The Young Lions Part 38

He felt the tears, complex and dubious, sliding down his cheeks as he turned to watch Hamlet, torn by doubt, put up his sword rather than take his uncle at his prayers.

Far off a single gun spoke into the subsiding sky. Probably, thought Michael, it is one of the women's batteries, coming, like women, a little late for the raid, but showing their intentions are of the best.

London was burning in a bright circlet of fires when Michael left the theatre and started walking toward the Park. The sky flickered and here and there an orange glow was reflected off the clouds. Hamlet was dead by now. "Now cracks a n.o.ble heart," Horatio had said. "Good night, sweet prince. And flights of angels sing thee to thy rest." Horatio had also said his final words on carnal, b.l.o.o.d.y, and unnatural acts: of accidental judgments, casual slaughters, while the last Germans were crashing over Dover, and the last Englishmen were burning in their homes as the curtain slowly dropped and the ushers ran up the aisles with flowers for Ophelia and the rest of the cast.

In Piccadilly, the wh.o.r.es strolled by in battalions, flashing electric torches on pa.s.sing faces, giggling harshly, calling, "Hey, Yank, two pounds, Yank."

Michael walked slowly through the shuffling crowds of wh.o.r.es and MP's and soldiers, thinking of Hamlet saying of Fortinbras and his men, "Witness this army, of such ma.s.s and charge, Led by a delicate and tender prince, Whose spirit with divine ambition puff'd Makes mouths at the invisible event; Exposing what is mortal and unsure To all that fortune, death and danger there, Even for an egg-sh.e.l.l."

What mouths we make at the invisible event, Michael thought, grinning to himself, staring through the darkness at the soldiers bargaining with the wh.o.r.es, what regretful, doubtful mouths! We expose all that is mortal and unsure, and for more than an eggsh.e.l.l, but how differently from Fortinbras and his twenty thousand offstage men at arms! Ah, probably Shakespeare was laying it on. Probably no army, not even that of good old Fortinbras, returned from the Polack wars, ever was quite as dashing and wholehearted as the dramatist made out. It supplied a good speech and conveniently fitted Hamlet's delicate situation, and Shakespeare had put it in, although he must have known he was lying. We never hear what a Private First Cla.s.s in Fortinbras' infantry thought about his tender and delicate prince, and the divine ambition that puff'd him. That would make an interesting scene, too.... Twenty thousand men, that for a fantasy and trick of fame, Go to their graves like beds, was it? There were graves waiting not so far off for more than twenty thousand of the men around him, Michael thought, and maybe for himself, too, but perhaps in the three hundred years the fantasy and the trick had lost some of their power. And yet we go, we go. Not in the blank verse, n.o.ble certainty so admired by the man in the black tights, but we go. In a kind of limping, painful prose, in legal language too dense for ordinary use or understanding, a judgment against us, more likely than not, by a civil court that is not quite our enemy and not quite our friend, a writ handed down by a nearly honest judge, backed by the decision of a jury of not-quite-our peers, sitting on a case that is not exactly within their jurisdiction. "Go," they say, "go die a little. We have our reasons." And not quite trusting them and not quite doubting them, we go. "Go," they say, "go die a little. Things will not be better when you finish, but perhaps they will not be much worse." Where is the Fortinbras, to toss a plume and strike a n.o.ble pose, and put the cause into good round language for us? N'existe pas, as the French put it. Out of stock. Out of stock in America, out of stock in England, quiet in France, too cunning in Russia. Fortinbras had vanished from the earth. Churchill made a good try of it, but when you finally sounded him there was a hollow and old-fashioned ring to him like a bugle blowing for a war three years ago. The mouth we make at the invisible event today is twisted into a skeptical grin. This is the war of the sour mouth, Michael thought, and yet there will be enough of us dead in it to please any bloodthirsty paying customer at the Globe in the early 1600s.

Michael walked slowly alongside the Park, thinking of the swans, settling down now on the Serpentine, and the orators who would be out again on Sunday, and the gun crews brewing tea and relaxing now that the planes had fled England. He remembered what an Irish Captain on leave in London, from a Dover battery which had knocked down forty planes, had said of the London anti-aircraft outfits. "They never hit anybody," he said in a contemptuous soft burr. "It's a wonder London isn't completely destroyed. They're so busy planting rhododendrons around the emplacements and shining the barrels so they'll look pretty when Miss Churchill happens to pa.s.s by, that it's b.u.g.g.e.r-all gunnery."

The moon was coming up now, over the old trees and the scarred buildings, and there was a tinkle of gla.s.s where some soldiers and their girls were walking over a window that had been blown out in the raid.

"b.u.g.g.e.r-all gunnery," Michael said softly to himself, turning into the Dorchester, past the huge doorman with the decorations from the last war on his uniform. "b.u.g.g.e.r-all gunnery," Michael repeated, delighted with the phrase.

There was dance music swinging into the lobby, and the old ladies and their nephews solemnly drinking tea, and pretty girls floating through on the way to the American bar on the arms of American Air Forces officers, and Michael had the feeling, looking at the scene, that he had read all about this before, about the last war, that the characters, the setting, the action, were exactly the same, the costumes so little different that the eye hardly noticed it. By a trick of time, he thought, we become the heroes in our youthful romances, but always too late to appear romantic in them.

He walked upstairs to the large room where the party was still in progress and where Louise had said she'd be waiting for him.

"Look," said a tall, dark-haired girl near the door, "a Private." She turned to a Colonel next to her. "I told you there was one in London." She turned back to Michael. "Will you come to dinner next Tuesday night?" she asked. "We'll lionize you. Backbone of the Army."

Michael grinned at her. The Colonel next to her did not seem pleased with Michael. "Come, my dear." He took the girl firmly by the arm. "I'll give you a lemon if you come," the girl said over her shoulder, receding in silk undulations with the Colonel. "A real whole lemon."

Michael looked around the room. Six Generals, he noticed, and felt very uncomfortable. He had never met a General before. He looked uneasily down at his ill-fitting blouse and the not-quite polished b.u.t.tons. He would not have been surprised if one of the Generals had come over to him and taken his name, rank, and serial number for not having his b.u.t.tons polished properly.

He did not see Louise for the moment, and he felt shy at going up to the bar, among the important-looking strangers at the other end of the room, and asking for a drink. When he had pa.s.sed his sixteenth birthday he had felt that he was over being shy for the rest of his life. After that he had felt at home everywhere, had spoken his mind freely, felt that he was acceptable enough, if no more, to get by in any company. But ever since he had joined the Army, a later-day shyness, more powerful and paralyzing than anything he had known as a boy, had developed within him, shyness with officers, with men who had been in combat, among women with whom otherwise he would have felt perfectly at ease.

He stood hesitantly a little to one side of the door, staring at the Generals. He did not like their faces. They looked too much like the faces of businessmen, smalltown merchants, factory owners, growing a little fat and overcomfortable, with an eye out for a new sales campaign. The German Generals have better faces, he thought. Not better, abstractly, he thought, but better for Generals. Harder, crueler, more determined. A General should have one of two faces, he thought. Either he should look like a heavyweight prizefighter, staring out coldly with dumb animal courage at the world, through battered, quick slits of eyes, or he should look like a haunted man out of a novel by Dostoievski, malevolent, almost mad, with a face marked by evil raptures and visions of death. Our Generals, he thought, look as though they might sell you a building lot or a vacuum cleaner, they never look as though they could lead you up to the walls of a fortress. Fortinbras, Fortinbras, did you never migrate from Europe?

"What're you thinking about?" Louise asked.

He turned. She was standing at his side. "The faces of our Generals," he said. "I don't like them."

"The trouble with you is," Louise said, "you have the enlisted man's psychology."

"How right you are." He stared at Louise. She was wearing a gray plaid suit with a black blouse. Her red hair, bright and severe over the small, elegant body, shone among the uniforms. He never could decide whether he loved Louise or was annoyed with her. She had a husband some place in the Pacific of whom she rarely spoke, and she did some sort of semi-secret job for the OWI, and she seemed to know every bigwig in the British Isles. She had a deft, tricky way with men, and was always being invited to weekends at famous country houses where garrulous military men of high rank seemed to spill a great many dangerous secrets to her. Michael was sure, for example, that she knew when D Day was going to come, and which targets in Germany were to be bombed for the next month, and when Roosevelt would meet Stalin and Churchill again. She was well over thirty, although she looked younger, and before the war had lived modestly in St. Louis, where her husband had taught at a college. After the war, Michael was certain, she would run for the Senate or be appointed Amba.s.sadress to somewhere, and when he thought of it, he pitied the husband, mired on Bougainville or New Caledonia, dreaming of going back to his modest home and quiet wife in St. Louis.

"Why," Michael asked, smiling soberly at her, conscious that two or three high-ranking officers were watching him stonily as he talked to Louise, "why do you bother with me?"

"I want to keep in touch with the spirit of the troops," Louise said. "The Common Soldier and How He Grew. I may write an article for the Ladies' Home Journal on the subject."

"Who's paying for this party?" Michael asked.

"The OWI," Louise said, holding his arm possessively. "Better relations with the Armed Forces and our n.o.ble Allies, the British."

"That's where my taxes go," Michael said. "Scotch for the Generals."

"The poor dears," Louise said. "Don't begrudge it to them. Their soft days are almost over."

"Let's get out of here," Michael said. "I can't breath."

"Don't you want a drink?"

"No. What would the OWI say?"

"One thing I can't stand about enlisted men," Louise said, "is their air of injured moral superiority."

"Let's get out of here." Michael saw a British Colonel with gray hair bearing down on them, and tried to get Louise started toward the door, but it was too late.

"Louise," said the Colonel, "we're going to the Club for dinner, and I thought if you weren't busy ..."

"Sorry," Louise said, holding lightly onto Michael's arm. "My date arrived. Colonel Treanor, PFC Whitacre."

"How do you do, Sir," said Michael, standing almost unconsciously at attention, as he shook hands.

The Colonel, he noticed, was a handsome, slender man with cold, pale eyes, with the red tabs of the General Staff on his lapel. The Colonel did not smile at Michael.

"Are you sure," he said rudely, "that you're going to be busy, Louise?"

He was staring at her, standing close to her, his face curiously pale, as he rocked a little on his heels. Then Michael remembered the name. He had heard a long time ago that there was something on between Louise and him, and Mincey, in the office, had once warned Michael to be more discreet when Mincey had seen Louise and Michael together at a bar. The Colonel was not in command of troops now, but was on one of the Supreme Headquarters Planning Boards, and, according to Mincey, was a powerful man in Allied politics.

"I told you, Charles," Louise said, "that I'm busy."

"Of course," the Colonel said, in a clipped, somewhat drunken way. He wheeled, and went off toward the bar.

"There goes Private Whitacre," Michael said softly, "on landing barge Number One."

"Don't be silly," Louise snapped.

"Joke."

"It's a silly joke."

"Righto. Silly joke. Give me my purple heart now." He grinned at Louise to show her he wasn't taking it too seriously. "Now," he said, "now that you have blasted my career in the Army of the United States, may we go?"

"Don't you want to meet some Generals?"

"Some other time," said Michael. "Maybe around 1960. Go get your coat."

"O.K.," said Louise. "Don't go away. I couldn't bear it if you went away." Michael looked speculatively at her. She was standing close to him, oblivious of all the other men in the room, her head tilted a little to one side, looking up at him very seriously. She means it, Michael thought, she actually means it. He felt disturbed, tender and wary at the same time. What does she want? The question skimmed the edges of his mind, as he looked down at the bright, cleverly arranged hair, at the steady, revealing eyes. What does she want? Whatever it is, he thought rebelliously, I don't want it.

"Why don't you marry me?" she said.

Michael blinked and looked around him at the glitter of stars and the dull glint of braid. What a place, he thought, what a place for a question like that!

"Why don't you marry me?" she asked again, quietly.

"Please," he said, "go get your coat." Suddenly he disliked her very much. Suddenly he felt sorry for the schoolteacher husband in the Marine uniform faraway in the jungle. He must be a nice, simple, sorrowful man, Michael thought, who probably would die in this war out of simple bad luck.

"Don't think," Louise said, "that I'm drunk. I knew I was going to ask you that from the minute you walked in here tonight. I watched you for five minutes before you saw me. I knew that's what I wanted."

"I'll put a request through channels," Michael said as lightly as possible, "for permission from my Commanding Officer ..."

"Don't joke, d.a.m.n you," Louise said. She turned sharply and went to get her coat.

He watched her as she walked across the room. Colonel Treanor stopped her and Michael saw him arguing swiftly and secretly with Louise and hold her arm. She pulled away and went on to the dressing rooms. She walked lightly, Michael noticed, with a prim, stiff grace, her pretty legs and small feet very definite and womanly in their movements. Michael felt baffled and wished he had the courage to go to the bar for a drink. It had all been so light and comradely, offhand and without responsibility, just the thing for a time like this, this time of waiting, this time before the real war, this time of being ludicrous and ashamed in Mincey's ridiculous office. It had been off-hand and flattering, in exactly the proper proportions, and Louise had cleverly erected a thin shield of something that was less than and better than love to protect him from the comic, unending abuse of the Army. And, now, it was probably over. Women, Michael thought resentfully, can never learn the art of being transients. They are all permanent settlers at heart, making homes with dull, instinctive persistence in floods and wars, on the edges of invasions, at the moment of the crumbling of states. No, he thought, I will not have it. For my own protection I am going to get through this time alone ...

The h.e.l.l with it, he thought, Generals or no Generals. He strode, upright and swift, through the room to the bar.

"Whiskey and soda, please," he said to the bartender, and drank the first gulp down in a long, grateful draught.

A Colonel in the Supply Service of the British Army was talking to an RAF Wing Commander at Michael's elbow. They paid no attention to him. The Colonel was a little drunk. "Herbert, old man," the Colonel was saying, "I was in Africa and I can speak with authority. The Americans are fine at one thing. Superb. I will not deny it. They are superb at supply. Lorries, oil dumps, traffic control, superb. But, let us face it, Herbert, they cannot fight. If Montgomery were realistic he would say to them, 'Chaps, we will hand over all our lorries to you, and you hand over all your tanks and guns to us. You will haul and carry, chaps, because you're absolutely first-rate at it, and we will jolly well do the fighting, and we'll all be home by Christmas.'"

The Wing Commander nodded solemnly and both the officers of the King ordered two more whiskeys. The OWI, Michael thought grimly, staring at the Colonel's pink scalp shining through the thin white hair on the back of his head, the OWI is certainly throwing away the taxpayer's money on these particular allies.

Then he saw Louise coming out into the room in a loose gray coat. He put down his drink and hurried over to her. Her face wasn't serious any more, but curled into its usual slightly questioning smile, as though she didn't believe one half of what the world told her. At some moment in the dressing room, Michael thought, as he took her arm, she had looked into the mirror and told herself, I am not going to show anything more tonight, and switched on her old face, as smoothly and perfectly as she was now pulling on her gloves.

"Oh, my," Michael said, grinning, piloting her to the door. "Oh, my, what danger I am in."

Louise glanced at him, then half-understood. She smiled reflectively. "Don't think you're not," she said.

"Lord, no," said Michael. They laughed together and walked out through the lobby of the Dorchester, through the old ladies drinking tea with their nephews, through the young Air Forces Captains with the pretty girls, through the terrible, anch.o.r.ed English jazz, that suffered so sadly because there were no Negroes in England to breathe life into it, and tell the saxophonists and drummers, "Oh, Mistuh, are you off! Mistuh, lissen here, this is the way it goes, just turn it loose, Mistuh, turn that poor jailbird horn loose out of yo' hands ..." Michael and Louise walked jauntily, arm in arm, back once more, and perhaps only for a moment, on the brittle happy perimeter of love. Outside, across the Park, in the fresh cold evening air, the dying fires the Germans had left behind them sent a holiday glow into the sky.

They paced slowly toward Piccadilly.

"I decided something tonight," Louise said.

"What?" Michael asked.

"I have to get you commissioned. At least a Lieutenant. It's silly for you to remain an enlisted man all your life. I'm going to talk to some of my friends."

Michael laughed. "Save your breath," he said.

"Wouldn't you like to be an officer?"

Michael shrugged. "Maybe. I haven't thought about it. Even so-save your breath."

"Why?"

"They can't do it."

"They can do anything," Louise said. "And if I ask them ..."

"Nothing doing. It will go back to Washington, and it will be turned down."

"Why?"

"Because there's a man in Washington who says I'm a Communist."

"Nonsense."

"It's nonsense," Michael said, "but there it is."

"Are you a Communist?"

"About like Roosevelt," said Michael. "They'd kept him from being commissioned, too."

"Did you try?"

"Yes."

"Oh, G.o.d," Louise said, "what a silly world."

"It's not very important," said Michael. "We'll win the war anyway."

"Weren't you furious," Louise asked, "when you found out?"

"A little, maybe," said Michael. "More sad than furious."

"Didn't you feel like chucking the whole thing?"

"For an hour or two, maybe," said Michael. "Then I thought, What a childish att.i.tude."

"You're too d.a.m.ned reasonable."

"Maybe. Not really, though, not so terribly reasonable," said Michael. "I'm not really much of a soldier, anyway. The Army isn't missing much. When I went into the Army, I made up my mind that I was putting myself at the Army's disposal. I believe in the war. That doesn't mean I believe in the Army. I don't believe in any army. You don't expect justice out of an army, if you're a sensible, grown-up human being, you only expect victory. And if it comes to that, our Army is probably the most just one that ever existed. I believe the Army will take care of me to the best of its abilities, that it will keep me from being killed, if it can possibly manage it, and that it will finally win as cheaply as human foresight and skill can arrange. Sufficient unto the day is the victory thereof."

"That's a cynical att.i.tude," Louise said. "The OWI wouldn't like that."

"Maybe," said Michael. "I expected the Army to be corrupt, inefficient, cruel, wasteful, and it turned out to be all those things, just like all armies, only much less so than I thought before I got into it. It is much less corrupt, for example, than the German Army. Good for us. The victory we win will not be as good as it might be, if it were a different kind of army, but it will be the best kind of victory we can expect in this day and age, and I'm thankful for it."

"What're you going to do?" Louise demanded. "Stay in that silly office, stroking chorus girls on the behind for the whole war?"

Michael grinned. "People have spent wars in worse ways," he said. "But I don't think I'll only do that. Somehow," he said thoughtfully, "somehow the Army will move me some place, finally, where I will have to earn my keep, where I will have to kill, where I may be killed."

"How do you feel about it?" Louise demanded.

"Frightened."

"Why're you so sure it will happen?"

Michael shrugged. "I don't know," he said. "A premonition. A mystic sense that justice must be done by me and to me. Ever since 1936, ever since Spain, I have felt that one day I would be asked to pay. I ducked it year after year, and every day that sense grew stronger; the payment would be demanded of me, without fail."

"Do you think you've paid yet?"

"A little," Michael grinned. "The interest on the debt. The capital remains untouched. Some day they're going to collect the capital from me, and not in the USO office, either." They turned down into St. James's Street, with the Palace looming dark and medieval at the other end, and the clock glistening palely, a soft gray blur, among the battlements.