and capable of more feeling than he had ever expected. He even took to looking at it in the long mirror behind the door, and with the blessing of Hope's approval on it, it appeared infinitely more graceful and useful than it had seemed to him before. Oh, he thought gratefully, looking at his bare chest, oh, how lucky it is I have no hair on it.

Hope, with a private place that was so securely their own, was unexpectedly wanton. In the warm familiar darkness of the city summer the cold hills of her Vermont puritanism vanished in riotous smoke, and they matched hunger for hunger, claim for claim on the other's flesh. In the dizzying ebb and flow of love, in the shabby room which had become the dearest and most profound secret of their lives, the noise of the streets below, the shouting on the corners, the calls in the Senate, the gunfire on other continents, dwindled to a remote murmur of background music, drums and bugles in the camp of another army far away in another war.

CHAPTER SEVEN.

CHRISTIAN FOUND it hard to keep his mind on the moving picture. It was a fairly good picture, too, about a detachment of troops in Berlin for one day in 1918 en route from the Russian Front to the Western Front. The Lieutenant in the picture was under strict orders to keep his men together at the station, but he understood how much they wanted to see their wives and sweethearts, after the ferocious battles in the East and the fatal battles-to-come in the West. At the risk of court-martial and death, he permitted them to go to their homes. If any one of them failed to get back to the station on time, the Lieutenant's life would be forfeit. The picture followed the various men. Some got drunk, some were tempted by Jews and defeatists to remain in Berlin, some were nearly persuaded by their wives, and for awhile it was touch-and-go whether the Lieutenant would survive the gamble. But finally, in the nick of time, the last soldier made the station just as the train was pulling out, and it was a solid band of comrades who started toward France, having vindicated their Lieutenant's faith in them. The picture was done very well. It cleverly demonstrated that the war had not been lost by the Army, but by the faint-hearts and the traitors at home, and it was full of touches of humor and pathos.

Even the soldiers who were sitting in the troop theatre all around Christian were moved by the actors playing soldiers in another wan The Lieutenant was a little too good to be true, of course, and Christian had never come across one quite like him. Lieutenant Hardenburg, Christian thought dryly, could profit by seeing this picture a few times. Since the one day of relaxation in the brothel in Paris, Hardenburg had grown more and more rigid with the lengthening of the war. Their regiment had had its armor taken from it and had been moved to Rennes. They had been stationed there, as policemen, more than anything else, while the war with Russia had started and all of Hardenburg's contemporaries were winning honors in the East.

One morning Hardenburg had read that a boy he had gone to officers' school with, whom they had called the Ox because he was so backward, had been made a Lieutenant Colonel in the Ukraine, and Hardenburg had nearly exploded with fury. He was still a Lieutenant, and even though he was living well, in a two-room apartment in one of the best hotels in town, and he had an arrangement with two women who lived on the same floor, and was making considerable money blackmailing illegal operators in meat and dairy products, Hardenburg was inconsolable. And an inconsolable Lieutenant, Christian thought grimly, made for an unhappy Sergeant.

It was a good thing Christian's leave was beginning tomorrow. Another unrelieved week of Hardenburg's snapping sarcasm might have driven Christian to some dangerous act of insubordination. Even now, Christian thought resentfully, when he knows I'm leaving on the seven-o'clock train for Germany in the morning he's put me on duty. There was a patrol scheduled for midnight to round up some French boys who were dodging labor service in Germany, and Hardenburg hadn't picked Himmler or Stein or any of the others for it. That nasty, thin grin, and, "I know you won't mind, Diestl. Keep you from being bored your last night in Rennes. You don't have to report till midnight."

The picture faded out on a closeup of the handsome young Lieutenant smiling tenderly and thoughtfully at his collected men as the train sped west, and there was real applause from the soldiers in the hall.

The newsreel came on. There were pictures of Hitler talking and the Luftwaffe dropping bombs on London and Goering pinning a medal on a pilot who had downed a hundred planes, and infantry advancing against a burning farm building on the road to Leningrad.

Automatically, Christian noticed the energy and precision with which the men carried out their a.s.signments. They'd be in Moscow in another three months, he thought heavily, and he'd still be sitting in Rennes taking abuse from Hardenburg, arresting pregnant women who had insulted German officers in the cafes. Soon there would be snow all over Russia, and here he was, one of the best skiers in Europe, playing policeman in the mild climate of Western France. The Army was a marvelous instrument, but there was no doubt about it, it had some grave imperfections.

One of the men on the screen fell. It was hard to tell whether he was taking cover or had been hit, but he didn't get up, and the camera pa.s.sed over him. Christian felt his eyes growing wet. He was a little ashamed of himself for it, but every time he saw these films of Germans fighting, while he sat safe and comfortable so far away, he had to curb a tendency to cry. And he always felt guilty and uneasy and was sharp-tempered with his men for days afterwards. It wasn't his fault that he was alive while others were dying. The Army performed its intricate functions in its own way, but he couldn't fight off the sense of guilt. And even the thought of going back home for two weeks was flavored by it. Young Frederick Langerman had lost a leg in Latvia and both sons of the Kochs had been killed and it would be impossible to avoid the measuring, contemptuous stares of his neighbors when he came back, well-fed and whole, with one half hour of semi-comic combat outside Paris behind him.

The war, he thought, had to end soon. Suddenly his civilian life, the easygoing, thoughtless days on the snowy slopes, the days without Lieutenant Hardenburg, seemed unbearably sweet and desirable. Well, the Russians were about to cash in, and then the British would finally see the light, and he would forget, these boring, silly days in France. Two months after it was over people would stop talking about the war, and a clerk who had added figures in the quartermaster's office in Berlin for three years would get as much respect as a man who had stormed pillboxes in Poland, Belgium and Russia. Then, Hardenburg might show up some day, still a Lieutenant ... or even better, discharged as unnecessary. And Christian would get him off alone in the hills and ... He smiled sourly as he recognized the recurrent, childish dream. How long, he wondered, would they be likely to keep him in after the armistice was signed? Those would be the really difficult months, when the war was over and you just were waiting for the slow, enormous machinery of the Army's bureaucracy to release you.

The newsreel ended and a photograph of Hitler was thrown on the screen and everybody stood at attention and saluted and sang, "Deutschland, Deutschland, ber Alles."

The lights went up and Christian moved slowly out among the crowd of soldiers. They all looked middle-aged, Christian thought bitterly, and like men who suffered from frailty and disease. Garrison troops, contemptuously left in a peaceful country while the better specimens of German manhood were out fighting the nation's battles thousands of miles away. And he was one of them. He shook his head irritably. He'd better stop this or he'd get as bad as Hardenburg.

There were still some Frenchmen and women on the dark streets and they hastily stepped down into the gutter as he approached. He was annoyed at them, too. Timidity was one of the most irritating qualities in the human character. And it was a more or less needless and unfounded timidity, which was worse. He wasn't going to hurt them and the entire Army was under the strictest orders to behave correctly and with the utmost politeness to the French. Germans, he thought, as a man stumbled a little stepping down from the curb, Germans would never behave like that if there were a foreign army in Germany. Any foreign army.

He stopped. "Old man!" he said.

The Frenchman stopped. Even in the dark, the hunch of his shoulders and the hasty movements of his hands showed how frightened he was.

"Yes," the Frenchman said, his voice trembling a little, "yes, my colonel."

"I am not a Colonel," Christian said. What a childlike, infuriating form of flattery.

"Forgive me, Monsieur," the Frenchman said. "In the dark ..."

"You don't have to step down in the street for me," Christian said.

"Yes, Sir," said the Frenchman. But he didn't move.

"Get up here," said Christian harshly. "Get up on the sidewalk."

"Yes, Sir," said the Frenchman. He stepped up tentatively. "I will show you my pa.s.s. My papers are in perfect order."

"I don't want to see your d.a.m.ned papers," Christian said.

"Whatever you say, Sir." The Frenchman spoke humbly.

"Ah," said Christian. "Go home."

"Yes, Sir." The Frenchman scurried off and Christian continued on his way. A new Europe, he thought ironically, a powerful federation of dynamic states. Not with material like this. G.o.d, if only the war would end. Or if he were sent some place where the guns could be heard. It was this garrison life. Half civilian, half military, with all the drawbacks of both. It rotted the soul, robbed a man of ambition, faith. Maybe his application for officers' school would come through and after he became a Lieutenant he would be sent to Russia or to Africa, and this period would fall into its proper perspective. He had put in his application three months ago and had heard nothing yet. Probably it was lying under a pile of papers on some fat corporal's desk on the Wilhelmstra.s.se.

G.o.d, it was so different from what he had expected the day he had left home, the day he had come into Paris ... He remembered the stories from the last war. The iron-bound, tender friendships formed under fire, the grim sense of duty performed and the sporadic flares of exaltation. He remembered the end of The Magic Mountain. Hans Castorp, in 1914, running into the French fire across the flower-spotted field, singing Beethoven. The book had ended too soon. There should have been a chapter showing Castorp three months later, checking off size 12 boots in a supply depot in Liege. Not singing anything.

The whole myth of comradeship in a war. He had had it for a moment with Brandt, on the road to Paris, and even, for a flicker in time, with Hardenburg going down the Boulevard des Italiens toward the Place de l'Opera. But now Brandt had been commissioned and was an important young officer with a flat in Paris, working on an Army magazine. And Hardenburg had lived up to all the worst expectations Christian had had of him in training. And the other men around him were swine. There was no getting away from it. They thanked G.o.d morning, noon and night they were in Rennes instead of outside Tripoli, or Kiev, and every one of them was busy making all sorts of black-market deals with the French and putting away piles of money for the depression after the war. How be comrades with men like that? Money-lenders. War-dodgers in uniform. Whenever any one of them was in danger of being sent to one of the fronts he pulled every wire imaginable, bribed regimental clerks, anything, to remain where he was. Christian was in an army of ten million men and he had never been so lonely in all his life. In Berlin on his leave he would go to the War Office. He knew a Colonel there, a man who had worked with him in Austria in the days before Anschluss, and he would ask him about a transfer to another and more active unit. Even if it meant giving up his rank ...

He looked at his watch. He still had twenty minutes before having to report to the orderly room. There was a cafe open across the street and he suddenly needed a drink.

He opened the door. There were four soldiers drinking champagne at a table. They were red-faced and they had obviously been drinking a long time. They had their tunics unb.u.t.toned and two of them needed shaves. Champagne, too. Certainly not on a private's pay. Probably were selling stolen German Army weapons to the French. The French weren't using them, of course, but there was no telling what might happen finally. Even the French might regain their courage. An army of black-market merchants, Christian thought bitterly, dealers in leather and ammunition and Normandy cheese and wine and veal. Leave them in France another two years and you wouldn't be able to distinguish them from the French except by their uniforms. The subtle, shabby victory of the Gallic spirit.

"A vermouth," Christian said to the proprietor, who was standing nervously behind the bar. "No, a brandy."

He leaned against the bar and stared at the four soldiers. The champagne was probably awful. Brandt had told him the French put any kind of label on any kind of miserable wine. The Germans didn't know better, and it was the French way of fighting back, patriotism mixed, of course, with profit.

The four soldiers noticed Christian watching them. They became a little self-conscious and lowered their voices as they drank. Christian saw one of the men rub his hand guiltily across his unshaven cheek. The proprietor put the brandy down in front of Christian and he sipped at it, staring stonily at the four soldiers. One of the men took out his wallet to pay for a new bottle of champagne and Christian saw that it was bulging carelessly with francs. G.o.d, was it for these soft, conniving gangsters that Germans were hurling themselves against the Russian lines? Was it for these flabby shopkeepers that the Luftwaffe was burning over London?

"You!" Christian said, to the man with the wallet. "Come over here!"

The man with the wallet looked at his comrades thoughtfully. They were very quiet and they stared down into their gla.s.ses. The man with the wallet stood up slowly and stuffed his money away in a pocket.

"Move!" Christian said fiercely. "Get over here."

The soldier shuffled over to Christian, his face growing pale under his stubble.

"Stand up!" Christian said. "Stand at attention!"

The man stiffened, looking more frightened than ever.

"What's your name?" Christian snapped.

"Private Hans Reuter, Sergeant," the man said, in a low, nervous voice.

Christian took out a pencil and a slip of paper and wrote the name down. "Organization?" he asked.

The soldier swallowed unhappily. "147th Battalion of Pioneers," he said.

Christian wrote that down. "The next time you go out to drink, Private Reuter," he said, "you will shave and keep your tunic b.u.t.toned. You will also stand at attention when addressing your superiors. I'm submitting your name for disciplinary action."

"Yes, Sergeant."

"Dismissed."

Reuter sighed and turned back to his table.

"All of you," Christian called bitingly, "dress like soldiers!"

The men b.u.t.toned their tunics. They sat in silence.

Christian turned his back on them and stared at the proprietor.

"Another brandy, Sergeant?"

"No."

Christian put some money on the bar for the drink, finished the brandy. He stalked out without looking at the four soldiers sitting in the corner.

Lieutenant Hardenburg was sitting in the orderly room with his cap and gloves on. He sat erectly, as though he was on a horse, staring across the room at the Propaganda Ministry's map of Russia, with the battle lines, as of last Tuesday, drawn on it in victorious black and red strokes. The orderly room was in an old French police building, and there was a smell of ancient small crimes and unwashed French policemen that all the brisk cleanliness of the German Army had failed to eradicate. A single small bulb burned overhead and it was hot because the windows and blinds were closed for the blackout and the ghosts of all the petty criminals who had been beaten in the room seemed to be hovering in the stale air.

When Christian came into the room, a little, greasy man in the uniform of the French Milice was standing uneasily near the window, occasionally glancing at Hardenburg. Christian stood at attention and saluted, thinking: This cannot go on forever, this will end some day.

Hardenburg paid no attention to him and it was only because Christian knew him so well that he was sure Hardenburg was aware he was in the room, and waiting. Christian stood rigidly at the doorway, examining the Lieutenant's face.

As Christian watched Hardenburg, he knew that he hated that face worse than the faces of any of his enemies. Worse than Churchill, worse than Stalin, worse than any tank captain or mortar gunner in the British or Russian armies.

Hardenburg looked at his watch. "Ah," he said, without looking around, "the Sergeant's on time."

"Yes, Sir," said Christian.

Hardenburg strode over to the paper-littered desk and sat down behind it. He picked up one of the papers and said, "Here are the names and photographs of three men we have been looking for. They were called for Labor Service last month and have evaded us so far. This gentleman ..." with a slight, cold gesture toward the Frenchman in the Milice uniform ..."this gentleman pretends to know where all three can be found."

"Yes, Lieutenant," the Frenchman said eagerly. "Absolutely, Lieutenant."

"You will take a detail of five," Hardenburg said, going on as though the Frenchman were not in the room, "and pick up these three men. There is a truck and a driver in the courtyard and the detail is already in it."

"Yes, Sir," said Christian.

"You," said Hardenburg to the Frenchman. "Get out of here."

"Yes, Sir." The Frenchman gasped a little as he spoke, and went quickly out the door.